Mary Jane Mitchell
Mary Jane Mitchell was born in Monroe county, Ohio, May 8, 1840 and died at the home
of I. J. Letherman, Shirland, Ill., on Good Friday, March 30, 1923.
When she was a child 6 years old her parents moved to Elkhart county, Ind. They lived
on a farm in Olive township where she was reared and on Nov. 6, 1864 she married Matthew
Garner who died at Elkhart, Ind. June 2, 1894. The young couple lived on the old homestead in
Indiana over ten years, selling this and then purchased a farm south of Wichita, Kan., where
they lived until a few years before his death, when they had returned to Elkhart, after Mr.
Garner’s death, Mrs. Garner returned to her former home in Kansas where she lived a few
years, she then sold the farm and invested in a hotel at Ames, Oklahoma. She then stayed with
Mrs. Letherman, her niece for several years. After purchasing the hotel she made that her home
for about 15 years and then sold it and invested in a farm in Oklahoma. Nearly five years ago
Mrs. Letherman brought her from the west and since then she took care of her.
Her remains were laid to rest, by her request, beside her parents in a small lot in the
cemetery near the old homestead, Olive township.
Mrs. Garner’s great grandfather, Wm. Mitchell was of Scotch descent and was born in
Ireland. He was “pack peddler” up and down the Hudson river in New York state but later
became a merchant and still later a farmer and factory man. The grandfather, James Mitchell
was born in Dutchess county, New York. The father of Mrs. Garner was born Oct. 31, 1797.
He, Zephaniah Platt Mitchell, born in Water county, New York died in Elkhart, Ind., Dec. 16,
1854.
4/5/1923