SLAVERY AND FOUR YEARS OF WAR, A POLITICAL HISTORY OF
SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES, Vol. II,
by Joseph Warren Keifer. Published 1900 by G. P. Putman's Sons, New
York.
page 246
Mary Smith Keifer (my mother), a daughter of Peter and Catherine Smith born January 31, 1799,
on Duck Creek near Columbia Church, within the present limits of
Cincinnati, married Joseph Keifer, when not yet seventeen years of age,
and became the mother of fourteen children, eight of whom lived to mature
years---two sons and six daughters. She died at Yellow Springs,
Ohio,
March 23, 1879, passing her eightieth birthday, having survived all of her brothers and sisters. She was the next to
the youngest of them. She inherited, cultivated, and practiced the
essential virtues necessary in a successful, useful, pure, happy, and
contented life. She had a most cheerful disposition, and was of a
confident and buoyant spirit, in sorrow and adversity. She was
devoted to all her children, and all owe her much for the fundamental
preparation, education, etc., together with the habits of industry and
perseverance, essential to whatever of success they have attained in
life. And, above all, she early became a member of church (Baptist
and Christian), and maintained her church relations for above sixty years, to her death, never doubting in her Christian belief, yet never
bigoted or intolerant of the religious views of others.
She was a devoted companion to her husband, and with him ever took a deep
interest in their family and neighbors, never neglecting a duty to
them. She, born in the Ohio territory, lived within its borders above
eighty years, witnessed its transformation from savagery to the highest
civilization, and its growth in wealth, power, and population from little
to the third of the great States of the Union. She witnessed the coming, through science and inventions, of railroads, telegraphs,
steam, and electric power, telephones, etc. She saw the soldiers of
the War of 1812, the Mexican war, and the War of the Rebellion, and
something of the Indian wars in Ohio. In her childhood she lived in proximity to savages. With her husband
she had ministered to escaped slaves, and saw slavery (always detested by
both) abolished. She witnessed with becoming pride a degree of
success in the efforts of her children and grandchildren, and she held on
her knees her great-grandchildren. She is buried beside her husband
in Ferncliff Cemetery, Springfield, Ohio.
The children who grew to maturity were: Margaret, born September 22, 1816,
who married Joseph Gaines, and died March 10, 1896, leaving two sons and a
daughter; Sarah (still living) born September 29, 1819, who married Lewis
James, and
after his decease, Richard T. Youngman, having one son, J. Warren James
(Captain 45th Ohio, War of the Rebellion), and five children by her last
husband; Benjamin Franklin (still living), born April 22, 1821, who married Amelia
Henkle,
and has
three sons and three daughters; Elizabeth Mary, born February 20, 1823,
unmarried (at time of this writing); Lucretia, born January 20, 1828, died
August 05, 1892, surviving her husband, Eli M. Henkle, and her only son,
John
E. Henkle; Joseph Warren Keifer, born January 30, 1836, who married March
22, 1860, Eliza Stout, of Springfield, Ohio. (They have three sons living,
Note: at the time of this writing, Joseph Warren, born May 13, 1861;
William White, born May 24, 1866, and Horace Charles, born November 14,
1867. Their only other child, a daughter, Margaret Eliza, was born June
02, 1873 and died August 16, 1890.) Minerva, born July 15, 1839 (died July
22, 1899), married to Charles B. Palmer, and they have two sons and a
daughter; and Cordelia Ellen, born July 17, 1842, not married.
NOTE:
MINERVA4 KEIFER, b. July 15, 1839, Yellow Springs, Greene Co., OH; d.
March 23, 1879, Columbus, Franklin Co., OH; m. CHARLES BENNET PALMER; b.
February 19, 1844, Springfield, Sullivan Co., NH; d. March 02, 1909, Hot
Springs, Garland OH., AR.
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