An American Family History

Leathy Ann Taylor Stringfield Gilman was born on January 22, 1851 in Shelby County, Ohio. She was the daughter of Jacob Taylor and Sarah Branstiter.

She married three times. She married her first husband, William Ray Stringfield in McLean County, Illinois on September 22, 1872. William was born in June, 1851 in Missouri. Their daughter, Jessie M. Stringfield was born in Iowa in 1875. William died on March 10, 1877 and is buried with Leathy's father, sister, and brothers in row 37 of Carlisle Cemetery.

She married her second husband, Alfred N. Stringfield about 1876. Alfred was born in 1850 in Illinois. They had one child Sarah Alice (Allie) F. Stringfield (1877?-1966). Alice married Charles B. Schooler in 1895 and they had five children. They were Karl P. Schooler (1898), Edith H. Schooler Conant (1900-1955) who married Harry Clair Conant (1896-1963) in 1902, Anna Arnitus Schooler (1904), Dean Harold Schooler (1907-1999) who married Ellen Lavaun Gardner (1910-1999), and Murray Schooler (1910-1994) who married Mary Ellen (1913-1994).  Allie lived next door to her grandmother Sarah Taylor at the time of the 1900 census. Alfred died in 1879.

Leathy married her third husband, Henry C. Gilman on February 13,  1879. Henry was born in July, 1836 in Pennsylania. He had a son Walter Gilman from a previous marriage. Walter was born about 1867. Leathy and Henry had one child, Harry Michael Gilman (1883-1911) who married Mary.

The Gilmans appeared in the 1880 census in the 5th Ward of Des Moines, Polk County, Iowa. The household consisted of C. H. Gillman age 43, Lethe A. age 29, Walter age 13, Jessie M. age five, and Alice age three.

Leathy was left a widow for the third time on July 22, 1893 when Henry died. She (Lethe Gilman) appeared in the 1900 census in Des Moines, Iowa with her daughter Jessie Stringfield and her seventeen year old son, Harry M. Gilman. They had three roomers. At the time of her mother's death in 1911 she was living in Somerset, Iowa.

She died at age 63 on September 12, 1914 in Summerset, Warren County, Iowa. She is buried in Palmyra Cemetery, Warren County, Iowa with her third husband Henry. The inscription on her tombstone reads "Leatha Ann Taylor, Wife of C.H. (sic) Gilman, Jan. 22, 1851, Sep. 12. 1914."

Frank Myers wrote: "Palmyra consists of the restored Palmyra church (which I think is a museum rather than in active use) on the east side of a paved Warren County road and houses and a few other buildings on the west. The cemetery also is on the east side of the road perhaps a quarter of a mile north of the church. It is an aggressively maintained cemetery - not a blade of grass out of place, all stones (including some very old ones) upright, and all graves very close together (no wasted space). This is not a relaxed old cemetery like Salem, it's darned uptight. Cars whiz by every few minutes, since Palmyra is within easy commuting distance of Des Moines.

Once again, the Taylors have a front-row seat. Contrary to the description given in the Warren County inscription book, Leatha's grave is the third south of the center drive just inside the gate - in the first row of graves from west to east. Leatha's stone is white marble, chest high, a thick slab with some decorative elements atop a base slab. The inscription reads,

LEATHA ANN TAYLOR
Wife of C.H. GILMAN
Jan. 22, 1851 Sep. 12, 1914

The next stone is shorter, waist high, a white marble square with a peaked top atop a larger base slab. It's inscription reads,

HENRY GILMAN
DIED JULY 22, 1893
AGED 56ys, 11m 22d

If you're interested in eternal neatness, this would be a great place to be planted, but it's not the sort of place you'd care to linger and spend quality time with your ancestors. Anyway, we drove on north of Palmyra, turned west at a sign marked Middle River Friends Church "Evangelical" (i.e. Baptist Quarkers), then past the church and across the Middle River valley into Carlisle from its southeast corner. This brought us to the Carlisle cemetery from the south. I could not make out the inscriptions on the stones marking the Taylor childrens' graves, although more was evident. One of these days I'll try a rubbing.

The initial on William Stringfield's tombstone is indeed an "R." The inscription reads,

WILLIAM R. STRINGFIELD
1851-1877
Husband of Leathy Ann Taylor

As you probably know from the cemetery book, there's an inscription on the back that reads, "This memorial replaced in 1981 by Karl Schooler, Grandson." So if there were reliable evidence that William's middle inscription were something other than "R," I'd take this one with a grain of granite. After all, Karl Schooler may have had no better an inscription to translate when he commissioned this new stone than we still have on the three Taylor childrens' stones."

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