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> Eliza Jane Schmachtenberger was born January 10, 1850 in St. Joseph County, Indiana. She was the second of eight children born to William and Mary Newman Schmachtenberger, both from Stark County, Ohio. Her siblings included: Salinda, Sarah, Catherine, George, Margaret, Mary, and Ava.
Eliza’s father died in 1862, when she was only 12 years old. She went to work as a cook in a restaurant until her marriage to Hiram Rushton in 1865. Hiram was a boiler inspector on the train that ran from New York through eastern Canada to St. Joseph County where Eliza lived. They were married March 21, 1875 in Indiana, and, after giving birth to daughter Cora Ann in 1876, they moved to St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada. In 1979, Eliza’s mother died of a stomach illness.
Eliza and Hiram had 3 more children: Horace Holroyd (1879), Bertha Estelle (1881), and Blanche Winifred (1883). By 1903, all four children had married and left home, but in 1912, daughter Bertha died from complications of her 10th pregnancy. Only two of Bertha’s children had survived childhood, and Eliza and Hiram took in their grandchildren to raise. Ariel and Holly Watson lived with them until Eliza’s death in 1919.
My grandmother was Ariel Watson. She remembered Grandma Eliza fondly. She said she came from tough, German stock. She had all the old remedies for illness, like mustard poltices and a dose of castor oil every Friday after school. She was loving, but strict and the grandchildren enjoyed a good life with her.
In 1918, Eliza fell and broke a hip, leaving her bedridden. Granddaughter Ariel now reversed the roles and became her caretaker, having quit her new job to tend her grandmother and cook and clean for her grandfather. Eliza was then discovered to have Hodgkins Disease and died February 3, 1919. |
