Coffey County KS Archives Biographies.....LaRue, Joseph April 10, 1835 - March 21, ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ks/ksfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Hal Phillips shobe.descendants@cox.net May 24, 2011, 12:01 pm Source: Unpublished Author: Unknown The earliest available information about the LaRue family or “Larew”’ as it was most frequently spelled then, spelling being notoriously variable in early times, places the family in Virginia’s fabled Shenandoah region in the early part of the 19th century. Judging from the name, though, its earliest antecedents were in France, where the name LaRue means “The Street”. Benjamin Larew is the earliest known member of the family. Of his marriage to Jane Rea, four children were born, the oldest, John in 1809. It is through him that we trace the present line of descent. Benjamin and Jane survived after the deaths of at least 3 of their four children, mute testimony to the high mortality rates of an earlier day. The Shenandoah Valley was changing during this period of history. From being the raw frontier surveyed by Washington, it was becoming increasingly populated by settlers. To those to whom the encroachment of civilization was anathema, the lure of tales of the great stretches of fertile farmland farther to the west was irresistible. Perhaps it was these tales that led John Larew and his wife Sarah Jane to take their children and move from their home near Lexington, Virginia, and move to Parke County, Indiana, in 1843. Two or three more were born there. Of –these eight children, the second Joseph, is the grandfather, great grandfather, and great-great-grandfather of the present generations. He was born in 1835. His older brother John Newton kept a little leather-bound account book (now in possession of Fern Dorcas) that provides and interesting document of the times including a section on the breaking of horses. Later, his life was marred by tragedy: his young wife and child died in childbirth, and his own death occurred after he was struck by a bolt of lightning, some of the other children maybe recognized by their association to recent times. Andrew Jackson LaRue, father of Hennie Kooken and her brother, Edward, subsequently settled in Kansas on the site of the present Kenneth Glenn farm. A sister, Mary Jane Pruitt, also came to live in Kansas, at Neosho Falls. The youngest child, Benjamin, became a doctor. He was the father of the late Edith LaRue of Burlington, Kansas. It was he who insisted that the name be written with the original Gallic spelling of “LaRue”, and so it became. Facts available about the young manhood of Joseph LaRue are confusing. His obituary states that he took a claim seven miles east of Burlington in 1860, yet his army enlistment, marriage, and births of his first two children occurred in Indiana after that time, so if he took the claim her then, he must have lived on it only the requisite time and then went back. He was discharged from the Indiana Infantry Volunteers, Company B, 115th Regiment, on February 4, 1864, after spending a little over six months in the service, possibly seeing action in the Civil War. His brother, Andy, also served in the conflict. That same year, Joseph married Louisa J. Phillips, ten years his junior, at Indianapolis. About this time, he became a member of the United Brethren church, although later in life, he and his wife transferred to the Methodist Episcopal Church. However, speaking out at church gatherings always proved difficult for him. Due to his problem of stuttering. While still in Indiana, two daughters, Lillie (abt 1866) and Wilmina (1867), were born to the couple. After moving to Kansas, five more children arrived, Grant in 1872, Willie in 1878, Luora in 1880, Anna May in 1885, and Lottie in 1889. Willie died after living only a few weeks, and Anna May at age five. Of the children of Joseph LaRue, only Luora (Ora) Mannschreck survives. As they grew to adulthood, only Wilmina married young, to William Shobe, at eighteen. Several of their nine children are still living, the closest being Loren (Mrs. Tony Armstrong) of Burlington, Kan. Lottie and Ora married later in life, both to widowers, Ellsworth Gorrell and Emanuel Mannschrick. Neither had any children of their own, but each had several older step children from their husband’s previous marriage. Lillie, who had been crippled since birth, was never to marry. Before their marriages, the three daughters lived with their widowed father, at first on the farm east of Burlington and later in Burlington itself in the west part of town. After his death, they moved to Iola, where their cousin Jennie Kooken thought they might find work. In his late twenties, Grant, remember as Dad, Papa or grandpa by the family, married Hilda Charlotta Swenson in 1886. She was an accomplished musician and gave lessons to the neighborhood children. They lived in a two-room house on the farm just north of the present F.M. (Bill) Hughes home. Their children Fern, Nadine, and Lois were born there in 1902, 1907, and 1910. After the children came, two more rooms were added to the house. Somewhere around 1913, Hilda contracted tuberculosis, or as it was called in those day, “Consumption”. Realizing she didn’t have long to live she asked her close friend “Aunt” Annie Olney if she would take Lois the youngest, to raise. This was agreeable to her, but Grant would have note of it. He feared that Lois would grow up feeling superior to her sisters because they would not be as well off financially. So he kept the girls together as a family and raised them alone (with occasional help from housekeepers) after Hilda’s death January 10, 1914 much of the burden of taking care of the house and the two younger girls fell on Fern’s young shoulders. In 1919, Fern went to Iola to live with her aunts and attend high school. She went home in late fall. Then Grant sold his farm, and the family went to stay in Iola, with the expectation of buying property there. In the mean time, Grant had a chance to buy the farm most of us think of as the home place, later owned by Lois and Glenn Dreyer. He built the house on it in 1921, and later the barn and outbuildings. As a young woman, Fern worked at home and for various families who needed line- in-help after such events as illness, childbirth, etc. She met Everett Dorcas, who came to Waverly from Marshall County, and they were married in 1925. Their son Myrl was born I n1927, daughter Dorothy in 1930, and Glenn in 1935. They lived in the big two-story house on the Dorcas farm, until it was lost to fie in 1953. After living temporarily in other housing in the neighborhood, they moved another house to the site, where they lived until Everett’s death in November 1960. After Glenn bought the farm, Fern moved to a new home in Waverly. Nadine, meanwhile, had married a local man, Ernest Hess, in 1932. Their children, John Arthur (Jack), James, Charlotte, and Patricia (Patty) were born in 1935, 1938, 1939, and 1941. They lived at several places in the neighborhood, beginning with a farm near Anuth Myrtles Hess’s, then on the present Gerald Allen property, after which they move to what was known as the Young eighty, and then on to what was picturesquely termed “Honeymoon Flats”, because som many young couples got their start in farming there. The family then shared the Dorcas home with Fern and family while Everett worked in Iowa. They moved to their present home in 1939, where they farmed, and Ernest worked from time to time as a heavy equipment operator. Lois became acquainted with Glenn Dreyer, from Gridley, and he was employed by her father on the farm. The two married in 1934. After spending a few months in California, where Glenn attended diesel school and Lois worked in a luncheonette, the couple came back to Kansas and lived on eh home place with her father. In 1945, Nancy came to liven up their home. Grandpa LaRue kept active around the place until his death in 1956. Several years passed, and then Glenn required open heart surgery performed in Houston Texas, and a pacemaker implant. However, his death, in 1970 was due to a cerebral hemorrhage. Lois sold the farm and now resides in Waverly, Kan. Family marriages, births, and deaths after this time are all within recent memory. The author of this paper is unknown. It was written in 1970 or later. I found this in papers of my father-in-law, Raymon Shobe who died at May 2011 at the age of 97. He was son of Arthur Shobe and and Edna Minnie Bunge, grandson of William Shobe and Sarha Wilmina LaRue (referenced in this document). Further research by myself has determined that Benjamin Larew was the son of Jacob LaRue and Mary Fortiner, grandson of Abraham LaRue and Sibyl Lambert, great-grandson of Peter LaRue and Elizabeth Cresson, and great-great grandson of Abraham Le Rooux (the immigrant from Germany) and Magdellaine Gillet. Hal Phillips husband of Martha Louise Shobe Apr 2011 Photo: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ks/coffey/photos/bios/larue168bs.jpg File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ks/coffey/bios/larue168bs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/ksfiles/ File size: 9.4 Kb