FAMILY HISTORY: POETRY Collection written by Elsie Strawn ARMSTRONG
  
  File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Les Howard Strawn
  
  Copyright 2006.  All rights reserved.
  http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
  http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/somerset/
  ________________________________________________
  
  INTRODUCTIONS 
  
  I, Leslie Howard Strawn, am Elsie Strawn Armstrong's 1st Cousin, five 
  generations removed.  I came into the possession of the following work in the 
  year 2000 as a result of the following e-mail:
  
  Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2000 7:23 PM
  Subject:  Elsie Strawn Armstrong
  
  Hello,
  
  I have in possession a notebook, which contains a collection of poetry and 
  life experiences written by Elsie Strawn Armstrong.  You may already have a 
  copy of it.  I thought you might be interested having it.
  
  It is a most interesting collection put together by Marshall N. Armstrong, 
  Ottawa, Illinois, March 5th, 1903.  This one was prepared for John H 
  Armstrong.
  
  Please let me know if you are interested in it.
  
  I am not a relative.  My husband salvaged it from the trash at a flea market 
  in our area.  It is in very good condition.  I really hate for anyone's 
  family history and writings to be destroyed.
  
  Sincerely,
  (Name and address followed.)
  
  Of course, I emailed a "Yes, I would like it", back to the sender and 
  it was sent to me US mail.
  
  Leslie Howard Strawn, November 2006.
  
  
  
    My grandmother, ELSIE STRAWN ARMSTRONG, was born in Somerset County, 
  Pennsylvania, November 24, 1789, and died May 31, 1871.  She was married to 
  Joseph Armstrong, May 19, 1808; to them was born nine boys.  The first 
  twenty-one years of her life was spent with her parents where she was born.  
  At the age of twenty-one she removed with her husband and first-born to 
  Licking County, Ohio, where she and her husband reared a large family and 
  endured the privations incident to a pioneer life in the wilderness, until 
  April 15, 1831, when she set out for Illinois with her children, horses, 
  cattle, household effects and chattel property, and in due time arrived at 
  her brother, John Strawn's house at Lacon, Illinois, and a few months later 
  settled in Deer Park, Southwest of Ottawa.  Here she labored until she saw 
  her sons all married and settled in their own homes, when she removed to 
  Ottawa where she remained a few years looking after tenant houses until 1861, 
  when she removed to the home of her son George W. Armstrong in Brookfield, 
  and there remained until 1867 after which she removed to her new home at 
  Morris, Illinois, and there she died having passed through a long and 
  eventful life.
    She was never idle and when she was blind, so that she could not see to 
  read or write she was ever busy sewing or knitting.
    She composed the following collection of poems from time to time during 
  this busy life and many of them in her old age, while she lived at my 
  father's home.  I remember when my grandmother's bell rang, some of us 
  grandchildren would be requested to attend her at once, and perhaps thread 
  forty or fifty needles and place them in a pin cushion ready for her use, and 
  meantime she would sew and make poetry.  And I 
  remember with what delight she would turn a couplet or stanza and when done 
  to her satisfactions, she would repeat it a few times to fix it in her 
  memory, and once fixed, she never forgot it, and even to the last, if she 
  were given the first line or subject, she could repeat the poem from 
  beginning to end.
    This copy of her poems was typewritten by my faithful and painstaking 
  stenographer, Miss Mary L. Beckel, in her spare moments saved from writing of 
  briefs, arguments and pleadings in law and equity, the writing of letters and 
  other duties incident to the duties of a stenographer in a law office.
    And this volume is respectfully presented to my beloved cousin, John H. 
  Armstrong.
  
                                       
    Marshal N. Armstrong
    Ottawa, Illinois, March 5, 1903