- MRS. LAURA ARMS KENDALL is the oldest living woman pioneer
in Janesville. She arrived
- in 1838 with her husband, Theodore KENDALL. She is nearly
eighty-eight years of age - a tiny, dark-eyed woman, clear in
mind, sufficiently active physically to live alone in half of
a double house, attending to her own domestic duties. When asked
for her story of old times, "Ah," she said, "I
will write it all out. I can write plainer than you can."
- Mrs. Laura Arms KENDALL was born in Duxbury, Vt., December
24, 1811, and was married
- to Theodore KENDALL in Lowell, Vt., May 16, 1836. They came
with their team to Buffalo from Vermont, thence by boat to Detroit,
thence with others in an emigrant train to Janesville. They
found but two frame houses in Janesville. The frame of a hotel
was on the MYERS House corner, and Mr. KENDALL bought a lot on
the opposite corner and built a frame house.
- "It was a palace in those days," said the smiling
little old lady. "three stories - on the ground - we
- used to say."
- "The first court was held in the hotel and the jury
met in our house. When the hotel building was
- just completed they had a fine ball, the first in the county.
Young people came from as far as Racine, and I had the honor
of leading in the first cotillion with Volney ATWOOD."
- How unreal and dreamy it all seemed! from the tiny, withered
old lady standing on the borderland
- of another life, back to the misty years to the dainty, dark-haired
girl wife, was only a brief span bridged by golden memories.
- Mr. KENDALL died April 2, 1891, leaving his wife in affluent
circumstances. Mrs. KENDALL
- still retains an acute interest in all the beneficent and
religious interests of the city.
- "You built the present Congregational parsonage?"
said the writer. "I always say the workmen
- built it," she replied facetiously, "but my two
thousand dollars helped."
- On the construction of the Y.M.C.A. building Mrs. KENDALL
aided by a gift of five thousand
- dollars.
- North of Janesville on the river road is the quaint old "Strunk
homestead." Nestled almost under
- the overhanging hill, it has withstood the wintry blasts
for sixty years. It is built of stone, one story high, and has
received few alterations.
-
- Taken from "Rock County, Wisconsin, Vol. I"
by William Fiske Brown, (c)1908, pp. 455-456.
-
- Courtesy of Carol
|