Dancharthos : Genealogos : Transcribed August 2002.

Obituary -- Flora May Gandy [Holsinger] (1856-1935)

Comments at end.

Chase County News, Volume XVI, Number 47
Wednesday, February 20, 1935. Page 1.
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Mrs. W. H. Holsinger Dies At Her Home

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Pioneer Cottonwood Falls Woman Will Be Buried There Friday Afternoon.

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Mrs. W. H. Holsinger, one of the pioneer residents of Cottonwood Falls, died Tuesday afternoon at her home. The funeral services will be held Friday afternoon at 3 o'clock at the home in Cottonwood Falls, and internment will be in Prairie Grove cemetery.

For 75 years Mrs. Holsinger made her home in Cottonwood Falls. She was born December 29, 1857, in Troy, Davis County, Iowa, and was brought to Cottonwood Falls by her parents, Mr. and Mrs. A. P. Gandy, about 1860. She was married to the late W. H. Holsinger and they lived most of their married life in the home where Mrs. Holsinger died.

Mrs. Holsinger is the last charter member of three Cottonwood Falls organizations--the Methodist church on whose roll her name appeared longer than any other person; the Order of the Eastern Star, and the Shakespeare Study Club.

Three of the four surviving daughters were with Mrs. Holsinger when she passed Tuesday. The other, Mrs. Charles Payne, San Diego, Calif., will reach Cottonwood Falls today (Wednesday). The other daughters are Mrs. R. L. Cochrane of Chicago, Ill., Mrs. R. J. Wood of Winslow, Ariz., and Mrs. L. J. Moore of Cottonwood Falls. Other survivors are two sisters and one brother, Mrs. H. A. Croghan, Mrs. Flora Strader and C. F. Gandy, all of San Diego, Calif.

Transcribers Comments:

First, the identity of the "surviving daughters" and "two sisters and one brother,"

  • 1) Mrs. Charles Payne, San Diego, California, is Margaret Amelia Holsinger [Payne], my grandmother.
  • 2) Mrs. R. L. Cochrane of Chicago Illinois, is "Aunt Nettie" Jeanette Holsinger [Cochrane] whom I met once or twice when she came to San Diego in the 1960s, and who had only one child, Jeanette Cochrane, who died in Chicago (in 1980?) without children.
  • 3) Mrs. R. J. Wood of Winslow, Ariz., "Aunt Lizzie" whom I do not specifically remember, but whom my mother (I believe I remember correctly) said married a railroad man who worked out of Winslow. I do not know if she has children or grandchildren.
  • 4) Mrs. L. J. Moore of Cottonwood Falls is "Aunt Pickie" Arabella Holsinger [Moore] who my grandmother sometimes let me speak with on the telephone; she died sometime in the 1970s or 1980s and has children and grandchildren I have never met. When I drove through Cottonwood in the summer of 1984 to Chicago, I stopped one evening in Cottonwood Falls. The sheriff I met in the office under the courthouse said he remembered Arabella Moore, but he wasn't volunteering any stories and I felt better than to pry. Just to get him to say he remembered her was... well, something. Already I was feeling old.
  • 5) Mrs. H. A. Croghan of San Diego was "Aunt Mary" Mary Gandy [Croghan] wife to Herbert the tax collector who was convicted of taking all the tax money and saw his rising political career destroyed possibly as a sacrificial lamb for the real thief who got away. I remember Aunt Mary as a really old lady who lived in a trailer in Lemon Grove and of whom my mother and grandmother were very fond.
  • 6) Mrs. Flora Strader I never knew but sometimes I think I see her in my dreams along with the others mentioned here. It is curious why she alone of all the "Mrs's" gets to have a woman's name in the obituary instead of a husband's initials. Maybe she was divorced, widowed, or otherwise liberated. There is also a family story of how the two sisters were both named Flora, which will confuse genealogists for ages to come, I fear! My understanding is this sister Mrs. Flora Strader was Flora Belle.
  • 7.) C. F. Gandy is "Uncle Chester" also whom I do not remember but sometimes think about in dreams and waking life. I believe he had no children. Leastwise none of the Gandys in the phone book twenty years ago when I called them were no way related to him or me.

    Which leads us, at last, to the lady herself, my great-grandmother Flora May Gandy [Holsinger] (1856-1935). My understanding is that she, Flora May, was always called May, while her sister Flora Belle, was always called Flora. The reader may note that I list her years as 1856-1935, in accordance with my cousin Sandra's genealogical tables of 2001. But the newspaper says she was born in 1857. The discrepancy has yet to be resolved as of this day 17 August 2002.

    Her parents, "Mr. and Mrs. A. P. Gandy" were Asbury Preston Gandy (1825-1909) and Nancy Ellen Williams (1831-1883).

    She and William Henry Holsinger are buried in the Cottonwood cemetery just outside of town across the little ravine and up the short grade. Several infants who did not survive are also buried with them. Her mother Nancy Gandy was buried there. When we (Paula, baby Jude and I) visited in September 1980, I found Nancy's stone engraved with the words: "Her last words were 'I am so happy.'" She did not know that her widowed husband would (according to family tales) marry a woman from a catalog and move to San Diego with the younger children where his new wife ("L.P.Gandy"-- according to the tombstone in Mt. Hope Cemetery in San Diego) might have been the same L.P.Gandy who, according to old articles in the San Diego Union, was brought before the court on a charge of faith healing, but was not convicted because she never promised to actually heal anyone. Heh. For some reason I often think about her when I see the old Palms Hotel on 12th street and Island. Don't know why. I do know why I think about Asbury whenever I see the old Odd Fellows Building on Market and 6th. He was a member. But perhaps his second wife was the real odd one. Unless that's me, of course.

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