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Emma Urania (Martin) Foster, was the third child of Elza L. and Sarah (Morris) Martin. She was born 19 December 1858 in Hot Springs Township of Napa County, California. The 1860 census shows her in Hot Springs Township with her parents, her two older brothers Hannibal and Milton, and her younger brother John. Her parents had made the long, treacherous trip to California from eastern Nebraska about a year before she was born. They had traveled by wagon train along with her mother’s parents and siblings (the Morrises), who had settled nearby. When Emma was 5 years old, her parents decided to return to the Midwest, again traveling by wagon train. This move took them to Fremont County, Iowa, across the Missouri River from their earlier home in Nebraska. There Emma met her Martin grandparents and her father’s brothers and sisters for the first time. Sadly, less than a year after the family traveled back to Iowa, Emma’s mother died of consumption on 3 September 1865. Two years later, her father remarried, and 8-year-old Emma suddenly had a new stepmother, stepsister, and stepbrother. The new blended family lived for a couple of years at Hawleyville, Iowa (on the Page County–Taylor County line), then in 1869 moved about 60 miles down to Falls City Precinct, Richardson County, Nebraska. There Emma finished her schooling and grew to adulthood. She taught school for most of 1877. Then on 10 April 1878, she married Benjamin Ellis Foster, in a ceremony at her own home conducted by her father. Benjamin had been born 24 July 1850 in Fulton County, Illinois, the son of William and Hannah (Alder) Foster.
According to the Falls City Journal of 13 April 1878, “Ben Foster is a whole-souled, genial-hearted, and, withal, an industrious, energetic fellow and we heartily congratulate him on his good fortune in securing, as we have been informed, one of the most estimable young ladies in the precinct.” Emma’s step-niece, Minnie Alice Rhoads, in her memoir Of Such as These, had this to say about the marriage: “Emma married Ben Foster, a good man and practical joker. He wore a full, black beard and had black hair. Sometimes he embarrassed Emma for she was a serious minded person but she laughed at his jokes.” Emma and Ben settled in Falls City Precinct, close to Emma’s father and stepmother, and are shown living there by the Federal censuses of 1880, 1900, and 1910, and by the 1885 Nebraska State census. Like most men of this time, Ben started out making his living as a farmer, and that is the occupation shown for him in the 1880 and 1885 censuses. In later years, though, he had changed his occupation to carpentry, as shown in the 1900 and 1910 censuses. Emma had no formal occupation during this time, but newspaper accounts show that she served on the Falls City School Board in 1906–07, and was also an officer in the Degree of Honor around the same time. All three of Emma and Ben’s children were born in Falls City:
Ben contracted pneumonia and died on 24 October 1914, at the age of 64. The Falls City Daily News published a lengthy obituary for him, and he was laid to rest at Steele Cemetery in Falls City. Following Ben’s death, Emma moved to Evanston, Illinois, where she lived for the next couple of decades with her daughter Elfreda and Elfreda’s husband Thomas Snyder. She is shown there in the 1920 and 1930 censuses, and also in various Evanston city directories. The 1940 census, however, shows Emma living in Calistoga, Napa County, California, in the household of her niece Mabel (daughter of Emma’s brother Milton) and Mabel’s husband Christopher Petersen. That census also reports that she had still been living in Illinois 5 years earlier, in 1935. Hence, sometime after 1935, Emma had returned to the same county where she had spent the first 5 years of her life. After having spent most of her life in Nebraska and Illinois, Emma passed away in Calistoga, California, on 6 October 1945, within a few miles of where she had been born 87 years earlier. The Falls City Journal ran an obituary for her. Note, however, that even though the obituary says she was buried in Calistoga, I have found no grave for her there, and Find-a-Grave shows that she is buried in Falls City, close to Ben. If you can suggest any corrections to the information above or provide any further details about the lives of Emma, Ben, and their descendants, please contact me at the address shown in the image below:
Thanks,
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