--Contributed by Barbara Leroy.
Eliab Foster was born in 1808 in Oneida County, New York, the second son of a large family. His father, William Foster, was killed while felling a tree on their farm in Oswego County NY in 1831. Some of Eliab's uncles helped form a company of people who purchased land in what is now Kenosha County WI in the early 1840s, and a whole group of people from upstate NY followed them to Kenosha, Eliab included. He met and married Jane Rebecca Clark in 1845 in Kenosha County; she was born in Naples, NY in 1826, and both her parents died in 1835, leaving her and her siblings orphans. She came west with an older brother and brought along her sister, Martha, who was living with her sister and brother-in-law in the 1850 census. Jane died in Nov 1851; Martha married Eliab in August, 1852, and they remained in Kenosha County until after the Civil War.
I don't know why they moved to Illinois around 1865, renting land in Iroquois County for a year before buying their farm in Ford County the next year. Frances, my great grandmother, was born in Ford County, IL in 1866. The other four children born after her all died very young; an infant daughter not named, Albert Alonzo, Dora Bell, and Bell. I think only Bell's tombstone was still around the last time I visited Lyman Township Cemetery.
Of course, Eliab and Martha are there. Eliab went out one day in 1872 to chop wood. The axe slipped and cut him so badly that he bled to death before he could get home. Martha, his widow, remained on the farm until about 1890, then moved to town, where Leda and Martha looked after her until she died of cancer on Christmas Day, 1908.
Of the grown Foster children (or their kids) who remained in Roberts, I know this:
Olive Foster married Samuel Kenward, a real estate agent, in 1886. The family moved to Bradley, IL, and had seven children. Olive died of fever in 1903. Samuel couldn't cope, and farmed the children out to relatives. One of her children was Nancy, who went to live with John and Patience Kenward, her paternal grandparents. She married Otto Seng and lived on a farm near Roberts. Her children were Lawrence and Della.
Sela Foster worked for a hardware store before starting his own. My mother said that they had an "elevator", pulled by ropes, that took folks to the second story, where I think they stored items for the store. Sela married Sarah Harriet Whorrall. They had five daughters. One of them, Blanche, married Charles Wright and lived in Chicago for a time. But the couple eventually moved to Roberts, where Charles helped run the hardware store.
Bela led an interesting life; he was the thistle ranger--he inspected farmland and helped eradicate thistles. He was a school teacher and principal (and wrote a poem "Will You Think Of Me", which he gave to his classes. This person found the poem and gave copies of it to her classes at the end of term for several years. He married Christina McKay, a Canadian, in 1903. She was a very classy lady and my mother was scared she would make some faux pas when she visited! But she loved her "Uncle Beel", as she called him--she'd run to him when she visited and he would scoop her up in his arms and give her a big kiss on the cheek, which tickled because of his mustache. Bela later became a rural mail carrier and wrote those marvelous histories of the county. They had no children.
Leda was a school teacher, made rugs on a loom, and kept a boarding house. Martha was a nurse, and spent long hours at the Roberts clinic. One interesting side note: in 1912, a new doctor came to board with them--Fred Blome. Leda fell and injured her arm, so she wrote her sister, Frances, in Michigan, to send her oldest daughter down to work for them. Della Bell Ruedger came and she and the doctor fell in love! Leda took the train with them up to Michigan, where they were married 13 Feb 1913. They lived in central Illinois most of their lives, which was how their daughter, Frances Blome, was able to tell me so much about the Fosters in Roberts.
