First they went to western Pennsylvania, then to Ohio, and finally the Ayres and Fox families converged on Warren County, Ohio – in the north-western corner of the state. From there, both Harvey Newton Fox and Margaret Ayres went to the Baptist Liberal Arts College of Hillsdale, Michigan. There they met, graduated (Margaret majored in mathematics), and later married. Harvey went on to medical school at the University of Cincinnati, at the time of the Civil War. Having acquired his M.D., he settled in Wyoming, Illinois, just south of Chicago.
But, after retiring, he moved on west to the pioneer agricultural area of Kearney, Nebraska and invested in farming properties. Margaret became an early president of the Kearney Women’s Club – and so took her place in the Feminist Movement.
Meanwhile (Ella) Grace Hobstetter grew up in rural Iowa, near Cedar Rapids. She was the oldest girl in the family, and after high school graduation was a teacher in a rural school. She was also the family dressmaker, and had a flair for millinery. So, when her younger sister, Allie, at an early age, married Harry Small, a rising pharmacist, and moved with him to Kearney, Neb. – she gave up teaching and ran (or worked in ) a millinery shop in this small town.
Fred Fox (the Grandad Fox you knew) had, meanwhile, gone to Hillsdale College, and graduated the year of the Chicago World’s Fair. After working all summer pushing visitors in wheeled chairs, he was urged to come out to Kearney, were his father had a fine job for him. He was to work in the local bank – for the first year on NO salary! This was what they called “learning the business”
The local young people had a very active group, of which we have some pictures in the album. Here Fred & Grace met and became engaged. When they were married (1900), Harvey Newton (Fox) invested in a grain elevator in Tipton, Indiana, and the young people set up housekeeping there in February. The locale was, no doubt, chosen because a family friend from Wyoming, Ill., was a banker there – Fred Davis. The small cottage in which I was born, was across the street from the Davis home, on Independence Street.
There is one more colorful character in the family annals whom I don’t want to leave unmentioned. This was Margaret Ayres Fox’s brother, William Ayres, who was a bachelor, and later lived his declining years with Margaret and Harvey. Uncle Willie was a stagecoach driver on the Leavenworth to Dodge City, Kansas run for many years.
There was also an Ayres relative, Porter, who went out to California in 1850 to seek his fortune in the Gold Fields. He was an uncle of Margaret’s, but, although he lived in California for 8 years, he never found the fortune.
One of the values of this autobiographical account, as I see it, is to record a picture of a much simpler, less sophisticated, and slower-paced lifestyle than you, or any or your descendants will know. The technological and scientific developments that have taken place in my lifetime are unbelievable. As a small example – we have an anatomy text book that your Great-grand-father, Harvey Newton Fox, used in medical school, which would be about what an 8th grade student would get today. And, of course, your father and I have seen the coming of automobiles, airplanes, radio, television, computers, vacuums, dish-washers, washing machines, dryers – to say nothing of organ transplants, genetic engineering, mechanized agriculture, etc., etc.
