Click here to see more photos.

The Ewing sisters were not identified on this photo. It is believed that they are: (left to right) Ann and Laura, seated, with Carrie and Sadie standing. Current theory would place this photo taken about 1886, shortly before Carrie died. Lizzie, who would have been the fifth sister still living at that time is not in this photo.

Click here for the Journey to Kansas story.

This branch of the Ewing family made the move from Scotland (or Northern Ireland, we don't know which) some time in the late 1600s or early 1700s, settling in the American colony known as New Jersey, near Trenton. As the settlement of this new land proceeded westward, the Ewings migrated with it, placing them in Chester County, Pennsylvania, west of Philadelphia by 1727. Later years would find them a couple of counties further west, first in York County and then into Cumberland County by 1761. There they would remain for most of the next century.

The Family of

William Alexander Ewing

This website is devoted to the family history of William Alexander Ewing, his ancestry and descendants.

William Alexander Ewing (seated) with his sons (left to right): John, Grant and Ira.

   William Alexander Ewing was the third generation of our family to be born in south-central Pennsylvania. Cumberland County had been divided to form Perry County in 1820, and that is where William Alexander was born on March 22, 1827. The first child of Ralph and Ann (Reid) Ewing, William grew up in Perry County and learned the skills of tending the land. He stayed with his parents into adulthood, helping to farm his father's land, and is found there in the 1850 census.

   In 1855, William Ewing married Rebecca N. Marshall, a Pennsylvania native born in 1838 who would have been about 17 when they married. Rebecca was the oldest child of Joseph and Sarah (Sweger) Marshall, and had four younger siblings: Margaret, Thomas, Robert and Sarah Ellen. Her father, Joseph Marshall, died when she was just ten years old, apparently leaving the family with no way to support itself. The 1850 census showed Sarah Marshall (Rebecca's mother) as the head of the household, living with only two of the children. Rebecca and the other children had been placed with other families nearby.

    Shortly after they married, William and Rebecca moved with his parents and family to northern Illinois, settling in Boone County, near Cherry Valley. William's father, Ralph, bought land in Illinois in 1856 which was farmed by William and his brothers. When Ralph died in 1866, he left his farm to his two oldest sons, William and Jesse.

   William and Rebecca's first child was born in 1855 in Illinois. Information is limited to what is available in federal census records and a cemetery census at the library in Belvidere, Illinois, which only indicates the child, named George in the federal census, died August 26, 1860 at the age of six years, one month and three days (which does not agree with his age listed in the federal census). 

   The library record also indicates that two more children born to William and Rebecca died at early ages. Levi died August 19, 1861 at age four years, eight months and 21 days (born about November 29, 1856). Cassius is shown in the library record as the third child buried in the Cherry Valley cemetery. He is indicated to have died on April 2, 1861 at age seven months, 19 days (born about August 14, 1860).

   Five other children were born into William and Rebecca's family while they were in Illinois. Elizabeth A., born February 2, 1859; Laura A., born August 15, 1863; Anna L., born June 22, 1865; Myrtle C., born in 1866 (exact date not known); and Grant, born September 15, 1868. These five children were still living when the family moved from Illinois to Kansas in 1870.

   By 1870, William Alexander Ewing's parents had died and were buried in Cherry Valley cemetery, as was his brother, Jesse, who died in 1867. Perhaps that influenced William's decision to follow the steady flow of settlers moving westward into the great plains where virgin land was being offered to homesteaders. One of his neighbors, a Lane family, had made the move earlier and settled in Pottawatomie County, Kansas, near what is today the town of Blaine. Once there, Lane urged William and his good friend, Willard Sabin, to join him in Kansas and in the fall of 1869, both decided to follow. When they arrived in Kansas at the beginning of 1870, both William and the Sabin family decided to settle on land further north, near the existing railroad in Marshall County. On February 12, 1870, William Alexander Ewing filed for homestead rights on 80 acres in Wells Township, Marshall County. His younger brother, Cyrus Ewing, filed on land that adjoined on the east and the Sabin family filed for land that was about a mile and a half further east. While the Ewing and Sabin men built their homestead houses, their families stayed in a cabin owned by a man named Sherman, who operated a sawmill on Bluff Creek in Pottawatomie County. By April, 1870, the Ewing family was settled on their new homestead.

   Once established in Kansas, William and Rebecca's family continued to grow. Caroline M. Ewing was born in 1871; Sarah E. (Sadie) Ewing was born in 1873; Ira Delos William Ewing in 1875; and John W. Ewing in 1878. In total, twelve children had been born to William and Rebecca. In addition to the three children who died in Illinois, three more died in Kansas. Myrtle died at the age of 14, in 1880, just a week before the death of her mother, Rebecca (died May 18, 1880). Caroline (Carrie) died in 1886 at the age of 15. Then, in 1891, the oldest daughter, Elizabeth (Lizzie), died at the age of 32. She had never married. These children were buried in the family plot at Antioch Cemetery in Marshall County, along with Rebecca and William Alexander who died January 3, 1910.

   The children of William and Rebecca (Marshall) Ewing were:

   George Ewing, was born shortly after the family moved to Illinois. The cemetery census in the Belvidere library indicates that George died on August 26, 1860, but they had transcribed his age from a well-worn stone and had him listed as over 6 years old. An attempt to verify the information on the grave marker was not successful. The stones for the three young Ewing children in Cherry Valley cemetery are small, badly worn, broken and nearly covered with dirt. The library information didn't have a name for this child, the name was obtained from the 1860 Boone County federal census which showed him as five years old.

   Levi Ewing would have been born about November 29, 1856, according to the library information. He died August 19, 1861, at the age of four years, eight months and 21 days.

   Elizabeth A. Ewing (Lizzie), born in Illinois February 2, 1859, was described in her father's 1910 obituary as having been crippled by a childhood accident. No other information has been found to verify that.  She would have been ten years old when the family left her home state, bound for Kansas. Although she never married, she is not shown as living  with her family in the 1885 Kansas census and, I believe, is not in the photo below, thought to have been taken about 1886. Her whereabouts at that time are not known for sure, although the 1885 census shows her living in Blue Rapids with the family of A.E. Sweetland, a merchant in Blue Rapids. According to her obituary which appeared in the May 7, 1891, issue of The Irving Leader, Lizzie had lived in Marshall County until 1890, when she went to live with her sister, Laura, in Auburn, Nebraska. That's where she became ill with "la grippe" which turned into pneumonia and quickly caused her death on April 21, 1891. Her funeral was held in the Antioch schoolhouse and she was buried in Antioch cemetery, near Bigelow, Kansas.

   Cassius Ewing is shown in the Belvidere library record as the third Ewing child buried in Cherry Valley cemetery. It indicates he died on April 2, 1861, at age seven months and 19 days, making the birthday about August 14, 1860.

   Laura A. Ewing was born August 15, 1863, also in Illinois. Laura lived in Kansas until she married George W. Kent on January 22, 1890. George was an engineer for the railroad so they lived part of the time in Auburn, Nebraska, and part near Concordia, Kansas, where they were living when Laura's father died in 1910. They had a son who died in infancy and one daughter, Ada, born in September, 1895. George Kent died in May, 1913, in Auburn, NE. Laura lived in Auburn until her death in January, 1937. Laura's obituary in The Nemaha County Herald indicated that Ada still lived in Auburn (but didn't list her last name) and also said that Laura had four grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Laura and George Kent are both buried in Sheridan cemetery on the west side of Auburn.

  Anna L. Ewing, also born in Illinois, June 22, 1865, was shown in the 1900 Kansas census as still unmarried and living at home with her father and two youngest brothers. Sometime after 1901 she went to Nebraska to live with her sister, Laura, then returned to Kansas in 1909 to care for her father in his last few months of life. After his death, Ann lived with Laura near Concordia, Kansas. Although once thought to have never married, a search of records in Auburn, NE, finds that on January 28, 1914, Ann married Robert M. McConnell in Auburn. He passed away in Auburn in 1918 and some time after that Ann must have married again, although no record of a second marriage has been found. She was listed as a survivor in her brother Grant's, 1942 obituary as "Mrs. Ann Brush of East Auburn, Nebraska." She is also listed as Ann Brush McConnell on the grave marker that she shares with her first husband in Auburn's Sheridan cemetery, which indicates that she died in 1942. No further information could be found. 

   Myrtle C. Ewing (Mertie), another child born in Illinois, in 1866, died at the tender age of 14 of typhoid fever in Kansas in May, 1880, just a week before the death of her mother. She was the first of the children to die in Kansas.

   Grant Ewing was born September 15, 1868, in Boone County, Illinois. He was just over a year old when the family moved to Kansas, so lived nearly his entire life in Marshall County. Although his formal education was limited to eight grades at Mt. Zion, later to be Pleasant Valley school, Grant listened closely to the stories of his elders, committing much of it to memory and kept detailed journals in which he recorded events of his lifetime. He developed a keen interest in history and a thorough understanding of nature and the prairie environment where he grew up. Being the oldest boy in the family, Grant learned from his father to work the farm at an early age. But as he grew older, Grant's varied interests drew him in other directions. In 1892 Grant traded a threshing machine to his friend Rod Weeks for a half-interest in a well-drilling rig and worked with him drilling water wells for a year before buying Rod's remaining interest in the rig. By 1895 he had three drilling rigs and was putting down wells throughout the county and into southern Nebraska, gaining enormous knowledge of the area's geology. As early as 1890, Grant began an involvement in journalism when he started writing "personal items" for the newspapers in Frankfort and Irving. He continued to write articles for area newspapers on a freelance basis for most of his adult life. On December 16, 1894, Grant married Carrie Mae Newbury. They settled on a farm about a mile northeast of the Ewing homestead at the western edge of Wells Township. Grant and Mae had four children, two of whom died in infancy. Their daughter, Lena, born in 1898, grew to adulthood and married Miles McMillan in 1916, but she was listed as Mrs. Lena Hansen of Lubbock, Texas, in Grant's 1942 obituary. Lena died in 1985 and her marker in Antioch cemetery identifies her as Lena Uphoff. Grant and Mae's son, Levi, was born April 20, 1901. He joined the U.S. Army in 1919 and was stationed in the Philippine Islands where he died on March 5, 1922, from "dilation of the heart," a condition that surprised his family. Mae died in 1903 and Grant remarried two years later to Margaret Fincham, daughter of another Marshall County pioneer family. Grant and Maggie had three children: Leonard, born May 10, 1907, who married Ellen Schimmel and died 1972 in Richmond, Missouri; Gloria, born July 5, 1913, married Lew Wentz in 1929 and had three children, Duane, Margaret and Betty, and later married Gloyd Zook  - she and Gloyd are buried at Antioch; Clair, third child of Grant and Maggie, was born September 20, 1915, and achieved an excellent education, served as a career officer in the Air Force and was instrumental in the development of U.S. rocket and missile technology. Clair married Evelyn Anderson in 1942 and died in Lompoc, California in 1995. Clair and Evelyn had five children: Mike, Kathy, Karen, Patty and Kevin. Grant Ewing's life in Marshall County brought him into contact with a lot of people. He was well known throughout the area. He died September 24, 1942, and is buried in Antioch cemetery.

   Caroline M. Ewing was the first of William and Rebecca's children to be born in Kansas. She came along in 1871, shortly after the homestead was established. Carrie grew up on the prairie and died there when she was in her teens, 1886. She was buried in the family plot at Antioch cemetery.

   Sarah E. Ewing (Sadie) was born on the Wells Township homestead in 1873. She had been described in early family information as a fiery red-head with a temper that did not get along well with her father and was reported to have been farmed out to another family at an early age. But census records do not indicate that. They show her living at home at least through 1895, when she would have been 22 years old. Marshall County records indicate that she taught at Pleasant Valley school, just a mile from the Ewing homestead, in 1895-96 and at the Reserville school in 1896-97. According to an item in Grant Ewing's newspaper column (written in 1932), Sadie also taught a year at the Scriber school. In the article, Grant states that Sadie attended college where she learned shorthand, typing and telegraphy. Then, after teaching school for three terms, got a job as a telegraph operator and worked in Colorado Springs, Jacksonville (Florida), Seattle, and the capitol of British Columbia, before moving to Idaho. Somewhere along the way, Sadie married W. Chester Benton and was living in Kootenai County, Idaho, in 1910 when her father passed away. Her daughter, Nadine, was born in Idaho in 1907 and it is believed that her descendants still live there.

   Ira Delos William Ewing was born July 16, 1875. He was probably named in honor of Ira Sabin, the good family friend and neighbor who came to Kansas with the family from Illinois. Don't know where the "Delos" came from, but the "William" should be obvious. Ira grew up on the homestead, went to school at Pleasant Valley school and remained with his father, helping to farm the land, until he was 25 years old. In 1901 he married Salome Coxley, who had been his neighbor for twelve years. They had ten children, two of whom died at birth, and established the branch of the family that fostered this website. Ira died July 22, 1941, in Topeka, Kansas, and is buried in Rochester cemetery in Topeka. More information about Ira and his branch of the family can be found on the "Newsletters" page of this website.

   John W. Ewing, the youngest of the Ewing children, was born August 22, 1878, also on the homestead. Like his brother, Ira, John stayed with his father until September 3, 1901, when he married Grace A. Risdon. John and Grace bought an 80-acre farm that was situated just off the northwest corner of the Ewing homestead in January, 1902. John helped his father farm the homestead when William Allexander's health began to fail. As he grew more ill, William stayed with John and Grace until Ann could return from Nebraska to care for him. John and Grace had three daughters: Queenie, who died at birth in 1906; Ruth and Faye. In the spring of 1919, John sold his farm and moved into Blue Rapids. Once he was settled in town, John got into the business of distributing petroleum products. Kerosene had been widely used for years, but now, with the development of more equipment that used gasoline-powered engines and the growing popularity of automobiles, the demand for fuel was increasing. He became a prosperous member of the business community as a distributor for Standard Oil until 1932, when he joined the Farmers Cooperative Grain and Elevator Company and maintained that association for the rest of his life. John  died December 22, 1949, and was buried in Irving's Greenwood cemetery. He was moved to Fairmont cemetery in Blue Rapids when Tuttle Creek reservoir forced the evacuation of Irving. Grace died February 21, 1966, and is also buried in Fairmont cemetery.