1894 – 1984Single user treewhat does this mean?

Edith Grace Johnston

Second of eight children of Clark Runyon Johnston and Flora Isabell Maskell, born September 9, 1894 at Rossville, Clinton County, Indiana. Left home at age 17 due to family issues and moved to Elkhart to find a career, where she became a drapery maker. Returned to Remington to marry Edward Frederick Lorenz at her family home on Christmas Eve 1914. Lived most of her adult life in Elkhart in a three-story house. Per her great-niece Pamela Miller Todd: kept toys in a bench in the foyer for visiting children. In her older years she moved to a smaller house and methodically labeled every piece of furniture, shelf, and knick-knack with the name of the person she wanted to have it after she was gone. Died July 21, 1984 at approximately 9 AM; buried Chapel Hill Memorial Gardens in Osceola.

Occupations

drapery maker

Events in this life

1984 · death

Stories

Edith left home at seventeen to become a drapery maker

~1911-1914

Edith Grace Johnston was the second of eight children. At seventeen, due to family issues, she left her parents' home in the Wolcott / Remington area and moved to Elkhart, Indiana on her own to find a career. She trained as a drapery maker and built a life of her own there, returning to Remington only to marry Edward Frederick Lorenz at her family home on Christmas Eve, 1914.

Source: Ancestry.com message thread with Pamela Miller Todd

The three-story house and the name tape

ca. 1955-1984

Per her great-niece Pamela Miller Todd: 'As a kid I loved the three story house she lived in. She was the only person I knew that had that kind of house. She kept toys in the bench I think it was in the foyer. When I moved into my first apartment Aunt Edith took me to her linen closet and gave me drapes for the windows and a few other things. She was older and had moved to a smaller house. That day she took me around the house and showed me that she had put a piece of tape with a person's name on it under each piece of furniture, shelf or knick knack. That's who she wanted to have her things when she was gone. Bless her heart I thought it was so sweet. She had even included me. She had a shelf that my grandfather had made in shop class with my name on it.'

Source: Ancestry.com message thread with Pamela Miller Todd

A Christmas Eve wedding in Remington

1914-12-24

Edith Grace Johnston and Edward Frederick Lorenz were married on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1914, at the Johnston family home in Remington, Indiana. Edith was twenty, Edward was twenty-one. She had been living independently in Elkhart for about three years already, working as a drapery maker.

Source: Edith Johnston Lorenz Family History

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