Ida Ellen Warner

Ida Ellen Warner, fifth of the eight children of Eleanor Amelia “Nellie” Martin and John Warner, was born 11 August 1878 on a farm on the outskirts of Martintown, Green County, WI. The land she called home for all of her brief life was an eighty-acre parcel her mother had received as a dowry from her parents Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader.

Ida died at the very young age of seventeen months, perishing 14 January 1880. In this respect she was like the six children of Nathaniel and Hannah who had died as infants or toddlers between the mid-1850s and 1870. Like them, Ida was laid to rest in the private Martin cemetery at the top of the hill above her grandparents’ home and mills, a spot overlooking the Pecatonica River. Alas, she was not the first of her generation to endure such a destiny. Her first cousin Edna Brown, born the same month as she, had been buried there three months earlier. According to a note written more than a hundred years later by Ida’s younger brother Albert Frederick Warner, both girls died of a diphtheria epidemic that swept through the region in the winter of 1879/1880. This same deadly wave also accounted for the death of Ida’s two-year-old first cousin Olan Carson Warner in Butler County, NE.

Nellie Martin was understandably upset to have her little one taken from her in such a way. She was pregnant and the stress of the tragedy may have contributed to the miscarriage she suffered. Happily, that additional loss was the end of the year’s streak of bad luck, and things continued well for another three decades. The other seven children of Nellie and John reached adulthood.

To go back one generation to Ida’s mother’s biography, click here. To go back one generation to her father’s biography, click here. To return to the Martin/Strader Family main page, click here. To return to the Warner/Alexander Family main page, click here.