Leah Merle Hastings

Leah Merle Hastings, third of the three children of Mary Emma Warner and Fred Philo Hastings, was born 15 June 1913 in Cadiz Township, Green County, WI, quite near Martintown, the village founded by her great grandparents Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader. She was a descendant of Green County pioneers on both maternal and paternal sides of her heritage.

Leah’s preschool years were spent on the farm her parents owned in Green County. The property had been acquired in 1910, only two to three before Leah’s birth. The acquisition came after Fred Hastings had spent years as a tenant farmer, and it represented hard-won accomplishment. Unfortunately, the 1910s proved to be a difficult period for American farmers in any part of the nation to earn a living, and the challenge was particularly true in the case of the upper Midwest. So in 1918 the family decided they would follow the example of Emma’s parents and all her siblings and move to Fresno County, CA.

Upon arrival, the family stayed with the Spece household in the town of Sanger. Belle Spece was Emma’s sister, and her husband Alie Spece was Fred’s first cousin. This situation lasted several weeks or even a few months, until Emma and Fred obtained a house of their own in Sanger. This residence was located on DeWitt Avenue.

Leah’s brother John was already old enough to spread his wings, but he chose to be part of the DeWitt Avenue household. And for a while, there were six occupants, because Emma and Fred took in Fred’s nephew Lowell Dale (son of Fred’s sister Phoebe, who was in turn a beloved friend of Emma). Lowell, then in his early twenties, apparently wanted to see what California life was like. Lowell soon returned to Wisconsin.

In the early 1920s, the Hastingses moved again, this time shifting about ten miles westward to 2251 Olive Avenue in the city of Fresno. Leah therefore had to get used to a new school. Again, her brother remained a member of the household. By the middle of the decade, sister Elma was old enough to move out, but also chose to stay while she went to college to obtain a teaching degree. John also entered college at this point. He had been a farm laborer in the early 1920s and it seems he got tired of that sort of occupation. Leah was lucky her siblings hung around or she might not have come to know them well, given how much older they were than she -- John was fourteen years older, and Elma eight. (At right, Leah reads a book on a porch during childhood.)

The togetherness of Leah’s birth family underwent a sea change in the late 1920s. Back when Emma and Fred had departed Wisconsin, they had not sold their farm outright. They had left it in the hands of John and Isabel Scott, who had either leased it, or had committed to making payments on a mortgage note Emma and Fred had carried so that they would have the benefit of the interest income. John and Isabel were from Chicago, and perhaps had not understood everything that went into to making a living off the land. As the 1920s wound down, the Scotts could not make financial ends meet, and they simply “walked away” from the farm. Emma and Fred were faced with the prospect of either hiring a farm manager, which they could not readily afford, or returning to Wisconsin to become farmers themselves again. They chose the latter option. Perhaps they did so at first thinking they would stay a year or two until they could find a buyer, after which they would head back to Fresno, but the Great Depression began, and potential buyers could no longer be found.

Leah was not happy at having to say good-by to California, especially given that her siblings were able to stay. John, now employed by San Joaquin Light and Power as a tester of electrical meters, took over the 2251 Olive Avenue house as his own. Elma was already gone, having become a school teacher in Kern County, CA. But Leah, not yet fifteen years old at the time of the move, was a little too young for independence, so back to Wisconsin she came. For the rest of her life, she would speak longingly of California. Meanwhile, she had her education to complete. She entered Winslow High School in the midst of the 1927-28 academic year as a freshman and went on to graduate as part of the Class of 1931. The institution, located in Winslow, a mile south of Martintown in Stephenson County, IL, was one that many members of her family had attended over the decades, and even at that time some could be found there. The Class of 1931 included cousins Leon Elton Smith and Barbara Anna Hastings, and other classmates included cousins Lyle Horatio Smith, Roscoe Maxwell Martin, and Alice Zada Martin. (The photo in the upper left corner of this page is Leah’s graduation shot, taken at age seventeen. Appropriately, Leah’s nickname in the 1931 Win-Nel yearbook was “The Girl from the Golden West.”)

Leah did not fulfill her hopes of residing in the West again. She was her own obstacle, in a sense. She fell in love with the “boy next door.” The object of her affection was Robert Emmanuel Schumacher. He was a son of Charles Lewis Schumacher and Rosa (aka Rosina) Mueller. Charles and Rosa had each come from Switzerland to Green County, WI in the 1880s along with their birth families. As a newly married couple they had farmed in Clarno Township, where Robert, the sixth of their seven childen, had been born 12 July 1910. The family had shortly thereafter moved to acreage in Cadiz Township that happened to be right across the road from the parcel that Leah and her parents would return to in 1929. Robert and Leah’s wedding took place 24 March 1934 at the parsonage in Pearl City, Stephenson County, IL. Robert’s brother Alfred was best man; Leah’s sister Elma was matron of honor. The marriage was to be a union that would endure until Robert’s death nearly seventy years later.

The couple started their family at once, becoming parents for the first time before the end of 1934. Like her own mother, Leah would ultimately give birth to three children, but she would do so at a faster pace, taking less than seven years, rather than over fourteen, to complete the process. The last baby would arrive in the early 1940s, well before Leah would turn thirty. Meanwhile, during the family’s early years, it was a hardscrabble existence. The Great Depression wore on. Robert’s wages were sometimes as little as fifty cents a day, forcing upon them a thriftiness even the pioneers of Green County might have found daunting ninety years earlier. However, hope of a more secure situation was foreseeable right from the beginning. Even while Leah and Robert were newlyweds, their fathers were both already well into their sixties and were heading toward retirement. Robert knew there would be the chance to step up and become a full-fledged farmer before he grew much older.

The shift to being his own boss came sooner than anticipated. Charles Schumacher passed away in early 1936. By the early 1940s Robert was in charge of the land he had grown up on. He continued to farm it for nearly two decades. At the end of the 1950s, he and Leah bought out Emma’s interest in the old Hastings farm, and then he and Leah farmed and lived there until 1976. Throughout Robert’s tenure as an active farmer, Leah worked by his side -- she was not one of those housewives who spent all of her time indoors. That is not to say she avoided the kitchen. Every year she would maintain a huge garden, and canned most of what she grew. Every year when the berries were ripe in the wooded parts of the farm, she and the kids went gathering, and what wasn’t consumed right away was consigned to the deep freeze to be enjoyed throughout the rest of the year. A note in Emma Warner Hastings’s diary makes a reference to the yield of one such expedition: “Leah has fifty-two quarts in the freezer.”

Leah’s role as caregiver went on well past motherhood. All three of her children remained in the vicinity aside from brief sojourns elsewhere, and her home was a regular sanctuary to a large number of grandchildren. In the 1960s, after her eldest daughter had divorced her husband and was working full-time, a pair of grandchildren essentially lived with her on weekdays. Today those grandchildren think of the farm as one of the main places where they were raised.

One of the benefits Leah’s children and grandchildren enjoyed was the bounty that came from her skill as a seamstress. She made a great portion of her family’s clothes. This was one of many talents. She showed herself to be a true descendant of Nathaniel Martin with her musical ability. She learned to play accordion. This was originally at Robert’s urging, so that she would be able to play at social gatherings. She herself was sometimes embarrassed by her informal training and would try to beg off of performances if possible, but she could usually be persuaded, and then would rise to the occasion. One of her regular venues was the big hall above the general store in Martintown (a business operated by her cousin Hap Hastings and his wife Hulda). Leah also painted. She was quite taken with the tradition of painting country scenes on old saw blades, and completed many examples.

Leah was an avid reader. She had a quick mind and was always interested in learning. She was also a health nut. She knew about organic growing, herbs, natural cures, wheat germ. A granddaughter recently recalled how Grandma Leah would spoon cod liver oil down her throat. In the 1960s, she was putting into practice health advice that would not be common until the 1990s and beyond. Her awareness of nutrition and the strength she developed from all her vigorous involvement in farming and gardening, along with her genetic heritage, ensured that she would live to a ripe old age.

In 1976, Leah and Robert retired from farming. Their modest lifestyle and care with money had given them a nest egg that was sufficient to carry them through the rest of their lives. They moved into a house in Martintown. This put Leah in an exclusive category. She was the only one of the sixty great-grandchildren of Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader to spend a significant chunk of old age residing right in the village the couple had founded. (Several others dwelled in spots not too far away, such as Monroe, WI, Winslow, IL, or Freeport, IL, but none of their homes were within Martintown itself.) “Retirement” did not mean Leah and Robert headed for a set of rocking chairs, though. Robert had his pastimes, such as restoring his 1936 Chevrolet. Leah kept busy with sewing, painting, gardening, and more. There was also more time now for travel, which had always been one of Leah's favorite things to do. Naturally one of the main destinations was the San Joaquin Valley of California to visit kinfolk. However, over the course of her life, Leah also managed to see a vast portion of the United States. Surviving photos show her with such companions as her cousins Erma Spece Johnston and Dorothy Warner Yost, her uncle Bert Warner, and many more individuals. A regular set of travel companions were Darlyn and Wayne Stamm, Darlyn being one of Robert’s nieces. Thanks to Leah’s fun-loving, warm, good-natured personality, she was a welcome guest wherever she went.

Robert himself preferred to stay at home if he could, and many of Leah’s ambitious trips were made without his company. Leah was therefore especially pleased when he agreed to go along to California to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary in the early spring of 1984. A big party was held at the home and farm of her sister Elma’s younger son in Laton, CA.

Mr. and Mrs. Robert Schumacher at the wedding of one of their granddaughters 14 February 1982. The event was held at Martintown Community Church, a place built more than one hundred years earlier by Leah’s great-grandfather Nathaniel Martin.

Robert died 23 August 2001 in Martintown. About two years later, at age ninety, Leah suffered a stroke that took away her power of speech. She spent her remaining years in convalescent care. She still recognized people and responded to them with smiles and gestures. Even at the end she seemed to take at least some joy in life. She was alert and devoured all three meals on her final day of awareness, Saturday, 17 November 2007.

Leah passed away at Lena Nursing Center in her sleep in the early hours of Sunday, 18 November 2007. Her funeral was held Wednesday afternoon, 21 November 2007 at Martintown Community Church. The services were conducted by the pastor of the church, who happened to be the husband of one of her granddaughters. Leah’s remains were interred at Pioneer Cemetery in Cadiz Township.

Descendants of Leah Merle Hastings with Robert Emmanuel Schumacher

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