One Stayed Home

Week 32: #52 Ancestors – Sister

By Eilene Lyon

My great-great-grandfather Richard D. Halse had two sisters, one older and one younger. Richard, his widowed mother, and all his siblings moved from Iowa to Dakota Territory around 1880, except for the younger sister. Her name was Elizabeth Sorby Halse and she married a couple years before all of her family moved away.

Her aunts, uncles, and cousins also left. In fact, it was quite the mass exodus from Winneshiek County, Iowa, to Codington County, Dakota Territory. There wasn’t much chance of her husband wanting to leave Iowa, so she bade farewell to everyone closest to her.

Elizabeth’s parents emigrated from Northern Ireland with her oldest siblings in 1850. After a brief time in Rhode Island and New York, the Halse family relocated to Highland Township in Winneshiek County. Elizabeth was born there on February 25, 1858.¹

William O. Casterton, the oldest of ten children, had to be the most eligible bachelor in all Winneshiek County. And he lived in the same township as Elizabeth. According to Will, farming kept him so busy that he barely knew people in the surrounding townships.² Despite that, there was no denying Lizzie’s beauty and charm, so he didn’t really need to look any further.

They wed on October 8, 1878.³ If the wedding was anything like that of Will’s sister Nettie’s in 1885, it was quite the grand affair. For Nettie Casterton and Granville Fawcett, the Decorah Republican had an extensive write-up, including a gift list! Shame on you if your gift seemed chintzy, I guess. Heading the list was $1,000 from the bride’s parents.⁴

“An hour was spent in congratulations and examining the presents, when supper was announced. ‘Such a supper’ – the writer is incompetent to describe. Suffice to say that a superior one has not been spread to invited guests in Winneshiek County for a long time, if ever,” gushed the reporter. The dancing went on all night.⁵

Will’s parents, Ogden Casterton and Mary Kew, emigrated from England and settled for a few years in Illinois. They then moved on to Highland Township, where Ogden had purchased land ahead of time.⁶ Unlike many people on my tree, Ogden knew how to leverage his labor into large land-holdings and became a very wealthy man.

After Ogden retired from farming, turning the enterprise over to Will, he settled in the county seat of Decorah to continue work in the banking field. Despite rearing ten children, Ogden and Mary amassed a small fortune for their day.⁷

In addition to Lizzie Halse marrying into the large Casterton family, three of my 3^rd-great-uncles did as well, including Lizzie’s brother, Samuel V. Halse, who married Emma Jane Casterton in 1880.⁸ (Granville Fawcett is another of those uncles of mine.)

Lizzie didn’t just marry a prosperous man, but a hard-working and good-natured one. Will was known to love a good joke and during his long life (87 of his 90 years spent in Highland Township), he won many friends.⁹

The couple had four children together, two girls and two boys. Sadly, both boys died quite young. They raised their two daughters, Hilda and Myrtle, on the family farm. Hilda, born in 1879, married Willard Josiah Casterton (known as “Jay”) in 1903 in Winneshiek County, then moved to Canada where they had a son and daughter.¹⁰

(Hint: if you want to take your husband’s name, but also want to keep your own, marry someone with the same last name! I’m not entirely certain of their relationship, but possibly first cousins. Jay’s parents were Josiah Casterton and Jane Kew.)

Will and Lizzie took on the task of raising Lizzie’s niece, also named Lizzie Halse, in 1906, after the young girl’s father died during an epileptic seizure. Their younger daughter, Myrtle, married in 1909 to Albert Newhouse.¹¹ Myrtle and Albert had three children together.

When I went to Winneshiek County in 2012, I spoke on the phone with a Casterton – not a descendent of Ogden and Mary, but of Josiah and Jane. He recalled Lizzie Halse Casterton and her daughters, as well as Jay Casterton. One thing he told me was that Lizzie had a degenerative disease and was confined to a wheelchair for many years.¹²

I haven’t been able to confirm his story, as I don’t have a death certificate or obituary for her. The only clue I have that this may be true is the photo below showing Lizzie posed awkwardly on the porch while everyone else is standing. However she looks about the same in the feature image, standing just fine. Certainly Lizzie passed away too young, suggesting some sort of illness.

Elizabeth Sorby Halse Casterton died on May 18, 1922 at the age of 64 and is buried in Hesper Cemetery.¹³ Hopefully some of her family came “home” from South Dakota for the funeral.

Feature image: Lizzie Halse feeding her chickens (Courtesy of nabeck1 on Ancestry.com – cropped)

Elizabeth Sorby Halse on Ancestry.com