Dad told me he’s renewing his driver license this month and that reminded me of his maternal grandmother, Grace. She was the 2nd woman in Ross County to learn to drive a car! The 1st woman had a car and taught Grace. Grace would drive her daughter, Ruth, to work as a schoolteacher in a one-room schoolhouse. Ruth never learned to drive herself because Howard McNeal, Grace’s husband/Ruth’s father, didn't approve of women driving. That seems like an interesting contradiction and I wonder if Howard's dislike for women driving came before or after his wife learned how!
Grace Gertrude Gibson was born in Vinton County, Ohio in the “Gilded Age” in 1886, the same year the Statue of Liberty was dedicated. Her father Jesse J was a teacher and a farmer, and her mother Elizabeth Jane Hill was a homemaker. Grace was the middle of five daughters. She married Howard McNeal of Ross County in 1905 when she was 19. They went to housekeeping in a house that Howard built for her on Hildergarten Avenue in Chillicothe. Ed’s mother, Ruth, was born there the next year, Nov 7, 1906.
Stories in the Chillicothe Gazette at the time tell me Grace was the President of the Women's Missionary Association of the Chillicothe United Brethren Church and also President of the King's Daughters in the 1920s. She was a leader.
She was just voted in for another Presidential term in the King’s Daughters when she died of pneumonia, after a 4 day illness. She was only 41. She left behind her husband and 4 children: Ruth, who was 21, Edgar 19, Julia 16, and little Hazel was only 9.
I love the top photo of her as a young woman. Grandma Ruth had it displayed as long as I can remember.
Below is the Gibson family in about 1900.
Back row: Eliza Bell, Clara May, Grace Gertrude
Front row: Harry Clark (husband of Eliza), Elizabeth Jane (Hill), Esta Livona, Jesse J., and Phoebe F.
This is a picture of Grace, her husband Howard McNeal, and their daughters: Ruth, Julia, and Hazel.
