Elsie is my great-grandma. I will write down what I remember of her & her life. She was born & raised in Kansas with her 4 sisters Grace, Ida, Nora & Mary & brother Willis. She came to Colorado in August 1913 to spend time with her cousins, the Lytles. While she was here, she met Eugene Cantril & they married on December 22, 1913. Their daughter, Josephine (my grandma) was born October 25, 1914. They then had daughter Ruby on April 19, 1916. During the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-1920, Eugene had gone to help take care of one of his sisters (Gertrude Emily) & her family in February 1920 as they were very sick with it. Both she & her husband, Elmer Cox, died within a week of each other. She was pregnant at the time & of course the baby died with her & is buried with her. The rest of the children were sent to other relatives to raise. I find this all to be extremely sad. Eugene came back to Salida. He fell ill with the Spanish flu as well & died on March 2, 1920. Elsie must've found out somewhere around this time that she was pregnant again, because their son, Stacy was born on October 11, 1920. I don't think Eugene even knew that he was going to be a dad again, which is sad. So Elsie was left alone with 3 little kids to raise by herself. She was blind in one eye...can't remember exactly what happened. She started taking in people's laundry to make money. She had a very hard life. I didn't know her siblings at all as she had some issue with one or more of them. Can't remember which one now. I don't know if she had any contact with them after that as I was little. She was a very stubborn, hard working woman, I do remember that. I met some relatives in Greeley, CO once that remember her as being "mean." Well I was young & she was old when I knew her..and yes she did have a temper sometimes. She hated her middle name (not sure if she hated it before or after the TV show "Maude" came out). LOL She also said that she hated Lucille Ball, but every day at 5:00pm, she was in front of that TV watching "I Love Lucy."
She didn't like eating in front of people for some reason, so when we went there to eat for Thanksgiving or Christmas, she would cook, then we would eat in the dining room while she ate in the kitchen. She would tell me to always look under my bed & in my closet before I went to bed at night to make sure nobody was there...not a good thing to tell a kid! I was terrified. She loved me a lot & I loved her. Her daughter, Ruby was killed by a boyfriend in June 1930 when she was 14. Elsie tried to kill herself after that, I believe, by going into the river (I think it's in the Salida newspaper). I have heard that she had one or two more children after that. Well I know that she had one, because Josephine (who was about to get married at the time..in June 1931) wanted to adopt the little girl, but that wasn't allowed back then. So I have another great-aunt out there..or did, but have no idea how to find her or her family since she's probably gone now. Her son Stacy died in June 1948 when he was only 27. My mom told me that after Eugene had died & she ordered his tombstone, it wasn't the color that she wanted it to be, so she took some red paint & painted it!! LOL The tombstone was later replaced. In her later years, she had a bout with stomach cancer...she had a tumor the size of a basketball in her stomach. Her doctor at the time said she was too mean to die (she was in her early 90's at this time). :) I think she did the best she could in this life. It never seemed it was very easy for her.

If anyone who knew her is still alive, I would like to know more about her or if you have any pictures of her that I could make copies of, I would very much appreciate it.