Just who was she? Why was she hiding in the background? Had she not had a life before meeting up with him? The family did not have much to tell about her as they did her husband. Oh, he was the source of tales, sagas, and downright family lore. So, just who was she?
Born in 1833, Mary Etta Soule grew up in a small hamlet in New York. Surrounded by water and forests, she lived among family, aunts, uncles, and cousins. For her first fourteen years, this was her way of life. Then the early death of her father left the family wondering how they would survive.
Her mother Jane was a strong willed woman who had little fear of anything. She gathered her young sons and daughter to make a new life. Part of their journey westward took them down the Erie Canal. Mary Etta and her family group went by steamer across Lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan to Milwaukee. From there, they traveled by grain wagon to Watertown, Wisconsin. She was now eighteen and for awhile worked in a brickyard. She struck up a friendship with the manager, Andrew Storer. He needed a wife to care for the animals on his small farm so he proposed. Did they marry for love?
With her new husband Andrew, she discovered that she had married a man with wanderlust. He was originally from Maine with quite a background, too, in settling in different places. In time, they would settle in the Minnesota Territory, Iowa, and finally Kansas. Together they would raise nine children. Mary Etta became known for her steadfastness, loyalty, and familial devotion. She passed after a brief illness in 1887 at the age of 54.
Later, it was noted in the newspaper that Andrew had erected a memorial to Mary on his farm. Being one of Osborne County, Kansas’s earliest pioneer families, more is told and remembered about Andrew. Mary Etta remains a quiet figure without any family lore…sometimes, those persons are the foundation and backbone of those who are best remembered.
