WAUPACA COUNTY NEWS

December 8, 1921

 

FROM THE WISCONSIN VETERANS’ HOME         

 

            The subject of the following sketch is one of the first with whom the writer and wife became acquainted when they came to the home over eight years ago, and the acquaintance soon ripened into a firm friendship which grows stronger and richer every day.

            Miss Ellen Main was born on the twentieth day of July 1834, at Cheddar, Somersetshire, England, and was the only girl in the family.  When she was fourteen years of age her parents, Mr. and Mrs. William and Harriet Main decided to make America their home, and in June of 1848 with their little family of four children, Ellen and three brothers, Robert, George and Thomas took passage in a sailing vessel for this country.  They were six weeks on the ocean and Ellen often speaks of her great joy in making the passage because she was the only one not sea-sick.  In due time the long voyage ended and they landed at New York, and located at Jordan in that state where Mr. Main soon had all the work he could do at his trade of stone mason.  There the children entered school and competed the education they had begun in the old country.  In 1853 Ellen was married to Mr. John T. Consaul, at Syracuse, N.Y. and in 1854 a little girl came to cheer their home, but this little one passed away in infancy.  In 1855, Mr. and Mrs. Consaul came to Wisconsin and located at Madison, but later Mr. Consaul with a friend took a contract for building a saw mill at Stevens Point and in time they moved to that place and made their home.  When the war broke out Mr. Consaul enlisted as Private in Co. B., 1^st Wis. Cavalry, and during the war was advanced to Lieutenant-Colonel.  He was taken prisoner in 1863 and as a prisoner suffered untold agonies which so broke his health that after being liberated he was compelled to resign his commission and return to his home at Stevens Point, where he died in November of 1867.  In 1869 Mrs. Consaul was married to Mr. Seelye Hungerford, a banker of Stevens Point, with whom she spent about twenty-one years very happily.  Mr. Hungerford passed to the Great Beyond in 1890.  In 1908 Mrs. Hungerford became a member of Wisconsin Veterans’ Home, and has since resided here, grateful for the many, many blessings conferred upon her, and with nothing but praise for the home in every respect.  Mr. and Mrs. Hungerford became members of the M.E. church at Stevens Point shortly after their marriage and ever remained staunch supporters thereof.  Mrs. Hungerford being a woman of great ability held many positions of trust and usefulness in her church and was always greatly esteemed as a Christian friend and worker throughout the city.  At the time of her coming to the home she was class leader in her church, a position she had held for many years.  At the present although well up in the eighties she is a regular attendant at all services, and her prayers and exhortations are such as to rejoice the heart of any pastor.  When the call shall come for her to enter on a higher service we are fully assured that she can be commended in the words of scripture, “She hath done what she could.”