Rachel Elmeda Christy Ricketts

28 April 1845 – 27 January 1927

Early Life and Parents

Rachel Elmeda Christy was born on 28 April 1845. Her family group sheet gives her birthplace as Clinton County, Indiana. However, there is conflicting evidence about where she was born. The 1850 and 1860 censuses identify Ohio as her birthplace, as do numerous later census records and her obituary. Thus, although the family information gives Clinton County, Indiana, the records created during Rachel's lifetime generally point toward Ohio. 

Rachel was the daughter of Samuel Henry St. George Christy and Lyda Gallimore. Samuel was born 11 September 1819 in Indiana, the son of Ebenezer Christy and Rachel Elizabeth Dawson. Lyda was born 25 March 1824 in Ohio, the daughter of Isom Gallimore and Judith Bentley. Samuel and Lyda married on 3 March 1842 in Fayette County, Ohio. 

Rachel's childhood appears to have included moves between Indiana and Ohio. In 1850, five-year-old "Elmedia Cristy" was living in the household of Samuel Cristy in Jasper Township, Fayette County, Ohio. By 1860, fifteen-year-old Rachel E. Christy was living in Samuel H. Christy's household in Jefferson Township, Tipton County, Indiana. 

Her mother, Lyda, died on 1 February 1864 in Clinton County, Indiana, when Rachel was eighteen years old. Lyda was buried at Hills Baptist Church Cemetery near Pickard. Rachel's father lived another forty years, dying on 24 March 1904 in Clinton County. He was buried the following day in the same cemetery.

Brothers and Sisters

Rachel grew up in a large family. The family group sheet identifies nine children of Samuel and Lyda Christy, including Rachel. Several of Rachel's siblings died quite young, so death and loss were part of her family experience from childhood. 

Her siblings were:

• Emily Jane Christy, born 15 April 1843 in Indiana; died 11 October 1864; buried at Hills Baptist Church Cemetery near Pickard, Indiana.
• Eli Salathiel Christy, born 18 September 1848 in Ohio; died 16 July 1851; buried at Hills Baptist Church Cemetery.
• Rhoda Elizabeth Christy, born 22 February 1850 in Ohio; died 23 July 1851; buried at Hills Baptist Church Cemetery.
• Shelamiah Christy, born 5 November 1850 in Indiana; died 25 September 1861; buried at Hills Baptist Church Cemetery.
• Ebenezer Christy, born 7 February 1853 in Clinton County, Indiana; died 26 January 1941 in Ekin, Tipton County, Indiana; buried 29 January 1941 at Hills Baptist Church Cemetery.
• Samuel Milton Christy, born October 1855 in the Clinton/Tipton County area of Indiana; died 7 February 1924 in Tipton, Tipton County, Indiana; buried at Hills Baptist Church Cemetery.
• Lydia Alice Christy, born in 1858 in Indiana; died in 1888; buried at Liberty Dutro Cemetery in Woodson County, Kansas.
• Esther Christy, born 17 January 1860 in Tipton County, Indiana; died 5 April 1924 in Tipton, Indiana; buried at Kempton Cemetery in Tipton County. 

The family experienced an especially difficult period in the 1850s and 1860s. Rachel's younger brother Eli died in July 1851, followed only a week later by her sister Rhoda. Her sister Shelamiah died in 1861. Rachel then lost her mother in February 1864 and her older sister Emily in October of that same year.

Of the nine Christy children listed in the family group sheet, Rachel, Ebenezer, Samuel, Lydia and Esther survived to adulthood.

Interestingly, Rachel's sister Lydia Alice Christy was eventually buried in Liberty Dutro Cemetery in Woodson County, Kansas—the same cemetery where Rachel would later be buried. 

Marriage to James Marshall Ricketts

On 12 July 1866, Rachel married James Marshall Ricketts in Frankfort, Clinton County, Indiana. Rachel was twenty-one years old. Their marriage began shortly after the Civil War, during which James had served in Company K of the 7th Indiana Cavalry. 

Rachel and James would spend more than fifty years together. Their married life began in Clinton County, Indiana, where their first six children were born.

By the 1870 census, twenty-five-year-old Rachel was living with James and their young family in Sugar Creek Township, Clinton County. 

Rachel and James's Children

Rachel and James were the parents of eight children. The 1900 census reported that Rachel had given birth to eight children, six of whom were living. The same information appears in the 1910 census, and Rachel's obituary later stated that two of the children had died in infancy. 

Their children were:

• Frances Artlissa "Artie" Ricketts, born 7 April 1868 in Clinton County, Indiana.
• Hulda May Ricketts, born 24 April 1870 in Clinton County, Indiana.
• Annabelle Ricketts, born 9 November 1871 in Clinton County, Indiana.
• Daisy Pearl Ricketts, born 29 July 1873 in Clinton County, Indiana.
• Manford Milton Ebesnor Ricketts, born 17 March 1875 in Clinton County, Indiana.
• Charles Desmond Ricketts, born 17 June 1877 in Clinton County, Indiana.
• Minnie Ricketts, born 7 October 1880 in Woodson County, Kansas.
• Dora Ricketts, born 7 October 1880 in Woodson County, Kansas. 

Moving West to Kansas

Sometime between the birth of Charles in Indiana in June 1877 and the 1880 census, Rachel and James moved their growing family west to Kansas.

By 1880, Rachel and James were living in Everett Township, Woodson County. Rachel was thirty-four years old. Later that same year, Minnie and Dora were born in Woodson County. 

Rachel's younger brother Ebenezer Christy was also living in the James Marshall Ricketts household in 1880. Born 7 February 1853, Ebenezer was about twenty-seven years old at the time. His presence in his sister's Kansas household provides another connection between the Christy family in Indiana and Rachel's new home in Woodson County. The information available here does not establish why Ebenezer was in Kansas or how long he remained there, so it would be best not to speculate about whether he traveled west with the Ricketts family.

Ebenezer eventually returned to Indiana. He died on 26 January 1941 in Ekin, Tipton County, Indiana, and was buried at Hills Baptist Church Cemetery near Pickard—the same cemetery where Rachel's parents and several of her siblings were buried. 

Rachel was not the only Christy sibling with ties to Woodson County. Her younger sister Lydia Alice Christy, born in Indiana in 1858, was buried at Liberty Dutro Cemetery in Woodson County following her death in 1888. The family group sheet does not provide enough information to explain when Lydia came to Kansas or the circumstances that brought her there. 

Together, Ebenezer's presence in the Ricketts household in 1880 and Lydia's later burial in Woodson County show that Rachel's move to Kansas was not an entirely isolated chapter in the Christy family story.

Life in Woodson County

The census records provide regular snapshots of Rachel's life but reveal little about her everyday activities. Like many women of her generation, Rachel generally appears in official records as a member of her husband's household rather than as the principal subject of the record.

In 1900, Rachel was recorded as the wife of James M. Ricketts in Liberty Township. The census stated that she had been married for thirty-five years and had given birth to eight children, six of whom were living. 

achel and James were still together in Liberty Township in the 1905 Kansas census and the 1910 federal census. She was again enumerated with James in the 1915 Kansas census and the 1920 federal census. These records document a long period of stability after the family's move to Kansas. 

Rachel's obituary adds one personal detail that the census records cannot provide. According to the newspaper, she "united with the Christian church when a girl and had faith in her Saviour till the last." Her religious faith was therefore described as something that began during her childhood and continued throughout her life. 

Widowhood and Later Years

Rachel's long marriage to James ended when he died on 28 November 1920. She was living in Yates Center in December of that year. 

On 23 February 1921, Rachel received a widow's pension based upon James's Civil War service in Company K of the 7th Indiana Cavalry. 

The 1920s brought several more losses in Rachel's birth family. Her brother Samuel Milton Christy died in Tipton, Indiana, on 7 February 1924, and her sister Esther Christy died there on 5 April 1924. 

Rachel herself was living in Topeka, Kansas, in 1924. By 1925, eighty-year-old Rachel was living in Iola, Allen County, Kansas, in the household of Edward G. Briles. 

Death and Funeral

Rachel Elmeda Christy Ricketts died on 27 January 1927 at the age of eighty-one in Iola, Kansas. She died at the home of her daughter, Mrs. E. G. Briles, at 612 North Jefferson Street.

Her obituary reported that she and James had eight children, two of whom died in infancy. Her six surviving children were identified as Mrs. E. G. Briles of Iola; Mrs. May Cokley of Iola; Mrs. Belle Howell of Oakland, California; Mrs. Pearl Israel of Yates Center; M. M. Ricketts of Yates Center; and C. D. Ricketts of Vernon, Kansas. She was also survived by grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and "one living brother of Indiana." 

That surviving brother was almost certainly Ebenezer Christy. Rachel's other brother who survived to adulthood, Samuel Milton Christy, had died in 1924, while Ebenezer lived until 1941. Family of Samuel Henry St The identification is particularly interesting because Ebenezer had once shared Rachel and James's household in Kansas. In 1880, nearly half a century before Rachel's death, he was living with the Ricketts family in Woodson County.

Rachel's funeral was held at Pleasant View Methodist Episcopal Church, six miles north of Yates Center, with Rev. A. W. Johnson officiating. Burial followed at Dutro Cemetery in Woodson County. 
There she was buried in the same cemetery where her younger sister Lydia Alice Christy had been buried nearly forty years earlier. 

Historical Context: Rachel's Changing World

Rachel's eighty-one years encompassed an extraordinary period of American history. Born in 1845, she grew up in an America that was still expanding westward. Her childhood was spent in Ohio and Indiana at a time when both states were receiving families moving west from older parts of the country.

Her own family experienced the high childhood mortality common to the nineteenth century. Rachel lost three siblings before she was seventeen. Later, she and James experienced the deaths of two of their own eight children in infancy.

Rachel was fifteen when the Civil War began in 1861. Her future husband, James Marshall Ricketts, served in the Union Army, and his military service continued to affect the family long after the war through the federal pension system. After James's death, Rachel became one of the many aging Civil War widows receiving a government pension.

Her marriage in 1866 came during the nation's first years of recovery from the Civil War. Rachel and James began raising their family in Indiana but joined the broader westward movement when they relocated to Kansas during the 1870s.

Kansas itself was still a young state. It had entered the Union in 1861, only about two decades before Rachel and her family were recorded in Woodson County. Rachel therefore participated in the settlement of a state that was still developing its farms, towns, churches, schools and transportation networks.

Over the following decades, the world around Rachel changed dramatically. She lived through the expansion of the railroad era, the spread of telephones and automobiles, World War I, and the opening decades of the twentieth century.

Yet the records suggest that family remained a constant thread throughout her life. She began as one of nine children in the Christy family, became the mother of eight children herself, and spent her final years among her adult children. Even the family cemetery connections tell part of that story: Rachel's parents and several siblings were buried at Hills Baptist Church Cemetery in Indiana, while Rachel and her sister Lydia eventually found their resting place at Liberty Dutro Cemetery in Kansas.

Rachel's obituary gives us perhaps the most personal summary of her life. It remembered not only her husband and children but also her grandchildren, nieces, nephews, surviving brother and the Christian faith she had embraced as a girl. Behind the many census entries, dates and places was a woman whose life connected two generations of the Christy and Ricketts families and two important places in their story—Indiana and Kansas.