Melinda Jane Denning


Name Melinda Jane Denning
Birth 18 February 1855, Miller Co, MO216, Sheet 11-B, dwelling 235, family 237,426
Census 5 January 1920, Topeka, Shawnee Co, KS219, 1208 Monroe St.
Death 22 November 1944, Oskaloosa, Jefferson Co, KS426
Burial 24 November 1944
Father Leonard Denning (1832-)
Mother Mary Minerva Estes (1836-)
Melinda Jane Denning

Spouses
1 UNNAMED425
Unmarried
Children Leona Evelyn (1877-1963)
2 John Yost
Birth 1852, Hanover, Germany189, ED 118, SD 3, page 14, dwelling 49, family 51,425 The 1880 census says Wurttemburg.
Death 1892, Jefferson Co, KS426
Father Yost
Marriage 13 September 1879, Perry, Jefferson Co, KS427
Children Leona Evelyn (Duplicate) (1877-1963)
John A. (1880-1965)
Birdie (1883-1964)
William A. (1885-1975)
Edith
Roy (1890-)
Leonard (1893-1972)
3 Steven T. Stallons216, Sheet 11-B, dwelling 235, family 237
Birth June 1853, Iowa216, Sheet 11-B, dwelling 235, family 237
Death 1902426,425
Marriage 1899216, Sheet 11-B, dwelling 235, family 237

Notes for Melinda Jane Denning
Melinda's oldest daughter Leona was born two years9 before her marriage to John Yost in 1879427. According to family legend Leona was actually the daughter of an itinerant hired hand who was working on her father's farm.425 His name is lost to history.

John Yost died in 18929, probably from tuberculosis425. Seven years after his death, she remarried Stephen Stallons in 1899.426,216. Family lore tells that he was a mean man, especially to his step-children. He was killed by a falling tree in 1902 leaving her a widow for a second time426,425. To support herself and her children she took in washing and ironing and did housework for neighbors and people in nearby Perry.425,426

By the time of the 1910 census she had resumed using the name Yost.218 Also according to the 1910 census, she had 7 children, 6 of whom were then living218. The seventh was a daughter, Edith, who may have died as an infant according to Melinda's obituary.426 However, one of her grandsons believes that Edith died as a young teenager, around thirteen or fourteen.425

She lived with Leonard in Topeka220,219,222 throughout the 1920s and through 1930, but as her health began to deteriorate she lived with her other children in turn. She probably spent the most time425 in her later years living with her daughter Birdie in Oskaloosa where she died in 1943.9

Read more about the Yost family.

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