Rose Adell Kingsley Steadies Her Family

Whenever I find sad stories in my genealogy research, I always look for the heroes who tried to make things better.  The bright spot of the story of Elihu and Mary Kingsley is their daughter Rose.

Rose Adell Kingsley was the first girl born to Elihu and Mary Kingsley and the second child overall.  They lived in a small community of homes nestled in the forest near Sheffield in Warren County, Pennsylvania.  They lived in the second home built in the area.  It was built by her bachelor uncle Elias who lived nearby.  He lived in the third home built in the area, which he also built.  What roads they had were dirt roads and often muddy.  Riding in wagons meant getting stuck in the mud, so most people just walked everywhere.  Where there weren’t roads, old Indian trails that wound through the deep forest sufficed.  

There was always work to be done—preparing meals, tending the garden, storing for winter.  And the kids were always dirty and needed cleaning along with the small home they inhabited.  Rose helped her mother attend to these duties.  Her mom was much younger than her dad – about fifteen years younger.  She had been so young when they married, it was wearing to have to work so hard to keep the family going.  Her dad worked hard too, as a farmer, then he sold land to oil prospectors when they came to town.  He hunted some, but nothing like Rose’s grandpa Ebenezer.  She had heard stories of this famous hunter who settled south of them in the Tionesta forest.  Roses’ family struggled to get ahead like most other poor families.  The only thing of value they owned was a good name.

The only business in town was a sawmill owned by the Barnes family.  And lots of taverns, some also owned by the Barnes family.  The Barnes provided stability to the community with these enterprises.  The rest of the community were farmers who worked hard to clear and plant the land.  And then there was the lumber boom, when the lumbermen came and choked the river with the trees they felled and floated to market.

Rose likely helped her mother care for the home and the children.  When the youngest was born in 1866, Rose was 13 years old and probably loved to hold Archie and care for him.  She must have worried about him when Roses’ mother announced she was leaving with Archie for a while to visit someone in Michigan.  Little did she know that it would be the last time she saw Archie for nearly two decades.  For Rose’s mother and Archie never came back.

As the time passed, the family must have worried sick about their mother and Archie.  What was keeping them?  Did something happen to them?  Little 6 year old Emma got sick and died a few years after they left.  Rose did all she could to help her but couldn’t save her.  Her Dad was approached by the Barnes family—they wanted to know if they could care for little Katheryn Emily.  She was about 8 years old.  Surely he considered what had happened to Emma when he decided to let them take her.  With Herbert also married, Rose accepted the proposal of Richard Bloss and they married in 1871.  That left her dad with 3 boys to raise—Fremont 15, George 12 and and Charles 10.  Perhaps she and Richard lived with her dad for a while to help out until these boys were older.

Rose welcomed several children into her family as Mrs. Richard Bloss as the years passed.  They named them typical names from that era.  But in 1886, Rose named her 8^th child ‘Archie.’  Is this when Rose and her dad and siblings reconnected with their mother and brother?  Perhaps. Roses’ dad was working at the mill peeling bark.  He and George had moved in with Uncle Elias.  Her dad considered himself a widow after not hearing from his wife for so long.      

Upon reconnecting, they must have been devastated to learn that their mother had remarried shortly after leaving Pennsylvania and had been living in Michigan just 500 miles away this whole time.  Archie had been raised by two step-fathers.  Their mom was still married to her third husband, a man the same age as she was.  

No account of the reunion exists to show how the kids reacted to learning these things at this reconnection.  One can imagine the variety of emotions that prevailed on that day.  Of all the children, though, we know that Rose forgave her mother.  Only a daughter who loves a parent will take them in to care for them in their declining years, as Rose did for her long lost mother.

A few years after this reconnection, Rose’s dad died, then her mom’s husband.  That left her aged mother alone and broke in Michigan, as Archie had also married and moved away.  Rose brought her mother to her home and took care of her until her mother died in May 1903.  

Although Rose probably felt the weight of her mother’s disappearance most keenly of all of the children, she was the one to care for her in her time of need.  Rose had substituted for her, assuming the role of mother that her own mother had left vacant.  She likely wiped her siblings tears and kissed their booboos as any loving mother would.  She had the most right of all of them to hold a grudge and refuse to forgive.  But Rose was better than that.  She frankly forgave her, even going the second mile as to care for her.  

I honor and revere Rose Adelle Kingsley Bloss for the strength of character in this dear lady.   May we learn from her example to follow Christ's teachings to forgive freely, even those who hurt us most.

Disclaimer:  This story is gleaned from the records surrounding Elihu Beckwith Kingsley, Mary Sophia Harvey Kingsley Leonard Amey and their children.  No narrative tells this story.  Recollections of Rose’s niece Belle bear no traces of the abandonment.  The author did her best to research and confirm the facts of this story.  But the accuracy cannot be guaranteed.