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Mary Agnes Rothers


Born: Sep. 11, 1905 in Nemaha County, near Corning, Kansas 

Died:    About 2010 in Topeka, Kansas; she lived to be age 105.

Her father was 1876 Bernard Henry Rothers.

Her mother was 1875 Teresa Nolte.

She was married July  3, 1931 to George Truman Ward.
They had three children together:

  1934  Janet Joy Ward    
  1935  George Gene Ward  known as "Gene"
  1939  Ward Lee Ward     known as "Lee"  

Mary Agnes Rothers was born on a farm in the Coal Creek community, 
southwest of Corning, Kansas.  

She was the second of their four children and the only girl.  
Her brothers Alvis, Philip and Larry preceded her in death.

With the early death of her mother, in 1910, she and her brother 
Alvis were moved into the home of their paternal grandparents, 
on the parallel near Soldier, Kansas.

Her younger brothers went to live with the Nolte grandparents in 
their home near Seneca, Kansas.   

Mary first attended the Anderson County School, then transferred 
to St. Peter and St. Paul Catholic School before attending Soldier 
High School, where she was graduated with the class of 1926. 

With her Normal Training Certificate she became a teacher at 
Anderson school, where she had begun her education, and taught 
there for two terms.  She attended Emporia State Teachers College, 
and in the fall of 1928 she took a position as a teacher at Eureka 
School, south of Netawaka, Kansas.

She married George T. Ward on July 3, 1931 in Emporia, and they made 
their first home in Goff, Kansas, where George worked as a printer's 
apprentice on the Goff Advance. 

The photo above was taken in 2005, when Mary was 100 years old.
The photo at center was taken in her home in Topeka in 1983.

They had three children:

  Janet Joy Ward
  George Gene Ward  (known as "Gene")
  Ward Lee Ward

Gene passed away prematurely in 1979. 

During the Second World Ward Mary worked at an Ordnance Plant near 
Parsons, Kansas, where the family had moved when her husband went 
to work for Commercial Publishers.

After the Korean Conflict broke out she continued to work there, 
although the family had moved to Joplin, Missouri and it was a 
60-mile commute.  After the war she worked at St. Francis Hospital 
in Joplin, then when the family moved to Topeka, in 1956, she    
worked for Stormont-Vail Hospital, until her retirement in 1972.

She and her husband, George, purchased a home in Topeka in 1957, 
at 1104 West 32nd Street, where she continued to reside until her
death in 2010.

George worked for the Topeka Capitol until he passed away in 1981.

Mary became a member of the Countryside Methodist Church in 1958, 
and was active in the Women's Circle there.  She was a member of 
the Women's Auxiliary #37 of the International Typographical Union, 
and of the Sigma Alpha Sorority of the Kansas Chapter, which she 
served as treasurer.

She was an excellent seamstress, sewed for all of her grandchildren 
and made hooked rugs as gifts and afghans for family members and 
especially for her great grandchildren.  She gardened and canned 
every year of her life and tomatoes were her specialty.  In 2003,
at the age of 98, she harvested enough tomatoes from two plants 
to fill several quart jars.  

In this 1981 photo is shown a tapestry that Mary made at age 75 
for the 1981 wedding of her grand-daughter, Sarah Asbury Sherman.

She was proud of her German heritage and recalled that her Rothers 
grandparents came to the United States in 1892 when her father was 
sixteen years old.  Her "Granpa Nolte" entered the U.S. in Louisiana 
and came up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, where he met his 
bride-to-be.  She was only 16 years old, so he homesteaded in Seneca 
near the railroad tracks and then went back and got her later.  They 
had a simple one room house with a dugout for a basement. He worked 
as a mason before the family became farmers.

Because of her gratitude to the Capper Foundation, for financial aid 
given when their daughter Janet underwent corrective spinal surgery, 
she became a life-long contributor to that and many other worthy causes.

Here is Mary's autobiography.

Here are links to photo collages created by grandson Jefferson Ward Asbury:

Photo Collage A.    Photo Collage B.    

Photo Collage C.    Photo Collage D.