Email From Gary Aden to Gary Aden
Email Dated 6/18/2001 

     Jessie Mechling, my grandmother, was only four years old when her
mother, Malinda RUMBAUGH Mechling, died at the age of 34. Tragically,
the family had just begun "homesteading" near Garrison, Butler County,
Nebraska. Jessie and her sister Mary, age 6, and "Floyd", age 2, were
sent to their grandparents, Aaron and Mary Mechling, where they were
raised for the next few years. Prior to her death, Malinda had shared
her husband's anguish from the time they started out in Wahoo City,
Nebraska to their new location in Garrison with the hardships of pioneer
life, "Indians" and crop failures. Often times, the small kids would
help carry cuttings from the cottonwood trees to prevent the wid from
blowing so hard against the house of four rooms. 

      After several years, her father remarried and the family was
reunited in Garrison. He had two more children by stepmother Jennie,
with whom the stepchildren cooperated. She was a classmate of her future
husband, John W. Aden, who said he loved her from the time he first saw
her when she was seven years old. As her father prospered, he opened a
saddle shop in Lincoln and the children spent adolescent summers at
various occupational stints. Jessie worked in a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
glass factory earning $3/ week at the age of 16 etching designs on
tableware. She acquired a taste for concerts and was exhilarated
recalling in later years Paderewski playing the piano. 

      Following marriage at the age of 21 in the Methodist Episcopal
Church to John Aden, the couple farmed for a time near David City,
Nebraska where her first child was born.  She used her knowledge of
Pennsylvania Dutch cooking to can fruit, make jelly and bake homemade
bread and pies. Her brother persuaded the couple to relocate to Fort
Collins, Colorado where gandfather sold real estate and my own father
was born. Around this time and during a visit from Centa, one of
grandfather's sisters, all three adults- grandfather, grandmother, and
Centa- almost died from typhoid fever later traced to water consumed at
a picnic. 

      Two years later, grandfather uprooted Jessie and the two boys,
Lloyd and Carl, from their comfortable home and surroundings in Fort
Collins, Colorado to fulfill his dream of ranching in Saratoga, Wyoming
on a leased facility, with an L shaped house surrounded by sagebrush, a
village six miles away and neighbors equally inaccessible. During this
period, her daughter, Elda, who has supplied the above information in
her AUTOBIOGRAPHY written before her death in 1998, was born. The family
moved back to Fort Collins, but the dream would not go away, and so my
grandfather partnered with his cousin, Tom Reinholtz, to buy a ranch.
Thus, Jessie was to return to an old log house with no electricity; the
kids were to horse and buggy to Saratoga through the winter snow for
school; Jessie would cook for hired hands in addition to the kids; there
was no ceiling in the ranch house and one had to sewn and resewn from
muslin and then tacked to the wall; and it's a wonder there weren't more
fires than the two or three mentioned to me because they were using coal
oil lamps and lighted candles. To get clothes white required a clothes
boiler which was also used to boil canned meat and gravy to insure
purification(three hours required). There were joys to be sure- close
family ties, singing together, piano playing, neighbor helping neighbor,
but make no mistake, life was tough. Rural electrification came to
Saratoga in 1943- the year my grandmother died. She also confronted many
challenges: her oldest son, Lloyd, nearly died of appendicitis and her
youngest son, Ray, suffered throughout childhood with one ailment after
another, the most serious being rheumatic fever. My father had a severe
case of scarlet fever. She  suffered a precipitous decline in health
leading to the diagnosis of abdominal carcinoma(primary site either
unknown or undiscovered) at the Mayo Clinic  and eventually death at the
Community Hospital in Monte Vista, Colorado and a funeral service where
her husband and children gathered at the gravesite to sing ABIDE WITH
ME. She is buried alongside my grandfather in Fort Collins, Colorado.
She was survived by seven grandchildren and four children in 1943. Her
children were: (1) Lloyd George Aden(6/12/1902 David City, Nebraska-
9/12/1977 San Diego, San Diego County, California buried Saratoga,
Wyoming); ranching in Saratoga, three daughters by Mary Paulson Aden, (
2) Carl William Aden(8/7/1907 Fort Collins, Larimer County, Colorado-
3/13/1986 Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas buried at Mount Olivet
Cemetery,  Fort Worth, Texas); wholesale gas and oil distributor for
Continental Oil Company, two sons and one daughter by Irene Maud
"Bobbie" Aden, (3) Elda Regina Aden Betsinger(10/21/1919 Saratoga,
Wyoming- 8/22/1998 San Diego San Diego County, California); school
teacher, wife of owner-operator of Triangle Motel and Coffee Shop Monte
Vista, Colorado; also had a dance band before marriage; married to
Donald W. Betsinger(3/3/1900-1/5/1980), (4) John Raymond "Ray"
Aden(9/19/1915 Saratoga, Wyoming- 8/3/1979 Fort Gibbons, Arkansas);
Major, U. S. Army, Ret., Civil Servant, two children by Martha Bower
Aden and one child by Elgin Knott Aden.