The Gentlewoman above was a daughter of the prominent Streator Family of Northeastern Ohio. Emma Jane Streator's uncle, Dr. Worthy S. Streator, in whose landmark Euclid Avenue "castle-like" Cleveland home she lived while attending Miss Bartow's Finishing School for Young Ladies, warned his friend James A. Garfield of a premonition of the new President’s death by assassin before Mr. Garfield left Ohio to be sworn into office. (President Garfield had been a Classics professor, and then President of Hiram College, an institution of higher learning that figured significantly in the lives of both Templetons and Streators, as well as Hayden cousins.)

Emma’s father, Alpheus F. Streator, farmed within a buggy ride of Braceville, Windham and Southington, Trumbull County, Ohio. Alpheus was also renown as a minister of the nascent Disciple Church, possessed of "a remarkable memory recall of scripture" in those parts. Emma extended her youthful social circle by attending many 'meetings' in the area -- sometimes going to meeting with a friend that called on the Streators of an afternoon, while her parents went to another service -- before she and joined the congregation at Braceville. The social and the intellectual milieu that were interested in the debates on questions of theology in the neighborhood were an important opportunity for Emma to exercise her native intelligence and ability to influence those around her. But, the injunction toward fealty to God's Word was strong in her -- both in terms of personal faith and in terms or the organization of the Church she would adhere to, ultimately. The evening, before going to bed, on Sunday, February 15, 1874, Emma wrote in her diary, "Morning text 5:20 Math." The reference is to Matthew 5:20: 

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Emma continued her diary entry, "The text is what the church is." Having grown up as a preacher’s daughter, the Disciples of Christ Church remained a focus of Emma's devotion, as well as shaped her social circle, throughout her life.

-- o --

The Templeton and Streator families were neighbors and "went calling" on each other often. The families became much closer with the marriage of both Emma and her brother Wilson Streator to offspring of Michael Templeton. We're not sure what event or occasion first brought George Bostwick Templeton to "set his cap" on winning Emma Jane Streator's hand, but as both families were stalwart, founding members of the Disciple Church, it is quite possible that George became impressed with Emma at one of the many "meeting" events that occasioned the formation of that denomination in Eastern Ohio.

George Bostwick Templeton courted Emma Jane while he was dividing his time reading the law under Senator L. C. Jones, Esq. of Warren, Ohio, and working on his father's farm. Emma’s beau finished his law studies in Carrollton, Missouri, studying under Judge T. W. Whiteman and passed Missouri’s State Bar in January, 1881. The couple were married on December 15, 1881, whereupon she joined him in Rich Hill, Missouri, where he had established his practice and soon purchased coal-producing property. The Rich Hill newspaper remembered, "the town was just starting then and she lived through all those exciting days and saw the town spring up and grow rapidly with the big coal industry that was then in its infancy."

The couple built a house on "Quality Hill" in Rich Hill. It was a home animated with the vigor of two popular sons, George Streator Templeton and Frank Harold Templeton, the Judge’s business callers (and probably marriage-minded couples seeking the Justice of the Peace’s services), Emma’s afternoon teas and gatherings of church groups, not to mention the occasional Shetland pony wandering through the Victorian halls and rooms. (Judge Templeton trained and sold the ponies as "seeing-eye" animals for the blind as a sideline business to his horse breeding avocation.) Following the Judge’s horse breeding, along with his acquisition of a farm and his interest in building the region’s coal mine production, it’s not surprising that Emma’s sons graduated from the University of Missouri at Columbia, one to gain his doctorate in animal husbandry and the younger son taking a degree as a civil engineer. Her sons left home, George first to Texas to join the University of Texas faculty and to continue his studies, and Harold (now going by "Frank") to Kansas City to take assignments as a civil engineer designing and building municipal water, sewage and electrical systems across Kansas. Emma threw herself whole-heartedly into her Sunday School teaching and the other, more social, church activities. Though Emma probably accompanied her husband on his trips to Texas and Alabama visiting their son George, and to Florida, where the Judge investigated the practicality of opening a retirement facility, Rich Hill was the only place she wished to call home.

It was while the Judge was recovering from persistent flu symptoms at a sanitarium near Atlanta in 1919 that Emma was widowed at age 66. Both of her sons entreated her to join them and their families. She preferred to remain at the Quality Hill family home, "among the old friends and surrounded with the old scenes." Her grandson, George Louis Templeton recalled that she "was involved in her association with a number of widow members of the Christian Church," and was a very active member of the community until she became frail and moved in with her close Rich Hill friends, the Morelands. Son Frank hurried to her side upon receiving word of her final decline, and was with her when she died July 14, 1941.

Emma Jane Streator's diary, "Beacon Hill, Ohio 1874". [MS Word .doc]

<-- Back to "Biographies"

NOTES:

1. 0031 FHT-GLT Papers, RMT collected family letters, 2003.
2. "Gladys Notes", RMT, collected papers.
3. "Death of Mrs. Emma Templeton", "Rich Hill Bates Co. Repub.", July 18, 1941, p. 1
4. "Deathbed", op. cit.
5. "Grandma Templeton", George L. Templeton, email of 2002.