Wilson Streator was one in a long line of family – cousins and uncles – that were distinguished ministers of the Disciple Church*, a tradition that traces back to that denomination's founding. Born on February 21, 1845, near Braceville, Ohio, he was a graduate of the area's earliest school of higher learning, Hiram College, upholding another family value of cherishing the full fruit of the finest formal education available.

Wilson entered the ministry at an early age and held pastorates in Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Missouri through his early career. He was accompanied in these moves by his wife, Minerva Ann Templeton, and their three children: Victor, Fanna and Gertie. The kids had each reached their majority by the time Wilson and Minnie separated before 1900. That was when census takers found Minnie living in Lorain, Ohio, with her adult children Victor and Gertrude.1  Wilson had moved to a place near Waldron City in Scott county, Arkansas, to take a new pulpit in 1896.2

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We don't know the reasons for Wilson and Minerva's separation, and the idea of divorce must have been abhorrent to each of them.  But we can't help but imagine the strain that frequent moves must have put on both. And, while many of the places Wilson had taken his family while preaching around the Midwest weren't close to "home," Waldron City, Arkansas, was far from Minnie's extended family in eastern Ohio, and to this day is well off the "beaten track"  – isolated from commerce and communication by steep hills** on all sides; a wide spot in the road far from Fort Smith and Hot Springs – in western Arkansas. [ED:  The church has evidently not survived. The closest Disciples of Christ congregation to Waldron, today, is found in Heavener, Oklahoma.3]

Wilson and Minnie's children each distinguished themselves in cultural and professional pursuits in their own right: Victor Streator sang opera in New York before retreating to Wisconsin and establishing a voice academy in Milwaukee and a hunting retreat on a remote Lake Michigan island; Fanna S. (Streator) Wright, a pioneering female lawyer of Iowa, graduated with her LLD from Drake University in 1899 and was admitted to the bar of that State before moving to Washington State to establish a law firm in partnership with her husband, Judge D. F. Wright, who was admitted to the Washington State Bar in 1900; and the youngest, Gertrude Inez Streator, was a gentle woman of letters, a family historian, and put her passion for horticulture to the service of organizations devoted to the pursuit.4

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Reverend Streator remarried at age 59 to the twice widowed Sarah (Allen) Bryant, 62.  Sarah  was originally from Vernon County, Missouri,  where she still owned farm land at the time of her death in 1916.5

Minnie died and was buried near her daughters in Olympia, Washington, some years before Wilson passed away at his home in Waldron on August 1, 1927, at the age of 82 years.

* http://www.disciples.org/
** "steep hills" - see link and link.

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NOTES:

1. 0225 - Reynolds, Barbara, excerpted "U.S. Census, 1800, 1900," email of 5 June, 2005.
2. 0111 FHT Scrapbook: Rich Hill, Missouri, newspaper clipping of obituary, collection of Roger Templeton.
3. http://www.disciples.org/congregations/locate/index.aspx 2007.07.20 -- see Zip Code 72958.
4. Letter from Frank Harold Templeton to Oma Loverne Templeton, 12 Oct 1949, collection of Roger Templeton.
5. 0224 – Reynolds, Barbara, transcription, "Will of Sarah A. Allen," 2005.