Sophia Henry’s Niece Article

Sophia Clarice Newton Ward, the niece and namesake of Capt. Henry’s wife Sophia.

This website chronicles the life of shirt-tail Henry relatives in Wisconsin.

Newton Family of Wisconsin site

I have clipped a portion that mentions the Henry family and Sophia Clarice Newton Ward as she is the niece and namesake of Capt. Henry’s wife Sophia.  She lived for awhile with the Henry’s to further her education in Cleveland.

“…..The 1870 U.S. Wisconsin Census for Buffalo County, Town of Canton enumerated Sophie with her parents and four siblings. Sophie was age eight, her brother Frederick was 18, and her sisters Marcia and Adelaide were 14 and five, respectively.

Schooling was very important to Sophie’s mother, who was a trained educator, so it was not surprising when a new schoolhouse, appropriately name the Newton School, was built on the Newton farm. Sophie was six at the time and it became her center of education for the next eight years.

Sophie was only 14 years of age when she finished her final year at the Newton School. Her next educational opportunity was unusual for a rural Wisconsin girl in that it took her to Cleveland, Ohio. In the fall of 1877 her mother’s sister, Sophie Henry, and her husband, Charles, traveled from Cleveland to the visit the Newton family in Wisconsin. Sophie returned to Cleveland with them and for the next four years attended high school while living as part of their family.

In 1880 the U.S. Ohio Census enumerated 18-year-old Sophie with the Henry family at 187 Cedar Avenue in Cleveland. Also residing with Sophie were her three Henry cousins: 18-year-old Mary, 16-year-old Marcia, and 12-year-old Frederic.

During the first three years in Cleveland she only saw one member of her immediate family, her mother, who visited but once for two-month period. The following year Sophie returned home for a short visit. Each summer that Sophie lived in Ohio she taught school at Geauga Lake, a resort area where her uncle owned a summer home. In Sophie’s later years she commented on her time in Cleveland: “My stay with my aunt was very pleasant, they making me feel perfectly at home, treating me like an older daughter, and never for one moment was I made to feel any sense of dependence. I loved my aunt only second to my own mother and felt perfectly at home there. This was a great opportunity for me, not only for schooling, but for meeting many wonderful people, seeing many fine things, and knowing something of life as I could not from the new country in Wisconsin.” Sophie’s uncle, who was prominent in Republican politics, was appointed Marshall of the District of Columbia when James Garfield assumed the United State Presidency in 1881. Sophie was offered the opportunity to move to Washington with her aunt and uncle, but instead elected to return to Wisconsin. In hindsight this may have been a better than expected decision since Charles Henry may have lost some of his political support when President Garfield died in September 1881, after being shot.

Sophie arrived back at the Newton Place on September 1, 1881, just in time to move into the new home that her father had built. It replaced the old log house, the home of her childhood that Sophie cherished and remembered fondly throughout her life.”

Newton Family of Wisconsin site by Myron Newton

January 14, 2011 Linda