Obituary Details

Mary B. Guernsey

(11/30/-0001 - 02/25/1950)
Courtesy of The Lusk Herald, 03/09/1950

Two Pioneer ladies Of Guernsey Area Die Past Fortnight

Two pioneer women of Wyoming, who were well known to the old timers of Lusk and vicinity, died recently. They are Mrs.
Mary B. Guernsey, wife of the late C.A. Guernsey, for whom the town of Guernsey is named.

The other is Mrs. Minnie Frederick who came to Wyoming in 1883 shortly after her marriage to Charles Frederick at St. Paul, Minn., and they took up their residence on a homestead some 35 miles south of Lusk, where she died Monday, Feb. 27, at the age of 89 years.

Mrs. Guernsey was more than 90 years of age and died Feb. 25 at the home of her son, Bryant Guernsey, at Seaside, Calif. For many years now she had resided in Pacific Grove, Calif., and funeral services were conducted from the First Presbyterian Church in Monterey.

In writing of Mrs. Guernsey's life the Guernsey Gazette says: "Mrs. Guernsey's long and active life had spanned nearly a century, and her memories included many stirring and historic events. From her childhood in Chicago she remembered Lincoln's funeral procession, and the great fire of 1871.

After her marriage to C. A. Guernsey, pioneer Wyoming cattleman, she spent several years in what was then still frontier country, and recalled one occasion during a Sioux uprising when her husband kept a team harnessed for several days, ready for a run into Cheyenne should the hostiles appear.

When Wyoming was admitted to the union as the first state to legalize suffrage for women, she drove 22 miles in a buckboard with a baby on her lap to vote in the presidential election of 1892, the first at which women had ever cast a vote in the United States."

Funeral services for Mrs. Frederick were held in Guernsey Friday, March 4, with burial in the cemetery at that place beside her husband who preceded her in death in 1933.

Of the Fredericks the Guernsey Gazette says: "Mr. Frederick was a civilian employee of Old Fort Laramie until their marriage.

Their home was an oasis in these far-flung open spaces in those early pioneer days, where the latchstring hung outside for the traveler.

It was folks the calibre of Mr. and Mrs. Charlie Frederick, belonging to a hardy race of pioneers, who helped build the West. Mrs. Frederick witnessed the transition from the unsettled frontier to the advancement of today.

With the handicaps and hardships of that pioneer life she raised a splendid family."

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