Walter Ernest Townsend

Walter Ernest Townsend Walter was the last child born to Horatio Gates and Annie Lois Young Townsend. He joined siblings; Warren (1870-1879), Charles Herbert (1871-1956), Lewis Franklin (1875-1934), Emma Ada (1877-1918), Cora Eda (1879-1957), and Harvey Gates (1885-1948). He was born in David City, Nebraska. While he was still quite young he left home to join his brother Charlie, on his own homestead in White Clay, Neb. Walter was very handy with a hammer and a very hard worker. He helped to build the house as well as to work the herds and do the farming chores. The call of duty interrupted his future. Walter was the first man drafted from Sheridan County, NE and he was off to World War I. He was trained in Kansas and served in France as an Army cook throughout the war. He was unfit for long marches because of an old leg injury after a horse had fallen on it. After the war was over, Walter's outfit was to board a ship for home. It was Walter's misfortune to become ill with the flu at boarding time. He was removed from the dock and taken to a local hospital. All of his military papers were in his bags, which had gotten aboard ship without him and they arrived with his outfit at Fort Dicks, in New Jersey. The Federal Officers there assumed Walter to be lost in action and they tried to pay Walter's insurance money to Dad and Mother. Walter did return, much to his mother’s joy, much later. Walter cared for her until a private nurse; H. Marie Stroud was called from Indiana to help with Annie’s care. After Annie’s death, Walter was married to H. Marie Stroud on June 27, 1925. Walter was 38 years old. The couple stayed in the Lincoln area for a short time, and then moved to Xenia, OH in about 1927. Walter attended mortuary school, but after his partner in the Xenia Neeld Funeral Home died, Walter moved on. At the time of his death, the couple was living on a small farm on Hyde Road outside Yellow Springs, OH. Walter was also the head of the carpentry division of the maintenance department of Antioch College. He had worked all day at the college was sowing oats that evening when his wife found him dead of a major heart attack, sitting under a tree in his field. Walter was just 61 years old. The couple had two sons; Silas Horatio a senior at Oberlin College and Wallace E. a student at Ohio State University at the time. Walter never met his daughter-in-laws, Ann Stocking and Edith Kenney, or knew his five grandchildren; Si’s son Harvey Gates, or Wallace’s girls Nancy, Terrie Sue, Amy and Karen. Walter’s ashes were sprinkled around the Antioch Maintenance Shed where he had kept an office.