Monday, June 30, 2014

52 Ancestors: #21 Rebecca Annabel Fisher, "Aunt Annie"

Rebecca and three of her six sisters.
Clockwise, from top left: Eliza Jane, Mary Ellen,
Minerva C., and Rebecca Annabel Fisher.
Rebecca Annabel Fisher was born November 8, 1857 in Marion County, Indiana.  Her parents were Henry James Fisher and Nancy Elizabeth McLaughlin.  (The story is handed down that Henry and Nancy eloped to be married.) She grew up in a large household, being the eighth of ten children.  Her father was an entrepreneur in the tile making business in Jasper County, Indiana.

Rebecca's sister,  Eliza Jane, died in 1880 at the age of 19.  She left behind a newborn daughter, Mary Lillie Ellen.  Rebecca, unmarried and living with her parents, helped to raise her niece.

At the age of 36, Rebecca married Lewis Milburn Worland in Rensselaer, Indiana. He was ten years younger than her. They had two sons, Leonard and Luther, and one daughter, Dola (my great grandmother.)  The Worlands first settled in Jasper County then relocated to Shelby County, Indiana around 1900.

They moved to Jennings County, Indiana around 1915.  Soon after they moved, their daughter Dola met her future husband Clyde Holtzlider at the United Brethren Church in Pierceville.

Worlands, c. 1897: Lewis, Leonard, Rebecca, and Dola.
 Rebecca (right) and her niece Mary Lillie Ellen

























Rebecca lived to be nearly 90 years old.  By the time she reached old age, she was completely blind. She died at her daughter's house in Greensburg on August 30, 1947 and was buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in Shelbyville, Indiana.  Her husband had died only a month before her.