Mary Edith Stoneburner

Mary Edith Stoneburner died in her 101st year at Beckett House, New Concord OH on June 13, 2007. A school teacher throughout her whole career, she was born on the family-farm southwest of Salesville OH September 29, 1905, and attended public school in Salesville & Quaker City, and college at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware OH. Her most important teaching was of European history in the public high school at Alliance OH. She was devoted to her parents, Hosea Victor Stoneburner and Susan Rebecca (Van Kirk) Stoneburner and almost invariably spent her week-ends and vacations with them at the family-farm, gardening and lawn-mowing in season, and even, upon occasion, assisting in harvesting the hay-crop. Soon after the death of her father, she retired from teaching and took over the supervision of maintaining of the family-farm in first-rate condition, if limited production. A lifelong member of the United Methodist Church, Salesville, she was for a period the musician who accompanied hymn-singing at worship. She was also a member of Eastern Star and a staunch supporter of the Republican Party. She collected china and glassware. Although almost altogether a person who stayed close to home in her free time, until the death of her mother, she became an enthusiastic traveler thereafter, relishing visits to KY (both Berea and Shakertown at Pleasant Hill), ME, MI, NC, VA (Williamsburg), and the ever-different place around the state of the annual meeting of the Symposium on the Culture of the Ohio Frontier (at the one in Delaware, the gathering heard her paper on sorghum). Her journeys away from home enabled her to demonstrate what an outgoing person she was. Her parents and her brother, Charles William Stoneburner, a Methodist minister, predeceased her. Surviving her are her nephews Tony and John and her niece Jane Ann Moore, and their spouses, and their children, David and Carol, Stephen, and Deborah Ann. There are two grandnieces, Christian and Caitlin, and one grand nephew, Kyle. Donald Stoneburner of Salesville is a cousin. Private family services will be held. Thorn-Black Funeral Home, Quaker City, is handling arrangements.