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Amy Stith "Emma" (Powell) Skinner. She may have been named after Amy Stith (64083158), the mother of the pastor of the church that her father attended when young. But was that the only connection?

Amy Skinner's grandmother Phoebe (Graham) Powell may have been related somehow to the Mary "Polly" (Graham) Stith who was married to Jesse Stith, son of Amy (Williams) Stith.

Richard called her "Emma" or "Em."

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The family gathering with people gathered around Amy and Richard holding a birthday cake may have been his 80th birthday. Pictured from left to right were little Opal (Hutchinson) Seslar, Bern C. Hutchinson, Eunice (Skinner) Hutchinson, Ray S. Hutchinson (son of Charles & Meg), Velma Hutchinson (dau. of Charles & Meg), baby Raymond Hutchinson (son of Ray), Charles Hutchinson, Meg (Skinner) Hutchinson, Omer Smith, Bess Smith, Perl Hutchinson, Clinton Smith, and Ted Hutchinson.

Dick (as Amy called Richard) & Amy brought their young family west by covered wagon before the turn of the 20th century. They were first in Worth Co., MO before moving to western Nebraska. Amy responded to a letter from one of her Lanning nephews, a son of her sister Eleanor, that she liked living in western Nebraska. The open spaces with few people didn't bother her. I'm guessing that she thought one of the benefits was leaving behind the temptations associated with the mining culture in Perry Co., OH. That mining culture in OH killed Richard's half brother, John Thomas "Tom" Spurgeon, after a night of drinking and gambling caused him to take a nap on the railroad tracks.

Ethel Albin, who was an excellent researcher, compiled an unpublished genealogy of her Powells when she was very elderly. Some of the data in it was given to her by others and unverified. She listed Amy as 1.5.2.4 AMY "AMA" "EM" POWELL. It incorrectly has Richard A. Skinner's father Eli Skinner b. in OH instead of PA.

I don't know the source of the following information that Ethel added about this family. It might not be completely correct. The old letter from Amy's mother Enora (Barnes) Powell to her daughter Mary Eleanor (Powell) Lanning was in an old trunk that had belonged to Ethel's Lanning grandparents. Here's what Ethel put in her Powell genealogy:

"Richard and Amy were members of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. He worked in the coal mines in Perry Co. for fifteen years. He enlisted in the Civil War in the Sixty Second Ohio volunteer infantry, and served during the closing eighteen months of the war. After the war was over, he returned to his old home and from there moved to Missouri in 1873, farming there until 1886, when he moved to Banner County, Nebraska, and homesteaded on the tract that adjoins his present home farm. Their first home was a dugout. They left Missouri with four horses, and two covered wagons, and reached their new home with the two wagons, two horses and twenty dollars cash capital. They had reached Sidney and remained there over night, with forty miles to go, and on the way an electrical storm came up and one horse was killed, and another so shocked he never fully recovered.

They lived in the dugout for two years, but it was never really safe, as wild cattle on the range had to be continually driven away to keep them from trampling over the covering of the house and caving in on them.

They gathered bones of buffalo from the prairie and wood from the hills and hauled them to Potter and Sidney, selling bones for eight dollars a ton, and getting eleven to twelve cents a piece for cedar posts.

After proving up his homestead, Mr. Skinner borrowed money on it in order to buy cattle. However, when his children became ill he had to spend the money for medicine and a doctor.

After two years in the dugout, the family moved into a sod house, and lived there for ten years. He then bought the land adjoining his homestead and built a still more comfortable sod house, in which they lived afterward. Since the Civil War, Richard was a Republican. He served many years as a road-overseer, as precinct assessor and as a School Director. He belonged to the Order of Odd Fellows.

A letter (no date) written by Enora (Barnes) Powell from the home of her daughter and son-in-law, Matilda & Noah Barnes, to her daughter, Mary Eleanor (Powell) Lanning, says:

"I got a letter from Amy Skiner this morning. Had got none for a good while. They are at the gold mines. Went in May, left a man on thare farm to take care of things till they come back. They took all thare singel childern with them and 8 horses and wagons and a Spring wagon. They are keeping a boarding house. She said none of the children is working at the shaft where thare is danger. Their boys is chopping wood for the camp and Dick and Ned had gone to Larime (Larramie) City on bisness. I expect they get all thare provisions from thare. Amy diden say when they was comeing back. She said they took a drive the 4 of July 35 miles across the mountains. Could see snow on the mountains."