Fannie's parents moved from Ohio to Iowa around 1854, probably looking for land like so many folks were doing in those years. Fannie was born on the 6th of December in 1856 in West Union, Fayette County, Iowa. This town was originally called Knob Prairie, which gives us a better description of what the countryside looked like. Everyone knows that Iowa is where corn is grown!
Evidently this environment didn't suit the Huffman family because they moved back to Ohio and are found in the 1870 census at Washington, Defiance County. Fannie had two brothers and two sisters but something drastic happened to her family before the 1880s. Her mother died in 1871 in Hicksville, Defiance, Ohio, and then all of Fannie's siblings died in their 20s. I suspect it was typhoid fever because I saw some newspaper articles about this epidemic in Defiance County, Ohio during this time period. How devastating this must have been for Fannie and her father, the only persons remaining of their entire family. But Fannie busied herself making hats (listed as a milliner) in the 1880 census. Her father was in the lumber business.
On the 29th of December 1881, when Fannie was 25 years old, she married Charles G. Shepard in Hicksville. I think that this must have been a happy marriage because I was told that each member of the Shepard family played an instrument (Robert, for instance, played the cello, Nellie and Jessie played the piano) and there were many occasions where they would play together, possibly Charles joining in with his tenor voice, too. Here is the list of the children and their birth dates, all born in Hicksville:
Fred Larrison 6 Nov 1882
Lelia Huffman 3 Oct 1883
Nellie Eleanor 14 Aug 1885
Ward Beecher 14 Mar 1887
Jessie S. 7 May 1890
Mary G. 26 Feb 1894
Robert 1 May 1896
Soon after Charles' death, the Shepard family had to sell the beautiful Shelby house in town. Fannie bought a farmhouse and small farm with cows and became a milk laborer, with help from her children. The farm was about 2 miles southwest of Shelby.
Fannie was quite ill with carcinoma of the colon for about a year and died at the farm house on the first of March 1930 when she was 73 years old. Her funeral was at the Barkdull Funeral Home in Shelby and she was buried at the Oakland Cemetery there.FANNIE JOSEPHINE HUFFMAN
BORN: 6 Dec 1856 in West Union, Fayette, IA
MARRIED: 29 Dec 1881 in Hicksville, Defiance, OH
DIED: 1 Mar 1930 in Shelby, Richland, OH
BURIED: Mar 1930 at Oakland Cemetery in Shelby, Richland, OH
SOURCES: Marriage and death certificates, Ward Shepard, informant on the death certificate; Censuses of 1860-1930;Deed Index Defiance, Ohio, Fannie Shepard, Grantor to Joseph S. Bunnell, LDS film #0900483; "The Huffman and Shepard Genealogy Booklet, published in 1967, compilers, Mary and Jeffrey Shreffler.
