Juliette Cordelia Hayes

1830s–1850s

Born 13 November 1834 in New York to Nelson Hayes and Sarah (Sally) Jones; the family moved to Ohio, where younger siblings were born. Married Byron Taylor Loomis in Allen County, Ohio, on 17 February 1853; daughters Sarah (1853) and Clara (1856) were born.

1860s

Living in Marion Township, Allen County, when Byron and her brother Alexis enlisted in the 1st Ohio Cavalry in 1861. Moved to Iowa after the war; son Isaac (Ike) was born in 1866.

1870s–1880s

Moved from Linn County, Iowa, to Ellsworth County, Kansas, in 1874, where son Nelson (Bud) was raised. Won eight first prizes for preserves, jelly, pie, and soap at the 1882 county fair. Hurt in a buggy accident in 1887; hostess of the Junction House in Geneseo in 1889.

1890s–1900s

Moved to Washington with Byron in 1890, settling at Humptulips, where the town band serenaded her on her 68th birthday in 1902. Died there in October 1904.

From Ohio to Kansas

Juliette Cordelia Hayes was born on November 13, 1834, in New York, the daughter of Nelson Hayes and Sarah (Sally) Jones. The family moved to Ohio, where her younger brothers and sisters were born; her siblings included Alexis Pope, Clarinda, Isaac, Russell, Hester, and Enos. In 1850 the Hayeses were in Jackson Township, Allen County, and on February 17, 1853, in Allen County, Juliette married Byron Taylor Loomis. Their daughters Sarah and Clara were born in 1853 and 1856.

In 1861 Byron and Juliette's brother Alexis enlisted together in the 1st Ohio Cavalry, and Byron came home in 1864 with an illness that dogged him for the rest of his life. The family moved to Vinton, Iowa, where their son Isaac Hayes (Ike, Meghan's 2x-great-grandfather) was born in 1866, and by 1870 to a farm in Fairfax Township, Linn County. In 1874 they moved again, to Ellsworth County, Kansas, where their son Nelson (Bud), born in 1873, grew up.

A Kansas Farm Wife

On the farm on Turkey Creek Juliette kept a busy house; in 1880 the local schoolteacher boarded with them. At the Ellsworth County Fair in September 1882 she took eight first prizes, for tomato butter, two kinds of tomato preserves, plum butter, plum jelly, grape jelly, pumpkin pie, and soft soap. Her family followed her west. In August 1884 her brother Alexis came from Black Hawk County, Iowa, to visit her and their cousins, liked the country so much that he bought 700 acres on Turkey Creek, and by about 1885 he and their brother Russell had both moved to Ellsworth County.

In 1887 Byron sold the farm and went into storekeeping in Ellsworth and Geneseo. That July, as Juliette and her daughter were driving from Geneseo to Ellsworth, their horse took fright and flipped the buggy, which was smashed to pieces; Juliette was badly hurt and her daughter bruised. In 1889 Juliette was the hostess of the Junction House, the boarding house the Loomises ran in Geneseo, while Byron tried his luck in Oklahoma.

Humptulips

In 1890 the Loomises left Kansas for Washington, living in Olympia, then at Quinault Lake, and by 1900 at Humptulips, in Chehalis County, where Byron ran a store that their son Bud had bought for thirty head of cattle. In June 1902 their daughter Clara Knox came from Olympia with her children to visit, and on the evening of November 13, 1902, the Humptulips band played in honor of Juliette's sixty-eighth birthday. She was ill several times in her last years, and she died at Humptulips in October 1904, a few weeks short of seventy. Byron outlived her by less than three years.