EMILY LANTZ FLETCHER CARL (1868-1935)
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Emily Lantz Fletcher, my great-grandmother, was born in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, on April 21, 1868, where she was raised, and where she lived almost all her life. She graduated from Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania in 1889, very unusual for a woman then (and her husband did not attend university). Her uncle, Judge D. Watson Rowe (who had no children of his own), thought Emily had the best legal mind among his nieces and nephews and offered to put her through law school. She turned him down, saying in a letter that as a woman, she would never have the opportunity to practice, and therefore his money would be wasted; a copy and transcription of the letter can be found on this page.
Emily married Pitt F. Carl, Jr. at age 22, on November 6, 1890, in the Presbyterian Church in Greencastle. They had three children, two boys and a girl, the youngest of whom was my grandfather, Pitt F. Carl, Jr.
She was called "Mammo" by her grandchildren and lived to be 67. She died on December 28, 1935, in the hospital in nearby Chambersburg, probably of cancer, and she is buried next to her husband in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Greencastle.
A copy of the newspaper article recounting her wedding to Pitt Carl on November 6, 1890, can be found in the "marriage notes".
The following is the obituary which appeared in the paper (probably the newspaper of Greencastle) on December 28, 1935 (a copy of the article is in the possession of Missy Carl Hamilton, her granddaughter):
Mrs. Emily Fletcher Carl, widow of Pitt F. Carl, of South Carlisle Street, Greencastle, died at 10 o'clock this morning at the Chambersburg Hospital, after several months' illness. She was aged 67 years and was a member of the Presbyterian Church of Greencastle. She was a graduate of Wilson College, class of 1889, and was prominent in social, civic, and religious activities of Greencastle. She was the daughter of the late L.H. Fletcher and Martha Ellen Rowe Fletcher of Greencastle and had lived her entire life in that place.
"She is survived by three children, Charles W. Carl of Scarsdale, N.Y., Mary Lillian Carl, at home, and Pitt F. Carl, Jr., of New York City, also these brothers and sisters, Henry P. Fletcher of Greencastle, J. Gilmore Fletcher of New York City, G. Fred and D. Watson Fletcher, Mrs. John F. Martin and Mrs. Florence Bitner, all of Greencastle.
"The funeral services, conducted by Rev. Walter B. Freed of the Trinity Lutheran Church of Greencastle, will be held at the home at 2:30 o'clock on Monday afternoon; burial at Cedar Hill cemetery, Greencastle."
Emily married Pitt F. Carl, Jr. at age 22, on November 6, 1890, in the Presbyterian Church in Greencastle. They had three children, two boys and a girl, the youngest of whom was my grandfather, Pitt F. Carl, Jr.
She was called "Mammo" by her grandchildren and lived to be 67. She died on December 28, 1935, in the hospital in nearby Chambersburg, probably of cancer, and she is buried next to her husband in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Greencastle.
A copy of the newspaper article recounting her wedding to Pitt Carl on November 6, 1890, can be found in the "marriage notes".
The following is the obituary which appeared in the paper (probably the newspaper of Greencastle) on December 28, 1935 (a copy of the article is in the possession of Missy Carl Hamilton, her granddaughter):
Mrs. Emily Fletcher Carl, widow of Pitt F. Carl, of South Carlisle Street, Greencastle, died at 10 o'clock this morning at the Chambersburg Hospital, after several months' illness. She was aged 67 years and was a member of the Presbyterian Church of Greencastle. She was a graduate of Wilson College, class of 1889, and was prominent in social, civic, and religious activities of Greencastle. She was the daughter of the late L.H. Fletcher and Martha Ellen Rowe Fletcher of Greencastle and had lived her entire life in that place.
"She is survived by three children, Charles W. Carl of Scarsdale, N.Y., Mary Lillian Carl, at home, and Pitt F. Carl, Jr., of New York City, also these brothers and sisters, Henry P. Fletcher of Greencastle, J. Gilmore Fletcher of New York City, G. Fred and D. Watson Fletcher, Mrs. John F. Martin and Mrs. Florence Bitner, all of Greencastle.
"The funeral services, conducted by Rev. Walter B. Freed of the Trinity Lutheran Church of Greencastle, will be held at the home at 2:30 o'clock on Monday afternoon; burial at Cedar Hill cemetery, Greencastle."
YOUTH
COLLEGE YEARS
Very unusually for the time, Emily went to college, graduating from Wilson College in 1889. She was the only one of my great-grandmothers to attend university, and not even my two grandmothers went to college.
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![]() One of the letters I found among my mother’s papers after she died was this one, on the right, written to Emily in 1887. We assumed it was a letter from her husband. To our great surprise, it turned out not to be from Pitt Carl, but instead from a man who must have been a boyfriend of Emily’s, and in fact, it sounds like there was some sort of “understanding” between the two that they would get married. It took a while to figure out who the letter writer was, but the man who wrote the letter turned out to be Joseph Claggett (“J.C.”) Seacrest.
Who was J.C. Seacrest? He was from the rural Antrim Township area around Greencastle, and in fact, was probably a distant relative of Emily’s (his middle name, “Claggett”, is also a family name of the Fletchers and Rowes). Born in late 1864, he was three years older than Emily, and he started working at age 14 at the Greencastle Press. The letter was written very soon after he moved “out west” to Lincoln, Nebraska, where his uncle had already established himself. J.C. was a young reporter at the Nebraska State Journal when he wrote the letter; the letter describes how his mother and siblings would move out to Lincoln soon, now that the “farm in Clay Lick” has been sold, and indeed, that is what happened, and he also talks about “when you come to Lincoln”, but that was not to be. J.C. eventually became very successful in the newspaper business, becoming the publisher of the Nebraska State Journal, and an important civic leader of Lincoln. What happened to the romance? That is a mystery. The letter was written in 1887, when Emily was 19 years old and attending Wilson College. Who broke up with whom? Did Emily not want to move to Nebraska? She got married before J.C. did, to Pitt Carl, in 1890. J.C. married two years later, and not to someone he met in Nebraska – by that time he had been living there for five years – but to Jessie Snively, someone from “back home” in the Greencastle area (and who was also a distant relative of Emily’s). Had he already known her when he was courting Emily? Why was the letter kept, even after Emily died? Perhaps the letter hadn’t been read in a hundred years – was it assumed that it was from Pitt, her husband, because of the envelope, and that’s why it was saved? ADULTHOOD AND FAMILY LIFE
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