emma
Emma Newell - just three days younger than Mary Ingalls - was born on a large and prosperous farm in Durham, New York. Her grandfather was an elder in the Presbyterian church, and the Newell families long kept Saturday night as holy, just as described by Laura Ingalls Wilder in reference to her grandfather's family in Little House in the Big Woods. Emma's father, in addition to farming, was also a career teacher who eventually moved his family to Wisconsin and Nebraska, not for the farming, but to advance his teaching career.

It was to Nebraska that Frank Cooley traveled to marry Emma after he sold a preemption claim in Clark County, Dakota Territory (just north of Kingsbury County). They settled on his homestead claim northeast of De Smet, and in addition to raising their two sons, Emma was active in the Congregational Church, serving as church secretary. In Mansfield, Emma and Frank joined the Methodist Church and she remained very active in church work her whole life.

Many of the questions I had after the Lore article was about "how tiny" Mrs. Cooley must have been. The photo at left shows Emma Cooley Burney late in life; she stands between George and his wife Frances. Although bent in old age, one can tell that Emma was always quite small in size. It would be interesting to know how tall Emma was in comparison to Laura Ingalls Wilder.

When I first interviewed George's son Frank, he told me that when he was a young man in the 1940s, he was driving Grandma Burney somewhere in his car and was forced to brake suddenly. In those days before seatbelts, Emma slid off the seat and onto the floor beneath the dashboard. She was so tiny that she ended up crouched there completely under the dash, and because her coat was the same color as the seats and floorboard, Frank thought she had been thrown from the car because she was "totally lost" in the small space and he didn't see her there! He said it wasn't until he stopped the car and ran to open the door on the passenger side that he realized his grandmother was still in the car and - luckily - she was also unhurt.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:59 PM