The photo above is of Phoebe Ann Moore Brent and daughters Vesper, Eva, Jessie and Ida circa 1885. Ida Brent Married Emory Starr in 1898 and raised Ernest Starr from the age of 3. Emory is my 2x great grandfather and Ernest is my great grandfather. After Emory was killed by a lightning strike in 1927 Ida came to live with Ernie and his wife Ina and their sons including my grandfather, Ken Starr, from 1935 until her death in 1944. I feel indebted to Ida for raising my great grandfather Ernie. She never had any other children. Ernest Starr was a good man who raised good men and I’m sure Ida had a big part in that. So while biologically she’s not my great grandmother and we share no DNA with the Brent family, I still feel a connection there. Emory was killed working on the farm of Ida’s nephew. He was obviously close to her family too. This photo, shared on ancestry.com by a descendent of the Brents, made me want to know more about these Brent women. They all had their struggles and triumphs working farms, raising and burying children and husbands and running their own small businesses around the turn of the century.
Ida’s mother, Phoebe came to Warren County Illinois as a child. Her father, Andrew Moore died in Ellison township, Warren County, Illinois when she was 6. She died at Ida and Emory’s home in Monmouth. Her obituary is an interesting read:
PIONEER WOMAN DIED YESTERDAY MRS. PHOEBE A. BRENT PASSED AWAY AT AGE OF 86 YEARS-FUNERAL TUESDAY.
On Sabbath afternoon at 3 o’clock, at the home of her daughter, Mrs. E. A. Starr, 1020 South . Eighth street, occurred the death of Mrs. Phoebe A. Brent, aged 86 years, and one of the pioneer women of Warren county. The immediate cause of her death was old age, together with a severe
attack of neuritis, with which she had been a patient sufferer for the past year.
In the passing of Mrs. Brent the community loses one of the few remaining pioneers that assisted largely in shaping the policies and material affairs of Warren county to which we have fallen heir and which we prize as a sacred heritage. Phoebe Ann Moore was born in Cumberland County, Ohio, on October 9, 1836. At an early age she was brought by her parents to Western Illinois and grew to womanhood on a farm located near the site of the village of New Lancaster some four miles northwest of the present village of Roseville.
On August 13, 1857; she was united in marriage to Paul Brent and the young couple at once, established a home on the farm located one mile east of the village of Smithshire in Ellison township. To this union twelve children were born, six of whom preceded their parents in death, those remaining being: Elias Brent of Columbus Junction, Iowa; Mrs. Eva Barrick of Morning Sun, Iowa; Paul Brent, Jr. of Fairfield, Iowa; Mrs. Jessie Law
of Kirkwood; Mrs. Ida Starr and Harry Brent of Monmouth.
The family was reared on the family farm and lived there until about 3 years ago when they moved to Abingdon, where they lived for six years, before moving then to Kirkwood where they resided until the death of the father.
Since the death of her husband Mrs. Brent has made her home with her children. The funeral services will be held on Tuesday, Dec. 5, at 1 p. m ., from the home of the daughter, Mrs. A. Starr, 1020 South Eighth street and the body will be laid to rest by be side that of her husband in the Ellison cemetery.
Ida was the firstborn of the 12 Brent children, born in 1858. Then her brother Oscar was born in 1860, he died at the age of 17. Then in 1862 Vesper May Brent was born. Vesper never married, living with her brother Paul after her father died. She fell ill in 1919 and died at the age of 56. Another brother was born in 1863, Elias.
In 1866 Eva Georga Brent was born. Before Eva was 18 she witnessed the death of four of her siblings. Marion was born in 1868 and died at 11 months. Four months later another brother, David was born and died the next day. Eva was 3 at the time of these deaths. When she was 10 another infant sibling, Minnie Brent died at the age of 3 months in 1876. And the following year 17 year old brother Oscar was killed when Eva was only 11 years old. When she was 14 her brother Edwin, born in 1879 died at 5 months of age. One can only imagine how witnessing so much death at such a young age may have effected Eva, and her surviving siblings. In August of 1885 Eva married Amos Rensberger. Six months later she gave birth to her son John Paul. Three years later the Monmouth newspaper reported that Amos took over the farm of Eva’s father, Paul. The marriage was short lived and by 1895 Eva remarried to another farmer, Sam Barrick. She and Sam had three children together in the next 13 years. Unfortunately deaths also came. Eva’s father Paul died in 1906 when Eva was 40 years old, ten years later her husband of 21 years died and then three years after that her sister Vesper died. As a widow at 50, Eva ran a boarding house in Morning Sun Iowa for a time, her mother Phoebe and sister Vivian living with her there in 1920. Eva suffered the death of her daughter Vera Barrick, who had never married just four months before her own death in 1936 at the age of 70.
The youngest surviving Brent daughter was Jessie Colman Brent who was born in 1872. She attended school in Abingdon, Illinois, which is 20 miles southeast of Monmouth. In 1895 at 23 years of age she married thirty four year old William “Oscar“ Laws, a clerk in a dry goods store in Tompkins, Illinois. Six months later her first daughter, Mary Josephine was born. Ten years later she welcomed a second daughter, Katherine. The 1910 census shows Oscar is now employed as a rural mail carrier, a career he continued through 1930. Being 9 years younger than her husband and one of the youngest children she survived the deaths of all but one of her siblings, her husband and her parents. She died in 1946 in Monmouth at the age of 74.
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