Mrs. E.N. (Rebecca) Leib

Rebecca (nee Witt) Leib was active in the local Ingleside Women’s Club and was president for the year 1904-1905. In her year as president, there were 60 members total. The club’s focus that year was listed as Shakespeare, Tennyson, and History.[1]

Rebecca was from Ohio and spent most of her adult life in Marengo. She was born in October of 1846.[2] She was the second wife to Elias Newton Leib, whose first wife Ella (Crane) passed away in the 1880s.[3] Ella and Elias Newton had two children together, Baron and Mark. Rebecca and Elias married in 1886 and had two children together, Mildred and Lawrence. Rebecca later officially adopted Baron.

Rebecca’s husband was very active in the town of Marengo. E. N. Leib had served as a soldier in the Union Army.[4] He later became a 1st Lieutenant in the Iowa National Guard.[5] He held the rank of a captain in Marengo’s Phoenix fire company as well.[6] Leib also became one of the first members of the Masonic Jerusalem Chapter No. 72 in Marengo, and he served as the Captain of the Host.[7] He owned a grocery store, Leib Grocery, which later employed his two sons. Leib Grocery was located within the old Eddy building for 34 years until 1911 when Baron became proprietor and moved the grocery into the new Gode building. (Lawrence eventually parted ways with the family grocery business, as he was named new clerk at Marengo’s Haas pharmaceutical store in 1906.[8] Mildred became a music teacher.[9])

Elias died May 15, 1905.[10] Rebecca was a widow from 1905 until her death in 1918.[11] She is buried at the IOOF Cemetery in Marengo.

-Cristin Noonan

[1] Iowa Federation of Women’s Clubs Year Book 1902-1905:1904, Bulletin-Journal Press, p. 45.

[2] Ancestry.com. Iowa, State Census Collection 1900 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012. Rebecca has identified herself on census records as being from Ohio. However, one record indicates her being from Illinois.

[3] Ancestry.com. Iowa, State Census Collection, 1880 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2018. Ella isn’t listed on census data after 1880, indicating her death. Their child, Mark K., also isn’t listed on any other census data, indicating that he died as a small child since in the 1880 census Mark K. was 1 year old. However, since Rebecca and Elias Newton married in 1886, it’s likely that Ella passed away in the first half of the 1880s.

[4] Marengo 1859–2009: Families Then and Now Who Made It Their Town
during the Past 150 Years, (Marengo: Marengo Sesquicentennial History Committee, 2009), p. 169.

[5] James C. Dinwiddie, History of Iowa County, Iowa, and Its People, vol. 2, (Chicago: S.J. Clarke Publishing, 1915), p. 43.

[6] The History of Iowa County, Iowa: Containing a History of the County, its Cities, Towns, & Biographical Sketches of its Citizens, War Record of its Volunteers in the Late Rebellion, General and Local Statistics, Portraits of Early and Prominent Men, History of the Northwest, History of Iowa, Map of Iowa County, Constitution of Iowa, Miscellaneous Matters, &, Des Moines, IA, Union Historical Company, (Des Moines: Birdsall, Williams & co., 1881), p. 507.

[7] Ibid., p. 506.

[8] The Northwestern Druggist: A Progressive Journal for Retail Druggists, Vol. 8, (1906): p. 38.

[9] Ancestry.com. Iowa, State Census Collection, 1910 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2018.

[10] Marengo 1859–2009: Families Then and Now Who Made It Their Town
during the Past 150 Years, (Marengo: Marengo Sesquicentennial History Committee, 2009), p. 169.

[11] Ancestry.com. U.S., Find A Grave Index [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2018.