Dorothy Hendry

Looking for Jencey: the Life of Lizzie Elnora Murphy Casebolt Dorothy Hendry

This is a true story, a family saga, whose strong and resourceful heroine is Lizzie Elnora Murphy Casebolt. It tells of her lifelong search for her beautiful mother, Jencey, who died when Lizzie was seven, but who appeared to Lizzie many times in dreams and in unusual circumstances. Lizzie was adopted by a kindly judge and his wife, the Taylors. She grew up in the small Missouri town of Miami, where she found romance with one young man, but married another. Her life, through nearly ninety-one years of happiness and heartbreak, spanned the postÂ-Civil War period and the aftermath of slavery, the tragedies of the two world wars, the suffrage movement, the hardships of the Depression, the births of her children and grandchildren and some of her great-grandchildren, and the exciting and sometimes difficult life she led with her beloved daughter, Myrtle, and Myrtle's husband, the educator George W. Diemer, including their travels to California, the Rockies, and New York City. The gentle determination and steady character of Lizzie shines through all of the events and people who were part of her life.