Biography

Celestia Levina Buell, one of five children of Chauncey and Levina Willis Buell, was born on 25 July, 1831 in Lebanon, New York. Celestia Buell married twice, first in 1849 to Lafayette Muzzy of Hamilton, New York, who died in a sawmill accident in 1849. After being a widow for six years, she married Patrick Henry Burchard in Hamilton, New York, in 1855. Their daughter Lettie Buell Burchard was born July 10, 1859 in Hamilton. Patrick Henry Burchard died in 1883. Three years later, Lettie Burchard married Thomas Jewett Wheeler. After Celestia Burchard´s death in 1903, her daughter continued the tradition of keeping a diary that her mother had started in 1862. In 1910 the Wheelers move to Laurens, Iowa, in Pocahontas County, which became their permanent home. Lettie and Thomas Wheeler had a daughter, Adelaide Wheeler Joselyn, who wrote one diary in 1921. Lettie Burchard Wheeler was the grandmother of Alberta Randall Hall,who donated the family diaries to the Iowa Women´s Archives.

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