Louisa Ewing

Louisa, the fifth daughter and ninth and youngest child of Colonel Alexander and Charlotte Griffith Ewing, was born March 18, 1819 in Troy, Miami, Ohio. the family was to move in 1822 to Fort Wayne, Indiana.

"Colonel Ewing's first visit to Fort Wayne was made in 1812. He had removed from New York to Piqua, Ohio in 1806 and there built a double log house which was used as a tavern and trading house. He became a colonel in the Miami county militia which joined General Harrison in his relief expedition to Fort Wayne in 1812. Colonel Ewing served with the army in a detachment of spies, and continued throughout the campaign to the battle of the Thames. He lived but five years after the family settled in Fort Wayne, but in that brief period he established one of the pioneer taverns and became the owner of real estate which is today of incalculable value."

Louisa was ten years younger than her next sister, Lovina, and twenty nine years younger that her eldest sister, Sophia, so her childhood must have been an unusual one, surrounded by so many older siblings. Her father died when she was eight.

Louisa married Charles Edmund Sturges on March 3, 1836, in Logansport, Cass, Indiana. Family tradition has it that Louisa, who was only 17 at the time, wed against her family's wishes, wearing a black dress and pantaloons.

Louisa and Dr. Sturges had eight children, of whom five lived to adulthood. They were Susan, who died young; Louisa, who married Dr. G. W. McCaskey and lived until 1941; William G. E.; Edmund Lynch, who lived from June 4, 1842 to December 8, 1872; Ewing; Louis, who was born July 23, 1848, married Caroline Work, and died in 1906; and Alida Livingston, born August 9, 1846, married Percival Gates Kelsey on January 1, 1868, and died April 5, 1929. Her brother Samuel Pratt Sturges married Percival's half-sister, Lymna Orvilletta Kelsey, and died in 1920.

Louisa died March 10, 1887 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, eighteen years after her husband's death. They are buried together at Lindenwood Cemetery, close to their children, Edmund, Louis and Caroline and Alida and Percival. There is a Ewing crypt close to the Sturges plot, belonging to some of Louisa's cousins.