Baker City, Oregon
Lillie Lovelace Ells, 100, a longtime Baker City resident, died April 8, 2003, at St. Elizabeth Health Services.
Her funeral will be at 2 p.m. Monday at the Coles Funeral Home, 1950 Place St. Pastor Ian Fisher of Calvary Chapel in Ontario will officiate. Interment will be at Mount Hope Cemetery. Visitations will be Monday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the funeral home.
Lillie was born at Clovis, Calif., to Hubert and Lucy Van Cleave Carroll on Jan. 4, 1903. She moved with her parents at the age of 3 to Brady, Neb., where she lived until she was grown.
She worked hard all her life in the fields, milking cows and doing many chores outside and helping her mother with her younger brothers and sisters. She was the second of 13 children.
She lived in a sod house until she was 15 and assisted her mother in making mattresses for the beds, which were filled with corn shucks or clean straw. She was up early every morning to help outside and then did the chores inside before fixing a lunch and then walking to school, a distance of ? miles, and she made sure the younger ones got there on time.
In 1917, her father moved the family to Kelly, Wyo., and she soon moved to La Grande where she worked at odd jobs until 1922, when she met and married Ed Lovelace.
They bought a ranch at Durkee and moved there in 1926, where she resided until 1950. She worked hard raising a huge garden each year, and canning many jars of fruit and vegetables to carry them over the winter. They always had others to room and board whether a friend or a stray prospector. One man, a Mr. Gray, wished to stay for four or five days to prospect a gold mine and he lived with them for more than 30 years.
Lillie worked at the Portland Cement plant, which was then at Lime during World War II and was a rural mail carrier for 13 years from Durkee to Bridgeport. She also cooked for Chris Lee’s sheep shearing crew for seven years.
She and her husband raised a herd of registered Hereford cattle the last years on their ranch and in 1950 they sold everything and moved to Baker City.
They then moved to their home on Elm Street. Mr. Lovelace died on July 23, 1973, and Lillie lived alone at her home for more than 13 years. She was a very active person, and loved hobbies and creative crafts.
She liked to make something with such items as seeds from her flowers or anything she could gather from the waysides, beads, fish scales, etc. She was a rock hound and made lovely pieces of beautiful jewelry out of her many agates and petrified woods.
She did lapidary work and made custom jewelry for many of her friends and relatives. In later years, she spent many hours china painting dishes for her sisters and friends. She loved to fish and to be outdoors.
She married Ralph Ells at American Falls, Idaho, on Nov. 4, 1985. They had known each other for many years and were very, very happy in the short time they had together. Ralph owned and operated his own chimney and furnace cleaning business for 38 years until he was forced to retire due to ill health in 1987 at the age of 87. He died on March 7, 1990.
Lillie was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a charter member of the World War I Auxiliary, the Veterans of Foreign Wars Auxiliary, American Legion Auxiliary, and the Durkee Grange.
She was preceded in death by her two husbands; her parents; her grandparents; four brothers, Hubert, Joe, Patrick and Warren Carroll; and four sisters, Daisy Suitter, Bertha Klien, Pearl McClary and Ada Talley.
Survivors include her sisters, Violet Graham of Baker City and Lois Music of Yelm, Wash.; and brothers, Omar M. Carroll and George W. Carroll Sr., both of Baker City; many nieces and nephews, great-nieces and nephews and great-great-grandchildren; and her longtime friends and neighbors.
Memorial contributions may be made to Cancer Research or the V.F.W. through Coles Funeral Home, 1950 Place St., Baker City, OR 97814.
Used with permission from: Baker City Herald, Baker City, Oregon, April 11, 2003
Transcribed by: Belva Ticknor