| Martha Jane (McKee) Alderman July 21, 1855 ~ February 1, 1903 |
| Newspaper Obituary: Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, February 2, 1903, page 1 |
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| MRS. MARTHA JANE ALDERMAN DEAD WELL KNOWN FOR ACTIVE LIFE IN THE CAUSE OF CHARITY Mother of the Twenty-eighth battery passed to her reward after a life of usefulness Mrs. Martha Jane Alderman, well known throughout this city for her active connection with the charitable movements to which she had devoted years of intelligent labor, died Sunday afternoon at her home on Crescent Avenue, in Lakeside. She had not enjoyed the best of health for several months and was for a time a patient at St. Joseph's hospital, where she was under treatment for a complication of diseases that finally brought about her death. Mrs. Alderman was born in Eel River township, in this county, and was a daughter of Thomas L. McKee, one of the best-known citizens of the community in which he lived. During the civil war she removed with her family to Warsaw, where she resided for nine years, and with the exception of this period she spent her entire life in Allen County. She married in 1874 to Frank Alderman in this city and he died in November 1900. The surviving family consists of Frank Alderman, of South Hanna Street; Harry, Dollie and Charles Alderman, who made their home with their mother. While she had been connected with the charitable organizations of the city for a number of years, the greater part of her good works were done through individual ministering to the afflicted, and in many homes throughout the city there will be a kindly remembrance of Mrs. Alderman as a staunch friend in the hour of sorrow and affliction. During the Spanish-American War she was particularly active in collecting and sending to the soldiers camped at Chickamauga supplies that were not allowed them from the army stores, and she went to the camp, where she labored among the boys in blue, devoting here energies to the relief of the sick. Frank Alderman was a first lieutenant in the Twenty-Eighth battery and Harry was a corporal in the same battery, and during her stay among the soldiers she was affectionately called the 'mother of the twenty-eighth battery'. Funeral services will be held from the residence at 9:30 o'clock Tuesday morning and at 10 o'clock from the Cathedral. Interment will take place at Lindenwood |