Person:Susan Pine (1)

Susan Jane Pine was the oldest of six children of Simeon Pine and his wife, Sarah Haines, Quakers who had been born in New Jersey. The Pines were originally from England, settling at Hempstead Colony, on Long Island, on the 1640’s. The Haines family was also from England, settling in New Jersey in the 1680’s.

Though Susan Pine’s parents were living in Waynesville at the time of her birth, when she was born on October 21, 1830 it was in Centerville, possibly at the home of her maternal grandfather, John Haines, who lived in Washington Township for many years.

Susan spent the first six years of her life in Waynesville. When she was about six years old, her father purchased 164 acres of land on the north side of Spring Valley Road near Centerville, then a muddy lane. Simeon and Sarah took their three young children to live in a log cabin that Simeon had built there, and eventually their family grew to include six children. Susan grew up with three younger brothers and two younger sisters.

In September of 1854, Susan married James Sheehan in Waynesville, about ten miles to the southeast of Centerville. James was thirty five, and a member of the Sugar Creek Baptist Church. Susan was twenty four, and a Quaker. Though Susan lived near Centerville at the time of her marriage to James, she was a birthright member of the Waynesville Friends.

After their marriage, Susan went to live with James in the house that he had helped to his family build twenty years earlier, on the east side of what would one day be Sheehan Road.

James and Susan Sheehan had five sons and one daughter. Their first son, Jason Lamar Sheehan, was born in 1856. Their second son George Milton Sheehan, who went by Milton and Milt, was born in 1858. Next was born Charles Warren Sheehan, in 1860, followed by William Albert Sheehan, in 1862, who went by Albert and Al. Sarah Elma Sheehan, their only daughter, was born in 1865. Nine years later, in 1874, when Susan Sheehan was almost 44 years old, she gave birth to her last child, a son, James Elmer Sheehan, who went by the name of Elmer.

Nine months following the birth of Elmer, in May of 1875, James Sheehan died. He was only fifty five years old.

Susan continued to live in her house on Sheehan Road, depending, no doubt, on the help of her older sons at first for the agricultural work of the farm, which ran for about half a mile down both sides of the road. And she must have depended, too, on the help of her daughter, Sarah, with the house and with little Elmer, and on her brothers and sisters and their families nearby, and on a community of neighbors and friends. There was probably help of many sorts, too from Susan’s mother, Sarah Haines Pine, who had married Samuel Kelly of Waynesville in 1868, until Sarah’s death in April of 1877. Over time, Susan Sheehan’s sons established homes of their own.

Susan Sheehan lived for forty three years after the death of her husband, James. She died on Christmas Day, in 1918, at the age of 88, and was laid to rest in the Sugar Creek Baptist Cemetery between her husband and their daughter, Sarah, who had died thirty five years earlier at the age of eighteen.

At the Sugar Creek Baptist Cemetery, she is buried in the 25th row, North end, #10. At the very back of the cemetery furthest away from Main Street, to the east of Main Street, look in the southeast quadrant for Sheehan and Stansell.

She is buried at 39d 38' 1699" N, 84d 9' 3999"W.