Rena  Eloise Midghall, the second daughter of George and Irene Midghall, was born on  April 4, 1908 in Hamilton, Ohio.  Her  paternal grandfather, an English immigrant, had received three hundred dollars  to take the place of a wealthy man who wished to avoid the draft.  A gifted musician, John Midghall was the  regimental drummer of the 70th Ohio  Infantry.  He fought at Shiloh,  Vicksburg, and Atlanta.  He marched with  Sherman’s Army to the Sea; he was captured near the Atlantic coast before the  army reached Savannah in late 1864.   Since Andersonville Prison was closed by that time, Corporal Midghall  was sent to languish in the prisoner-of-war camp at Salisbury, North Carolina,  where he contracted consumption and suffered with the infection of  tapeworms.  He managed to survive the  war, but was soon too ill to work to provide for his wife, their eight  children, and his wife’s sister’s boy – made an orphan during the war.  John died a few years later of the disease he  contracted while a prisoner of war.

Eloise  and her older sister, Ethelyne, barely knew their surviving grandfather, David  King, also a Civil War veteran.  He died  when Eloise was a small child.  Ethylene  soon followed him to the grave at age eleven.   It is believed she died of a ruptured appendix.  These two deaths so close together shaped the  rest of Eloise’s life, as she remained the only solace to her mother’s grief.

Eloise  remembered the Great War and the influenza epidemic that followed.  Her mother refused to allow her to go to the  library or read library books, as she feared the dreaded disease would be on  the books and take her only living child.   Eloise was trained in music and studied at the Conservatory in  Cincinnati.  She also attended Oxford  University to earn a degree in Education.   She studied with a handsome fellow student named John Pressler, whom she  had dated since high school.  Her mother  didn’t like him.  Her father, a kindly  and quiet man, did.

Eloise  and John Pressler were together for twelve years.  When he asked her to marry him, Eloise  hesitated.  She had just earned her  degree to teach school on the eve of the Great Depression.  Her parents needed her income, and were she  to marry, she would lose her position.   She asked John to wait a while longer.   He surprised her by abruptly marrying someone else.  The shock devastated her, and she suffered a  nervous breakdown.

Eloise  never married, and lavished her attention on her numerous school students.  She taught first grade for many years until  her retirement in 1973.  She lived in the  house where she was born all her life, and took care of her aging parents until  they died in 1965 and 1967. 

In  addition to teaching school and traveling all over the world, Eloise spent much  of her free time with a gourmet cooking club. She experimented with new recipes on her distant family – her favorites  included desserts and hors d’oeuvres. 

Eloise  was a pleasant person, and an unusual one.   When Allyene’s and Bill’s youngest daughter, Freda, called her one day  and asked her to go to the movies, she was surprised to hear Eloise turn from  the phone and ask her mother if she could go to the movies.  Freda, in grade school at the time, thought,  “ My goodness, you have to ask permission at 38 years old?”   Eloise also kept nearly $100,000 in her  checking account.  When asked why on  earth she would keep that amount in a regular checking account, she replied, “Oh,  you never know when you might need a little cash.”
Her  driving skills remained in fairly good condition, even throughout her  seventies.  She and two of her teacher  friends drove Freda's daughter two thousand miles to college for the girl's  freshman year in Utah.  It was her first  time away from home, and it was an experience riding with three elderly school  teachers through the plains of Kansas and the mountains of Colorado.  Eloise chose historical places to stop on the  way: the Harry Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, the  Eisenhower Boyhood home in Abilene, Kansas, and Pike’s Peak near Colorado  Springs.  When she dropped off the new  student with her multitudinous, cumbersome luggage, Eloise placed the suitcases  outside the car on the sidewalk, took a picture, and said, “Well, bye!” and drove away.  The  girl said, "I’ll never forget my  astonishment as I watched her go in her old Buick."  (Her dorm was on the third floor – with no  elevator.  She still can't remember how  she managed to get everything up there.)
One of Eloise's  favorite exclamations was “Fiddle dee dee!”  She was using it long before it became  Scarlett O’Hara’s catchphrase.

Eloise died at  age 96 the last week of June in 2004. 

Whenever  the family enjoys her old-fashioned colonial puddings, her hummingbird cake or  her apple crisp, her light-hearted company never seems far away.

These two Civil  War granddaughters knew each other well, and shared years of memories with  their myriad tried-and-true recipes.   They would be pleased to know that for nearly a quarter of a century,  the dishes that were their labors of love continue on for us to enjoy.