Elizabeth Matilda Flood great aunt of Elizabeth Speedy who married Stanley Roose. Lizzie on RootsMagic tree.

Elizabeth went by Lizzie and was born January 28, 1867 in Butler County, Iowa. The year she was born, Harvard opens the 1st dental school, Nobel files a patent on dynamite, Nebraska becomes a state and Charles Dickens gives 1st public reading in the US.

Lizzie was a dressmaker. She was single and rented her home, in Iowa around 1900. Did she wish to stay single, did she have marriage proposals that she refused?  Did her parents hassle her to get married, start a family and settle down? Three of her sisters married and had children, one did not. Both her brothers married.

Lizzie died at about 36  years old, following an operation. She is buried near her family: mother Delia Viola Angell and father William Flood, brothers and sisters in an old cemetery near Clarksville, Iowa.

I think Lizzie liked living with her four sisters, two brothers and parents but was restless to be on her own. So she moved out of her family’s small town home at 20 years old and went to the closest city, then lived on her own until her death. Maybe she was a successful dressmaker during the day, then at home in the evenings she designed her own dresses and pondered opening her own dress shop. After Lizzie’s death her youngest sister, Nettie, owns a millinery shop. Perhaps Lizzie’s estate left all to her sister?

Lizzie may have kept a notebook similar to this Swatch book where she recorded her ideas for dress designs and her knowledge of textiles and sewing.

The Swatch book is at Winthur.org in their Digital Collections.

“Swatch Book :: Textile Patterns and Designs.” Swatch Book :: Textile Patterns and Designs. Winterthur Digital Collections, n.d. Web. 05 Jan. 2016.