1. As told to me by my aunt, Hilma Jean Ivey Mortell: “My grandmother was great at taking pictures and writing on backs of them. She only went to school through 8th grade, but she was self educated in many ways. An intelligent woman. I have an old album of hers from the locks where Mother's family lived for a few years. My grandfather (Eugene) was a locks tender at the LaGrange Locks on the Illinois River near Versailles. Mother always said that those were the happiest times of her childhood and that they had a good life there. Mother's family and Alva's brother and his family, in addition to one other family, the Coles, were the only ones who lived there. Mother had great stories about when the river flooded, and she was quite a good ice skater when it froze.”

2. On the last page of a book entitled A Memorial History and Genealogical Record of the John Howell and Jacob Stutzman Families is the following, written in hand by Alva Fink: “‘ But though the large, black eyes opened when she raised her head, there was no recognition in their gaze; for the soul was preparing for it’s final flight, and was too busy to look out of it’s own windows.’ [from ‘St. Elmo’] Alva Fink” (it is thought that she wrote this after her son, Howell’s death in 1922).