Sometime after 1880, Mary Ellen's mother, step-father and half-brothers moved to Kansas where Arminda died.  I have been unable to find any more information on her after her move to Kansas.  There is no cemetery record, death certificate or obituary to be found for her mother, and other than her tombstone, there is no record of Mary Ellen's passing either.

She died young, being only 42 at the time of her death.  Most of her children were long gone before I was old enough to remember them let alone question them about her.  My grandmother, her youngest child, was just a child herself when her mother died and did not have many memories of the woman.

But based on the kind of children she raised, I would guess that she was a loving, caring woman with a good sense of humor which she imparted to all the children fortunate enough to be raised by her.  After her death in 1902, Sylvenus remarried Elmie Taplin in 1905.  Elmie was considerably younger than he and from family accounts resented the two children still left at home, my grandmother and her sister, Elsie.  I think Elsie was old enough to let most of Elmie's antagonism roll off her, but my grandmother was not and she, out of all the children in this family, seemed to find happiness hard to attain, no matter what she was given in life.

She is buried in the Spring Lake Cemetery in Pierce County, WI next to her husband Sylvenus.  Whenever I am back there to visit I make sure this cemetery is one of my stops, if for no better reason than to let them know that I, for one, remember them.