Mahala Jane Shell
Mahala Jane was born in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, on 4 May 1822, by her obituary. Her memorial gives her maiden name as Exline.
Her first husband was James H. Smith, by her memorial, and their children were Mary Ann and James Adam Smith. He died in 1855, and by 1859 she was a widow in Van Wert County, Ohio. On 20 September 1859 she married Henry Shell there, a blacksmith thirteen years older, himself a widower with grown daughters. She bore him two sons in Van Wert County, William Henry on 6 August 1861 and Ira B. on 25 August 1863.
Henry died in June 1868 and Mahala was a widow for the second time, with two small boys. She brought them west to Kansas. In June 1880 the census found her in Center Township, Russell County, as Mahala J. Gambol, the wife of John Gambol, a Pennsylvania man of 26. With them were her sons, William Shell, 18, a laborer, and Ira, 16. The census gave her age as 47, more than ten years short of her obituary.
She spent her last years at Winfield, in Cowley County. She died at her home there on 25 February 1885, aged 62, and the Rev. J. H. Reider of the Baptist church conducted the funeral. She was buried in Highland Cemetery at Winfield, where the grave is no longer marked.
Both of her Shell sons went on to farm on the plains. William married Nancy Elizabeth Enlow in 1885 and settled at Bunker Hill and later Hoisington. Ira and his wife Hettie took part in the Oklahoma land run of 1889 and staked a farm near Hennessey, by the account of their descendants; he died at Apache, Oklahoma, in 1941.
A photograph of Mahala survives in the family. It shows a woman with dark hair parted in the middle and drawn tightly back, in a dark buttoned bodice with a small white collar.
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Cite: Heirology, "Mahala Jane Shell (1822-1885)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/mahala-jane-shell-1822-1885-7b1920.