"Widely Known Pioneer Passes; Funeral Services Tomorrow for Woman for Whose Family Local Prairie was Named"
Death came to another of Centralia's pioneers when Mrs. Anjelin Ford Shelton, aged 87, passed away last evening at her home in Seattle, following a long illness.
The body is at the Sticklin & Sons mortuary here, where funeral services will take place Wednesday afternoon at 2:30, Rev. P. H. Raymond officiating. Interment will be in the Mt. View cemetery in the family plot.
Of a family of six children, two survive - a son, Anson Shelton, and a daughter, Mrs. Carl Stanley, both of Seattle; six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren.
Mrs. Shelton's parents, Sidney S. Ford and Nancy Shaw Ford crossed the plains and settled in the Willamette valley in the winter of 1845, after being six months on the trip. In the following spring they crossed the Columbia river and settled on the prairie just west of Centralia, which now bears the name of Ford.
There Anjelin was born in 1847, said to be the first white child born west of the Columbia river. In 1865 she was married to John T. Shelton, also a child of pioneer parents. Sidney Ford was government agent over the Indians in this district during the time of the Indian wars, at one time having about 5,000 Indians in his charge. The little Anjelin, with her brothers and sisters, had as their only other playmates the young Indian children, and learned to speak their languages as well as their own.
Source: The Centralia Daily Chronicle, 24 Sep 1934, page 1.
Transcribed by Diana Smith. She has no further information on this individual.