Margaret Stout née Stillwell (1885-1932)    

Headstone GPS Coordinates: 

Birth: 31 October 1885, Troy, Miami County, Ohio  

Death: 28 June 1932, Seattle, King County, Washington

Relatives in Seabeck Cemetery:Sarah Stillwell née Wilson, Margaret C. Selby née Wilson, Dempsey Wilson, Margaret Wilson née Woodruff, Mary Bell Selby,  Lloyd M. Selby, Alice Hite née Wilson, Joseph S. Selby

American Revolutionary War Patriots*: Jeremiah Stillwell (Pennsylvania)

Disclaimer: These lines have not been officially proven by NSDAR standards

 

Margaret W. Stout née Stillwell was born on October 31, 1885, in the family home on Market Street in Troy, Miami County, Ohio. She was the younger of two daughters born to Elias H. Stillwell, a Civil War veteran, and Sarah “Sadie” Wilson. Her sister Mary was four years older.

When Margaret was four years old, her father died, leaving Sadie to raise two young daughters alone. Elias had owned timberland, which Sadie sold in order to support the family. Margaret grew up in the same Market Street home where she had been born, attended local schools, and graduated from Troy High School.

At eighteen, Margaret moved to Columbus, Ohio, to attend Ohio State University. Around 1905, the university had no dormitories for female students, so they rented rooms in nearby boarding houses. OSU would not open a women’s dormitory until 1908, and even then it accommodated only 60 students despite the fact that about 600 women were enrolled at the time.

By 1910, Margaret was working as a stenographer for the railroad office in Columbus and living with her mother, who had also relocated to the city. They rented a home off 11th Avenue, just steps from the OSU campus.

During this time, Margaret met Harry Loren Kneisly of Galveston, Texas. Harry had lived with his aunt and uncle in Troy before attending OSU, where he likely met Margaret. On August 17, 1912, at the age of twenty-five, she married Harry in Houston, Texas. Harry worked as an electrical engineer.

By 1915, the couple had moved to Waxahachie, Texas. Around this period, Margaret wrote an article advocating for women’s suffrage that was published in the Dallas Morning News and later reprinted in the Miami Union in her hometown.

Sometime before 1917, Margaret and Harry separated. Margaret relocated to the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle, where she worked as a stenographer. Around 1922, she met James Montgomery Stout, a divorced father. They married in March 1923 “back East,” according to their marriage announcement, and settled in Seattle, where James worked as a salesman. That same year, Margaret’s sister Mary died in Chicago.

It is unclear how long Margaret and James lived together. By 1930, they were estranged. Margaret was living in Seabeck, Washington, in her mother Sarah’s home, along with her grand-niece, Celine Chilson. James, meanwhile, was living in New Jersey with his daughter. On the 1930 census he listed himself as “widowed,” though Margaret was very much alive in Seabeck.

Margaret continued living with her mother and great-grandniece. During this time, she became ill and was admitted to Martha Washington Hospital in Bremerton, likely with severe abdominal pain. Doctors diagnosed her with hysterosalpingitis, a bacterial infection of the fallopian tubes, as well as a pelvic abscess. She underwent treatment, and the abscess was drained, but she remained hospitalized for nearly a month.

On June 28, 1932, at age forty-six, Margaret died unexpectedly from a pulmonary embolus—a blood clot that traveled to her lungs. Such clots were a known complication after pelvic infections, prolonged bed rest, and surgery. In the early 1930s, effective treatments such as blood-thinning medications were not yet in widespread use, and physicians had few options beyond supportive care. As a result, a significant pulmonary embolus was typically sudden and often fatal.

Margaret’s funeral was held at Lewis Chapel, where the community brought an abundance of flowers in support of her grieving mother, who had now lost her last surviving child. Margaret’s remains were sent to Seattle for cremation, and her mother placed her ashes atop the grave of Margaret’s grandmother, Margaret Wilson. When Sarah died in 1941, she too was cremated and placed beside her daughter.