Notes for: Ann E. Bodine
This originally came from Ronny Bodine:
And from The World (New York City) of 26 Dec 1897.
There was a touch of happiness in the Christmas of aged Mrs. Bodine after all. She and her invalid son and daughter were not evicted from their humble apartments at No. 2100 Atlantic avenue, as had been threatened, and even in that hopeful old Mrs. Bodine found reason to be cheerful. The story of the pitiful situation of the octogenarian mother and her two children--one sixty-five and the other fifty years old--published In yesterday morning's World, served to bring aid to the distressed trio. Several of Mrs. Bodine's old friends visited her and provided her with money enough to tide the little family over the holiday week. The landlady, Mrs. Diegenhardt, too, was impressed with the pathetic relation of the woes of tho family and did not have them evicted, as she had threatened. Instead she gave Mrs. Bodine a few days' time in which to hunt up other quarters. The story effected another desired end also. It stirred to compassion the heart of a neighboring expressman and he employed Mrs. Bodine's son, Gustav, as a driver. Mrs. Bodine, who Is eighty-five years old, is the widow of Capt. John Bodine, for fifty years captain of an Albany and New York steamboat. Squire Bodine, Capt. Bodine's brother, owned all of what are now Stapleton and Sailor's Snug Harbor, S. I. The Bodines were among the first settlers on Staten Island and all of them were wealthy. When Capt. Bodine died he left his widow a large fortune. According to the story told by Mrs. Bodine yesterday lawyers have swindled and robbed her of every dollar's worth of property she possessed. She at one time owned about $40,000 worth of real estate in Brooklyn alone, besides other valuable properties on Staten Island. A legacy of several thousand pounds left to Mrs. Bodine by her grandfather in England is now in chancery, and the legatee is unable to get one penny of it. Mrs. Bodine with hair as white as snow and frame bent under the weight of her four score and five years, spoke cheerily yesterday of going to work. "I am a dressmaker." she said, "and can earn enough if I can get the work to do to help support our little family. "My husband was a war veteran and I draw a small pension from the Government, but it is only a mite. It Is not in my nature to despair and I feel sure that the good God will see me and mine through our troubles." Mrs. Edward Lederle, Mrs. Bodine's daughter, is also a widow. Her husband's dead body was found on the shore at Bay Ridge about twenty years ago with two bullet holes in the heart. He was believed to have been robbed and murdered.
From Ronny Bodine:
She was Ann Bodine, age 12 in 1850 and age 21 in 1860 and Annie Bodine, age 33 in 1870, living with her parents in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York. In 1880, she was Ann Ledelle, age 42, and widowed, living at 142 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn in a househould that included her mother Matilda.