• School teacher and world traveler.  Final years spent in Arizona.

Elsie Jerusha Covell was the youngest child and only daughter of William S. and Maria E. Covell, was born at the Old Covell homestead in Scott Township on March 29, 1893. She grew to young woman-hood there and received her early education in the public schools of Scott Township, attending what was then known as the Gifford school. After graduating from the common school grades, she attended Tri State College at Angola, Indiana, preparing herself to be a teacher. For over twenty years she was one of Steuben County’s successful school teachers. Teaching at Scott Center, Metz, Flint, at the Star School and for several years in the Angola City School.

She attended Columbia University in New York City on two different occasions. On June 18, 1935 she was united in marriage at Auburn, Indiana, with Cass Budnik of Detroit Michigan and they left by automobile the same day for Redlands, California. Redlands was their home for about one year when they moved to Parkerk Arizona, where they lived a short time and then they moved across the Colorado River to Parker Dam, California where they lived for another year. They then moved to Tucumcari, New Mexico, where they lived until about April 1939, when they moved to Everett, Pennsylvania where her husband was employed by the Pennsylvania Highway Commission as a civil engineer.