Ruth Alberta Saunders

Ruth Alberta Knuckles Saunders was born February 6, 1924 in Ellington, Missouri to Jefferson Davis and Clara Catherine Ann Knuckles.
At the age of five, she, her mother and father, brother Tom, sisters Bertha, Louie, Irene, and Maxine, along with her uncle, Fred Buffington, and several of his family members (a total of fourteen people) left Missouri in December, 1929, in an old single axle Chevrolet truck, complete with all their belongings and a barrel of gasoline, for a week-long journey to Colorado. They arrived on December 12, 1929, about a ¼ mile south of where she and her husband were to eventually build a house and raise their family.
On July 26, 1940 Ruth married Walter Saunders who was an employee of her father at his sawmill in Disappointment Velley, Colorado. To this union were born four children, Beverly Ann, James, Joe, and Dianne. Beverly died of pneumonia in January, 1944 and was buried in Peel Cemetery with her father and now her mother lying next to her.
Ruth and husband Walter lived on a farm given to them by her father, J.D. Knuckles, for 51 years of farming and raising cattle. Ruth spent many hard years driving a tractor and laboring in the fields, raising her family, taking care of all the cooking and housework, and helping other family members, neighbors, and friends when needed. Ruth went to school at Peel School, about a ¼ mile east of the Peel Cemetery, as well as the Lavender School while living in Disappointment Valley, and was finally able to get her GED when she was 48 years old.
Ruth was grandmother to 11 children; great grandmother to 30 children; great great grandmother to 27 children; and aunt to 31 nieces and nephews. Ruth lived almost 23 years after her husband died, and passed away peacefully at home on September 10, 2021 at the age of 97.