Maria Ashley

A Memorial Service for Maria Stueber Ashley, age 93, of Ogdensburg will be held on Monday (December 14, 2020) at 2:30pm at Notre Dame Church with Rev. F. James Shurtleff officiating. Burial will follow at Notre Dame Cemetery.

Calling hours will be held also on Monday from 12:00 – 2:00pm at the Fox & Murray Funeral Home. Mrs. Ashley passed away at her home on December 10, 2020.

Maria was born in a small village in the state of Hesse, Germany in 1927. Being in the country, she was sheltered from most of the effects of the Second World War and remembers her childhood as being idyllic.

Shortly after the war she met her husband, Gilbert Ashley, a staff sergeant in the US Army, in a nearby city. The two married in 1947 on Gilbert's twenty-first birthday and returned shortly after to Ogdensburg, Gilbert's hometown.

Their first daughter, Sonya Ashley Coffey, was born two years later. A second daughter, Renee, was born on Long Island where Gilbert had received a job offer and they lived until Gilbert's retirement. Maria and Gil then returned to Ogdensburg to enjoy a peaceful life.

After a tragic accident, Maria and Gilbert raised the four children of Maria's sister, Sophie Stueber Hill who had also married an American soldier and was living in the US. She is survived by three of the four children: Larry Hill, Martha Hill Stokely, and Monica Hill Mobley. Another nephew, Floyd Hill predeceased her.

Maria enjoyed her role as a housewife and was known as an excellent cook and baker. Besides her weekly cakes and pies, the smell of homemade Christmas cookies could be smelled every weekend, and sometimes weekdays, for a month before Christmas. She was a skilled seamstress who loved sewing clothes for the four girls and their Barbie dolls.

Maria is also survived by her grandson, Paul Coffey, and granddaughter, Joann Coffey Lutters, six great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, Maria requested memorial contributions be made to Notre Dame Heritage Fund 125 Ford Avenue, Ogdensburg, NY 13669 or Hospice of SLV, 6805 US Hwy 11, Potsdam, NY 13676.

Friends and family are welcomed to share memories at foxandmurrayfuneralhome.com.