Ethel Winifred Albin was born on October 21, 1913 at her family's home located south of Dawson, Nebraska. She was the daughter of Ira Marion Albin and Clara Jane (Lanning) Albin. She graduated from Honey Creek High School after which she attended Peru State Teachers College and taught school. She later entered the Cadet Nurse Program at the University of Nebraska School of Nursing, where she received a Bachelor's degree in Nursing, and Depaul University, where she received a Master's Degree in Nursing Education. During that time she also taught neurological and neurosurgical nursing at the University of Illinois Research and Teaching Hospitals and at St. Luke's School of Nursing Education. She loved Nursing and spent most of her career working in Veteran's Administration Hospitals. She had many stories of caring for polio victims in iron lungs, wounded soldiers and sailors during the Korean War and of making good friends among the other staff members. She worked at Veteran's hospitals in Maywood, Illinois, Kansas City, Missouri, East Orange, New Jersey, Poplar Bluffs, Missouri, and Grand Island, Nebraska. She enjoyed traveling in the United States and in Europe. She had a lively curiousity and a wonderful sense of humor. She loved chocolate, impressionist paintings and Asian art, letters, good books and good jokes. She was fascinated by the challenges and experiences of people in earlier times, which she explored through her hobby of genealogical research. She researched, wrote and published many books of family history.
Ethel died in Sabetha, Kansas on September 12, 2006, after a short illness. (freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hutch/Laird/Albin.htm)

I met Ethel through our own independent search for our Barnes family origins. Not long after I began my search of my family history in 1999, Michael Caldwell sent me an email saying that he had information showing that my James Barnes (who died in 1795) traveled from Baltimore, Maryland to southern Pennsylvania where his property adjoined that of a Caleb Barnes and his wife Honor Stevens. Michael mentioned that both he and Ethel were descendants of Caleb and Honor Barnes. I contacted Ethel, soon traveling to see her at her beautiful brick home located at 307 Harrison Street there in Sabetha (Ks.) where we compared our research, and began a joint effort to uncover the past. Ethel used her extensive personal library for some of her research. We made progress and enjoyed the discoveries. Ethel was always a very big help to me, quick to share her knowledge and experience. She certainly was a good person and I'm sure that she is missed by everyone that knew her. I miss her and her never ending quest to dig up the past and share the information. I never tire of working with family history researchers that make the search feel like it should be, an adventure! She mentioned that her genealogy books would be donated to Brown County, but I don't have specifics at this time. Ethel wrote three genealogy books that I am aware of. They are; The Virginia Albins, The Descendants of Nancy Kerlin & John Lanning of New Jersey & Somerset Co., Pa., and The Frey Family. (Larry E. Barnes)

"Our cousin Ethel also wrote an unpublished Powell genealogy and had compiled the "Dear Jose & Becca Letters," which were letters that her grandparents Joseph Leander & Rebecca "Becca" (Bailey) Lanning wrote to each other, as well as letters they had received from other relatives." I started getting information from her to identify some of the people referred to in those letters when she passed away. I'm on the branch of Amy (Stith) Powell Lanning and had known Ethel since the 1980's when I began looking into family history. (Sharon Leon)

She willed her genealogical collection to the Topeka Genealogical Society in Kansas.