Note: Quotes are from My Family Tree by Beulah Russell Nisbet, 1952.

Jane was born 19 January 1874 in Perry County, Illinois. She was the fourth child of Caleb McDonald Throop and his wife Susan Jane. At the birth of the fifth child on 10 February 1878, Susan died. The infant son, Lee, soon followed her in death 2 March 1878. "Mr. Throop, left with three little daughters to take care of, seemed to be unable to take the strain and whether his health was already poorly is not known, yet he soon passed away.

In the 1880 US Census, Jane's oldest sister, Izela, is a thirteen-year-old in the home of her mother's brother Engram in Perry County, Illinois (recorded E.A. McClellan). The second sister, Caroline, is a ten-year-old in the home of her mother's brother Alferd McCleland in Ora Township, Jackson County, Illinois. The next sister, Almedy has died. I have not found the whereabouts of Jane in 1880.

Family stories about Jane's life were collected and written by a daughter-in-law, Beulah Russell Nisbet, including the following:
At the death of final parent and at a very early age, the three sisters were separated and placed in homes. Caroline was placed in the home of Uncle Henry Williamson (where Joe Rosenberger now lives). Izela was taken into the Fred LePere home where she passed away as a young girl in 1885.
But a permanent home was not found for Jane in this neighborhood. She fell into the hands of a ne’er-do-well family. She has told of seeing, “the bundle of switches” left by the door - the Ku-Klux-Klan order to get out. The family (John Gillet & wife) fled to Arkansas taking her with them. There she lived her childhood days scantily clad and poorly nourished. She has forced to work hard, for the people were lazy. She lived a life in fear, half hungry most of the time. She plotted to run away but feared the wrath of the drunken man who kept her, if she would not succeed. Finally, partly thru Aunt Caroline, and partly through her Uncle Alf, who was really the guardian of the 3 girls, it was arranged for a man to go from here and bring her back. A Mr. Fenn (Nora Crawford’s father) made the trip and got her. She was now 13 years old. She was tiny, weighing around sixty pounds, I believe.
A new era opened for her. She was placed in the home of Uncle William Carr, the second husband of Huldah Williamson Stout. They lived where George Stout now lives. Uncle Alf was supposed to help cloth her for she came back penniless. As guardian he had control of the money left in the estate of the parents. But all she got was some cloth from some bolts of goods left from a store that Alf had formerly run. Grandma believed that he would have dome differently, but for his wife.
She entered the Sato school, trying to round out a very sketchy education. She tells of how the Jay boys, especially John, helped her. Altho in those days they attended grade school until grown, by the time she “quit” to start working for a living she just had the equivalent of a sixth grade education.
The popular career for young ladies of that era was that of “hired girl”, or maid in homes. She was in great demand for she was a good worker and an excellent nurse. She could cope with any situation, even helping deliver babies while yet a teenage girl. Like many, she drifted toward city life for it meant better pay. DuQuoin was the town where she worked last.
Romance knocked at her door but not until a certain Thomas Nisbet, a young coal miner at Sato became interested, did any romance ripen. Lured by the booming coal fields of Alabama, he went there to work. She followed and they were married October 17, 1895. There is a picture of the tent they shared with another couple.

Here at Cardiff, Alabama, their first child, daughter Vera Mariee, was born 27 June 1896.

"Whether the work wasn’t so good, or it was sheer homesickness, isn't reported, but their life in Alabama was brief. They returned to Carterville, Illinois. There they had a fire that destroyed their rented house and practically all their possessions. They came to Sato ahd lived in a house down halfway of hill on west side of road, just north of the present house. Jane told of how they bought the house and lot and fulfilled a lifelong desire on her part. Her parents, although she didn’t remember them, had been farmer folk and there seemed to be a love of the land within her. She said that she felt like a Queen when she could stand in that yard, look down at the ground and think, “This belongs to me.”"

The second child, Samuel Robert, was born here 26 October 1900. When the third child, Harry Thomas, was born 11 November 1903 they no longer lived in that first house that they had bought on Main Street, but lived over by what is now the woods a quarter mile west in the Williams house. This house was moved to the Main Street where it presently stands" about 1906.

Five more children were born in Sato: William Gould (18 April 1907), Mary Alice (19 July 1909), Arthur Lee (21 October 1911 only lived 9 days), and twins Kent Elmer and Keith Almer (26 December 1914).

As the population of the town of Sato moved out, Thomas and Jane bought land and also several buildings. It was many years later after the children were all grown before the town lots that by then were the farm, were converted back into acres.

Again quoting from Beulah Russell Nisbet: "As a final chapter, Uncle Will Carr again appears. At the death of Aunt Huldah he was left alone and needs must take up a new abode. Too, her possessions passed back to the Stout heirs leaving him very little. In gratitude for when he took her in, Grandma Nisbet offered him a home under her roof. He accepted and became a member of the family.
You can see why Grandmother Nisbet knew little about her ancestry. What little she did know had been told to her by an old lady Engram. This woman said her name was really Janie. She was told that her father was red-haired and she was disappointed that she had no red-haired child. She watched (in vain) for it to appear in a grandchild.
Jane was well known for her philanthropic work in the neighborhood, helping in sickness, and at deaths, also births. She was a Sunday School teacher and deaconess in the church. She has said that had she chosen a profession it would have been nursing. She wanted either a doctor (first of all a minister of the gospel) or a nurse among her descendants. One appeared, a grandson, Clarence Whisler, being a doctor of dentistry. At one time it looked as if son Kent would become a Doctor of Divinity, but he chose to remain a layman."

Jane Throop Nisbet was "skinny", but was an organizer and hard worker who would try to carry the whole load rather than give orders, even when she wanted help. She was an efficient needleworker, a good housekeeper, and had a "green thumb" with growing flowers. She loved bright colors. It was felt by many that she was the true head of the house, and its true that she controlled the finances. Her son Harry told of being hurt to watch his father go to his mother on Sunday morning and ask for a penny for Sunday School (which is what everyone put in the collection in those days). It was also said that she put her children first and her husband second.

"Grandmother Nisbet spiced up her conversations in a dramatic manner making her an interesting talker. But, like the true dramatic, the imagination is so near the fact, sometimes they merge." In spite of her ability to speak dramatically, Jane was reserved, being much more at ease with friends she had known a long time and most at ease with relatives. "There was one condition under which Grandmother Nisbet would break her reserve. If, say at a basket dinner, she saw some stranger standing out to one side hesitant to come to the spread food, she’d invite him or her in, or perhaps take a plate of food. She was more helpful than social."

At age 78, Jane fractured her hip, and that strain added with heart disease and complicated by an anemic condition led to her death 18 April 1952. She is buried at Ava Evergreen Cemetery, Jackson County, Illinois.

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