Stories of Remembered Chenoweths
as told by grandchildren
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This page is dedicated to adding stories of people in the family in an effort to put some flesh on the "bones" of genealogy facts. Hopefully the page will be popular and supported by stories of cousins about their grandparents. Grandparents often create the curiousity that leads people into genealogy research. often, sadly, after a grandparent has died, the interest sparks in who they were and the memory of stories told spur grandchildren into tracing their family. For my own part, my father's mother, was a Laprath, a name I got curious about in 1995, starting my quest into genealogy. I enjoyed the process so thorioughly I turned my attention to my mother's parents, the "Chenoweths". If you have one to add please Email it to me. I will add the family Genealogy at the end.
With thanks to the many who took the tiime to add their stories
ADA BELLE8 CHENOWETH (MARSHALL7, JOHN KITTLE6, WILLIAM PUGH5, JOHN4, WILLIAM3, JOHN2, JOHN1) was born March 07, 1874 in Randolph Co., WV, and died October 29, 1962 in McQuain Road, Elkins, Randolph Co., WV. She married CYRUS MCQUAIN February 14, 1894 in Randolph Co., WV, son of JOSHUA MCQUAIN and MARY LEARY. He was born September 07, 1868 in Chenoweth Creek, Elkins, Randolph Co., WV, and died November 10, 1937 in McQuain Road, Elkins, Randolph Co., WV.
Children of ADA CHENOWETH and CYRUS MCQUAIN are:
by Angeline Chenoweth 'Ann' Young [March 2004]
Daniel McLean Chenoweth was born in Barbour County, West Virginia in 1858 and was the third child of Isaac Newton Chenoweth and Sarah Ann McLean Chenoweth. Daniel was 20 years old when he married a 21 year old Italian girl named Joanna Donegia. Joanna was born May 1857 also in Barbour County. After their marriage they lived with her parents for a time before they acquired enough to move to their own place. Seven of their children were born in West Virginia.
Sometime in the late 1880's Daniel left West Virginia to participate in the Oklahoma land rush. He made the journey in a buggy pulled by a team of white horses. He was unsuccessful in the land rush because of "sooners". Sooners were people who illegally laid claim to the land before the rush started. Daniel then traveled to Springfield, Colorado where he met the village blacksmith, James Bickford. James was the father of Minnie, who later became Daniel's daughter-in-law. Daniel inquired about land available for homesteaders and James told him about one of his neighbors who was giving up his claim located 9 miles north and 1 mile west of Springfield. It was a prime parcel of land with a well and a small dugout, but no house. Daniel became interested and filed on it as a homesteader.
With only a dugout for living quarters, there was no place for his entire family to live. With this in mind, Daniel returned to West Virginia for his three oldest children, the livestock and farm machinery. He was planning for the rest of the family to join them after a house was built. While he was in West Virginia, he and his brother purchased a mattress for their mother hoping to make things better for her. However, she thought the mattress was too hard, so she continued to sleep on the floor.
Daniel and his 3 children returned to Colorado traveling by railroad box car to Lamar, Colorado. After arriving in Lamar, they traveled by wagon to the homestead. They lived in the dugout while building a two room house. About a year later Daniel's wife and the 3 younger children joined them traveling to Colorado by train.
Daniel and his family dug a fairly large pond, stocking it with cat fish and planting fruit trees around it. They continued to improve the homestead for about 2 years when the droughts and no crops forced them to leave.
Daniel, his brother John and their families moved to Douglas County in eastern Kansas and lived close to a river. During their 2 year stay in Kansas, Ethel was born to Daniel & Joanna. When the drought conditions improved, they moved back to the homestead in Colorado where 2 more children were born.
Daniel obtained a water right to build a dam making him eligible to file on more government land in addition to the original homestead. This additional land was called a "Desert Claim" and it was to be irrigated. Daniel, his sons and a neighbor, Fred Chatham built a dam and a ditch going down to their land for irrigation. The dam was called "The Chenoweth Dam and was located about 4 or 5 miles west of Daniel's homestead on Horse Creek. The dam formed a nice sized lake of water, but they never irrigated from it. The dam washed out sometime in the 1930's.
When the children became old enough, they each filed on government land as a homestead. These homesteads were all near each other, and most of them are still in the families.
In June 1906, Daniel's wife, Joanna, died at the age of 49 years old, then in the early 1920's, Daniel married a widow, Amanda Campbell. Most of his children were very upset over this marriage because they thought he treated Amanda better than he did their mother.
After the marriage, Daniel and Amanda both sold their claims and moved to Pomona, California. During the depression, Daniel had to redeem his homestead and some of the other land. After leaving California they moved to Hardesty, Oklahoma and lived on Amanda and her first husband's homestead. They were married 15 years until her death, and then Daniel moved back to Colorado. He would live with one of his children for a short time, then move on to another one so as not make a hardship on any one. He was living with his son, Truman, who lived South of Lamar, Colorado when he died in 1951 at the age of 93.
DANIEL MCLEAN7 CHENOWETH (ISAAC NEWTON6, WILLIAM PUGH5, JOHN4, WILLIAM3, JOHN2, JOHN1) was born August 12, 1858 in Barbour Co., VA (Now WV), and died May 21, 1951 in Lamar, Prowers Co., CO. He married (1) JOANNA L. DONEGIA January 09, 1878 in Barbour Co., WV, daughter of FRANCESCO DIONIGI and REBECCA COBERLY. She was born May 27, 1857 in Barbour Co., VA (Now WV), and died June 15, 1906 in Springfield, Baca Co., CO. He married (2) AMANDA CAMPBELL Aft. 1920. She was born Abt. 1852.
Children of DANIEL CHENOWETH and JOANNA DONEGIA are:
co-authored by Jon Egge and Harry Holt Chenoweth [March 2004]
In the late twenties, H. E. Chenoweth lived at 8246 Ashworth Avenue, six or seven blocks north of Green Lake in Seattle. He was retired from the lumber business, having worked as a tallyman in various lumber mills in the Northwest and then as a shipping clerk in a lumber yard in Seattle. He lost part of a finger when making molasses on a farm in Missouri. He had a shock of snow-white hair and chewed plug tobacco which he would spit into a nearby coffee tin kept by his chair for that purpose. He would always have a card table set before him where a solitaire game was always in progress. On summer days he would listen to Leo Lassen announce the current Seattle Rainier's baseball game. With the advent of TV, he would watch games, but he would always turn the volume off and list to the game as announced on the radio.
The Chenoweth home on Ashworth was a one story, 3 bedroom, white stucco house with a basement that was filled with an enormous sawdust furnace, piles of sawdust, shelves of preserves, crocks of sauerkraut, canned vegetables, and a workbench. The house was on a double lot, so the yard was large for the city. In front was a large weeping willow tree, where small family dinners of fried chicken were some times held. To the side were rows of flowerbeds. Behind was a chicken coop (the source for the dinners and breakfast eggs), a large vegetable garden with pea and raspberry patches, childhood delights. Between the coop and the raspberry patch, back along the ally was a garage, filled with little room for anything else than a deep blue '49 Ford.
Harry's wife was Minnie Jane Holt. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on June 16, 1963. He had married her in Seattle at the YMCA and they took their honeymoon on a boat trip down the sound to Tacoma. Harry had come out from Missouri in his late twenties, working his way across the country by working on a cattle ranch near Flagstaff, Arizona, then picking potatoes near Greeley, Colorado. Before leaving Missouri, Harry attended a small Business College for one year, then opened a caf�, probably in Rocky Comfort, Missouri since that is where he met Minnie. He was the manager, cook, waiter, and dishwasher.
After arriving at the lumber mill in Barnston, Washington, and getting established, he sent back home for Minnie, who took the train to marry in Seattle. A year later they were in the small town of Hobart where both their children would be born. Harry suffered from asthma and a change in climate seemed to give him some temporary relief so he relocated many times. Later they moved to Spirit Lake, Idaho, and then went to Hailey, Idaho, where they lived for some months with Minnie's sister Thet Buttram. Harry worked as a farm hand on his brother in law's large ranch and then he moved to Alpine, Washington, where he was again a tallyman at a lumber mill. In the late 20s, they came back to the city and bought their home on Ashworth. Harry worked at the Balcom Canal Lumber Mill and then for the Farrell Lumber Company located at Seventh and Westlake in downtown Seattle.
Besides baseball and solitaire, Grandpa would cook peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies. He also would pop corn in a blackened kettle popper that had a knobbed stirring rod. The corn would be from garden that he had preserved. Every morning he would gather eggs and together with other garden bounty, pack them into his car and deliver them to one of the many little grocery stores that dotted the area. This would include berries, peas, vegetables, dried garlic and onions that grew in the garden.
All this was a child's paradise, picking peas and raspberries, gathering eggs from the warm nests, playing and rolling in the sawdust or watching Harry cut off a chicken's head and pluck it for the dinner that afternoon. Sometimes he would hatch baby chicks in an incubator in the basement and at other times he would buy day old chicks and raise them in the basement until they could safely be added to the regular flock. Minnie was always sewing on a quilt and we would cut out squares from various cotton patterns. There were stacks of old National Geographic Magazines and there was the reddish book by Cora Hiatt on the Chenoweth family, talking of lost treasures and the Baltimores.
HENRY EDWARD 'HARRY'4 CHENOWETH (ALBERT WHITE3, HENRY S.2, JAMES1) was born September 26, 1883 in Pineville, McDonald Co., MO, and died August 18, 1966 in Seattle, King Co., WA. He married MINNIE JANE HOLT June 16, 1913 in Seattle, King Co., WA, daughter of NAPOLEAN HOLT and SARAH WHITE. She was born June 30, 1889 in Bolivar, Polk Co., MO, and died March 04, 1984 in Seattle, King Co., WA. [Harris: page 184 & Hiatt: page 67]
Children of HENRY CHENOWETH and MINNIE HOLT are:
by James William Chenoweth [June 2005]
Thomas Lewis and Hannah Keenan Chenoweth were my great great grandparents. When Hannah was nine years old, her parents came to Bonham, Texas, which at that time was the end of the road. They came on to Dallas County with surveyors, who actually blazed the trail. They were the first settlers in Dallas County, and later were adjacent neighbors to John Neely Bryant, reputed to be the founder of the city of Dallas. They settled in Dallas County in 1842. Don't forget that there were Indian raids where they lived for the next 35 years. Hannah's father would take the men back to Bonham for a yearly supply of provisions by ox-drawn wagon. The round trip would take six weeks. Prior to leaving, they would bury all the valuables plus some food so Indians would not get them should they raid while the men were gone. Sounds as if the women and children were left to fend for themselves.
Thomas Lewis Chenoweth married Hannah Keenan on November 7, 1847 in Dallas County. This is the earliest record of a Chenoweth being in these parts. It stands to reason that he must have been around here for at least a short time prior that. They lived on the Elm fork of the Trinity River near what is now Farmer's Branch. That was a favorable spot for crossing the Trinity river by westward bound pioneers. It was known as Keenan's Crossing, because it was where the Keenan family had settled. My dad took me to see the original cabin when I was about ten years old. I saw what was left of it. A barn had been built using the log cabin as one corner of the barn. I could not take you back there, but I am sure it is near Sandy Lake Road, West of Interstate 30, and very near the river. I believe there is still a spot that can be located on the river still known as Keenan's Crossing.
Thomas Lewis had two brothers, and they both came to this vicinity early on. Thomas L. obviously came some time shortly before 1847, because he married Hannah Keenan in Dallas in that year. James ,who was Thomas's older brother, married Matilda Moss in Missouri, but they obviously came to North Texas by 1849, because they had a child here in that year. Thomas's younger brother, Joseph certainly was here somewhat prior to 1866, in that he married Rebecca Ann Crawford in Denton County, Texas in that year. From everything I have been able to piece together, It appears that Thomas and Hannah settled at Keenan's Crossing on the Elm Fork of the Trinity River near present Farmer's Branch. James and Matilda must have settled near Aurora, a small town near Rhome, Wise County, Texas. It could be that Thomas L. and Hannah may have moved out there at a later date to be near James and Matilda, because quite a few relatives are buried there including Thomas L. and my grandfather James William, and others. Aurora apparently was where considerable of the family congregated. The third and youngest brother, (5)Joseph and his wife Rebecca settled along White Rock Creek somewhere near the present White Rock Lake. They had seventeen children. My mother gave me information about some of their children. One was named Ben. I have a section on him later in this book.
Thomas Lewis and Hannah had seven children. The second child was James William (Will), who was my grandfather. Will met Lillie Long, and married her on February 22, 1884, and lived near Aurora, Wise County, Texas. Some time later, they move to Dallas, and lived on South Patton Street. Will was a salesman for the John Deer Plough Co. Will died at an early age, and left Lillie with four young children to raise. Lillie turned her house into a boarding house in order to support her family. All four kids had many chores of cooking, cleaning, washing, sewing, etc. At an early age, my dad J.W., got a Dallas Morning News Route. He threw his route using a horse and cart. His route was in Oak Cliff, but he had to go across the viaduct to downtown Dallas to first pick up his papers, then go back to Oak Cliff to throw his route.
Lillie's mother, Katherine Beauchamp Long lived with them. The Longs moved to Texas from Kentucky when Lillie was a young girl. My grandmother Lillie told me that she was quite young when they lived in Kentucky, but she could clearly remember the flashes and flare on the horizon, and the rumble and roar of cannon fire of a nearby Civil War battle. I assume that Will must have met Lillie in Aurora, since they married and lived there after they first married, but I have no evidence of that.
Charles C.(Uncle Charley) was Dad's uncle who owned and ran an automobile agency in Abilene. Hannah Keenan was Uncle Charley's mother. He would come to Dallas, I guess on business, but would stay with us. He would never stay more than a day or two. He always insisted on sleeping outdoors, so we would set up an army cot in the driveway where he could enjoy a nice breeze from the south. I feel sure that my dad got most of the past history of the Chenoweths and the Keenans from Uncle Charley. Incidentally, Hanna Keenan was buried in Taylor County, Texas. Abilene is the major city in Taylor County, so I assume that Hanna, in her later years, went to live with her son Charley, died and was buried out there.
THOMAS LEWIS5 CHENOWETH (BENJAMIN FRANKLIN4, THOMAS3, THOMAS2, JOHN1) was born July 05, 1821 in Franklin Co., OH, and died May 19, 1900 in Wise Co., TX. He married HANNAH KEENAN November 07, 1847 in Dallas Co., TX, daughter of THOMAS KEENAN. She was born April 12, 1833 in Ohio, and died February 15, 1924 in Taylor Co., TX.
Children of THOMAS CHENOWETH and HANNAH KEENAN are:
by Kristi Lynn Tumblison [June 2005]
Christine Clarabelle was a very loving mother and grandmother. She worked in the home raising her three children and alongside Grandpa at their bakery in Muncie, Indiana. After Grandpa sold the bakery she worked in some sort of a nursing function at a Ball Memorial Hospital clinic. My grandparents retired to Bradenton, Florida where they enjoyed fresh orange juice every morning, exploring the neighboring cities, and visits to baseball parks. Grandma was diagnosed with senility several years prior to her death and we're certain that she did not recognize her own children past 2001. Sounds like senility was inherited from her own mother, Viola.
I remember most: Grandma's laugh, the perfume scent in her bedroom, her dark brown eyes that I and my son Bradley inherited, her soft, fair skin, her charm bracelet and her wonderful warm chocolate pudding cake!
Grandma Cruea passed away while in residence at a nursing home in Greenfield, Indiana. My Uncle Bob and Aunt Liz visited, loved and cared for her daily. In later years, Grandma and Aunt Liz referred to each other as a "dear friend".
CHRISTINE CLARABELLE9 CHENOWETH (ROY MCKINLEY8, ELMER EDMUND7, CHARLES WESLEY6, WILLIAM THOMAS5, WILLIAM4, ARTHUR3, ARTHUR2, JOHN1) was born March 07, 1919 in New Madison, Darke Co., OH, and died February 01, 2004 in Greenfield, Hancock Co., IN. She married HASSEL WAYNE CRUEA. He was born July 28, 1917 in Hartford City, Blackford Co., IN, and died May 20, 1995 in Bradenton, Manatee Co., FL.
Children of CHRISTINE CHENOWETH and HASSEL CRUEA are::
My grandfather, Peter Alexander Reip was the third son of Adam Reip and Edith Amanda Chenoweth. He was born in Calhoun County, Virginia, August 23, 1856. He married Luverna Ellen Downey January 24, 1878. She was the daughter of Alex Downey and Sarah Jane Brannon. To this union was born six children, four sons and two daughters, namely, Francis Alexander, Maude Alma, Adam, Grover, William Howard and Emma. Most of their married life was spent on a farm which had been deeded to them by his parents. During the years between 1891 and 1893 they lived in Clay County where he had gone into the lumbering business with a couple of brother-in-laws. The brother-in-laws left him holding the bag and deeply in debt. During that time the farm in Calhoun County was deeded to his wife.
He was a Republican and a Baptist. He shared with others in need, particularily with another brother-in-law who had a large family. I was five and one half years old when he passed away so I do not remember a great deal about him except what I was told by my mohter, Emma. He liked raw turnips and I remember my older brother and I standing with him by the garden gate where he peeled turnips and shared them with us. And I remember some little tid bits of my grandparents visits with us. I remember once taking them half way home in our Willies Overland where we met up with Uncle Frank. When he was ill my mother took my younger brother and spent a week helping to take care of him. When she came home I went with my father for a weekend. We went with cousin, Harold Campbell. Then my mother went again taking my older brother during which time he passed on. He died May 15, 1929 and was buried on the farm under a big oak tree on the side of the hill where he had requested. His daughter-in-law, Victoria, was buried there first in 1922.
My mother spoke of her father as a kind, loving husband and father. He truly loved his wife and treated her like a queen. He had wanted to marry her at age 20, however she made him wait a year to be sure. Even so, Peter, given the opportunity to attend college but turned it down to marry his love.
PETER ALEXANDER7 REIP (EDITH AMANDA6 CHENOWETH, ROBERT T.5, JOHN4, WILLIAM3, JOHN2, JOHN1) was born August 23, 1856 in Calhoun Co., VA (now WV), and died May 15, 1929 in Euclid, Calhoun Co., WV. He married LUVERNA ELLEN DOWNEY January 24, 1878 in Calhoun Co., WV, daughter of ALEXANDER DOWNEY and SARAH BRANNON. She was born May 14, 1855 in Gilmer Co., VA (now WV), and died October 01, 1940 in Euclid, Calhoun Co., WV.
Children of PETER REIP and LUVERNA DOWNEY are:
by Shannon Cecile Graham [June 2005]
JAMES was born 1831 in Williamson County, Illinois to James Francis Chenoweth Jr. and Anne Dillard, also of Williamson County. He was born on a farm purchased by his great-grandfather Nicholas Chenoweth when he came to Illinois from Kentucky in 1819. The farm was originally 500 acres and my family still holds an interest in 250 acres of this farm today.
James was an expert horseman and managed the family breeding program of trotters and fine saddle horses, which they showed and raced until Jim�s death in 1916.
Jim was a story-teller par excellence and could keep his audience enthralled for hours with his exploits.
Though Jim was born in Illinois, the roots of this family went deep into Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland and the Confederacy. His grandfather, James Francis, had joined the Kentucky Militia and been killed at the Battle of New Orleans in 1814 before James� father was born.
Jim�s father, James Francis, Jr., was a rabid southerner. When the Civil War came on, James Francis joined the Knights of the Golden Circle and began buying horses for the Confederacy and driving them south to Shawneetown, Illinois. Part of the organization of the Knights in Illinois were Jim�s neighbors. Reverend Tom Cox (one of the first circuit riding Methodist preachers from Robeson County, Tennessee) and his son-in-law, Henry Hooper, would become James Solomon�s in-laws. When the Articles of Secession were nailed to the Williamson County Courthouse door, in April 1862, with a number of signatures, the Union Army moved in.
Deputy Sheriff Ike Phillips went to arrest James Francis. When James Francis asked if he could go into the house to say goodbye to his family, Ike agreed. James F went into the house and was never seen again. Family tradition says the next morning his coat and hat were found on the banks of the Mississippi River at the Cape Girardeau crossing. What happened to him no one knows. If James Solomon�s mother knew, she never told. But she also never signed any legal documents as a widow.
James Francis and Ann had six sons but two had died several years before. William, Jim, Miles and Josiah, were forced to enlist in the Union Army. William, the only one to serve, died in Andersonville Prison. Jim would never fight against the Confederacy. He and his friend, Newt Cripps, went west and stayed until the end of the war.
Jim had been a schoolteacher in addition to running a horse farm and taking care of his mother. He was 40 years old before he married Celia Ann Cox (b. 1839). She was the daughter of Reverend Thomas Cox. They were married in January 1876. Their first child, Samuel was born in December 1876. Benjamin Franklin, Mary Jane and Sarah Ann followed quickly.
Jim loved to argue. In fact, his daughters called him and Celia the Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat. One of his favorite subjects was a neighbor across the road. This was the famous agnostic Robert Ingersoll. At least once a week, Jim would find Bob in his yard and immediately a religious argument would start. When Celia thought it had gone on long enough, she would go out, take Jim by his arm and say, �Come in the house, you are never going to change that man�s mind.� Whereupon Jim would huff himself up to his full 6� 4� and say, �But it is my God-given right to try.� Jim always bragged he was a hard-shell Baptist and a Democrat.
Of the four children, only Sarah was a Baptist and a Democrat. The three others were Methodists and Republicans. We grandchildren always laughed about who wore the pants in that family.
The first day of November 1916, at 85 years old, Jim went out to break a colt. No amount of cautioning could stop him. The colt broke his shoulder, his elbow and wrist. In a week Jim had pneumonia and no amount of care by his son, Dr. S.J. Chenoweth, could save his life. Both my mother and father loved James Solomon and my earliest memories are of his surviving a Missouri flood, almost drowning in the Platte River and his refusal of two wives when he contacted the Mormons in Utah. Through it all he was the mainstay of his siblings, devoted to his mother, a wonderful father, and Celia said, a good husband. His Chenoweth line, as far as I know, rests with the only child of his great-grandson, Robert Chenoweth of California. The rest of his descendant are all girls. Still his grand-daughters bear his genes and perhaps their sons will inherit some of Jim�s zest for life.
JAMES SOLOMON7 CHENOWETH (JAMES FRANCIS6, JAMES FRANCIS5, NICHOLAS RUXTON4, THOMAS3, JOHN2, JOHN1) was born July 1837 in Williamson Co., IL, and died November 11, 1916 in Williamson Co., IL. He married CELIA ADELINE COX January 27, 1876 in Williamson Co., IL, daughter of THOMAS COX and ELIZABETH TIPPY. She was born February 22, 1840 in Williamson Co., IL, and died December 12, 1924 in Williamson Co., IL.
Children of JAMES CHENOWETH and CELIA COX are:
by Carolyn Chenoweth Newby [Nov 2007]
You�re going to do what!
Grandparents didn�t move. They stayed in the same house you�d always known, tucked you into bed when you spent the night, and helped you put jigsaw puzzles together. Their house was a refuge when you needed a familiar place and a sympathetic ear. Besides that, farmers retired and moved into town when they got old. My grandparents were retiring from business and moving to the farm. I had always loved to take a bath at Grandma�s. The footed bath tub was big enough for both my sister, Phyllis, and me. There was hot and cold running water and Ivory soap that would float. There was a toilet that flushed, and tiny tiles covered the floor. We didn�t have that at home.
The farm was a new adventure. Although only a couple of miles from town, the power lines didn�t extend that far at the time of the move. For quite some time we had to read or do our homework by the light of a kerosene lamp. It was an exciting day when the lines were hooked up, and the lights came on. We were invited to come out and watch.
Bathing was quite different too. There was a pump and large metal sink in the kitchen. The water was heated on the kerosene stove and poured into a basin. A stand-up bath was not much fun on an Indiana winter night.
When staying overnight we slept upstairs in a big brass bed with lots of quilts and sweet-smelling pillows. The room was heated (sort of) by a stove pipe positioned through the floor and ceiling. The stove downstairs burned coal, and if it was really cold, Grandpa stayed up all night tending the fire.
Before daybreak and again in the evening Grandma and Grandpa milked the three or four cows. I learned to perform this chore sitting on a little stool with my head against the cow�s warm body. You put your thumb and index finger around the top part of a full teat, squeezed while moving your hand downward in a stripping motion, repeating until no more milk flowed. The barn cats waited expectantly.
The one chore I hated was going into the chicken house to gather eggs. When the hens decided they wanted to keep them for hatching they would peck my hands. It didn�t faze Grandma one bit. She�d put her hands right under those old biddies and let them peck away. The roosters weren�t much fun either. If they didn�t want me invading their territory they chased me all over the lot. Grandma would get even with the feisty ones. She made the best fried chicken I�ve ever tasted.
I don�t know how she managed to cook such tasty food on that old kerosene stove. She even baked in an oven that sat on top of the burners. She taught me to make sugar cream pie, something my mother never could get just right, and that made me feel smugly proud of myself. Grandpa was a good teacher too. During the summer the first crop to be harvested was the oats. A machine would cut and bundle them. Then two people would pick up six bundles and stand them on end, packing them together in a tight circle. Two more bundles, or sheaves, would be laid across the top to keep the rain from ruining them before they could be hauled away. It took lots of people to do harvest work. The farmers and their families all helped one another, and wherever they were working they were fed. Grandma cooked. When we were finished the fields were a picturesque sight.
My sister and I, along with our cousins, liked to play hide and seek in the corn fields. When the corn was tall enough we could hide for a long time if we were very quiet. The one thing I didn�t like was running into webs with big black and yellow spiders. I even hated going to the outhouse if there were spiders.
In springtime nothing was more entertaining than watching lambs at play. They would run and jump, chase one another, and it�s true that what one sheep will do, all the rest will follow.
One year Grandpa surprised us with a gift of a lamb each for Phyllis and me. We gave them names, and we knew our own lambs from the rest of the flock. When they were grown we received the money for their wool at shearing time, and when they had babies of their own, we were paid when they were sold. We always felt so lucky when our sheep had twins.
The hogs were not my favorite animals except when they were turned into bacon and ham. Every part of the pig was used for something, and butchering time was as busy as harvest time. I�ve often wondered why the lambs were never butchered. I�d have been horrified at the thought, but it�s strange that I never tasted lamb until I bought it at the supermarket and cooked it myself.
Grandma loved farm life, her vegetable garden, and her flowers. But the last two of her seven years of �retirement� were spent in and out of the hospital while cancer spread throughout her body.
Grandpa was very lonely, but he spent seven more years on the farm before he succumbed to the heart problem that had forced him to carry his nitroglycerin pills in his pocket and place one under his tongue when the angina pain hit. He called them his dynamite pills. My parents checked on him often, and one day they found him sitting in his rocking chair, gone but with a peaceful smile on his face.
His lunch was half cooked, but he had managed to turn off the stove burner before he sat down. He had been frying chicken on that same old kerosene stove.
ORIEN STEELE7 CHENOWETH (GEORGE WILLIAM6, GEORGE HENRY5, JOHN4, WILLIAM3, WILLIAM2, JOHN1) was born March 15, 1880 in Greene Co., OH, and died July 15, 1959 in Atlanta, Hamilton Co., IN. He married WINIFRED MCMULLAN August 01, 1901 in Hamilton Co., IN, daughter of HENRY MCMULLAN and MATHILDA WALTZ. She was born May 09, 1882 in Atlanta, Hamilton Co., IN, and died October 07, 1952 in Noblesville, Hamilton Co., IN.
Children of ORIEN CHENOWETH and WINIFRED MCMULLAN are:
by Vida Sue Chenoweth [Dec 2007]
As a child I was always interested in listening to stories of the pioneer days. Grandfather Chenoweth and his two brothers-in-law, John and Austin Swaney, made the run from the Kansas border. Grandmother Chenoweth came later, driving a wagon with household goods and three children - Altah, Velyma and Louis, who was only a few months old. I hear her say that she wrapped him in a towel to prevent sunburn, or worse, heat stroke.
The three men staked land extending from Breckenridge to Grarber, land owned now by veterinarian Phil Steinert and rancher-farmer Roger Haffner. As we grew up many visits to hike or hunt on these two properties were enjoyed by my twin sister, my two brothers and me. Wagon tracks were pointed out which remained from pioneer days as was a buffalo wallow and a plot of gravel. Dad pointed out scissor-tails and meadow larks, and a post along the road where one was sure to see a hawk perched. Just a few days ago I saw a hawk perched there on a post!
The last Chenoweth child, named Alma, was born in the Oklahoma Territory. It was she who became the first child to die among these pioneers who settled the the Cherokee Strip. I remember very few references to her as it was too emotional a subject. What I do recall was that once, when I was 4 years old, Aunt Altah said that I looked like �Alma�. �Who is Alma?� I asked, and she told me it was my father�s little sister who died.
Alma�s pet kitten was always with her, and for this reason someone reckoned that she caught a sickness from the kitten. I think it was for this reason my father did not like cats. The only thing I remember him saying about her was that they put pennies on her eyes when she died. This puzzled us, but Dad said no more about her. However we did visit the Garber cemetery on Memorial days. Mother told us children to just wait in the car as dad paid his respects. I don�t think he ever recovered from the pain of her dying at age five; he was then only seven years old. It is hard to imagine what it must have been like to dig a grave for one�s child, place the tiny body in the ground and cover her with the red soil. There were no funeral homes or undertakers then. Maybe the pain of all this was what drew her father Lincoln Morgan Chenoweth away from the homestead. Grandmother and the children remained on the farm until the children were ready for high school. They moved to Enid and then settled a 430 South Buchanan, next door to the Clive Cessna family whose house on the corner is now in ruins. My grandmother Chenoweth � one of the few who did not think Cessna as a madman � sewed up the canvas wings for his monoplane. It eventually soared over Enid to the amazement of all after taking off in Mosher�s pasture, the place where I now live in a townhouse!
I found the grave a few years ago, just inside the original cemetery. By now there were many graves, but Alma�s grave was all alone. I took it upon myself to have her tombstone reconditioned, as the words were hardly readable. It was replaced this year, 2006, one hundred and five years after she was first laid to rest. My father would be pleased. --- Vida Chenoweth
LINCOLN MORGAN6 CHENOWETH (LEWIS FOSTER5, JOHN FOSTER4, ELIJAH3, THOMAS2, JOHN1) was born August 05, 1862 in London, Madison Co., OH, and died 1932 in Wichita, Sedgwick Co., KS. He married MARTHA A. 'MATTIE' SWANEY December 19, 1885 in Sumner Co., KS, daughter of ALEXANDER SWANEY and REBECCA BURROWS. She was born 1866 in Indiana, and died 1962 in Enid, Garfield Co., OK.
Children of LINCOLN CHENOWETH and MARTHA SWANEY are:
[JE: There were 4 Oklahoma Land rushes between 1889 and 1895. The 3rd was the Cherokee strip on September 16, 1893. Louis would have been 2 weeks old. In my notes I have that one of these events was started by a trumpet blast by Sheriff James Morse of Summer Co., KS, the husband of Rachel Eveline Chenoweth. Rachel was a sister to Lincoln Chenoweth who made the Cherokee Run. Velyma Rebecca Chenoweth was actually born after Alma and there was an first born daughter, Martha who died young in Kansas before the trip. Alma was the first of the family to die in Oklahoma.]
When I was a child, my mother occasionally unlocked the old trunk that had belonged to her mother, and allow me to �dress-up� in the old fashion clothes. My favorite outfit was the pink and black plaid dress, high-top velvet hat and small black purse.
As I was thinking of their story, I opened that purse again and carefully unfolded the aged paper; to read my mother�s handwriting on her 35th birthday,
November 2, 1942 I was nine then, and remember her letters written in search for her father, and her disappointment when there was no response. In retrospect, I hope I was sensitive to her need and entertained my 2-year old brother, Charles Louis, so she could deal with her disappointment privately. She never knew her father�s birthday was May 24th; or her grandparents were Thomas Milton Goode and Sarah Ann Chenoweth. In 1880 Milton was living in Lexington, Lafayette County, Missouri, where he worked as a farm hand. Twenty years later he was in the home of his sister, Anne Chenoweth Gons, as a lodger.
Evidence shows that soon after 1900, Milton left his sister�s home in Ohio and arrived in Leoma, Lawrence County Tennessee, with his nephew, Fred Gons.
The work of building a railroad and cross-country road in the vicinity drew people to Leoma. A booklet on the history of Leoma lists �Good Sawmill� among the early businesses. I believe Milton ran a sawmill business and bought tracts of land and cut the timbers. He acquired more than 300 acres of land in a less than five years.
Milton was about 58 years old when he was courting his future wife. Hulda Christine Walker, a mother of three, who had arrived in Leoma before 1900 with Uncle Jim and his family, including the only mother she ever knew, affectionately known as �the old grandma�. They joined several neighbors leaving their homes in Winston County in search of a better life.
Civil War history buffs know about Winston County. It was populated by men who had fought with Andrew Jackson and they were patriotic. One such man was surrounded by Confederates and told to join with them or die. His last words were, �I will not shoot at Old Glory�. In a protest meeting at Looney�s Tavern, the will of the people�s was declared in favor of succeeding from the Confederacy and forming the �Free State of Winston�.
Hulda�s father, Pvt. William Walker fought with the Union in 1st Alabama Calvary, leaving his wife and children on Dec 14th 1963 to join at a recruitment station in Mississippi. Later William�s wife, Mary Ann Vaughn, died giving birth to their 8th child, Hulda Christine Walker on 17 March 1871. The Walker grandfather and his young wife, Elizabeth Cosper Walker, took the baby home with them and raise her with their own children. A few months later Hulda�s farther remarried and they joined a wagon train traveling westward, taking his other seven children. Her father wanted to take Hulda, but her grandparents refused to release her. Following the war the most of the people of Winston moved away. After the old man Walker died, the remaining family moved to Leoma, Lawrence County, Tennessee.
Milton James Goode and Hulda Christine Walker were married on November 15, 1906 by MG S. M. Beasley. A year later, on November 2, 1907, their only child was born, Lydia Mary Ann Goode. The son Leroy was undisciplined, perhaps because his farther, George Walker; died as a young man. Her children refused to honor Mr. Milton as head of the household; so I believe he left them and moved into the home of N. N. Reynolds and wife, Annie. Hulda told their daughter they would have been happy together, except for her children.
Their separation terms are recorded in three deeds: Hulda and her family were in Morgan County, Alabama before 1910. She became a caretaker to a stroke victim, Mr. Denton. The Denton family provided a house on their farm for her use, referred to as; �the house on the hill�.
In Alabama, Hulda and Lydia were known socially by the Walker surname, but legally they used their Good name. They were members of Bethel Baptist Church. Lydia attended school with one of the Waddell girls, and through their friendship, met her future husband.
Mr. Denton died on October 12, 1925 and Grandmother�s family gathered for his funeral. Claude snapped a photo of the group with his Brownie. Lydia and Claude Waddell were married on March 16. 1926. Grandmother Hulda died six months later on November 30, 1926, and is buried in Bethel Cemetery with her first daughter, Elizabeth and her Powell family.
On March 5, 1929, Lydia Mary Ann gave birth to their first child, James Lee Waddell, and named him for both grandfathers, Milton James Goode and Robert Lee Polk Waddell.
A few days later Claude rode a train to Leoma with authorization to act for the owners of the 20 acres of land given by Lydia�s father. That deed was issued March 19, 1929.
Years later my parents and I drove to Leoma to see this land given to mother by her father, but the owner refused to allow us to put foot on it. We drove around Leoma and stopped where an elderly woman was sitting on her porch. When my parents presented their question, she replied, �Yes, I remember Mr. Goode, he lived with the Reynolds family for a while, but then I didn�t see him any longer.� (I did not find N. N. Reynolds in Tennessee census records.)
After the death of our parents, one of my brothers and I went to the County Courthouse in Lawrenceburg where we copied the deeds at the Probate office; and repeat that no divorce for our grandparents, nor his death notice was found.
MILTON JAMES6 GOODE (SARAH ANN5 CHENOWETH, JOSEPH4, JOSEPH3, WILLIAM2, JOHN1) was born May 24, 1848 in Wayne twp., Warren Co., OH. He married HULDA CHRISTINE WALKER November 15, 1906, daughter of WILLIAM WALKER and MARY VAUGHN. She was born March 19, 1871 in Winston Co., AL, and died November 30, 1926 in Alabama.
Child of MILTON GOODE and HULDA WALKER is: Written in 1949 by Lou Elea Hart Irvine submitted by her great-granddaughter, Cathy Thompson [Dec 2007]
My Grandfather, James Montgomery Hart, bought the Hazelwood farm in 1825. He raised 11 children on it, then gave it to my father, Calvin Collett Hart, to pay for taking care of him and my Grandmother who was Eleanor Chenoweth.
Grandpa was a grandson of John Hart who signed the Declaration of Independence. He was born in New Jersey, 1791. He had several brothers and sisters who scattered over the states. Three sisters and a brother lived in Beverly, one had the coal mine on Rich Mountain.
My Grandpa, James Montgomery Hart, ran the Hazelwood farm. They had to raise most everything they ate, and wore, too. The women of the house spun and wove wool and flax clothing, bed clothes, towels, and table linens.
They lived in a big log house on a hill near King's Run (Paul Dean owns that part of the farm). Grandma lost a baby, wanted it buried where she could see its grave from her window beside the fireplace (this is now the Hazelwood Cemetery).
Her greatest grief was the Civil War. My father, Calvin, another son, Bunn, and a grandson, John C. (son of Ezra) went with the south. Another son, Hugh See, living in Kansas, went with the north. The Hart family went the way they thought best. When Grandma would hear of a raid coming (Yankees), they would go to my Uncle's near the Kelly Mountain. One time Grandma buried a big jar of apple preserves in the garden to keep it safe from the thieves. When they came back the hogs had rooted them out and ate them.
One of my uncles, Elmore, died on the way to join the army. The youngest, Wayne, had cut a tree for wood, didn't get far enough out of the way. It fell and killed him. (Buried in Hazelwood Cemetery) No one was home but the old folks and one girl who went to see about the 18-year old boy. Found him dead.
It was hard to hear the battles of Beverly and Rich Mountain.
Grandpa died in March 1874. The old house got bad. My mother's father, William Foggy, died in 1878. He left a small farm and some money so they had lumber sawed on an old time water mill (which we owned in a partnership with Scott's), and built a new frame house on the "pike" and moved to it. Grandma lived with us in it until 1885. She was nearly 84.
My father, Calvin, and my mother, Julia Foggy, were married in 1868. They raised five children, the oldest, Camden, died in 1936, age 68. He married Marietta Logan in 1902. I was next, born 1874, September 16. Married David Grove Irvine September 15, 1896. We went to Granville, Ohio, to Dennison University. He was in the last year of college when he took diphtheria in January of 1897 and never got to go back to school as his eyes got bad.
Now to my own life - my first memory is of my brother Vance's arrival in 1877. "Grandma" Scott took me to her house. When they brought me home a Mrs. Russell had just bathed the baby and dressed him in a red flannel petticoat and a pink calico dress (very fashionable in those days). She asked me if I thought the baby was pretty and I said, "no, his nose is too speckled." He had a rash. I became very jealous as Vance got more attention - at least I thought - than I, so I decided to wet the bed. Ma didn't say anything, but she washed my behind with a cold wet rag. I didn't try that stunt anymore.
One day I asked Pa if I could have one knee. I was used to having both.
My next remembrance is a serious sick spell - not allowed to eat anything as the doctor gave me a calomel (a great remedy in those days). I asked everybody who came for even a drink of milk. Paxton Scott said, "I will go home and when I come back, I will bring you a pitcher of cream" which he did as soon as I was allowed to have it. I remember seeing him coming across the field by the cemetery. I was named Lou for his sister and Elea, short for Eleanor, my grandma Hart's name.
I loved to stay with the Scotts and did many weeks. They came from Missouri about the close of the Civil War. "Grandpa Scott" was the first Presbyterian preacher I ever saw. I was a little afraid of him. He was a large man, stayed in his study most all day. Came down for meals and to have family prayers at night.
We lived so far from everybody except the Scotts, � mile away though the woods, no children to play with until I was five. Then Robert Scott moved close with four little boys ranging from ten years to six months. One, Fred, was my age. We were playmates until I was married, and we write to each other at Christmas time yet.
A big event in my life was starting to Weese School when I was six, nearly two miles away over a hill. I really didn't know how to play with other children, but soon learned. The teacher was a kind neighbor so I wasn't afraid of him. Our school house was of logs with half windows near the ceiling, and long benches with no desks, too high for short legs, mine would get very tired. One day I had a terrible headache, made me cry. He came back to me, shook his pencil, and said "Hush that crying." I cried louder as I was scared stiff. One of the older girls took me on her lap, gave me a stick of candy which I ate, hushed crying, but got a sick stomach. Then the teacher told Cam to take me home, but instead Cam left me with my cousin, Delphia Weese, who had a family of children and knew what to do for sick heads. She gave me a "yarb" tea that soon helped. I took a nap and got up normal. When Cam came by I was out riding stick horses with my cousin (girl) a year younger than I. Cam told Ma I was acting the possum or I couldn't have gotten well so fast.
For clothes in winter, I wore homespun flannel or linsey, the latter yarn woven on cotton chain (warp). Flannel petticoats, muslin or gingham panties, shimmys (like our slips), stockings of yarn which I helped knit when I was six. Also mittens and scarves.
My third year at school was the last in the old log house. I learned to write on the teacher's desk. My copy book was of foolscap paper with heavy brown paper backs. My pen was made of a goose quill. I used some kind of red ink - may have been made of poke berries. I wanted to keep my book as neat looking as my seat mate's book (she is Mrs. Lucretta Pierce), but I upset the ink and soiled the back of the copy book. One day was so cold and snow so deep I stayed all night with an aunt, a Mrs. Weese, who lived near the school house. The snow was too deep for me to go to school the next day. One of the men cousins told me he had my pet calf tied up at the foot of the hill (on which they lived, a place I loved) and was going to let the calf freeze. I put out a lot of tears and told Aunt Jane. She scolded him and told me to believe anything those boys told me for they just did it to plague me. I wouldn't have believed anything they said after that. I was very glad to find the calf, I believe we called him Henry Ward Beecher, was safe in the log barn when I got home.
I could read as well as now even at eight years. "Granny" lived with us and did a lot of teaching. She also taught Vance and me to knit, piece carpet rags, and quilt. She would give me so many rounds to knit on my stocking and so many carpet rags to sew each day. I thought I could fool her by slipping her mark back or hiding a few rags. One turn of that was enough as I had to do double turns the next day.
In summer time we helped with the garden as soon as we were big enough to pull weeds or drove the cows from the pasture or picked berries. We always had Tony, our good old dog along. A great treat was to ride the horses to the creek for water.
When I was climbing up the corner of the log barn that Pa built of the logs from the old house to get on a gentle old horse which side stepped and I fell backward on a rock. I cut my head badly, but didn't know I was hurt until the next morning until my senses came back. I had called for Lou Scott, Vance ran after her, and she came and stayed with me all night.
I didn't know much about playing with little girls until the Scott's took an orphan girl, Louise Hyson, who is named for Lou Scott, too. (She later became Mrs. Goly). I think we were about six years old at that time.
Moving to our new house on Christmas Day about 1881 as well as I remember was a great event. Santa Claus had arrived the night before with a tiny doll about four inches long. It had pretty hair and I called her Lizzie for my Great Aunt Lizzie McLean. Vance had a tin horn and Annie had a little red tin cup from which to drink her milk. Everybody from a couple miles around came to help us move. They brought horses and wagons and good things to eat. We liked the new house which only had three rooms furnished, but I got homesick for the old place. We often went over there to play as the new lawn was in woods and brush thickets. There were so many hazelnut bushes that Lou Scott suggested calling our home Hazelwood.
I had a habit of running away, especially to the mill. Ma would be so scared she would pet instead of spank. One day I found "Grandpa" Scott running the mill and Pa somewhere else. He told me to go back home. I did and never ran off to the mill again, but I went other directions. One day I thought it fun to hide behind the big stone chimney at our house and have them hunting for me. An aunt who had lived with us until I was two or three (then she married) was there. All called and Vance would say, "Hey, Weddie." He couldn't talk plainly. Finally I giggled as Ma was passing looking so pale. I soon had my red checked gingham pants well spanked - good enough for me even if I wasn't five yet.
The Civil War was only past three years when my parents were married. Times were hard, there was very little money floating. Veterans of the south except in a few far southern states had no pensions. If crops failed, we had not much to eat. Corn meal mush was our usual supper. We children began to work as soon as we could pick up chips. All fires were wood we cut with an axe or a saw. As I remember the old log house, there were two fire places and a cook stove. Grandma formerly cooked on the fireplace.
In spite of hardships we were happy children. We knew of very little that was better than we had. Our toys were all home-made ones.
I was a lonely girl after my brother grew too old to play with. I made playmates of the flowers - used hollyhocks for young ladies, also the beautiful laurel blossoms and would roll up any kind of a rag for a doll.
I began washing dishes or rather drying them when only five years old. Grandma taught me to knit. First I knitted myself a pair of garters, then helped on stockings. We had a button on our pantywaist and one on the stocking and buttoned our garters to them. My shoes (excepting a pair of my first ones, I don't know where they came from) were made by my father who was a shoemaker until I was at least twelve. Then my oldest brother plowed a garden for a storekeeper in Beverly to pay for a pair of shoes for me.
I had so wanted a red worsted wool dress as I had seen one on another little girl. At fourteen it came my way. I suppose Lou Scott made it. It was a little basque and a separate skirt. I got my first millinery hat - a pretty brown one trimmed in beautiful brown ribbon - off of one of Mrs. Scott's hats. Mrs. Yokum, doctor's wife, gave me a lovely red satin hair ribbon for my hair that was 27 inches long - great sorrow when I lost the ribbon.
My children enjoyed the old home - had a big apple, peach and cherry orchard, lots of wild plums, hazel and butter nuts, and grapes by the creek. It was great fun to climb the trees and swing on the grape vines out over the water, or also to wade in the water. I never went deeper than my knees.
We were taught to read when very young. Grandmother couldn't work any more, but could teach us so many useful things and tell so many stories of her young days. When her father, John Chenoweth, a Revolutionary soldier, who seemed to have been what we thought rich - came in here before the Indians hadn't been gone very long. She would tell us of their awful deeds until I would be afraid to go to our trundle bed with my two brothers, but slept with her. She wasn't afraid of anything. Grandma also told us stories of her childhood and their slaves.
After a while we got used to the new house with the beautiful woodland all around. The Robert Scotts (brother of aunt Lou) had built a new house and moved near so we had company - the boys would cut horses, cows, dogs and men of the leather scraps left from shoes and play they were cattle drivers.
Hundreds of cattle were driven to market to many cities - think of taking a drove of cattle on foot to Baltimore. We boarded some of the drivers and their cattle were corralled in one of our fields. All field had to have fences. Also all farm had fences all along the roads. My father had to cut trees, split rails for many years.
I think I was nine, maybe younger, when my father decided to start Sunday School at Weese Creek. He taught all who could to sing as he was a good singer. The Sunday School is still going, but there are very few left who started there. We could have a small card for each verse we learned from the Bible and big one for every four. I could commit to memory a whole chapter a week (smart girl) - I have one or two of the big cards yet.
A few years later Beverly wanted my father to be the Superintendent of the Presbyterian Sunday School there. So we all went. We would carry our good shoes to Dotson run, take the old ones off, put the good ones on so our shoes looked nice when we got there. Our Sunday dresses were calico. We thought them wonderfully beautiful.
The first china doll I ever saw was at Lou Scott's. It was a keepsake of hers handed down from an old aunt to her, then to one of her nieces. The doll would be nearly 200 years old now. Annie and I were about the only little girls allowed to play with it.
We had a lot of aunts and uncles. In winter Pa would hitch a horse to the sleigh sled which he made. We put hay and hot rocks in the bottom - all wrapped up and go to visit Uncle Ezra Hart, my father's oldest brother. (Ezra, John C., then Wade, then Wilson). He was an Old Side Baptist preacher. That was, I think, the only church here for many years.
We loved to eat maple sugar made at the camp where Wade Hart now lives and the one where Aunt Ida and Leona live now (Mrs. Ed Kerns, Draper's sister, children of James T. Hart) He had a mill to grind corn on, also a saw mill with a carpenter shop that had a big fireplace. He made all kinds of furniture in it. It was lots of fun to play out there in the shavings. (He was a dear old man. All of his family except one daughter-in-law, Aunt Ida, are gone long ago. She is almost 90).
We enjoyed going to Great Uncle Hoy McLean's (brother to Julia Hart's mother) who lived in the Great Grandpa house. He had a sugar orchard on the riverbank with log cabin sugar house in the middle. We went there once when he was making sugar. He boiled the sap in big kettles. When it began to "sugar" he would pour some on the snow. Nothing ever tasted so good to a little girl. He had a big cradle to rest in at night. He wanted me to stay and sleep in it. I was afraid so I went home with the rest of them.
Aunt Mary Lytle, Pa's sister, who lived with us until I was past two when she married. Cam and I hated Uncle George for taking Aunt Pop away. I can remember them coming to visit, both riding horses. Cam and I were going to hit him with clubs, but our hearts failed when he handed us sugar cakes and was very nice to us - so we loved him too.
When Vance was born I wanted him called Pop and George, but they didn't. He should have been named George Marion. We knew we would have crullers at their house fried in a pretty little iron pot.
At Aunt Mary (Foggy) Kennedy's, my mother's sister, there were lots of hickory nuts and good jelly that I loved. Also there were stories of her old home, her young married days, and the Civil War. Her husband was carried off to war prison by Yankees and he died there. (He was her first husband named Camden).
My mother's Methodist preacher brother, Hanning Foggy, was another one we loved. I think the special eating there was good creamed chicken or ham.
We visited Pa's sister, Jane Weese, the most often. I like something she made of milk called ribble soup. We went there for cherries after our trees died and also good apples.
Ma's sister, Susan (Foggy) Scott, lived below aunt Mattie's (Thomas, D.G. Irvine's sister) at Tyre's Ford. I only remember being there once when ten years old and just for the night. Her husband was very sick and Pa took me behind him on horseback to visit. He didn't live very long after.
The Big Visit was to Ma's sister, (Sarah (Foggy) Smith, when I was eight - clear over to Meadowville below Belington. Pa borrowed a spring wagon from Reverend Scott, took a load of wheat to a mill at Philippi as our river and creeks were so dry from the drought, the mills couldn't run. We left here early in the morning (Cam and a neighbor to stay with Granny). We went over the old Laurel Hill Road. It took all day to go to Aunt Sarah's. We would get tired and stop to rest. We had dinner at one of Pa's cousins who lived on the farm where Lillian Campbell was raised and stopped to visit relatives along the way. I was surprised to see so many women going barefoot, even to one aunt. Her mother-in-law gave me a square of a quilt she was piecing, and a lot of pieces, so I pieced one for myself.
My first visit to a store was when I was ten. The Scott brothers put in one. Ma took Annie and me up to see it. One of them set a box of candy between us on the counter and told us to eat all we wanted which we did as usual, I got sick. Lou Scott told me to pick out what I liked for a dress. I decided on a grayish leafed one with darker gray background and a border of pink roses to go on the bottom of the skirt. She liked a candy striped better, but as usual with her, I got the piece I wanted. She made it - and I sure was dressed up.
When I was seven, a neighbor moved across the field from our house. I had helped to knit myself a pair of mittens. I ran off over there to show them. Naturally I was asked if my mother knew where I was, was given something to eat and sent home. I may have had a spanking.
One day when six I decided I wouldn't say "please" when asking for something at the dinner table. Pa was very strict as to manners. I was sent from the table to get a switch. I tried to bite a tiny one about eight or ten inches of the bush, broke a loose tooth out and came in bawling: saying, "please, please."
Another day about the same age I went with Pa to the attic of our old house, slipped coming down, fell all the way down from the attic to a platform about middle way of the steps to the downstairs. I lit on my head and I didn't know much for a time. When I came to myself I was in the cradle and was given something special to play with.
My grandmother died when I was ten. It was a terrible grief to us children as she had been teacher and nurse for all our lives. We never got entirely over it.
Our playthings were all home made. Until I was nine years my dolls were rags or a towel rolled up and so loved. Sometimes they were made of sticks that had four limbs at one place which were cut off even length and would stand up. I had three at one time when I was six. Pa brought them from the woods. He named them Sam Old Henry, Philip McCooley, and Leonard. I laid them in Granny's room by the fire to keep warm over night. She thought they were kindling wood and cremated them. What heartbreak to find nothing but ashes. Pa brought some more and I gave them the same names. Santa brought me a pretty china doll when I was nine. Her name was Birdie and I was the happiest little girl alive. My mother's first cousin and two neighbor girls dressed her up beautifully. Then Pa made bedsteads for Annie and me - painted them red. Lou Scot made our bedding. My little stead got burned when we had the fire in 1934 in the house on Barnard Ave. in Elkins. I still have the quilt. Never knew where the doll dresses went. I wanted to keep them and I did long after I was married.
We made playmates of books. We didn't have many books, no magazines or papers, but could borrow from Rev. Scott's library, the Christian Observer, Youth Companion, and some Bible story books.
Vance and I went to one summer school at Weese taught by my cousin, Birdie Weese. We went barefoot and I wore a sunbonnet made of red calico. We had to cross a creek. My bonnet blew off in the water. We were scared, we ran along the bank until a bush caught it for us.
We loved to play beside a frog pond beside our new house. We learned to imitate the frogs and toads until they would answer. One plaything we loved was a whistle that Pa made of willows in the spring when the bark would slip. We also liked canes of black gum. We would peel them off in stripes so one stripe would be black and the other white - they were lovely stick horses.
Our best loved pets were lambs - lots of fun until they got so big they would knock us around and become dangerous. Then had to be sold.
Our games were round town ball similar to baseball, Bully wolf, and Squirrelly, all running games. Our father didn't think it right to play dominoes or checkers. We could play marbles with ones he had when he was a little boy.
We went coasting down the hillside by the old log house. My first trial was when I was five. I fell off the sled in deep snow, had a hard time getting out. By the time I got to the house, my hands were so cold, I cried for somebody to open the door. Granny did.
When nine years old the Scott's adopted daughter decided it would be fun to build a small fire in a park back of their house and cook some apples. She went to get the apples, Lou came back with her carrying a pan of water which ended our cooking. It was a windy morning.
One of the favorite scenes which we enjoyed going to with our mother was to the river. A rock slanted out from the hill to the water's edge. It was a beautiful place. The laurel was all on the high bank above. We would sit on the rock and skip rocks across on top of the water. There was an island nearby on which we could find mussel shells and early spring flowers. The railroad came along and covered up our lovely rock. The island is still there, but not so beautiful.
Until I was past ten our artificial lights were tallow candles which my mother made. She melted the fat from beef cows, poured it in molds. They had strings called candle wick in the middle. Later we had a pretty yellow glass lamp with a globe on it and thought it was a wonder. As years went by we had several lamps. Now the old house has electricity and gas which we never heard of until Elkins came. It was many years after that electricity came to Elkins. Now in 1949 both go many miles over the country.
Our farm work was hard on both old and young. The flax growing had been discarded before my mother came to live here, but they still kept sheep. The wool was carded on a machine which had belonged to my great grandfather near Beverly.
We enjoyed making sugar cane molasses. The cane grew like corn. We had to strip off the blades, then cut the stalks which were pressed between two upright heavy rollers with a long pole attached to the top and pulled around and around by a horse. We boiled the juice in big kettles until it was thickened. Then it was poured into large tubs for Winter. This took the place of store sugar for our cake baking and preserving of fruits. We didn't can fruits and vegetables. Instead we dried everything from berries to tomatoes, apples, peaches, beans, pears, corn, and pumpkins. The roots vegetables were buried.
For candy we made "lasses" taffy, sometimes adding walnuts or hazelnuts. One thing that was better then than now was that we did not have to fight off all kinds of bugs and the blighting of vegetables. This seemed to come in as the country was cleared of woods. For heat we had fireplaces and wood cook stoves until I was grown up. Then we had a coal heater.
The first Presbyterian preacher we had as pastor in Beverly came when I was about six. He was a young fellow and often came to visit us in our old house. He was city-raised. My father taught him to ride horseback and to drive horses. I felt very big when he took me to Weese School house to hear him preach. I thought I had something over the other kids. All the music we knew was singing. A crowd would gather at the school house and sing good old hymns and Civil War songs which were taught by my father. The first instrument I remember was an accordion, a fiddle and a mouth harp at an Aunt's. Her children were musical. The first organ was in the church and the first piano was at a friend's home in Beverly.
One of our amusements was following tumblebugs as they rolled little balls holding their eggs along the side of the road. They eventually would roll them to the roadbank to lie quietly until eggs hatched.
We depended on pack peddlers for many things. They would carry big loads on their backs. They began coming when I was about twelve. Later they came in small wagons with enclosed sides almost like small stores. They usually were Jews or Asyrian. We kept some over night or for dinner and let them pay for their meals with their goods.
For sickness all five of us had mums, measles, scarlet fever, and chicken pox - my worst was diphtheria.
When I was five my sister Annie was born. She was such a tiny little black haired baby. I was willing to rock her cradle. We moved to the new house when she was two. Four years later she with Vance and I were packed up in a sleigh sled and my father took us to Grandma Scotts for a couple days. When we came home we found the sweetest baby brother (Hugh).
The places I loved to go for nights while going to the Weese School which was nearly two miles away was to Tripletts with Ella Stepp, two years younger than I; Schoonovers, where Lucretta was my age; to Taylor and Jacob Weese's where others of my age lived.
For my first three years I went to an old log building where my mother taught her last school. We were very proud of our new frame school house with desks with a shelf under them. Also pictures on the walls and a bookcase. The first book I read from the case was Rumpelstiltskin. Our gang in Hazelwood would play it as we did other children's stories. In later years we put on some fairly good plays and readings after school in the evenings. Sometimes we had taffy pulling and always had popcorn.
Imagine a whole school room full of girls in flannel dresses, coverall calico aprons, yearn stockings of our own knitting, long hair tangled on the buttons down the backs - also imagine all of the mob drinking from a dipper out of a water bucket passed around by one of the boys. None of us got poison for lack of sanitation. The boys wore home-made boots, jeans, suits and hickory shirts - a gray and white stripe of heavy material.
vWe had a pretty alder patch beside the spring where we enjoyed holding revivals. We didn't know anything else to imitate. We carried rocks for church seats, one big one was the pulpit. We had a little seven-year old Triplett boy for a preacher, others to give "experiences" and some of us to shout. In the middle of our services, the teacher came out and stopped our glorious service and said we were making a mock of religious services, kept us all in at recess, and sat our little red-headed, black eyed preacher on the table with his feet in a drawer.
In snowy weather we played fox and geese. I never got to be the fox because my grown up cousins would pick me up and carry me around on their shoulders. I was sixteen the last winter up there.
We had our new school house across the road from our house. Vance and I made the fires and kept the floor clean. That was the only whole term I ever went. The teacher was Samuel Hogan with a Number One Certificate and he was paid $35.00 a month which was good wages.
We put on plays and other entertainments during the winter. That summer of 1892 was a busy one. They started building the railroad to Beverly. We had several boarders. It was hard on us women folk, but lots of fun.
When a little girl I loved to visit Granny Marstiller and watch her cook lots of good things on a bar across the fireplace and bake bread in a dutch oven on the hearth.
I went three years to our new school house, passed the examination for a diploma for a Number Two Certificate and taught part of one school year. Then in 1896, September 15, I married a college student whom I had met four years before. I went with him to Granville, Ohio, for his last college year. Diptheria came to the town. He took it and left him so blinded he could not go back to school. It was three years before he could read the largest newspaper headlines. He worked as a passenger car cleaner for the Elkins Railroad Station, picking up magazines and newspapers.
We came home and one way and another living here and there we managed to raise six children. All living, but one who died at 39 leaving five children. All of our children and the orphan little girl cousin we raised are married and have families so we are living alone in the house owned by our first girl.
We have fourteen grandchildren and one great one. The ups and downs we have had in nearly 53 years of married life would be too many to write about. We are so glad none of our flock ever gave us any trouble by going wild. All were studious and made good in different professions.
The first bear I saw was when I was 11 and coming home from Scotts. I looked behind me and not far back I saw a man coming leading a brown bear. I was so scared I ran fast and stopped at the neighbor, Robert Scott's, to tell him what a fearful thing was coming. I then ran through a field on to home. Not long after the man and bear stopped at our house for dinner. After which we called neighbors in to see the bear perform many tricks he had been trained to do.
We loved to ramble in the woods with neighbor children. It was lots of fun in spring time to search for arbutus, violets, anemones, then later Service, dogwood and honeysuckles.
It was fun to gather moss and carpet playhouses and to pick young wintergreen and peel red birch bark. We would scrape inside the bark. The shavings were tender and so good. We often found teaberry and turkeyberries from pretty little vines. All those lovely things passed away with the trees and woodland which were cut down for lumber, fence posts and fire wood.
I have ridden most everything from wheelbarrows to trains and cars, but no rides were so enjoyable as the stick horse.
There were so many varieties of birds and little animals that seem to be extinct. Can't even hear a hoot owl anymore. Robins and whippoorwills do come back in the spring.
We had so little outside the home for amusement. We made up our own plays and toys. I really believe we were happier than children with so many things of now in 1949.
ELEANOR 'NELLIE'5 CHENOWETH (JOHN4, WILLIAM3, JOHN2, JOHN1) was born June 07, 1796 in Randolph Co., VA (now WV), and died January 09, 1885 in Virginia. She married JAMES MONTGOMERY HART September 23, 1819 in Randolph Co., VA (now WV), son of DANIEL HART and MARGARET BUNN. He was born September 07, 1791 in Hopewell, Hunterdon Co., NJ, and died March 07, 1874 in Randolph Co., WV.
Children of ELEANOR CHENOWETH and JAMES HART are: As we get older, we tend to think about our childhood more. Growing up in Kentucky in a family of 10 kids was so much fun but what added more fun to our lives is the fact that we lived next door to my Grandma and Grandpa who lived with my Aunt and Uncle who had 8 kids and across the road from us was my cousin and his wife who had 5 kids and to the right of our home was my Aunt and Uncle who had 4 kids and down the road from us was my Uncle who had 5 kids. As you can see we had our own ball team, we had plenty enough to play hide n seek and any other game we wanted to play.
Sunday's for me would be going to Church and then coming home and going out to see my Grandma and Grandpa on my Mom's side. My Grandpa always had peppermint candy for us and Grandma made biscuits and gravy for us often. We'd then come home and go over to Grandma and Grandpa Kennedy's house and Grandpa would take us riding on his mules. Their names were Kate and Sally, He would put 4 or more of us on a mule at a time.
I spent so much time at Grandma's house I believe my Aunt and Uncle thought I was just one of their kids. My Aunt made the best beans and cornbread I ever ate. My mom was a good cook too but it just seemed someone elses' cooking was better after eating hers all of the time. My Mom made the best homemade green tomato relish and my Aunt made the best Souse Meat I ever ate. Every year my Dad and Uncle would kill a hog since there were 18 kids in all to feed between them. They raised big gardens too. I can remember pulling weeds in ours often but I remember more going out after getting home from school and pulling tomatoes and eating them right off the vine or pulling up carrots and eating them. I don't think we ever did without food in those days. They seemed so much better to me then what we go through today but then again, I don't know what my Dad thought about how hard it was raising a big family. He did hunt and fish any free time he had to help feed us too.
I can remember going over to Grandma's and getting the eggs out of her henhouse. Reading another relatives story about that brought those memories back. I hated going in there to fight then hens over the eggs. I can remember though, many a Sunday dinner with the best fried chicken.
Last year I had the privilege of going to a Grade School reunion in my home town. I went back to Ky. for a visit, I now live in Colorado, but I can't give up my roots. Anyway I knew at the reunion, I would know a lot of people since I had so many relatives going to school with me, it was like having a family reunion. It was great seeing family I hadn't seen in years. I still think of all of my family and look back on the fun times we had and I really iss the ones that have gone on before me.
I think about other people who had no family at all and think how lucky I was to grow up with such a huge family and a great one at that.
Today, I spend my time with my daughter, son-in-law and my two Grandson's who are 15 and 16. Although I have a great time with them as I get older I long for the simple days where the laughter and fun was more important then the seriousness of life today as people seem to be caught up in.
The stories that John Egge has put in our family history is so much fun to read because they do hit home with me and I really enjoy reading them and proud of the history that he has put forth for us to read.
Ada Warren
HENRY CLAY8 KENNEDY (JOHN C.7, RUTH F. 'RUTHIE'6 CHENOWETH, ISAAC CALVERT5, WILLIAM4, WILLIAM3, JOHN2, JOHN1) was born September 21, 1882 in Larue Co., KY, and died February 28, 1958 in Larue Co., KY. He married ALMEDIA BARNES, daughter of JAMES BARNES and MARTHA BALLINGER. She was born October 18, 1884 in Kentucky, and died January 18, 1980.
Children of HENRY KENNEDY and ALMEDIA BARNES are: NOTE: Mrs. Minnie Washington was the third white child born in Nucholls County. Before she died on May 9, 1967, at the age of 95, she dictated a story of her early life and experiences as a life-long resident of the Oak community. Her death, at the age of 95, occurred a few days after the Centennial Tea at Nelson at which a number of pioneer residents of the county were honored as a part of the Nuckolls County Centennial observance. She was one of the nine children of Mr. & Mrs. Job Allen, early settlers in the Oak community. [This story was published in two installments in the Superior Express for the Oregon Trail celebration]
Shortly after my father, Job Allen, returned to Illinois at the close of the Civil War, he married Mary K. Chenoweth, later known throughout the county as Aunt Mollie.
It was mid summer of 1871 that father and his brother-in-law, Abe Chenoweth, and several of their neighbors and friends decided to go west and establish their homes.
They came to Nebraska and made their way to Nucholls County, a county that had been surveyed in 1871 by D. W. Montgomery.
At that time there were very few people living in the county and there were no roads, no bridges, no fences, just the wide expanse of prairie.
Nearly all who came in this group filed on some type of land claim. Father filed on a Soldier�s Claim of 160 acres that was located one mile south and across Oak Creek from a place that was later named Oak.
Several of the group remained throughout the summer and late fall, building some kind of a shelter or dugout that would house their families on their return in the spring of 1872.
Materials for these buildings had to be cut from trees along Oak Creek and selecting the proper sized logs for cabins and any lumber had to be obtained from saw mills located many miles east or going to Sutton, Neb., a town some 30 miles north.
Before leaving for Illinois in the late fall, Father boarded up the window and door openings and taking the sizes needed so that he could bring them on his return.
In late February of 1872 Father and Abe Chenoweth left Illinois and headed west with two covered wagons loaded to the top with as much furniture as they could bring along with bedding, stoves, cooking utensils, tools, seed and food.
One of the wagons was drawn by a pair of oxen named Buck and Jerry. The other team was a team of horses named Babe and Jimmy. They tied two good cows to the back of one wagon and in one wagon had two bred sows and a crate of chickens.
The trip was a hard, long, trip and on their arrival they worked almost day and night getting their homes in order, building shelter for their livestock and chickens and sod had to be broken for their garden and first crop. They also had to dig a well for their water supply. The days were hardly long enough to do all the things that had to be done.
In June of 1872 father sent for mother, my two older brothers and one sister. They came by train to Sutton, Neb., where father met them in a wagon and after a night�s rest they purchased some necessary supplies and made their way to their new home some 30 miles distant.
For the first few years they were here, all of these old pioneers had to practically live off the land as the source of supplies was miles away. However, at that time small game such as rabbits, squirrels and prairie chickens were plentiful and fish could be taken from the Blue River which was only a half mile from our home.
As the men and boys labored in the fields, the women and girls would work in gardens and put up the vegetables for winter�s use. The wild plums and berries that grew along Oak Creek were a big help in the early days. On Oct. 7, 1872, I was born and according to the records, I was the third white child born in Nuckolls County. Lena Riber, the first, was born on Spring Creek south of Ruskin; Ella Simington was the second. Both of these fine ladies have passed on.
Families in those days were larger than the families of today. There were nine children in our family and I will name them: Elizabeth, nicknamed Dot, Ellsworth; Taylor (Bush); Samuel (Mage); myself; Grace Neer; Job; Lou Taylor; Annie (Dick) Cox; and Addie (Top) Dudley. Job passed away at an early age and was laid to rest in the old Montgomery Cemetery that was used until about 1878. Its location was some three-fourths of a miles west and north of Oak, just across the road west from the present Jack Montgomery home. I am sure that many in this county have never heard of this cemetery.
In the early days everyone worked. There was no form of entertainment, you made your own. There were no conveniences. You used candles for light and kerosene lamps if you had the oil. Your stoves were wood ranges and you used the long wood burning stoves in your parlor. Some used cow chips. Your mattress was usually filled with nice new straw or the inside part of the corn shucks. Your washing machine was the wash board. It was not easy but no one complained.
At an early age I remember many things about the Indians. The main Oregon Trail was still in use. The main trail was on the north side of the Blue River but there was another trail just a short way south of it that the Indians used and it came just a short distance east of our home then turned north to the bluffs southwest of Oak and it came together near the place called the Narrows.
Indians traveling the south trail would often come to our house begging for food. Mother seldom turned down a hungry Indian if she had food. Indians would often just walk in without knocking.
One day when my Father was away a large group came into the yard and their chief walked in and asked for food. At first she told them she had no food , had to keep for her papooses and pointed into the room where we children were huddled in fright, and he pointed to the bean, rice, coffee jars on the shelf. She finally gave him some beans and rice in a paper sack and she opened the stove oven door and pulled out a pan of bread, braking off a loaf of the hot bread and giving it to him. He was so pleased that he took her hand and said, �Shake, paw, shake paw, good squaw, good squaw� and left.
Just a year or so later we got to see that same chief again. One of the children ran into the house and said there was a big band of Indians coming from the east. We all ran to the windows and saw that they were dressed in full war regalia. What a sight! We were all so frightened as they all were wearing their feathered war bonnets and war paint. The old chief stopped the group in the yard and he rode to the kitchen door and pounded on it. Mother went to the door and as he sat on his horse, he extended his hand and said, �You good squaw. Come say goodbye. We go Montana, big fight.� As he rode away we could not help but notice his beautiful pony, his colorful beaded jacket and beaded blanket that was across his horse. It was quite a relief when they headed northwest and over the bluff. We often wondered if any of them were at the Custer Massacre as it was about this time.
On another occasion we observed a group of Indians traveling on the south trail going west past our home. It was possibly a large family and no doubt were taking a child to the burial ground as their pony was dragging a limb of a tree and across it was tied a little wrapped body.
One day one of the Simington children came to our house. They lived only one-half mile north , and they told us that a big burial party was coming and they were told that it was an Indian chief. We all walked to the Simington place and watched them come. It was a large delegation of Indians. The men were all riding but the women and children were walking. The men on horses headed the group, then came the chief�s horse that had all of his personal possessions tied on it including his dog, then the pony with the branch carrying his body, followed by the women and children of the tribe.
For a year or so after the settlers arrived there was no school house. Finally District No. l, the first school, was built on the Montgomery land just at the intersection at the southwest edge of where Oak is today.
As there were no bridges, rivers had to be forded and people living across the river south and west would alternate and take the children across the river by wagon. Then the river bottom was a hard sand bottom and there was no danger unless the river was high or when the ice was breaking up in the spring.
My first school teacher was George Joy. Others that I remember were Anna Follmer, John Enerarl, Charles Hackler, and a Mr. Husong. The main subjects taught were reading, writing, arithmetic, spelling, and history. Penmanship was stressed. As year passed the little school house was filled. Many times during the year, especially when it was cold, it was not uncommon to hear the door open and have two or three Indians walk in to get warm. Sometimes they would stay for 30 minutes to and hour just sitting and listening then they would depart.
One day in the spring of the year when we were having a blizzard, we did not go to school. The snow was wet and sticky and as we were finishing our noon meal, an Indian wiped off the snow from our dining room window and looked in. Father said �He will be in in a minute.� And sure enough he walked in the kitchen door. He had a blanket over his shoulders and was wearing a hat. As most of us had finished our meal, Father said, �Minnie, it is your time to get your friend something to eat.� So I motioned for him to sit in the chair and I dished him up some food that was left and give him a cup of coffee. Indians were fond of coffee. After he had finished, he stood up, looked around looking at pictures that were hanging on the wall. Then he went to the door of the parlor. He saw an empty chair near the stove and he sat down to warm and dry his blanket that he had never taken from his shoulders. After a few minutes something made a movement under his blanket and he saw that we observed the movement too so he reached down under the blanket and pulled out an old hen by the neck and said �Chick.� He thought nothing of it as he put it back and after warming a few minutes more walked to the door and out into the storm. The chicken was not ours but we presumed that he had visited a neighbor�s chicken house west of us.
Ten years from the time the settlers came the country had changed so much. Roads were laid out on most of the section lines, there were bridges to cross streams. A few of the fields were fenced and nearly all of the land was taken. There was a house or dugout on nearly every quarter and sometimes on the forty and eighty-acre farms. Somehow they all made a living. For the first few years my folks did most of their trading at Sutton, then Edgar was established and it was only sixteen miles to drive in a wagon. Then a store and post office was established near the Oak mill site where we could get staple merchandise. A saw mill was set up near Friedensaw same 15 miles east of us.
It was not long before most famers had several head of livestock and large flock of chickens so they had their meat, butter, and eggs.
The orchards that were planted in the virgin sod and began to bear in abundance and almost everyone had their large fruit and vegetable cellars where they could store their winter supply. These cellars would be opened every week or two. Bu of apples and vegetables were transferred to lower bins in the deep caves and used as needed.
Almost everyone�s cave was filled with several hundred jars of canned fruit, jellies, jams and preserves. If you were willing to work, there was no need to go hungry.
Everyone had their smoke house where they would smoke the meats. Walnuts were gathered in the fall of the year. Sometimes we would gather a lower wagon box load for our winter supply.
My father did not believe in working on Sunday, so oftentimes on Sunday we would either have company or perhaps go to a neighbor or relative several miles away. Father would fill the wagon about half full of prairie hay. He and mother would ride on the spring seat and we kids would sit in the wagon on the hay. A day to go visiting was a big day for us.
School programs were something to look forward to. Most of our early Christmas or birthday gifts were something that mother could make. We thought more of the rag doll that mother made and dressed than the kids of today do of the doll that cries, wets and talks. When my brothers got their first knife, it meant more to them than the motorcycle that the kids ride today.
I have seen the good years and the bad ones. I believe it was the year of 1880 when we had the best crop prospect. We had just laid the corn by and were so proud of it and on the day of the 4th of July, hail came and completely wiped us out. I can�t remember the year but I have seen the grasshoppers fly overhead so thick they would obscure the sun and I remember looking through glass that we smoked so it would not hurt our eyes.
I believe it was in the year of 1887 when our part of the county began to boom. They were building a railroad from Fremont to Superior. Hundreds of men with plows and scrapers pulled with horses made all of the first grades of the railroad. Bridge crews were sent in to build the bridges. I remember that during that time that mother baked bread every day and sold it to the crews. I believe this railroad was named the Fremont, Elkhorn, Missouri Valley Railroad, later changed to the Chicago and Northwestern.
In the year of 1888 the town of Oak was established. In a span of just a few years Oak had a population of almost 200 people. It had a depot, butcher shop, two general merchandise stores, one hardware store, one hardware and implement store, a shoe and harness shop, a post office, a billiard parlor and two restaurants, a furniture and drug store, two barber shops, two blacksmith shops, a newspaper and a real estate office. We even had two doctors and a bank, a large four-room school house and at one time had four churches, a jewelry and watch repair store. No doubt I have missed others.
I remember very well the blizzard of 1888 and I differ with some of the reports that I have read.
On the morning of the blizzard, we all went to school as usual because the morning was warm and calm. Most of the children carried their coats. School took up as usual and it was nearing the noon hour when we observed a dark cloud rising on the horizon to the north. We played in the yard during the noon hour but you could see the clouds approaching. Shortly after school had taken up after noon, it became dark and shortly after that my father came in a wagon and loaded all the children that lived south of the river. Even at this time there was no wind or snow but before we arrived home large snowflakes began to dart and then the wind started and shortly after we arrived home it was snowing and blowing so hard it was impossible to see anything. Late in the evening the snow had drifted three or four feet deep on the south side of our house. The storm lasted two full days and on the morning of the third day it began to clear and all you could see were drifts ten to twelve feet deep.
My father was a good provider and he always had a large rick of wood piled just outside our kitchen door, so we had fuel. His main concern was his livestock . He was afraid to try to go to the barn for fear of getting lost so he took down the clothes line tying one end to the well post and on reaching the barn made it fast to a post at the door. We were fortunate not to lose any livestock but after the storm was over the snow had blown into the barn so much that the horse had packed it down to a depth that it had to be picked out.
On October 2, 1892 I married Harry Washington who with his mother had lived and farmed just west of our place. He had sold the farm and he bought into partnership with Noah Dudley who earlier had moved his store and stock from the Oak Mill Site to Oak. For a few years this business went under the name of Washington and Dudley General Merchandise. In the year of about 1900 he purchased Mr. Dudley�s interest.
Harry passed away in 1921. Our family had four children: Mary, now Mrs. Ray Gillett, lives at Wahoo, Neb.; Carl has lived in Superior since 1922; Clyde operating the store for a number of years, then moved the store to Hardy, he now is the Hardy postmaster; Edith, Mrs. Marvin Dudley, lives in Portland, Ore.
Only two of my sisters are living. Top & Dick. They live in Sheridan, Wyo.
During my lifetime, I have lived in only two locations, my present home site and from my south window I look a mile south and see the old home where I was born 94 years ago.
I love my home, my flowers and garden but above all, my friends. There are perhaps hundreds of things that I could relate about Nuckolls County history, but I will leave most of it to the younger generation. I live in my home during the summer months and old friends are always welcome.
MINNIE6 ALLEN (MARY KENNY5 CHENOWETH, NOAH4, ABRAHAM3, THOMAS2, JOHN1) was born October 07, 1872 in Oak, Nuckolls Co., NE, and died May 09, 1967 in Oak, Nuckolls Co., NE. She married HARRY WASHINGTON October 02, 1892 in 10/2/1892, son of JAMES WASHINGTON and MARY MCCLELLAND. He was born May 07, 1868 in St Joseph, Buchanan Co., MO, and died February 20, 1921 in Lincoln, Lancaster Co., NE.
Children of MINNIE ALLEN and HARRY WASHINGTON are: Grandma Smith as she was known to almost everyone in the small town of Garland (then) was only 35 yrs when her husband died of tuberculosis, probably a result of the pneumonia he had had in the army as many of the Southern soldiers died from exposure when clothing and bedding were almost unobtainable. She and five small children lived on an isolated farm not far from her sister Susan at Fisher, Texas. She managed her farm with the help of the neighbor men who had always been ready to help when her husband could do little work on the farm. She told how the good neighbors would come, wrap her husband in blankets and take the family in a carriage for an outing. She said he always took his brown bitters bottle and took a nip when he became chilled. She always kept that bottle on a small shelf on one side of her bureau explaining to me why she had kept it as a reminder of her happiest days. ( I now possess the old log cabin shaped bitters bottle and now its over a hundred years old and my child will treasure it, I hope, in memory of a very unusual woman, a great grandmother.) Grandma lived alone on her small farm even after her four children married. Three months after her husband died she buried a seven month old baby girl: this was the third baby that she had buried in the little Cox cemetery on the land that her sister, Susan and Jessie Cox had given for a cemetery, very near White Rock Lake near the little farm of 50 acres that Jessie Cox had taken his bride Susie Chenoweth to grace. Aunt Mary Chenoweth, a spinster, and Fannie McKenzie Chenoweth (wife of Benjamin) made their home with the Jessie Cox family as did their daughter Fannie C. Williamson and her husband James A. Williamson (Uncle Jim) until Susan Cox died. (The Williamsons inherited the farm then and lived on part of it until they died).
As Grandma Smith was born on Independence Day and in the state of Missouri it was decided to name her for the state and day. She never signed her full name until after her husband's death and applied for a Civil War Widow's pension. Her family had always called her 'Puss' a pet name. She was the youngest child, but wasn't very fond of her long name. About 15 years before she died, a banker's wife in Garland gave her a LovingCup of sterling silver with her full name engraved on it as well as her birth date- for her 70th birthday. It seemed that her name meant more to her after that and especially since the gift came from her "True and Tried friend, Mrs. A.R. Davis. (((Bertha McKee Davis)))
Grandma Smith didn't leave her farm until after her son, Dave, had lost his wife, and he had three children to care for, the youngest just three. She was an active member of the Christian Church of Garland in spite of having been an Episcopalian in her younger years. After her marriage there wasn't a church of her faith near, and it became quite an ordeal to take even her yearly Communion. She never lost all of her English background and used many purely English expressions that I find in some of Charles Dickens early works. She was a meticulous housekeeper (and ardent gardener) and her house always looked like a little "Band Box". She wore mourning clothes until she was persuaded to wear black and white in the years she was in a wheel chair. She had started to smoke a little clay pipe after her husband died and she said she never took her clothes off at night for one year. She sat up and smoked and mourned. She wore black silk and satin long sleeved, full skirted and high necked clothes. Her skirts were always made with pockets in the side seams to accomodate her clay pipe, tiny brass trick top match box and a small pen knife to cut her plug tobacco fine enough for the little clay bowl of her pipe. I distinctly remember her black edged linen handkerchiefs and her mourning stationery. No other woman wore the kind of shoes she wore for dress, little flat heeled satin pumps with a generous but small pon pon on the toe. She might have had a secret admirer, for she would never tell me where her only ring came from, a plain gold band which she never had had off. Secretly, I had visions of her having been courted, and hoped she had.
When Grandma Smith was 74 she developed gangrene in one of her feet and it traveled so fast that the surgeons had to operate and remove the limb above the knee. She walked on crutches for a year and the second foot was affected, so she lost the other limb and was in a wheel chair for about 9 years. She didn't give up her home until it became very difficult to keep a housekeeper and then she made her home with her son Dave Smith in Dallas where she lived until she was 84 years old. She had a slight stomach upset, went into a coma after two or three days." by Erma Smith Rozelle ca. 1970
MISSOURI INDEPENDENCE 'AUNT PUSS'5 CHENOWETH (BENJAMIN FRANKLIN4, THOMAS3, THOMAS2, JOHN1) was born July 04, 1840 in Forsyth, Taney Co., MO, and died October 13, 1924 in Texas. She married SAMUEL DAVID SMITH, JR. August 18, 1864 in Dallas Co., TX. He was born April 16, 1832 in Virginia, and died June 11, 1875 in Texas.
Children of MISSOURI CHENOWETH and SAMUEL SMITH are: by Joseph Thomas Chenoweth [July 2010]
My grandfather, William Benjamin Chenoweth, the oldest of Joseph & Rebecca Ann Crawford Chenoweth�s children who lived, was born on a farm in Dallas Co., Texas in 1868. Like most farm kids he grew up learning how to make do with what you had � and if something had to be built or something broke you had to fix it with whatever you had around the place � because town was too far away and there wasn�t enough money to buy whatever you needed anyway. Bill Chenoweth was a little more advanced in that regard, as he inherited mechanical aptitude at the genius level. Though he never made it out of high school, his initial profession was that of a mechanical draftsman, then a locomotive designer, and then an inventor. He married Anne Elvira Crenshaw in Nevada, Collin Co, TX in 1889.
1st 6-Cylinder Automobile Engine: So he wrote to the National Engineering Laboratory in Philadelphia explaining his idea with the detailed plans for engine and bus. Their reply, dated October 18, 1899 stated �beg to say you must have been kicked in the head by a mule as a small boy which left you laboring under the hallucination or delusion that ice could be frozen on a red hot stove by thinking of driving a self-propelled vehicle over a public road at 25 mph. In our opinion it�s an idle dream of a feeble minded person especially so with a gasoline engine.� That shut him up for about a year, but the idea wouldn�t die. Over the next couple of years he wrote to many engine manufactures, looking for one who would build his engine, or sell him one of theirs, but was not happy with any of their responses. So he decided to build it himself. He got the Western Motor Co. of Logansport, IN to build two 6-cylinder motors to his exact specifications and ship them to St. Louis, Missouri where, with the help of C.H. Miles (inventor of the triple sealed piston ring), he set out to manufacture the first two �buses.� The first one was completed in October 1907 and shipped by rail to Colorado City, TX. The idea was to run the bus line between that city and Snyder, a distance of 28 miles. Now mufflers had not been invented yet, so when Bill Chenoweth started the thing up it sounded like a machine gun! Can you imagine the havoc wreaked by such a thing in West Texas in 1907? Preachers warned against riding on the evil thing and the bus was often met at the edge of town by a horseback sheriff armed with a Winchester 30-30, warning him not to come into town. Consequently they had to keep moving their route. About the time people started getting gentle enough to ride the thing, some enterprising Westerner would buy a few 2-cylinder vehicles, which were much quieter and safer, and go into competition. After being put out of business like that the 3rd time, he sold one of the buses to the Alto Vista Dairy Farm in Fort Worth, Texas to be used as a truck. So a truck body was built for it and the first load to town was 52 bales of hay. This was the first truck in Fort Worth and it did the work of four teams & wagons � but the dairyman�s driver forgot that it needed oil and water every once in a while, resulting in burning out all the bearings and freezing the pistons in the cylinders. Thus ended the life of the first 6-cylinder automobile engine in the country, and the first bus, and first truck in Texas. In 1921 the American Society of Automotive Engineers adopted the six cylinder engine motor as the most practical motor for automobiles. Were it not for the fact that �Dad� Chenoweth�s thinking was 20 years ahead of the times, we could all be driving Chenoweths!
1st Wind Motor: Somehow Dad Chenoweth wound up living in Chicago in the 30s and invented his flying machine. Although it was not a helicopter, it could take off vertically, fly straight and land vertically (does that make anyone think Osprey?). That invention had a short life as well, because he actually flew it over Chicago around �rush hour� one day and caused such a traffic jamb that he was arrested when he finally landed and told not to EVER fly that thing in Chicago again. That also ended his inventing �career.� He never mad a dime from any of his inventions, and he reportedly had 17 patents.
In between inventing things that were too far ahead of their time and going broke he somehow found enough family time to make sure everyone played some kind of musical instrument. He himself was a champion fiddle player, daughter, Frances, could play anything with strings, daughter Vivian played 5 or 6 instruments, my Dad, Thomas, played guitar and youngest son, Joe was an excellent banjo player. �Dad� Chenoweth used family members as musicians to form �The Cornfield Symphony Orchestra� and played in all kinds of venues, on WFAA radio in Dallas and WLS radio in Chicago. His Cornfield Symphony Orchestra helped make music history in Dallas by being one of the first two bands to have their music recorded in Dallas, when Okeh Records brought a portable sound truck there in 1924. My Dad and his two sisters played on vaudeville stages for several years as adults as a result of the training they received by their father. Later, Vivian played the mandocello with the Westchester Mandolin Orchestra in New York.
Frances� and Vivian�s Banjos: William B. Chenoweth died a pauper in Terrell State Hospital in 1946 � but the character that he was still lives on.
WILLIAM BENJAMIN6 CHENOWETH (JOSEPH5, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN4, THOMAS3, THOMAS2, JOHN1) was born December 10, 1868 in Dallas, Dallas Co., TX, and died April 01, 1946 in Terrell, Kaufman Co., TX. He married ANNIE ELVIRA CRENSHAW November 10, 1889 in Nevada, Collin Co., TX, daughter of JOHN CRENSHAW and MARY NORRIS. She was born February 12, 1873 in Sparta, Bienville Parish, LA, and died May 14, 1929 in Dallas, Dallas Co., TX.
Children of WILLIAM CHENOWETH and ANNIE CRENSHAW are: Written by daughter Barbara Page [Dec 2008] My Mother Gladys E DeGroot Nolan b. 1901 d.1998 had a twin sister named Berniece E DeGroot Schmidt. When they were approximatly 5 years old they got in the apples and thinking of the same thing at the same time , they both started running for the knife. My Mother grabbed it first and started running with it and when she turned to see where her twin was she was holding it in such a way that she cut her sisters nose nearly off. In those days the doctor was miles away by horseback or horse and buggy. Their Mother Eliza quickly mixed up flour and water for a paste, and using a piece of clothe with the flour paste, she glued the nose on and held it on with a rag wrapped and tied behind her head. What ever was done the nose was saved. As told to us kids many times. Berneice always blamed that for the way her nose looked. But it really was an OK looking nose.
Written by grandson Albert Jennings Chenoweth, Jr. [Dec 2008] My grand father worked in the shipyard in Bremerton in the early 1900's. I don't know exactly what he did, something to do with sailing ships. Any way the family lived at top of navy yard city hill. Grandpa would walk to work every day. A long walk especially coming back up the hill at the end of the day. Grandma (Mary Hilton Chenoweth) would take the empty lard bucket and wash it clean. It had a tight fitting lid and a handle. It made a perfect lunch bucket for grandpa. She would pack him lunch in it. He emptied the bucket at lunchtime; so on the way home he would stop at the tavern at the bottom of the hill and have it filled with beer. This made the climb back up the hill easier.
Last Revision Monday, August 2, 2010
Milton James Goode 1848-unk
The years of Milton J. Goode 1900 to 1910
written By granddaughter, Laverne Waddell Moody [May 2009]
I am lonely for my parents today � it has been so long since I
saw my daddy�s sweet face and heard him call my name. My
mother has been gone nearly 16 years this morning. They are
gone but not forgotten. I look forward to seeing her at God�s
Great White Throne and she will show me my old gray haired
daddy, then we will rejoice forever---�
Eleanor 'Nellie' Chenoweth Hart 1796-1885
"The Hazelwood farm of James Montgomery & Nellie Hart"
Henry Clay Kennedy 1882-1958
A look back
written By granddaughter, Ada Kennedy Warren [May 2009]
Henry Clay Kennedy's Granddaughter
Minnie Allen 1872-1967
"Grandma Minnie's memories"
sumitted by D'Ann Washington, wife of her great grandson, [Nov 2009]
Part I
They Headed West
Lived Off The Land
Nine In Family
They Just Walked In
The Burial Party
Reading, Writing, Arithmetic
Part II
Missouri Independence Chenoweth Smith 1840-1924
'Aunt Puss' comes to Texas
sumitted by Rita Rozelle Schimpff, as written by her grandmother, Erma Smith Rozelle in the 1970's, a grandaughter of Missouri Independence [May 2010]
![[Aunt Puss]](auntpuss.gif)
Just as the Benjamin Chenoweth Family had all plans ready to come to Texas from Missouri Benjamin died, but the Mother with the Henry Derryberry family and young Joseph and Missouri or "Puss" (her pet name) decided to come on anyway. They came by wagon train in a covered wagon. When the train reached Oklahoma Territory instructions were given that everyone be as quiet as possible and do nothing to antagonize the Indians. The story was told that one young man, for some unknown reason fired a pistol or gun at one of the Indian lads. The group or band of Indians came immediately, took the young man and began peeling the skin off his body while the frightened travelers quietly went on their way as they were outnumbered ten to one. After the family settled in Denton County a horseman rode to scattered homes to warn of approaching Indians. One woman was alone with her tiny baby. She hid the baby in a barrel of feathers with a loose covering. The woman was carried away, but the baby was found sound asleep. (These were told to me by my Grandmother when I used to stay with her, while she was teaching me to do satisfactory darning or buttonholes. When she passed on my efforts I was elated for she was a master with the needle.)
William Benjamin Chenoweth 1858-1946
Inventor & Musican: the Legacy of W. B. Chenoweth
While working for the International & Great Northern Railroad in East Texas the idea for the 1st 6-cylinder automobile engine hit him in 1899. He realized that engines broke down more through vibration than from the work they did. The current one and two cylinder engines of the time were subject to terrific vibration, so, reducing the vibration would require more and smaller cylinders. His calculations showed, theoretically, that three explosions per revolution produced negligible vibration. So in a four cycle engine, that would require six cylinders. His idea was to put his new engine in an open-air 14 passenger �bus� which he predicted would go 25 mph on a good road (of which there were almost none in Texas). So he drew up detailed plans of the engine and the bus and started trying to get financing for his idea. However, since the fastest car around only went about 10 mph and 25mph was a good speed for a passenger train at the time, everyone thought him just a little bit crazy! Someone suggested he get the opinion of other engineers as to the practicality of his idea.
In 1920 he invented a wind motor (not a windmill) that would operate at fairly constant velocity regardless of wind speed. He figured a way to hook it to storage batteries so they could have electric lights on the farm in Arlington, TX before they had them in town. In fact he even figured how to have all the blades turn into the wind when the wind got above 15mph to keep from burning up the storage batteries � then when the wind subsided, the blades would start turning again. He patented this invention in 1922. Then he figured that he could hook the storage batteries to the hot plate of the wood stove and cook with electricity. That obviously wasn�t too efficient a heat source because the next thing you knew he figured out how to use the wind motor to pump air through kerosene and run that pipe to the stove and cook with gas. At that point the whole family decided he was going to blow the house up with that thing and gave him the ultimatum that he unhook that pipe or they were leaving! That idea of wind energy was only 50 years ahead of its time because it wasn�t until the 1970s when learned people started the talk of using wind as an alternate energy source.
My Aunt Frances and Aunt Vivian accompanied by Vivian�s husband, Ed Hayes, had a group called Ed Hayes and His Banjo Girls. Sometime during the 1930s Vivian and Frances had the Gibson Banjo Company make them a matched pair of tenor banjos with Mother of Pearl inlaid into the fret boards, beautiful maple and rosewood marquetry inlaid into the walnut backs of the resonators, and corded electric lights inside � very rare for the time. After the two sisters died, Frances� banjo went to her daughter, Fran Roberts in New York and Vivian�s went to her son, Ed Hayes in Texas. Since the Gibson Banjo Company was located in Ed Hayes sales territory, he dropped in on their museum one day in the 1990s with his mother�s banjo and asked what they could tell him about it. The museum director left for a few minutes and returned with some yellowed old papers, and immediately asked, �Where is the other one?� He showed Ed the original order for both banjos and told him every thing about each of them. The museum director said they had never had such a unique order before or since and that they would surely like to have both of them for their museum. The museum was willing to purchase both banjos and make a permanent display for them so everyone touring the museum would see them. So Ed contacted Fran about the exciting prospects of their offer. Fran thought that if one museum wanted them that maybe a more prominent museum would want them as well. So she contacted The Smithsonian Institution about the banjos. The Smithsonian wanted the family to donate the instruments and made no promises about ever displaying them. So a quiet duel between the two cousins ensued - Ed�s argument was for the permanence of the display and Fran�s was, �but its The Smithsonian.� After several months Ed gave in, and both banjos reside somewhere in The Smithsonian Institution�s archives, possibly never to be seen by the public.
Snippets
Gladys Elma DeGroot 1866-1926
"cutting off your nose"
David Theodore Chenoweth 1866-1926
"Lunch and Home"
(Not all of us are fortunate to know our grandparents. Albert's grandfather died 18 years before he was born. This is a story his father related to Albert about his grandfather:
Add your story - Jon Egge
You can reach me by e-mail at: jegge@chenowethsite.com
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