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THE KERN FAMILY OF KINGSTON TOWNSHIP 
THE JAMES HOUGHTON FAMILY AS PIONEERS IN NEW YORK TWP.
THE COX FAMILY LIFE 
THE KAUTZ FAMILY IN CALDWELL COUNTY 
ANDREW BAKER - PIONEER PREACHER OF NEW YORK TOWNSHIP 1860
EDWARDS FAMILY IN NEW YORK SETTLEMENT 
IN NEW YORK TOWNSHIP IN THE SIXTIES 
THE FILSONS IN NEW YORK TOWNSHIP 
THE PUCKETT FAMILY IN NEW YORK TOWNSHIP IN 1859 
THE WALDO FAMILY IN FAIRVIEW TOWNSHIP - 1868 

THE KERN FAMILY OF KINGSTON TOWNSHIP 
Narrator: Mrs. Martha Ellen Baker, 78, Hamilton, Missouri

Home Made Clothing 
Ox-team Rides

Mrs. Baker is the widow of Edgar Baker who came into Caldwell
County with his parents 1869. She is the daughter of Margaret Ann
Zachary who married first Daniel Z. Cox (1817-1851) who is buried in
the Brown Cemetery and who is the grandfather of Mrs. Josie Borden of
Hamilton, second F.J. Kern, who was the father of Mrs. Baker. Her
parents were both early settlers. As a girl, Mrs. Baker lived
north and east of Kingston. Mrs. Kern, her mother carded all the
family wool on a pair of cards. She spun all the yarn, and wove all
the cloth for every article of clothing except boots, shoes and hats.
She insisted on her children wearing woolen hosiery all year around.
She and her girls knitted diligently to keep up a supply. She striped
the dyed yard with bright colors for stockings. She knitted mittens
and even gloves which were not clumsy. Mrs. Baker says she can't
recall seeing her sit down with idle hands. For colors, she used
white oak bark, which being boiled with the yarn or cloth gave a
golden brown color. The red and yellow dyes had to be bought at the
general store or drug store. She also wove carpet for herself and
customers. The carpet loom was rarely empty. Sometimes the rags
would be assorted for striped carpets, sometimes mixed for hit and
miss. Sewing rags was a fine way to put in a winter evening, with a
dish of apples near by. Mrs. Baker's brother Charles Kern often
drove the ox-team (Tom an Jerry) to Kingston in the sixties. Both
Mrs. Baker and Mrs. Josie Borden her niece had ridden behind them.
The oxen wore a yoke instead of collar and the driver used no lines
but directed them by his long ox whip and by gee (right) haw (left).
These orders were plain to them and they went along nicely. Usually
they were allowed to go their own way - a brisk rolling walk. If
pushed they went into a dog trot. 

Interviewed July 1934.

~~~~~~~~~~

THE JAMES HOUGHTON FAMILY AS PIONEERS IN NEW YORK TWP.
Narrator: Katherine Houghton of Hamilton

Houghton History 
Early Hardships
An Accident at Otter Creek 
New York Families in N.Y. Twp.
New York Cemetery

James Houghton and his wife were among the New Yorkers who helped
start the so-called New York settlement in Caldwell County in the
60's. Mrs. Houghton was Amy Jane Hall who was born in Jefferson
County, N.Y. in a community called New Connecticut because the
settlers were from that state. Her parents were Caleb G. Hall and
Catherine Lewis. They were prosperous and progressive people as shown
by the fact that in 1875 they had a furnace and carriage and other
niceties of life. Mrs. Amy went to rural school, then to Antwerp
Academy and then taught school and "boarded round." In 1875, she
was married to James Houghton, once also of Jefferson County, but then
of Caldwell County, Mo. He, in 1865, had started out from home with a
youthful comrade to see the country. They went through this section
on a train and it pleased him. He got a job as a brakeman on the
Hannibal and St. Joseph railroad and "fell for" the rolling farm lands
through which his train ran. Finally he quit railroading in the fall
of 1865 and bought a farm in the present N.Y. township, where his
family lived for several decades and which is now in the possession of
his daughter, Katherine. His farm like others at the time, was not
fenced, so he split rails in 1867-8 and fenced it. His father, Otis
Houghton, brought his family out in 1867 and set up a home near by.
When James Houghton's bride came out in 1875, she naturally found a
contrast to her New York home. Here were few fenced fields, roads
were laid but little used since it saved miles to cut across the
prairie; no bridges but people forded the creeks; no buggies but
people used lumber wagons or as New Yorkers said "double wagons."
She had been here just a week when she had an alarming experience.
Mr. and Mrs. Houghton and his family (Otis Houghton) had gone to town
to buy dishes, kitchen utensils, sugar and flour to fix up James' new
home. It was in the spring and snow was melting. They forded the
Otter Creek easily in the morning but in the evening they met with
much trouble. They were in a "double wagon" and the force of the
water dragged the horses and Mr. Houghton holding the lines, also the
wheels and the wagon frame away from the wagon bed in which were left
Mr. Houghton, the elder, Mrs. Houghton and their purchases. The wagon
bed drifted on till they came to the log of a tree. There they caught
hold, but the force of the water carried away the wagon bed and their
stuff and left them hanging to the log. Finally, Mr. James Houghton
got to shore with the team, caught the wagon bed, rescued them and
their only loss was sugar and flour. After James Houghton came to
this county, other families from Jefferson County, N.Y. came, too.
First, there were the three Austin brothers, Jake, Bill and Oliver;
Jake bought a section and sold some to his brothers. Other Jefferson
County settlers were the Searls, Salisbury, Thwing, Enos Boutwell
families as well as the Owens, Doyle, Wolcott, Few, Combs families
from other N.Y. counties. Mail was a scarcity. Four families had
an arrangement whereby each took a turn at bringing out the mail from
Hamilton for the four families. This was usually once a week but in
the winter in bad roads and weather it was at longer intervals; and at
times Miss Houghton says, there was a gunny sack of mail sent out.
The community in 1875 started its own cemetery, New York Cemetery, in
which the first burial was Mrs. Lucy Houghton buried Feb. 23rd. It is
now endowed with $1200.00 for perpetual care. The original plot was
one acre donated by A. Wolcott. This has lately been increased. The
community also a soon built its own church. This New York
township was originally settled by what the New Yorkers called
Missourians but the New York settlers soon became the dominant
population and the community is generally known as New York
settlement. 

Interviewed June 1934.

~~~~~~~~~~

THE COX FAMILY LIFE 
Narrator: Mrs. Sarah Hannah Puckett, 68, Hamilton, Missouri

Missourians and Yankees 
Spring Valley Teachers

Mrs. Puckett belongs to two of the older Caldwell County
families. Her father was John Cox and her mother Lydia Welker. The
Coxes were some of the Virginia families who lived in what is now New
York and Fairview townships. They did not like it very well when a
large group of "Yankees" from New York state came into the community
in the late sixties to buy land near them. At first there was a sharp
line of difference between the two groups of settlers. The New
Yorkers called the earlier settlers Missourians and the latter called
the later comers Yankees, both with a tone of their own superiority
(see note at end). John Cox was a son of old Jesse Cox
(1801-1852) and Sally Cox (1794-1892) early pioneers in this county.
The old Jesse Cox place was one-quarter mile east of the Cox
Graveyard. Jesse's boys were, Enoch who married first Jane Crist and
second a Miss Martin; Nathan who married Lucy Brown; Jeremiah (Jerry)
who married Mary Hatfield and John who had four wives: Nancy Peabody,
Lydia Welker, Nellie Wells and Mrs. Culp (Kay Culp's Mother). Jesse
Cox's wife (Sallie Edwards) lived to be almost one hundred years old
and almost blind but she could always tell the denominations of money,
silver or bills. The John Cox place is now owned by James Puckett.
It was a quarter south of the Puckett land. Mrs. Puckett went to
Spring Valley or Cox School and some of her early teachers were: John
Boyd (afterwards Post Master at Nettleton) Charles Cline, Courtland
Van Slyke (buried many years ago in the "Old" Hamilton Cemetery)
Phoebe McFee and Mollie Stubblefield who taught about sixty years in
this county. Mrs. Puckett attended Hamilton High School 1882 under
Prof. Guttery. John Cox used to trade in Hamilton, coming at
first across prairie land, any which way and going around the streams
or fording them. He used to say that he recalled when only two or
three houses stood between them and Hamilton, one was the Jacob Kautz
house. He knew Hamilton when there was a saloon, a store and a
blacksmith shop here. Early settlers produced most of their eats and
clothes at home and rarely came to town to buy "bought on goods." In
the early Cox home, whatever bacon could not be used at home was
hauled to Lexington to be shipped south. Most of the early Cox
family lie in the Cox Graveyard; Nathan lies in the Brown Cemetery;
the Pucketts lie in the Cox. Interviewed July 1934.

Interviewers note: The Yankee-Missourian feeling of animosity
gradually wore off in New York settlement but it continued fairly
strong today in the Kidder community.

~~~~~~~~~~

THE KAUTZ FAMILY IN CALDWELL COUNTY 
Narrator: Worth Kautz of Wichita, Kansas

The Jacob Kautz family came to Caldwell County in 1859 from
Illinois to which they had come from Indiana. They settled in what
was known as Grand River township now New York township in the
Pleasant Ridge district. They came in a slow ox-wagon. The settlers
who came here in the fifties had a much harder time than those who
came in the sixties, for every year of pioneering advanced conditions
of living in a new country. There were three sons; George, Ross and
Worth; six daughters; Laura (Dodge), Emily (Lemon), Hannah (Lambert),
Margaret (Noel), Annetta (Houghton), and Mollie (Spivey). When
they came here they all lived in a covered wagon till the house was
finished; and since there was not yet sleeping room inside for the
boys, they slept that winter out doors in the covered wagon. In those
days of 1859-60, the Kautz house has been mentioned by old-timers as
one of two houses to be seen for twelve miles south of Hamilton.
When the Civil War was about to break out and it became likely that
the oldest boy George would be expected to go to war, he went back to
Illinois to enlist with boys whom he had known before they moved to
Missouri. Those first few years were hard ones. They had to find
the right crops for the new soil and they had to subdue the soil.
They had to provide for the family needs and they had very little
money to spend. They rarely ate store victuals for most of their food
came off the place. They had little white bread mostly corn-bread.
Worth was the youngest son and he went with his mother on her trips to
gather berries (gooseberries, strawberries, blackberries,
elderberries); to gather herbs for medicine since doctors were costly
and far away. He used to hunt bee trees for by the old law of the
land the finder of a bee tree had the honey, no matter where the tree.
He and his father and brothers shot or trapped wild game and kept them
for winter meat. He told of hunting deer with Al Pemberton of the
neighborhood. The Kautz and the Houghton family intermarried.
Annetta Kautz married Ira Houghton. Mary Houghton married George
Kautz and Sophia Houghton married Ross Kautz. 

Interviewed November 1933.

~~~~~~~~~~

ANDREW BAKER - PIONEER PREACHER OF NEW YORK TOWNSHIP 1860
Narrator: Mrs. Caroline Williamson, 84, Breckenridge, Missouri

Mrs. Williamson is a grand daughter of Elder Andrew Baker and
Nancy Bryant. Rev. Baker was born in Washington County Virginia 1797
and died about forty years ago. He was an outstanding character in
the church history of Caldwell county. His grandfather Andrew Baker
was a farmer-preacher in Virginia and was a chaplain in the
Revolutionary war. He himself followed in his grandfather's steps and
was ordained a Baptist Elder at Versailles Indiana in which State he
and his young wife had moved as pioneers in 1828. In 1860 he moved to
Caldwell county in what is now New York Township and acquired a farm
of 400 acres. While a splendid farmer in reducing the unimproved
lands to fertility, he never forgot his church and the ministry.
He busied himself in arousing an interest in the Missionary Baptist
church in his community. For some years they had held occasional
services in homes before he came on the scene. Finally he organized
the Hopewell Church; its organization dates from November 10 1866; and
he and his wife Diana, his son Thomas and wife, his grand daughter
Caroline (later Williamson), Sarah Cox, and Elizabeth Puckett were
some of the constituent members. He preached there till he died. He
gave liberally to the church building erected 1867 and besides gave
$1000 to be loaned at 6% to be used in paying a preacher's salary.
This fund still is being used for this purpose. When the Hamilton
Baptist church was being organized in May 1868 at the home of Elder
Bennett Whitely we find Elder Andrew Baker there to help in the
organization as a messenger from the "Baptist church on Shoal near the
mouth of Crab apple Creek" which was an early designation for his
church. By his first wife, Elder Baker had ten children. After
her death 1861 he married Diana Bateman and had two daughters Mrs.
Hattie Young and Mrs. Grace --- who was a milliner here in Hamilton in
the nineties. Grace Baker his youngest child was much younger than
his grand daughter, Mrs. Caroline Williamson the narrator aged 84.
Rev. Baker is buried in the Hopewell Cemetery. 

Interviewed September 1933.

~~~~~~~~~~

EDWARDS FAMILY IN NEW YORK SETTLEMENT 
Narrator: Mrs. Ollie Peabody, 86, Hamilton, Missouri

The Trip From Virginia 
Reasons For Moving
The Marriage Cap 
Frolics of the Edwards Family

Mrs. Peabody was the daughter of Isaac Edwards and Nancy Moore of
Grayson County Virginia who made the trip from the hills of Carroll
County Virginia to Caldwell County in a covered wagon 1849. They
settled in New York Township then called Grand River Township. Mrs.
Peabody recalled much of that trip west which took six or eight weeks.
They were strict Campbellites and did not travel on the Sabbath.
Whenever they stopped Saturday night they stayed till Monday Morning.
They herded their cattle along the road and often the cattle were a
day behind the wagons. At night the women folks slept in the wagons,
the men folks under the wagons. There are two reasons for their
coming west. First Mr. Edwards had several of the Edwards clan (who
largely composed the neighborhood) marry their own cousins; and he
said he was going away so his children would not have to marry their
cousins. Again little Ollie (Mrs. Peabody) had the pthsic and needed
a change. When they started she had to stay in the wagon, but when
she got to Caldwell county she could ride horse back. Mrs.
Peabody was never seen without a cap to the day of her death. She
said she put on a cap with her wedding veil and after that she was
never without it except to comb her hair or wear a hat. It was a sign
"back there in Virginia" of a married woman. At night she wore a
night cap. Mrs. Rosamond Bowers her sister knew of this custom but
did not observe it. The social events of her day were many.
Infair dinners were always given the second night after a wedding.
Her own family gave an infair for an orphan girl who had been married.
There were dances, games and the Virginia reel. She and her sisters
used to ride horseback half a day from the Bowers home in New York
Township to attend a "play party" up at the Bowers home in Daviess
County. They would stay all night and return the next day Mrs.
Peabody's brothers and sisters who came to maturity were: Celia,
Solomon, Amos, Haywood, Rosamond Bowers, Matilda Hawks and Ruth
Wonsettler.

~~~~~~~~~~

IN NEW YORK TOWNSHIP IN THE SIXTIES 
Narrator: Mrs. Mary Kautz, 87, of Hamilton, Missouri

Houghton Family 
Horse Back Riding and Roads 
School Teaching in the Sixties

Mrs. Mary Kautz is the daughter of Otis Houghton. In the spring
after the close of the Civil War, her brother James came into Caldwell
County as a visitor and was so well impressed that he went back and
told his father that out in Missouri there was land which you could
plow all day long without striking a stone. He came back and bought
and the father came also in 1866. Both bought land from the railroad
in what is now called New York settlement because so many New Yorkers
settled there. The Otis Houghton farm is the present Ben Mackey farm.
It is sometimes said that the Austin families were the first New
Yorkers to settle there but really James Houghton came earlier but
without a family. (See Katherine Houghton paper for further data.)
When the Houghtons came there were no roads between New York township
and Hamilton. Often, she said, she would lose her way in the many
horse paths across the prairie. Then she dropped the reins and left
the matter to the horse, who would pick out the way, especially on
returning home. She used to come to town with a long black riding
skirt and a satchel for her shopping. In town she would find a horse
block and get off; let down her riding skirt and go shopping.
Mrs. Kautz was one of the early teachers in that country. She had
already taught in New York so she easily got a school here. Her first
school was the Radical log school, the Pleasant Ridge, then Wolf
Grove. She "boarded round" in part of her experience. She got $2.50
cash per week and her board from the patrons. At Pleasant Ridge she
got a little bit more and she paid her board at the home of Jacob
Kautz whose son George she afterwards married. Her description of
school life of that time are very interesting. She said that
sometimes there was no uniformity in readers, arithmatics etc.; that
at the Radical school every pupil brought what ever text book they
happened to have and had to be taught out of it. When she complained
to a director he said "she had better put up with it, for there was
prejudice in the district any way against stuck-up Yankees." The
country down there was settled with Southerners before the New York
people came. All three schools in which she taught had about the same
type of seats and desks. At three sides of the room were writing
desks made of planed logs and held up by supports, underneath was a
second shelf for books. The seats faced the wall and also were made
of planed logs - no backs. Some short ones had "milk stool" legs,
some long ones had uprights at intervals. When the children recited,
they had to turn around and face the teacher. She recalled that
she took her teachers examination under Floyd McAfee' grandfather, he
being the county school commissioner. She said it was oral and took
about half a day. A cousin of hers came out from New York who had
been off to school. She had a New York certificate and they let her
teach without any examination. Aunt Mary Kautz today has a wide
reputation as a fine cook. About thirty five years ago she baked
bread and doughnuts and redeemed a large debt. Until very recently
she baked the chicken pies for the annual Congregational Church
Supper. Her 87 years' vigor makes her a character in Hamilton.

Interviewed on her 87th Birthday February 2, 1934.

~~~~~~~~~~

THE FILSONS IN NEW YORK TOWNSHIP 
Narrator: Mrs. Zelma Adams Filson, 70, Hamilton, Missouri

School Affairs 
Shoal Creek Tricks

Mrs. Filson is the widow of Thomas Filson of Hamilton and the
step-daughter of John Owen. She was born in New York State and she
came west with her Mother and her step-father in the colony of New
York neighbors who settled in the present New York Township and
Fairview Township in the late sixties. (For her remembrance of Haun's
Mill, the old Mormon site, see special paper.) There she grew up.
In her seventeenth year, she took her first teachers examination for a
license to teach. Steve Rogers of Kingston was the School
Commissioner. He gave her a very severe oral examination on account
of her youthful aspect, thinking she might be poorly prepared. She
passed and later 1883 taught in the primary department of the
"Hamilton Graded Schools" as they said those days under Professor
Guttery. This was in the old north side brick which was torn down
about 1905. She married Thomas Filson 1884 whose father James
Filson had come into the county from Kentucky prior to the influx of
the New York settlers. There were two Filson brothers, Washington
(known as Wash) and James (Jim). They settled in the forks between
the Otter and the Shoal Creeks. Jim, being nearer Shoal, soon saw
that he had made an error when he put his log cabin in the rich bottom
land; for every time Shoal would get up it would come right into the
cabin; and they putting the chairs on the tables would go over to
Wash's house till the creek went down. So when they built their
permanent home, they dug a cellar of only two feet then heaped up a
high foundation and built the house that. When Shoal came up, it
filled the cellar two feet but could not get into the house. When
Mrs. Filson and her husband were married they lived in this very
house. She recalls one time that Shoal came up to the house and when
it receded they went out in the yard and picked up a mess of fish.
This farm was afterwards sold to E.G. Wallace who lived there many
years (and so did the Interviewer who taught down there). Mr. Wallace
told the same "fish story" about the fish once being picked up in the
grass of the dooryard. Since the Filsons lived there, Shoal Creek has
changed its course at least once; and in flood years ruined many a
corn crop but at other times has given bumper crops in its bottoms.
Captain Wash Filson was a member of the Caldwell County Home Guards
during the Civil War and his duties brought much trouble to him with
the Southern sympathizers of that neighborhood. Jim was not active in
the War. He had three sons come to maturity, Thomas, Frank and
Alfred. Wash's children were George Leonard, Samuel and Mrs. Dave
Paullin. With the exception of Mrs. Filson there is not a person
living today in the county by this name; so widely has the family
scattered. Mrs. Filson's daughter married James M. Hill a
grandson of the pioneer Samuel Hill (see paper). 

Interviewed June 1934.

~~~~~~~~~~

THE PUCKETT FAMILY IN NEW YORK TOWNSHIP IN 1859 
Narrator: James Puckett, 79, of Hamilton, Missouri

Mr. Puckett was born 1855 in Carroll County Virginia. With his
father Constant Puckett and the other members of the family, he came
1859 to Caldwell County to live. Constant's brother-in-law Elisha
Edwards already lived here. They came to Lexington Missouri by boat
and from there overland by ox team. When ever any relation came out
to visit the Pucketts, they always drove over to Lexington after them.
Constant Puckett first bought a forty from the Government in New
York Township, later an eighty from the railroad, six miles south of
the railroad, the land still is in the Puckett name, being owned by
James the narrator. James' father and some of the sons were in
the Union army. Neighbors of the Pucketts were: Elisha Edwards, John
Cormona, John Cox, Isaac Edwards and Billy Hawks. His first home
was a one-room log cabin later a shed kitchen built on. The cabin had
a window at one end and a chimney at the other and a door in front.
Inside was a bed, a trundle bed to be shoved under the bed and often
beds on the floor for the children. The church was Hopewell,
Baptist with Father or Grandpap Andrew Baker (they called him both) as
pastor; in this church Mrs. Constant Puckett was a constituent member.
The school was Pleasant Ridge and early teachers were: Mr.
Woosebeck, Annetta Kautz who married Ira Houghton, Miss Scott (later
Clevenger). Amusements were literary societies, debates, spelling
matches and all day work like husking corn at some farm when the women
quilted and the food "was brought in". Mr. Puckett recalled some
of the old farming ways which he had known as a youth. There was the
old linch pin wagon and the stiff tongued wagon which used the linch
pin wheel, the jumping shovel plow for ground with stumps (it was like
a single shovel but had a cutter in front of the shovel which made the
plow jump the stump) there was the old wood turning plow. He recalled
how first the ground was broken with one yoke of cattle, then run over
with single shovel plow, then planted by hand from a seed
bucket--three seeds to the hill (one to rot, one to grow, one for the
birds). The plow then went through the parallel lines, then checked
in the other way through and at each check seeds were planted. Then
it was covered by dragging a stone the size of a pillow over the
field. Later came the hand planter, still later the horse planter.
Changes came to in cutting wheat. First a bunch of wheat was taken in
hand and cut with a hand sickle until enough was done for a bundle.
Then came the cradle and the binder. Todays' machinery combine many
of these steps. The old wheat threshing was done on a "threshing
floor" which was really hard ground swept clean, then the wheat was
spread out with heads all in the same direction and horses were driven
over it in a circle. It was cleaned by a fan. Few people had
buggies those days. Billy Clampitt, and Charlie Hawks were the first
in their part. The buggies (later spring wagons) cost $150 to $200
and that was a lot of money to spend when you already had a farm
wagon. 

Interviewed July 1934.

~~~~~~~~~~

THE WALDO FAMILY IN FAIRVIEW TOWNSHIP - 1868 
Narrator: Mrs. Louisa N. Chapman, 84, of Breckenridge

Mrs. Chapman is the daughter of Asel Waldo and Aurelia A. McNutt,
both of Lake City, Ohio. On her father's side, she descends from Seth
Sprague who fought for his country in the Revolutionary and 1812 Wars.
In 1846, Asel Waldo took up a homestead in Marquette County,
Wisconsin, and in 1868 joined the land rush to Caldwell County,
Missouri. His farm was near the site where the next year the new
town, Proctorville, was founded by Dan Proctor. A "ramshackle" school
house was built in the corner of a cornfield and Mrs. Chapman, who had
had some good schooling in Wisconsin, was the second teacher there.
The Waldos kept sheep and sent their wool to Berlin and Brunswick to
be carded and made into rolls 18 inches long and as big around as
one's finger, from which the mother and the girls knit the family
stockings and mittens. Mrs. Chapman and her mother both spun and
today she can still run an old spinning wheel. While both knew how to
weave, they did little of their own weaving but put it out to an
expert woman who did it for the community. At the age of 22, she
married J.N. Chapman and he first helped her father with the large
tract of land, and later bought a part of the farm. They have three
children, Elizabeth Morse, W.W. of Braymer and Asel B. of Madison
County, Mo. Mrs. Chapman recalls in the late 60's, still in the
Reconstruction days after the war, that her father and Mrs. Chapman
both had to take an oath of allegiance to the government before they
could vote. Those days women sufferage was just a wild dream and any
woman who wanted to vote was a kind of a freak, and rather unladylike.

Interviewed 1934.

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