Interesting story on CAPPS of Dent/Texas Counties of Mo, from a distant
cousin, also w/ Capps ties of Weakley Co TN origin---Jim
-----Original Message-----
From: Joe W. Stout <joewstout(a)iswt.com>
Subject: Bessie Hawkins
Jim and all:
I posted the following on the Fly Family Forum on your thread - Flytown -
William & Lucy Capps' Family.
Joe Stout
After reading the posts about Bessie Capps Hawkins book I remembered that
someone had sent me a copy of a newspaper article written about her. There
is a picture of her evidently in her home with some of her keepsakes. The
caption underneath reads:
+++++++++++++++
BESSIE CAPPS HAWKINS AND FAMILY KEEPSAKES... Mrs. Hawkins is sittin in an
old chair this is the only one left of three that her father had made when
he married in 1879. He paid a bushel of corn for each chair made by a Mr.
Fagan. The braided rug on the floor is one she made with her sister's
help. The butter dish, cake platter and spoon holder on the table belonged
to her mother. The lamp was given to her by her brother, Roy Capps. The
goblets and pitcher were bought at Marshall by a brother Elbert Capps as
gifts for his sisters and the basket on the floor was her mother's brother
bought the basket at Houston on one of his trips. The blue plate was one
the Capps brought with them from Tennessee. The old picture frame which
once had a mirror belonged to Lewis and Clarissa Watson, and the picture is
a Currier and Ives print that Granville Capps won for getting the most
head marks' in spelling at school in 1882. The old mirror, however has a
story all its own. When Grandparents of Mrs. Hawkins brought it with them
from Tennessee and it was the first mirror in the Ashley Cave area near
Montauk in 1859. A group of boys came over to pay them a call. When they
looked into the mirror and saw themselves they ran outside and went running
all around the house to find the boys who were supposedly in the yard.
The Salem News, Salem, MO, Monday August 5, 1968
SUGAR AND SPICE
By Margaret Vicery
When the Dent County Historical Society held their "Show and Tell" meeting
several months ago in the Second Baptist Church, Bessie Hawkins told some
humorous tales about her parents and grandparents when they first came to
Missouri. After our visit with her last week I not only have those tales
but several more that Mrs. Hawkins has written doen about the early history
of her ancestors before and during the Civil War that are most interesting.
They go back to her great-grandfather, William Capps who first migrated
from South Carolina to Western Tennessee. He settled near Greenfield, in a
community known as Flytown. Flytown got its name from a tribe of Cherokee
Indians named Fly who lived in this area at the time. Great- grandfather
William Capps fell in love with a Fly Indian girl and married her. He paid
the tribe a sum of money if they would all move out of the county he lived
in. The Cherokee Fly tribe then moved to Oklahoma.
Her grandfather, Elisha Fly Capps, was born in 1824, and married Mary Ann
Stout. Around 1855 Elisha and Mary Ann started the long journey from
Tennessee to Missouri. The journey took six weeks. Mary Ann was a woman
of great courage and traveled day after day on a gray mare holding a small
son on her lap. A few years later during the Civil War, whtn living near
Ashley Cave theis mare was taken by the Union men. She complained to an
officer who came riding by later in the day. He asked "Would she come home
if loosed?" Her reply was, "Yes." The next morning the mare was at home
and she always believed the officer turned her loose.
Elisha and Mary Ann Stout Capps first settled on a farm about 2 miles west
of Lecoma near a large spring. Here they added the fourth daughter to the
family. Then they moved to a farm one mile south of Lecoma and a second
son, Henry Granville Capps was born. When he was one month old they moved
to Texas County on Ashley Creek or perhaps this farm might lie in the
corner of Dent County. It was here that they lived during the Civil War.
Granville Capps, Bessie Hawkins father, recalled many hardships when they
lived near Ashley Cave and Mrs. Hawkins set down' many of them in writing.
"Grandmother had all her provisions for winter such as molasses,
preserves, corn for bread, and animals, but saw them all carried away by
the soldiers, and some dumped out. The big stone jar full of preserves was
broken and dumped beside a big stump not far from the house. The corn
cribs were made of logs and unroofed. The corn was shoveled into wagons,
commandeered from neighbors. As the corn lowered in the crib the logs were
thrown off so there was no effort to shovel the corn in the wagons. When
they reached the bottom of the crob there was no more corn and no more
logs. One neighbor who was forced to use his team and wagon, sat glumly on
the rail fence with his back turned to the house, whole the soldiers raided
the crib.
This is believed to be the time when the gray mare was stolen and released
to come home. All the stock was taken by the soldiers. But Mary Ann never
gave up. She mounted her gray mare and rode over the hills to people more
fortunate in escaping these raids. She solicited spinning, weaving,
knitting, or any kind of work she could do at home, in return for this work
she was paid with food for her family. She was accompanied on these trips
by her small son, Granville, who always rode behind her. When she returned
home with work, she and the eldest daughter, Alice worked late into the
night to turn out the work.
When spring came again, no team, and no man (Grandfather in the Army) to,
make a corn crop, but with the resourcefulness natural to her she took the
children to the field where the corn had been raised the previous year, had
them pull out the corn stubs and plant the corn in these holes. Then it
was tended with hoes.
The Capps frm was about three miles from Montauk. There was a water mill
located there. The eldest boy, then a lad of about eight years, was put on
a horse with a measure of corn to take to the mill to be ground into meal.
Several daylight hours elapsed, night came, but no boy. Grandmother Capps
grew restless with anxiety. Wolf packs being prevelent in the woods added
to her anxiety. Walking the floor, wondering, listening. After a few more
hours, the horse was heard then the whistling of the boy. So many
customers were ahead of him and each one must take their turn. All these
hours, even tho' a small lad, he had waited patiently as he knew his mother
was depending on him to bring meal for the family bread.
In 1870 the family purchased land just north of Licking on the Rolla road
(now C Highway), Grandfather and my dad, now thirteen, made a camp out
there whild a house was constructed. They made a trip to Rolla with ox
teams which took five days for a round trip. My dad felt very much a man
to drive and ox team all this long way of 35 miles each way.
Baxter School always held a special meaning for me as my dad attended
school there. He was a good scholar and once won a Currier and Ives print
as a prize for making the most head marks' in spelling when he was 15
years old.
Later this farm was sold and they settled near Cave Spring. The spring is
at the foot of a steep hill while the Capps home was on top of the hill.
This spring was the source of water for the family; One day my day
(Granville) and a son-in-law were hauling barrels of water up the hill.
The weather was very cold with ice in the wagon bed. A barrel slid back,
tipped over spilling the whole barrel of water over him. The
brother-in-law said, "What shall we do?" and Daddy replied, "Do as you
please, I'm going to the house." Even tho' a very short distance, all his
garments were frozen stiff on him when he arrived at the house." Henry
Granville Capps, Bessie Hawkins father, was born Dec. 15, 1857, the sixth
child of Elisha Fly Capps and Mary Ann Stout Capps. He wooed and married a
young lady named Harriet Irene Watson on Oct. 30, 1879 at Prescott (near
Licking), MO., at the home of her eldest brother, Jesse Watson.
Again in the history of the Watson family, Mrs. Hawkins has recorded
several interesting incidents:
On account of the war the parents of Harriet Irene Watson, Lewis and
Clarissa Ferguson Watson, moved north. This was a large family of 18
children. The name of one child has been lost. Three children died before
they reached Missouri. They lived some years in Georgia. My mother has
often described some features of the place. One was the large pear trees
that grew in the yard and the large spring near by. They kept their milk
and butter there. The spring was surrounded by white like stones, perhaps
a limestone, and in these were depressions of various sizes. The older
girls would skim up the milk and pour the clabber milk in these
depressions. The younger ones (my mother being one of them) were there
with spoons ready to consume it.
Another incident which she laughed about (and my mother laughed a lot in
spite of all the hardships which were hers). She and her brother, Will
Watson, were sent to the river bottom for bark from a tree. Pioneer women
used these barks to produce dyes. Different trees produced different
colors. The river was frozen over. Large fish lay dormant near the
surface. They had their ax, so they struck the ice a blow to stun the
fish, chipped a hole and brought out the fish. They were so engrossed with
this that time flew by. They forgot the bark and as they neared home they
began to realize they had not performed the duty they had been sent to do.
They did the fish in the chimney corner and entered the house empty handed.
After being punished they confessed they had a lot of fish and were told
"had you brought your fish in you could have avoided punishment."
In 1870 the Watson family moved to Missouri. By this time a number of the
older ones were married. So there were several wagons in this train that
moved west. My mother was then nine years old. She did not want to leave
home and friends. She climbed out of the wagon and hid beside the road
intending to go back to the home they were leaving. However, as the sound
of the wagons faded out, she became suddenly conscious of the fact that all
her loved ones were in this wagon train. She ran and ran and slipped into
the feed box of the last wagon as it was crossing a sizeable stream of
water. A feed box attached to the back of the wagon was standard equipment
for these journeys. These were for the teams to eat grain from. Mother
barely managed to scramble into this feed box for the crossing. She had
not been missed as the occupants of each wagon thought she was with
another. They came through the town of St. Louis which was not too large
a city at that time. She remembers seeing a woman scrubbing steps and one
brother tried flirting a bit with her but she promptly snubbed him.
Grandfather Watson only lived a year after they settled on the farm at
Prescott, Mo. and four years later grandmother died.
And this brings us down to the father and mother of Bessie Hawkins. Henry
Granville Capps and Irene Watson Capps began their married life in Texas
County as share croppers. They started housekeeping with very few pieces
of furniture. In 1885 Granville Capps applied for a land patent on an
acreage in Dent County near Anutt. The house was a lare log room with a
lean-to kitchen. A fireplace was the source of heat. Later on they had a
six room house which is the one that Bessie Capps Hawkins grew up in.
Bessie attended the Weber School and taught at South Fairview in a
one-room school house with long benches for the children to sit on, and no
desks. From here she taught a year at Mt. Hermon, and then four years as
Lecoma and a short term at Watkins. In 1922, and they had no children.
And, now, Bessie closes with:
The days which seemed would never pass when I was a youngster have flown
by and now they say I'm growing old. It is my wish in writing bout the
early days of my family, to leave a heritage to posterity. Not money but
something that enriches lives. To help some to understand how great are
some blessings that money cannot buy.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Her story of the Fly Indian tribe is evidently mistaken but I'm wondering
if that might be confused with stories I've been told about Flytown that
Elisha Fly Jr.'s wife was the Reed family and that they were at least part
Cherokee Indian. Could it be that William Rogers Capps wanted the Reed's
relocated to another county. At any rate there is no doubt that the
Fly/Capps/Stout/Cochran families of the Flytown/Christmasville area of
Tennessee were of Indian descent from one or more of these families.
Joe Stout
________________________________________________________
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