Baby Picture of Mildred Mae McCauley, taken in summer, 1902 at Patout Studio, St. Marys, Kansas
Mildred Mae McCauley, was born on March 16, 1902 at Vera, Wabaunsee County, Kansas. Vera was little more than a name on a sign board near the Vera Road Rock Island railroad crossing by the time I had grown up. It was located 2 miles west of Maple Hill, and Mill Creek was to the south and within sight of the railroad crossing. Mildred's father, Samuel McCauley, was ranch foreman on the Frederick L. Raymond Ranch. He and his wife, Lucy Mae (Lemon) McCauley, lived in a little white frame story and one-half house that was at the entrance to the Raymond Ranch and very near the banks of Mill Creek. It was still standing well into the 1980s.
Baby picture of Mildred Mae McCauley taken in about 1904 at McNeely Studio, Beloit, Kansas. Grandmother told me that her mother was a beautiful seamstress and made their clothing. She also embroidered and did all kinds of tatting and crocheting as evidenced by the little dress. Lucy Mae (Lemon) McCauley was the youngest of ten children born to Stewart Montgomery and Lurancy Louisa (Grandy) Lemon. Her birthdate was December 8, 1873 and she was born at Eldora, Hardin County, Iowa. Grandmother Mildred and many of her first cousins told me that Stewart and Louisa had moved many times in a covered wagon across the Midwest. They had been married August 24, 1837 at Lake Geneva, Walworth County, Michigan and were the parents of ten children. After their marriage, they returned to Pontiac, Oakland County, Michigan for a short time before moving to Winona, Winona County, Minnesota. There, Stewart enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War. He came home ill and never regained his entire strength. He was later given a pension. In the early 1870s, he moved his family to Eldora, Hardin County, Iowa. Many family members told me that the entire family worked in the broom corn harvest there. They harvested the tops from the corn plants and were paid as labors. From there, they moved by covered wagon to Norton County, Kansas where they homesteaded land. The Great Grasshopper Plague occurred in 1874 and wiped out most farmers in the northern half of Kansas. Stewart, Lucy and other family members then went to work helping build the railroad in Cloud County, Kansas near Concordia.
Grandmother Mildred and her cousins, Charles and Margaret (Mitchell) Vilander said that both Lucy Mae and Jane Lemon worked as seamstresses, making shirts and repairing garments for the railroad workers. The men worked on the railroad work gangs. That is also how Lucy Mae Lemon met her future husband, Samuel McCauley. The extended McCauley Family lived in Plumb Township, Mitchell County, Kansas about nine and one-half miles northeast of Beloit. Samuel worked on his father's farm but made extra money working on the Union Pacific Railroad construction gangs. Stewart Lemon was an experienced stone mason and helped build bridges and culverts.
When the work was finished in Cloud and Mitchell Counties, the families heard about the building of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad across Wabaunsee County, Kansas. Many of the families moved to Maple Hill, Wabaunsee County, Kansas where some obtained railroad jobs and others worked for area farmers and in helping construct dwellings on the new townsite. Maple Hill was established as a town company in 1887.
I have never heard a reason, but Stewart and Louisa Lemon did not move to Maple Hill. They moved to Perry, Jefferson County, Kansas where Stewart helped construct several stone buildings in the town of Perry. As he aged, Stewart's health deteriorated. He suffered a stroke and died on May 15, 1894 and is buried in the cemetery at Perry, Kansas. After his death, Louisa "visited" her children and lived until 1918.
My intent is to cover the Lemon's in much more detail in several additional blogs, but in this writing, I'd like to deal more specifically with the McCauley Family.
Lucy Lemon and Samuel McCauley were married at the home of his parents on January 2, 1896. They were not married in a church because Lucy Lemon was Presbyterian and Samuel McCauley was Roman Catholic. When I went to the Catholic Church in Beloit, looking for McCauley family records, I found Samuel McCauley's record page with a big red ink "X" drawn through it on which was written, "Excommunicated - No Communion or Confession" The newly weds moved to Maple Hill and joined other family members fairly soon after their wedding, but they seemed to have taken the Union Pacific from St. Marys, Kansas to Beloit, Kansas often.Wedding Photograph of Samuel and Lucy Mae (Lemon) McCauley, taken after they were married on July 2, 1896 at the home of his parents.
Grandmother Mildred and her brother, Robert M. McCauley used to tell that their mother, Lucy McCauley, kept a row boat tied up on Mill Creek very near the house. She would go fishing nearly every day and kept a live box in the creek. When she would catch channel cat, she would throw them into the live box until they were needed for a meal. My Uncle Robert M. McCauley was born in that house on November 7, 1896.
A second child was born while they lived in the house near Mill Creek: Samuel Lester McCauleypnuemonia on January 19, 1904 at Vera. He is buried in the Old Stone Church Cemetery at Maple Hill, Kansas next to his parents.
Sometime around 1900, Samuel and Lucy moved to another tenant house on the Raymond Ranch. It was torn down before I was born but was located pretty much where Interstate 70 intersects with Vera Road. No photos of it are known to me. It was nearer Dr. Clothier's home than the main house on the Raymond Ranch.
Mildred Mae McCauley was born in the second house, on March 26, 1902.
Tragedy struck the little family when their son, Samuel Lester McCauley contracted pneumonia and died on January 19, 1904. He is buried in the Old Stone Church Cemetery, Maple Hill, Kansas. His father and mother were later buried next to him on the south side of the Old Stone Church. Uncle Bob McCauley told me that Sammy had a cold for a couple of weeks prior to his death. The family didn't think much about it. However three days before his death, the cold worsened, he had a fever and the cough became much worse. Dr. Clothier, who lived nearby, was summoned. Dr. Clothier asked Sam McCauley to ride his horse into Maple Hill and ask Dr. Kemper to also attend Sammy. The two doctors did all that medicine could afford but to no avail. The funeral was held at the Old Stone Church at 2:00pm on Saturday, January 21, 1904. Rev. W. B. Meggs conducted the service and friends carried the little coffin made by relatives to the gravesite. Aunt Olive (Allen) Lemon, wife of James Greer Lemon, told me her first hand account of attending little Sammy's service. A small obituary also appeared in the Alma Signal Enterprise, "Vera News."
Photo of Mildred Mae and Robert McCauley taken at their Snokomo Farm Home in 1915.Samuel McCauley worked very hard on the Raymond Ranch and eventually saved enough money for a down payment on a 160-acre farm about 3 miles to the south in the Snokomo Community. He moved his little family there in 1905. There was already a fine five-room house with enclosed porch built on the farm. Located near the house was a spring which flowed about 50 gallons of fresh water per minute. There was a nice stone spring house built over it where the McCauley's kept their milk, cream, butter eggs and some vegetables. Grandmother Mildred told me that there was a large patch of wild strawberries in the farm's pasture and that while they were careful and watched for rattle snakes, they harvested berries in spring and kept them in the spring house. She said that watercress also grew where the spring exited the spring house.
Sam and Lucy worked very hard but the weather cooperated and crops were good. Within just seven ears, the farm was paid for free and clear.
Tragedy again struck the family when Samuel McCauley began to have headaches and dizziness. Dr. Samuel Clothier, a neighbor, treated him initially and then he saw Dr. Kemper in Maple Hill and finally went to a doctor in Topeka, Kansas who specialized in "Brain Fever." He was sick for several months and the illness became progressively worse. Although no one knew much about cancer in those days, it is assumed that he must had had a malignant brain tumor.Samuel and Lucy (Lemon) McCauley, taken in about 1905 at Steinhoff Studio, Topeka, Kansas. The dark residue along the left side of the photo is mud damage from the 1951 Topeka Flood.
Grandmother Mildred would always start to cry when she talked about the last days of his illness. She said that he was not rational and that he became very violent. Her mother took him on the train to Topeka, where he was committed to the State Assylum. Grandmother said that previous to that, her uncles had come to the farm and at Sam's own request, they had chained him to a tree in the yard so he wouldn't hurt Lucy or the children. What a horrible experience that must have been.
He passed away in the Topeka Assylum on May 17, 1911. Grandmother Mildred said that she was only nine but she remembers those terrible days. Her grandmother, Roseanna (McCrystal) McCauley lived on the farm in Mitchell County, Kansas and she wanted her son's body brought there so it could be blessed by a Catholic priest. The body was taken by train from Topeka to Beloit.
In a 1981 letter to me, Nick Clark, from Lucille Martin, daughter of Margaret McCauley Smith and niece of Samuel McCauley: "I must tell you this. When I was a little girl, about 5 or 6 years old, I remember my mother taking me to Beloit, for her brother Samuel's funeral. My mother was soooo sad. When we arrived at the big stone farmhouse of Grandmother McCauley's, the casket was in the parlor, all laid out, nothing in the room but the casket and lots of flowers. The drapes were drawn and it was dark. The family and friends were all there in another room, talking, crying, eating, etc. I went into the room where the casket was, pulled up a chair and was looking into the casket. I noticed that his hair was messed up so I tried to straighten it up. Grandma McCauley came in and I gather in those days little children weren't supposed to be near corpses. She gathered me up in her arms, tears flowing, thanked me for fixing his hair and carried me into the other room. We all then got on the train with the casket and rode to Maple Hill for the burial at the little stone church. I'm now in my 70s, but I still remember that darkened room and that beautiful man, asleep, so peacefully in his casket."
Many of the Lemon Family attended the Methodist Church in Maple Hill so the services were held there. My Grandmother Mildred, told me that she had injured her foot getting off the train in Beloit. It was difficult for her to walk so she said her cousin, Charlie Mitchell, son of William Alexander and Mary Jane (Lemon) Mitchell carried her to the funeral and then to the buggy for the 1.5 mile ride from Maple Hill to the Old Stone Church Cemetery west of town.
Robert McCauley, who was only 14 when his father died, tried to operate the farm with his mother's help but the work was just too hard for a young boy and it was decided to rent the farm. Uncle Bob told me that he had just finished grade school at Snokomo School and when they decided to rent the farm, his mother sent him to Rossville High School in Rossville, Kansas. He boarded with his aunt and uncle, Margaret (Lemon) and William Miller and their two boys, Bill and Vernie Miller. He said that is where he was introduced to football and he played on the team along with Bill and Vernie. That team won the State Championship in 1914 when he was a senior.
During the summer, Uncle Bob McCauley worked on the custom steam threshing crew of my great grandfather's, Leander Emory Jones. Uncle Bob said they not only harvested in Wabaunsee County but went out to western Kansas. They took the big threshing engine and other equipment on a railroad flat car and then followed the harvest from west to east across the state. The stories Uncle Bob told me about that experience would fill a book. Uncle Bob was a great story teller!!
Grandmother Mildred and Uncle Bob told me that their mother, Lucy (Lemon) McCauley moved to Maple Hill, where she began a small merchantile store next to the feed store owned by Tom Rutledge on Main Street. Lucy was a very good business woman and succeeded in every one of her many endeavors. Uncle Bob remembered that her Snokomo Farm rented for $2,100 per year then. She took that and some money she and her husband Sam had saved, and used it to stock the store and buy a little house in Maple Hill. They both recalled that she always provided a good living for the family.
Great Grandmother operated many businesses over the years but seemed to specialize in general stores and little restaurants/cafes. She operated a large general store at Plains, Kansas in the extreme southwest part of the state. That is where my Grandmother Mildred graduated from high school.
Then Great Grandmother Lucy sent her to a year of Business School in Wichita, Kansas. That is where Grandmother Mildred met her future husband, Robert Corbin.
After that endeavor, Great Grandmother operated a general merchantile store at Clements, Kansas. She then moved back to her Smokomo Farm, where her new son-in-law, Robert Corbin and her daughter Mildred helped her operate the farm for a year or two. Bob and his mother-in-law Lucy did not get along well and Lucy decided to sell the farm. She eventually met her fourth husband, Jerrod Strong, and moved to Topeka, Kansas in 1940 where she operated a small cafe until retiring well into her 70s.
My mother, Lucille (Corbin) Clark used to tell about taking the train to Topeka and spending time with Great Grandma Lucy. Mom said that Lucy would get up at 4:00am and go to the restaurant where she made all kinds of pies. Mother said that Great Grandma's speciality was lemon meringue and that all her pies would be gone when she closed after lunch every day. My mother said that she was always exhausted when working with Great Grandma McCauley.
Great Grandmother Lucy didn't trust banks after they were closed during the Great Depression and the majority of people lost money. She always hid her money about her home. I remember after the 1951 flood ravaged her home in Topeka, my grandparents and other family members including myself, spent a lot of time looking for money under floor boards, in metal cans, and under carpets. Grandmother never left the home even though the raging flood waters reached three feet deep in the second floor of her home. The process of hunting for hidden money was repeated when she suffered a stroke and died on March 10, 1955. I was only 11-years-old and I don't remember how much money was found but it was several thousands of dollars.
I have lots more to share, both text and photos, concerning Great Grandmother Lucy, but I'll save that for the future. I will continue talking about the parents and grandparents of Samuel McCauley and Lucy Mae (Lemon) McCauley in future blogs. Until then, happy trails to you!!
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