The reason this part of the family migrated to Missouri can only be assumed, as there are no family stories to provide any absolute information. However, there were many families from Loudoun and Fauquier County who had migrated to Missouri previous to, and following the Civil War; the Withers family of Warrenton, the Fishback and Luttrell families, and the Noland and Smallwood families of Loudoun County. The Noland and Smallwood families are much intermarried in both State’s, and the areas around Hillsboro and Purcelville has been home to a great many of them. It is likely these families would send reports of life in Missouri to their families remaining in Virginia, and these reports were shared with others in the nearby communities. After all, in the time before electronic entertainment, there were not many better stories than those coming from the edge of the Wild West. It could be that Oliver heard enough reports and stories of success that he decided to take the risk and remove to Missouri.
In about 1882, Oliver and Alcinda’s daughter married the eldest son of Elijah Chilton Lunceford; Alcinda was Chilton’s younger sister. William ‘Willie’ Rhodes Lunceford married Elouise ‘Ella’ Hawes, they were first cousins. The marriage between first cousins was a common practice in that era when the possible results of such close familial relationships was not understood. I have not found an actual record of their marriage, but it likely took place in Loudoun County.
In about 1886, Willie and Ella Lunceford left Loudoun County, Virginia for Jackson County, Missouri to settle near Ella’s parents, Oliver and Alcinda. Traveling along with them was Willie’s younger brother, Samuel Shelton ‘Shelt’ Lunceford. The area where they settled is within Fort Osage Township which is in the north-eastern corner of Jackson County. A small village in the area, which was called Mecklin, served as the initial hometown of the families. They also occupied land near Lake City, which is now government-owned and contains an ammunition manufacturing facility. This area is best known for the operation of Jesse and Frank James and their gang. It is believed the families in this area provided much support for them during the Civil War when they rode with William Quantrill, and afterward when they were bandits in the area.
Samuel Shelton ‘Shelt’ Lunceford married Frances Hannah Brammer, the daughter of a Virginia Confederate veteran, James Naaman Brammer. He and his brother, Greene C. Brammer, came to Jackson County, Missouri following the war. These two Brammer’s are buried in the Confederate Cemetery in Higginsville, Missouri. Frances and Shelt had 12 children, one daughter, Mary died very young. Many of their children were born in a house that still stands across from the land my parents purchased near Levasy, Missouri. It happens that this property is very near the Walnut Grove Stock Farm mentioned later in this document. Later, Shelt moved his family to Lake City, Missouri. He was a farmer early on, but was listed in the census as a plumber.
John Henry Lunceford, a younger brother of Willie and Shelt, married Madie Ann Smith, daughter of George Smith of Halfway, Virginia. They lived near Orlean and Hume, Virginia. They lost two children, Ernest and Ethel, early in their marriage. John and Madie left for Missouri sometime in the early 1890’s, we believe. Family lore claims John killed an officer of the law in Virginia and fled to Missouri to avoid prosecution. He eventually had to return to Virginia to stand trial and be cleared of the charge of murder in order to qualify for a government job in Missouri. He apparently got off with a declaration of self-defense, but none of this story has ever been verified. He did, however serve as a “road-overseer,” or foreman, in the Fairmount district of Independence, by appointment of Judge Harry S. Truman. An additional incident of family lore claims that John became so enraged over the harassment on himself by another gentleman that he threatened if the fellow didn’t stop what he was doing, they “would find his dead carcass stretched over his own woodpile, sometime.” As gruesome as this threat is, story has it that someone did, in fact, find the fellow’s violently beaten, dead body laid on top of the woodpile near his own house. This story has also never been verified. Any credibility can only be added by more family lore that suggests the Civil War veteran, and older uncle by the same name, John Henry, would take the younger John to the taverns in Fauquier and start a fight. Then, he would step out, leaving the younger John to defend himself alone and, should the younger John be tossed out of the melee, the older John would throw him back in until all the fight had gone out of one party or other. Again, unverified lore, but it lends a possible motive to the previous mentioned episodes of violence.
Ella’s brother, Granville
Hawes married Sarah Rachel Campbell, the daughter of John Beazer Campbell, a
prominent area farmer from Loudoun County, Virginia, and a pioneer of the Fort
Osage Township. Granville was not well regarded by Sarah’s father as is evidenced
by a portion of his will which roughly states that, “…should Sarah marry
Granville Hawes, she will not receive her inheritance until she reaches the age
of 39 years, because I (Campbell) feel he is not fit to provide for her
well-being…” This is a very harsh description of Granville, but not an
unfamiliar feeling for many fathers. And, yes, Campbell did actually name
Granville Hawes in his will. This gives strong evidence that, early on, the
family was not more than simply, poor dirt-farmers, a condition that endured
for two generations, at least.
Despite the feelings of John Campbell, Granville Hawes was the great provider in the family. He married Sarah after her inheritance was secured. Joining with his in-laws, George Grubb Campbell and Mary Elizabeth Virginia (Campbell) Worley, they created the Cedar Grove and Walnut Grove Stock Farms just north of Mecklin. The large property left to Campbell’s three children provided many mules for the local farmers, as well as for the First World War. Sarah and Granville’s land was still held by a grandson until around 1995, when it was sold, the greater portion sold to a development company. The smaller portion still contains the house built by Granville and is still in great condition. Headstones placed on several family gravesites were purchased by Granville. He helped many neighbors weather through the Great Depression by purchasing their land and selling it back later, without interest, if they could afford to repay him. Several housing additions in Oak Grove, Missouri bear the Hawes name.
Two other Hawes brothers, Turner and Walter, migrated to Arizona, likely late in the 1890’s, and began farming and ranching in the Tempe-Mesa area. The two became quite respected and prominent, assisting in the development of the irrigation system there. They returned to Missouri in 1905 to purchase milking cows to take to Arizona in order to provide dairy products to their ranch-hand’s families. A reunion was featured by their younger brother, Ted Hawes while they were in Missouri, and a photograph taken then shows the three generations of the Hawes family, including the family of Willie and Ella Lunceford. Jeter Hawes, the last of the Hawes children, also went to Tempe-Mesa to improve his health and raised chickens on a small farm there.
Granville’s father, Oliver never “amounted to much.” According to family stories shared through one of Granville’s daughters, Oliver and, at some point Willie Lunceford, were apparently seldom in good health and were unable to create much wealth from their efforts. Oliver Hawes was close to what is considered elderly, even when he married Alcinda he was middle-aged. When he came to Missouri, he was probably old enough to be feeble and easily fatigued. We don’t have an accurate account of his condition, but the risks and effects of heat-stroke are common in this part of the country; it’s possible this is why he couldn’t provide a living. Or, they may have just been lazy, as Granville’s daughter believed.
As was stated above, regarding bad health and inability to work, the same was said of Willie Lunceford, after a point. The same daughter of Granville, who mentioned Oliver’s poor condition, didn’t carry much regard for Willie either, when it came to his inability to work. It was said that neither Oliver, nor Willie spent enough time in the fields, and in most opinions within the family, they were lazy. She was quite young at the last years of Willie’s life, and it is doubtful she actually knew Oliver. This information is just family lore, as I see it. However, I have a post card hand-written by Ella, my great-great grandmother, to her niece May Lunceford, daughter of Shelt, which says; “…Uncle is feeling better…,” leading one to speculate that he had some chronic disease. When they left Virginia, Willie and Ella had two sons, Walter Fulton and Fredrick Turner, Freddie died when they arrived in Missouri. They had five more sons in Missouri; Lewis, Richard Henry, William ‘Bud’, Curtis, and Irving. Ella didn’t have a daughter, but being so fond of May, she would invite her to visit quite often.
Following the death of Willie in 1909, Ella and her younger sons eventually left the farms and moved into Independence, living in the Fairmount District where John worked for the County. Shelt and Frances watched their many children disperse throughout the whole country. After John died, Madie was cared for by other family members and finally by their daughter, Alice. The other of their daughters ended up in California working for the Salvation Army. Most of these early Missouri settlers are buried in the small Oakland Methodist Cemetery located just south of the Lake City area, mentioned previously. Oliver and Alcinda are buried in the Mecklin Methodist Cemetery. Mecklin no longer exists as a town, but at the time the family arrived, it was a very busy, bustling town. The Hawes’ who migrated to Arizona only returned for rare visits, and eventually stopped returning to Missouri altogether. Having sold the last of the family land holdings, the youngest descendant of Granville, who was adopted, resides in California.
The remaining of Willie Lunceford’s family are scattered around Missouri, all of them descending from just three of the seven sons of Willie and Ella. Walter, their oldest, died in 1917 from an accidental, self-inflicted shotgun blast to the abdomen which severed his femoral artery. Henry died in 1925 from heart disease. Bud, their fourth son, along with the widow of Henry, was killed in a head-on collision with a drunk driver on US-50 highway in 1953. Curtis died from a ‘self-inflicted gunshot,’ ruled a suicide in 1938. However, some suspected he was murdered by thugs resisting the unionization of the Ford Assembly plant in Kansas City. Irving, the youngest son, died in 1960 from a stroke.
The last living son of Willie and Ella was my great grandfather, Lewis Normen. I knew Grandpa Lewis because he lived with us in the year prior to his death. He was suffering with dementia, and had a bad habit of pinching my brothers and me when we came too close. My sister, on the other hand, could sit in his lap all day, and he never pinched her. He had a deep voice with a strong Missouri drawl. He chewed black, plug tobacco and the juice stained the whiskers near the corners of his mouth. He stood nearly 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighed about 190 lbs., his favorite pastime was catfishing, and he was awfully fond of cherry pie. He once recalled an episode on his boyhood farm near Lake City, which my father attempted to record on a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder. My parents, my siblings and I sat and listened as he struggled through tears of laughter to tell about a time that a cat wanted milk from a cow he was milking, so it decided to climb the cow’s leg to get some. I don’t remember the details of the story; I only remember the thunderous laughter of that hard, old man whose mind was giving way to age.
Grandpa Lewis died in 1970 at the age of 81 years. After his death, I was given a charm that I assume he had received from his daughter, Lucille, who was a missionary in Thailand most of her life. It is hollow, being made from two pieces of pressed tin fused together, displaying three elephant’s heads; research shows it is a Hindi-Buddhist symbol known as Erawan. I still have it and have included a photo. In about 1996, while researching our family, I received an email from a researcher named John Lunceford who lives in Terra Haute, Indiana. He was attempting to relocate Grandpa Lewis’ family, and he found me through a genealogy site. He had a hand-written letter he received from Grandpa Lewis that gave his account of our family’s story as best he knew. I now have a copy of the letter which was written the year after I was born. It’s strange how things come back around sometimes.
Finally, as a kind of
footnote to all of this information, we found that we have no biological
connection to the Lunceford family, after my sister submitted her DNA to
AncestryDNA. It appears that our biological grandmother was a bit careless 6
years into her marriage and, since her husband was unable to father children
due to a childhood injury involving the kick of a mule, my father was grossly
mistreated by his ‘dad.’ His ‘dad’ knew he could not be the father, but it was
never discussed until my dad was raising his own family. It was only after an
inquiry by a ‘match’ individual following the DNA testing, that we’ve suspect
who our biological grandfather might have been. My mother was adopted in
Hutchinson, Kansas when only two days old. She knew she was adopted and was
able to eventually locate and connect with her biological siblings. So, our
family history has completely reversed from what we have known most of our
lives. Mom didn’t have a family and now she does, dad had a family and now he
doesn’t. We’ve only ever been Lunceford’s, no matter how good or bad we’ve been
at it, and we still are. I can’t shake off the ghosts of the long-dead family
members that I’ve brought back to life through my research. They still claim
me, and I still claim them. After all, they weren’t perfect, either.
Tim Lunceford
Independence, Missouri
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