Hello from Lori Law, Hollis, NH, lorilaw@lawwarehouses.com
I just found your website on Jewell, Kansas. Since you've asked for family stories I’ll send what I know about mine, albeit brief.
My grandmother, Mary Anne Whitehouse Headrick, was born in your area in about 1881 (I can't find the exact date at this moment). She was the daughter of Samuel (I have to check that too) and Mary Brady Whitehouse. My grandmother always said she was born in "White Rock, Jewell County, Kansas." She was very proud of the fact, and liked to say it emphatically.
Her family came to the area as homesteaders from either Chicago or Pittsburgh. They ultimately left Kansas and moved to Pittsburgh. I've always had the impression that their reason for giving up homesteading lay in the stories my grandmother told us.
Apparently when my great grandparents arrived at the spot where they were to live in their sod hut, Mary Whitehouse bemoaned the fact that she could see absolutely nothing for miles [except, I assume, prairie]. A "neighbor" was said to have told her, "Well, just wait til the corn grows, Mary." We were given to understand that then she’d see nothing at all. She seems to have been very lonely out there on the prairie.
My grandmother told stories of Indians coming to their house on occasion, staring into their windows or coming to their door. My great grandmother gave them a dog at one point, probably for them to eat. It was my understanding that the Indians were impoverished and hungry, and they seem to have haunted the family.
She also told a family variation on the Moses story, saying that when she and her sister asked her parents where they came from, their parents said, "We found you when the Indians put you in a cabbage and floated you down the river." Now, thanks to the map on your website, I know that the river is the White Rock River. How wonderful to have a family legend come to life!
My grandmother had a sister, Helen, and a brother, George, both of whom may also have been born in Jewell County. I plan to begin research in earnest on that side of my family soon. Meanwhile, I'm happy to have learned a little bit more about my roots, thanks to you. I will see if any of my cousins remember more details.
_____________Lori Law
Hollis, NH
lorilaw@lawwarehouses.com
April 26, 2002
from Jewell City Kansas Internet Site, 2002 by Leland M. Haines, Goshen, IN
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April 27, 2002