#2 October 2014

Frank's Family Findings

#2 - Jacob Treber and the 

New Madrid Earthquake

Hackney - Holmes

Much has been written about Jacob Treber, the Trebers and the families into which they married. Fortunately, those writings have included the telling of many tales about life on the frontier, which at that time was the wilds of the Northwest Territories. Before relating that story, I should tell you who Jacob Treber is (or was). Jacob was born in 1779 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, but lived most of his life in Adams County, Ohio, dying there in 1875 at the age of 95. 

How are we related? Jacob and his wife Jane Thoroman "Mother Treber" (my 3rd great-grandparents)

Jacob Treber

bore twelve children, including a daughter, Elizabeth Treber. Elizabeth married John  Holmes (my 2nd great-grandparents), and they had a son, John Frank Holmes. After the family moved to Aledo, Illinois, John Frank married Sarah "Sally" Canum (my great-grandparents). Later in life and tired of the long cold winters, they moved to Sumner County, Kansas, taking their 17-year old daughter Maude Elizabeth with them. Maude taught in the one room school near their home until marrying Frank Silas Hackney, the son of the school board president and a close neighbor, in 1908. My mother, Betty, was the third of their five children.

The following is taken from The Treber Family – found in  A History of Adams County, Ohio, 1900, Evans and Stivers 

"In 18ll, Mr. Treber, with George Sample, made a trip to New Orleans on a flat-boat loaded with produce for that market. On their way, they, with others bound on a like voyage, tied their boats at New Madrid, Mo. At this time occurred the terrible earthquake at that place, a short description of which is here given in Mrs. (Jane Thoroman) Treber's own language: 

A typical flat-boat of the time

 'This first shock took place while the boat was lying at the shore, in company with several others. At this period there was danger apprehended from the Southern Indians, it being soon after the battle of Tippecanoe, and for safety several boats kept in company for mutual defense in case of attack. In the middle of the night there was a terrible shock and a jamming of the boats so that the crew were all awakened and hurried on deck with their weapons of defense in their hands thinking the Indians were rushing on board. The ducks, geese, swans and various other aquatic birds, whose numberless flocks were quietly resting in the eddies of the river, were thrown into the greatest tumult, and with loud screams expressed their alarm and terror. The noise and commotion was soon hushed, and nothing could be discovered to excite apprehension, so that the boatmen concluded that the shock was occasioned by the falling in of a large mass of the bank near them. As soon as it was light enough to distinguish objects the crew were all up making ready to depart.

'Directly a loud roaring and hissing was heard, like the escape of steam from a boiler, accompanied by the most violent agitation of the shore and tremendous boiling up of the waters of the Mississippi in hugh (sic) swells, rolling the waters below back on the descending stream and tossing the boats about so violently, that the men with difficulty could keep on their feet. The sand-bars and points of islands gave way, swallowed up in the tremendous bosom of the river, carrying down with them the cottonwood trees, cracking and crashing, tossing their arms to and fro, as it sensible of their danger, while the disappeared beneath the flood. The water of the river which the day before was tolerably clear, being rather low, was now changed to a reddish hue and became thick with mud thrown up from its bottom, while the surface, lashed violently by the agitation of the earth beneath, was covered with foam, which gathering in masses the size of a barrel, floated along on the trembling surface. The earth along the shore opened in wide fissures, and, closing again, threw the water, sand and mud in huge jets higher than the tops of the trees.

'The atmosphere was filled with thick vapors or gas, to which the light imparted a purple tinge, altogether different in appearance from the autumnal hues of the Indian summer of that of smoke. From the temporary check to the current, by the heaving up of the bottom, the sinking of the sand-bar and bank into the bed of the river, it rose in a few minutes five or six feet; and as if impatient of the restraint, again rushing forward with the redoubled impetuosity, hurried along the boats now set loose by the horror-stricken boatmen, as in less danger on the water than at the shore, where the falling banks threatened at every moment to destroy them, or carry them down in the vortex of the sinking masses.'

They reached New Orleans in safety, and after disposing of the boat and cargo they returned home on foot*, going by the way of Lake Ponchartrain, Mussel Shoals, Nashville, and Limestone.**" 

*  According to Google Maps, such a walk would cover 826 miles, and in today's conditions (paved roads, sidewalks, bridges, etc.) take 273 hours to complete.  If one could walk for ten hours a day, that would mean a journey of almost a month.
**Limestone, on the banks of the Ohio River in Kentucky, is now known as Maysville.

 

Glidewell - Hendricks 

DG Hendricks and his work horses, Beaver County, Oklahoma Territory

Davidson Gardner Hendricks (1857-1943) is the great-grandfather of my wife, Nancy and her siblings Fred and Marie. D.G. and Hattie were the parents of Etta May (often seen incorrectly as Mae). Etta May married Frank Glidewell. From that union was born Nancy's mother, Edith Pearl Glidewell Staker and her siblings Opal, Mary, and Kenneth (who died in childhood).

At Hendricks' passing in 1943, Beaver County, Oklahoma's weekly newspaper mourned the death of one of the county's earliest settlers, and the last of the Hendricks family who came to what was known as "No Man's Land" in 1906. That was in the panhandle of Oklahoma Territory, four years prior to statehood. DG was remembered as a man "of quiet, unassuming nature, but his acquaintance was large and he had many friends over the county."

Born July 28, 1857 in Marion County, Indiana, on a farm near Indianapolis, DG moved with his family to Livingston County in north-central Missouri. It is unknown exactly when that move occurred, but we know from federal census records that the Hendricks family was living there by 1870. Prior to and "during the Civil War, Grand River Township suffered greatly from pillaging and thieving by bushwhackers.(1)" Was DG witness to those historical events? We don't know.

Davidson Gardner and Hattie Foltz were wed on March 6, 1890 in a ceremony at the Union Hotel, Chillicothe, Missouri. They took up farming near Hale, Missouri, where Hattie had grown up. Five children were born there: Etta May (grandmother to Fred F, Nancy, and Marie), Wiley Oren, Harry James, Hannah Pearl, and Earl Davidson.  All would grow to adulthood.

In February of 1906, "Gard," as he was sometimes known, traveled to the panhandle of Oklahoma Territory to file a claim on 160 acres of land in Beaver County. Earlene Hendricks Schaefer, granddaughter of D.G. and Hattie, and daughter of Earl Davidson Hendricks, has done an excellent job of telling the story of the Hendricks homesteading experience. Rather than relating that story in an abbreviated version now, it will be presented as a featured story in the near future.

(1) "A History of Livingston County, Missouri" Published by The Livingston County Centennial Committee, http://www.livingstoncountylibrary.org/History/County/1937/1937grandriver.htm

Road Trip!

View of  the re-created fort at Prickett's Fort State Park, West Virginia

Nancy and I recently devoted a week to visit some landmarks pertaining to my family history - Prickett's Fort in West Virginia, the Old Treber Inn and Treber family cemetery as well as the John Holmes home in West Union, Ohio, and the National Museum of the US Air Force near Dayton. It was an exciting time for me - and we saw some beautiful country, as well. My next blog will take you to some of those locations.