Initially settled mostly by Southerners traveling up the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, Missouri entered statehood in 1821 as a slave state, but by 1860, it had become more diversified when non-slave holders from the North settled there; tensions increased with the two differing ideologies, and Missouri became a battleground state during the Civil War.
Besides troops from the same state fighting for the Union and for the Confederacy, there were also bands of pro-Confederate sympathizers called Bushwhackers who used guerilla warfare to fight a border war with Union sympathizers in Kansas known as Jayhawkers, and in an attempt to curtail the Bushwhackers and the Southern sympathizers who aided them, Union General Thomas Ewing issued General Order No. 11 in 1863 that required all persons living in certain border counties along the Kansas/Missouri line to relocate outside of the area.
My great, great grandfather Thomas, his wife Louisa, and his young son were among the several thousand forced to relocate; they lived in the St. Joseph area until the war ended, then made the return trek (along with a second son who was born during their exile) back home via wagon train. It was on this journey, somewhere near Lexington, Missouri, that Thomas was killed when another member of the wagon train accidentally shot him while cleaning a gun, and Louisa continued on alone with the little boys to Holden, Missouri.
In the dining room of my parents' house is a pie safe made of walnut (I originally worded this as a walnut pie safe and then it sounded like it was a pie safe only for walnut pies and that just wouldn't do). It rode on that wagon train back to the family farm and has remained in the family now for nearly 150 years, and I have a really crappy photo of it with someone's finger in the foreground, college-aged me just past that, a family member who is no longer in the family behind me, and the pie safe in the background.
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| I warned you it was a crappy photo.... |
I can see the pie safe now in the background. I was expecting something smaller. Well told and interesting memoire.
ReplyDeleteThank you! The pie safe is 6 feet tall.
DeleteThose terrible words that people with guns have been uttering forever but nothing ever changes.
ReplyDeleteThey never learn, do they?
DeleteWhat a fascinating snippet of family history, Dyanne. I've seen those cupboards, but never heard them called that!
ReplyDeleteThanks! If you have a minute, there's a little more to this story at https://iwantbacksies.blogspot.com/2014/04/j-is-for-jesse-james.html
DeletePie safes have punched tin inserts in the sides of the cabinet, I guess to let air circulate around the pies (who makes that many pies anyway?)
This is such an interesting piece of family history you shared here. I am so sorry Thomas was shot.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Astrid! It was a shame that Thomas was shot, but what an amazing woman Louisa was to continue on without him!
DeleteIt's beautiful, what a great way to preserve family history!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Mimi! I wish I had written down more stories when my mom was alive to tell them!
DeleteI love history set in a family story. Love the photo, finger absolutely appropriate to the times (we all have more than one of those), and I hope that pie safe is full...
ReplyDeleteBecause now I want PIE!! :-)
Oh, thank you! The finger is awesome, isn't it?!
DeleteI want pie now, too! Wish it weren't so stinkin' hot or I'd bake one!
Polaroids were so much fun! Good family story. good six
ReplyDeleteThank you! We have a long family history with a polaroid camera that belonged to my two great aunts. They terrorized our family with it for many years!
DeleteI enjoyed the family story in the historical context. From wagon trains to polaroids!
ReplyDeleteThank you! I always knew about the wagon train and Thomas being shot, but I didn't learn about Order No. 11 until more recently.
DeleteVery interesting and educational Six, Dyanne!
ReplyDeleteBrilliant family story - full of the history of the time, coupled with a tragedy and the inspiration to keep going, and then a family relic still held. I too imagined it to be a smallish item but from the photo it's huge (those old Polaroids and 35mm photos are little treasures I reckon... we have a ton of them taken of (and by) old family members no longer here).
ReplyDeleteFascinating story, Dyanne.
ReplyDeleteI love this SSS. My great great grandfather and his family escaped some bushwackers in MO during that same times period. He wrote about the experience in a journal he wrote in his later years when he wrote about some of his escapes from death.
ReplyDelete