Caldwell County MO Archives History .....THE CRAWFORD FAMILY AT KINGSTON IN 1867 AND HAMILTON IN 1875 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com August 30, 2008, 4:21 pm

THE CRAWFORD FAMILY AT KINGSTON IN 1867 AND HAMILTON IN 1875
	Narrator:  Mrs. Joseph Crawford, 91, Hamilton, Missouri
     
     Mrs. Joseph Crawford born 1843 now lives in Hamilton but she came into 
Caldwell County as a Kingston resident.  She was born in Washington County 
Virginia, was of a Southern family and knew all the troubles of the Southern 
people after the war was over.  Her husband came from Tennessee.  After the 
war conditions were so hard in the south, that her husband, who did not have 
much, decided to come west.  They came up the Mississippi river from Tennessee 
on a boat and it took them four days and four nights to get to Illinois, where 
Crawford's brother had already settled.  They had with them very little 
baggage - for they had sold their old Conastoga wagon and some furniture 
before starting.  In Illinois, they ran up against Bill Schwartz who came from 
Caldwell County and told them how much better bargains in homes they could get 
in Missouri.  He said if they were not satisfied with Caldwell County he would 
pay their way back to Illinois.  He brought them on to Kingston where Crawford 
began his trade of shoe maker to which he had been apprenticed as a boy.  It 
was a trade which meant good money those days.  Often he made $7 a day in 
making (not mending) boots and shoes.
     They bought their land from Dr. Lemuel Dunn father of the late Dwight 
(Pete) Dunn of Hamilton.  On this he built a two room shack and they lived 
there till his death 1872 aged 27, he lies in the old part of the Kingston 
Cemetery.
     During the stay in Kingston, he held the highest office in the Masonic 
lodge and most of his friends were Masons.  At that time Hugh Chain and family 
kept the frame hotel (afterwards Cadman House).  Dr. Dunn, Dr. Neff and Dr. 
Smith were the doctors.  She recalled old man Turner and the older Spivey, 
Henry Botoff and a druggist Gudgell.  Most of the people there were 
Northerners and so Crawford used to say to his wife "We are in a Yankee 
settlement.  We have to lay low," especially so when the war had been over 
only three or four years.
     After her husband's death Mrs. Crawford and two children Kate and Lula in 
1875 moved to Hamilton to get something to do.  They were very poor.  For a 
while she sewed for a living and took her pay largely in vegetables, milk, 
meat, needing just enough money to pay rent.  At that time she lived on the 
site of the Methodist parsonage.  Finally she began taking care of Mrs. Dort 
who was an invalid, and stayed in the Dort home as house keeper forty years.  
There she still lives.  Her daughter Kate now owns that very home and Ben 
Dort, who formerly owned it, died a few years ago at the County Farm.
     During 1875, there was a scarlet fever epidemic here.  Her daughter Kate 
had a severe illness; and when she recovered she began peeling off.  The 
doctor had not known what the illness was but finally decided it was scarlet 
fever.  She was the second one to have it in the 1875 epidemic.  It grew worse 
and killed several children.  She had caught it from visiting another little 
girl who was sick.  You see there were no scarlet fever signs those days and 
no quarantine.  So it was no wonder they had bad epidemics.  At that time, the 
doctors in town were Dr. Stoller who had his office at his home south of the 
present Methodist parsonage.  Dr. Tuttle in Claypool Hotel, Dr. Brown just 
starting out as a young physician.  Dr. Ressigeau in present Katherine 
Houghton home.  The dentists were Dr. Simrock above Nash Produce store and Dr. 
Stevens over Wilson and O'Neil.  He made a set of uppers for Mrs. Crawford 
which she has used ever since (56 years) without a bit of repair.
     The Rohrboughs were leaders then in town government and business.  At 
that time Anthony and his son George owned the brick block of two rooms now 
the Bram Store and ran a grocery and dry goods store.  They said (so Mrs. 
Crawford reports) that they were going to stay here till they made $100,000 
and then go.  She says they made it and then sold out 1879 and went to the 
city and lost it.  She said they died in modest means.                    
Interviewed  	January 1934.


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