Caldwell County MO Archives History .....F.D. CLARKSON FAMILY AT KINGSTON IN EARLY SEVENTIES 
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Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 1, 2008, 4:39 pm

F.D. CLARKSON FAMILY AT KINGSTON IN EARLY SEVENTIES
	Narrator:  Mrs. Clara Brosnihan, 82, of Hamilton, Missouri

	A Wagon Train of the Sixties
	Clarkson and Farabee Families
	Frozen Mince Pies
	Early years at Polo

     Clara Clarkson was born in Knightstown Indiana July 1852 and came with 
her parents T.D. and Hannah Clarkson from Indiana to Missouri 1869.  The Jacob 
Allee family, T.D. Fort family and T.D. Clarkson family all started to 
Missouri with some six or seven covered wagons.  They had a safe journey and 
before reaching Missouri they were in company with sixteen or seventeen 
wagons, not all stopping in Caldwell County.  They all stopped on Saturday 
afternoon, baked, bathed and did their washing with no Sunday travel.  She 
thinks their trip took over a month.
     The Clarksons had once been prosperous but T.D. signed a note for a 
relative and lost money, so in order to be miles away from his mistake he 
decided on a new country.  He came with a sick wife and six children and 
settled at Kingston.  Clara (a sister of Nathan Clarkson once a Hamilton Post 
Master) helped in every way for the comfort of the family.  Her mother died a 
year after they cam to Kingston.  Her father edited a Kingston paper for a 
time and she worked in the printing office.  She says that work really was her 
schooling; sitting on a high stool in a print shop.
     She became the wife of Oliver Farabee in Polo 1872.  They had a Hotel, 
Livery Barn and a General Store in Polo, in fact they were about ALL Polo for 
several years until the Milwaukee Railroad came through there.  Mr. Farabee 
died 1886, when the first ground was just broken for the railroad.  After 
that, she and the girls worked hard to keep going; later they moved to Kansas 
City and she married Mr. Brosnihan.
     She tells several interesting tales of the pioneer years when she was 
Clara Clarkson.  She used to ride from the Fort farm to near Bonanza behind an 
ox-team.  She used to go horse back to attend spelling schools and singing 
schools and to attend dances in a sleigh - if possible.  When mince pie time 
came they always baked a lot of pies, eight or ten, in the big oven the same 
day.  Then came the problem of storing them till all were eaten.  Some people 
wrapped them up in paper and kept them in a bin out doors.  The Clarksons 
wrapped them and put them in the frozen rain-barrel where the pies also 
froze.  Before a meal, they were re-heated in the oven.  They were delicious.
     The early home makers make their own bread, butchered, made soap, dried 
fruits and vegetables, rendered lard, knitted sewed carpet rags, and were 
always ready to help in sickness at the next neighbors.
     Interviewed  May 1934.


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