Caldwell County MO Archives History .....KERNS FAMILY IN CALDWELL COUNTY 
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Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 4, 2008, 4:20 pm

THE KERNS FAMILY IN CALDWELL COUNTY
	Narrator:  Mrs. Robina Payne, Cowgill

     Mrs. Payne is the daughter of Geo. Benjamin Kern and Julia Terry of near 
Cowgill.  F.J. Kern, her grandfather, was a Civil War soldier and lived in the 
county during the Civil War.  His own father was born 1861.  Mrs. Kern has 
done quite a bit of local history researching.
     The Kern family boasts a Revolutionary War ancestor from Kentucky who had 
a land grant near Columbia Ohio.  Her grandparents on her father's side are 
Martha Zachary and Francis J. Kern.  Kern had been married previously and his 
first wife is buried in the old Brown cemetery.  Martha, his second wife, also 
had been married previously to Daniel Z. Cox (see his write-up).  The children 
of Martha and Cox were Jas. Brent Cox, John Cox, Fannie Streeter.  Then when 
she was Mr. Kern's wife, they had these children:  Chas. S. Kern (buried at 
Kingston), Martha Ellen Baker who lives at Hamilton, Francis Manford Kern yet 
alive (1935) but feeble, Geo. Benj. Kern (father of Narrator) dead, Wm. Jesse 
Kern dead.  Mrs. Baker in the first series of interviews gave further details 
about the Kern family.
     Geo. Benj Kern (commonly called Ben Kern) was a farmer-teacher.  He was 
among the early pupils in the Kingston High school in the 70s under Uncle 
Steve Rogers, the founder of the Kingston H.S.  He reported that high school 
those early days was much different from that twenty five years later even.
     He began teaching at 17, after he had taken his first examination for a 
teacher's certificate from Prof. Rogers.  His first school was one in which 
several teachers had been driven out - a common thing in some districts.  It 
was Bethany school.  He was young and looked even younger so they began on 
him.  He got control the first day of school by taking a revolver out of his 
desk and putting it on top of the desk.  His next examination was under County 
Commissioner Henry Gee.  A new law had come out which forbad the re-issuing of 
certificates without examinations.  He taught on thru the OPs and eventually 
became a rural mail carrier, one of the first, under the laws, which started 
that service.  
     He married Julia Terry whom he first met in the old Hare's studio at 
Hamilton when both were having their pictures struck.  She was then a house 
maid in the district where he was teaching.  He boarded with the Aaron Pfost 
family who kept a store at Glassville.  Glassville is no longer a town on the 
map, but in the early 80s was a post office.  Aunt Eliza Myers was the last 
post mistress.  When the town of Cowgill was started in 1887, Glassville lost 
its post office, since it was too near the new town.  Mrs. Payne's father Ben 
Kern, helped work on the new Milwaukee railroad when it was built 1887 and the 
new town of Cowgill was born.
     The Terry family (on her mother's side) came into the county 1869 from 
Henry Co. Ills. in a covered wagon and settled in 1871 on the very farm where 
the Payne family now live.
     Mrs. Payne says that the earliest school in that section was north of 
Cowgill in the early 60s, where the McCray children went.
     In 1868, two schools were built, by the same man Levi Keran (accent on 
last syllable) who lived on what is now John Hendricks farm.  These two 
schools of 1868 were Eureka and Bethany, both near Cowgill.  The first Bethany 
location was on the north east corner of the Hendricks farm, and then the 
building was moved across the road diagonally to the south east corner of 
another farm.  The Kerns family have had four generations on the same farm, 
and three generations have attended the same rural school - Bethany.  They are 
the only family in their community who can boast this 

  
honor, for the district was later divided so that some families had to send 
their children to the new school.
     Interview  April 1935.


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