Caldwell County MO Archives History .....MEMORIES OF WILLIAM GUFFEY IN NEW YORK TOWNSHIP 
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MEMORIES OF WILLIAM GUFFEY IN NEW YORK TOWNSHIP
	Narrator:  William Guffey, 76, Hamilton

     William Guffey is the son of S.R. Guffey (1828-1919) and his wife Abigail 
Toner (1837-1871).  S.R. Guffey was the son of William Guffey (1799-1856) who 
came into Caldwell county 1840, just four years after the county was 
organized.  He and his family (four children) then drove an ex team from 
Indiana where they had been sojourning for a while, altho they had started out 
from Tenn.  Here in Caldwell county, they entered land near the present Guffey 
graveyard 5 miles south west of Breckenridge.  There the children of the older 
William grew up.  William Guffey of Hamilton of course does not recall his 
grandfather William, who died 3 years before his birth, but he remembers well 
his grandmother and her stories of the wolves which howled around their lonely 
cabin in the forties when no house could be seen for miles in any direction 
and the sight of a person outside the family was quite an event.
     Mr. Guffey's mother was a Toner from the Toner family in Clinton county 
near the McCroskie graveyard neighborhood near Mooresville, which shows how 
far the young people of that time went to meet their social friends.  At her 
death in 1871, S.R. Guffey married Mary J. File who was the mother of Bertha 
Guffey who clerked for many years here in Anderson's store.  About 25 Guffeys 
of different generations are buried in the old Guffey cemetery, the earliest 
one being old William himself who was buried 1856; with that grave, the 
graveyard was started and now (1935) is still in active use.
     Elcey Guffey, sister of S.R. married Joseph Cathcart, another early 
settler in the county from Tennessee in that same vicinity (see separate 
interview on the Cathcart family).
     S.R. Guffey moved into New York Settlement (NY Twp.) and Mr. Guffey 
himself went to the Radical school to Miss Mary Houghton (Mrs. Mary Kautz) 
when she taught there about 1867.  As he recalls the school, it a was a boxed 
up school (boarded up and down, not crosswise), and the floor was made of 
broad planks which shrank apart gradually and left wide cracks thru which the 
come came up in winter and made the room uncomfortable in spite of the big 
cast iron stove.  The lumber for the school was sawn over at the Wash Filson 
mill on Shoal Creek.  There certain days were set apart for sawing logs and 
grinding corn and wheat.  This was customary in all early mills.
     Another teacher whom he remembers was Elizabeth Wellwood mother of Mr. E. 
Merryman (county clerk at present) and wife of Wm. Merryman.  Wm. Merryman was 
a brother of Mrs. Jim Filson in that neighborhood and thus he got acquainted 
with Miss Wellwood.  She preceded Mary Houghton at Radical.  The next teacher 
after Mary Houghton (whom Hamilton people now know as Aunt Mary Kautz aged 88) 
was Jacob Carroll, a farmer-teacher, of whom there were quite a few those 
days.  He is the grandfather of Woodrow Carroll of Hamilton.
     About 1872, he went to Chas. Thwing, another farmer-teacher of N.Y. 
Township, the father of Fred Thwing of Kansas City.  The Thwings had moved 
into the "New York Settlement" in 1867-8 with the other New Yorkers the 
Austins and Houghtons.
     Mr. Guffey having taken all that the county school had to give, came to 
the Hamilton High school and was under Prof. Davy Ferguson here about 1876, 
being a classmate of Miss Minnie Ogden of this city.  His parents lived 10 
miles out east, so he boarded in town and they came in after him Friday, if 
the roads permitted.
     Then he decided to teach, having a little more education than most 
country boys.  He got a certificate Prof. Steve Rogers then the county 
commissioner, and taught at Radical school which was his home district in 
1879.  His term was 6 months the common length for a school year.  The three 
Austin girls Nell, Maria and Cora all went to him.
 
     The last day of school was observed by a program and teacher gave a treat 
of candy or apples, or perhaps the teacher parents would bring in food as a 
treat.
     Interview  October 1934.
 


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