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From: "Sherry Balow" <>
Subject: ELIZABETH HILL, Part 7
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 16:26:14 -0800


The story as father told it over and over again went like this: My
fathers farm was on the Osage River below Capps Landing. He owned 311
acres right there n the bend of the river. We had sixty acres on the
crick that was good, but some of it was hilly and rough. My father had
this farm paid for and around $2,000 in the bank. When my father lived
back in West Virginia he had signed a note with some feller. This note
came due and since the other feller couldnt pay it, it came back on
father to pay it. He was told the note was signed so long ago it was
outlawed and he didnt need to pay it but father said, I promised to pay
if he couldnt and I always pay my debts. He had to borrow $650 and pay
10% interest and put a mortgage on the farm. He took the $2,000 plus the
$650 and paid off the note in West Virginia. Nearly a year later he was
able to sell enough hogs and various things t raise the money to pay off
the mortgage. Mr Brumley promised to cancel the mortgage. It was a cold
drizzley day and he tuk sick on the way home. It was in February and he
had about 12 miles of slushy half melting snow under foot. When he got
home in the evening he said, Its all paid off. I have Mr. Brumleys
promise that he is going to cancel the mortgage and bring it out here
tomorrow. In the morning my father was dead. Mr. Brumley claimed that it
was a mistake and that he still owed something on it. He wanted the farm
for his son-in-law, Jeff Bilyeu. In the book of land records page 46 and
47 is a record where Elizabeth Jones gave a quit claim deed to W. J. Bilyeu
on April 5,1877. While searching the court house records in Tyler County,
West Virginia, I found several notes that Lewis Jones had countersigned
with Mark Custer, his second wifes father. I didnt check the note file
at St. Marys, West Virginia but it is likely that he also had
countersigned notes there because he was doing Big Business there for
several years.
The next ten years of Grandma Jones life might be called the frantic
years. Brumley, Missouri is named for the villain of the above story.
Every frontier had 50% on his loans. We still have loan sharks today. As
soon as the shock of her husbands death had worn off she tried to cope
with the situation. These next years of Grandmas life should be viewed
with compassion and much understanding.
Grandpas sudden death gave her no chance to prepare for what was to come
and she had little knowledge of what was considered the mans
responsibility, business. She had to depend on the honesty and integrity
of those with whom she must deal. She could not read or write. She had
six living children but they could not read or write either. Her clan of
relatives were loyal but they could not read or write and could do little
to help her. It must be a bit like being blind while trying frantically to
see and understand. She had step-sons with some education. The intense
hatreds caused by the Civil War still were evident. Mark Jones and her
brothers were on opposite sides. Lou Jones had married in September 1871,
Lou and Cal seemed to have been farming together. Grandma Betsy tried to
carry on with the help of her two boys, Grant 9 years old and Billy 14
years old. The mixed a bit of play with their work and hardly strong
enough for the tasks before them. The first time I took father to Miller
County, Missouri he pointed out the very steep hill in Tuscumbia that they
had to travel to get into town. The court house on top of this steep hill
had 72 steps down to the town on the river bank. That has been changed now
for the town has been moved to the top of the hill away from the rivers
floods. The steps have crumbled an are covered with wild growth. The road
goes around the hill half way down from the brow. Father relived the awful
moments when he and Billy tried to take their wagon loads down that steep
hill with their team of oxen. Grant rode the shoe brake against the back
wheel for he was heavier and Billy walked ahead of the oxen whacking them
over their noses to make them hold back. Another time he mentioned a
problem they solved. They had to get the wagon and oxen across the river.
It was summer, the water was low, it was hot and there were lots of flies.
The oxen waded into the middle of the river and stopped enjoying both to
drink and to cool off. Stubbornly they stood switching flies. Nothing
would make them move.
In desperation Billy said, Grant, get the cat. Grant got the cat. Now
Billy instructed, Walk on the tongue between the oxen, put the cat on the
back of one of the oxen and pull the cat backwards by the tail. The cats
claws stuck and with a beller the oxen came up out of the river and the
boys got home all right. Its a wonder Grant wasnt thrown from the tongue
and trampled.
Again he chuckled over riding the steer. His job was to carry baskets of
corn to fee the steers. With the usual hickory feed baskets, one on each
arm, he climbed on top of the rail fence. On impulse, balanced by two
equal buckets, he started walking the rail until he came to where a steer
stood close to the fence. Calling to Billy he laughingly said, Look!
Billy, watch me ride the steer! Just then the rail turned and he lit on
top of the steer which took off with a beller of fright for the lowest
limbs to brush the animal off its back. Grant dropped the baskets and hung
on for dear life until they came to a low limb he could grab and dismount.
Grandma Jones had to depend on just boys fro her livelihood.
At this time her brothers and sisters left her, according to Geo Hawk,
Aunt Elizas son. The Hill clan moved to Iowa in 1875. There was John,
Alexander, Levi and Eliza with their families. Jackson Hill was either
dead or divorced for his second wife, Mrs. Stacy (West) Hill married
William Martin on February 23, 1871 in Miller County, MO. His children,
Nancy Hill (Burrell) and John, (Wild John), by his first wife and Doc and
Hannah Hill (Acton) by Stacey West, were all raised by relative.
Grandma Betsy Jones tried to carry on as a benevolent widow for her son
said, I remember a case after my father died. A widow woman came to our
house with three children. They were starving and had no work. She wanted
to stay at our house until she could get work. A woman then might make 50
cents a day. The girls were ten, twelve and fifteen. The oldest girl and
the mother stayed about a year until they got work. They only returned for
visits but the other two stayed with us until they got married, one three
years and the other, four years.
After 1877 she must have moved from the farm. Father said, We moved a
lot after father died. we kept hearing about Kansas. It cost very little
for land there. Billy, Virginia, Nancy and husband and my mother and me
went to Cherokee County, Kansas just west of Joplin, Missouri. The land
was cheap but there was no water and we had to haul our wood 18 or 20
miles. Billy said, Lets go down into Arkansas. There we found plenty of
timber but awfully poor land.
Billy went away to haul a show for Diamond and King through Texas, a Punch
and Judy show. Lucy Ann Messersmith and family went west from Kansas and
Grandma Jones never heard from her again. She lost both Lucinda and Nancy
from accidents. Lucinda had to have a foot cut off because of a foot
infection, the same that had killed a younger daughter Eliza. Lucinda
(note: this is supposed to be Nancy. -- SB) was supposed to have been
around twenty when she died, that would have been soon after Lewis Jones
death. She was riding a horse carrying her small baby in her arms. When
the hose shied she was thrown and dragged to her death. She was handicapped
by the tiny baby in her arms and by having only one foot to balance in the
stirrups. The baby was still alive when they found her for she had
protected the child in her fall. The child was seeking nourishment from
the dead mothers breast. Nancy married Abner Hathaway on September
19,1878. She went to Kansas with them but except for the fact she was
killed by a horse and left a little girl called Nancy Hathaway I know no
facts. The fear, the loneliness and grief that were Grandmas lot during
those ten or fifteen years are hard to imagine. She was alone now except
for Grant and Virginia, and she only had Virginia for a few more years.
About the year 1882, when she was 14 years old, Virginia died.
My mother always said, Grandma was frantic for fear she would lose Grant
too.
Grant said, I was just a boy but I worked hard. sometimes I got as much
as twenty five cents a day, more often I got paid a half a bushel of corn
or a hogs jowl or maybe a side of bacon. I worked four whole days and
earned a bushel of wheat. It was hard work. It was hard sliding. It
doesnt hurt a feller to be poor it is only the disadvantages that come
with it.
Uncle Billy did return from Texas but by the time Grandma Jones and her
son Grant returned to Miller County Billy was married and soon left for
Blue Rapids, Kansas. He went on from Kansas to Oregon. Grandma never saw
her son William Lewis Jackson Jones again. From 1880 to 1885 Grandma Jones
went where her son could get a job. Grant cut ties for the railroads, he
helped raft logs down the river, he helped with harvesting here and there.
They went to Joplin, Missouri for Grant to work in the lead mines but he
refused when he saw the conditions of the miners.
In 1885 when Grant Jones was 21 years old, Uncle Johnnie Hill came back to
Miller County, Missouri on business. He was having trouble getting his
pension payments from the Civil War. He found his sister Elizabeth there
in Miller County. She was all alone except for her son Grant Jones, who
was home between jobs. Uncle John Hill persuaded his sister Elizabeth
Jones to go back with him to Decatur County, Iowa where she could be with
her sisters, brothers and daughter Polly Ann. How she hated to go. The
horror of her two years there was not forgotten but she and Grant went.
They bought a little place down on the Little River Bottom for $350. There
was a house of sorts on it, a little log cabin with one room below and one
above. Grant worked hard to support his mother. He hewed ties for the
railroad at 10 cents a tie. He cut cordwood at 45 cents a cord and worked
on the railroad with his little span of mules and a slip scraper. Grandma
Jones had 3 or 4 years of security but not much else. They made friends.
Then her son, Grant, fell in love and married. Sarah P. Snethen Jones and
Elizabeth Hill Hampton Jones had little in common. Sarahs brother David
Snethen liked Grant Jones as a companion but not as his sisters husband.
David told Sadie (Sarah), Go down there and see how they live and see if
you can live that way. Sadie married Grant Jones and went to live with
him and his mother Betsy in that miserable little log cabin. She found out
that when she wanted to make cookies there was no sugar to make them and no
money to buy sugar. Coffee was often pure hot water with no sugar or cream.
It was Grandma Jones who rebelled at having another woman in her house so
she married an old man by the name of Parker, much to her sons disgust.
He refused to recognize Parkers status as his mothers husband. Grandma
Jones was at her sons home when she died. She was ill with malaria but
died of severe gastritis according to her death certificate recorded May
11, 1893 at Leon, Iowa courthouse. Her name was listed as Mrs. Elizabeth
Parker in the certificate. She knew her daughter-in-law was about to
deliver a child that May so she called Sadie to her and blessed the child
in the womb.
To the last Grandma Jones was a pioneer woman, with the pioneers pride,
self reliance and still believing in signs, spirits, lucky pieces and other
kinds of fetishisms.
Grandma Jones is buried in the Bethel Cemetery with other members of the
Hill family. The Bethel Baptist Church is the oldest in Decatur County
having been built in 1871. Grandma Jones stone reads:

Elizabeth Hill Jones
1830-1893

Her tragedy filled life was ended.


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Sherry Balow




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