MY FATHER’S FAMILY LINES: TAYLORS, SAPPS AND OTHERS FROM THE MIDDLE SOUTH

 

New Liberty Primitive Baptist Church in 1999

New Liberty Graveyard in 1999

 

As a religious agnostic, I probably can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been inside any church during my adult life. Most of those episodes would have occurred for obligatory trips to weddings or funerals. But I did visit a church one time with eager anticipation, traveling in 1999 from my home in Houston to St. Louis then driving a rental car 120 miles west to the small town of Ashland near Columbia in Boone County, Missouri.

I came after several years of researching my roots. I wanted to see the New Liberty Primitive Baptist Church founded in 1842 by my third great-grandparents and thirty other pioneers recently removed to Missouri to start a new community. Like my 3GG, Joseph Taylor (1811-1885) and Louisa Jane Pauley Taylor (1812-1897), most likely had journeyed from Kentucky. It’s clear that they traveled with other members of Louisa’s Pauley family and Joseph’s brother John (1809-1845) who had married Louisa’s sister, Sarah Sally Pauley (1810-1885). They all are listed among 32 names in a pamphlet outlining the first congregation at the church in 1842.

Joseph and Louisa had brought with them two sons born in Kentucky, Dudley (1835-1856) and my 2nd Great-Grandfather John Thomas Taylor (1837-1873). Their third child James Taylor (1840-1904) became the first of my Taylor line born in Missouri, thus establishing their arrival as at least by 1840.

My visit to their church in 1999 took me back in time. The congregation met only twice a month but they enjoyed what must have been a traditional Missouri country-style event complete with a pot luck luncheon after the service. I met descendants of people who had known my third great-grandparents. One was a descendant of the pastor Berryman Wren who had performed the 3 May 1860 marriage service joining my 2GG John Thomas Taylor with my 2nd Great-Grandmother Ellen Kane McDow (1841-1871). All the congregants treated me as if they actually had known those ancestors from more than a hundred years before.

More illuminating than the service and picnic, however, was my tour of the adjacent graveyard before I left. In a grassy field strewn with a variety of weathered old tombstones, I found the graves of Joseph and Louisa, at rest there for the last century while their descendants had carried on their line down to me, born in 1947.  As an amateur genealogist, I already knew Joseph represented the most impassable brick wall in my research. He still does. But standing over his grave that day in the churchyard provided a sense of cosmic balance. I could feel my connection to a distant past and a new resolve to pass that connection along to my descendants as well.

This post represents another chapter in my continuing effort to share my genealogical research with those descendants and anyone else who also might have a link to my family lines. It follows earlier articles about my Mayflower ancestors, my New England Puritan ancestors, my Libby lines from Maine and my ancestors who arrived through Jamestown in Virginia—all on my mother’s side. In this post I will explore the families that led to my father, Dale Kempster Taylor (1921-1984).

Although my knowledge of the Taylor line goes no farther back than Joseph, my research into adjoining paternal lines has proven more successful. I’ve discovered I had a fourth ancestor at Jamestown in 1620, for example. I’ve learned more about the histories of Delaware and South Carolina from tracking other ancestors who married into the Taylors. But I will start with the Taylors because they form the spine for those other lines to join. And I’m including this WikiTree fan chart of my father’s family tree to provide a road map to all the names I plan to mention: Pauleys, Johnsons, Sapps, Starks, Watsons and McDows.

Family Lines from Dale Taylor (1921-1984)

KENTUCKY: THE DARK AND BLOODY GROUND

While details about Joseph’s parents remain sketchy, several things appear clear. His father—my 4th Great-Grandfather—was identified as a “James Taylor” in Joseph’s 24 August 1831 marriage record for Madison County, Kentucky marriages between 1823 and 1851. The record also lists James as father-of-the-groom for Joseph’s brother John at his marriage a year earlier. And it identifies John Pauley (1775-1845) as the father-of-the-bride for both marriages. Census records show the Taylor sons and the Pauley daughters all born in Kentucky around 1810. Almost certainly the Taylors and Pauleys shared a close association and probably farmed land near each other. Without a doubt, the two families ranked among the first pioneers of America’s initial westward expansion after the birth of the republic.

That expansion had begun before the American Revolution with exploration by the legendary frontiersman Daniel Boone  into the wilderness south of the Ohio River and west of Colonial Virginia. They called that land “Kentucky” after native words for land or “land of our fathers.” By finding a passage through the Appalachian Mountains at the Cumberland Gap in 1767, Boone opened Kentucky for westward expansion along what became known as the “Wilderness Road.” 

Boone joined North Carolina politician and land speculator Richard Henderson (1735-1785) in forming a company to take advantage of Kentucky’s anticipated future growth. Meeting with Cherokee tribal leader Dragging Canoe in 1775, Henderson exchanged about 10,000 pounds ($2 million in 2026) worth of trade goods for the ownership of Kentucky lands they named Transylvania.

After concluding the deal, the chief offered a somber observation destined to color Kentucky’s image for the years ahead. He warned the investors that Kentucky represented a “bloody ground” beneath a “dark cloud.” As a result, for decades the land has been nicknamed the dark and bloody ground. His words seemed prophetic as the influx of pioneers clashed in the next few decades with natives fighting to hold that ground against American expansion. Virginia controlled Kentucky as a county or district until 1792 when Kentucky joined the young nation as the 15th state, trailing Vermont by one year and ahead of Tennessee by four.

Even before the end of the revolution, Virginia stimulated Kentucky expansion in 1779 by offering land grants for veterans. The assembly also sold western lands through treasury warrants and granted claims of 400-acre tracts to settlers after a year of residence plus production of a corn crop. The effort triggered a boom that saw Kentucky’s population explode from 73,677 in 1790 to 220,955 by 1800. By 1830 Kentucky’s population had grown to 687,917.

Sometime during those earliest years, my Taylor and Pauley ancestors arrived without much fanfare, settling primarily in the Madison County area according to the sparse written records for marriages and residence. Those records show my 4th Great-Grandfather John Pauley Jr. (1775-1845) marrying my 4th Great-Grandmother Mary Henderson (1785-1866) on 13 June 1805 in Madison County. FamilySearch.org also includes a record of a Madison County marriage in 1803 between James Taylor and Neoma Roberts giving reason to believe they also represent 4th Great-Grandparents. While some sources have listed Joseph’s birthplace as Virginia, he cited Kentucky on later census reports in Missouri.

In researching a 1999 book about the Joseph Taylor lineage, my cousin Patsy H. Slocum verified most of that information and discovered records naming the family members in the archives of Kentucky’s Cane Springs Baptist Church. Her book, entitled simply Joseph T. Taylor of Kentucky, provides meticulous details about all the subsequent generations in the family lines.

The settlers established Madison as a separate county in 1786 with Daniel Boone’s Boonesborough as a thriving center for a countywide population that increased from 5,772 in 1790 to 10,490 by 1800 and on to 18,751 by 1830. The Kentucky River forms the north and northwest boundary of the county, providing passage there from the Ohio River. Corn emerged as the first major crop but tobacco gained importance quickly with three tobacco warehouses operating in the county by 1798.

Why Joseph Taylor, his brother, their wives and their father-in-law decided to move to Missouri in 1838 remains a mystery. Family tradition records that the migrants had an opportunity to purchase 644-acre tracts of land apiece in Boone County. As detailed in my earlier posts, my mother’s ancestors had arrived in Missouri about 20 years earlier and chosen to settle closer to the Mississippi River in Pike County. By 1838, it appears, Missouri opportunities had spread westward where Boone County had formed along the Missouri River.

Springing to life in the mountains of Montana, the Missouri River flows east and south through the Dakotas to form the western boundary between Iowa and Nebraska and part of the boundary between Kansas and Missouri. It flows across Missouri to cut the state in half before draining into the Mississippi River just north of St. Louis. In the center of the state, the Missouri River forms the western and southern boundary of Boone County.

Missouri's river system

The land in central Missouri that eventually became Boone County had been explored early in the century by two sons of the legendary Daniel Boone. Just as thousands of pioneers had followed Boone to Kentucky before the American Revolution, they had followed him again afterward when he relocated to Missouri. His sons established a salt making operation in central Missouri that became known as the Boone’s Lick Country. 

With adoption of a treaty in 1815, natives ceded the lands north of the Missouri River to settlers from Madison County, Kentucky, according to a history of Boone County written in 1882. By 1819 migration into central Missouri had increased to a point where The Franklin (Missouri) Intelligencer newspaper took note of 271 wagons and four-wheeled carriages passing through St. Charles headed to the Boone’s Lick Country. The territorial government formally created Boone County with a population of 3,692 in 1820—nine months before Missouri became a state—named for the iconic explorer who had died in Missouri earlier that year.

By 1830, Boone County’s population had grown to 8,859 and towns had emerged, including Columbia as the county seat. It also would become home to the nation’s first land-grant public university west of the Mississippi River and my alma mater (BJ 1969) the University of Missouri, or Mizzou—founded in 1839. The population grew to 13,561 by 1840 and reached 183,000 by 2020.

Although the 1840 census listed two Joseph Taylors living in Boone County, the listing for one of them appears more likely to be that of my 3GG. Neighbors include the McDow and Sapp families who would have children marrying Joseph’s son and grandson. Despite a lack of public documents about Joseph’s life as a farmer, one of my cousins shared an invaluable record she found written by my Great-Grandfather Cicero Hampton Taylor (1869-1964) at the age of 84 in 1953 in an attempt to describe his lineage.

Transcribed from notebook of Cicero Hampton Taylor (transcribed by Patsy H. Slocum) Jal N.M March 18, 1953, it reads:

“I, Cicero Hampton Taylor, being the youngest son of John Thomas Taylor and Ellen Kane McDow Taylor. Born January 20, 1869. My mother died when I was two years old of TB. Father died 2 1/2 years later. Don’t remember either one. Had two sisters, Alcie Jane, the oldest. James Robert Taylor which is now living here in Jal NM with his youngest girl, been an invalid for three years. Josie Ann Taylor came next, and there was an infant that was born dead I am told. I came next the last one. The black sheep of the flock as I have been told from my early childhood.

“I lived with my grandfather, or rather growed up, Dec 16, 1888 when he died. I was 16 that coming January. Made my home with my sister, Alcie Jane till I married. She had married to Charles Edmond Sapp, one of the best men I ever knew. Till in February 25, 1891, I married Marium Frances Sapp, daughter of Samuel and Sara (Watson) Sapp. We had two children, Elsus Bauer Taylor which died suddenly five years ago in St. Louis. He had five children: Elwood, Dale, Frances, Milo, and Sara Sue.

“Elsus, my son, married a Miss Etta Bell Wilson. My father came to Missouri in an ox wagon from Madison County Kentucky when he was one year old with his father Joe Taylor and Louisa (Pauley) Taylor in the year about 1835. Settled in Boone County MO on a ridge known as the devil’s backbone on Cedar Creek. At the foot of this devil’s backbone was a water mill known as Duley's Mill. At the time he settled there, it was known as Duley's Diggins. I was told by my grandfather it took Duley 2 years to dig under the devil’s backbone to turn the water from the creek to run the water wheel to run the mill. I used to go there with my grandfather when I was a boy from where we lived 10 miles on horseback and carry 2 bushels of corn for meal, lots of times.

“It might be of interest to someone in the future for me to describe Joe Taylor, my grandfather, that I grew up with till I was sixteen. He was a little old man, hatchet-faced, roman nose. His shoulders started down on his side and sloped up till it joined on to his head. He was known far and wide as Uncle Joe and the biggest fat horses and more corn in his cribs than anyone else in the county, so stingy his back was covered with moss, and the hardest way he could do his work, that's the way he did it.

“For example, when he had me to clean out the stables where the horses and mules stayed, instead of letting me pitch it on the sled out of the stall and haul it out to the fields, make me pitch it out on the ground till I got that stable cleaned and then scoop it up on the sled and haul it off that's No. 1 example. No. 2. When he gathered corn in the fall, he would not let me pitch it out of the wagon in the cribs. Had an old shed by the side of the cribs, make me pitch it in the shed, then we would go out after supper and pitch it in the crib by hand. Don't misunderstand me, he was right there on the works doing his part. No. 3. Robert and I cleared 10 acres of heavy timbered land. Made us take the mules and sled and haul all that rail timber a quarter of a mile in the road in front of the house. People passing thought he was going to have a saw mill right in front of his door.

“I had three hundred dollars of my father's estate, and he was appointed my guardian. I worked like a dog for him and had to buy all my clothes out of my money also what school books I used. And he never even gave a nickel worth of candy in all the years I was with him. He told me hundred of times I would never be worth an ass full of tobacco ashes. But I don't wish to be boastful, but by the time I was 35 I could have bought him and all his brood.

“His children were John, my father, Jim, who married a McCrackin, Millie Ann, who married Cale Bennett, Nannie first married Jim Crane. He died, she then married Gale Bennett. Henry Clay married Sallie Bennett. Dudlie, he married but can't recall who. Died young suddenly. Mary Etta married M C Pace.

“My Grandfather Taylor had a twin brother, Jack. He married Sallie Pauley, a sister of Grandmother. She had several sisters which I shall name as far down the line as I can. Louiza, my grandmother. Sallie married Jack Taylor, Patsy married a Todd, Citie married Jim Edge, Domie married Thomas, and one married a Moore, one Brother Billie, a one-horse preacher, father of Sylvester Pauley, John Pauley, Franklin Pauley, Sarah Eads, Bud Pauley and there was another. I believe her name was Allie.

“I might further add that my grandfather Taylor was so afraid I would be lazy, he would not let me wash my face in warm water no matter how cold it was. Lived in a house so cold the water bucket would be frozen over every morning in the winter time till you have to take the hatchet to break the ice. He got me up at four o’clock and make a fire in the big old fire place which would take a half cord of wood and the house like a barn. And if the temperature was 20 degrees below zero, he would not let you get back in bed till the fire got started. Said that was laziness.

“Have me go every night and morning, frost or no frost, drive up his old fat mares running on clover and grass up to their eyes and give them a bushel of cut sheaf oats and didn't work them. Always had mules to work to keep me busy till the mules got done eating before we went to the field. Always plowed corn with a single mule. Would not have a double shovel, so you would have to go three times in a corn row to plow it properly. If he saw a buggy coming down the road, he would always say, ‘Yonder comes a dog cart filled full of strut farts.’

“I hope whoever reads this can read between the lines and draw a picture in their minds of the life I lived from the time I can first remember till I were sixteen years of age. He was born in 1811, known far and wide as Uncle Joe Taylor, for his honesty and fat horses. Never got anything out of life and caused all the grief he could in his own family. My grandmother Taylor, born 1812,” Cicero wrote in 1953.

Joseph died in 1885 at the age of 74 while my 3rd Great-Grandmother Louisa Jane Pauley lasted another 12 years to die in 1897.  Both lie buried beside the New Liberty Primitive Baptist Church that they helped found in 1842.

As my Great-Grandfather Cicero Hampton Taylor noted in his diary, both his parents died in their 30s from tuberculosis or TB. Thus, in my Taylor family line, TB wiped out a generation—John Thomas Taylor and Ellen Kane McDow Taylor—and left their children orphans. While TB has plagued humanity for centuries, modern medicine and antibiotics have rendered it impotent today.

More routinely called “consumption,” TB emerged as a scourge in 19th Century America. So, it is not unusual to learn that my second great-grandparents both died young from TB. Before 1880 people believed TB occurred as a genetic ailment, passed from parents to children. Once researchers discovered TB’s contagious nature, officials took steps to keep infecteds separated with the introduction of sanitoria—about a decade too late for my second great-grandparents.

Tuberculosis death rates peaked in the mid-1800s at 200 per 100,000 with one in every seven deaths from TB. It disproportionately affected younger women. They accepted the diagnosis as a death sentence. During their decline, patients suffer coughing spasms, chest pains and difficulty breathing until they eventually succumb to respiratory failure from damage to lung tissue.

The 1870 census shows four children living in the home of John and Ellen Taylor, who by then likely did not feel so good. The eldest, Alice Taylor (1861-1947), would have been 10 when her mother died the next year and 13 when her father followed in 1873. My Great-Grandfather Cicero had a brother, James (1862-1958) and another sister, Josie (1866-1903), all sharing a farmhouse with parents on the edge of death.

While that image sounds bleak on the surface, the 1870 census actually paints a brighter picture when I scroll through the neighborhood and recognize the names of relatives living nearby. Besides the patriarch Joseph and his wife Louisa, the census shows John’s brother James Taylor (1840-1904) plus Ellen’s brothers in the McDow family, Louisa’s brothers in the Pauley family and members of another family destined to play a prominent role in the lives of both Cicero and Alice—the Sapps—all listed living within walking distance of the John and Ellen Taylor home. That area of Boone County’s Cedar Township represented a family compound of sorts. So, those children would not have been so isolated with cousins and uncles stepping up to help. But I imagine everyone did a great deal of coughing.  

“Now if you will excuse me, I will switch to my mother’s people,” wrote Cicero in 1953, continuing his account of his family lines referencing my 2nd Great-Grandmother Ellen Kane McDow. He wrote: “My grandfather McDow's name was William, and Grandmother McDow was Alcie. Her maiden name was Adams and she was Scotch-Irish. He died before I was born.

“He settled on what is known as the McDow branch in Boone County MO, 3 miles from Easley, that is now a railroad station on the MK&T. If Boone County was in the shape of a bull, he lived right under the tail. They had six children that I know of. Ellen Kane married my father. Margaret married Lincoln Nichols, Sallie Married John Tilford, Robert married Mary Brinegar. Another married Nannie Nichols.

“Duck (the nickname of one son), he was lost in the Civil War. The last time he was seen alive was at Alton, IL, when they were exchanging prisoners then. And he was broke out with the measles and it pouring down rain and Uncle Bob tried to get him to stay in prison till he got well. But, he said he had rather die than stay there in those lice. So, I guess he took pneumonia in that cold rain and is laid to rest somewhere in IL by the road side. He was just 16 years of age at that time.”

While Cicero’s knowledge of his McDow heritage was limited to stories from his grandmother, I’ve had access to a book written in 1953 by another McDow descendant, Ida McDow Rodman, The McDow Family in America. Her research penetrated farther back in time. She identified John McDow Jr. (17??-1813) as the ancestor who immigrated from Scotland before 1750 and settled first in Pennsylvania. She described him as the descendant of Scottish clans Dow, Buchanan and Davidson from Edinburgh.

By 1751 the McDows and other families had relocated to South Carolina, settling near the Catawba River in a section of Lancaster County called the Waxhaws.   John’s uncles by his mother—my 6th Great-Grandmother Catherine McElhenny (1725-1774)—had received land grants in South Carolina that became the foundation for their community. FamilySearch.org identifies her father as John Henry McElhaney (1707-1766). Born in Limerick, Ireland, and died in Virginia, he would have been my 7th Great-Grandfather.

“All of these, however, were of the Presbyterian persuasion and many of them were wealthy people,” she wrote. “Many of the men were advanced in years and before coming to the Waxhaws were elders in the Presbyterian churches of Virginia and Pennsylvania, from which they removed.”

During the American Revolution, the American army used the Waxhaws church as a hospital. Despite the thorough research of Ida McDow Rodman for her book in 1953, we remain confused on several dates and names in the McDow lineage, likely due to the prevalence of so many similar first names such as John, Robert and William. It seems clear, however, that my line runs back to a John McDow Jr.—son of John McDow and Catherine McElhenny—and his wife Catherine Caryl (1743-1786), my 5th Great-Grandmother.

The book describes my 5GG John McDow Jr. as a “planter of considerable means, owning much land and many slaves.”  His son Robert McDow (1774-1830) became my 4th Great-Grandfather, resettling to Boone County, Missouri, some time after 1812, according to a pioneer certificate on file with the Genealogical Society of Central Missouri. It lists his occupation as a “wheelwright”—a profession that would have served him well. That certificate fails to provide much more information about him and identifies his wife only as “Mary.” The McDow book records that Robert traveled first to Illinois with an older brother then on to Missouri.

But other records indicate Robert’s son William Arthur McDow (1812-1857)—my 3rd Great-Grandfather—was born in Tennessee. Those include the 1850 census in which William himself lists Tennessee as his birth state. So, the McDow brothers apparently traveled a bit. William Arthur also rated a pioneer certificate from the Missouri society, and it verifies the memory of my Great-Grandfather Cicero Taylor in identifying William’s wife and my 3rd Great-Grandmother as Alice “Alcie” Adams (1818-1876). A history of Boone County mentions her father James Adams as another central Missouri pioneer who arrived about 1817 but only in passing.

Here's my best guess about my McDow lineage chart:

Gen	Name	Spouse	comments
1	John McDow (1725-1803)	Catherine McElhenney (1725-???)	Came 1751 to Pennsylvania, then South Carolina
2	John McDow Jr. (1743-1813)	Catherine Caryl (1743-1786)	Arrived as an 8-year-old
3	Robert McDow (1774-1829)	Mary Eleanor Gilham (1773-1843)	Moved to Illinois, then Missouri after 1812.
4	William Arthur McDow (1812-1857)	Alice Alcie Adams (1818-1876)	Born in Tennessee.
5	Ellen Kane McDow (1841-1871)	John Thomas Taylor (1837-1873)	Both died young of TB
6	Cicero Hampton Taylor (1869-1964)	Marium Frances Sapp (1866-1949)
7	Elsus Bauer Taylor (1894-1944)	Etta Bell Wilson (1898-1973)
8	Dale Taylor (1921-1984)	Rheva Mae Wright (1918-1981)
9	Gary Dale Taylor (1947- )

 

After recording his memories of the McDows in 1953, my Great-Grandfather Cicero Hampton Taylor shared more information about his adult life.

“And now in a rough way I have tried to outline of some of my people,” he wrote. “My education is very limited as you can see from my language. Never went to school over three months in one year and then had to stop 2 weeks at corn gathering time. Never got as far as fractions in arithmetic.

“After my Grandfather died, my sister begged me to go to school, but I have been told so long that I would never amount to anything, I felt I should go to work and get started in the world. Hired out till I got enough money to buy me a good team of mules, went to farming for myself at 18. Rented till in the fall before I was married, 22 in Jan. Bought an old farm for twelve hundred. Had a home to take my sweet wife to. A poor one, but a home.

Cicero Taylor and Marium Sapp Wedding Photo 1891

“She passed away four years ago, the 23 of January. If she had lived until the 25th of February, we would have been together 58 years. Life was not always smooth. When our baby boy was 18 months old, he fell in a bed of red hot coals, lost all of his fingers on his left hand. When the crash came after the first world war, I lost thirty thousand in real estate.

“My daughter, Sarah Brooksie, married Tinsley Haden. They had six children. Joseph married Mary Agnes Wilson. Benjamin Cicero (Bennie) got killed by some mules at the barn when a small boy, age 5. Bettie Lou got killed in a car wreck in June before she was ten in September. David first married Margaret Pile. They lived together about five years, then separated (no children), then he married a Mrs. Bullard. Her Maiden name was Shyrock (Gus Shrock's daughter). Hampton Taylor Haden (Jimus they called him) married Miss Mary Lee Kash. Patsy Sue married Robert Slocum of Fort Worth Texas.

“My son had five children. Elwood married Miss Goslin, Dale married Miss Wright, Frances married Bill McKinzie, Millo married Miss Hamilton, Sara Sue not married at this time.

“I have tried in my poor stumbling way to give a rough outline of my ancestors (so to speak). I am now in my 84th year making my home with my brother's youngest daughter who has been teaching here in Jal NM for ten years. Trying to help take care of her father who has been an invalid for over three years in his youngest girl's home and her older sister, Emma, who is the main stay in the way of taking care of their father, which has been a real burden for the last five or six years,” he concluded about himself.

 THE SAPPS FROM DELAWARE

Cicero overlooked a significant family group in limiting information about the family of his wife, my Great-Grandmother Marium Frances Sapp (1866-1949). Fortunately, I have learned a lot from several records and books that trace her family back quite a way, notably A History of the Sapp Family written in 1910 by J Gooden Sapp and R.W. Stanley. 

Unable to pinpoint an origin story, Sapp and Stanley summarized: “They are not well educated as a rule and not mentally brilliant.” Ouch! They traced different branches to the years 1765-1775 with the lines traceable from there. They concluded anything prior is based on oral tradition. But they believed a John Sapp arrived in 1650 from England with Lord Calvert’s second ship to Maryland. 

The first Baron of Baltimore, George Calvert (1580-1632) had been an English politician who became interested in colonization so he could establish a haven for persecuted Irish and English Catholics. He received a royal charter to create Maryland but died before he could settle there. His sons Cecil and Leonard succeeded in his stead. 

Noting the presence of Sapps in other parts of the colonies, the book’s authors identify two distinct lines with Line A traced to John Sapp’s 1650 arrival in Maryland. Despite some confusion in the lineage, I am comfortable citing this guy as the Sapp immigrant and my 9th Great-Grandfather: Joannes John Sapp (1640-1708). Further complicating my research, it appears that at some point a female Sapp married a male Sapp confusing my ability to identify them distinctly. Nevertheless, I can document my line clearly back to my 4th Great-Grandfather Levi Thomas Sapp (1775-1860) while the Sapp book authors mention him in their research for Line A back to John Sapp who arrived in 1650.

Providing additional help, a History of Callaway County written in 1884 included a profile of Levi’s grandson—and my 2nd Great-Grandfather—Samuel Morris Sapp (1836-1918). 

“Among the early settlers of Central Missouri were John and Mariam Sapp (daughter of Matthew Sapp), the parents of the subject of the present sketch, who removed from Delaware, of which State they were both natives, to Missouri and settled in Boone County with their family in 1823,” according to that history on page 788 which has been digitized and shared on the web site for the Missouri Secretary of State. This profile indicates the marriage between John Sapp (1804-1896) and Mariam Sapp (1807-1862)—my 3rd Great-Grandparents who might have been cousins!

Three sons of John M and Mariam Sapp

When my 3GG John Sapp died in 1896, he rated a short obituary in The Columbia Missouri Herald: “Uncle John Sapp, aged 91 years and six months and perhaps the oldest citizen in Boone County, died at the home of Levy Hagans near Wilton April 10, 1896, of pneumonia. He was born in Kent County, Delaware, Oct 14, 1804, and at the age of 10 years came with his parents to Bourbon County, Kentucky, and from there to Pike County, Missouri, in 1823. He came to Boone County in 1825 and has since resided here—a period 70 years.”

Of his son, my 2GG Samuel Morris Sapp, the Callaway County history profile reports he “became a successful farmer and one of the most worthy and highly respected citizens of the community in which he lived.”

Born 13 January 1836 in Boone County, Missouri, the profile described Samuel as “reared on his father's farm and there formed that taste for farm life which influenced him to devote himself to the occupation of a farmer on reaching manhood. Nor has the result been such as to cause him to regret the choice he made.

“As a farmer he has been substantially successful, and now has a comfortable homestead in Cedar township of this county, of 240 acres of good land, 150 acres of which are under fence and fairly improved. It is well watered with springs and exceptionally well adapted to stock raising,” the profile continued.

Reviewing the 1850 census for Boone County, we find a 74-year-old Levy Sapp living in household 1271 with my 4th Great-Grandmother Trana Williams (1774-1856), age 65, both listing Delaware as their states of birth. Nearby we find my 3rd Great-Grandfather John Sapp, age 46, living in household 1266 with his wife, my 43-year-old 3rd Great-Grandmother Mariam Sapp and five children including 15-year-old Samuel Morris Sapp destined to become my 2nd Great-Grandfather. As states of birth, John listed Delaware, Mariam listed Kentucky and Samuel listed Missouri. Also nearby, we find 39-year-old Joseph Taylor living in household 1246 with his family.

This chart reflects my best research into my Sapp family lineage:

Gen	Name	Spouse	comments
1	Joannes John Sapp (1640-1708)	Christina Zepp (1634-1704)	Arrived 1650 Maryland on Lord Calvert’s 2nd ship.
2	John Charles Sapp II (1672-1708)	Sarah Frost (1666-1695)
3	Henry Sapp (1695-1743)	Anne Moore (1697-1761)
4	Henry Sapp Jr. (1721-1772)	Sarah Frost (1723-1746)	Another Sarah Frost????
5	Ephraim Sapp (1746-1807)	Elizabeth Greenlee (1748- ? )
6	Levi Thomas Sapp (1775-1860)	Trana T. Williams (1774-1856)	Moved Delaware to Ky 1823-Missouri 1825.
7	John M. Sapp (1804-1896)	Louisa Marium Frost Sapp (1807-1862)
8	Samuel Morris Sapp (1836-1918)	Sarah Stark Watson (1840-1888)
9	Marium Frances Sapp (1866-1949)	Cicero Hampton Taylor (1869-1964)
10	Elsus Bauer Taylor (1894-1944)	Etta Bell Wilson (1898-1973)
11	Dale Taylor (1921-1984)	Rheva Mae Wright (1918-1981)
12	Gary Dale Taylor (1947- )

 

When my 2GG Samuel Morris Sapp married Sarah Sabitha Stark Watson (1840-1888) on 1 November 1855, he brought another colorful and long-lived family line into my tree. Although I know Sarah’s Watson lineage only back to her father—my 3rd Great-Grandfather John Ketchem Watson (1800-1876)—researchers have traced her mother’s Stark side to a William Stark (1546-1584) of Somerset, England.

Those researchers include family genealogists who have posted articles on the FamilySearch.org project and produced a book in 1985: James Stark of Stafford County, Virginia and His Descendants. They identify Scottish immigrants named John Stark (1665-1754?) and his son James Stark (1695-1754) who appear to be my 7th and 6th Great-Grandfathers. The research shows they arrived in 1710 and settled in Londonderry, New Hampshire, where James met and married the daughter of a Welsh immigrant in 1716—my 6th Great-Grandmother Elizabeth Thornton (1700?-1755?).

Compiled by Mary Kathryn Harris and Mary Iva Jean Jorgensen, the 1985 book shares research into a number of family lines connected with the Starks. They explain that the Stark name originated near Glasgow, Scotland, in the Scottish lowlands. While more research is needed to identify the ancestors of the James Stark born in 1695, they cite the existence of a colorful snuff box passed from James in 1754 to his son and my 5th Great-Grandfather Jeremiah Stark (1722-1805).

By 1717, James and Elizabeth had moved to Stafford County in the Virginia colony where they had 15 children, including my 5GG Jeremiah Stark. Known as Lieutenant Jeremiah Stark, he fought with Virginia militia in the French and Indian War between 1754 and 1763 suffering the amputation of one arm due a wound by a native arrow. He had four children with his first wife who died in 1759, then nine more with his second wife, my 5th Great-Grandmother Mary Elizabeth Green (1732-1775). Oral traditions recount that Jeremiah and several sons fought in the American Revolution, but Harris and Jorgensen could locate no confirming records. Jeremiah died in 1805 in Virginia at the age of 79.

Born in 1770, my 4th Great-Grandfather Thomas Stark (1770-1824) would have been too young for service in the Revolution. He married my 4th Great-Grandmother Celia Harding (1780-1840) about 1798 in Virginia where they had two children including my 3rd Great-Grandmother Sophia Stark (1802-1884). By 1806 the family had moved to Sumner, Tennessee where they had 10 more children.

While Thomas and Celia both died in Tennessee, Sophia married my 3rd Great-Grandfather John Ketchem Watson (1800-1876) in 1821 in Tennessee and they moved in 1832 to Missouri, settling first in Callaway County. Sophia enjoyed a reputation as a frontier midwife and doctor who went blind later in life. John Ketchem Watson had come from Georgia and has been remembered as a large man who made a living splitting rails. Neighbors called him the “rail splitter of Callaway County.”

In the 1850 census we find the Watson family living in Callaway County with five children that include my Missouri-born, 10-year-old 2nd Great-Grandmother Sarah Stark Watson (1840-1888). Sarah married Samuel Morris Sapp five years later, and her parents moved the short distance to Boone County where the Sapp family had established itself. By 1860, the census shows John and Sophia Watson living in Boone County with their last two children in a home between my newlywed 2nd Great-Grandparents Samuel and Sarah Sapp and another Sapp family farm.

Here’s a chart reflecting my best reconstruction of my Stark family lineage:

Gen	Name	Spouse	comments
1	James Stark (1695-1754)	Elizabeth Thornton (1696-1754)	Arrived in New Hampshire  from Scotland 1710
2	Lt. Jeremiah Stark (1722-1805)	Mary Elizabeth Green (1732-1775)	Lost an arm in the French and Indian War
3	Thomas Stark (1770-1824)	Celia Harding (1780-1840)	Died in Sumner, TN
4	Sophia Stark (1802-1884)	John Ketchem Watson (1800-1876)	Moved the family to MO before 1840.
5	Sarah Stark Watson (1840-1888)	Samuel Morris Sapp (1836-1918)
6	Marium Frances Sapp (1866-1949)	Cicero Hampton Taylor (1869-1964)
7	Elsus Bauer Taylor (1894-1944)	Etta Bell Wilson (1898-1973)
8	Dale Taylor (1921-1984)	Rheva Mae Wright (1918-1981)
9	Gary Dale Taylor (1947- )

 

Sarah Stark Watson Sapp died in 1888 at the age of 48 but Samuel Morris Sapp remarried a year later and lived on until 10 September 1918 when he died at the age of 82. Several newspaper articles reported on his death, noting that he had retired a year earlier from his farm and moved to Columbia. The only cause cited was the infirmity of old age.

“The large assemblage of relatives, friends and neighbors at the funeral attested the high esteem in which Mr. Sapp was held,” The Ashland Bugle recounted. “His wide circle of friends learned with sincere regret of the pioneer citizen’s death, removing as it does another link that connected the past with the present.”

The Columbia Daily Tribune described him as “a member of the well known Sapp family of Cedar Township and was born and reared in Boone County. He was well known to nearly everyone in the southern part of the county, and was highly esteemed by everyone.”

Cicero with Marium in 1948

Besides his second wife who would live until 1950, the newspaper recorded that Samuel also was survived by his daughter Marium “Fannie” Sapp Taylor (1866-1949) and her husband Cicero Hampton Taylor (1869-1964)—my great-grandparents who had married 25 February 1891. Because his 95 years of life ranged over so many cultural and commercial changes, Cicero Hampton Taylor represents a solid spine on which to share these accounts of the various family lines intersecting in my father’s lineage.

Cicero Hampton Taylor

Born just after the Civil War in 1869, Cicero lived long enough that I even met him a couple of times as a teenager in the early 1960s. Orphaned at the age of four, he built a successful life on his own and likely with the help of the Sapp family. My father spoke reverently of Cicero, referring to him always as “Grandfather Taylor.” Cicero did record his memories in the 1953 diary already quoted several times in this post. But he lived another 11 years afterward. My cousin Patsy H. Slocum shared her research and memories of Cicero and Marium in a written article posted to FamilySearch.org: 

“Hampton and ''Fannie were lifelong members of the Primitive Baptist Church. The last years of their lives, members of Rocky Fork Primitive Baptist Church in Hinton, Missouri. Hampton was an Elder in the Church and lead the singing from the front pew. He was a farmer in Boone County, Missouri, for most of the years of his life.

“About 1910, Fannie was in very ill health, and they thought that the California climate might help her. So, the family closed the farm up as well as they could, and journeyed to Long Beach, California, on the train. They rented a house there close to the beach, and they stayed in California for a year. They moved to a farm about 3/4 mile east of Hatton, Missouri, Callaway County, in 1941. They resided there until Fannie's death in 1949. He then sold the farm, and lived a few years with his daughter, Brooksie, on the adjoining farm.

“Then, he moved to New Mexico to live with his nieces, Emma Taylor Loyd and Catherine Taylor in Jal. He built a duplex on the lot next to Catherine's home and rented the property out. He was in his 80s at this time. About 5 years before his death, he became ill, and was transported back to Missouri by ambulance (Parker Funeral Home). He lived with Brooksie until his death.

“In his last years, he fell and suffered a broken hip, and was wheel-chair bound. Brooksie took care of him until his death. She had a potty chair that she would place it at the foot of her bed which had a high footboard. Hampton would grab hold of the bed and pull himself out of the wheelchair so that she could slide the potty chair under him to use.

“He loved to travel, and a few days before his death, Brooksie and her husband, Tinsley, took him to Irvine, Kentucky, to visit a grandson. He rode all the way down there in the back seat of the car without getting out. He loved to play cards and his favorite was 3-point pitch. After his eye-sight dimmed, he used the enlarged print cards,” my cousin concluded.

THE CRIMES OF GRANDPA “NUB”—A MOONSHINE ENTREPRENUER

Elsus Taylor about 1940 with his left hand "nub" inside a pocket.

I never met my grandfather on my father’s side. Born 28 March 1894, Elsus Bauer Taylor died at age 50 on 6 October 1944, three years before my birth. But I did hear stories that painted Elsus as one of my most colorful and roguish ancestors. In 2026 I managed to find written verification on most of those stories using a gift subscription to the Newspapers.com web site. I simply typed in some search parameters—“Elsus Taylor” “1900-1944” and “Missouri”—then waited for the search engine to populate. A few minutes later Newspapers.com delivered a whopping 214 articles published in that time frame by a number of Missouri newspapers, most notably The Ashland Bugle, The Columbia Tribune, The Fulton Sun and my old employer The Columbia Missourian covering a number of his activities. It turns out, my grandpa Elsus made the front page of The Columbia Missourian in the 1920s more times than me during my year as a reporter there in 1968-69 while attending the University of Missouri.

Until downloading that archive of articles, my best accounts on Elsus had come from older cousins who either knew him or had heard about him. A summary of the oral biography appears on the collaboration section of his FamilySearch.org profile and his WikiTree.com profile. 

“Elsus was known as "Nub" because of an accident as an 18-month-old child. He fell into a fireplace and burned off his left hand. Being so young, however, he learned to live with this handicap,” the notes begin.

“He became a farmer and skillful at breaking mules. He worked for the University of Missouri in Columbia running some of their farming operations while running a farm and opening a restaurant. According to recollections of his oldest daughter Frances, however, he lost everything in the Great Depression.

“Then his father, Cicero Hampton offered to buy him a farm in Hallsville, Mo. CH promised to deed the place to Elsus in seven years if he worked it and behaved. Just as the seventh year approached, Elsus hatched a plan to sell the farm once he got the deed. CH learned of the plan and denied the deed. So Elsus told CH to keep the farm. Then Elsus moved his family to Vandalia where Dale met Rheva. Later he moved to St. Louis, Mo during World War II to work in factories there,” the note concludes.

His WikiTree profile adds: “Another family legend says that Elsus once was arrested for operating a moonshine still on a farm in Central Missouri but his father helped resolve the legal matter. He had red hair and freckles. He also had physical strength, according to family stories from his niece.”

Indeed, his draft cards from World Wars I and II describe him as a redhead with blue eyes, standing 6-feet-2-inches tall and missing his left hand. Some articles described him incorrectly as a “one-armed man” as they detailed a variety of criminal cases during the 1920s and 1930s in central Missouri from bootlegging to check forgery and chicken theft. Juries acquitted him multiple times but the stories about the trials reflect both the divisions of the times over prohibition, the unusual circumstances of small-town justice and the interest shown by local papers in all activities of their audience.

Earliest mention of Elsus occurs in 1908 when he found a turtle bearing the carved initials of his father, Cicero C.H. Hampton Taylor on its shell. His dad had carved the shell nine years before and released the turtle into the yard of their farm near Ashland. Editors at The Fulton Gazette considered the incident interesting enough for one paragraph of local color on Page Two.

In 1910, The Columbia Tribune included a paragraph on the front page about the family’s departure for a vacation to Galveston, Texas, in a roundup of local news. In October of 1911 The Ashland Bugle reported he successfully made the school basketball team, without emphasizing his apparent ability to dribble with only one hand. Six months later he appeared on The Bugle’s front page again listing him among the eighth-grade graduates while his sister Sarah Brooksie Taylor Haden (1892-1978) was listed among the high school grads.

A year later, The Bugle declared it front page news when his father brought Elsus home from Springfield, Missouri, where he had been attending something called “The Normal School”—a precursor to Southwest Missouri State Teachers College founded in 1919. No later articles cover a graduation, but they do report him purchasing real estate a few times and prosecuting a civil lawsuit about an estate. His 22 March 1916 marriage to my grandmother Etta Bell Wilson (1898-1973) also made the news as did her unexplained hospitalization in 1924.

Right after that, however, in the peak of prohibition, the newspaper stories turned darker for my Grandpa Nub and for my Grandma Etta Bell as she found herself on the wrong side of the law thanks to him. My family’s version of Bonnie and Clyde? Not quite. But reading between the lines, it seems clear that Elsus emerged at one point as public enemy number one for the deputies of Callaway County, described in one article as determined to stamp out the specter of bootlegging within its border.

Unfortunately, Elsus had opted to rent a farm in 1925 in Callaway County—known as the old George Andris place—placing him within their jurisdiction. Fortunately, however, he would succeed in forcing consistent changes of venue back to Boone County where his father held sway and jurors apparently had more antipathy against prohibition helping him to beat many a rap.

Nub’s dark days actually began with a horrible auto wreck on 22 March 1925, a month after his arrival in Callaway County. He was riding in the backseat of his car beside another man with his friend Roy Cutchall at the wheel and another friend, Jack Galligher, in the front passenger seat. After passing a car at a high rate of speed, Cutchall flipped Nub’s car into a ditch, ejecting the passengers in the backseat while pinning the driver and front passenger under the wreck.

Galligher would die the next day prompting Fulton police to charge Cutchall with manslaughter. In short order, Callaway County deputies arrived 19 April 1925 at Nub’s farm to search for an illegal moonshine whiskey still.

“The Callaway County authorities are making a desperate effort to clean out all liquor law violators in Callaway County and in that effort they brought in two more men Sunday evening,” noted a front-page story in The Fulton Daily Sun-Gazette reporting my grandfather’s first arrest. The raid had secured a 15-gallon still plus empty barrels that had held corn mash. Two days later, Elsus also was facing an unrelated charge of forgery in Columbia. His rap sheet had begun to grow.

Noting that Elsus’s father had helped pay bail, The Fulton Gazette described Cicero as a “highly respected farmer of Boone County.” Before Elsus could face trial on either charge, he became a witness in the manslaughter trial of Cutchall, helping him secure an acquittal on 25 May 1925. The front-page story in The Fulton Gazette listed the names of every juror and described Elsus as a witness for the prosecution whose testimony “gave benefit” to the defense during cross-examination. Elsus told jurors that Cutchall had to drive into the ditch or risk hitting another car. No witnesses could prove Cutchall had been drunk.

With the Cutchall manslaughter case complete, Elsus faced two trials himself in Boone County after his attorney succeeded in moving his Callaway County liquor still case there. His check forgery trial began 23 June 1925 with testimony alleging he had tried to buy a coat for his wife the previous December by forging the signature of his friend Joe Morris onto a $20 check from Morris’s account. But jurors needed just eight minutes of deliberation to acquit Elsus after Morris testified that he had signed the check outside the store and given it to Elsus there.

“TAYLOR IS AGAIN ON TRIAL” screamed a front-page headline in The Columbia Missourian for 29 June 1925 announcing commencement of the case from Callaway County regarding possession of a moonshine still. Callaway County lawmen described their raid of Elsus’s farm where they found part of a still in a hole in the barn concealing a copper kettle, 450 pounds of sugar in five sacks, 100 pounds of “chop” for diluting the brew and three tubs. When jurors hung 10-2 for conviction after 15 hours of deliberation, the judge declared a mistrial 1 July 1925.

One article quoted the prosecutor blaming the mistrial on the presence of a couple of “wets” who had infiltrated the jury. Coverage noted that Elsus and five others testified for the defense but failed to share any nuggets from his testimony. He had told reporters, however, that—of course—he “had no knowledge” of the still. And his October retrial resulted in an acquittal after just 20 minutes of jury deliberation.

Those Callaway County lawmen must have been furious and frustrated about these results. Their case against Elsus included testimony from the fourth passenger in the March car wreck who said he had spent the night before the wreck helping Elsus build the still at Elsus’s home. He also said Elsus paid him to help clean the place after the car wreck, which resulted in a death and a manslaughter trial that also ended in acquittal. Since Elsus had only rented the farm a few weeks before the wreck, however, he must have received the benefit of the doubt that previous occupants had left the still behind.

If his acquittal sounds unusual in light of that overwhelming evidence, we must consider it against the context of the times and acknowledge the quality of Elsus’s defense attorney. Following adoption of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the government prohibited the manufacture, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages between 1920 and 1933, when the 19th Amendment passed to repeal the 18th. But the Prohibition Era did not occur with universal agreement among the population. Indeed, prosecutions for bootlegging proved difficult with at least half of the cases ending in dismissal or acquittal, according to national statistics. We shouldn’t find it hard to understand that Elsus could win an acquittal in trial in his home county.

In addition, Elsus managed to secure the services of an experienced defense attorney in Rubey Hulen (1894-1956). A decorated veteran of World War I, Hulen had just served a term as the elected Boone County District Attorney from 1920-1924. Elsus’s forgery and bootlegging trials would be among Hulen’s first after retiring to launch his new private practice.

As a prosecutor, Hulen had convicted others on liquor violation charges so he boasted intricate knowledge of the legal landscape as well as a stellar local reputation. In 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt would appoint Hulen to a federal judgeship in St. Louis. So, there is little doubt that Hulen would have brought an effective and articulate defense to Elsus’s cases in 1925. We should also assume that my Great-Grandfather Cicero paid the handsome fee likely required to retain Hulen’s services for the trials of his son.  

Once acquitted, Elsus opted to return to Boone County as quickly as possible, moving onto Cicero’s farm. As soon as Elsus left his Callaway County farm on 8 December 1925, however, deputies swooped onto the vacant property the next day in a fruitless attempt to find new evidence against him. Demonstrating their ability to hold a grudge, deputies had acted on “gossip,” according to The Fulton Gazette, that Elsus had traded a cow and a calf to a moonshiner for 15 gallons of corn whiskey. During the transaction, however, a fight erupted and a tipster told deputies Elsus had left parts of his still behind. But they found nothing they could use to build a case.

Undeterred, Callaway deputies managed to bring a new case against Elsus in February of 1926, when they secured a grand jury indictment that charged him with having given “hooch, moonshine or corn whiskey” to a 17-year-old on two occasions during events at the Taylor farm the previous year. My Grandpa Nub obviously had a target on his back. The newspaper reported that Cicero had impressed the Callaway County judge when he paid the $500 bail for Elsus.

Of Cicero, the paper noted: “He owns several farms in Boone County and seemed quite anxious to set his son right with the people and the law and get him settled down to farming.”

Even before Elsus’s trial on this new charge, Callaway prosecutors demonstrated their determination with an unusual perjury charge against a witness who had testified in the grand jury proceeding that indicted Elsus. They charged that Tom Potts had lied to the grand jury when he told them he had not seen any liquor at Elsus’s home the night of the alleged offense. It marked the first perjury case for Callaway County in “many years,” according to the Fulton newspaper.

“TAYLOR IS ACQUITTED ON CHANGE OF VENUE” screamed the headline just under the front-page masthead of The Columbia Missourian for 14 April 1926, and above a story describing the trial moved to Columbia from Callaway County thanks again to the arguments of Rubey Hulen. Two things appeared clear: My Grandpa Nub had become well enough known for copy editors to use his last name in headlines, and Rubey Hulen had received steady work from the Taylor clan defending him. The Boone County jury on this case took just two hours to find Elsus not guilty of giving drinks to a 17-year-old friend during a party at Taylor’s Callaway County farm the year before.

Determined to make somebody pay for Elsus’s activities, Callaway prosecutors prepared for the perjury trial which began 18 June 1926 in Fulton with numerous witnesses describing how Elsus had brought a stew kettle full of corn whiskey into his living room for a gathering to share. Testifying in his own defense, Tom Potts said he had not lied to the grand jury when he told them he had not seen any whiskey at the Taylor home that night.

“I purposely avoided seeing the whiskey,” Potts testified at his perjury trial. He added, “But believe I could have seen it if I had looked for it.” He also testified that his doctor had advised him against drinking “hooch” so he did not even want to look.

The jury hung 9-3 for conviction of Potts on the perjury charge, according to The Fulton Gazette for 24 June 1926. The retrial in September resulted in an acquittal for Potts. At this point the Callaway County lawmen must have been frustrated beyond imagination. Every prosecution related to Elsus Taylor seemed to lose. But Grandpa Nub had more cases ahead.

Life appeared peaceful for about 18 months as Elsus settled onto one of his dad’s farms in Boone County. But he made the front page again in both Columbia papers in February of 1928 after Boone County lawmen arrested him on a complaint of stealing 39 chickens from his neighbor A.D. Johnson and found 50 bottles of home brew there. Elsus faced dual charges of grand larceny for the chickens and liquor law violation for the hooch. But a judge allowed a minimal bail because Elsus said his wife, my grandmother Etta Belle was “dangerously ill,” according to The Columbia Tribune. The paper failed to elaborate on her illness.

Before Elsus could stand trial on either local charge, however, federal agents surprised county lawmen with a secret raid 12 October 1928 in Columbia that nabbed Elsus and four other men on liquor charges. He immediately drew a $50 fine with 75 days in jail. The Columbia Daily Tribune reported the agents had been operating for three weeks in Boone County.

“They did not cooperate with the local officers but came in and represented themselves to be students, employees of the state highway department and other vocations,” the paper noted. “They succeeded in buying liquor from local bootleggers and Friday night made arrests.”

Apparently, my grandmother had recovered enough to be arrested, too. She invited them into their home and sold them a pint of whiskey. After a jury trial on 8 January 1929, she received a fine of $500 and three months in jail for conviction on one of the liquor charges. In a third case, the couple stood as co-defendants and Elsus did the honorable thing by assuming full responsibility “for the conduct of his home,” The Tribune reported on page one.

“MRS. ETTA BELLE TAYLOR AGAIN TRIED ON LIQUOR CHARGES” screamed a front-page headline in The Columbia Missourian for 21 January 1929 as the cases unfolded. The article continued: “Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were charged jointly this morning with the possession of intoxicating liquor.” She won a brief delay in the trial when their attorney discovered that 11 of the potential jurors in the jury panel had served in the case two weeks before that convicted her then. They had to recruit a new panel.

We all called her “Granny” in the 1950s whenever she would visit my family home in St. Louis. I never suspected that sweet old widow woman was hiding a rap sheet.

Elsus logged two liquor convictions before facing trial 18 April 1929 for stealing those chickens. Columbia Missourian copy editors must have been enjoying themselves writing front page headlines for this show: “THIRTY WITNESSES IN CHICKEN TRIAL—A.D. JOHNSON TESTIFIES IN CASE AGAINST ELSUS TAYLOR.”

Johnson told jurors no one lived on his chicken farm. But he found 39 of his flock of 134 missing when he arrived the morning of 8 February 1928. He said he also found tire tracks with footprints from a man and a woman leading to the chicken coop. Checking with a local poultry buyer later that day, he found some chickens he identified as from his flock. One in particular had an unusual knot on one leg from an injury.

“I would have known that chicken if I had seen it in Chicago,” Johnson testified.

Things might have looked bleak for Elsus, but my aunt Frances ran to his rescue. Then just 10 years old, she entered the courtroom and told the jury the chicken with the broken leg had been her pet. The prosecutor objected, of course, calling her “imaginative, malleable and apparently coached beforehand.” Elsus also offered character witnesses who vouched for his honesty and other witnesses who said he’d been too ill that night to commit any crime.

“ELSUS TAYLOR IS PRONOUNCED NOT GUILTY OF CHICKEN THEFT” screamed the headline atop the front page of The Columbia Missourian for 19 April 1929. The jury had required just under two hours to reach its verdict. This acquittal had been won by a new defense attorney named William McCluskey. And Elsus continued to live a charmed life as a defendant while Cicero likely continued to pay the legal tab. But a reckoning loomed beyond the horizon as his luck in the courtroom began to fade.

“ ‘NUB’ TAYLOR FINED—APPEALS FROM CITY COURT” screamed a front page headline in The Columbia Daily Tribune for 26 June 1930 reporting another liquor case and recognizing his nickname as worthy of mention in a headline. Even after prohibition ended in 1933, Elsus continued to flout the law with bootlegging, and the record shows several additional fines for violations.

But his final brush with authority occurred in an ignominious way in March of 1936 when he avoided hard prison time by turning snitch. Arrested with two partners for operation of an illegal unregistered moonshine still, “Elsus (Nub) Taylor” agreed to testify against them, according to The Columbia Daily Tribune for 25 March 1936. His co-defendants immediately changed their pleas to guilty and received 18 months in prison while Elsus drew three years probation.

So, what should we make of my grandfather’s record? I tend to consider him more of a rascal than a threat to society. I actually hope I inherited some of his independent spirit and ability to challenge authority. We also must consider the results of his life. He fathered five children who each became responsible adults while achieving various levels of success without any antisocial activities. The brood included my father Dale Kempster Taylor (1921-1984). My uncle Milo Hampton Taylor (1924-2012) participated in the 1944 Normandy invasion. So, Elsus must have been some sort of an effective role model despite his shenanigans.

In addition, his marriage to Etta Belle Wilson provided another milestone in my genealogical trail. After more research, I’ve discovered she descended from a man who arrived in Jamestown in 1616—my 9th Great-Grandfather John Johnson (1590-1637)—providing a fourth Jamestown ancestor in my family tree including the three on my mother’s side described in my blog post of 7 January 2026. 

THE JAMESTOWN JOHNSONS

With such a common name as Johnson, unraveling the links to me from four centuries after Jamestown remains a challenge. But I believe I’ve made a reasonable case for this link to the John Johnson who likely traveled to Jamestown as a child from London about 1616 or earlier. He ranks among those known as “ancient planters.” In those times, London suffered an overflow of orphaned and vagrant children. The Virginia Company would recruit them as apprentices needed in their Virginia Colony. By 1624 records show John Johnson living on Jamestown Island in a tent on a 15-acre plot with a wife and two children including my one-year-old 8th Great-Grandfather John Johnson Jr. (1623-1665).

The Johnson descendants remained in Virginia and the Carolinas until my 3rd Great-Grandfather Isaac Ewing Johnson (1799-1873) emigrated to Boone County, Missouri in 1826 with his wife, my 3rd Great-Grandmother Hannah Little (1802-1883) and likely her father, my 4th Great-Grandfather William Edward Little (1781-1844) since he died in Boone County.

The 1850 U.S. Census found Isaac and Hannah living in Boone County with six children including my eight-year-old 2nd Great-Grandfather Jerome Johnson (1843-1888). Each parent listed Virginia as their state of birth while listing Missouri as the state of birth for each child. In 1870 Jerome married my 2nd Great-Grandmother Ann Frazier (1841-1906), a native of Kentucky. The 1850 Census shows the Frazier family living near the Isaac Johnson farm.

Jerome and Ann had just one child, my Great-Grandmother Sallie Marih Johnson (1868-1926). Eight years before Jerome’s death, the 1880 U.S. Census recorded a household that includes Jerome’s 77-year-old widowed mother Hannah Little Johnson, Ann’s brother Henry Frazier and a farmhand identified as 21-year-old James Johnson.

Sallie would marry young for the first time in 1885 to George Nichols and have two children with him. After his death on 28 June 1890, however, she married again as a widow to my Great-Grandfather Alfred Wilson (1872-1930) on 25 November 1894. Before she could merge her Jamestown Johnsons heritage with my Taylor Tree through her daughter’s marriage in 1916 to Elsus Taylor, however, my Great-Grandmother Sallie would face some drama on her own.

The census of 1880 shows 23-year-old George T. Nichols (1857-1889) and his 22-year-old wife Parlee Brown Nichols (1853-1881) living with her father Hezekiah Brown (1824-1900) just two homes from Jerome Johnson’s home where Sallie was 12.  After the death of Nichols’s first wife in 1881, the widower Nichols would marry 16-year-old Sallie in December of 1885 and make her a stepmother for his two children from his first marriage. Before Nichols’s death in 1889, she would have two children with him. His death made her a widowed stepmom with four Nichols children under her care.

But that situation changed one night in August of 1890 when nine men disguised in white caps rode horses onto her farm and abducted the two older children from George Nichols’s first marriage. According to an article 6 August 1890 in The Missouri Telegraph, Sallie filed charges seeking the arrest of two men connected to the 65-year-old grandfather of her two missing stepchildren, Hezekiah Brown (1824-1900). I have found no record indicating they ever returned. Although Hezekiah Brown has no bloodline connection to my family, his later years sound interesting enough to mention as a sidebar in this post.

Hezekiah married three times. After the death of his first wife, Hez apparently was still feeling frisky. In 1894 at the age of 70, he married a 39-year-old woman and began a short-lived but apparently rocky relationship.

“The marital troubles of 80-year-old Hezekiah Brown and his young wife have given rise to a great deal of trouble in that portion of Boone County known as ‘New Virginy’ so-called no doubt in kindly irony for although the great dome of the state university almost casts a shadow over its ravines, aestheticism has never found a permanent abiding place there,” began a front page article in The Columbia Herald-Statesman for 2 August 1895.

“Last February Hezekiah Brown expelled his wife and her sick child from his home, and in desperation the woman waded through deep snows to the home of Mr. and Mrs. John Johnston who generously gave her a shelter,” the article continued. “She left her household goods behind, pending a legal settlement of her affairs and in this she was supported by Mr. Johnston.”

The article relates how Hezekiah dispatched one of his pals—a man identified by Sallie as one of the abductors of Hezekiah’s grandchildren—to dump furniture from the Brown home to the yard of the Johnston home. A fight left Johnston with a broken leg and Brown’s pal convicted of assault.

By the next year, Hezekiah was ready for a new marriage and chose a 19-year-old with one newspaper saluting the “May-December” romance. That article described the old man as “gallant.” He died of a stroke in February of 1900. It sounds like Sallie would have had faced constant conflict raising his two grandchildren as part of her blended family.

That family started to grow after she met and married my Great-Grandfather Alfred Spencer Wilson (1872-1930) on 25 November 1894. I have failed to learn much about the Wilson family. Born in Louisville, Kentucky to John Wilson (?-?) and Eliza Hendricks Wilson (1846-1927), Alfred appears on no census record before 1900. By then, however, his widowed mother, my 2nd Great-Grandmother Eliza, was living with Alfred’s brother Samuel Wilson (1881-1950). Eliza would list herself as a widow on all future census records through 1920. Alfred listed his occupation as a farmer on the census records but his 1930 death certificate identified him as a fireman working for the Columbian Hotel. It was my Grandmother Etta Belle Wilson Taylor who provided that information about her father, by then a widower after Sallie’s death in 1926.

My Johnson lineage chart (according to WikiTree’s Jamestown project)

Gen	Name	Spouse	comments
1	John Johnson (1590-1636)	Anne Goche (1600-1665)	Arrived in Jamestown about 1616.
2	John Johnson Jr. (1623-1681)	Margaret Lyden (1630-1700)
3	Jeffery Johnson (1650-1725)	Elizabeth Wright (1652-1725)
4	Jeffery Johnson Jr. (1690-1758)	Margaret Unknown (1744-1794)
5	Jeffery Johnson III (1722-1789)	Rachel Irene Walker (1727-1816)	Moved to North Carolina about 1769.
6	Ben Franklin Johnson (1753-1814)	Elizabeth Gaines (1757-1835)	Died in South Carolina
7	Isaac Ewing Johnson (1800-1873)	Hannah Little (1802-1883)	Moved to Missouri in 1826 with wife
8	Jerome Johnson (1843-1883)	Ann Eliza Frazier (1841-1906)
9	Sallie Marih Johnson (1868-1926)	Alfred Spencer Wilson (1871-1930)
10	Etta Belle Wilson (1898-1973)	Elsus Bauer Taylor (1894-1944)
11	Dale Taylor (1921-1984)	Rheva Mae Wright (1918-1981)
12	Gary Dale Taylor (1947- )

 

MY DAD: A ST. LOUIS ENTREPRENEUR

Born 25 January 1921, my father was a child when his father Elsus fought the law repeatedly in the 1920s. While I never knew Elsus, I did know my father very well because I worked beside him in his business from the age of 12 until I left home for college at 18. I still wish I had known him better. I have some blanks in his life story I never will fill.

For starters, I’d like to know the genesis of his middle name: Dale Kempster Taylor (1921-1984). Had there been a Kempster line somewhere in the past or did Elsus have a friend named Kempster? We’ll never know. Recounting stories from his youth, my dad offered no complaints about abuse and always spoke kindly of Elsus. But he did recall the poverty of the Great Depression.

At 15 in 1936, Dale lied about his age to join the U.S. Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) so he could earn a living and send money home. His CCC discharge paper showed he served from July until November and listed his age as 18. It recorded his education level as eight years of common school, height of 5-7, black hair and brown eyes. He worked as a “pick and shovel” man on crews in California. The CCC provided transportation home from Camp Wildcat Canyon, California, near Berkeley to Columbia, Missouri, with $2 of travel money.

Created in 1933 as one of the New Deal work relief programs, the CCC recruited unemployed, unmarried men between 18 and 25 to supply manual labor jobs for public works projects. The government provided shelter, food and clothing while paying $30/month (worth $746 in 2025) with $25 sent to each family back home. CCC’s largest enrollment at any single time stood 300,000 workers. It ranked as the most popular of the New Deal programs and it must have seemed a miracle opportunity for my dad who lived his life thanking U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the rescue.

Dale’s camp, according to one New Deal history article on the “Living New Deal” remembrance web site, was among “five camps in the East Bay hills, starting in 1933-34 and carrying on until 1942.  From those camps, the ‘CCC boys’ set out into the newly-created East Bay regional parks to do a wide range of improvements, such as clearing brush, planting trees, building roads and trails, and laying out picnic areas.

“The first camp was set up at Wildcat Canyon at the present site of the Tilden Environmental Education (Nature) Center.  About 3,500 young men rotated through Camp Wildcat Canyon,” the article continued. “As Eugene Swartling, who supervised the camp, recalls, ‘these young men were not being trained as soldiers but as good citizens; to be courteous, neat, and clean. In the evening, various classes were offered for three hours and the CCC men were encouraged to learn a trade.’”

Dale’s 7 November 1936 discharge document bore Swartling’s signature. It labeled Dale’s work and character as “satisfactory.” Dale spoke often with a proud reverence about his service in the CCC. But he left after suffering a hernia which he would not have surgically repaired until the 1950s. That pick and shovel work took its toll. The hernia would keep him sidelined for World War II as unfit for duty.

Still lying about his age, he had found a job in Vandalia, Missouri, a growing town about 34 miles east of Columbia with a population of about 22,000 in 1930. Since 1909 it had served as home for the Walsh Fire Clay Products Company, purchased in 1927 by Pittsburgh’s Harbison-Walker Refractories to become that corporation’s first expansion west of the Mississippi River. Dale left the CCC after landing a job at this plant and moved to Vandalia in Audrain County. How you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen California?

Harbison-Walker made refractory materials designed to withstand high temperatures for use in construction and other building applications like lining furnaces and kilns. Basically, Dale worked in a brick yard. And the Vandalia newspapers repeatedly published articles during that period about injuries and deaths at the Harbison-Walker plant. It must have been a dangerous place to work. But he escaped unscathed.

At some point he encountered the woman destined to become my mother, Rheva Mae Wright (1918-1981). Since she refused to date younger boys, he continued to lie about his age and it worked again. I don’t know if they met cute or met noir, but he apparently employed his California swagger to win her heart.

Of the bride, The Vandalia Leader of 5 August 1937 said: “She is a lady of rare refinement and accomplishments. She is gifted in music and has on a number of occasions delighted her audiences with excellent music. She has always shown a desire to take part in any undertaking in which her talents could be used and was not one of those who had to be begged. She advanced and gave the best she had without apologies or restraint and for that we have always admired her. She wears a beauty and exemplifies it in her actions and demeanor. She has a host of friends.”

Rheva and Dale in 1937

I’ve already posted four articles about Rheva’s colorful ancestry. Four of her ancestors arrived on the Mayflower, three others came through Jamestown, and another family line descended from the Puritan oligarch and minister Peter Hobart (1604-1679). Rheva’s mother descended from the Libby family who emigrated to Maine in 1630 to establish a commercial fishing business. She never knew about her ancestry.

Browsing newspaper articles from the 1920s and 1930s, it’s clear that Rheva lived an active life as a child and teenager. She placed high in spelling and math competitions and trained as a teacher before graduating from Vandalia High School in 1935. She finished among the top 16 in the Miss Vandalia Beauty Pageant for 1935 and helped model new clothing as part of her job with the Ely-Walker Garment Factory right after school.

As a high school senior, she willed her “gad about ways” to one of her junior classmates, according to one article. The year before, as a junior, she had been willed a “love for older boys” from a friend in the class of 1934. Earlier articles reported her wish that Santa would bring her a doll and a dollhouse. She participated in music clubs and piano recitals. Somewhere she caught my father’s eye.

The Vandalia Leader described my dad in their wedding story as “a splendid type of our young men today and is energetic and hustling. He has for some time been employed at the Harbison-Walker Refractories.” Say what you will about editorial license, the reporter on this article showed great perception in pegging Dale as a hustler. He would continue to harness that eighth-grade education and ambitious hustle to seize new opportunities as an entrepreneur right up until his death at 63 in 1984.

Tragedy struck the couple in 1939 when their first child died one day after his birth. They named him Ronald, and he was my older brother. They relocated to St. Louis in 1943 when my dad secured a job with the Carter Carburetor automotive manufacturing company. Although deferred from service by his hernia, Dale still joined the U.S. Army in April of 1946 and served until December in Idaho. His discharge report described him as a “duty soldier” who drove a jeep to ensure guards were posted and as a “warehouseman” who sold clothes to officers and issued supplies.

I can only speculate, but I suspect Dale joined the Army to take advantage of the benefits offered veterans. By the time of my birth on 4 March 1947—just three months after his discharge—Dale and my mother already were living in a newly built home in suburban St. Louis. It must have been financed under the G.I. Bill of Rights which granted significant mortgage benefits to veterans.

By the time of the 1950 U.S. Census, Dale listed his occupation as field manager for a retail brush company. He sold door-to-door as the “Fuller Brush Man.” That short-lived career morphed into a position managing a gasoline station within a couple of years. It was there, however, that Dale discovered his entrepreneurial niche when the use of gasoline-powered lawnmowers began to boom across suburbia.

He bought a few to sell in his station. Of course, when some broke he learned to repair them. Before long he had converted a small shed on his property into a lawnmower sales and service shop to accommodate the demand in the area. Quickly the lawnmower business outgrew the station. Named St. John’s Lawnmower Service after the municipality that hosted it, the business moved into larger quarters in 1962. I had begun working there in 1959 as a 12-year-old and would remain active until leaving for college in 1965.

Throughout the years, Dale had always pursued any new opportunity that emerged. When states began requiring seatbelts in older cars, for example, my dad ordered a large supply of seatbelt installation kits and placed a small classified ad in a newspaper offering the service. For a couple of months drivers lined up outside St. John’s Lawnmower Service to have their seatbelts installed through his side-hustle. Once he had saturated the neighborhood seatbelt market, he moved on to something else.

Some days he would load a new lawnmower or tractor into his pickup truck and drive around to golf courses or large estates demonstrating equipment just as he had once sold brushes door-to-door. He worked the shop six days a week. He also suffered at least two heart attacks and finally a debilitating stroke in 1977 that forced him to sell the business. He died in 1984 from cancer, four years after my mother passed from the same affliction. Neither one of them knew much about their distant ancestors as far as I could tell.

In contrast with his bootlegging father, my father rarely drank and I never saw him drunk. He attended church every Sunday in the Disciples of Christ  and required my attendance as well. Despite his lack of schooling, he provided a solid middleclass life for me, my two sisters and our mother. But he was a workaholic who could not rest. After running his business during the day, he spent many nights finishing the basement of our house with knotty pine paneling for the walls. He always found some chore he needed to do.

Dale did not leave us a lot of money. But he did bequeath several sayings that served as mottos for his life and mine as well.

“Grab a root and growl,” he’d joke when any job appeared too challenging to complete.

“Just do your best,” he’d often say as a reminder about our limitations.

“Find a job that uses your mind instead of your muscles,” he’d recommend, a conclusion he undoubtedly adopted while building callouses as a “pick and shovel man” in Wildcat Canyon so many years ago.

Here is a chart depicting my Taylor family lineage:

Gen	Name	Spouse	comments
1	James Taylor (?-?)	Neoma Roberts (?-?)	Likely arrived in Kentucky about 1800
2	Joseph Taylor (1811-1885)	Louisa Jane Pauley (1812-1897)	Moved to Missouri about 1838.
3	John Thomas Taylor (1837-1873)	Ellen Kane McDow (1841-1871)	Both died young from tuberculosis
4	Cicero Hampton Taylor (1869-1964)	Marium Frances Sapp (1866-1949)	Orphan at age four, raised by grandfather Joseph
5	Elsus Bauer Taylor (1894-1944)	Etta Bell Wilson (1898-1973)	He fought the law.
6	Dale Taylor (1921-1984)	Rheva Mae Wright (1918-1981)	Entrepreneur.
7	Gary Dale Taylor (1947- )