Gazwell Kline was Grocery and Saloon Keeper

New Madrid Record

March 24, 1886

Funeral Notice:

                               Died in this city at one o'clock p.m. Wednesday, March 24, 1886.

Mr. Gazwell Klein

Aged 42 years, 11 months, and 15 days.  Friends of the deceased are respectfully notified that the funeral will take place from the residence of Mrs. Mosier in this city at 2 o'clock Thursday, March 25, 1886, to the Klein graveyard.  Services will be conducted by Rev. Webster Full.

(The Kline/Cline graveyard is now in the middle of the Mississippi River.  Gazwell Kline was the husband of Anna Eliza Blount Kline, and the above newspaper clipping was pasted in her Bible.)        ___  ___  ___ ___ ___ ___ ____ 

                                       

The funeral was held at Elizabeth "Tickell" Jones-Moore-Blount-Mosier.

.

Elizabeth Mosier, who died February 20, 1892, was a sister of Madison Tickell and Gazwell Kline's mother-in-law.  Elizabeth Tickell, the wife of Daniel Mosier, is buried in the Sikeston City Cemetery along with her daughter, Eliza Anna Blount Kline, her son-in-law, W. Henry Cline (his wife and Elizabeth's granddaughter Nancy Lena Kline), a grandson Webster, and a great-granddaughter Vera Cline Johnson.  Elizabeth has her maiden name on her headstone, which shows her date of birth as March 9, 1811.

NOTE:  William "Wilheim" Cline was born in  Darmstadt, Hesse, Germany, and his American family originally spelled their name Cline.  However, after the marriage of his granddaughter Nancy Lena Cline to her first cousin Henry Cline, Anna Eliza Blount Cline changed the spelling of her and her daughter's name to Kline.

William's only son, Gazwell, was born in or near New Madrid, Missouri, on April 8, 1843.  Some seventy-four years and fifteen days later, his great-great-granddaughter Tina Louise Harmon Havard was born on his birthday on April 8, 1960.  Even odder, six years later, on April 8, 1966, a second great-great-granddaughter Jeanelle Renee' Cline Shaw, was born.  Both these baby girls were the granddaughters of Curtis Henry Cline and Marie Ruth Price Cline.  Unfortunately, family tradition says that Gazwell died from either gallstones or appendicitis.

I found the 1863 Tax Assessment Report for New Madrid County, Missouri, listing non-serving men of eligible age who were not fighting in the War Between the States.  I then found Missouri taxed a $30 fee for non-service in 1863 on Gazwell Cline for not serving in the War.   I was surprised by this as Gazwell's father was a German-born immigrant to the USA.  In general, German-born immigrants firmly backed the Union cause.  It is also odd that this family had three or more slaves.  But, again, most German-born citizens were staunch abolitionists.  From these documents, he apparently declined to take sides in the American Civil War and continued to run the family grocery store.

We have little information on Gazwell Cline; however, I have a videotape of granddaughter Vera Cline Johnson telling the camera about her memories of hearing her Grandma Kline talk about her husband.  My Aunt Vera recalled her Grandma saying, "My husband Gazwell was a kind man and a gentleman.  He was good to me.  I could go into the store and take money out of the cash register, tell him how much I took, and he would just say, 'fine dear, have a pleasant day.' That was the way he was, even-tempered." Unfortunately, family traditions state he died of appendicitis.  Today, a simple operation would take care of that issue; however, in 1886, doctors had little knowledge of the surgery needed to remove his appendix.  He did just fifteen days short of his 43rd birthday.

Gazwell Cline (later changed to Kline) and Anna Eliza Blount married on January 23, 1868, in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in New Madrid.  He was educated in private schooling in New Madrid and worked in his Father's Grocery and Dram store in downtown New Madrid.  His wife, Anna, was educated at the Nashville Ladies College in Nashville, Tennessee.  Gazwell and his wife had two children, Nancy Lena Cline and Robert Edward Cline.  Both were well-educated in private educational institutes in New Madrid.  Lena was fluent in English, German, and French and was an accomplished musician.  She played the pianist for the local Methodist Church.  Their son, Edward, graduated from the Kentucky University and Business College in Lexington, Kentucky, and was employed with N. W. Marshall and Company as a bookkeeper.  He died in 1894, just one year after graduating from college.  

Gazwell's daughter Lena married his wife's cousin, Henry Cline.  Family tradition says that it was at this time they changed the spelling of the last name from Cline to Kline.  So Anna Eliza Blount Kline's mother (Elizabeth Tickell Jones-Moore-Blount-Mosier) and her new son-in-law Henry Cline's mother (Sophronia Tickell Cline) were sisters.  This made my grandparents William Henry Cline and his wife, Lena Kline Cline, second cousins.  It also makes my family tree interesting.

Part 6 and Final Segment of Anna Eliza Blount

Part 6 of 6

Anna Eliza Blount Kline and Her Swamp Land Grant

I hope you have enjoyed learning about my great-grandmother Anna Eliza Kline.  She was an educated pioneer lady who enjoyed life to the best of her ability in the swamps of Southeast Missouri. 

In 1907, a group of men formed an organization called the Little River Drainage District to take on the swamp. They issued bonds and taxed landowners in the district for the benefits derived. From topographical maps, they knew that the elevation of the land falls one foot per mile from Cape Girardeau to the Arkansas border. They devised a system of levees and ditches that relied heavily on gravity.

By 1928, the district had built nearly 1,000 miles of ditches, more than 300 miles of levees and had drained 1.2 million acres of land in a drainage project that at the time was the largest in the history of the world. The district drains 750,000 acres upland of the drainage system and 1.2 million acres total.  Houseboats were home to many of the men and women who dug canals and built the levees.  My Dad remembered some of the children who lived on the houseboats parked not far from his house.   Land, once 95 percent covered in water and trees, is now largely cleared and free of water most of the year.  Draining the earthquake swamp became one of the greatest engineering marvels of the 20th century.  The project moved more earth than was moved in digging the Panama Canal. [1]

Sadly, Anna Eliza Blount Kline never got to enjoy the fruits of her portion of tax money spent on draining the swamps.  The money she invested in the Stock Market provided generous dividends for many years until the 1929 Stock Market Crash.  With the onset of the Great Depression and the loss of her money in the market, she was forced to use what funds she had on hand to support the family and see her last two grandsons through high school.  My father was very disappointed he was unable to go college as did his three older siblings.  He wanted to obtain a degree in the field of mathematics.  

  

In the end, the combination of Anna losing her money in the crash of the Stock Market, coupled with the fact previous customers could no longer afford to purchase dairy products from the family dairy farm, and Henry Cline’s siblings coming to visit, while expecting to be fed for weeks and months at a time, made Anna flat broke within three years.  My dad told my brothers and me that he recalled his father’s brothers and sisters coming to visit for extended stays because his family had a large garden, fruit trees, and dairy cows to feed them.  Some of his father’s siblings could not find work and had no food.  During the Great Depression, many people had no food and had to wait in bread lines to keep from starving.  Henry took care of his brother Bedford when he became elderly and had no means of support, in addition to raising his half-brother Sam.

Anna first sold off portions of her Swamp Land Patent, then by late 1932, she lost the land in total.  She and her son-in-law Henry had to move in with his son, and her grandson Ed Cline in McMullin, Missouri.  She took pride in the fact she saw all her grandchildren finish high school and three of the older grandchildren went to college.  People who knew her well said that even after she lost her money and property, she held her head high and entered a room like she owned it up until her death on 29 June 1934.  She was quite a lady, and I wish I could have met her.

Researched and written by Anna Eliza’s great-granddaughter, Margaret Cline Harmon.  Contact – mcharmon1@gmail.com, 225-788-5999.  Any reproduction of this article should give credit to the author, dated February 2017.

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1  The Little River Drainage District – Sam Blackwell article in the Sunday, November 4, 2007, Southeast Missourian, Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

Part 5 of the Saga of Anna Eliza Blount Kline

Part 5 of 6

Anna Eliza Blount Kline

And Her Swamp Land Patent

The relationship between Anna Eliza and Henry Cline was a complicated one.  First, they were first cousins.  His mother was Sophronia Tickell-Cline, and her mother was Elizabeth Tickell-Jones-Moore-Blount-Mosier, who were sisters.  Anna was born in 1846, and William Henry Cline was born in 1859.  Due to the timing of Elizabeth moving to Cheatham, Tennessee about the time Henry was born, Anna and Henry were not around each other as children, except for possible family trips to visit each other’s families.  Henry moved from Hickman County, Kentucky to New Madrid, after his father died in 1885.  His move was two years after Anna secured her Swamp Land Patent in Morehouse.  Secondly, at some point, he started dating Anna’s daughter Lena, and they married on 1888 at the New Madrid Methodist Episcopal Church, South.  Henry was twelve years older than Lena.  I don’t know what Anna thought about the marriage between the second cousins. However, we are aware she changed the spelling of Gazwell’s last name from Cline to Kline after the couple married.  I imagine that was to direct misgivings from the two of them being cousins.  Thirdly, we are not certain, but we believe Henry used some of his inheritance money to build the two-story home for his family on Anna’s Swamp Land Patent property.  This action starts to complicate the family finances.  We know Anna had much more money available than Henry; however, he had enough money to start a dairy farm shortly after building a house on Anna’s land, and he provided for the family with the dairy farm.  Grandma Anna was there for piano lessons, trips and other extras her grandchildren needed or wanted.  My dad said he thought his grandmother bought the beautiful furniture in their home from a firm in St. Louis and had it shipped down the Mississippi River to New Madrid.  Henry and Anna both dressed well and wrote expensive jewelry.  When it came to who had the last word, though, money usually won the issue, and Anna had the most money.  Henry was said to be overly strict, physically, to his children, like his father was to him, but Grandma protected them as much as possible.

Lena and Henry’s family had grown to include three sons and a daughter by 1904, Howard Dennis Cline, born in 1891, William Edward Cline, born 1899, Gazwell Harold Cline, born 1903, and Eula Cline-Goolsby, born 1895.  Henry and Lena had two more sons and two more daughters after Anna moved in with the family, Curtis Henry Cline, born 1911, Vera Daugherty Cline, born 1905, and Lena Grace Cline-Dye, born 1907.  Lena gave birth to her last child, Clarence “Cotton” Cline, in 1913.  My dad and his sisters often talked about the beautiful dining room they had, with delicate china, and a player piano in the parlor.  Many enjoyable times were held in the home with Lena playing the piano, and Henry playing the violin or fiddle.  She became very ill on 30 August 1914, and was taken to the nearest hospital in Cairo, Illinois, but died from a ruptured hernia on 31 August 1914.[2]  At this point, Anna had only her grandchildren left in her life.  She considered it her responsibility and honor to raise her grandchildren to adulthood.  Henry Cline never remarried, and my father told me that it was because he and his siblings hated their last step-mother, Susan, and he would now put his children through living with a step-mother.  The family always had domestic help. A couple of cousins, who wish not to be identified, told me there were rumors that Henry became very friendly with the domestic help and the family found it difficult to keep the same maid and cook for any length of time.  My cousins inferred he might have tried to get too friendly with them, but it is only speculation.

  Tragedy came to Anna and the Cline family again on 5 March 1926.  It was about 11 o’clock on a Sunday morning when the Cline home burned to the ground.  My dad told me that his Uncle Madison’s house was identical to their house, but he had a metal roof.  The Cline home had a wood-shack roof and embers from the fireplace landed on the roof and caused the fire.  The fire was reported in the Sikeston Daily Standard the same day.  It stated, “Fire broke out in the home of Henry Cline Sunday morning about 11 o’clock, two miles southeast of Morehouse.  Help calls took the men from the churches and streets of Morehouse, but in the high winds, the house was soon beyond control and was practically a total loss together with the contents.”  The eight children, Henry and Anna were devastated by the loss of their home.  They loved it and my dad often talked about it in a loving way.  A much smaller single-story, six room house was built to replace the large two story home.  The family managed to save a few pieces of furniture from the parlor, but it was mostly a total loss.  Two chairs saved are now in possession of two of Gazwell Cline’s children.  I am sure they will remain in the family for many years to come.

My father, Curtis H. Cline, told many warm stories about his grandmother.  Above all else, he remembered her as a loving grandmother.  He remembered that she enjoyed entertaining in an elegant way and was generous with her family.  One remembrance he shared was the time his father had instructed him to do a chore, and he continued to play up in the barn loft.  He was about nine or ten years old at the time.  He made a misstep and fell out of the loft and hurt himself.  His father came at him with a horsewhip ready to discipline him, but his grandma ran out and threw her apron over him and told his dad, “don’t you touch this boy, can’t you see he is hurt?”  Every time he told the story he got tears in his eyes and almost cried.  He thought the world of Anna Eliza Blount Kline.  Another thing he recalled was that Anna looked very elegant and aristocratic.   He also told my brothers and me that his grandma had the ability to look taller than she was, and she drew everyone’s attention when she walked into a room.  My cousin Sam Goolsby, son of Eula Cline Goolsby, is the only great-grandchild living that remembers Anna Blount Kline.  He was born in 1929, and what he remembers most is that she was a “lady” in every sense of the word, and that she was very aristocratic in the way she walked, looked, and conducted herself.

My dad also remembered walking on raised boardwalks around Morehouse when the Little River flooded the area every spring.  He also told me he remembers hearing panthers scream and it sounded a lot like a woman screaming.  He said the scream made his hair stand on end.  He remembered watching the workers digging up stumps and making the ditches related the Little River Drainage District when he was growing up in Morehouse.  Families working in the drainage district lived in houseboats, and a few children of the workers attended the Morehouse schools.

Plans to turn the swamp into farmland date to the 1840s, but the job seemed too big. Not even the government had ever undertaken anything of that magnitude before. But in 1907, a group of men formed an organization called the Little River Drainage District to take on the swamp. They issued bonds and taxed landowners in the district for the benefits derived.  In our last segment on Anna and her Swamp Land Patent we will learn if she benefited from the draining of the swamps.  How did this fine lady live out her life?  Come back tomorrow for the final part of the saga of Anna Eliza Blount Kline.

Part 4 The continued saga of Anna Eliza Blount's Life

Part 4 of 6

Anna Eliza Blount Kline

And Her Swamp Land Patent

We continue the story of Anna Eliza Blount Kline which revealed the saga of a well-educated pioneer woman who traveled from Obion County, Kentucky to Cheatham County, Tennessee, and how she arrived at New Madrid, Missouri in 1867.  We continue the story of her life in New Madrid.

Starting in 1886, Anna lost her husband, her half-brother Edward Jones in 1887, an aunt in 1890, her mother in 1892, a son in 1894, another aunt, Martha Tickell-Montgomery-Pierce in 1898, and her Uncle Madison on 25 December 1903.[1]  This period of her life must have been difficult for her.  After the death of her Uncle Madison, Anna moved in with her daughter and son-in-law down the road to their house, which sat on her Swamp Land Patent.  Madison Tickell’s daughter Mary Eliza “Mollie” Tickell-Hunter moved back to her father’s house after his death and the recent separation from her husband, Clay Hunter.  As Anna and Mollie were very close, I am sure it was a comfort to them at that time to live close to each other again, particularly in that sad time in both of their lives.

Anna and Mollie attended the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, also known as the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, and often entertained their grandchildren with tales of what they saw and did at the World’s Fair.  Organizers of the fair erected nearly 1,500 buildings, including several grand “palaces” across 1,200 acres of a newly redesigned Forest Park.  That magnificent fairground equated America’s expansion westward since the Louisiana Purchase with the nation’s cultural and economic progress.  One excited writer noted in the World’s Fair Bulletin, the Exposition’s official journal:

“The heroes of Homer’s Iliad were engaged in petty achievements when compared with the work of the men who wrestled a vast wilderness from savages and wild beasts and made it the seat of twenty grand commonwealths in a single century.”

Attendees from across the globe experienced the highest achievements in technology, fine arts, manufacturing, science, civics, foreign policy, and education.  The World’s Fair boasted extravagant exhibits from fifty foreign countries and forty-three of what was then forty-five states.  Festival Hall, in the center of the  Colonnade of States overlooking the Hall, was the jewel of the fair.[2]  

This was all before television, telephones and before planes flew.  Electricity was new and one of the exciting and beautiful Palaces, along with other industries of the day displayed this new technology.  Of direct importance to us today, there were more new American foods invented and introduced at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, Missouri than during any other single event in history. The list includes the hamburger, the hot dog, peanut butter, iced tea, the club sandwich, cotton candy, and the ice cream cone, to name just a few.[3]  This last item listed, the ice cream cone, related to a story my father told us hundreds of times.  Reportedly, his Grandma Anna and Mollie Tickell Hunter were on the train home to Morehouse when the train served dessert in an ice cream cone.  He told the story that she said, “Pond my word Mollie, do they think our stomachs are like goats?  This cone is made of cardboard, my stomach will not digest it.”  For some reason, this story made an impression on my father.  He remembers the tales of grand palaces and other things she told too, but he most remembered her telling of eating her first ice cream cone.  This tale was just one of many stories my dad told of Anna and trips she took with her cousin Mollie.  I am inserting three photos of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition and World’s Fair to show the magical atmosphere created by the St. Louis World’s Fair.

[1] I have two obituaries of Madison J Tickell, including photograph, in my private collection.  One from the New Madrid Record, and the other from the St. Louis Dispatch.  
[2]  www.seriouseats.com/2016/01/food-history-1904-worlds-fair-st-louis.html

[3]  http://mohistory.org/exhibits/Fair/WF//HTML/Overview/

Part 3 of the saga of Anna Eliza Blount Kline

Part 3 of 6

Anna Eliza Blount Kline

And Her Swamp Land Patent

In the two previous segments of the story of Anna Eliza Blount Kline revealed the saga a well-educated pioneer woman who traveled from Obion County, Kentucky on the Mississippi River across from New Madrid, Missouri to Cheatham County, Tennessee and how she arrived at New Madrid, Missouri in 1867.  We continue the story below.

Siblings not noted in his bio were:  William P. (born 1813), Andrew James (born 1832-1882), Sophronia (1833-1871), and Mary E. (1835-1893).  I have not identified a ninth adult child as of this writing.  The Tickell siblings Elizabeth, Martha, and Madison lost their sister, Sophronia Tickell Cline, in 1871.  Sophronia still lived in Hickman County, Kentucky in the town of Moscow.  She was only thirty-eight years old and left five children twelve years old or younger and her oldest daughter, Molly Cline, was seventeen at the time of her death.  Her husband William F. Cline went on to marry two more times and to have more children by those wives.  Sophronia and William Cline’s children moved to New Madrid to be with the Tickell family after their father’s death in 1885.  If you take a ferry, to cross the Mississippi River, it is only thirty-six miles from Moscow, Kentucky to New Madrid, Missouri.  Henry was twenty-six at the time he moved to New Madrid, and he brought his nine-year-old half-brother Sam Cline with him to raise.  Sam was born to his father and his second wife, Mary Cromwell.  Henry did not get along with his father’s third wife and his second step-mother.  Family tradition states that is why Henry brought Sam with him, rather than leave his with his step-mother Susan Smith Cline.  After Henry married, he and Lena raised Sam to adulthood.  Later in life, Sam and his family moved to Hammond, Indiana.  I have communicated with descendants of Sam Cline and have genealogical information on his family for future publication.

I am not sure where Anna received her education, but I am somewhat sure it was in or near their home in Cheatham County.  What we know for certain is that she was well educated and a good business woman.  After moving to New Madrid, she met and married Gazwell Kline on 23 Jan 1868, in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in New Madrid, Missouri.  His father, William Cline, was from Germany and they owned and operated a grocery and dram (liquor) store in downtown New Madrid.  Gazwell provided well for his family.

Anna and Gazwell Kline had two children.  Nancy Lena was born 7 Aug 1870, and her brother Robert Edward Kline was born 24 Jul 1872.  Their children we most likely educated at the New Madrid Academy, a private school.  Lena was fluent in French, German, English and she was an accomplished musician.  Her brother Robert Edward graduated from Kentucky University and Business College in Lexington[1].  The history of popular education in Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee, before the Civil War, was similar to that of public education in every southern state.  The institution of free public education, as seen by upper-class whites, was incompatible for their children.  They saw them as “pauper schools” and never considered letting their children attend them.   I bring this up because citizens today, in general, are unaware that the average citizens of the 1800s had little, or limited, education.[2]  In contrast, Anna Eliza Blount Kline was blessed with a good private education.  She made certain her two children also had a good education, and she was instrumental in the education of her grandchildren as well.

Little was told to me about Anna’s twenty-year marriage.  Gazwell was the only son of William Cline and Nancy (Cox) Cline.  They also had four daughters – Elizabeth Cline Verlaque, Sarah Jane Cline Curtis, Nancy Cline Whitmore, and Louisa Cline Frederickson.  Gazwell’s sisters married and moved to San Diego, California, the Chicago area, and Davenport, Iowa.  Anna’s husband Gazwell Kline died March 24, 1886.  The New Madrid Record[3] published a funeral notice that read: “Mr. Gazwell Klein died in this city at one o’clock p.m. Wednesday, March 24, 1886.  Aged 42 years, 11 months and 15 days.  Friends of the deceased are respectfully notified that the funeral will take place from the residence of Mrs. Mosier, in this city at 2 o’clock Thursday, March 25, 1886, then to the Klein graveyard.  Services will be conducted by Rev. Webster Full.”  We cannot locate Gazwell’s burial place because that section of what used to be New Madrid has been washed away in the ever-ceasing encroachment of the Mississippi River on the town of New Madrid.

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[1] Gleaned from the obituary of Robert Edward Kline glued in Anna Eliza Blount Kline’s Bible. My cousin Sam Goolsby has the Bible now.

[2] www.historynet.com/antebellum-period

[3] The article was pasted in Anna Eliza Blount Kline’s Bible.  It was undated but had to be the day or death, or the day of the funeral.

Part 2 of 6

Anna Eliza Blount Kline

And Her Swamp Land Patent

By her great-granddaughter, Margaret Cline Harmon

Anna Blount’s mother Elizabeth C Tickell-Jones-Moore-Blount married Daniel Mosier on 4 Aug 1849, in Obion County, Tennessee.  This marriage was her fourth, being widowed three times before.  It was this last husband who raised Anna like a daughter.  Anna Eliza was a few months shy of being three years old when her mother married Daniel Mosier, and twenty-nine when he died.  The 1850 Federal Census of Obion County, Tennessee, lists her as age 2, her mother Elizabeth as 39, step-father Daniel Mosier 45, and a step-brother Charles Mosier age 12.  It also listed two half-brothers by her mother’s previous marriages, Edward Jones 17, and George Moore 7.  Four key things happened between the recording of the 1850 and 1860 federal census.

• Elizabeth C. Tickell’s father, William J. Tickell died in Fulton County, Kentucky around 1855.
• The Daniel Mosier family moved from Obion County to Cheatham County, Tennessee between 1850 and 1860, where they are listed in Cheatham County on the 1860 Federal Census of Tennessee.   We do not know the year they moved.
• Daniel and Elizabeth Mosier had a son, W. Mosier, born in 1851.
• Elizabeth’s mother, Lavina Stallcup-Tickell, at some point after her father’s death went to live with the Mosier family as she is on 1860 Cheatham County Federal Census living in their household.  It is possible that the family decided to move upon the death of William J. Tickell too.

In the early period that the Mosier family lived in Cheatham County, Tennessee, was the first and only time that Elizabeth and her children had lived apart from extended members of her Tickell family.  Adding stress to the family, Cheatham County was near Nashville, and they experienced the Civil War firsthand.  My father told me his grandmother Anna used to tell of the awful memories she had of both the Union and Confederate soldiers coming to their farm and taking what little food and livestock they managed to raise between soldier raids.  She said that on one such raid they even took their canned goods from the summer storage shed and some of their cooking utensils.  Sometime between 1860 and 1867, the Mosier family moved to New Madrid County, Missouri, to be near two of Elizabeth’s siblings.  Her brother Madison J. Tickell was a successful businessman and landowner by 1867, and her sister Martha Tickell-Montgomery-Pierce was a widow and a seamstress.  Elizabeth would have been fifty-six years old, her husband Daniel Mosier would have been sixty-two, and Anna Eliza Blount would have been twenty-one in 1867 when they made the trip from middle Tennessee to New Madrid.  It must have been very hard for Anna’s parents to move at that advanced age, back when moving meant using horses and wagons.  For them, it also meant floating on a flatboat down the Mississippi River from Kentucky to New Madrid with all their worldly possessions.

To add perspective, I am adding a segment from the biographical profile of Madison J. Tickell, as published in the 1888 Goodspeed’s History of Southeast Missouri, pages 912-913.  It reads: “Madison J. Tickell, a prominent citizen of New Madrid County, was born in White County, Tenn., on July 16, 1826.  He is the sixth of eleven children born to William and Lavinia (Stallcup) Tickell, natives of Rockingham County, N. C., and of Scotch-Irish and German Linage, respectively.[1]  Probably soon after their marriage, they removed to White County, Tenn., and in 1836 to Obion County, that State, where they remained several years,[2] and went to Hickman County, Kentucky and resided there until their deaths.[3]   Of their eleven children, nine lived to be grown and four are living at this writing: Madison Jackson, Elizabeth C. (widow of Daniel Mosier, deceased), Sallie Louisa (who is married and resides in Arkansas), Martha Caroline (widow of Mr. Pierce, deceased).” 

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[1] The Stallcup family immigrated from Sweden and were founders of the state of Delaware.  This information is published in books and several websites, including www.

[2] We know that they moved to Hickman County by 1840, as recorded on the 1840 Federal Census of Hickman County, Kentucky.  Sometime before 1850, they moved to adjoining county of Fulton, per 1850 Federal Census of Fulton County, Kentucky, and remained there until William J. Tickell died.

[3] The mother, Lavinia, moved in with her daughter Elizabeth after the death of William, as listed in the 1860 Federal Census of Cheatham County, Tennessee.

Part 3 of 6 will be published tomorrow.

Anna Eliza Blount Kline

                           Anna Eliza Blount Kline                      And Her Swamp Land Patent

The great New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812 created a big swamp in southeast Missouri.  Small streams including the Little River that runs through Morehouse, Missouri, fed the swamp.  A two-million-acre region called the “Missouri Glades” was the largest wetland in America prior to 1928.  The swamp was nearly impenetrable and considered almost useless by most everyone.  The exception was at the edges and on the ridges.  The swamp's dense forests contained millions of feet of marketable timber.  Some of the ancient oak trees reached 27 feet circumference, and some of the Cyprus trees circumferences reached 10 to 12 feet.  In the early to mid-1800's, lumbermen recognized the value of abundant timber and bought up most of the land. But after the lumbermen cleared the land of its oak, cypress, hickory, and gum trees, they found that they had to pay taxes on unproductive land.  The Swamp Land Act of 1850 was enacted to solve this problem by finding individuals willing to pay taxes on the swamp land.

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The land in the district initially was owned by the United States government and granted to the state through the Swamp Land Act of 1850. Not knowing what to do with it, the state conveyed the land to the counties.  The land remained vested in the counties for most of the last half of the 19th century because the counties were unable to find anyone willing to assume the burden of taxes on swamp land after the timber was removed.  The counties eventually sold the land to private owners and companies at low cost, with the stipulation that it had to be developed and drained.[1]

My great-grandmother Anna Eliza Blount Kline applied for a Swamp Land Patent from the General Land Office of the United States at Ironton, Missouri.  She received Swamp Land Patent Number 496, on August 6, 1883, located in Section 4, Township 25, and Range 13, consisting of 640 acres.  The land was two miles southeast from Morehouse, Missouri, and down the dirt road from her Uncle Madison J. Tickell, her mother’s brother. 

[1] Missouri Secretary of State website.

Anna Kline (Census records show the last name as Cline) was the daughter of Thomas P.  and Elizabeth Cornelius (Tickell) Blount, born 24 Nov 1846 in Obion County, Tennessee, or Fulton County, Kentucky.  Obion County is in the northwest corner of Tennessee.  Anna’s mother’s parents, William J. and Lavinia (Stallcup) Tickell, lived in Fulton County, Kentucky at the time of her birth, which is adjacent to Obion County, Tennessee.  My Aunt Grace (Cline) Dye told me Anna’s father was said to be related to the prominent political Blount family.  However, I have yet to find a published connection, or a Will, relating him to Tennessee Governors William or Willie Blount.   Elizabeth Tickell was married to Thomas Blount a month less than two-and-a-half years when he died on 29 Mar 1848.    Family tradition tells that her father provided well for Anna and her mother financially, but as of February 2017, I have not located Thomas P. Blount’s Will in either Obion County, Tennessee or Fulton County, Kentucky.  Anna Eliza was only 16 months old when her father died, and was forty-five when her mother died in New Madrid on 9 Mar 1892.  Her mother left her property in New Madrid, and all her personal belonging in a will recorded in the New Madrid County Courthouse.  I believe, but can’t prove, that Elizabeth Tickell’s wealth, and then Anna’s wealth came from the Thomas Blount marriage.

Part 2 of 6 will be published tomorrow, and one part a day thereafter until all six are published.