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.

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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.

William Cline's Life in New Madrid

In 1979, I began searching for the immigration document showing the ship that carried my great-great-grandfather Carl Wilhelm "William" Cline from Germany to the United States.  I have yet to locate the elusive record, but I am getting much closer to discovering his birthplace and the Port of Destination and Passenger List.

Meissen China Mark
on back of Cline China.

We don’t know what other items William Cline brought over from Germany; however, we know he brought some Meissen china with the mark shown here.  This manufacture mark was on the back of the Cline Meissen China.  Research shows that China with this mark was made between 1773 and 1814.  Dad’s grandmother, Anna Eliza Blount Kline, told him she inherited the china from her husband’s family.  Most of the china was destroyed in the 1926 Cline house fire in Morehouse.   

I had the pleasure of opening the tin box with all William Cline's probate records in the New Madrid County Court House in 1988.  I found the inventory of his household which included a safe.  I can only speculate that the safe was used in his grocery business.    Other documents included the receipt for his funeral and an interested deed outlined below in 1857.    

Carl Wilhelm "William" Cline (Klein) was born on May 27, 1807, in Schwelm, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.  His father, Peter, was 18 and his mother, Maria, was 20 at the time of his birth.  This information was obtained from one of the many databases at the Morman Family History Center at Little Rock in 1995.  I found it while searching in the book, Germany Selected Births, and Baptisms, 1558-1898.  He immigrated to America and settled in New Madrid at about the time the state of Missouri was admitted into the Union on August 10, 1821.  He married Nancy Cox in late 1834 or early 1835. They had five children in nineteen years.

Without a written diary, it is impossible to know what the family life of William and Nancy Cline was in early Missouri.  Based on what we know from other historical documents written on the first half of the 1800s, most families lived in a small square log cabin, worked long hours hunting, fishing, and cultivating the land for a garden.  The women were responsible for helping her husband as he needed, made clothes for everyone in the family, tended to the cow and other farm animals, taught her children how to read and write, then cared for the family's spiritual needs as well. 

The 1840 Census of New Madrid County, Missouri, his name was "Clyne," and he was married with one son under the age of five (unnamed and died before 1850), and one daughter the age of five (Elizabeth).  

In 1850, he was still living in New Madrid County, he listed his occupation as a hunter, and was a landowner.  His family had added a second daughter (Mary Jane) in 1848.  This date for Mary Jane's birth is different than other sources, but as the Census is the closest primary source found, I deferred to this date of 1848.

Inside the tin box holding William Cline's probate records, I found a surprise.  There was a transfer deed inside where he sold two slaves to Shapley R. Phillips on 20 Oct. 1857, for sixteen hundred dollars.  One was a negro boy, fourteen years old, standing five feet two inches high, and called Shatrick.  The other, a female, was known by the name of Lilly, twenty-six years of age, and of a very dark complexion.  This was surprising because most German in Missouri were against slavery of any kind.  Perhaps the woman helped keep up the house and care for the children after William's wife died.  It is interesting that the sale occurred a year after his eldest daughter married and moved from his house.  The young boy could have been related to the woman and used to do odd jobs in the grocery store.  This deed and other legal documents show that the family had the means to live a good life.

In the 1860 Census of New Madrid, recorded William Cline as a widower with four children living at home.  It showed his occupation as a Grocer.  The trade listed confirms what family tradition always reported, that he owned and operated a grocery store and sold whiskey.  In reviewing the 1860 New Madrid Census Slave Schedule, I found William still owned one female slave, age twenty-eight.  Sadly, no names of the slaves are listed on Census Slave Schedules.
  
The 1870 Census of New Madrid County, Missouri records William Cline, age 61, a widower, living with his youngest child, Louisa Cline, age 15, in the town of New Madrid.  A lot happened between 1860 and 1870 in New Madrid.  We will look at just some of what happened next week.  Then, we will conclude this segment by looking at what happened to his children, starting with the marriage of Elizabeth to Theopholis Verlaque in 1856.  I believe you will find it interesting.

Digging Up Gold in New Madrid

Buried Gold Coin in
New Madrid, Missouri

              DIGGIN UP GOLD IN NEW MADRID

The New Madrid Weekly Record, dated October 7, 1882, tells a story about my great-great-grandfather William Cline and how he hid his gold coins shortly before his death on the 27th of September in 1882.   The article reads:

     "Digging Up Gold - Last Saturday morning, Mr. J. M. Broughton, Public Administrator, took charge of the estate of William Cline, deceased.  It was known that the old man had sold his farm sometime before his death for about $700; that he had received the money in gold, and it was believed he had buried it about his house.  Soon after taking charge of the estate that morning, Mr. Broughton, with Messrs. F. H. Dawson, R. G. Holloway, and Gazwell Cline commenced a search of the property.  Gazwell recalled that his little daughter Lena told him that her grandfather kept the smokehouse locked and would allow no one to go into it.  With this clue, the party determined to search there.  The dirt in the northeast corner showed that it had been disturbed recently, and commencing to dig, the third shovelful of dirt brought up a bottle containing $500 - 25 twenty-dollar gold coins.

     Next morning Messrs. R. G. Holloway and Gazwell Cline in compliance with Mr. Broughton's request examined the house.  They found a small wooden box lying on a slat in the bed formerly used by the deceased which contained $80 in gold and $20 in silver." [end of article]

This is part of my history and as I have said before, history and genealogy are inseparable.  I'm sure you have heard stories of people in the Civil War era and up through the Great Depression hiding or burying their money because they didn't trust banks.  William Cline immigrated to New Madrid, Missouri from Germany about 1831 and was distrustful of banks.  This article confirms the stories that people buried gold as true.  I encourage you to look through old newspapers, or online newspaper websites to learn more about your ancestors.  Next week, we will look at William Cline's probate records and an inventory of his personal property.  It gives us an idea of the lifestyle of people back in mid-1800 to 1882.