The Family Farm and How it Began

 

My Aunt Bill, as everyone called her, wrote down a bit of early family history for us all. While I rarely spoke to her or was even around her as a young girl, she carried the weight of a family historian like myself. 

Aunt Bill married, but had no children. She and her husband took over the family farm after the death of her parents. She carried a presence about her that commanded respect. I knew this, even as a small child, because she frightened me a bit with her confidence. 

Many years later, right before the Pandemic, in fact, I finally received her historical account of how our family came to Shawnee, Oklahoma, and the events leading up to this. 

While her claims about our being descended from the Stephens Hopkins family on the Mayflower, it is entirely possible, given the fact that her last name was indeed Hopkins. I remember in my great grandmother's (Aunt Bill's sister) later years, seeing some Hopkins spoons displayed on the wall. 

My great-grandmother recounted how they were carried over on the Mayflower. To this day, the spoons are missing, so I cannot verify this. However, it remains a very real probability that this is somewhat true. 

But, I digress, because the real purpose of this story lies in the original settling of our family's farm in Oklahoma. 

They arrived on October 1, 1904, by train, so their arrival was several years after the original land rush of the Indian Territories. 

Their story began In Illinois

William Edgar Hopkins was born in Bement, Illinois to Samuel Josiah Hopkins and Melissa Caroline Rawlins in 1859.

The family had a farm there, however, Edgar split rails for a living and then set out with his brother James to Kansas for an easier life. 

The winters remained quite harsh in Illinois, so they staked a claim and made the move by covered wagon to Kansas to farm. 

However, life was still rather harsh in the cold Kansas climate and prairie fires in the early days of the frontier. 

However, Edgar made a life for himself and also helped to set up churches and Sunday Schools for the people in the panhandle of Oklahoma. 

He met his future bride on a trip to Indiana, Ida Brown, married her in 1893 and brought her back home with him to Kansas.

They had their first child, Ilda and when they lost too many crops, they moved to Roadhouse Illinois to start a dairy business. Still trying to find relief from the severe winters, they heard from friends that Oklahoma was a better place to live.

So, in 1904 they arrived in Oklahoma with the promise of a better life and remained there for several generations. 

The Family Farm

According to family legend, the farm was bought from a man, John Anderson, and the family created a fully working farm, making sorghum syrup, hominy, homemade sauerkraut, and soap, as well as pigs, cows, and chickens. 

There were also geese which were plucked for feathers to stuff pillows or beds. The big red barn housed all the family's needs. 

Further, the working farm in those days also housed guests from the local Baptist University, where some of our family ancestors are still buried to this day. 

Many of the young men came to hunt and receive real country farm hospitality when they could not make it home. 

Many gatherings and suppers were held this way long after Edgar and his wife, Ida passed. They are buried in the cemetery in Tecumseh, which is right next to Shawnee. 

Aunt Bill kept the family farm until she sold it in 1976 and moved across town in Shawnee. 

It was the end of an era and made quite the story.