Kenneth Monroe Pybas: Tennessee To Texas -- By Barbara Pybas

[Admin Note: In researching Kenneth Monroe "KM" Pybas, I came across this manuscript by Barbara Pybas and realized I could in no way improve on her telling of his story!  Recent updates in some details have been added by me and are so noted--but otherwise Barbara deserves all the credit for this story! - CCL]

Kenneth Monroe Pybas had virtually lived a lifetime before he arrived in Cooke County, Texas in 1881 at the age of fifty­ seven years, a life span at that time in history. However, he would reside on Nubbin Ridge near the Red River in Cooke County for another thirty years, passing his eighty-eighth birthday in 1913. He was a respected, responsible citizen in his native Bedford County, Tennessee. He had acquired, owned and cleared a farm, was a road overseer, served as a soldier in the Confederate Anny even as a forty year old with a family of six children, was the tolJ gate keeper for the S & F Turnpike Company in the l 870's, found it necessary to sell his holdings, made the wagon train journey with his four married sons and families, his wife and three other children to the Trinity River area near Grapevine, Texas. Although he had purchased land in that area, tragedy struck with the epidemic of Typhoid Fever, the death of three of the grandchildren, the unhealthy climate, prompting the decision to find another location.

 K. M. Pybas was born in Lincoln County, Tennessee in 1824. He was of slight build, five feet, nine inches, dark skin and dark hair as stated on his enlistment papers of his Confederate war record. Although his eyes were a steel blue, he had sight in only one eye, having fa11en on a pair of scissors in his grandmother's lap while she was piecing a quilt, when he was only a year or two old.

He was largely self-educated, having only three months of schooling. However, he wrote legibly and was widely read as evidenced by the books handed down to his descendants. Some of those are The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbons, History of the Second War with England, in two volumes, 1853, a bound volume of The Trial of Andrew Johnson on Impeachment for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Washington:Government Printing Office, 1868., The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest, 1899., also books of poetry, culture, presidents of the United States and Greek history of the Peloponnese Wars.

His father, James Pybas, Jr., one of nine children, was born in North Carolina in 1801, married Sarah Jane Moore in 1822-23. He made his way to Lincoln County, Tennessee where they became parents of two sons, Kenneth Monroe, born in 1824, and William J. Pybas, 1828.  James Pybas, Jr. died in Lincoln County in 1843 and as the two sons were underage, an executor and guardian, John Sanders, was named, for the estate. After K.M reached majority and his mother had remarried, to a man named Joshua Yates, Yates was appointed guardian for the second son, William, by the court. The two sons then moved to Bedford County.

In 1853, K.M and William J. sold the 153 acres in Lincoln County they had inherited from their father. (Lincoln County Deed Book, B-2, pp 117,120). After that disposition, there seems to be no record of the brother, William.

Eleanor Cain Holt

K. M. Pybas married Eleanor Cain Holt November 9, 1847 in Bedford County, Tennessee. She was the daughter, born in 1828, of Jordan Cain Holt and Margaret Willough. Her grandparents bad also come from North Carolina, (Joshua and Eleanor Cain Burrow) and purchased about 2000 acres of land in Bedford County 1808.

Pybas had married into a very religious family, Joshua Holt having established the Holt's Camp Ground where camp meetings were held for many, many years and a Methodist Church was built in 1823. Eleanor's uncle deeded the twenty acres of the camp ground to the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1841.

K.M. and Eleanor had a family of six sons and two daughters. They were Jordan Cain, 1850, James Blair, 1852, Hiram Cardwell, 1854, John Benjamin, 1856, William Edward, 1858, Margaret Alice, 1861, Boy (Kenneth Monroe), 1864, and Missie (Emily Evaline), 1868.

Bedford County, Tennessee is more rolling and timbered than the delta country of that state so Kenneth Monroe Pybas' family was probably more in the corn, grain and livestock, such as sheep, hogs and cattle, than in cotton production. They did grow enough cotton for their own use, spinning and weaving cloth for clothing, quilts and household use. Records show that he was the owner of a few slaves, who he may have purchased to keep a family together, a Negro girl named America in 1854, a mother and child in 1856, and a man named, Sam, about forty years of age, in 1861, each from different owners.

One common responsibility of K. M. Pybas, his father and his own sons was the clearing and building of roadways in their commw1ities. James, (K.M.'s father) in Lincoln County (minutes of the Docket, Fayetteville, April 23, 1835, "was ordered by the court to be overseer of the publick road from X Pybas plantation to the twelve mile post and call on the usual hands".

In Bedford County, November Term, 1848, "Kenneth M. Pybas ordered by the court to be overseer from the Ten Mile Post to Alice Flacks in the Survey of Peter Cunningham."

K.M. Pybas was also the keeper of Gate Number 1, for the S&F Turnpike, Co. One document shows his receipts from January 1876 to July 1877. It also lists the workers and disbursements, showing that his sons, W.E. Pybas, J.C. Pybas, Ben Pybas, J.B. Pybas and H.C. Pybas were also employed.

This may have been the last accounting made by K.M Pybas as they made preparation to move to Texas in the spring of 1878.   Other roadmen were sons, W.E. Pybas, county commissioner, Cooke County, Texas, 1896, Ben Pybas, road overseer in 1888, (Cooke County) later county commissioner, 1916-22. J.C. Pybas, road overseer, Boone Township, Oklahoma Territory, 1895, after he had proved his homestead claimed in the Oklahoma Land Run, April 22, 1889.

The account, told by descendants of the Pybas family, is that after the Civil War, K.M. Pybas, in accommodating a neighbor, had co-signed a note to help him make payments on land. When default was declared and payment demanded, K.M. was forced to sell his own property to pay the neighbor's debt. This prompted the decision for the family to move to Texas. [Documents have since verified that it was not a neighbor, but K.M.'s brother-in-law, James Lewis Hix, for whom K.M. co-signed the note. Attempts to obtain the transcripts from this court hearing are ongoing as of this writing-CCL] Jordan C. Pybas, the eldest son, unmarried, was sent to find a location. The family left Tennessee in the spring of 1878, arriving at the Trinity River bottom near Grapevine, Texas. The wagon train with seven wagons, containing all their household goods, books, photographs, an organ, tools, seeds, foodstuffs, was well planned by the close-knit family of K.M. Pybas.

 Members traveling with the wagons were four married sons:

- James Blair Pybas and his pregnant wife, Emma Holt, a distant cousin, who he married in 1874 and their two children,

Hiram & Emma Pybas

- Hiram Cardwell Pybas and his wife, Emma Newton, whom he married in 1875, also pregnant on the trip to Texas.

- John Benjamin Pybas (Ben) and his pregnant wife, Lillie Dale Newton and two year old son, Jordan R. Pybas. (Ben and Hiram Card had married sisters, Lillie Dale Newton and Emma Newton in a double wedding ceremony in Bedford County in 1875).

- William Edward Pybas and his pregnant wife, Fannie Wiggins, married in 1877.

 Also in the group were three younger children: Margaret Alice. seventeen in 1878 on the Texas journey; Boy (Kenneth Monroe, Jr.), born in 1864, (fourteen in 1878); and Missie (Emily Evaline), born in 1868.

Also included in the train was Herod Holt, grandfather of Blair's wife, Emma. His son, Emma's father, was killed while serving in the Confederate Army.

To become true settlers and to invest in their chosen location, K.M. Pybas evidently purchased land immediately. Tax receipts show he paid taxes in 1879 on property in Tarrant County valued at $530. With land selling for $1.00 per acre, it was a sizable tract. He also signed a $100 note with H.A. Lewis in 1880 as part payment on a tract of land, payable at Grapevine, Texas. As an additional enterprise, the sons, J.C. and J.B. signed a paper for J.D. Hudgins, for one-fourth interest in a cotton gin at Grapevine, Texas.

One can imagine the hardship for the young women in the wagon train, each in some stage of pregnancy. A descendant of Benjamin Pybas recounted some of his recollections as the husband of Lillie Dale. They chose to walk, he said, because of the jouncing in the bumpy wagons and covered most of the miles from Tennessee to Texas on foot. His daughter, Ludie, was born two weeks after they arrived at Grapevine.

Little is known of the living arrangements of the Pybas clan at the Grapevine area, but the men must have busied themselves with breaking enough land to put in cotton that spring to ensure a fall harvest. K.M. was the true patriarch and guide for the group as well as having the money left from the sale of the Tennessee farm to finance their beginning in Texas.

The summer of 1880 brought tragedy to the family. Four of K.M.'s grandchildren contacted Typhoid Fever. Three of them were Blair's children, 5, 3 and 1. They died within one week. Ben and Lillie's, Ludie, also came down with the fever. She was not expected to live. Emma, Blair's wife, had a nervous breakdown and was put on morphine. The worry and sorrow was taking its toll.

K.M. made a decision. Quoting his granddaughter, Kenneth M. Clifton, "Grandpa K.M. said, 'We're not going to stay in this unhealthy loca]jty any longer."' They had heard that there were persons settled in Cooke County from Tennessee. So their father sent Jordan C. and Ben to try to find another location. They rode horseback to Gainesville, still a village at that time, a cow town, where they inquired where a Tennessee Colony was located. They were directed to Sivells Bend where they met Mr. Midkiff, who had established a farm there as early as the 1860's, was the postmaster, Justice of Peace, self­ appointed land man and respected citizen. He knew of 500 acres for sale on Nubbin Ridge, partly good black land, part of it timberland, a bluff overlooking Warrens Bend and the Red River.

The transaction was accomplished, after consultation with their father and arrangements for disposition of the Grapevine property. Again, the family was packed into their wagons, heading for another destination. K.M. Pybas and wife, Eleanor, sons, Blair and Emma, Card and Emma Newton, Ben and Lillie, Will and Fannie and the several children. Alice, Boy and Missie, the younger ones, and Grandpa Holt. The large group arrived in the fall with little time to put in a crop except for turnips and late vegetables. They camped in their wagons and tents, sending some of the wagons to Sherman for lumber for a house and a barn. With great effort, a four room house was completed. Eleanor Pybas was able to bring to her new borne her precious items packed carefully in Tennessee. The books, the pictures, the organ, the quilts and dishes.

There were no trees on the prairie land along the wagon track where K.M. wanted his house but a grove of young hackberry trees grew along a ridge several hundred yards to the north and the men stationed their wagons there for shelter. They then constructed half dug-outs under or near the trees and lived in them the first winter. Ben Pybas, K.M.'s son, told that they managed very poorly that winter. The money was about gone, they were living on rabbits and squirrels and whatever they could hunt. They learned that a man in Marysville needed some fences built. Will Pybas and Ben took on the job although they were paid in meat, the man that hired them had butchered some hogs. He said that each received a side of pork and that their good wives could stretch it with gravy.

One can imagine the fortitude and perseverance, the decisions to be made, the endurance that was necessary in establishing a farm, a homestead, and a place in the community in the 1880's in a land that was quickly becoming settled. Mr. Rufus Hickman lived on the next place to the west. He was capable and efficient in building ponds with a slip or fresno and teams of horses. K.M. had a pond built for stock water and soon had the ground broken for wheat and oats. He planted his exceptional orchard and made a large garden.

The sons and families began to find their own locations: W.E. to Marysville; Blair and Ben to Warrens Bend; and Card to Dibble, Indian Territory. Boy worked as a cowboy for Bill Washington who ran large numbers of cattle in Indian Territory. Alice was soon married to Zambry Giddens of Sivells Bend. And sadly, a grave at Bearhead Cemetery is marked for their month old infant in 1881.  (The family of K.M. Pybas was to see many births and deaths in a few short years after their arrival in Cooke County.)

Ben and Blair began their development in Warrens Bend with 500 acres, built a gin, blacksmith shop, a store to accommodate the many familjes who sharecropped for them and for the Gunter family whose large holdings were on the east end of the valley. Ben built a large home in 1890. Disaster struck in 1891 with an overflow and with Blair's death at age thirty-nine, leaving Emma and five little children, born after they arrived in Cooke County in 1881. Fannie Wiggins, Will's wife died in 1889. He married Linda (Wilborn) Binford, a widow with two children, Daisy and Clem Binford. They lived near Marysville. Ben and Lillie Dale also lost several children, infant twin boys, another infant in 1894, five-year-old Bonnie in 1895 and twelve-year-old Bailey in 1901. The mother also died in 1905.

K.M. would see Emma, Blair's widow, married again to a brother of Ben's and Hiram Card's wives, (Lillie Dale and Emma), John Newton. 

Eleanor Pybas wrote to her daughter-in law, Emma Holt (Pybas) Newton in Indian Territory in 1895. She tells the news of the family, that the thrashing of the wheat and oats had been completed, that they had had a bumper crop of peaches, which she dried and canned, that they had lots of rain that summer. "You never saw the like of weeds and grass, it takes a man to get to the garden. I have good cabbage and tomatoes, have all the chickens I want, all the turkeys I want, all the meat and bread I want, lots of butter and eggs, so you can see we are doing very well." She told of a revival meeting at Barehead Church and that Mr. Early Giddens had joined the church. She admonished her grandchildren to "be good children and don't bother nothing that don't belong to you and to keep out of bad company."

K.M. Pybas was still settling for land in 1896 when a deed was filed for 1476 acres of land on Nubbin Ridge in Cooke County. He was seventy-two years old. In his later years, his granddaughter recalled, he would sit on his front porch, watching the road. If anyone rode by, he walked out to approach them and insist they come in to eat. Food was prepared in the morning, placed on the table and covered with a cloth and left for the rest of the day. An extra plate was always set, a ritual carried over to his son, Ben Pybas' home, in Warrens Bend. Ben Pybas' daughter, Kenneth Marie (Pybas) Clifton was named for her grandfather. She was born in 1911 before his death in 1913.

K.M.'s wife, Eleanor suffered a stroke which left her bedfast for two years before she died in July 1912. The youngest daughter, Missie, cared for her and was the beneficiary of the land on Nubbin Ridge.  K.M. Pybas died only six months later, January, 1913 at age eighty-eight.

As he had requested, there was no funeral for him, no "tomfoolery" as he called it at the Barehead Cemetery. His son, Ben, the one K.M. had given the instructions, had asked. "Don't you want a nice funeral like you gave Mother?" He said, No, that was different; Grandma was a Christian and he was an infidel. He told Ben he wouldn't die satisfied until he promised that there would be no tomfoolery, (preachers, praying, flowers) after he died.

On a cold January day in 1913, the neighbors had come as they knew death was very near. [After he died] they took him to the cemetery in a homemade coffin in a wagon. Mr. Russell, his good neighbor, removed his hat and said, "Friends and neighbors, we all know that this is the body of K.M. Pybas."

His son, Ben Pybas, told his daughter, Kenneth M. (Pybas) Clifton, "Burying Pap was the hardest thing I ever did in my life."  Kenneth Monroe Pybas was one of the hardy, responsible, enterprising, brave and adventurous individuals who came to the sparsely settled West to establish family ties, contribute to the development and a better livelihood in the new community than they could expect to accomplish in his native Tennessee following the Civil War. The exodus of the extended family to Texas was a combined effort for a better life, and to that end the energy and drive and means, with their honesty, dedication, ability and contribution helped in the progress and growth in Cooke County, Texas.

CIVIL WAR SERVICE OF KENNETH MONROE PYBAS

K.M. Pybas served in Lieutenant.General Nathan Bedford Forrest's Escort, a personally selected small group who served in many capacities, scouts, messengers, as well as at the front They continued with the general even when he was removed from command of a finished brigade and required to train and recruit two more brigades.  He served with Captain John C. Jackson's Company,Tennessee Calvary, as well as under Captain N. Boone's Company Calvary for the General. He volunteered, January 10, 1863, at thirty-nine years of age. As he was a farmer and head of a family with six children, he probably had resisted the hardship of leaving his borne, wife and children in danger until it was absolutely necessary. 

The completed harvest was perhaps commandeered by the Confederate Forces, the remainder later confiscated by the Federal troops. The danger increased as the Union Army neared control of Bedford County, Tennessee, K.M. Pybas' home. He was leaving his thirteen-year-old son, Jordan C. Pybas, his wife, Eleanor, and a few slaves in charge of the farm.

K.M. Pybas kept a diary or day book for part of his military service. Although the notations are brief, he records battle and events. The cavalry were required to furnish their own horses. Twice he tells of getting his horse shot and returning home for a replacement.

"April 10, 1863: skirmish near Douglas Church four miles from Franklin, Tenn. Captain Freeman killed and his battery taken; recaptured battery with small loss. Got my fine mare killed and left all my rigging on the battlefield. Four of the escort wounded."

He tells of several skirmishes and also that he was sick and was transferred to a hospital at Atlanta, Georgia. However, he was sent back in time for a battle at Chickamauga, beginning September 18, 1863, very heavy fighting...."slaughter heavy on both sides with Rosecrans falling back and Bragg advancing, holding the battleground."

He also gives accounts of fighting in Mississippi, driving the enemy back and capturing about fifty prisoners, that the "escort" lost three men and that Dock Boone was killed.

"Feb 20, 1864....escort captured twenty-one prisoners late in the evening. ten of the escort sent back with the prisoners. I was on the detail."

Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest

General Nathan Bedford Forrest was born in Bedford County, Tennessee in 1821. His family moved to Mississippi where his father died when he was about thirteen. He matured very quickly and had his own enterprises in Nashville by the time he was nineteen. He enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1861 as a private. He had evident leadership qualities and was soon given a command. At that time the Confederate troops elected their junior officers.  They elected Forrest Lieutenant.  He recruited more soldiers and they elected him Major.

His troops were very ill-equipped and ill-armed. Since he had no education and all of the higher officers of both the Confederate and Union armies were from West Point or will educated, Forrest was not considered for a high ranking office. He then recruited enough men for a battalion, who elected him Lieutenant Colonel. Fully half his men had only shot-guns and squirrel rifles brought from home. His first successes were in capturing supplies, rifles, blankets, provisions from Union outposts. He equipped his battalion and since it was well mounted and well armed, the Confederate officers removed it from his command and ordered him to recruit another battalion.

After the battle of Chattanooga, on the 18th of June, 1862, he was fortunate to find the 8th Texas Cavalry, better known as Terry's Rangers, to form the first part of the second brigade, he was to recruit. It was made up of cattle ranchers and cowboys from Texas and several volunteers from Cooke County, Texas. When Terry was killed, he was succeeded by Lt. Col. Biffie, from whom most of the Biffle's in Cooke County are descended. Again, Forrest mustered and equipped a forceful brigade.

At the time his first brigade was removed from his command, he insisted on taking some of his personally picked men which served as his personal escort. About twenty-five to fifty strong, they stayed with the General, if they survived, until the end of the war. They served as a utility force, filling many capacities, scouts, setting up headquarters, communications with other units, on the battle field under heavy fighting, as well. More men were selected as the need arose and K.M. Pybas was one of these men.

Towards the end of the war the Confederacy finally recognized Forrest's brilliance and placed him as a Lieutenant General in command of all the Cavalry for the Confederate Army of the West. Quoting Winston Churchill in his The Great Democracies, "Forrest could hardly read or write, but he possessed military qualities of the highest order." His unique ability in the art of war was summarized by the phrase attributed to Forrest, himself, of being "Firstest with the Mostest." Had the Confederacy recognized his strategic and tactical abilities sooner, the outcome of the war may have been different.

 

Youroquains: The Legend of Caty Sage

Catharine “Caty” Sage was born 5 Jan 1786 in Elk Creek, Virginia, to James and Lovisa Sage. She was their fifth child and their second daughter. Her father, James, was a “new” American, having arrived in the Colonies from England in 1773. He had fought in the Revolutionary War against England in several battles, including Valley Forge under the command of General George Washington. After the defeat of the British, he settled in Virginia Colony where he met and married his wife, Lovisa “Lovi” Ott, the daughter of German immigrants to the Colonies. Together they homesteaded 400 acres of land along Elk Creek and began raising their family.  

In the late spring of 1792, a neighbor of James Sage named Cornute (Cornett) had three of his finest horses stolen. Three white strangers had been seen in the area and it was believed these men were the thieves.  Seeking the assistance of his neighbors, James and Cornute went in search of the horses and found them hobbled and grazing in a place called Elks Garden between the White Top Mountain and Balsam Mountain. The horse thieves themselves were never found.

Later, in July, James and his two sons, Samuel, and James Jr., were working in the family’s field. Back at their log cabin, Lovi had carried her large iron pot to the creek, filled it with water and had set a fire beneath it to heat the water to do the washing. When she went back to the cabin to get the clothes to be washed, she spotted Caty chasing butterflies in the nearby hayfield, her blonde hair blowing in the wind. However, when Lovi returned with the clothes, Caty was nowhere to be found. She searched the woods near the cabin and the creek, calling her name but with no answer. Panicked, she sent her older daughter, Polly, after James and the boys who also searched but still found nothing. James sought the aid of their neighbors the following day.  They searched for two weeks, but no sign of Caty was found.

Based on later interviews with Caty it is presumed that one of the horse thieves sought to redeem his losses and inflict revenge by selling the blond-haired, blue-eyed little girl to the Cherokee that came to the Trading Gap in Tennessee, a two-day ride to the southwest of her home at Elk Creek. Per her recollection, she was snatched up by a white man, a handkerchief put over her mouth, and taken away on horseback.  Once at the Trading Gap, she was sold to the Cherokee who took her north, back through Virginia, what is now West Virginia, and eventually to a Wyandot village near the Scioto River, just north of the town of Franklinton, a district of present-day Columbus, Ohio. 

 It was an arduous 16-day ride by horseback and canoe from Elk Creek to the Trading Gap. The Cherokee were there to trade horses with the Wyandot and Shawnee and to take part in the Green Corn Harvest Festival, the Indians’ thanksgiving celebration. The Wyandot chief, Tarhe (“the Crane”) showed great interest in the little fair-haired girl who would not speak, and with much negotiation obtained her from the Cherokee.

Tarhe was the Grand Sachem (head chief) of the Wyandot Indians, born near Detroit in 1742. He belonged to the Porcupine clan of the Wyandot Nation and since boyhood had participated in all the battles of his tribe. His wife, Ronyouquaines, was believed to be French, the daughter of Chevalier La Durante, a French Canadian. It was said that she had been captured as a child and raised by the Wyandots and was eventually married to the great Tarhe. Together they had a daughter, Myerrah, who was married to Isaac Zane, a white man who also had been captured as a child and raised by the Wyandots. By order of Tarhe, Caty was adopted into the Turtle clan with the full blessing of her new father, Tarhe, the top chief of the Wyandot nation. It was during her adoption that she was given the name “Yourowquains,” by the squaws of the tribe. Full translation of the name has been lost over time, but at least part of the name translates into English as “Sally.”  

 Back in Virginia, James had not given up hope of finding his Caty, but all searches and turned up nothing. Out of desperation, he sought out an Appalachian woman called Granny Moses whom it was rumored had the gift of foreseeing the future. She told James that indeed Caty was alive but he would never see her again in his lifetime. His wife, Lovisa, would hear of her in her old age and would learn of her whereabouts, but she too would never see her again. Granny Moses advised James to return home to his family and try to live and forget.  

Meanwhile, a great battle between the American Army and the Indian Nations was coming. The Wyandots and others had been preparing for some time and in 1794 at the Battle of the Fallen Timbers 1,300 braves from the Indian Nations and 80-150 British Canadian militia fought against 3,000 American Army soldiers on the Maumee River. The bloody battle lasted only an hour and 10 minutes, but it left the Indian nations defeated and subdued. Of the 13 chiefs that had left for battle, only one returned—the great Tarhe who was wounded in the arm. One of the youngest braves to return was Tauyaurontoyou, or “Between-The-Logs” at only 14 years of age. The Battle of the Fallen Timbers resulted in the Treaty of Greenville, which redefined the boundary between the Indians’ lands and the white men’s lands in the Northwest Territory. Following the signing of the treaty, in the spring of 1797, Tarhe moved his camp of Wyandots from near the Hocking River north to the Upper Sandusky River.  

 In the winter of 1803, Ronyouquains, the wife of Chief Tarhe, died. Tarhe, at the age of 62, took Caty, now 17, as his wife. Together they had a son who died in infancy. This was a common occurrence with Indian newborns and though sad was considered a natural thing. Then in November 1816, at the age of 74, the Great Crane, Chief Tarhe died. Caty and the entire Wyandot nation went into mourning and were adrift without their beloved leader. Eventually, he was succeeded by Duon-quot (Half-King) of the Porcupine clan.  

Christianization of the Indians had begun in the early 1800s. John Stewart, a Methodist, had committed himself to mission work among Native Americans and followed this calling to the Wyandot country around the Upper Sandusky River. There he presented them with the Christian message that brought reconciliation and peace to estranged and fractured relationships in the tribe.  During this time, Caty was allotted her own land where she had a house built, and soon after she became the wife of Between-The-Logs, who moved into her house with his daughter, a brother, and two sisters, one of whom was blind. Caty also took in an orphan girl in the tribe. Caty’s love and caring for others was becoming well-known throughout the tribe and many sought her advice. Shortly after their marriage, Between-The-Logs was made chief of the Wyandot nation. He also had become a Christian at one of Stewart’s early meetings and took an interest in the mission’s growth. Together, Caty and Between-The-Logs improved their way of life by learning new ways of doing things, most of which they learned from the missionaries. He died of consumption at his home in 1827 and a large number attended his funeral, which was held at the mission church he cared for so much.  

Frost

Two years after the death of Between-The-Logs, Caty was again married, this time to a Wyandot warrior by the name of Frost whom she had met through his sister who attended the mission church. This time, however, Caty changed her name to Sally Frost, taking the name of her husband as her surname, in the Christian tradition. Along with Between-The-Log’s daughter, Caty and Frost also raised Frost’s sister’s children after they were left orphaned. With this houseful, they decided to build a larger cabin about 300 yards from her old cabin on top of a ridge near a very good spring. Frost and several other families came together in September 1830 to cut the trees and fashion them into logs to build the cabin. In 1842 Caty’s husband, Frost, died. There is no record of the exact date or how he died. Their nephew Michael, whom they had taken in after the death of Frost’s sister, was 15 and considered to be a grown man. He had taken a wife named Hannah whom he moved into the Frost household. It was Michael who was now the man of the family, taking care of such chores as tending crops, chopping firewood, and carrying water from the spring, though their living situation would not last long. 

 During talks with the government officials regarding the buying of the Wyandot land on the Upper Sandusky, their chief Summunduwat was murdered. Almost immediately upon his death, government officials again offered to relocate the Wyandots to land in Kansas. Feeling they had no choice, they accepted and in July 1843, 51 years after Caty’s abduction from her home in Elk Creek, Virginia Colony, she was once again relocated to a strange land: Kansas. In 1846, Caty and her family homesteaded a 160-acre allotment that had previously belonged to the Delaware Indians. 

On 10 Mar 1848, one of the Wyandot interpreters came to Caty to tell her about a white man he had met at Fort Leavenworth who had a strong resemblance to her.  He had also told the man about her. The man had told him that he had had an older sister who disappeared before he was born and that her fate was unknown. The interpreter, who had known Caty since the time she was brought into the tribe by Tarhe, said the man’s name was Charles Comer Sage, and that he had come from southwestern Virginia as a trader.  He was now anxious to meet her to see if she was his long-lost sister. Caty agreed to meet this man at the Wyandot council house on March 29, with the interpreter as Caty did not speak any English but only the Wyandot language.  

Charles Comer Sage

 It was an emotional meeting. Caty had long since forgotten anything about her home in Virginia. And now she heard the interpreter explain to Charles that she had been given to the Wyandots by the Cherokee as a gift during one of their annual festivals about 50 or 60 years ago. Caty learned about how her father and brothers and neighbors searched for her for weeks when she went missing. She learned that her father, James Sage, had died and that her mother, Lovisa Sage, was still living at the family homestead on Elk Creek. Caty was convinced that Charles was her brother, but Charles was not yet convinced, saying that he would write to his family and inquire if there were any identifying marks that would confirm her identity. His older brother, Samuel, who was eleven years old when Caty disappeared, lived about 200 miles from Ft. Leavenworth and he also agreed to come to meet her as well.  

 In his letter home, Charles wrote:  

 “She looks to be about 58 or 60 years in age. She is about the height of Sister Esther. She stands straight under my arm. Her hair is yellow like Esther’s. She has a large nose like Sister Betsey. She has a foot and toenails like Mother and walks with a kind of swing like Mother used to do when going from you. She cannot talk one word of our language nor understand it. I had to talk to her through an interpreter. I asked her whether there were any particular marks on her that she could be distinguished by and she showed me her left hand. I examined her fingers. They are shorter than common and more thick and clumbsy at the end. Her left thumb resembles a thumb [--if you can imagine, or] supposed [that] it was cut off at the root of the nail, and then a broad, flat nail [were] to grow on the stump.”

In June, Samuel met Charles and arranged to meet Caty at the Council house. He had received the information he needed to confirm Caty’s identity from his youngest sister, Betsey. In his letter to Virginia dated 20 Jun 1848, Charles describes the meeting:

 “Samuel looked at her [Caty] and recognized her immediately. He had been told before he saw her she had a burn on her thigh. We asked her if it was there. She said it was and when she was a small girl, she asked the woman that raised her how that mark came there and she told her it was always there. We then examined and found the mark between her shoulders, as Mother described it, and Caty said she never knew it was there before. Also, the mark that brother James described on the right side just above the collar bone [was there] and so it seems that every mark proves it to be her. We have no doubt nor has she any doubt but she is our real sister and the Indians are satisfied she is our sister. She has been claimed by two families before but they never could convince her nor describe her by any mark.”

Caty agreed to accompany her brothers home to see her mother and the rest of her family but after two days she changed her mind about going. In his letter home, Charles explained that her reason was the distance “and that it would be no satisfaction because she cannot talk to you nor you to her and I am sure it would be the case.”

 “There is a man in the Nation that can write her history. [He is] a half-breed and I will get him to do it and send it to you which will give you more satisfaction than to see her, for I assure you that it was as trying a thing as ever I met with to meet a sister I never saw and could not talk one word with her.” “It is a difficult thing to talk through an interpreter. As to her situation, it is as good as any of ours. She appears to have plenty. Sister Caty is a very pious woman. She was adopted into the Turtle [clan] and claims the whole tribe as her children by adoption and they claim her as a grandmother.”

Charles continued to return to see Caty when his job for the trading company brought him to the area. Caty pondered whether she had made the right decision in not returning to Virginia to see her family, but the idea of traveling such a long distance frightened her. She was 63 and nearly blind. And there were rumblings of the government coming again to force the Wyandots to relocate again. No, she decided, she had made the right decision to look after her people. Then in the spring of 1849, the Wyandot tribe was infected with cholera. Charles tried to enlist the aid of the half-breed interpreter to write Caty’s story, but he too went blind.

On 25 May 1851, Charles again came to visit his sister. Through an interpreter, Caty asked him to write a letter to her mother for her.  

 “Though I am blind I can hear. Write to my mother and tell her though I have lost my vision, and all is dark without, all is light within. Tell her it has been some 30 years since I first heard the Gospel preached and the name of Jesus. I then embraced the calls of mercy and though I felt at the time an outcast and did not know that I had a relative on earth, I found Jesus precious to my soul. And from that [day] to the present time I have thought that when this mortal body put on immortality, I should meet my relations according to the flesh in that world where all circumstances of my mysterious life should be known. Though you may think that my lot has been a hard one, and certainly it has, I have no reason to complain. I have always been treated tenderly in the way I have been raised, and now that a mysterious providence has made known to me that I have a mother and brothers and sisters yet on earth, and the idea is forever precluded that I can see them in this world, my soul is buoyant in the hope that you all will meet me in heaven where we can tell all our sufferings and enjoyments over, where parents and children, brothers and sister, will meet to part no more.”

In the spring of the following year, Charles made another visit to Caty. It was to be his last. Her health had declined, her sight was almost totally gone. The biography that Charles had hoped would be written had yet to even be started, even though he had paid the interpreter the previous year to begin. On Sunday, 23 Jan 1853, Catharine “Yourowquains” Sage, the wife of chiefs, the grandmother to the Wyandot Nation, and the missing child of Elk Creek, died of pneumonia 16 days following her 66th birthday. Known in the Wyandots as “Aunt Sally Frost,” “Mother,” and “Grandmother,” she was buried near the Church of the Old Methodist in the Wyandot Nation. No biography had been written and her amazing story was lost to the annals of history, except to those family historians fortunate enough to discover it.  

Today the cemetery where Caty rests is called the Quindaro Cemetery in Kansas City. In Grayson County, Virginia, along Highway 21 is a historical marker marking the place where a 5-year-old girl with blonde hair and laughing blue eyes was abducted from her family and became a family legend.  

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ball, Bonnie Sage. Red Trails and White: the Mysterious Life of Caty Sage. B. Ball, 1988.

Bland, Bill. Yourowquains, a Wyandot Indian Queen: the Story of Caty Sage. Historical Publications, 1992.

Honsberger, Lonny L. A Book of Diagrams and Index of Indian Landholders on the Wyandot Reservation, Wyandot County, Ohio, at Time of Cession. L.L. Honsberger, 1989.

“James Sage (1749-1820) - Find A Grave Memorial.” Find A Grave, www.findagrave.com/memorial/83192527.

Ray, Michael. “Treaty of Greenville.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 27 July 2019, www.britannica.com/event/Treaty-of-Greenville.

“Battle of Fallen Timbers.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 7 Mar. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fallen_Timbers.

Sage, Charles Comer.

“Sally ‘Caty’ Sage Frost (1787-1853) - Find A...” Find A Grave, www.findagrave.com/memorial/86622600/sally-frost.

“The Legacy of John Stewart and the Wyandot.” Methodist Mission Bicentennial, 19 Oct. 2018, methodistmission200.org/about-the-bicentennial/the-legacy-of-john-stewart-and-the-wyandot/.

Yates, William A. Selected U.S./International Marriage Records, 1560-1900. Broderbund Software, 1997.