My great grandmother was Spanish. Royal blood came from the Spicers. Fish was English. Father (Luke Miner Fish) always said that there were two Fish brothers who came over on the Mayflower, and he was a descendant of one brother, and Hamilton Fish who was in politics in Washington was a descendant of the other brother.
My Grandmother Fish was Laverna Atkins and her mother’s maiden name was Spicer, and it was before that time that this Spanish blood entered into their family. I think the ancestor was a sister of Queen Isabella of Spain. She married a commoner and was disinherited. I don’t know whether Father had more than one brother or not. There was one brother Asahel (pronounced Asel) in New York State. Father (Luke Miner Fish) was born close to Albany, New York on February 12, 1832. My mother, formerly Mary Ann Harvey, was born in New York State. Her father was James Harvey, and her mother was Melinda (Sinnamon) Harvey. Her father was an old sea captain. He was a bald headed little fellow. He went around the world a time or two in sailing ships that depended on air and canvas to push them; didn’t have motors like they do now. They lived in New York State when he went to sea. My mother was born in New York State and maybe the other girls, too, I don’t know. After they went to Wisconsin, he never went to sea again. Before Luke settled in Minnesota, he worked in Wisconsin and got acquainted with the Harvey family. They had five children, all girls, namely:
SPOUSEMary Ann April 26, 1844 Luke Miner Fish Jane Romanzo Allen Martha William Mabley Kate (Katherine) – twin Will Brewin Lib (Elizabeth) – twin George Dennis
Luke Fish married Elisabeth Tooley in 1852, and they lived in Minnesota. She was a Canadian woman. They were parents of eight children: Elva, Miriam, Francis, Arthur, Ida, Fordyce, Asahel, & Eugene. When the last baby was about six weeks old, the baby and Elisabeth died of smallpox. When Luke was left with this large family he remembered the Harvey girls, and went and got a job close to them and courted Mary Ann. He married her November 26, 1866, and took her home. Her home until then had been near Palmyra, Wisconsin, and after their marriage they went to live in his home near Mapleton, Minnesota, in Blue Earth County. He had a large wheat farm. She stepped in and was mother to his seven children, and in 1868 twins were born to them, and then five other children, as follows:
Children: (all born Mapleton, Blue Earth County, MN except Hugh): Jane Martha Oct 11, 1868 James Harvey Oct 11, 1868 Everett Irwin Aug 4, 1870 Otto Otis Aug 6, 1872 Orlo Jason Jan 25, 1874 Horry Orael Dec 18, 1875 Hugh Robert Sep 22, 1880 b. Decatur, Wise County, Texas
The twins and I, and Otto, Orlo, and Horry were all born near Mapleton, Minnesota, in Blue Earth County. Horry was a baby when we left there in early 1876 and moved to Maryland.
I remember the snow that covered the fences in Minnesota, and we were running around in the snow without shoes, waiting for the shoe cobbler to come to our home and make shoes for the whole family, and he lived with us while he did it.
While in Minnesota, and when I was about five years old, Father’s (Luke) health failed him (he was having dysentery and chronic diarrhea). The doctors told him he couldn’t live a year and that he should get his business straightened up. He didn’t like the doctor’s report and he decided to go to another climate. He got the oldest boy, Miriam, to go with him as far as he could go. Miriam went with him in the wagon and then on the train until they got to Milwaukee, it took two or three days as he was in a weakened condition. When he got there Father (Luke) got on a boat and went down a chain of lakes and finally wound up in Maryland, on the coast, on the east line of Maryland to Delaware. That was quite a fruit country, and he got to eating fruit down there. After his health improved he decided to move the family down there, also. So, in 1875, or early 1876, he wrote Mother (Mary Ann) to sell everything and bring the family to Maryland. They had a good wheat farm in Minnesota, and he bought an old plantation in Maryland, that was grown up in pines and also had one ten-acre orchard on it. It had a big nice house.
Mother sold everything and we started. We visited Uncle Will and Aunt Martha Mabley in Minnesota first, and then went on and visited Mother’s sisters in Wisconsin, and from there we went by train to Maryland where Father was. As soon as Father (Luke) moved, his father and mother sold out and moved to Maryland, too. Their farm in Minnesota was right next to ours. With his father and mother were his two maiden sisters, Vianna and Pluma, which made four of that family. They moved in with Father’s (Luke) family in the big house that he bought. I remember Father (Luke) was mad when his father sold out and came and they shipped a lot of stuff, and their big grandfather clock was shipped and Father (Luke) had to pay the freight on it. Father (Luke) was very resourceful to make a living for all the bunch we had. He was somewhat of a carpenter, and conceived the idea of doing something that no one else had done. He patented and made beehives . He had a few hives of bees. That was the main source of income, making beehives. Aunt Pluma was real artistic, and she painted designs on the hives, and it made them more attractive for sale. When anyone wanted bees transferred, he transferred them out of hollow logs, or from old hives to the new patented hives with frames in them, so they could take out frames of comb and honey. They could handle honey from these patented hives. When the bees got the lower part full, he put in another story in the hive. He was quite a bee man. Father wrote several articles in a bee magazine, which he took. In Maryland, Father had his father and mother and two sisters, and six of us children, and, including Father and Mother, there were twelve in all, and then had two hired men a good deal of the time. The old plantation was all worn out. It had a swampy place on the north side that had been marshy and low, and he had those boys take out that muck in there and haul it out on the orchard. That did the trick, and the next year it was just like all budded fruit. After that the fruit was all good, and lots of it. He used to get fertilizer out of it, and we dropped it in each hill of corn. Father had some nice plum and cherry trees, and black cherries, about ten acres of fruit trees. He would try to graft some of it and we climbed up there and picked cherries. Mother could be so scared, especially if we got on a limb that was over the picket fence. The old plantation had lots of pine trees, mostly tall pines.
I remember the old home in Maryland, and roasting some of the oysters. Father would go down and get a box of oysters and he placed them on the floor of the smoke house, a wagon load. When going to feed them he would put corn meal in salty water and sprinkle it over them, and they would open up and grab it. Mother couldn’t eat oysters when we went to Maryland, but pretty soon she got so she could eat them as well as any of us. A good way is to put a little salt and pepper and a drop of vinegar on them and eat them off the shell. When you go to open them, put in a tub all the oysters you need, and pour a kettle of hot water in the tub, and they would open up and you could get a knife in there and cut the cartilage that opens and closes the shell and then they would open right up. We usually ate them right from the shell with a little salt. Father stayed in Maryland three years, and then got itchy feet. The morals there on the coast weren’t very good and he didn’t want to raise his family there. He got a lot of literature and decided to go to Texas. He left Sis (Jane) and I, because we could help our grandparents, and Horry, the youngest, who was two or three years old and he took the rest of the family and went to Texas. Grandfather’s and Grandmother’s instructions were to sell the place and come to Texas, bringing the three children that he had left with them, and of course, his two sisters, Vianna and Pluma. There were seven left in Maryland. The folks thought we would be left there not more than two weeks, but it ran into two years. Sis and I would talk and wonder when we would get to g o where the folks were. We would plan what we were going to do when we grew up.
Father and Mother took James, Orlo, and Otto and went to Wise County, Texas, and lived there one year, where he farmed and cleared up that land. Hugh was born in Texas in September 1880, at Decatur, Texas, in Wise County, which is about thirty miles northwest of Ft. Worth. He was nearly a year old when we went to Texas and saw him for the first time. After living in Wise County one year, they went to Montague County, Texas, and took a claim in the woods. They were in Texas two years before we got there. When we went there Father had a long house in the woods and it was covered with canvas. The house was divided in two sections, and there was a breezeway between the sections. One side was for sleeping, and the other side was a kitchen and dining room. At one time he had 16 there, including two hired men who came from Maryland to Texas about the time we did, to help him clear away timber, so that he could farm the land. To farm you had a lot of stumps to contend with, it was all timberland and they had to clear it. I was in Texas one year.
Father’s sister, Aunt Pluma, died in Texas. She was buried on the place we owned in Montague County, Texas. One corner had a big lot of rocks, and she was buried just inside the fence near that rocky side of the place, they picked a place that was close to that big pile of rocks where it wouldn’t be interfered with in farming, etc. Most of the farm was timber and we would have to cut timber and grub it out. We had an awful time killing sassafras. The farm in Montague County was close to the present town of Bowie. They started that town about the time we left. We left in July 1882. While in Texas I remember Mother wouldn’t let us have guns so we would go out rabbit hunting with sticks, using forked sticks and twist the rabbits out of hollow logs or brush piles, and killed them with rocks or sticks, and then we would have a good meal. The only meat we had was when we would get rabbits. I remember one time we boys got lost in the woods while hunting rabbits. We finally came to a house and the man told us how to get home. We started out but went in circles and came back to the same house. The third time we came back to the same house, the man told us to wait until he finished his chores and he would show us the way home, so he went with us to the clearing where we could see our house only a short distance away. We were so worn out, and the rabbits were so heavy, and we had dropped all our rabbits the second or third time around. So we arrived home very tired, and without any rabbits, but Mother was sure glad to see us. Father built a big well on one of the places in Texas, and people for miles around used it.
After we got to Texas, after Hugh was born, Father had a big family. Miriam, one of Father’s first family, was there close to us. Asahel was with us just overnight once in a while. He worked for a fellow close to town. He finally ran off and we never saw him again. He left before we started on our trip to Clarendon. Arthur and Miriam were with us a while down there. They started back to Minnesota and Arthur drowned in the North Canadian River. Miriam was with him. Arthur was a good swimmer and thought he could swim across. He was swimming the horse across and got in the way of the horse himself (the horse got in quick sand), and Arthur went under and never came up and he was drowned there. They found him about half a mile below on a sand bar a few days later. Miriam went on back to Minnesota and took his family there. They went up by Warroad somewhere afterward.
We left Texas in July 1882, in a covered wagon. We left in the middle of the night, after the Ku Klux Klan had sent three threatening notices to Father. Father was a Republican. He was down at the little post office and said something about the Democrats, and they wanted him to move, and got the Ku Klux Klan after him. Father slept on his guns all summer. Several times there were people who didn’t take heed to those notices and they would be found hung in the woods. The Ku Klux Klan had given three notices before it got on Father’s nerves and he decided we would move. So we moved out in the night, all of us except Father’s father and mother and one sister, Aunt Vianna, who were left there to be sent back to Father’s brother Asahel, in New York State, when they sold the place. The only neighbor Father had that he thought he could trust was authorized to sell the place for him and send the folks back to New York State, and send the remainder of the money to us. We later got $85.00 out of the place.
When we left Texas we had two cows trailing along behind the covered wagon. We moved to Clarendon, Texas, which is near Amarillo, and stayed about a month. We lived in a dugout, and Father worked on a big building that was being built, all that he was able to work. He was going into debt all the time, so he decided to come back to where Uncle Hite Sinnamon was, here in Kansas, (south of Sedan). He was Mother’s uncle, her mother’s brother. That was in September 1882 that we got to Kansas. We had quite a load, and all of us but Mother and Hugh who was a baby, and maybe another young child, walked from Clarendon, Texas, behind the covered wagon. The wagon was loaded with all our possessions and was too heavy for the horses to pull with us kids on it too. On the trip from Texas to Wauneta, Kansas, on crossing one river, the floor of the bridge began pushing up in front of the rear wheels of the wagon. Several of the boys who were walking behind had to walk the steel girders of the bridge in order to get across. When we got to Wauneta, Father had a little money and he rented a one-room house in Wauneta, so we would have a place to come back to, and we went down to Arkansas to pick cotton, after we rested up, and the horses got rested; they were all tired out. The incident that stuck in my mind most was when we were here in Sedan on the way to Arkansas to pick cotton; before we got money from the sale of the farm in Texas. We stopped here in a deserted cabin a mile or two south of Sedan. Father tried to get groceries from a fellow who had a grocery store on the corner where the Drug Store is now. Father was out of money but told the man he was looking for a little money but he didn’t know how much. The grocer refused him credit. There was an old man in the store at the time and overheard the conversation and said: “I have some corn that can be picked, it is a little green but you can shuck it, and you and the boys can pick it three cents a bushel, and I will pay you at the end of the day.” Father said we would be right on hand. When we came out in the morning to go to work, there were five of us, Father and four boys, James, Otto, Orlo, and myself, I don’t think Horry went. Mother came out with a little pry-top gallon pail, half full of eatables, She said “This is all there is in the house. You folks take this and when you get back this evening we will have a good supper”. That didn’t leave anything at all for the others to eat all day. We shucked the corn, got a load of it, and when we got back we had enough to pay for groceries. Then when we got back in the evening a check for $85.00 was there in the post office. They had sold his place down in Texas, and sent Father the remaining of $85.00 after sending his father, mother and sister back to New York. That shows how close Father came to being entirely broke. That is pretty close when there is only half a gallon of eatables for nine folks, and we had been refused credit at the grocery store. Mother and I had congestive chills and nearly died while we were in Arkansas. We had the chills every other day; we picked some cotton one day and chilled the next. The other children had to do most of the cotton picking.
We came back from Arkansas just before Christmas. We were on our way on Christmas. Father and Mother had stopped at Independence and got a stove, and in addition to bedding, etc., in the wagon, it made more of a load and we children had to walk. There was one horse we could ride, but most of us were walking when we got here. After leaving Independence we came to Sedan and camped in the wagon, so Father and Mother had made us children a bed beside the wagon, and we got up the next morning all covered over with four inches of snow. My, but we were cold when we got to Wauneta. Driving from there to Wauneta, we pretty nearly froze.
Before he left Wauneta, Father had rented a one-room house in Wauneta. It was about 16 feet square, sided up, lap siding, weatherboarded up one side, and nothing on the inside, just rough boards, showed studding. There were 9 of us. They had one bed and a little trundle bed under it, and the rest of us had pallets on the floor. We lived in Wauneta from about Christmastime in 1882. I lived out there seven years until I came to Sedan.
Father loafed a good deal in Wauneta in the town store, and he would get jobs for the boys. He was always hunting up something for us boys to do. He would give us a job, we were to hoe so much corn and then we could play. We would work hard and wouldn’t have much time to play. Father arranged to buy a cow from Sam Slater. We were to cut corn and shock it. For each shock of corn we would take four hills and fasten them together for a center to put corn against and then pile about a certain number of stalks around them. We were to cut a certain number of shocks for the cow. Mr. Slater thought it would take us a week or ten days to earn the sow, but we boys earned it and led the cow home at the end of the third day. We worked like beavers. He told Father that we were the “workingest” bunch of kids he ever saw. There were four of us working on that, James, Otto, Orlo and myself. I will give Father credit for being very very resourceful. He would raise crops that no one else raised. The first year we lived at Wauneta on that forty acres, he conceived the idea of raising peanuts. He raised a lot of peanuts. There weren’t any peanuts raised in the country. We had wagons loads of them. We sold them and got a good price for them. He brought them to town (Sedan) and sold some at the store where they wouldn’t give him credit. It gave Father a lot of satisfaction to take them to town and sell them there, and when they wanted him to take credit he said no, he wanted cash. Then he took the cash and bought groceries another place. Then one year he had sweet potatoes, and good crops to sell. And then it was strawberries. Hugh got tired of them and said: “I like strawberries, but I don’t like strawberries for a change all the time.” Father had peaches, apples, and grapes. The grape orchard lasted only a year or two. So things tended to go in cycles. We raised corn and took it to the mill and had it ground into cornmeal, so our bread was cornbread. We called it “Johnny Constant”. We had very little wheat flour, but on Sunday mornings Mother made biscuits. We called them “Jimmy Seldom”. You can be sure that no one got any more biscuits than the others. Our school lunch was cornbread and molasses, which we carried to school in a tin pail. We went to school about three months in the year. The first year and a half (we got there about Christmas time), we went up to the old Star schoolhouse, three miles north and west of Wauneta. We walked to school all the time and sometimes we nearly froze. Tom Ferguson taught school at the Star schoolhouse at that time. He later moved to Sedan and ran a newspaper, I think it was called the Sedan Lance. Then afterward, he was appointed and became the first Territorial Governor of Oklahoma. Father took up a claim across the road. He homesteaded forty acres on the south side of the road; we moved across the road and went down to the Bumgarner School, two and a half miles away.
When Mr. Barnhart was killed, the folks were living on the north side of the road in the one-room house. We boys were at the little house across the road on the south side. We were sleeping there on the new claim. We had to stay there a certain length of time before we could prove up on it. I don’t remember how much time. The Barnhart place was east of Father’s on the north side of the road, at the foot of the hill. When Mr. Barnhart was killed, Mrs. Barnhart rushed out and went down to Father’s, and he went back with her. They always thought Mrs. Barnhart came out the front way over his body, and they figured that the Witts (Dick and Doug) were on the back porch waiting for her. Father got us up, and James and I, and maybe Otto, went down to Wauneta to notify the folks down there. They were having an Odd Fellows’ meeting, or a church meeting, in the hall, and we went down there to tell Pete Calvert about it. The amusing incident about it was that James got his pants on backward, and I had to go in and tell them. I don’t remember what year that was. Probably in 1882, or 1883, because we went down to Bumgarner school next year. When we went across to go to Bumgarner schoolhouse, A.M. Ross was teacher. That would be about 1883 or 1884. I think we went there two or three years before they built the schoolhouse at Wauneta. When it was built we went to school at Wauneta. It was built about 1886. A man by the name of Bargess taught a year or two, and Mr. Mosier was teaching when I came to Sedan. I was his pupil for a year and a half. Mr. J.K. Tulloss in Sedan was a good friend of Mosier. Tulloss wanted a boy to work for him. He got fed up on some of the boys that were working for him, ands Mosier, my schoolteacher, recommended me. Then Father and Mother had to go into a conference, and they decided to let me go. I think that was about the last of January 1889, when I came to Sedan. I lived with Tulloss’ until I went to Lawrence to school in 1893. While I was with Tulloss I went to High School in Sedan and graduated in 1891. The High School course was changed to a 4-year course in 1893. There was no graduating class that year. Emma Liafe (my future wife) was a member of the first class to graduate after it was changed to a 4-year course. She graduated in 1894.
I worked for Tulloss and got $20.00 a month and board for quite a while. He had me go down and take care of Barrett’s store at Chautauqua about three months, from the first of December 1891, to the first of February 1892. I worked down there and ran the drug store for him. That was the time I got acquainted with Gay Jay, Ed Glover, and the Bennett’s, and Harry Harshbarger, and others. Mr. Barrett went back east for a visit with relatives. I then came back and worked for Tulloss to get money to go to school at Lawrence. J.K. Tulloss had a drug store, hardware, and implement store. One side was drugs, one side hardware, and in the back end they had implements. That was west of the First National Bank. I remember when the Oklahoma Strip opened in 1893, I had to run over and sell a lot of the stock on the other side of the building. He had a lot of stuff for covered wagons, wagon bows and sheets that covered it. They sold out all he had of it, and he had a big stock. Most of the people went from around here. They came from everywhere. They used to go through here, five or six wagons a day more, for a week or two before that opening. They had me awfully busy. In 1893 I got money enough to start anyway, and I went up to Lawrence to pharmacy school. That was a lonesome job, didn’t know a soul up there. I went to school the first of October 1893, and the next spring in March I went down to Fort Scott and took the State Board examination, and with the experience I had they allowed me to use that against it and when I passed the examination they gave me a certificate to practice pharmacy. That was on March 18, 1894.
When I came back I went to work for Dr. Cass, in his drug store. He bought the little store that I first worked in. when I built my present store building in 1921 I built right over it. I began work for Dr. Cass at $40.00 a month. I had been working for Tulloss for $20.00 a month and board. I hated to leave Tulloss but I was interested in the drug part of it and I thought I saw a better chance with Cass so I went with him. That was when I roomed with Marion Bricker in the second story of the three-story building in the first block on east Main, south side of the street. The bakery is in that building now. Marion was a stock buyer. He told me if I wanted to room with him to come up. He was planning to get married soon and then I could have the room myself. But he didn’t get married, but soon I got married and left him by himself. I was married on the 13th day of June, 1897, to Emma Liafe. Earl was born June 8, 1898. I was working for Dr. Cass then.
In 1898 Dr. Cass’ health was poor, and in May he wanted to quit work and wanted me to go into partnership with him, he would furnish capital and I would furnish labor. It was a five-year contract. When I took charge in May he went down to Dawson Springs for his health, but he didn’t live more than a month or six weeks after that. He had one boy, Ed Cass. Ed and his wife came back here and wanted to substitute his name for Dr. Cass’ on the contract. I was to get 40% of the net profits the first year and after that I would get 50%. I had sole management of it but had to report to him every month, or every week. I bought the store in 1905. They wanted to continue another five years, but we didn’t.
In the meantime, when I was working on the percentage basis I bought the building that the drug store was in from W.F. Lemmon. He moved to Monett, Missouri and was selling his property here and I bought the property from him. That was the east 19 feet of the second lot. It was during that seven years that I bought it. And in 1905 I bought the stock. In 1896 Father and Mother traded the farm at Wauneta for a farm in Arkansas near Gravette, and they went down there to live. When the folks lived in Arkansas, Hugh came up and lived with us and went to High School and graduated in 1901. Otto was with us a while when he ran the blacksmith shop, but he wasn’t here more than two or three months and then he moved to Mitchell, South Dakota. After Hugh graduated from High School in 1901 he went to Mitchell, South Dakota, and worked there a while in a drug store. He registered in South Dakota, and he came back down here and worked for a while. They allowed him to take the examination without going to school here, and he was registered here in 1904. He worked at Winkler’s Drug Store at Caney when he was going with Emma Floyd, his future wife. In the meantime, I bought the old Tulloss building (house) and moved it on the lot over east of where Clayo and Inez now live and Hugh and Emma went to housekeeping there when they were married in September 1905. About 1908 he bought the house where Collins lives now, from Harry Adams, a schoolteacher, and then we went into business together. I furnished the capital and he did the work at the Drug Store at Peru. Hugh moved to Peru the latter part of 1908, and later bought the Drug Store. He was pharmacist at Peru 33 years.
Jane Fish and John Butterfield were married in Arkansas, in 1903, in February. In 1908 Father and Mother sold their property in Gravette, Arkansas, and came to live with me. They lived with us until Father died in 1916. Mother lived with us only a short time after that and then she went to live with James and Sis on the farm. She moved with Sis and the children to Sedan in December 1920; she was afflicted with inflammatory rheumatism and was bedfast over eight years until her death in January 1929. In spite of her affliction and intense suffering, she was always patient and cheerful; an inspiration to all who knew her. She saw many hardships in her lifetime, and much hard work. She was always the peacemaker in our large family. Grandma Liafe, Emma’s mother, lived with us quite a while, until her death in 1923.
About the biggest accomplishment I made was building the store building in 1921.
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It is fitting that E.I. Fish’s narrative should end here with what he felt to be one of his greatest achievements – a fine building and business on the exact location where his father had been denied a few day’s credit for food for his family.
But the story of his life is far from complete. He worked at many interests with a clear mind until his death in June 13, 1958, which would have been their 61st wedding anniversary. (Emma Fish died April 27, 1943.) He had shares in or helped promote most of the important enterprises in Sedan. Among these were the Hotel, the Gas Company, and the First National Bank. He was on the City Council at the time the City Lake was built, was the Treasurer of the I.O.O.F. Lodge for years, and a Trustee of the Methodist Church to the last. He was always interested in new ideas and proud of every new and worthwhile development in the community.
He was a true friend, and inspiration and help to all.
October 1958 Inez Mattocks
Thanks to P.W.H.