Going the Distance

I have often heard how my ancestors walked from Texas to Kansas. I googled the distance  and wondered how they made that walk in what today would be an 8-hour+ drive ...

My paternal grandmother's family migrated from Grimes County, Texas to Oswego, Kansas during the height of the African American Exodus from the South around 1879. They traveled more than 500 miles with a group of about a dozen families mostly on foot, sharing a few wagons that held their household goods and the infirm as needed.

Nellie Washington, my 2nd-great-grandmother was already in her sixties then. She traveled with a son Jeff and three daughters Patsy, my great-grandmother Charity, and Belle, and the eight children between them who ranged in age from 3 to 9. I don't know if there were other family members in the group; these are the ones that I know arrived and lived in Oswego. The sisters appear to have come without menfolk.

The trip took months. They hurried out of Texas as fast as they could but stopped sometimes for weeks in both Texas and Oklahoma where they hired themselves out as farm workers in order to earn money for supplies.

Kansas was not as welcoming as they expected. Neither the State nor Labette County were prepared for the influx of immigrants and little could be done in terms of providing work, food or shelter. My family arrived just before winter hit. They lived in tents and lean-tos by a prone-to-flooding creek in crowded conditions without proper sanitation or sufficient protection from the elements. Even the efforts of the most Christian among the residents were not enough to deal with the numbers of Exodusters who came there. Some of the churches provided shelter in the worst weather, some collected food and blankets. It just wasn't enough. Many of the Black families did not hesitate to go back to Texas when a group of farmers came and promised them train fare and better working conditions if they returned.

My family stayed and endured. Jeff went off to Coffeyville and got involved in transporting whisky and beer from Oklahoma. The sisters worked when they could as farm laborers pretty much as they had done in Texas, earning just enough to keep their families fed. And when that wasn't enough Great-grandma Charity became the mistress of the farmer she worked for in Oswego. That got her son Dennis an apprenticeship with the farm's blacksmith and he went on to become a renowned smithy in the area. She also got a baby girl out of the deal - my grandmother Pearl. Belle married a widower and raised his children along with hers. Patsy died of cancer in 1887 leaving her children to be raised by the rest of the family. Nellie suffered from senile dementia. In her later years she would wander off in search of the children who were taken from her when she was enslaved. County officials declared her insane in 1907 and sent her to the state hospital in Osawatomie where she died ten years later. She was over 100 years old.

This story is pieced together from stories told by my Grandma Pearl Brown Coker and other relatives as well as through official records and newspaper articles. I cannot imagine the hardship or the hope of this family who made the long journey that made me possible. I can only honor them by telling their stories as I know them. I can stand at their graves and say "We are still here." Ase.