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Chase County Sketches
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Amos Noyes Family AMOS NOYES FAMILY
By CARRIE BREESE CHANDLER, IN CHASE COUNTY LEADER (1934)
Anyone who has tried to find out facts concerning local history of even 50 years ago, knows how hard it is to "get the straight of it."
Perhaps a short time ago it might have been easy—but some old settler passes and the book is closed. The pioneer era, some of whose customs and events are unbelievable to the present generation, has gone. It lives now only in the memory of these old people—and they are growing few.
A week or two ago this came so strongly to my mind that I went to visit Mrs. M. C. Newton and her sister, Miss Caroline Noyes, to beg for some of their old stories.
"Mrs. Newton and Carrie," as we affectionately refer to them, were at home. Their little sitting-room was warm and cozy though a belated snow was drifting outside. Mrs. Newton has a pension which she assures us is ample for her comfort.
She was looking over a box of old ambrotypes and daguerreotypes as her eyesight is failing and she wanted one more look at them.
On her table was a book with a bright coat-of-arms on the cover—the genealogy of the Noyes family—descendants of Nicholas Noyes who came to Medford, Massachusetts, then to Newbury in 1734. Just three hundred years ago last month he left Southampton, England, in the good ship "John and Mary" whose sailing was delayed a little until the colonists should take the oath of allegiance to, the established church and the king. Charles I was not minded to fill his New England colonies with non-conformists and doubtful people. If he had let them all go, he might have kept his head longer.
Mrs. Newton and Carrie are seventh in direct line from Nicholas Noyes. Their father, Amos Noyes, was born in Maine in 1805, moved west to Manchester, Indiana, where his large family was born and where he prospered greatly in a grist-mill, saw-mill, and store on the old State Road.
The troubled times before and during the Civil War broke him financially, his wife and several children died, and 1866 found him starting life over again at 61 in the new state of Kansas where things were just beginning to settle down a little.
He and his family, consisting of a widowed daughter, Augusta, two young daughters, Gertrude and Caroline, and a son Adolph, came by rail to Topeka. A married daughter, Xerissa, stayed in Indiana.
They lived several weeks in a deserted house in Tecumseh. There was no lack of deserted houses in Tecumseh at that time as the capitol of Kansas had been permanently located at Topeka and most of the inhabitants of Tecumseh had gone there to live.
Mr. Noyes bought the homestead right of a man in Chase County and his land proved to be at the head of Fox Creek, ten miles from the small settlement of Cottonwood Falls, and with few houses between it and Council Grove on the north.
The family and their possessions came from Tecumseh in two wagons and a buggy. "We walked most of the way," said Mrs. Newton.
They stayed with the Pet Watsons in the old Billy Barton cabin till their own house was finished.
Mr. Noyes had worked in the ship-yards in his youth, so he understood working in wood. He squared the timbers and made the shakes for the roof by hand. When the fireplace was finished they moved into the cabin which was to be their family home until his death in 1878.
Like many early cabins, it was built on the creek bank, for shade, fuel, and to be near water, unmindful that Flint Hill streams rise suddenly. Sometimes high water came up to the very door and under the floor.
Fox Creek has a beautiful little valley and Gertrude and Carrie were great lovers of Nature. Mrs. Newton yet remembers with delight a day when exploring up the west branch she surprised a regular rendezvous—an assemblage of humming birds—hundreds and hundreds of them at rest on a plum thicket.
Farther up was a rocky cliff in every crevice of which grew pink columbines. Truly that was a day to think about when you are old. Carrie speaks of pleasant days when she herded cattle up the east branch. No slavish job that, just to keep the herd from straying and enjoy the out-of-doors. Carrie had a lot of artistic talent as shown by pencil sketches and a small oil painting she made of the old cabin.
They had plenty of hardships but don't think that they didn't have their share of fun and merry making too. A woman of that time who first saw Carrie Noyes at a dance, in a white dress, with a rose in her dark hair, said that her beauty was something to remember.
Can't you hear the fiddles? John Scribner and John Doolittle are playing "Money Musk" or "Turkey in the Straw" and A. B. Watson is `calling off'' the old "square dances." .... "Honors to your partners, —all promenade!" .... The lights are growing dim. Play "Home'Sweet Home" for the dancers are tired.
Don't think because Carrie Noyes remained "Miss Noyes" that romance passed her by . . . Not beauty like that.
"But then 'tis past, the years are gone
I'll not call up their shadowy form."
Mr. Noyes was a charter member of the first Masonic lodge in Chase County, Zeredatha Lodge No. 80, organized in Cottonwood Falls, October, 1869. His picture, presented by his daughters, hangs in the ante-room of Masonic Hall.
The day before Christmas, 1870 Gertrude Noyes was married to Martin C. Newton. He had served through the Civil War, freighted on the Santa Fe Trail for Col. Sam Wood, and was now Clerk of the Court and County Clerk of Chase County.
They went on a two day's wedding trip to Council Grove. Young Jeff Daugherty and Rosalie Cunningham who had been married the August preceding, went along for company. It was zero weather, but who minded that when the wagon was well supplied with buffalo robes and heated rocks? It was thrilling to go to "The Grove" and spend Christmas at a hotel—probably Seth Hays' tavern.
Mr. and Mrs. Newton went to housekeeping in a room in the Charley Britton house west of the mill. In 1873 they went back to Fox Creek. Wherever fate placed Mrs. Newton her dainty housekeeping was a pleasure to her friends. A woman like that could make a home in a hollow tree.
Fox Creek was so near the "Old Kaw Trail" and the Indian reservation at Council Grove that the Kaws were much in evidence. In these times they were troublesome but not dangerous neighbors. The Cheyenne raid of 1868 gave the white settlers a good scare but did them no damage otherwise. Now in 1873 the Kaws were forced to give up
their reservation and go to a new home in the Indian Territory.
As they passed on their melancholy trek south many of them camped on Fox Creek and spent the night moaning and wailing in fare-well at old graves on the hill-top. Even as late as the 90's limiting parties came through every autumn going north. The buffalo and deer were gone long ago, but the old call was strong. Seventeen hundred Kaws went to the Territory; there is only a remnant of the tribe left now.
The Newtons and Carrie Noyes moved to Cottonwood Falls in 1892. Mr. Newton was soon after elected clerk of the court for a term.
About 1898, Miss Noyes, who had a great desire to teach, started to school in Cottonwood Falls. Such was her dignity and good temper that she was popular with her young classmates who saw nothing strange in having a middle-aged school mate. After reviewing the grades and doing some high school work she taught successfully for three years.
"Carrie Noyes is wonderful," said an old friend, "somebody ought to write a piece about her for the paper". . .! Well here it is after all these years.
Mr. Newton died in 1920. Mrs. Newton will soon be 85. She is very active and keeps her interest in everything. "If my eyes were good, I would think I was young," she says. Carrie, who is 83, is not so strong.
Adolph Noyes who married Alice Jeffrey, died in 1886. Their son, Edward Noyes, is a civil engineer in Dallas, Texas. His letters and occasional visits are a great pleasure to his aunts, and the gift of a radio keeps them in touch with the world as it is now.
Just a few weeks after the above article was written by Carrie Breese Chandler, Carrie Noyes yielded up the spirit and set it free to pass to the Great Beyond. Her death occurred September 7, 1934.
She was born in Dearborn County, Indiana, August 10, 1851.
Carrie was the youngest daughter of Amos and Lavinia Noyes, next to the youngest child in their large family of seven daughters and three sons, now all gone but Gertrude, Mrs. M. C. Newton.
Most of Carrie's history is told in the foregoing article. After the death of her father in 1878 she made her home with the Newtons and in 1892 moved with them to Cottonwood Falls.
Miss Noyes was possessed of much natural talent and could she have had the opportunities of the present day, would have gone far.
by your Chase County Host, Lorna Marvin.
Please submit your historical sketches.
| Chase County Host Lorna Marvin | 
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