A Kentucky Family Moves North
Edited by Terry L. Thompson
Based on the memories of Anne Y. Schneider
On November 3, 1997, my beloved aunt, Anne Yocum Schneider, passed away at age 88. Born in Powell County, Kentucky on February 20, 1909, to Andrew Yocum and Amy Jane Logan, she was the eldest of nine children. From her, I learned the true meaning of the words “class” and “grace”.
A few months before she passed away, I received a large, brown envelope from her. Inside was a history of the family’s move from Kentucky to Northern Wisconsin that she had compiled over the years. On a note included with the history, she told me that because I was now the family historian, she thought I would like the papers. She had always wanted to be a writer, but felt that she didn’t have enough education. To instill in the reader, the feeling that one is actually participating in the event, is the mark of a writer. Aunt Annie, you were one.
The following is in her words as she wrote them. Any additional information that I have gathered is in italics.
“My father was born a hundred years late. He would have made a good neighbor for Daniel Boone. He wanted to hunt deer, kill a bear and a wolf. (He did kill a bear in Forest County) He was a good shot with a pistol, rifle, or shotgun. He had practiced on squirrels that were eaten for food and had to be shot in the eye, we ate the brains. There was not much game left where we lived in Kentucky. People hunted and ate squirrels, opossum, coons, and rabbits.
So he met a neighbor on his return from Wisconsin and listened to the tales of a hunting paradise. He decided to go to Wisconsin.
I don’t know how my father picked out the town we were to move to. He picked out a family we could live with until we got settled. Their name was Chaney, they were Kentuckians and they lived at P & L Siding (Chicago & Northwestern, Forest County, Wisconsin). (The P&L Siding was located across the road where the late George (Luther) and Gracie Ison lived on Hwy. 8 West of Crandon.)
My father said money grew on trees and we believed him. My mother didn’t, she cried a lot. Paying no attention to her weeping, he went ahead with his plans for Wisconsin. There were five of us kids (Anne, Nina, Wallace, Walton, and Hazel). The youngest born in November (1917). We left the last of April after the auction. (Clay City Times, April 18, 1918 – Andrew Yocum had a sale Saturday and will move his family to Wisconsin where he will make his future home). My father was 35 years old; my mother was 30 and the mother of 5 children.
The auction where everything was sold except bedding that included feather beds and bolsters made out of white goose feathers and down that my mother helped pluck from grandma’s geese the first years of her marriage. The handmade, pieced quilts filled with cotton batting were not enough protection for Wisconsin’s cold nights.
These were packed in a big, wooden box to be shipped, along with a box of home-cured hams, part I suspect were going-away gifts from friends and relatives. My mother probably wrapped up her favorite dishes among the bedding; she was very fond of pretty dishes.
We had two big trunks. There were crates made for two fox hounds named Bruce and Myrt, and our little black terrier named Ted (although she was female). The sale of a team of mules, wagon, harness, a milk cow, and all the furniture amounted to about six hundred dollars.
We left near the end of April amid lots of tears on my mother’s side. I was dreadfully sick on the train. One of my father’s friends was going off to war, there was another tearful farewell before we got to Cincinnati where we changed trains and saw our dogs being transferred to another depot. We changed trains in Chicago. Again my mother thought some woman was trying to steal one of the twins. She was foreign and trying to help, I think. We got on the Northwestern train to take us to Wisconsin.
(continued next month)
