Thompson

Chapter 140

The Children of Cephas Vertrees; Concluding the Jacob S. Vertrees Story


CEPHAS D. and SARAH LOUISA (Connett) Vertrees had three children, Fannie Myrtle, Susie Pearl and Frank Roy Vertrees. The mother was the second child of John Stiles and Sarah Elizabeth (Smith) Connett, who were married at Rahway, New Jersey, January 15, 1843, and who came to this western country and settled on a farm southwest of Pittsfield in March of that same year. Sarah Louisa was a sister of Mary Smith Connett, who married Edgar Lyman Webster and whose family story was related in the preceding installment. There was also a brother, James Ebenezer Connett, born December 10, 1851, died January 13, 1856. Sisters and brother are buried in the West cemetery at Pittsfield.

Myrtle Vertrees, first-born of the children of Cephas D. Vertrees, married John R. Starr of Marshalltown, Iowa, December 28, 1898. They were married in Pittsfield by the Reverend J. H. Douglas, with John E. Vertrees and Thomas Shoemaker as the official witnesses. The groom was a teacher and a native of Indiana, a son of A. Starr and R. Wallace.

Mr. and Mrs. Starr resided in Marshalltown for about two years following their marriage, he having owned a business college there for ten years. He had taught school for twenty years. Deciding upon a change, in 1900 he bought a grain elevator and moved back to Winamac, next to the Winamac Public library.

Mr. and Mrs. Starr have had six children, Ruby, John Vertrees, Stanley Connett, Pearl, Dana Wallace and William Leroy Starr.

Ruby Starr, born July 11, 1900, graduated from the local high school in 1918 and has since attended four schools of higher education, taking her M. A. at Columbia University. She taught four years at Racine, Wisconsin, and has been teaching eight years at Dayton, Ohio. She spends most of her summers traveling and has been from ocean to ocean and from Mexico to Canada. One summer she spent in Alaska and this summer (1938) she is in South America, where she will remain until September 1.

John Vertrees Starr, bearing the name of a long line of John Vertreeses beginning with Captain John of the Revolution, was born at Winamac in 1902. After graduating at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana, he got his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1928 and since then has been with the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. He was married January 30, 1929 to Rebecca Martin of Ithaca, New York, and they have resided ever since in and near Elizabeth, New Jersey, ancestral seat of the Connet and Stiles families. They have two children, Judith Ann, born in 1933, and Mary Elizabeth, born in 1935

Stanley Connett Starr was born at Winamac August 14, 1903. He graduated in electrical engineering at Purdue University in 1925, worked for General Electric at Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Schenectady, New York, for five years, and since January, 1930, has worked for R. C. A. at Camden, New Jersey, near which place he resides. He married Mildred Heston July 22, 1928, and they have two children, Stanley Connett, Jr., born in 1933, and Kathryn Starr, born in 1936.

Pearl Starr, fourth child of John R. Starr and Myrtle Vertrees, was born at Winamac, July 6, 1905; she died June 22, 1921, and is buried at Winamac.

Dana Wallace Starr, born July 9, 1907, graduated from high school in 1925, then went two years to Purdue, after which he located on a large chicken ranch near Mentone, Indiana. He married Pauline Hubbard of Tiosa, Indiana, March 26, 1933, and they have one child, Patty Sue, born October 9, 1935.

William Leroy Starr, born August 6, 1915, graduated from high school and then attended Wabash College, from which he graduated in 1937. He then went to work for the Illinois Central Railroad, in the traffic department, at Chicago, where he now is.

Mr. and Mrs. Starr reside in that section of Indiana to which Mr. Starr's forebears came as pioneers, coming in a very early day from western New York. The farm home near Pavillion, New York, which his grandfather built, is still occupied by one of his descendants.

Pearl Vertrees, second child and daughter of Cephas D. and Sarah Louisa (Connett) Vertrees, was born in Pittsfield and spent all of her early life here. She developed into a fine business woman, with a charm of approach that made her for many years a leading saleswoman in the large mercantile establishment of Strauss & Brother in Pittsfield. Graduating from Pittsfield high school in 1890, she entered the employ of Strauss & Brother the ensuing fall and remained with the firm for a term of 33 years until the fall of 1923. In September of that year, following her mother's death in August, she sold the old Cephas D. Vertrees home at 442 West Fayette Street in Pittsfield to the Congregational church board, and the place has since been the parsonage for the ministers of that church.

Miss Vertrees was a member of the Pittsfield Research Club and was president of the club the year before she left Pittsfield. In January, 1924, she went to San Diego, California, where she still resides, her home being in the Curtis Apartments in that city. She is unmarried.

Roy Vertrees, third and last of the children of Cephas Daniel Vertrees, is also a native of Pittsfield who has been long located in the west. Leaving Pittsfield, he went to Pennsylvania and at Altoona married Sabina Trout. He took his wife to southern California, later locating at Modesto where the family still resides.

Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees have four children, Elizabeth, Miriam, Thelma and Junius Vertrees.

Elizabeth Vertrees is now Mrs. Henry Helt of Oakdale, California. Miriam Vertrees is a nurse. Thelma has been engaged in secretarial and youth education work, in connection with the Presbyterian church in Yakima, Washington. Junius Vertrees is at home.

Cephas Daniel Vertrees, born at Perry July 2, 1842, died in Pittsfield September 9, 1913, aged 71. He was long a resident of Pittsfield where he followed his trade of carpenter and cabinetmaker. He is buried in the West cemetery at Pittsfield. A marker at the burial designates him as Corporal Cephas Vertrees, Company B, 99th Illinois Infantry. He was the third of the five children of Jacob Sneed and Nancy Hobbs Vertrees, pioneers of the Perry settlement.

Sarah Louisa Connett Vertrees, born on a farm southwest of Pittsfield October 26, 1846, died at the family home in Pittsfield August 13, 1923, aged 76 years, nine months and 17 days. She was the oldest member of the Pittsfield Baptist church at the time of her death, both in age and period of membership in the church. She is buried beside her husband in the West cemetery.

Emma Theresa Vertrees, fifth and last of the children of Jacob Sneed Vertrees and Nancy Hobbs, was born at Perry May 27, 1852. On November 28, 1878, at Perry, she married the Reverend Francis Wayland Parsons, then a 29- year-old minister at Mt. Sterling, in Brown county. They were married by the Reverend Charles Albert Hobbs, then of Mason City, Iowa, son of the Reverend William Hobbs, who was a brother of Emma Vertrees's mother, Nancy Hobbs Vertrees. The wedding was witnessed by W. T. Hobbs and Thomas Shoemaker.

The Reverend Frank W. Parsons was a son of Otis Parsons and Mary A. Bates. The father was a native of Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he was born in 1812, the second of nine children. He came to Alton, Illinois, in 1835, and to Griggsville in 1836. He was a merchant in Griggsville for a number of years, and also farmed for a time. His parents also were natives of Gloucester. His mother was the only child of Captain Robert Tomlinson, who was a voyager and was lost at sea. She lived to a great age. When she was 97 (in December, 1879) she recalled at Griggsville that at the time of George Washington's death, she saw the messenger proclaiming the sad news that "Washington the Great id dead!" One of her sons, Solomon Parsons (brother of Otis and uncle of Francis Wayland Parsons), was state representative from Pike county in the first session of the Illinois General Assembly held in Springfield, following removal of the state capital from Vandalia. Solomon Parsons was also for a great many years superintendent of Tremont Temple in Boston.

Mr. and Mrs. Frank W. Parsons went to Glenwood, Iowa, following their marriage, where he held a pastorate for many years. They then located at Marshalltown, Iowa, and later at Mason City, at both of which places the Reverend Mr. Parsons had long pastorates. Still later he became pastor of the Western Avenue church in Chicago, and went to Stonington, Illinois, where he died and is buried.

Mr. and Mrs. Parsons had four children, Mary, Emma Theresa, Francis Wayland and Anne Parsons.

Mary Parsons, first-born, died in the late 1890s and is buried at Marshalltown, Iowa.

Emma Theresa Parsons is general secretary of the Y. W. C. A. at Santa Monica, California.

Francis Wayland Parsons is a civil engineer in the employ of the city of Los Angeles and lives in Glendale, California. He married Mabel Salisbury of Marshalltown, Iowa, and they have two children, a son, Francis Wayland, Jr., and a daughter, Georgeanne.

Anne Parsons, youngest child of Emma Vertrees Parsons, married Howard Dester, who was drowned in the great Eastland disaster at Chicago. They had no children. Anne lives with her sister Emma in Santa Monica, California.

Emma Vertrees Parsons died in Glendale, California, in 1932. She is buried in Forest Lawn at Glendale.

Jacob Sneed Vertrees, born in Kentucky July 9, 1814, died at his home in Perry, April 1, 1892, aged 77 years, eight months and 22 days. His wife, Nancy Hobbs Vertrees, born in Kentucky October 26, 1812, died at Perry August 28, 1883, aged 70 years, ten months and two days. Both are buried in Old Baptist cemetery at Perry.

Among some old records of the Jacob Sneed Vertrees descendants, the historian found the first definite data concerning the children of the Vertrees kinswoman, Mary Van Meter Chenoweth, by her first marriage to David Henton, which was a consummation of a stirring romance of Old Virginia. According to the family tradition, David Henton, when a youth of 16, saved the life of his sweetheart, Mary Van Meter, when she was threatened with death by the tomahawk, by firing a bullet through the head of the Indian who threatened her. Afterward the two were married and in 1779 they accompanied the great exodus of the Van Meter families out of Virginia into Kentucky. On this trip David Henton was drowned in the Ohio river and the young widow was left with two small children in the wild Kentucky land.

The records of the widow's children and their descendants are now in possession of Mrs. Mary Louise Butterfield of Griggsville, whose mother, Mrs. Anna Vertrees Shoemaker, secured them in her lifetime by correspondence with William Wallace Henton of Canton, Missouri, a descendant of Mary Van Meter Henton. The Van Meter, Vertrees, Hobbs and Haycraft families were all associated in mutual defense against the Indians in the early settling of Kentucky, soon after its opening to white settlement by Daniel Boone and other stout-hearted pioneers.

In Boone annals is found the story of the terrible Indian warfare around Squire Boone's Station on Brashear Creek in Kentucky in 1781, and the evacuation of the Station in September of that year by all but the families of Squire Boone (Daniel's brother) and the "Widow Hinton," who were left behind because there were not pack horses enough to carry them away. Usually, in Kentucky story, the widow is referred to as the "Widow Hinton," but it appears from the Vertrees (and also from the Chenoweth) records that the correct name is "Henton."

History records that the settlers who fled from Squire Boone's Station in 1781 were ambuscaded by the Indians when 21 miles out. A few days later, 300 settlers from the falls of the Ohio (where now is Louisville) went out, buried the dead who were victims of the ambuscade, and then went to Squire Boone's Station to rescue the families of Boone and the Widow Henton.

Shortly after this, the Widow Henton married Major William Chenoweth of the Revolution and became the mother of the pioneering Chenoweths in Pike county, Illinois, namely, Abraham, James Hackley and Jacob Van Meter Chenoweth, early settlers at Perry. The Henton children, therefore, who were cradled amid savage warfare in Squire Boon's Station in Kentucky in the time of the Revolution, were half brother and sister to the early Pike county Chenoweths. Also, Jacob Sneed Vertrees's mother, Nancy Haycraft Vertrees, wife of the second John Vertrees, was a daughter of Margaret Van meter Haycraft, who was a sister of the "Widow Henton."

From the records left by Anna Vertrees Shoemaker, it appears that the Henton children were two in number, a daughter and a son, Hester Henton who married Walter Briscoe, and John C. Henton. Both are buried in Lewis county, Missouri. Hester married a brother of Edward Briscoe, whose wife was Nancy A. Hardin, of the noted family which gave its name to Hardin county, Kentucky. Several of this family of Briscoes, sons of Edward and Nancy, came to Pike county, Illinois, more than a century ago.

John C. Henton, born November 9, 1778, married Katherine Keith on December 26, 1797 in Nelson county, Kentucky. They had children as follows: Hester Henton, born 1799, married Joseph La Follett, settled in Indiana; Walter Briscoe Henton, born 1804, married Rebecca Colby, settled in Lewis county, Missouri; Alexander Keith Henton, born 1806, married Mary McHenry, settled in Lewis county; Elizabeth Henton, born 1808, married Jacob Dickerson, settled in Indiana; Margaret Jane Henton, born 1812, married Henry Tuley, lived in California and Texas; Mary Catherine Henton, born 1815, married Adam Emery, lived in Texas; William Henry Henton, born 1818, died in 1823.

Alexander Keith Henton, who married Mary McHenry, had a son, Walter Briscoe Henton, born 1840, who married Elizabeth J. Nichols and they had children as follows: William Wallace Henton (Anna Vertrees Shoemaker's correspondent), born July 3, 1867, single when record was made; Daisy Mary Henton, born November 12, 1871, married Captain D. W. Wisherd of the Wisherd Steamboat Lines, lived in Quincy, Illinois; Ora Lee Henton, born July 14, 1882, married H. R. Kreitz of Quincy, established an undertaking business in Canton, Missouri, and had three children, Dorothy Elizabeth, born 1908, Walter Henton 1910, and Albert Raymond 1913.