The Story of the Mayo family - submitted by Lora Topinka

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Capps Chestnut Family History
By Agnes Capps Merritt Saunders

     Enoch R. Capps, our grandfather, was born in North Carolina June 19, 1837. He moved to Indiana in 1865. He married Mary M. Good. Ten children were born who lived to maturity. My father, Henry Allan Capps was born Feb. 1, 1879.

     The Jim Chestnut family came from Kentucky to Kansas in 1872. He filed on a claim in southern Sumner County in 1872 about nine miles northwest of the town of Caldwell.      The Louis Beck family came to Kansas from Kentucky in 1874. They located close to Belle Plaine. Louis Beck was born Jan. 25, 1829. The mother, Sarah D. was born Dec. 28, 1834. They had four girls and eight boys. Sedrrilda Beck, my grandmother was born Aug. 12, 1855. She was next to the oldest child.      Jim Chestnuts's son, Benjamin Chestnut and Serrilda Beck were married in Wellington, Kansas in 1875. Our mother, Estella Mary was born August 8, 1883 in a little house of her father's, Benjamin Chestnut. She went to the same rural school that some of her children attended later.

     The Becks left Belle Plaine, and the Ben Chestnuts went to Good Hope, Mo. There my father and mother met, and were married on November 8, 1900.

     Three children were born while in Missouri: Coral, Alfred, and Delmar. Coral died of Diphtheria, and was buried by her grandmother, Mary M. Good Capps.

     Henry Capps decided to take his family to Oklahoma. He rented a farm from an Indian woman. It was around 1906. It was located six miles east of Kaw City. (Now that location is a lake.)

      Opal was born there in 1908, and Basil was born in 1910.

Then an advertisement in a paper was encouraging people to go to Utah. So Dad got a covered wagon, a tent, some food staples, and put other necessities in the covered wagon and started out in the wagon train.

     The children's job was to pick up sticks for firewood. Dad fished and hunted for rabbits and sage hens. Dad said he could catch a fish with every bug he could find, but they could make or travel about 35 miles a day if he didn't stop to hunt or fish.

     When they got to the top of Rabbit Ear Pass, Dad cut three small trees to tie on the back of the wagon so the wagon wouldn't run up on the horses. They all walked down the steep part and Alfred led the extra horse.

     Because a man on the train mentioned that men were needed in the sugar mill in Billings, Montana, so Dad decided to go there. He got a job loading and packing the 100 lob. Sugar sacks. He was paid $9.00 a week of 6 days.

     Agnes was born there Sept. 9, 1913.

     Then my mother got a letter from her grandfather saying that if she and Henry would come and take care of them until they died, that they'd deed the land to them.

     So we came back on the train and landed in the little town of Doster.

     We were met by George Kubik in his new 1913 or 1914 Ford. Some had to ride in a wagon pulled by horses.

     We must have gone to the house that was rented from Virgil Mann which was situated in a pasture about a half mile from the home place.

     Later Dad and his brother Alfred Capps from Cedar Vale built the house we lived in.

        And I never did get to ride in a covered wagon!