Charles MACY was born in Kentucky on February 4, 1831 to William Blain MACY and Mary Elizabeth “Polly” (HUFF) MACY. He married Mary Jane MEADOR on February 19, 1852, in Kentucky and died on February 28, 1876 in rural Newton County, Missouri.
Charles MACY was my great-great-grandfather.
Charles and his young family migrated to the Kansas Territory from Breckenridge County, Kentucky, sometime after October of 1855 and, according to a territorial census of Kansas taken in 1859, they settled in Hartford Township of Madison County, Kansas, in March of 1857. At that time his family was listed as having five members. Although the other four were not named on that census (the territorial census only listed the names of voters), they would have been his wife, Mary Jane, and children Robert Taylor and Sarah Lydia who had been born in Kentucky, and Nancy Elizabeth who had been born the preceding year in Kansas.
Next to Charles MACY on that census was a “Jessie” MACY with his own family. That MACY family had also settled in Hartford Township of Madison County, Kansas, in March of 1857, and it included a total of three members.
The following year the US Federal Census of 1860 clarified the situation somewhat because it listed each member of the families by name. That census placed Charles MACY’s family in Hartford Township of Madison County, Kansas, as Family Number 598 in Dwelling Number 730. Family members included Charles (age 28, born in Kentucky), Mary (26, Kentucky), Robert F. (7, Kentucky), Sarah L. (4, Kentucky) and Nancy E. (2, Kansas).
Family Number 599 in Dwelling Number 731, the next door neighbors, were Charles’ next younger brother, Jesse MACY, and his wife, Dosha (Theodocia), who was Mary Jane’s younger sister, along with their two children. The census listed them as Jesse (age 26, born in Kentucky), Dosha M. (20, Kentucky), Roxana (4, Kentucky), and Thomas W. (1, Kansas).
In her very fine 1998 family history book entitled "Macy Family," compiler Betty TUGGLE BELL, a descendant of Charles and Mary Jane (MEADOR) MACY described how the MACY brothers and their MEADOR wives came to Kansas from Kentucky:
"In the middle 1850's Charles and his wife Mary Jane left Kentucky and along with Mary Jane's sister Theodocia and her husband Jesse Macy, Charles's brother, they joined a wagon train of immigrants that set out from Edgar County, Ill. and trekked to Lyon Co. Kansas. There they purchased land for $1.25 an acre. In this wagon train were Cornelius Pinson (wife was Eliza Meador); Henry Stratton (his wife was Nancy Jane Macy); Lucinda Macy Yeager (the widow of John Morgan Yeager); Calvin Meadows; Samuel Macy; Robert Macy; and Ann Meadows (the widow of Gamaliel Macy).
(Betty's narrative said that the families located in Lyon County, Kansas, but that is not technically correct. They arrived in Hartford Township of Madison County, as stated above. That was in 1857. Kansas became a state on January 29, 1861. Two days later Madison County was eliminated and its land was divided between Breckenridge County to the north and Greenwood County to the south. The MACY's were then located in Breckenridge County, Kansas. Breckenridge was named after John C. BRECKENRIDGE who had just finished a term as James BUCHANAN's Vice President. When the Civil War started, BRECKENRIDGE declared his affiliation with the South and went on to become a Major General in the Confederate Army. Kansas, a newly formed "free" state, decided to rename Breckenridge County due to John C. BRECKENRIDGE's political leanings. Therefore, Breckenridge County was renamed Lyon County on February 5, 1862. That made three distinctly named Kansas counties where the two MACY families had lived - and yet they remained in their same homes!)
"Find a Grave" on the internet states that Theodocia MEADOR MACY died on October 20, 1861, in Breckenridge County, Kentucky, and is buried there. Betty TUGGLE BELL states in her "Macy Family" that Theodocia died in Kansas along with her daughter (presumably an infant during childbirth) and that they are buried in Topeka. Regardless of where his wife passed away, Jesse was back in Breckenridge County, Kentucky, with the two older children by 1863 where he registered for the Civil War draft. Jesse remarried a couple of years after Theodocia's death, and he remained a resident of Breckenridge County, Kentucky, for the rest of his life, passing away there on November 9, 1921.
Charles and Mary Jane MACY remained in Kansas for several years where they resided near the community of Emporia in Lyon County. They relocated to Newton County, Missouri, sometime between February of 1866 and October of 1868 along with their older surviving children. Two additional children were born once the family established their new home in southwestern Missouri.
The nine children of Charles and Mary Jane MACY were: Robert Taylor (1852-1866), Mary Eliza (1854-1854), Sarah Lydia (1855-1937), Nancy Elizabeth (1858 – 1922), William Stephen (1862-1938), Martha Jane (1864-?), Rachel Frances (1866-1934), Charles Thomas (1868-1939), and Laura Isabel (1874-1947).
The seven children of Charles and Mary Jane MACY who reached maturity married the following individuals: Sarah Lydia (William Nathan SPEARS), Nancy Elizabeth (John McNeal WHITE), William Stephen (Louella PRITCHARD), Martha Jane “Mattie” (William M. CRISWELL), Rachel Frances (1. Aiden (Arthur) E. EDSON, and 2. William E. O’CONNOR), Charles Thomas (Minnie A. HARGRAVES), and Laura Isabel (William E. CARUTHERS).
Charles and Mary Jane and their family lived in a rural area of Newton County, Missouri, that became known as “Belfast” in the 1880’s. The name was chosen at random from a list of available names provided by the government to the local merchant who ran the store where the community’s first post office was to be located.
At one time my father’s double-cousin, Helen MACY PEARMAN, (their fathers were brothers and their mothers were sisters – like the earlier families of Charles and Jesse MACY) provided me with a few hand-written records from the old “Reding School” which later became known as the “Belfast School.” It was the school that the children of Charles and Mary Jane MACY attended. In those records it was stated that Charles was one of the directors of that rural school. It also showed an account of expenditures in which he was paid a small sum for selling firewood to the school.
I have since misplaced that record, and those facts are drawn from memory.
CHARLES MACY passed away less than ten years after moving his family to southwest Missouri. According to probate records in Newton County, he died on February 28, 1876, at the very young age of forty-five. At the time of his death he had six children still living at home and one daughter, Sarah Lydia, who had married and moved out a little over a year before. The baby of the family, Laura Isabel, was less than a year-and-a-half-old when her father died.
My father told me that Charles’s fate was actually unknown. He said that a group of masked men broke into his and Mary Jane’s house and abducted Charles - and he was never heard from again. That was right in the middle of the time that the Bald Knobbers and other vigilante groups were riding roughshod across southwest Missouri (1855-1889). Some of the vigilantes were settling grudges left over from the Civil War, but Charles had been living in Kansas at the time of the war and had not served either side in uniform. Some vigilantes, such as the Bald Knobbers, also considered themselves to be adjuncts to law enforcement who were helping to keep the peace. And some of the night-riders were focused on correcting abusive husbands by taking them out and whipping them – or even worse.
Whatever the circumstances of Charles MACY’s death, Mary Jane was able to file a claim on his assets in probate court six months later on August 31, 1876.
One indicator that the abduction story may be true is that Mary Jane, who passed away in July of 1897 and is buried at New Salem Cemetery in rural Newton County, Missouri, seems to be resting alone. There is a stone for her, but none for Charles. (Although “Find a Grave’ on the internet states that he is buried there also.) Charles’s estate was meager, so perhaps Mary Jane did not have the resources to procure a tombstone for him. Her children were all grown by the time she passed away and some of them undoubtedly could have purchased her tombstone. Or, perhaps the abduction story is true and his body was never found – and hence no burial – but enough people knew the truth about what really had happened to him (masked neighbor co-conspirators) that they convinced the Court to go ahead and settle his estate.
It’s a mystery!
When Charles MACY disappeared and/or died in February of 1876, he left behind an estate of personal property valued at $245.25. In a handwritten inventory of his worldly goods dated August 31, 1876 and filed with the Court by his administrator, H.H. BAKER, the estate, excluding real property of a house and land, consisted of:
"Five head of hogs (valued at $4.00 per head ($20.00), one hog ($8.00), one black two-year-old mare colt ($25.00), one bay two-year-old mare colt ($18.00), one black four-year-old mare colt ($12.00), one red and white spotted cow and calf ($25.00), one roan cow and calf ($25.00), one lined-back red heifer ($12.00), one yearling steer ($4.00) One six-year-old bay mare ($45.00), one wagon and harness ($20.00), farming implements ($10.00), five bushels of wheat at 80 cents per bushel ($4.00), Invoices as juror for two days in the Brittin case in June 1875 ($3.00), and invoices as juror in the Thomas Ashley case in February 1876 ($1.50) – for a total of $245.25."
The invoice was signed with the mark of Mary MACY and with the signature “A. Hays” as the witness.
There was no obituary recounting the life of Charles MACY, and his entire existence on this earth is summed up with census entries that showed his movements during life as well as the names of his parents, siblings, wife, and children, an inventory of personal effects that reflected what he had managed to accumulate during his forty-five years of existence, and dates entered into an old family Bible. The details of his death are not a matter of public record, but I suspect that the abduction story that my father related, and which had been passed down through family members, is as close to an actual accounting of his death as will ever be known.
Perhaps the most fitting legacy for Charles MACY is that for a brief while he headed a family that was able to survive his passing and carry the family genetics across generations. As far as I know, every MACY in southwest Missouri today, and there are many, are descendants of him and Mary Jane.
Rest in peace, Charles, wherever your bones may be.
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