Our
great-grandmother Ada Stones' brother. He was christened 27 June 1852 in
Snaith, Yorkshire, England, the sixth child of Charles Emanuel Stones and
Harriet Hall. He married Mary Hirst on 13 March 1873 in England and died 28
April 1911 in Kansas. They had six children of whom four were born in England,
two in the States.
This is his story as told by his daughter Mary Ann Stones (Mrs. Leon E.
Thomas) in the year of his death 1911.
I have lef the spelling unchanged.
"I feel that I would like to extend to the public a short history
of my Father's life. He was born in Snaith, York Shire, England almost
fifty-nine years ago. At the age of nineteen he gave three pounds for a Bible,
fifteen dollars in american money. This Bible crossed the sea with him and
Mother and four of us small Children, and although he was a man that you seldom
ever saw anywhere only when he was attending to business. He was as lover of
his own home, and many a Sunday Evening he has taken his Bible and read it when
others would go to Church. When we were all at home he would remind us on
Sunday Morn that it was time to get ready for Church School. He never attended
Church very regular but always insisted that we should go. When we came from
the old Country and settled down in Michigan he went to farming. The Neighbours
around us would laugh at the foreigner's way of farming but he would laugh and
take it all and we prospered. Several years from that time he was called to
Kansas on account of the severe Illness of his Brother Fred. While here he took
a Homestead. Six months later and twenty years ago now we started for Kansas,
Father, Mother, and six of us Children. After arriving here he laid all the
spare money he had in a small bunch of milk cows and settled down on the open
prairie with just a small little shanty to live in and would walk one half mile
to another one to sleep in, but oh how happy
we were, Barefooted boys and girls. We were children, no trouble to think of
both Father and Mother with us, we little dreamed those days what trouble
really was. Five months from that time Father took down with the mountain fever
and during his sickness us Children used to walk to the afore mentioned shanty
to sleep all alone. One night there was a couple of wagons drew up to the house
and started to make preparations to move it, us children commenced to get
scared and got to talking and those men came to the conclusion that if they
moved the Shanty that night they would have to move some Children back in the
morning so they took the second thought and let it alone. Short time after this
my little Brother the pet and pride of the Family took the brain fever and we
had to give him up. Father was so crushed by this blow he said to Mother he
felt like he had lost all he had. Mother says to him don't say that William you
have five of your Children left. Seven months from this time there came another
blow, my sister the eldest born Child was called home to join our little
Brother and of course by this time my Father thought if he only had his money
back that he had put in those cows, back to Michigan we would go but he could
not sell them as cattle was not worth anything at that time. So he decided to
cover trouble and do the best he could and after a time we commenced to gain a
little faith in Kansas and as the years rolled by he went in to the Livestock
business. Later with E.G. Finney and as you all know this was his business up
to the time of his death. Whilst on trips to the west after cattle he had many
thrilling experiences which I will not take space to relate at this time as my
heart is too heavy to go in to details about these things. During his last sad
Misfortune to and he would settle it just as quick as he could and he was never
more contented and happy than when his Family was about him.
Mrs. Leon E. Thomas".