Michael Ransallaer Erwin
by Donald D. Erwin
Elk County, Kansas was established in 1875, by an Act which divided Howard County into Elk and Chautauqua counties. It is located in the southeastern part of Kansas, and is bounded by Chautauqua County on the south, Montgomery and Wilson Counties on the east, Greenwood County on the north, and Butler and Cowley Counties on the west. It is thirty-one miles long by twenty-one wide, and contains 661 square miles. Basically, it comprises the northern half of what was formerly Howard County. Howard County was made up of lands acquired from the Great and Little Osage Indians by the United States Government as the result of a treaty signed in the fall of 1867.
Longton was the first major settlement in Elk County. A post office was established there in the fall of 1870, and J. W. Kerr – the first doctor in the area – was granted the commission of Postmaster. The post office was set up in the building which the doctor had erected for a drug store. The structure was small, and was made of hewed timbers and clapboards. Historical accounts of the time say that the good doctor did not seem to take his postal duties very seriously. It is said that when it was time to distribute the incoming mail it was his practice to open the bag, pour the contents into a small depression in the dirt floor of his store room, and then tell those present to “find your own mail.”
Almost three decades after Longton was established – in 1898 – Mike and Minnie Erwin, with ten-year-old Odes, Dale who was eight, and Thomas, born in 1892, moved by covered wagon from Carroll County, Arkansas to Elk County, Kansas where Minnie’s older half-brother Vachel Freeman lived. The trip had been in the planning stage for several weeks before they left. Details are sketchy, but it is believed another Erwin family – perhaps that of Cole and India Erwin or Joseph Johnston and Malissa Erwin – made the trip as well. The joint family-group traveled west from Green Forest, Arkansas into Oklahoma Territory, crossed the Grand River about where Grand Lake is now (also called Lake of the Cherokee), and on west and north into Kansas. According to my father’s recollection the trip took nineteen days. Bits and pieces of family lore indicate that the other family completed the trip to Elk County, but did not stay. After only a short time, it seems, they moved down into Oklahoma. This vaguely fits with the family lore concerning Cole Erwin.
As my father told the story to Clifford many years later, there were two covered wagons, a number of mounted family members, and ninety-nine head of cattle in the caravan. My father, being the oldest son, was to help drive the family cattle. He had a two-year-old colt to ride, and his dad had bought him a new saddle. When the wagon train reached the Grand River the spring rains were over, at least temporarily, but the water was still high. The two families decided that it was prudent to wait for the water to go down enough to make the river crossing less hazardous. The women were eager, by that point in the journey, to stop for a day or two. They took advantage of the delay, and the warm weather, to wash clothes and air bedding. The men looked after the cattle and horses, and checked the harnesses and wagons for wear. The children had to help also, but there was still plenty of time for play. In the evenings, around the campfire, there was singing and storytelling. After two days of rest, all the while watching the water recede, it was decided that it was safe to ford the river and proceed.
Near Longton, in Elk County, Kansas, Mike and Minnie settled on a rented farm. The stone house, which still stands (2005), is built on a hill overlooking the lower-lying fields. This farm adjoined one owned by Thomas Stillwell and his wife Ellen.
Michael Ransallaer Erwin – On December 16, 1886, Michael “Mike” Erwin, my grandfather, married Minnie Olive Freemanin Carroll County, Arkansas. It was, in fact, a double wedding. Michael’s next oldest brother, William Coleman “Cole” Erwin, married Indiana May “India” Freeman during the same ceremony. Both young ladies were daughters of John Freemanand Sarah Ellen Foncannon.
Mike and Minnie were parents of the following children:
- Odes Herman Erwin, b. April 30, 1888, in Green Forest, Carroll Co., AR
- Dale H. Erwin, b. October 18, 1890, in Carroll Co., AR
- Thomas Jay Erwin, b. November 23, 1892, in Denver, Carroll Co., AR
- Russell Vachel (Bill) Erwin, b. June 30, 1899, in Longton, Elk Co., KS
- Michael Roy (Jack) Erwin, b. 1905, in Longton, Elk. Co., KS
- Baby Boy Erwin, b. 1907, in Longton, Elk Co., KS…died same day
- Jessie Carroll (Jim) Erwin, b. July 7, 1909, in Longton, Elk Co., KS
- Evelyn Joyce (Joy) Erwin, b. April 6, 1913, in Washita, Caddo Co., OK
The following is an excerpt from The Grass is Always Greener Down the Road Apiece, by Helen Erwin Campbell:
Grandma Erwin had a quick temper and a very sharp tongue. Her grandchildren in turn, must have learned to stay out of her way most of the time, just as I did. Grandpa, in contrast, was soft-spoken with a gentle, good-natured way about him. When he was sitting in his rocking chair he had a lap that always welcomed a grandchild in need of cuddling or comforting. When Grandma started on one of her temper tirades, Grandpa just let it roll over him and went about his business.
Often Grandma liked to talk of her own childhood. She was born in 1870 in Girard, Kansas as Minnie Olive Freeman. The United States Census of 1880 placed John R. Freeman, with his wife and three daughters, in Carthage, Missouri.
My oldest brother Clifford remembered the stories Grandma told about Jessie and Frank James. Grandma’s father was a friend to the outlaw brothers and often offered them a safe haven when they were running from the law. She recalled a time when she was a small girl when the James boys rode in one evening and tied their horses to the wagon in the corral. The horses were given hay to feed on, and a bale of hay was placed behind each mount, with the saddles placed on the bales.
Grandma played around the bales and was told sternly by her father, “Don’t play with the saddles!” She continued to play near them, and her father finally told her, “Don’t even touch those saddles.”
Frank and Jessie had the saddles laid out just right so that if they had to leave in a hurry they could throw the saddles on their horses, pull up the belly cinch straps, and be gone in just a few seconds.
The James boys had supper with the Freeman family that night, and Jessie told a story about riding down to the river, with the law in hot pursuit. There was a high bank, about as high as a house. He jumped his horse into the river and he and the horse swam to the other side. When he got out of range of the law officer’s guns he claimed he turned and thumbed his nose at the posse as they stood watching him on the high bank on the opposite side of the river. Clifford later told the story to Dad.
His reaction was, “Aw…, I don’t think that ever happened. She just made that up.”
Years later, however, Clifford discovered that there was a tourist attraction on Highway 71 in Missouri that had a plaque to mark a spot where, it claimed, Jessie James had jumped his horse into the river while running from the law. Clifford had heard the story from Grandma thirty years before.
Grandma was a tall, gaunt woman who never seemed to have an extra ounce on her. She was also slightly crippled, one leg bowed inward from the ankle up. The story she told inquisitive grandchildren was that when she was driving a buckboard when she was sixteen, and shortly after she was married, a front wheel of the buckboard hit a pothole and the jolt threw her off the seat. She fell in front of the wheel, which then ran over her ankle. Her leg was never properly set, thus her deformity.
It didn’t seem to be much of a handicap for her though. She was an excellent cook and always set a good table. She usually had a large garden, which she tended herself. One of my most vivid memories is of a dishpan full of fresh-picked strawberries from her garden, which ended up that evening in delicious strawberry shortcake.
That bad leg never kept her from moving fast enough to swat a disobedient or rambunctious grandchild if the need arose…and for the older ones that ever-present crutch proved to be a very effective persuader. Grandma Erwin was certainly one of a kind, and if she isn’t always remembered with love, she is certainly remembered with awe and fond memories.
I never got to know Grandpa and Grandma Erwin very well. Dad moved us to California in 1936, when I was three, and then back to Kansas when I was fifteen. From the summer of 1948, until March of 1950, when I enlisted in the Marines, I don’t think I saw them more than three or four times. As a youngster and teenager I was never very comfortable with older people, but Grandpa was easy to talk to and tended to put one at ease. Grandma, on the other hand, always made me nervous. She seemed to have a frown that was frozen on her face, and she had piercing eyes that made me feel guilty…of something.
I remember one incident that allows me to identify with the last paragraph of Helen’s story above. It was about 1949, at a time when I had my mind more on teenage girls than grandparents. One Sunday I was cajoled into accompanying my folks to Severy, where Grandpa and Grandma lived. After Sunday dinner (lunch to left coasters) Grandpa and Dad retired to rocking chairs on the front porch. They would chew Red Man tobacco, discuss world events, rail about the Democrats ruining the country, talk about the good old days, and periodically spit tobacco juice over into Grandma’s flower beds. I liked to listen to their recollections of times past but I was beginning to have an opinion about world events. While I was brave enough to disagree with Dad when we were at home it wasn’t good form in the Erwin family to disagree with him in public.
After a period of holding my opinions to myself I wandered into the kitchen where Grandma Erwin and my mother were washing the dinner dishes. I made some comment that Grandma Erwin apparently thought was uncalled for, because she swung her crutch at me, striking me across the backside. My pride was the only thing that was injured, but from that point on I always tried to beg off when my folks visited my grandparents.