The White Family of Moore Prairie, Kansas

By Gary White

This is the piece that resulted from Don Cox's question about the Whites of Moore Prairie.

Moore Prairie Cemetery in rural Chautauqua County, Kansas lists sixteen occupants with the name of White. I can identify all of these people as relatives of mine. How this came to be will center around one rather shadowy individual, Caleb White (1839-??).

Caleb and his new wife, Eliza Head White (1839-1920) arrived in New York from Liverpool, England on June 22, 1864. Life in England had been hard for Caleb. In the 1851 British Census twelve year old Caleb was listed as the only offspring of Samuel and Philadelphia White, who are identified as “Paupers—Formerly Farmers.” How Caleb met Eliza and when they were married is unknown, but there is little doubt about their reasons for leaving England for the New World.

The Whites began the move west along with that steady flood of immigrants who were seeking a better life in the U. S. They must have taken several years to reach Kansas, because their first two children Philadelphia (1865) and Samuel Fredrick (1867) were born in Illinois. By 1870 they had homesteaded on Moore Prairie and little Alice was born. My grandfather, Howard Charles was born in 1872 and Daisy in 1876. Shortly afterwards, Caleb just up and left, leaving Eliza alone in the wilds of frontier Kansas with five small children.

Those of us who muck about among the dead folk searching for our connections to European royalty are bound to turn up a few pitiful characters and an occasional scoundrel. Caleb White may fit into both of those categories, although Eliza was later known in the family for her sharp tongue. Whether that came before or after Caleb left I don’t know. Anyway, Eliza gathered up her little band of farm hands and, by God, made a go of it on the homestead on Moore Prairie. Philadelphia became “Della” and Samuel Fredrick became “Fred,” thus erasing any connection with Caleb’s parents in England. Eliza seems to have been determined to start all over again in her adopted country and she systematically cleared Caleb White out of her life.

There are two pieces of family folklore about Caleb that I heard from my father. One says that Caleb had been a sailor and found life away from the sea onerous. I doubt that bit of folklore, considering that his parents before him had been failed farmers and every census record I’ve found shows that he listed his occupation as “farmer.” My guess is that that story was just made up by Eliza to cover for the real reasons that Caleb left. The other story is more believable. My father said that several years after he took off, Caleb returned, but Eliza ran him off the place. That totally fits with what I know about my great grandmother, and tends to confirm Caleb’s status as neer-do-well.

By 1885 the White family was all quite grown up. Della, age 20 was listed as a housekeeper, Fred, age 18 is a “farmer,” Alice, age 15 is listed for “housework,” and Howard, age 12 is a “farmer.” Only little Daisy, age 9, has no listed occupation. That is quite consistent with the picture my father painted of the family. He described the White’s as a family with grim determination and no nonsense or fun. This shaped my grandfather’s character, and I remember him as a rather bleak character, who just wouldn’t stop working, even after a failed prostate surgery left him incontinent and weakened. My father said that he had a similar upbringing to his father, and if there was an easy way and a hard way to do anything, his father always chose the hard way. That he didn’t pass that same grim determination on to me is a tribute to his ability to rise above his upbringing.

Fred grew up and married Hannah (1875-1949). They created a place of their own on part of the homestead, making them Eliza’s neighbors. There they raised seven children, Ray A. (1900-1959), Ralph L. “Boots” (1901-1971), Orville (1905-1948), Ward L. (1907-1997), Lynn (1909-1970), Thelma (1913-??), and Buel O. (1915-1974). What a bunch of farmers that crew must have been. For the most part, all of these children remained in the Moore Prairie area and all of them procreated, thus accounting for the list of White occupants in Moore Prairie Cemetery.

My grandfather, Howard Charles (1872-1954) married Mary Florence Witham (1876-1964) and they had four children, H. Fern (1903-1989), Sylvia O. (1908-2001), my father, Charles Howard (1911-1991), and Vernon D. (1915-1973). Eliza lived with this family until her death in 1920. The H. C. White family was not prolific, and I turned out to be the only child any of them had. Fern never married, Sylvia married Charlie Smith, but they had no children, my father married Lila B. Call and I was their only child, and Vernon only married later in life and had no children. So, while all the Whites of Moore Prairie were and are relatives of mine, none are what I would consider close relatives. However, we all carry some of that Moore Prairie limestone in our bones and have all been hard workers all our lives.