Bazaar Cemetery, (and school) Bazaar, Chase County, Kansas

 Excerpts from Chase County Historical Sketches Vol II

Click on each page to see larger image

 

William Edward Chesney

 

Obituary 19 Dec 1918
(name of newspaper unknown)

 

Copy of Newspaper Obituary
 

Transcription of the Newspaper Obituary:

"W. E. Chesney, who had a stroke of apoplexy, Thursday of last week, passed away Friday morning. Mr Chesney was a native of Maryland, but for many years had been a resident of Kansas, living in Chase county until about twenty years ago when he moved to Lecompton. Although born in 1836 he had been quite vigorous and until the last year or two was able to do work that many younger men would not have attempted. Mr. Chesney was a man who stood well in the community. He was an active member of the Methodist church and had held various offices in that church.

The Chesney family were pioneer Methodists and when William E. was six months old, the family moved to the new state of Illinois, to the town of Abington, [sic] which was founded by the family and named for the hometown in Maryland. Here was established Hedding College, a Methodist school of which Mr. Chesney was one of the first students. In 1863 he married Miss Ruth Ann Evans who passed away in Lecompton a few years ago.

The funeral was held Monday from the Methodist church and was conducted by Rev. E. A. Ploughman of Mayetta. Interment was in the Maple Grove cemetery. He leaves two sons, Edward K. Chesney, Natoma, and F.E. Chesney of Lakin, two daughters, Miss Mary Chesney of Lecompton and Mrs. Hetty Todd of Wyoming.

William Edward Chesney  - no date on photo. 

I obtained this copy of a copy from Evelyn Mae Chesney Baumer several years ago.

 for more information see:  Find A Grave Memorial# 29485494

b. 24 Mar 1836, Abingdon, Harford, Maryland

d. 13 Dec 1018, Lecompton, Douglas, Kansas

 

Parents:

  Kent Mitchell Chesney (1809 - 1892)

  Hannah Jane Price (1809 - 1897)

Spouse:

  Ruth Ann Evans  (1837 - 1913)
  m. 19 Mar 1863, Abingdon, Knox, Illinois

Children:
  Thadius Albert Chesney (1868 -1878)

  Edward Kent Chesney (1870 - 1945)
  Mary Elizabeth Chesney (1872 - 1936)

  Frank Evans Chesney (1876 - 1958)
  Hetty Jane Chesney (1878 - 1973) 

Siblings:

  Hannah Elizabeth Chesney  (1832 - 1832)

  Charles Thomas Chesney (1834 - 1892)

  William Edward Chesney (1836 - 1918)

  Jesse C. Chesney (1839 - 1881)

  Ezra Erasmus Chesney (1841 - 1920)

  Frances A. M. Chesney (1843 - 1885)

  John M. Chesney (1845 - 1898)

  Asbury Fitch Chesney (1848 - 1903)

  Mary Emily Chesney (1852 - 1868)

  Oliver Mansfield Chesney (1853 - 1942)

Burial: Maple Grove Cemetery, Lecompton, Douglas County, Kansas

 

 

Bazaar, Chase County, Kansas

 Why Bazaar?

William Edward Chesney

Ruth Ann Evans

(her father, James Vance Evans, froze to death in 1900 -

see also a biography of him written by a descendant)

 

Before moving to LeCompton, Douglas County, Kansas sometime before 1905, William Edward and Ruth Ann Evans Chesney lived in Chase County, Kansas. Prior to that they were married March 19, 1863, in Abingdon Knox County, Illinois. In 1870 there were in Indian Point, Knox County and in 1880 in Bedford, Taylor County, Iowa. Sometime between 1880 and 1885 they apparently moved from Bedford, to Chase County. (What was their motivation?) They are shown living in the area of Strong City, Falls Township, Chase County, in both the 1885 Kansas State Census and the 1900 U.S. Census. By the 1885 and 1905 Kansas State Censues they are living in LeCompton, Why they moved there in their late 60's is a mystery!

Some time ago, on the recommendation of my cousin, Evelyn Mae Chesney Baumer, I bought William Least Heat-Moon's book, PrairyErth.  It was a fascinating read and introduced me to "Chase County's voices past and present..."  From the book cover:

Chase County is a sparsely populated tract in the Flint Hills of central Kansas, "the last remaining grand expanse of tallgrass prairie in America," and PrairyErth lovingly details its 774 square miles and 3,00 souls till it looms as large as the universe while remaining as intimate as a village.

Heat-Moon divides his book into geographic sections of the county and then details his experiences and research into various locations of importance. I made sure to give special attention to his section on the community of Bazaar, because I knew from my genealogy research that I had many Evans and a few Chesney ancestors buried in the Bazaar Cemetery.  My mother's eldest brothers, Kent Loyal Chesney, Everett Mize Chesney, and her only sister, Isabelle Chesney were all born Chase County, which meant that my mother's parents also lived in the area as well.

Heat-Moon writes about the community of Bazaar:

The tracks: slicked with mist and starting to freeze, and the train coming on and passing, and I bending to feel a rail warmed and dried by the heavy freight heading toward California, and then I cross the line running along her backyard, and just behind me, where the depot once stood, there is still the Santa Fe sign: BAZAR, an old spelling, and its brevity odd in a county where village names can have more letters than people. although here the hamlet has double its characters... (p. 181)

 

 Santa Fe Sign

(I took this photo as an illustration of his opening paragraph about Bazaar.)

 In 2005 I went to Kansas to research and photograph Evans and Chesney graves in the
Bazaar Cemetery

 

Bazaar Cemetery

I took Heat-Moon's book with me when I visited Chase County (Cottonwood Falls, Bazaar, Matfield Green, the Flint Hills), so that I could better identify landmarks he wrote about. It was an enriching experience to be "on the ground" where my Evans and Chesney ancestors walked. I went to the railroad crossing where the "Bazar" sign stands and opened Heat-Moon's book. I found the paragraphs that described that exact location and then took the photo of the sign. I looked up and down the current railroad tracks trying to imagine what would have been at this crossing during my ancestors' era - wondering whether they ever took any cattle to the now-long-gone cattle pens and loading chutes that would take their cattle to market in Kansas City.

Did the menfolk sit on the porch of the Santa Fe station, watch the cattle mill around in the pens, and visit with their neighbors who had brought their livestock to be loaded on the train. Were there any Chesneys or Evanses among them? Did they get into important discussions about the price of a steak on dinner plates across America? Did they say anything about what they sold their cattle for? What did they do when they heard the familiar whistle of the train as it came up to the terminus from the South?

It was with the help of Heat-Moon's book that I was able to conjure up those scenes and others in my mind and come to understand just a little bit better the county's contribution to my family story.

You see, Bazaar was a cattle town when the Evans and Chesneys lived in Chase County in the mid 1800's. Bazaar was the end of a Santa Fe spur and one of the largest cattle-shipping points in Kansas. From here grass-fed steers, being held in pens awaiting shipment, went down the line and up "to the dinner plates in Kansas City." Cattle raising was and and still is the main industry in Chase County.

The railroad tracks that once ended at Bazaar were extended in 1923 to Kansas City, and now long, cross-country freight trains roar non-stop every 30 minutes through the crossing just to the East (right) of this sign. I was able to see and hear those cross-country freight trains all the way from the cemetery a few miles northwest of town. They never varied a minute from their 30 minute intervals. You could set your watch by them just like Heat-Moon wrote.

For information on the Bazaar Methodist Church click here

A Postcard, a DAR Application, and a Headstone

A 100+ year old Postcard, a DAR Application, 

and a Headstone

-or-

 Some of the things I learned about Opal Alyce Chesney

A research project I did in March 2021, in preparation for a virtual presentation to the Muskogee County Genealogical Society (Muskogee, OK), was sparked by the re-discovery of my mother's 100+ postcard collection. She had given me the collection some years ago for reasons I won't go into here.

 1914 Postcard

In this collection I found a 1914 Easter card from Opal. My research uncovered that this Opal is Opal Alyce Chesney, daughter of Frank Evans Chesney. Frank is one of my mother's (Ruth Mary Chesney) maternal uncles, making Opal and Ruth first cousins. This is the card (along with another in 1915) that set off a chain of research and discoveries for me that led to making better sense of a lot of information and family history I’ve been accumulating for more than 40 years.

This card is what I call my SERENDIPITOUS FIND! You see, I’ve had a copy of Opal’s 1945 DAR application for quite a while! It was my first DAR discovery a few years ago when I learned about searching the DAR online databases. I had been told that my mother’s sister, Isabelle, was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) and I was searching for HER application. Instead, I found another name I recognized – Opal Chesney – I remembered Mother occasionally referred to a cousin Opal. So, I ordered Opal Chesney’s file and it provided me with a lot of clues about the Chesney family connections to a patriot ancestor, William Chesney, who signed the Oath of Allegiance in Cecil County, Maryland in 1778.

I went back to that application as part of the presentation I was preparing and realized Opal’s mother died when Opal was two yrs. old. Her mother’s name – Grace Judd Chesney, “rang a bell” and I remembered a photo I took in 2004 of a Grace Judd Chesney’s headstone in Bazaar Cemetery, Chase County, Kansas – it was one of only two Chesney headstones there.

I visited the cemetery because three of my ancestor families had lived in Chase County from at least 1883 to early 1900s. My mother's three oldest siblings were born in that county. At the time I took the photo, I did not know who Grace was or how she was related to me, and this has been a mystery to me until Opal’s 1914 Easter card led to more research. I “mulled and pondered” about this card, Opal’s DAR application, and the headstone photo and saw I needed to do more research! Up to this point I had learned who Opal was. But why is 10 yr old Opal writing to my four year old mother from Lecompton, Kansas?

More research led me to Grace’s probate documents in which Opal’s father, Frank Evans Chesney, had applied for guardianship of Opal after her mother's death and to get the Probate Court's permission to sell Opal's ½ interest in the property in Chase County.

 One of several probate documents re: Opal Alyce Chesney

 

Receipt signed by Ruth Ann Evans Chesney (Opal's grandmother)

A receipt for $95 in the probate file, shows the proceeds of the sale were used to pay Opal’s grandmother to care for Opal (Opal’s grandmother is my gr-grandmother, Ruth Ann Evans Chesney, from whom my mother got her first name – Ruth).

This verifies that Opal was my mother’s first cousin. I now have the evidence that Opal was placed, after her mother’s death, into the care of her father’s parents – my mother’s maternal grandparents. Census records also bear this out. Please note Ruth Ann Evans Chesney’s original signature on these two documents in the probate records! Original signatures of ancestors are a rare find!

Another sweet Easter card comes a year later (1915) and is also postmarked from Lecompton, Kansas. Opal is definitely living with her Chesney grandparents who had moved from Chase County to Lecompton, Douglas County (year and reason for this move is unknown at this time).

1915 Postcard

Further research indicates that after the death of both her grandmother (1913) and grandfather (1918) Opal went to live with her father and step mother, (Araina Amanda Bell) Chesney and their two children (1920 U.S. Census) in Hubbard Township, Kearney County, Kansas.

 

I located marriage information for Opal's three marriages and two divorces

 

1) August 23, 1921, at age 17 she married Walter Powell Capps, in Los Angeles, California. There was 16 years difference in their ages. (How did she get from Kansas to California?) They divorced in January 1933, in Yuma, Arizona. 

 

2) February 4, 1933 she married Curtis Joseph Beedle IV who was 43 years older than she. They had a son, Curtis Joseph V (the fifth) born August 8, 1946.  

 

Their young son, at the insistence of his father, was enrolled in Harvard when he was 2 ½ “in keeping with a family tradition started in Colonial days” The Courier-News - Bridgewater, New Jersey 24 Feb 1947. At the time Opal was the California State Registrar of the DAR and claimed to be a descendant of the Plymouth Colony Governor, William Bradford. Newspaper articles label her as a "clubwoman".

 

Opal and and Curtis Beedle were divorced, May 10, 1949.

 

3) 9 days later - May 19, 1949 - she married Daniel Lee Bower, M.D., in Indianapolis, Indiana. They had one son, Daniel Jr.. Dr. Bower died at their home in Williamsburg, Kentucky, July 18, 1961. He is buried (with a military headstone) in the Riverview Cemetery, Seymour, Jackson County, Indiana.

 

Opal's DAR application and supplements were filed using both Beedle, and Bower as her last name which indicates she researched her lineage during both of those marriages.

 

Opal died in Hayesville, Clay County, North Carolina, July 19, 1983 (age 79), where she was living with her son, Daniel Jr.. She was cremated and her cremains are buried in the Shepherd Crematory Cemetery, Hendersonville, North Carolina.

 

To date I have found very little information about Opal's two sons. 

 

NOTE:

Curtis Joseph Beedle IV died Feb 1956, in Los Angeles, California. He is buried with his first wife in the Wythe Congregational Church Cemetery, Hancock County, Illinois.

Walter Powell Capps died October 16, 1957, in Dallas, Texas. He is buried with his father and at least one son in a family plot in Laurel Land Memorial Park, Dallas.

 

Union Cemetery (Monticello United Methodist Church)

Union Cemetery

(A.K.A. the Monticello United Methodist Church Cemetery)

A little history of this burial place in Kansas of many Mize descendants and related families

 

Union Cemetery, known locally as Monticello Union, was established in 1884 and located west of the Town of Monticello. The land was first patented to George W Walker as bounty land given to officers and soldiers under an act passed by Congress on 3 Mar 1855. Walker sold this land to F. L Kueker on 29 Dec 1868,

In 1884, the Union Cemetery Company purchased 5 acres from F.L. and Mary C. Kueker (pronounced "kee-kur"), for $275. There are 23 marked Kuekler inscriptions in this cemetery, including an old stone for Fred Kueker in the old central area of the cemetery. (I'll post later about the Mize connection to the Kuekers)

 Fred Kueker's grave marker

Yet, with the oldest grave dating to 1860, these grounds were already known locally as a cemetery.  

Garrett Memorial (oldest known burial - Elizabeth Garrett - is listed on this memorial)

 

In 1895, citizens built a Civil War monument at the center of the cemetery with four mounds of cannon balls marking each of its corners and a cannon pointed West.  On Memorial Days, there were programs with prayers, music, and speeches by local dignitaries, recitation of the Gettysburg Address, and firing of the cannon.  People would bring flowers from their yards and gardens to tidy up their family graves.

Unfortunately, the cannon was stolen along with the pipe fence and the cannon balls - and the weekend of Memorial Day events faded away.

 

The photo below is the Civil War Monument.

The picture above was found in a display in the old Monticello Methodist Church. From this angle you can see the relationship of the old church to the cemetery.

Today Union Cemetery is still an active burial location and a telling vestige of generations of life and memorial traditions.

- from Historic Monticello Driving Biking Tour, a brochure published by the Monticello Community Historical Society, 2013  www.monticelloks.org

Address
75th St and Gleason Rd
Shawnee, Monticello
Johnson, KS

GPS Location
38° 59' 31" N, 94° 51' 44" W
38.9919, -94.8622

Legal Location
Section 21, Township 12S, Range 23E

 

The following is a list of people with the MIZE surname who are buried in this cemetery. Other Mize family members (wives, descendants, etc.) whose last name is no longer MIZE can be searched for by using the link at the end of this list. 

Mize, Byron Keith, d. 15 Jan 1930, Infant Son of Harold Mize, Sec. SW, Row-3

Mize, C J, b. 29 Sep 1817, d. 13 Dec 1884, Sec. EC, Row-1

Mize, Daisy L, b. 5 Apr 1888, d. 28 Jun 1969, Sec. SE, Row-5

Mize, Edna P, b. 9 May 1910, d. 13 Oct 1992, Sec. SW, Row-3

Mize, Emma A, b. 1847, d. 1936, Sec. WC, Row-11

Mize, Flossie Anna, b. 1889, d. 1960, s/w Olen Ray Mize, Sec. EC, Row-7

Mize, George W, b. 1861, d. 1941, Sec. EC, Row-13

Mize, Harriet McClure, b. 1879, d. 1969, Sec. SW, Row-3

Mize, Henry, b. 1837, d. 1918, Sec. SW, Row-12

Mize, Infant, d. 28 Nov 1903, Daughter, Sec. EC, Row-13

Mize, Jamesw H, no dates, CO A 17 Kansas Inf, GAR 1861-1865, Sec. WC, Row-11

Mize, John, b. 28 Feb 1856, d. 4 Sep 1935, s/w Sarah Frances Mize, Sec. WC, Row-13

Mize, Mary Ann, b. 1855, d. 1891, Mother, Sec. WC, Row-11

Mize, Mary Enid, b. 22 Oct 1906, d. 12 Feb 1909, Daughter of Alfred and Mary Mize, Broken footstone, Sec. SW, Row-3

Mize, Mattie, b. 1862, d. 1948, Sec. EC, Row-13

Mize, Olen Ray, b. 1890, d. 1971, s/w Flossie Anna Mize, Sec. EC, Row-7

Mize, Sarah Ann, b. 1842, d. 1929, Sec. SW, Row-12

Mize, Sarah Frances, b. 27 Apr 1863, d. 12 Oct 1914, s/w John Mize, Sec. WC, Row-13

Mize, William N, b. 17 Jul 1913, d. 20 Mar 1994, US Army WWII, Sec. SW, Row-3

Mize, William S, b. 1876, d. 1952, Sec. SW, Row-3 

A list of all burials in this cemetery was made by photographing all gravestones, and then transcribing them. That list is available starting here (updated in 2008). Photos are also available for all entries.

Cemetery Diagram

1884 Union Cemetery Plat Map