Tag Archives: Woodson

Isaac McCoy

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Isaac McCoy
b. 13 June 1784, Uniontown, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, to William H. and Elizabeth (Rice) McCoy
d. 21 June 1846, Louisville, Jefferson County, Kentucky

m. 6 October 1803, Louisville, Jefferson County, Kentucky
Christiana Polk
b. 12 November 1784, Nelson County, Kentucky, to Charles and Delilah (Tyler) Polk
d. 6 August 1850, Kansas City, Jackson County, Missouri

Children with Christiana Polk:
• Mahala (1804-1818)
• Rice (1807-1833)
• Josephus (1808-1831)
• Delilah (1809-1844) married Johnston Lykins
• John Calvin (1811-1889) married (1) Virginia Chick, (2) Elizabeth Woodson
• Elizabeth (1813-1822)
• Sarah (1815-1835) married (1) Thomas Jefferson Givens, (2) Thomas Gilens
• Christiana (1817-1837) married William Ward
• Nancy Judson (1819-1850)
• Eleanor (1821-1839) married Husband Dononue
• Maria Staunton (1823-1824)
• Isaac (1825-1849) married Martha Stone
• Charles Rice (1827-1831)
• infant (1831)

The family moved to near Sellersburg, Clark County, in the Indiana Territory in 1804. Later, they moved to Vincennes, Knox County, where Isaac was a spinning wheel maker and a jailer. In 1805, they moved back to Clark County, where he was licensed as a Baptist minister. Isaac served at Mariah Creek Church in Knox County, starting in October 1810. In 1818, he established an Indian mission north of Terre Haute near Montezuma on Raccoon Creek in Parke County. In 1820 he went to Fort Wayne in Allen County to establish a church for Indians; Christiana had a school that taught spinning and weaving. In 1828, Isaac was appointed a member of the commission to arrange the removal of Indians to reservations in Kansas. He and two sons moved to the Kansas City, Missouri area. In 1843, Isaac returned to Indiana where he was appointed Secretary and General Agent for the Indiana Mission Association of Louisville, Kentucky.

Isaac wrote a book on the white man’s attempt to Christianize the Indians in 1840. A memorial book Early Indian Missions by W.N. Wyeth tells of the lives and mission work of Rev. and Mrs. McCoy. Many of his writings are in the Isaac McCoy Collection of the Kansas Historical Society. The towns of Niles and Grand Rapids, Michigan were originally McCoy Indian Missions.

Submitted by:
Christie Hill Russell
Paris IL
E-mail: christie@cartar.com

Henry Kelley Woodson

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Henry Kelley Woodson
b. 16 November 1831, Chillicothe, Ross County, Ohio
d. 15 May 1920, Chanute, Neosho County, Kansas

m. 3 March 1853, Lafayette, Tippecanoe County, Indiana
Elvina Johnson
b. 8 November 1833, Attica, Warren County, Indiana
d. 5 March 1920, Chanute, Neosho County, Kansas

Children with Elvina Johnson:

  • [–?–]

The couple stopped several years in Illinois before moving on to Kansas, where their only son was born. Both Henry and Elvina were given federal pensions for service during the Civil War from Indiana.

Submitted by:
Carla Kelley White
Tonkawa OK

Joseph Alvin Chavis, Jr.

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Joseph Alvin Chavis, Jr.
b. 6 September 1877, Hamblen County, Tennessee, to Joseph Alvin and Louisa Eliza (Ledwell) Chavis, Sr.
d. 8 November 1960, St. Louis County, Missouri

m. 5 September 1903, Putnam County, Indiana
Ollie Blanche Bailey
b. 2 July 1883, Putnam County, Indiana, to Roscoe Oliver and Emma Margarette (Gorham) Bailey
d. 9 January 1958, St. Louis County, Missouri

Children with Ollie Blanche Bailey:

  • Russell Richard (b. 1902) married Dorothy Faye Calvin
  • Edgar Alfred (1905–1975) married (1) Jean Beveridge, (2) Frances Woodson
  • Pauline (1913–1992) married Russell Louis Bishop

Joseph, the fifth child of Joseph and Louisa Chavis, immigrated to Indiana from Tennessee with his parents and siblings, but when Joseph left Indiana in 1912 intending to travel all the way to California to work on the railroad, the rest of his family remained in Indiana. When Joseph and Ollie left Indiana, Ollie was pregnant, and they decided to stop in St. Louis, Missouri, until the child was born. But because daughter Pauline was so tiny and sickly, they decided to remain in St. Louis instead of moving further west.

Joseph never did work for the railroad although his son Russell and his grandson Jim did. Instead Joseph became a day laborer, first for a coal mine. During the Depression he would carry 100-pound blocks of coal home on his shoulders to keep the family warm.

Later, during the construction of the four-story Tums Building in downtown St. Louis, Joseph fell through an open space in the sub floor and plunged two floors to a concrete basement below. He spent many months in a body cast but recovered. In the 1950’s, when a grandson on leave from the Marines visited Joseph, he found his eighty-year-old grandfather up in a fifty foot tree sawing off a dead limb, with his grandmother standing below shaking her finger at him and hollering, “Joseph, come down from that tree.” This was after their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

Submitted by:
Patricia Bishop Obrist
St. Charles MO