Mary A. Fox's orphans --- the rest of the story

Find A Grave Photo by Steve Hanken

I shared here on Sunday the incomplete story of a widow from Chariton named Mary A. Fox who set out during November of 1878 with her three children to join a sister at a place called Zion Valley, some 20 miles from Great Bend on the western plains of Kansas. You can find that post here, "Orphans from Chariton stranded in Kansas."

Zion Valley (later known as St. John) has an interesting history. Founded in 1875 by some 40 families led west from Pennsylvania by William Bickerton, it became the outpost of a tiny sect of former Mormons called Bickertonites who were committed to economic communitarianism and to the evangelizing of their neighbors and members of nearby Native American tribes.

But Mary discovered, upon reaching Zion Valley, that her sister had left the settlement. Critically ill with consumption, Mary retraced her steps from Zion Valley to  Great Bend where she died at a hotel during early December, leaving her children stranded far from home and without funds.

That was where I dropped the threads of the story, but fortunately Linda Pierce of Coralville picked them up, did considerably more research and now, thanks to her, we know the rest of the story.

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Linda found Mary in the 1870 census of English Township, Lucas County, with her husband, Lot Fox, age 33 that year and a "house carpenter" by profession. Mary was 32 and there were three children in the household --- a son named Emerson R., age 11; and two daughters, Mary M. and Julian, ages 4 and 2 respectively. All of the children had been born in West Virginia, so the family was fairly new to Lucas County.

The Foxes were living next door to an uncle of mine, Jesse McMulin, and that tells us that they were residents of the rural neighborhood near Brownlee Cemetery, northwest of what now is Williamson. 

Family researchers have determined that Mary and Lot had a total of eight children but only three were living when Mary headed west. The children were Emerson, born 1858, who reportedly died at age 18 in 1876, James (1860-1864), Mahala (1861-1862), Mary Martha (1865-1955), Elizabeth Eliza (1867-1868), Julia Ann (1868-1896), Arthur (1870-1871) and William (1872-1937).

Arthur was born and died in English Township and his grave in Brownlee Cemetery is marked. The children who accompanied Mary to Kansas were Martha, Julia Ann and William.

Lot, a veteran of Company N, 6th West Virginia Volunteer Infantry, died on Dec. 29, 1875, in Lucas County and was buried in the Chariton Cemetery. We know that because many years later, in 1928, his grandson, James E. Fox, then living at Davis City in Decatur county, ordered a government marker for the grave and saw to its installation. 

It may have been the death of Emerson a year later that pulled the remaining foundation from under Mary's family and set off the odyssey that would take the four survivors to western Kansas. He would have been old enough to support the family, but without him --- especially if Mary's health were becoming critically impaired by tuberculosis --- she would have been left with only the modest pension available to the widow of a Civil War veteran and the need to find someone who would care for her children.

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Did the three Fox orphans make it home to Lucas County after their mother died? Yes, Linda discovered.

When the 1880 federal census was taken, Mary M. Fox, 14, Julia Ann Fox, 12, and William Fox, 8, were living in the coal mining town of Cleveland with their aunt and uncle, Nancy and James McDiffit. Nancy (Haines) McDiffit was Lot Fox's older half-sister.

James and Nancy had arrived in Lucas County during 1867 to farm, but he also had 10 years experience in the coal mines of West Virginia, so when the Whitebreast mines opened at Cleveland found work there. He remained with the Whitebreast Mining Co. until 1888, working his way up to engineer.

The McDiffits, converted in West Virginia, were among the rocks upon which the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS) congregation at Lucas and Cleveland was founded upon. During 1888, the McDiffits moved to Davis City in Decatur County --- with Lamoni at the heart of the RLDS (now Community of Christ) movement --- and he prospered there as a coal merchant.

When James and Nancy married in 1857, she had two sons from a marriage that had ended when her first husband vanished. 

According to James McDiffit's entry in the 1915 "History of Decatur County, Iowa, and Its People," "Mr. and Mrs. McDiffit had two children, both of whom died in infancy, but they reared three of her brother's children, Martha, Julia and William Fox. Julia passed away in early womanhood, leaving four children who our subject and his wife reared. William resides near Davis City and Martha, who is the wife of John Allen, lives in the state of Washington."

Mary Martha (Fox) Allen died during 1955 in California. William married and raised his family on a farm in New Buda Township near Davis City, where he died in 1937. Julia, whose husband was William K. Henderson, died during 1896, leaving four children who, like their mother, were raised by the McDiffits.

And there you have in brief the rest of the story, thanks to Linda's research and a little additional scratching around on my part.