Montgomery County History Center | Dave McFarland

I know this may sounds a bit strange, but in April I got to do something kind of fun. I was requested to do a cemetery walk for a group of ladies who were friends and had all been high school classmates, and they were all about to celebrate their birthdays. Being safety conscious, I am not going to say what birthday it was.

I picked out about a dozen gravesites at Evergreen Cemetery here in Red Oak and then did a bit of research on these individuals thinking they would be interesting and each had a unique story, or so I thought. The walk was a great success, and everyone seemed to have a great time. The weather did not cooperate very well, however. It was a little cold, and it started to rain before we got to our last visit.

Now comes the irony. I knew the stories of these 10 people and felt well enough versed to do my little introduction for each. Then about halfway through the walk something struck me. These are not individual grave stones with their own unique stories at all. Most of these people knew each other, and though their stories were written over a hundred years ago, their stories were entwined and not by mere years and dates.

On our list of visits were: Martha Zuber, Henry Fall, the Murphys, Hiram Finley, Verni Hysham, Iphgenia McElhiney, Owen C. Hawkins, George Hawkins, William Wallace Merritt, Darwin Merritt, and Jason and Cornelia Packard.

 Quite a list of names, and so how were they all connected? Well, here goes. Martha Zuber was the wife of Joe Zuber, the first sheriff in Montgomery County, not to mention a local post master. He went off to fight in the Civil War. So he knew Hiram Finley, the last Civil War veteran to die in the county. But there is more to the story. Joe was taken ill in Arkansas during the war. Martha disguised herself as a boy, and set out to be with Joe in far away Arkansas. She convinced everyone for months that she was Joe’s little brother. William Merritt took Martha a good part of the way to Arkansas, as he was hauling supplies to Missouri. This was in the 1860s.

William Merritt was an early founder here locally and worked in local government, as clerk of the court. Jason Packard and his wife, Cornelia, came here in the 1850s for a land grant and he was our first county treasurer, so Jason and William worked together for years.

William had a son, Darwin, who was born here and graduated from Red Oak High School. Darwin would die in 1898 on the battleship Maine, an incident that would help propel the country into the Spanish American War, at the end of which our local National Guard company (M and B) would fight in the Philippine Insurrection (1898 to 1902). Verni Hysham was the youngest member of Company M and would die of typhoid. They all knew each other in the late 1890s.

Owen C. Hawkins was first sergeant in Company M when they went off to the Philippines. So he too knew Verni. Owen would go off to war again in 1918, World War I this time. Henry Fall was also in Company M, and Owen was there when Henry was killed. Owen’s nephew George also went to the Great War. That terrible war ended in November of 1918. Poor George died of the Spanish Flu on Christmas in 1918 before he could come home. Iphgenia McElhiney was a nurse, who heroically cared for flu patients here in Red Oak from 1919 to 1921. She knew Owen and George and probably Henry too. And she knew all too well the ravages of that flu epidemic that had killed poor George. By the way, Henry worked for the Thos. D. Murphy Company, so he knew the Murphys. So we find ourselves at 1920 and what a journey; a few short years and many lives. They share a time and now lay now within sight of each other. We are now separated by more than a hundred years of the past and yet we share a common time and home, too. Who do you know, and how will they be remembered in a hundred years?

Dave McFarland is director of the Montgomery County History Center. Reach him at mchsociet@qwestoffice.net.