Stephen Henson Hyten (1795-1885) was the second son of Josiah Heighton. Stephen Henson had 10 children, four were sons. One of these, Simpson, had 12 children of which six were sons. Despite these many immediate male heirs, today there is not a single person named Hyten left from his branch of the HYTEN family. Luckily though there is Pat Douglass-Smith, for without her, I would have virtually no information on Stephen Henson’s heirs.
In December of 1986 Pat sent me a printout of all her work. Not only did it provide me with valuable information about Stephen Henson’s heirs that I was missing but it provided me with many stories that she had collected about HYTENs. It also made me realize that I had been very busy collecting names and dates without finding out much about these people. I also saw that she had her information a lot better organized and documented than I had mine. Realizing this I set out to raise the second edition of my book to a higher level.
Stephen Henson fought in the War of 1812. What little is known of his service gives us an interesting historical perspective of the times. Shortly after his nineteenth birthday he was drafted from Bourbon County, Kentucky, into Henry Ellis' Company in the 16th Regiment of the Kentucky Militia. He served under a Col. Porter from September 10, 1814, until March 9, 1815, receiving $8.00 per month pay for his service. When the war ended in December of 1814 Stephen was stationed at Ft. Malden, Upper Canada. He was discharged and had to make his own way home from Canada. He was compensated $7.48 for the 375 mile, 29 day trip. For his service he received on April 23, 1851, a warrant (No. 3834) for 80 acres of land. Because of an error in the abstract it was returned to the General Land Office on April 22, 1858. The Index of Pensions: War of 1812 indicates that he later received a pension for his service.
Stephen Henson Hyten married Nancy McGary (1794-1849) on March 10, 1816 in Montgomery County, KY. Because Montgomery County records of this period were destroyed in a fire, the only record of their marriage is contained in his military records.
Like his brothers he began raising a family in Kentucky but he was to soon head to the western frontier. One source says he left for Missouri in 1822. More likely it was after the birth of his fourth child, Melinda, who I am pretty sure was born in Kentucky in about 1828. His next child, Rebecca, who was born in Callaway County, MO in about 1831. A source of Becky Ingram's, calling him Henson rather than Stephen Henson, says he moved in the fall of 1831 from Fleming County, Kentucky. The 1820 census of Fleming County, which is next to Montgomery County, lists Stephen H. Hiten.
He probably followed other Montgomery County Kentuckians to the area around Fulton, MO. The 1884 History of Callaway County mentions a Samuel Carrington from both the Maryland and Kentucky counties of Montgomery. Carrington's son, Randolph (ca.1784-1839), married Catherine McGarey (ca.1791-1839) and then settled in Callaway County, MO in 1826. It is reasonable to assume that Catherine may have been the sister of or was at least related to Stephen Henson’s wife, Nancy. The families were further entwined when Randolph's son John (1817-1900) married Stephen Henson’s daughter, Nancy (Nannie) (1824-1895), (spelled Hyton in that book). Back in Charles County, Maryland a Samuel Carrington was one of the witnesses to a 1795 land sale by Stephen Caywood, who was the father of Nancy's grandmother, Re-becca.
His first land purchase in Calloway County, MO, was on Feb. 11, 1832 when he bought 80 acres, Section 3, 1NW, T 46 N, R 10 W. On October 8, 1835, he bought 51.82 acres, Sec. 3, W1/2 of 2NW, T 46 N, R 10 W. His third purchase was the adjacent 51.83 acres, Sec. 3, E1/2 of 2NW, T 46 N, R 10 W. On the same date his son Simpson bought 120 acres, Sec. 12, S1/2SE, plus NENE, T 46 N, R 10 W.
After his wife had died and his children had grown, Stephen lived with his eldest son (Simpson) William Simpson (1815-1876). When Simpson died at age 62, Stephen Henson helped his daughter-in-law, Eliza Boyd (1824-1915), raise his grandchildren. At the age of 91 he was still saddling his own horse to ride. He apparently had great nursing skills upon which his neighbors depended. As surprising as this may seem in those times before modern medicine, many HYTENs lived into their 80s during the 1800s. (When checking your genes also note that there were several sets of twins over those years.)
At the time of his death in 1885 he was living with his daughter Nancy and her husband John Carrington. They were all members of the Regular Baptist Church in Carrington, MO. Many members of the family are buried in the church's cemetery.
The probate records of Callaway County contain Stephen's will along with those of many of his children. At his death his assets were listed as $5379.52 which in those days was a fair sum of money. By then he did not own any real estate; just his horse, a feather bed, a desk, and a rocking chair.
Callaway County, MO, is in the central part of the state about 50 miles east of Booneville, one of Daniel Boone's many frontier homes. Land records including those of 1846 and 1881 show several HYTEN properties in Callaway County but the main HYTEN farm was just south of Fulton, MO. In April, 1997 I drove by the property which remains very isolated to this day. Stephen Henson’s sons and grandsons farmed as he had done, but engaged in other businesses as well.
Simpson was a wagon maker and his son Thomas (1843-1921) ran a butcher shop on Court Street in Fulton. He and Sam Thomas had bought the shop from Christ and Humphrey. The Feb. 18, 1881, edition of the Callaway Weekly Gazette has an advertisement on page 2 for their "New Butcher Shop." By April, 1881, the names Keller and Baker also appeared in the ads. At the time of their mother's death in 1915, Thomas and his brother, James Simpson (1860-1952), were in California. Apparently James owned gold mines at Holloran Springs, CA, just north of Barstow, pictures of which are on the internet. When Thomas died he was back in Fulton. He was buried with an Odd Fellows ceremony in the Carrington Cemetery.
Both Elizabeth (Bettie) (1844-1935) and John Henry (1851-1938) married and lived in Callaway County. Bettie and James L. Lynes had six children. John Henry (1851-1938) and his wife, Eveline Rice(1854-1928), had two. Simpson's youngest, Lucy Alberta "Duck" (1879-1982), was to live longer than any other HYTEN, over 103 years.
It was William Lander (1848-1924) who really carried on the HYTEN tradition of pioneering. When he was 16 he moved to Jackson County, Missouri. A year later he joined a caravan, driving a team of oxen, headed for Santa Fe, New Mexico. After prospecting and mining for several years, he returned in 1882 to Call away County. The next four years were spent between there and Florida where he had invested in a 25 acre orange grove. At that time Florida was a true wilderness with hardly any settlers.
He then returned to California where he had an interest in a silver mine. William's great-grand-niece, Eleanor Douglass-Embree of Leavenworth, KS, has a gold and turquoise ring that he crafted from gold that he found. He was generous as well as prosperous, giving each of his brothers and sisters an 80 acre farm in Callaway County as they married. The last two years of his life were spent back in Missouri fighting off death from cancer. During this time he donated an x-ray machine to the hospital in Fulton.
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| HIRAM HYTEN |
Hiram (1855-1931) was a stock man and farmer who was active in the local Red Cross. He was a local highway commissioner as well. Sister Anna (1862-1914) never married nor did (Nannie) Nancy Jane (1857-1886). James Simpson (1860-1950) was living in California in 1915, in Nevada in 1924, and in Silver Lake, Colorado, in 1935. Pat Douglass-Smith lists him as married to Lina, but his death record says he was a bachelor. I got information on his death from the Odd Fellows Home in Liberty, MO, where he spent his last five years. Francis (Dollie) (1868-1954) married William Mosley and raised five children in Callaway County.
Mary (Mollie) (1864-1948) was educated to be a teacher at Synodial College, Fulton, MO, at Kirksville, MO, Teachers College, and at Clarksburg Normal School. She taught for 12 years in the schools of Dixie, New Bloomfield, White Cloud, and Auxvasse. Just before she married she was also running a mil-liner's shop in Auxvasse. She met her husband-to-be, William Harvey Pollock, while attending a singing school he was conducting in New Bloomfield. They lived in Fulton until the 1920s when they briefly lived in Columbia while their daughter Nellie attended college there. In May of 1932 they moved to Kansas to live with their daughter Nellie and her family on the Horsehead Ranch near Mullinville.
Mollie's daughter (Nellie) Eleanor William (1903-1979) was named after her uncle William T. and in childhood was often called Nellie-Will. She carried on the family's adventuresome tradition if not the family name. She followed her mother into teaching after graduating from the University of Missouri in June, 1926 with a major in history and a mi-nor in social studies. During the 1927-28 school year she taught in Minot, North Dakota. The next year she moved on to Mullinville, KS, where she was to meet her future husband, Weldon Doug-lass, who worked on his father's ranch south of town. Nellie was a botanist at heart and she used her college botany book to identify wildflowers on the ranch. She was even able to catalog some that had been previously unnoticed in Kansas. They operated the 3000 acre ranch until retirement in 1973.
It was one of her four children, Patricia Ann Douglass-Smith, who provided me with all this information on the Stephen Henson branch of HYTENs. She grew up on Horsehead Ranch and married an agriculture specialist whom she met while at Kansas State University.
Not as much is known about Stephen's other nine children. Landon or Landrum (1820-1851) was a brick ma-son who never married. Considering his age he left a fairly substantial estate. As mentioned before, Nancy (1824-1895) married John Carrington and had three children. John (1826-1853), a wagon maker by trade, was unmarried. Neither Melinda (1828-1849) nor Rebecca (1831-1856) married nor apparently did Mary Jane (1834-?).
Stephen Henson’s seventh child, Stephen (1833-1861), was listed as a teacher in the 1860 census. Apparently he was killed in what was an act of vengeance aimed at another man. A vine was strung across the road. Stephen came along before the man that the trap was intended to hurt and the top of his buggy was torn off, killing him.
Amanda J. (1835-1873) married William H. Dunavant and one of her grandchildren owns a drug store a block off the square in Fulton. Stephen Henson may also have had a daughter named Matilda who was born and died in 1849. If this was his child, I don't know for sure if this late birth contributed to the death of his wife Nancy that year at age 55.
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