Odds & Ends

 PIONEER ENJOYS STURDY OLD AGE

Somerset Township woman lives on the same farm 68 years, sleeps on same bed.

 Octavia Johnson King, pioneer of Jackson County, has lived on one farm in Somerset Township for 68 years.   Grandma King is 86 years old. She was born in West Virginia and came with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. George Johnson, to St. Louis about75 years ago.  Afterword moving farther south, Ava stands on her fathers old farm site.  At this place Miss Johnson married Moses King and moved to section 2, Somerset Township buying 160 acres of land  at one dollar and a quarter per acre of land, in timber,but a small tract. Mrs. King is from a family of five children, two girls and three boys. the two girls are still living.  Mrs. King being the oldest in the family and her sister Mrs. Ida Cheatham, the youngest.  Grandma King like a majority  of our pioneers brought with them little we call wealth, but they brought what to the settlers in an unbroken wilderness is more value and industrious hearts.  How changed is the scene since first her eyes beheld this country woodsman and its wild beast, before his rifle.  Sleeps on cord  bed.  Mrs. King has much of the same furniture that she began housekeeping  with, when she was a girl of 18 years old.  She has a small stand table with a drawer in one side that is nearly 100 years old today.  She is using  the same bed that had for years called the Cord bed, probably the only one in use in Jackson County.  The ladies have in their possession their Grandfathers the Rev. Taylors family leather bible.  (leather bound) with  many markings in it.  It contains the old family record, written with a  goose quill pen.  It can be read very readily.  Mrs. King was a great  horseback rider in her days and has run many races, both with women and men  riders.  She is the mother of eleven children, three boys and eight girls.  She has thirty-four grand-children and five great-grand-children the oldest  one being 19 years.  (donated by Lauri Gray Stoewsand)