Unexplained Deaths in Early Kansas

 In 2018, I made a post to this blog about the families of two Reeves' brothers who migrated into the Kansas Territory as soon as it was opened for settlement.  Gaston and Terrell Reeves were sons of William Reeves and Anne Terrell originally of the New River area of western North Carolina and southwestern Virginia.  William's father was George Reeves of Grayson County, Virginia who settled on the Peach Bottom Tract there in 1767 and served in a Revolutionary War unit from Montgomery County, Virginia. The known history of these Kansas settlers can be found in my initial post Settlers in Kansas Territory

At the time, I was puzzled by the deaths of both couples and most of their children within a decade after their arrival in Kansas.  They settled along the Verdigris River in southeastern Kansas and I wondered whether there had been attacks by Native Americans to the settlement or if some forces of nature such as tornados could have been responsible for so many deaths in these families. I searched most available sources but found nothing that might explain their deaths until several years ago when one of the descendants of Gaston Reeves joined  The Reeves Project and emailed to me all of the information he had been able to locate. 

1860 Census
Greenwood County, Kansas

My distant cousin Joe had finally discovered what appears to be the cause of their deaths when he came across a letter written in 1860 by Dr. Aaron Venard pleading for medical supplies.  When I discovered that the parents of these two families were missing in the 1860 census, I had found Gaston Reeves' children living in the home of Dr. Venard in Greenwood County.  In the letter that Joe found from Dr. Aaron Venard to Thaddeus Hyatt, he details the effects of scurvy on the pioneer settlement.  I have never considered scurvy a factor in anything other than long sea voyages, but apparently drought and the limited availability of adequate food sources to prevent illness had taken a toll on these settlements.

Dr. Venard's letter details the sicknesses of the prior winter and mentions that the primary problem was scurvy. Those who had come the previous year and made it through until Christmas, began to recover when the vegetables became available in January and February.

He explained that when vegetables did not exist, the scurvy was rampant.  He wrote that over the coming winter he expected the scurvy would ravish the settlers again.

Many more died over the coming 10 year period.  By 1873 practically all of the children of Gaston Reeves were deceased as well as the majority of Terrill Reeves' children.  Only Gaston's two youngest daughters are recorded as moving further toward the Pacific coast and lived into the next century.

The ancestors of my cousin Joe Hubbell, Elizabeth Easter Reeves and David F. Carter married in 1872 and migrated to California in 1875.  Many thanks to Joe for sharing all this trove of information about these families.

Settlers in Kansas Territory

After the death of their father, Terrell and Gaston Reves settled in the new Kansas Territory as soon as it was opened for settlement. Their father William was one of the sons of George Reeves (Reves) of Grayson County, Virginia. William and his extended family had left Ashe County, North Carolina around 1822 and after a time in Indiana, eventually settled in Carroll County, Arkansas by about 1840. There William and these sons along with their brothers Lenoir and John were recorded in census and tax records. After William's death sometime between 1840 and 1850, various members of the family are recorded on the tax lists of Independence County, Arkansas throughout the 1850's along with another brother, William H. Reves, who was a Baptist minister.

Excerpt from 1866 Map of Kansas

Gaston Reves along with his oldest sons Albert and Moses (Mack) were listed on the tax lists of Independence County in 1854 which was the final record for members of Gaston's family in Arkansas. The History of Verdigris Township in Historical Atlas of Wilson County Kansas records that "Gaston Reeves and his son Max (sic Mack) took claims in the spring of 1857".

Terrell Reeves was recorded on the 1856 tax lists of Independence County which apparently preceded his migration to Kansas for the history of Greenwood County, Kansas lists the Pleasant Grove township as being established in 1856 by Terrill Reeves.

In those early years of Kansas' history, besides indian attacks, there was also great political unrest involving guerrilla warfare as the debate over the expansion of slavery led to violence in Kansas. The bad weather, bad crops and destruction of crops and property by the opposing forces often offset the sense of prosperity that had fueled the rush of settlers to the newly opened territory. A large number of settlers left the territory after the bitter winter of 1856 and many experienced starvation effecting themselves and their animals caused by a severe drought in 1860.

Bill for coffin of Gaston Reves son of Terrell

The records do not reveal the causes of their deaths, but over the next five years, Terrell and three of his sons as well as his brother Gaston and his oldest son Albert were deceased. Terrell and his 21 year old son Gaston both died on the 4th of May, 1859 but the probate documents give no clue as to the cause. Although no probate documents have been discovered for his brother Gaston, all of his children were orphans living in the home of A. Venard, a probate court judge in Greenwood County in the 1860 census. Over the next decade the majority of the rest of the children from both families had also died.

Although I never doubted that pioneer life was hard and extremely dangerous, researching the story of these young families and their westward migration which ended so soon after their arrival in southeastern Kansas Territory has both surprised and saddened me. Even as my various families migrated out of Virginia and North Carolina into the wilderness that existed in early Kentucky, Tennessee and other newly formed states, I had just never discovered such hardship and death.


See post in this blog about William Reeves of Grayson County, Virginia and Ashe County, North Carolina