Genesis: Puxico

Puxico, c1900.

In 1848 not a single mile of railroad track could be found in the entire state of Missouri. The following year saw the chartering of its first railway, the Pacific, which opened five miles of track from St. Louis to Cheltenham in 1852. Off to a promising start, Missouri railroad construction soon slowed down due to the panic of 1857 and was stopped completely by the Civil War.

During the war, the Missouri's Bootheel region, where the Andrews and John William Summers would one day settle, was the home of Confederate sympathizers and guerilla bands, which Union forces tried to dislodge. The ensuing battles, often occurring in muddy swamps and swollen streams, were neighbor against neighbor, and kin against kin, with atrocities committed by both sides. The Battle of Mingo Swamp, which occurred on 4 Feb 1863 just north of Puxico, was the bloodiest battle in Southeast Missouri. Family feuds between combatants continued for decades after the war.

1907 Timetable (St. Louis Mercantile Library).

Missouri railroad construction took off again in 1865, at war’s end, and became rampant in the Bootheel area, a region of productive timberlands used for railroad ties and barrel staves. In 1883, Louis Houck, a railroad entrepreneur, extended his Cape Girardeau Southwestern Railroad through the swamps from what is today the town of Advance to Puxico. The following year, Puxico was incorporated as a village. Its position in the center of the timber industry of T.J. Moss, a large tie contractor, made it an important railroad stop. By 1888, Moss, who had acquired 40,000 acres of Stoddard timberland, became the largest tie contractor in Missouri. In 1902 the Cape Girardeau Southwestern Railroad and other lines were sold to the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway Company (the “Frisco”). And then John William Summers arrived in Stoddard County with some Andrews half-siblings.

Frisco Station, Puxico, c1902.

By 1910, 20-year-old John Summers had a room in a Puxico boarding house, about five miles north of Asherville, where his half-brother Lewis Andrews was living. John had moved to Puxico after getting a job as a laborer with the Frisco Railroad.

Another person associated with the Frisco in 1910 was Cass B Crabtree, who was working as an express shipping manager, while living with his mother and father on a farm outside town. Not a Frisco employee, Cass used the railroad for his express deliveries. Born with the name “Cason Lee,” he took the name “Cass B,” for unknown reasons, and treated the “B” not an initial, but as his middle name. His signature was sometimes written with quotation marks around the “B” to show it was not an initial, and it was even entered on some official documents that way. According to family members, that caused no end of confusion to record keepers.

Signature on WW I draft registration.

John and Cass met, either due to their railroad connection or because Crabtree and Andrews family members were neighbors in the Asherville area. According to descendants, John was invited by Cass to have dinner with his family. And at that dinner, John Summers met Cass’s sister Verne Cumi Crabtree. You can guess what happened next.

Verne Cumi and John William Summers, 1911.

On 3 Feb 1911 Verne and John obtained a marriage license in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, and were married two days later in Asherville, which both had listed as their home. Verne’s brother, John Henry Crabtree, a farmer and Baptist minister, may have conducted the wedding. John Henry lived near the Andrews and officiated at many “Asherville” weddings, including those of his brothers Cass B on Crabtree 6 Aug 1911, the same year his sister Verne was married, Charles Dillard Crabtree, and George Franklin Crabtree. Actually John Henry’s home, a mile or two north of the tiny community, was used for at least some of his “Asherville” weddings.

John H. Crabtree lived near Asherville
and Lewis Andrews (Plat book, 1930).

Verne and John William lived only briefly as a married couple in Stoddard Co. By August of 1911 John was working as a Frisco station agent in Boynton, Arkansas. Quite a jump from laborer to agent. But that is a future chapter in our saga.