Journeying with Jacque

Ghost Town or “Little More than a Ghost Town”

Today, Plum Grove, Kansas is classified as a ghost town. It was never a really successful town but it tried…it even moved once in order to locate where the railroad would be built. Unfortunately, plans with the railroad did not work out; it bypassed Plum Grove. In the 1870’s many settlers moved west to homestead in Kansas. William and Richard Watkins traveled to Kansas from West Virginia as part of this movement. In fact, according to Genealogy Trails, “section 28 was settled by Robert G. DeYarman, Squire Smith, John H. Odor and William Watkins.” According to census records both William and Richard were farmers as well as carpenters. “All who came to Kansas were united by the most powerful of dreams: life on the American frontier (Jonusas p. 9).” And this was the beginning of the Watkins family in Kansas.

William and Richard’s father, Samuel Watkins (my 2nd great grandfather) died in 1874. At some point, my 2nd great grandmother, Susanna or Susan, decided to take the younger children to Kansas and join her two oldest sons. William, the oldest born in 1843, and the youngest son, my great grandfather John Calvin born in 1869, were 26 years apart in age. According to the story John Calvin told his children, they journeyed west when he was 12 years old which would have been in 1881.

John Calvin had a connection with Greenwood which is another ghost town. “The town of Greenwood is located where the Sac and Fox Agency used to be. It was here where Keokuk and the other Sac nation members were relocated after the Black Hawk War. When the Indians were removed it was determined to start a town. Judge G. B. Greenwood, of Arkansas, then United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs, assisted in making the treaty. The original settlers laid out the town and named it after Judge Greenwood. Two or three houses were built, but the town never prospered, but instead, passed rapidly out of existence (Greenwood Township).” Greenwood is where my great grandfather married my great grandmother, Lavina Clark, on June 22, 1895.

Soon, the family ventured a few miles south and settled in Potwin, Kansas where my grandfather, Donald Watkins was born. Potwin, while not technically a ghost town, is not exactly a thriving metropolis. (This town had more success than Plum Grove with the railroad; it became a station for the Missouri Pacific Railroad.) According to the 2020 census, the population of Potwin had a population of 415.

Years later, my grandfather Donald Watkins married my grandmother, Fannie Vandyke in another  “Little More than a Ghost Town,” Hoffman, Oklahoma. My grandparents married on April 23, 1926. In 1910, Hoffman had a population of 307 and in 2010 it had a population of 127.

My grandmother was no stranger to barely existing communities. She was born in the Strickler/Bugscuffle area. Strickler and Bugscuffle (spelled as one word for the road and cemetery and two words for the church which is adjacent to the cemetery) existed because of the Butterfield Overland Mail Route and are rural communities.

Not to be left out of living in a “Little More than a Ghost Town,” my mother, Geraldine “Jerrie” McLeod, lived for awhile in Aguanga, California which was also on the Butterfield Overland Mail Route. Aguanga is considered to be a census-designated place so it can’t claim status as a town; there’s no actual boundary and no government. People self identify as living in Aguanga. Originally it was a native American community for the Luiseno people who named the community “Awaanga” which means “dog place.” In the 1950 census it shows that my mother, her mother, and her brother lived in Beaumont, California. Some time after that, my mother and grandmother moved to Aguanga. In order to go to school my mother had to ride the bus to Hemet. While Hemet is only 22 miles away it would take about an hour on the bus. After the 10th grade, when they moved back to Beaumont, my mother dropped out of school.

I may have never lived in a ghost town, but there are some ghost stories about the Brown Mansion in Coffeyville, Kansas where I grew up:

“The Brown Mansion in Coffeyville, Kansas was built in 1904 for W.P. Brown, his wife, Nancy and their family. The Browns had a total of five children, but only their daughter Violet survived to adulthood. Two sons died at birth, their son William died from pneumonia at the age of 4, and Donald died in the house at the age of 11 from complications due to diabetes.

Violet inherited the mansion after her parents passed away. In 1970 she sold the mansion to the Coffeyville Historical Society for use as a museum. She moved to a nursing home and died in 1973. Some claim the mansion is haunted by her and a few other ghosts. Some visitors claim to have seen the ghost of Violet in the third floor ballroom, where in life she would enjoy dancing by herself. Other visitors have claimed to see Donald playing on the third floor. Visitors have also claimed to see the ghosts of Nancy and W.P. in the mansion, even smelling his pipe tobacco in the first floor dining room and library. The ghost of the family’s servant, Charlie, has been seen sitting in his basement bedroom and standing by the front door, as if awaiting visitors (Stories about Deaths in Houses).”

I visited several times but never experienced the hauntings of the mansion.

Sources

Aguanga, California Facts for Kids, https://kids.kiddle.co/Aguanga,_California.

Genealogy Trails History. “History of Butler County, Kansas.” Butler County, KS, http://genealogytrails.com/kan/butler/historyofbutler11.html.

“Greenwood Township, Franklin County, Kansas.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 6 Dec. 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwood_Township,_Franklin_County,_Kansas.

Jonusas, Susan. Hell’s Half-Acre: The Untold Story of the Benders, a Serial Killer Family on the American Frontier. Viking, 2022.

“Population in Aguanga, California (Community Demographics).” Dwellics, https://dwellics.com/california/community-in-aguanga.

“Potwin, Kansas Population 2022.” Potwin, Kansas Population 2022 (Demographics, Maps, Graphs), https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/potwin-ks-population#:~:text=Potwin%20is%20a%20city%20located%20in%20Butler%20County,which%20recorded%20a%20population%20of%20421%20in%202020.

Stories about Deaths in Houses. https://www.diedinhouse.com/stories.