Mary's great grandmother was Julia Yocum. Julia
was the grand daughter of Jesse Ray Yocum. Jesse Ray, some of his sons,
and some of his grandsons were suspected of being outlaws in Kentucky,
along the Natchez Trace and in the Neutral Strip in southwest Louisiana and
southeast Texas. Though several were hanged or shot by vigilante groups, none
were arrested, tried, and convicted by legal authorities. The family criminal
activities occurred over three generations from about 1800 to about 1878.
Descendents of Jesse Ray Yocum:
1 Jesse Ray Yoakum
b: 1760 in Betetourt, Virginia d: Abt. 1840 in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana
(Veteran of the American
Revolution)
(Tried several times for murder in
Natchitoches, suspected of bribing witnesses and jurors, never convicted)
.. +Diana How Denton b: 1767 in Virginia m: May 22, 1787 in Mercer County, Ky.
.... 2 Samuel N. Yocum
.... 2 Ellender Yocum b: Abt. 1787 in Kentucky
........ +James Martin b. 1774, North Carolina m: November 15, 1802 in
Wayne, Kentucky
.......... 3 George W Martin b: Abt. 1804 in Wayne, Kentucky d: Abt. 1861 in
Henderson, Rusk Co., Texas
.............. +Mary Ann Cowan b: Abt. 1804 in Maries Co., Missouri m: January
17, 1836 in Maries Co., Missouri
.......... *2nd Wife of George W Martin:
.............. +Mary Ann Vaughn b: 1800 in North Carolina m: October 11, 1840 in
Maries Co., Missouri
.......... 3 Alexander Martin b: Abt. 1806
.......... 3 Hannah Martin b: March 09, 1803
.......... 3 Mary Polly Martin b: 1810
.......... 3 William Martin b: 1812
.......... 3 Elizabeth Martin b: 1818
.......... 3 Mahala Martin b: 1820
.......... 3 Samuel Martin b: Bet. 1812 - 1820
.......... 3 Nancy Martin b: Bet. 1825 - 1826
.... 2 Matthias (Matthew) Yocum b: Abt. 1790 in Wayne County, Ky.
(Thought to have murdered Robert
Callier; killed attempting to murder Charles Chandler, 1820s)
.... 2 Polly Yocum b: Abt. 1792
........ +Unknown Devers
.......... 3 Tom Devers
.... *2nd Husband of Polly Yocum:
........ +Jeremiah Grey b: WFT Est. 1763-1792 m: January 01, 1808
.... 2 Thomas Denman Yocum b: 1796 in Kentucky d: September 19, 1841 in Spring
Creek, Montgomery Co., Texas
(Accused in
1830 of killing a male slave and kidnapping his family)
(Owner of Yocum's Inn on Pine Island
Bayou, 1830 - 1841)
(Shot by
"Regulators" in 1841)
........ +Pamela Peace m: January 09, 1814 in Opelousas, Louisiana
.......... 3 Christopher A. Yoakum b: in Louisiana d: January 15, 1842 in
Beaumont, Jefferson Co., Texas
.............. +J Dever m: in Louisiana (Lynched by
parties unknown)
.......... 3 Josephine Yoakum d: February 02, 1862
.............. +Unknown Sharp
.......... 3 Polly Yoakum
.............. +John Weigley
.......... 3 Annette Yoakum
.......... 3 Evelina E Yoakum b: 1815 d: June 24, 1886
.............. +Unknown Harper b: Abt. 1815
.......... *2nd Husband of Evelina E Yoakum:
.............. +James E. Cotton m: April 22, 1842
.......... 3 Sidney Lee Yoakum b: 1823 in Louisiana d: 1898
.............. +[1] John B. Williams
.......... *2nd Husband of Sidney Lee Yoakum:
.............. +[2] David M. Cole m: April 29, 1838
.......... 3 Caroline Yoakum b: 1827 in Louisiana d: March 01, 1862
.............. +John Choate
.......... *2nd Husband of Caroline Yoakum:
.............. +G. B. Haines
.......... 3 Jesse Yocum Yoakum b: 1828 d: December 22, 1842
.......... 3 Samuel Houston Yoakum b: 1838 in Texas
.... 2 John R Yocum b: Abt. 1800 in Kentucky d: Abt. 1825
........ +Elizabeth Trexler b: 1758
.... *2nd Wife of John R Yocum:
........ +Adelia Coleman
.... 2 Catherine Yocum b: March 24, 1802 in Kentucky d: December 1891 in
Montgomery Co., Texas Burial: January 01,
1892 Montgomery Co., Texas
........ +Jacob Montgomery Shannon m: 1823 in San Augustine, Texas
.... 2 Elizabeth Yocum b: March 24, 1802
........ +Hiram Peace
.... *2nd Husband of Elizabeth Yocum:
........ +Isaiah Lawrence
.... 2 Martha Yocum b: March 22, 1804 in Kentucky d: April 18, 1889 in Oak
Grove, Louisiana Burial: Rutherford Cemetery,
Oak Grove, Louisiana (Sheltered
nephew, Doc Addison, from "Regulators", 1878)
........ +James Callier (Member of the Yocum Gang; killed
with Matthias Yocum, 1820s)
.... *2nd Husband of Martha Yocum:
........ +John Rutherford
.... *3rd Husband of Martha Yocum:
........ +Zachariah Isaac Jones
.... 2 Jesse Rae Yocum b: Abt. 1810 in Neutral Zone, Louisiana-Texas d: October
28, 1886
........ +Martha Danewood b: 1827 in Tennessee m: Abt. 1842 in Mississippi
.......... 3 Francis Yocum b: 1843 in Louisiana
.......... 3 James H Yocum b: 1845 in Louisiana
.......... 3 Yuluna Yocum b: 1845 in Lousiana
.......... 3 Marion Yocum b: 1847 in Louisiana
.......... 3 Julia Yoakum b: 1848 in Louisisna d: Aft. 1900 in Cameron Parish,
Louisiana
.............. +Thomas Fresimon Fawvor, Jr b: September 20, 1853 in Cameron
Parish, Louisiana m: Bef. 1874 in Abbeyville,
Louisiana d: Aft. 1900 in Sabine Pass, Jefferson Co., Texas Burial: Sabine Pass,
Texas (Mary Esther Fawvor's great grandparents)
.......... 3 Zachariah Yocum b: 1849 in Louisiana d: July 25, 1878 in Louisiana (Lynched
by "Regulators" in southwest Louisiana, 1878)
.............. +Cornelia Unknown b: 1850 in Louisiana
.......... 3 Charles Yocum b: 1852 in Louisiana
.......... 3 Susan Yocum b: 1855 in Louisiana
.......... 3 Jesse Constance Yocum b: 1858 in Cameron Parish, Louisiana
.............. +Mary Admonia Young b: in Cameron Parish, Louisiana m: in Cameron
Parish, LA d: in Sabine Pass, Texas
.......... 3 Jane Yocum b: 1862 in Louisiana
.......... 3 John Yocum b: 1865 in Louisiana
.......... 3 Mathis Yocum b: 1869 in Louisiana
.... 2 Julia Ann Yocum b: June 09, 1810
........ +James Henry Addison
.......... 3 Doc Addison (Reputed to be a murderer in
Texas and to have killed four "Regulators" in southwest Louisiana in
1878.)
.... *2nd Husband of Julia Ann Yocum:
........ +Unknown McClelland
.... *3rd Husband of Julia Ann Yocum:
........ +Henry Paulin Welsh
The following
articles/stories relate to alleged illegal activities by members of the Yocum
family:
Handbook of Texas
Robert Bruce Blake
YOKUM GANG.
The Yokum Gang was a group of reputed thieves and murderers who operated in the Neutral Ground between Louisiana and Spanish Texas in the early 1820s. Susan Callier (Collier), daughter of Robert Callier, who settled east of San Augustine in 1822, favored as a suitor, Matthew Yokum, a member of the gang; but her father ordered Yokum never to return to the Callier home and persuaded his daughter to marry Charles Chandler. Susan's uncle, James Callier, married a Yokum sister and became a member of the gang. James Callier and Matthew Yokum then killed Robert Callier and started to San Augustine to murder Charles Chandler, but Chandler, aided by a slave who was killed in the encounter, killed both his assailants. Other members of the gang then murdered a Louisiana citizen and seized his African-American wife and mulatto children to sell as slaves in Texas, but David Renfro and his neighbors drove the gang out of the country and returned the woman and her children to Louisiana. The gang fled to Pine Island Bayou in the area of present Jefferson County and resumed their practices of robbery and murder until neighboring citizens hung
(shot) Thomas Yokum and dispersed the remainder of the group.
Reprinted from FRONTIER TIMES, January, 1978, p. 10ff; also note all sources in footnotes of Block, HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY, TEXAS, etc. p. 78. The best source is Seth Carey's memoirs, "Tale of a Texas Veteran," Galveston DAILY NEWS, Sept. 21, 1879, as reprinted in Block, EMERALD OF THE NECHES, pp. 158-163, at Lamar University and Tyrrell Libraries. Many other writings of recent vintage are pure fiction.
Stories about the old Goodnight and Chisholm Trails have so dominated the writings of Western Americana that even Texans have forgotten that their first great cattle drives ended up at New Orleans rather than Abilene or Dodge City, Kansas.
When the Spanish viceroy lifted a trade ban between Texas and Spanish Louisiana in 1778, a New Orleans-bound cattle drive of 2.000 steers, driven by Francisco Garcia, left San Antonio in 1779, the first drive of record along the unsung Opelousas Trail. By the mid-1850s, more than 40,000 Texas Longhorns were being driven annually across Louisiana, and no one welcomed the cattle drovers more enthusiastically than did Thomas Denman Yocum, Esq., of
Pine Island settlement in Southeast Texas.
The first Anglo rancher along the Opelousas Trail was James Taylor White, who by 1840 owned a herd of 10,000. In 1818 he settled at Turtle Bayou, near Anahuac in Spanish Texas, and he was a contemporary of Jean Lafitte, whose pirate stronghold was on neighboring Galveston Island. By 1840, White had driven many large herds over the lonely trail, and a decade later, had more than $150,000 in gold banked in New Orleans, the proceeds of his cattle sales.
By 1824 there were others from Stephen F. Austin's colony, between the Brazos and Colorado Rivers, who joined White in the long trail drives, and a favorite stopover was Yocum's Inn, where the welcome mat was always out and the grub was always tasty and hot.
Thomas Yocum settled on a Mexican land grant on Pine Island Bayou, the south boundary of the Big Thicket of Southeast Texas, around 1830. It was then a virgin, sparsely-settled region of prairies, pine barrens, and thickets, and any settler living within ten miles was considered a neighbor. The deep, navigable stream, 100 feet wide and 75 miles long, was a tributary of the Neches River and had already attracted ten or more pioneers who also held land grants from the Mexican government. Often they heard the pound of hoofs and bellowing of thirsty herds, bound for the cattle crossing over the Neches at Beaumont. There were more than thirty streams which intersected the trail and which had to be forded or swum in the course of travel. And always Yocum rode out at the first sound of the herds and invited the drovers to quench their thirst and satisfy their hunger at the Inn. (Yocum's
land was located west of Beaumont at Pine Island. Pine Island was two miles
north of the present community of Pine Island. The name of the community is now Westbury.)
Some people who stopped at the Inn were headed west. Sometimes they were new immigrants driving small herds into Texas. Some, like Arsene LeBleu, one of Jean Lafitte's former ship captains, were Louisiana cattle buyers carrying money belts filled with gold coins, and were en route to White's Ranch or elsewhere to buy cattle. The popularity of Yocum's Inn spread far and wide. Its genial host soon became the postmaster of Pine Island settlement under the old Texas Republic, supervised the local elections, served on juries, and was widely respected by his neighbors and travelers alike.
Yocum acquired much land and many slaves, and by 1839 his herd of l500 heads of cattle was the fourth largest in Jefferson County. While other settlers rode the wiry Creole, or mustang-size, ponies of a type common to Southwest Louisiana, Yocum's stable of thirty horses were stock of the finest American breeds, and his family drove about in an elegant carriage.
A gentleman's life , however, held no attraction for Squire Yocum, a man who literally was nursed almost from the cradle on murder and rapine, and for many years Yocum's Inn was actually a den of robbers and killers. What is the most startling is the fact that Yocum was able to camouflage his activities for more than a decade, maintaining an aura of respectability while simultaneously committing the worst of villainies, with a murderous band of cutthroats unequaled in the history of East Texas.
How Yocum could accomplish this since he used no alias, is unexplainable, for he, his brothers, his father, and his sons were known from Texas to Mississippi as killers , slave-stealers, and robbers. If any neighbor suspected that something at Yocum's Inn was amiss, he either feared for his life or was a member of the gang.
One account, written by Philip Paxton in 1853, observed that Yocum, "knowing the advantages of a good character at home, soon by his liberality, apparent good humor, and obliging disposition, succeeded in ingratiating himself with the few settlers."
Squire Yocum was born in Kentucky around 1796. As a fourteen-year-old, he cut his criminal eyeteeth with his father and brothers in the infamous John A. Murrell gang who robbed travelers along the Natchez Trace in western Mississippi. At first Murrell was reputed to be an Abolitionist who liberated slaves and channeled them along an "underground railroad" to freedom in the North. Actually, his gang kidnapped slaves, later selling them to the sugar cane planters of Louisiana.
Murrell soon graduated to pillage and murder, but slave-stealing remained a favorite activity of the Yocum brothers, and on one occasion two of them, while returning to Louisiana with stolen horses and slaves, were caught and hanged in East Texas.
When law enforcement in western Mississippi threatened to encircle them, the Yocums fled first to Bayou Plaquemine Brule, near Churchpoint, Louisiana, then in 1815 to the Neutral Strip of Louisiana, located between the Sabine and Calcasieu Rivers. Until 1821 the Strip knew no law enforcement and military occupation, and hence became a notorious robbers' roost for the outcasts of both Spanish Texas and the State of Louisiana.
In the Land Office Register of 1824, T. D. Yocum, his father, and two brothers were listed as claiming land grants in the Neutral Strip; and during the 1820s, according to the Colorado "Gazette and Advertiser" of Oct. 31, 1841, Yocum's father was tried several times for murder at Natchitoches, La., and bought acquittal on every occasion with hired witnesses and perjured testimony.
By 1824, Squire Yocum, once again feeling the pinch of civilization, had moved on to the Mexican District of Atascosita in Texas. He lived for awhile in the vicinity of Liberty on the Trinity River. Writing about him in 1830, Matthew White, the Liberty alcalde, notified Stephen F. Austin that Yocum was one of two men who allegedly had killed a male slave and kidnapped his family, and as a result "were driven across the Sabine and their houses burned." But Yocum was not about to remain so close to the hangman's noose and the fingertips of sheriffs and U. S. marshals. And he soon took his family and slaves to the Pine Island Bayou region where he built his infamous Inn. Having acquired some wealth and affluence by 1835, the old killer and slave stealer could become more selective with his victims.
Among the many travelers along the dusty Opelousas Trail, the eastbound cattleman often stayed at Yocum's Inn and left praising the owner's hospitality. And of course the genial proprietor always invited him to stop over on his return journey. It was the westbound Louisiana cattle buyer and the Texas rancher who had already delivered his herd in New Orleans whose lives were in danger. Usually drovers paid off and dismissed their hands in New Orleans. Texas cattlemen often traveled alone on the return trip, and if any of them lodged at Yocum's Inn, a bulging waist line, which usually denoted a fat money belt of gold coins, virtually signaled his demise. The drover's bones were left to bleach in the Big Thicket, at the bottom of the innkeeper's well, or in the alligator slough.
In East Texas, Squire Yocum's crimes spawned more legends, many of them about his buried loot, than any other man except Jean Lafitte. And every legend tells the story differently. One relates that a Texas rancher was backtracking a missing brother, who was overdue from a New Orleans cattle drive, and stopped at Yocum's Inn to make inquiries. A Yocum cohort informed the rancher that no one had seen the missing brother on his return trip; then suddenly the missing brother's dog rounded a corner of the Inn. Glancing elsewhere about the premises, the rancher recognized his brother's expensive saddle resting on a nearby fence. When the conversation became heated, Yocum's partner grabbed for a shotgun, but the rancher fired first and killed him. As told in the legend, Yocum overheard the conversation and accusations from a distance, and quickly fled into the Big Thicket.
Another legend tells of a foreigner who was carrying a grind organ and a monkey with him when he rode his big gray stallion to Yocum's Inn in search of a night's lodging. Earlier the stranger had played the hand organ for some children who lived nearby and who had given him directions to reach the Inn. The story adds that Yocum traded horses with the foreigner during his stay. When the children later found a battered hand organ abandoned beside the trail, there was little doubt about the foreigner's fate.
There are many early records, written at the time of Yocum's demise, which chronicle the innkeeper's death, but they sometimes conflict. The longest of them was written by Philip Paxton in 1853, and his account of how Yocum's misdeeds were exposed appears to be the most plausible. {{Indeed, his account is deadly accurate. See sources at end}} Paxton claimed that a man named (Seth) Carey, who owned a farm on Cedar Bayou near Houston, had killed a neighbor during a quarrel over a dog and fled to Yocum for asylum. It was agreed that Yocum would receive power of attorney to sell Carey's land grant and that Yocum would forward the proceeds of the sale to Carey in Louisiana. A gang member, however, told Carey that he had no chance of escaping to Lousiana. Yocum planned to pocket the proceeds of the sale and, besides, Carey had wandered upon some skeletons in a Pine Island thicket and thus had learned "too many and too dangerous secrets" about the murder ring at Yocum's Inn.
The earliest published account, which appeared in the San Augustine "Redlander" of Sept. 30, 1841, stated that Yocum was killed by the "Regulators of Jefferson County who were determined to expel from their county all persons of suspicious or bad character." The newspaper chided the vigilantes for killing Yocum and not allowing him the due process of law and a speedy trial. But the editor conceded that Yocum had a notorious record in Louisiana "as a Negro and horse stealer, repeatedly arrested for those crimes."
Three other accounts, however, two in the Houston papers of that era and another in the "Colorado Gazette and Advertiser," published at Matagorda, Texas, alleged that "Thomas Yocum, a notorious villain and murderer, who resided at the Pine Islands near the Neches River, has been killed by the citizens of Jasper and Liberty Counties . . . ."
"Yocum has lived in Texas twenty years and has committed as many murders to rob his victims. The people could bear him no longer so 150 citizens gathered and burned his premises and shot him. They have cleared his gang out of the neighborhood," thus putting an end to the Pine Island postmaster, his gang, and his Inn. Of course, only Yocum could reveal the true number of murder notches on his gun, which may have reached as many as fifty.
According to Paxton, the Regulators found the bones of victims in Yocum's well, in the neighboring thickets, in the "alligator slough," and even out on the prairie. They then burned Yocum's Inn, the stables and furniture, but allowed his wife, children, and slaves a few days to leave the county. The posse trailed the killers into the Big Thicket and eventually caught up with Yocum on Spring Creek in Montgomery County. No longer willing to trust a Yocum's fate to the whims of any jury, the vigilantes gave the old murderer thirty minutes to square his misdeeds with his Maker, and then they "shot him through the heart" five times.
Paxton also reported that "not one of Yocum's family had met with a natural death." Little is known of the fate of Yocum's sons other than Christopher, who in 1836 who had been mustered into Captain Franklin Hardin's company at Liberty, and who had served honorably and with distinction for one year in the Texas Army. Chris, whom many believed to be "the best of the Yocums," may not have been implicated in the murder ring at all, but he fled, leaving his young wife behind, perhaps because of the stigma that his surname carried and the public anger that was then rampant.
Believing that the public clamor for revenge had died down after a span of four months, Chris Yocum returned to Beaumont, Texas, one night in January 1842. Sheriff West, although he had no specific crimes to charge him with, was aware that a thirst for retribution still lingered and he arrested young Yocum for his own protection. Jefferson County's "Criminal Docket Book, 1839-1851" reveals that Chris was lodged in the county's log house jail on the afternoon of Jan. 15, 1842. What the book does not reveal is the fact that young Yocum faced Judge Lynch and an unsummoned jury of Regulators on the same night. The following morning West found him swinging from a limb of an oak tree on the courthouse lawn, with a ten-penny nail driven into the base of his skull.
During the second administration of Sam Houston as president of the Texas Republic, there were many excesses and assassinations, principally in Shelby County in East Texas, attributed to vigilante bands, who called themselves "Regulators." On Jan. 31, 1842, he issued a proclamation, ordering all district attorneys to prosecute the Regulators stringently for any offense committed by them. The proclamation began as follows: "Whereas . . . . certain individuals . . . have murdered one Thomas D. Yocum, burned his late residence and appurtenances, and driven his widow and children from their homes . . . ."
Whether or not President Houston's paper might have been worded somewhat differently if the chief executive had been forced to witness the bleached bones in Yocum's well or to bury some of the skeletons out on the prairie is, of course, another question.
Almost from the date of T. D. Yocum's death, legends began to circulate concerning the murderer's hoard of stolen treasure, because the vigilantes knew that neither the old robber nor any member of his family had had time to excavate it before they were driven from the county. Some of them thought that only Yocum and one of his slaves actually knew where the loot was hidden. Others claimed that Chris Yocum knew where the treasure site was, and that one of the reasons for his returning to Beaumont was to dig up the gold so that he and his young wife could start life anew somewhere under an assumed name. For years treasure hunters dug holes along the banks of Cotton and Byrd Creeks, and decades later sinks and mounds in the Pine Island vicinity were said to be the remains of those excavations.
Time passed, the Civil War was fought, and the Yocum episode became only a dim memory in the minds of the early settlers. Finally it was an elderly black woman in Beaumont who triggered the second search for Yocum's gold. She told her grandchildren that about 1840 she was a young slave girl who belonged to the owner of a plantation in the vicinity of Yocum's Inn. One day whe was picking blackberries when she heard voices nearby. She moved ahead along the banks of a creek until she finally spotted Yocum and one of his young slaves at a low spot or crevice in the creek bank. Both of them were busy backfilling a hole in the ground.
As a result of the old lady's story, another network of pot holes were dug up and down the banks of Byrd and Cotton Creeks. And once or twice a stranger appeared who claimed to have a map drawn by an old Nagro who said he was formerly Yocum's slave. But if anyone ever found the treasure, that fact was never made public, and one writer claims it is still there awaiting the shovel that strikes it first. Maybe so, but gold hunters usually don't print their findings in newspapers. And they, like buccaneers, ain't especially noted for their wagging tongues either.
http://www.wtblock.com/wtblockjr/ SETH CAREY'S ESCAPE FROM THE MURDEROUS YOCUM GANG
By W. T. Block
Reprinted from "Escape From Murderous Yocum Gang Recalled," Beaumont Enterprise, December 25, 1977.
The principal source of Seth Carey's life was his own memoirs, titled "A Tale of A Texas Veteran," published in Galveston Daily News of Sept. 21, 1879, which is reprinted verbatim in W. T. Block, "Emerald of The Neches: The Chronicles of Beaumont, Texas etc.," pp. 158-163 at Tyrrell Historical Library. From about 1845 until 1880, Seth Carey and his wife farmed, and raised livestock near the mouth of Cedar Bayou in Harris Co. In 1859 he was also running a 20 hp. circular sawmill there, that cut 5,400 cedar and cypress logs into 1,878,000 feet of lumber, worth $28,000. See 1860 Harris Co. Sched. V, Products of Industry - on microfilm.
Parts of this story will coincide with another named "Yocum's Inn: The Devil's Own Lodging House." However, Seth Carey's encounter with the Yocum murderers is so unique a tale of frontier violence that it deserves retelling as a separate story. The main source is Carey's own long memoirs in the Galveston Daily News of Sept. 21, 1879.
If old Seth Carey looked back on any portion of his life with something less than nostalgic feeling, it was during the year 1841 when he fell into the clutches of the notorious Thomas D. Yocum gang of Pine Island, Jefferson County, Texas.
Just another fly caught up in Yocum's web of murder and intrigue, Carey not only survived his slated assassination and dismemberment in Yocum's alligator slough, but he lived instead to finger the gang and account for its destruction. It was an episode, however, that he was always reluctant to discuss and one that "cost him in one way or another at least $5,000."
When Carey told his life story to a newspaperman in 1879, he was already in the 73rd year of his life, silver-haired and partially bald. Small of stature, he had already lived most of his life as a farmer and livestock herdsman near Cedar Bayou in Harris County. His looks and gentle demeanor would wholly camouflage the fact that he had once killed a man and had participated in some of the most violent moments in the history of early-day Texas.
Born in Vermont in 1806, Capt. Carey had migrated at an early age to Boston, and later to New Orleans, where for several months he was employed as a laborer on the waterfront. It was early October of 1835 that the first news from the Mexican province of Texas heralded the impending revolt against the Mexican oppressor and begged for volunteers and supplies sufficient to guarantee its success.
Everywhere in the saloons and coffee houses, there were speakers and solicitors for the Texas cause, and when Captain William G. Cooke approached Carey about joining the Texas-bound "New Orleans Grays," the young New Englander enlisted.
The "Grays" traveled first by steamboat to Natchitoches, La., overland from there to Pendleton Ferry on the Sabine River, and thence to Nacogdoches, Texas, where they were royally welcomed. At Nacogdoches, the citizens outfitted them with muskets, ammunition, and Bowie knives before the "Grays" departed en route to San Antonio. Upon nearing that Mexican stronghold, they then joined the main force of Col. Ben Milam's command, and on Dec. 7, 1835, helped storm the citadel known as the Alamo and wrest it from Mexican control. When Gen. Perfecto de Cos surrendered the city, and later he and his army were allowed to retreat toward the Rio Grande River, the Texans hailed the success of their revolution and considered it as already ended. Unknown to them at that moment, Mexican Generals Santa Ana and Urrea were advancing on the Rio Grande with a large army of the enemy.
The "Grays" were then transferred to Col. James Fannin's command at Goliad, and except for a quirk of fate, Carey's bones, because of the Goliad Massacre, might have been left to bleach on the prairie there as were those of most of his comrades in the "Grays." But before leaving New Orleans, he and a friend named Moser had shipped a trunk via schooner to Brazoria, Texas, and they were granted furloughs to go there and recover it.
While en route, Carey was stricken with the first attack of a recurring malady, probably malarial fever, that for the next three years was to leave him often upon the threshold of death, and Moser left him to recuperate at the log cabin of a Captain Hatch. In the meantime, the Alamo and Goliad fell to the Mexican armies, and after his initial recovery, Carey and Hatch rode on horseback to Harrisburg, seeking the main body of the Texas troops. After joining General Sam Houston's army, he suffered a relapse of fever, and was placed aboard the wagon of a refugee fleeing in the Runaway Scrape toward Louisiana.
At Beaumont, Carey was left in the custody of an old ferryman named Joel Lewis, who sooned nursed him back to health. Later, when a small company was mustered at Beaumont for Indian service on the western frontier, he enlisted again, but upon reaching Lynchburg the malady struck him for the third and last time. For most of the next eighteen months he remained bedfast and a virtual invalid, at first in the care of Dr. Harvey Whiting, and later on Cedar Bayou at the residence of an old man named Benjamin Page, whom Carey had known before he left Boston.
By the time he recovered from his last and worst attack of malaria, he had been in the Page home for fourteen months and had become an adopted member of the family. Page had already exacted a promise from Carey that the latter would marry the old man's only child, a 13-year-old daughter, when she reached her sixteenth birthday. That union would bring to him the title of Page's league of 4,428 acres received from the Mexican government. But shortly after his recovery, Carey took complete possession of the place anyway, tending its cattle herds and supervising the cotton fields, because Page had grown too infirm and feeble to do so himself.
Carey received a 640-acre bounty grant from the Republic of Texas and a 1,200-acre land certificate from his county's Board of Land Commissioners, which he soon located on unclaimed public domain adjacent to Cedar Bayou. And in 1838, he acquired valuable business property near the waterfront in Galveston. By 1840, he had channeled about $4,000 of his own wealth into improvements on the Page place, knowing that the title to the league of land would soon be his.
By 1839, Carey's troubles with a neighbor named Whitney Brittain had already begun. The initial outburst resulted from a quarrel over a dog, but long before and without his knowledge, he had already become the victim of Britton's intense jealousy, hate, and violent temper.
Originally, Brittain had accompanied the Page family from Boston to Texas, built his cabin on neighboring property, and enjoyed the same position in the Page household that Carey would later assume. And as Carey's stature in Page's affections increased, Brittain's resentment and hate mounted in like proportion until he used every means short of murder to vent his spite.
Soon transferring his enmity entirely from Page to Carey, Brittain, so the old veteran noted, "shot his cattle, girdled his peach trees, turned over his windmill, injured his cart, and threatened and annoyed him in every way." On one occasion Brittain chased him with a cow whip at a time when he was unarmed and unable to resist. He added that he would have killed Brittain then and there if he had had any weapon, but he had neither owned nor carried a gun since his days in the Texas Army. Many neighbors, including the former Col. Moseley Baker, told Carey that Brittain had insulted him publicly in the town of Lynchburg and even threatened to kill Carey. Brittain warned that such indignities would end only when Carey acquired a will to resist. In desperation, Carey went to Houston and bought a gun, and even the justice of the peace assured Carey that if Brittain's death occurred at his hand, the killing could amount to no more than a justifiable homicide.
Early in 1841, Carey accompanied Dr. Whiting to the home of a Col. Turner to deliver some medicine. On the way, the doctor admonished him that Brittain needed no additional pretext for murder than to find Carey carrying a pistol. They arrived at Turner's place just as the colonel, in company with Brittain, rode up at the gate. The latter immediately launched "a tirade of abuse and threats against Carey," who in turn drew his gun, killing Brittain instantly.
The latter's death produced no tears in the Lynchburg vicinity, and a magistrate, to whom Carey had surrendered, scoffed at any thought of an arrest or trial, adding that the defendant had been provoked beyond human endurance and had rid the county of a violent and troublesome man. But within days, the same voices that had condoned the action before the event soon warned that public indignation over the killing was rising rapidly. Some suggested that Carey should abandon the country permanently, and a few offered to buy his property at a paltry fraction of its actual worth.
The warnings notwithstanding, Carey decided to give himself up for trial in Houston, and while on his way there, he stopped at Nimrod Hunt's place on Buffalo Bayou. Hunt offered to go to Houston and ascertain the true temper of the people, and after his return, he warned that the only justice that Carey could expect would be the lower end of Judge Lynch's rope. With a power-of-attorney received from Carey, Hunt went to Galveston to raise cash on the defendant's property there. And later, Hunt gave $100 in Texas currency (worth only $25 U. S.) to the fugitive, although Hunt had raised $300 in gold coin for the property.
Earlier, Hunt had told Carey of a place on Pine Island Bayou called Yocum's Inn. Located on the old Opelousas cattle trail northwest of Beaumont, it was a hideaway where on outlaw might purchase asylum for a price. In desperation, Carey gathered up what cash and valuables he had, along with his gun and a gold watch, and in the middle of the night, he saddled a mule and started eastward toward the Neches River. Finally, he arrived at the Beaumont cabin of David Cole, who was married to Yocum's daughter, Sydna Lou, and Cole agreed to accompany Carey to his father-in-law's estate.
The trail from Beaumont led through some of the prettiest pine and hardwood forests in North America. Blackberry vines and dogwoods were in full blossom, and here and there a raucous bluejay or redbird flitted through the branches. After a few hours' ride, the pair arrived at a large log house, nestled within the shadowy perimeter of a pine barren. A painted board across the front bore the crude notation "Pine Island Post Office." Nearby was a long barn, built of rough hewn logs, which also served as one side of a rail-fenced corral and a couple of slave cabins. As they approached, the bearded, old Tom Yocum could be seen in the doorway, conversing in an undertone with a stranger, whom Carey recognized immediately as William H. Irion. Irion's exact connection with the Yocum gang has never been firmly established. Perhaps he was deeply implicated; if not, he was at least an esteemed friend of Yocum's, one who was fully conscious, as he later admitted, of the murderous activities which were being conducted on the premises.
Carey had met Irion the first time at Joel Lewis' ferry near Beaumont during the Runaway Scrape of 1836, and afterward had encountered Irion on two or three occasions in Houston. Despite the latter's association with Yocum, Irion was a respected Beaumonter in the early days. In 1838, Beaumont's proprietors had contracted with him to build a steam sawmill, which never materialized, on the townsite's "Steam Mill Square." When Irion died almost simultaneously with Yocum in September 1841, the Houston "Telegraph and Texas Register" quickly heralded both deaths as resulting from vigilante violence (which was a falsehood) directed at the gang of murderers. But Rep. George A. Pattillo of Jefferson County, upon arriving at Houston the following month, declared that Irion's death at Beaumont had stemmed from natural causes, whereas Yocum had been lynched in another county.
Carey found old Yocum to be a genial host, somewhat talkative about the political affairs of the day, and he soon paid the innkeeper for a month's lodging. He was assigned to a bunk in the large , single-room attic of the log house. On several occasions, he shared his quarters with the dusty cattle drovers who stopped by for a place to sleep and a piping-hot meal, served by an elderly black woman.
Once a week, the mail rider passed through, traveling west, and Carey was pleased that he could communicate with the Page family if the occasion to do so arose. And perhaps with luck and the passage of time, the public indignation over Brittain's killing might subside and he might even return to Cedar Bayou.
Carey told Yocum the full extent of his troubles with the law and was assured of concealment from it. But the old robber baron warned him to avoid any movements far from the house or trips to Beaumont, where he might be recognized. And especially, he was not to mail any communication to Page which might fall into the hands of the Harris County sheriff. Yocum introduced to Carey a young man. named Jeremiah "Bud" McClusky, whom, he said, was his most trusted employee and who would gladly ride to Cedar Bayou for him if such a trip were required.
During the next two months, McClusky made three trips to the Page home, carrying letters from Carey, but on his return, he always reported that Page was too sick to write, and had forwarded no message, and the clamor for Carey's arrest and conviction had not subsided. Later, Carey learned that the Pages had always sent him money, clothing, and letters, but none of the items they sent were ever given to him by McClusky.
Irion came to Yocum's Inn once or twice each week, and Yocum assured the fugitive that neither McClusky nor Irion would ever betray him. Carey wandered at first only as far as the corral to tend his mule, but as time passed, he occasionally went for short strolls in the nearby forest. Sometimes he chatted with some of Yocum's slaves, one of whom was a 19-year-old Mulatto named Job, a stock-minder, whose mother had been Yocum's cook since long before his birth.
Once, when Carey heard cattle lowing, Job took him down a wooded trail to the stock pens, where a number of steers had just been sold to a cattle drover and would soon begin the long trek to New Orleans. There he met a red-haired stock-keeper, Ezekial Higdon, who oversaw Yocum's large herd of cattle and horses and lived in a rude cabin nearby with his wife. Higdon also enjoyed a wide reputation in the area as a "broncobuster" and horse racer.
Yocum's two older sons were usually gone and reputedly spent much of their time in Beaumont, where one of them, Chris, lived with his young bride. Two smaller children often played about the yard, but Yocum's wife was rarely seen outside of the house except when she rode her elegant carriage to Beaumont. A couple of men, "Boozer" and "Wes," were introduced to Carey as being among Yocum's most trusted employees, but no surnames were mentioned, a rather common occurrence on a frontier where outlaws abounded.
The more sinister aspects of Yocum's Inn, however, were transmitted to Carey by the young slave, after the former had gained Job's confidence. Nearly all of the tales, among them Yocum's earlier association with the notorious John A. Murrell gang of robbers along the Natchez Trace and Yocum's horse and slave-stealing escapades in the Neutral Strip, had been passed along to Job by his mother.
A few decades earlier, before Yocum had fled from law enforcement in Mississippi, it was said that an aged veteran of the American Revolution had lived with him, having deeded to Yocum all of his bounty lands in exchange for care, board, and lodging until his death. The old soldier imbibed quite freely, however, and often "slept off the fumes" on a pallet in front of the fire place. One day when the old man was drunk and Yocum was molding musket balls from molten lead, the innkeeper stuck a small funnel into the old man's ear and filled his head with boiling lead, which brought on instantaneous death.
Other tales recounted by the young slave mentioned the thoroughbred horses in Yocum's stable, whose owners, usually cattlemen returning from New Orleans with fat money belts, had ridden them to the Inn in search of food and a night's lodging. The next day, the horses were seen running loose in the corral or pasture, but the owners were never seen again. And a gray mare with two white stocking feet, which Carey had seen in the stock pens, certainly answered the description of a missing Liberty County cattleman. On one occasion, Job said that he had seen two huge alligators in Yocum's slough devouring the body of a man, and elsewhere, the bones of other victims were reported as scattered about the nearby thickets.
After a few weeks, Carey despaired of ever returning to Cedar Bayou, and decided to sell his property to Yocum, if an agreement could be reached. He would then escape to Louisiana, and Yocum readily agreed, offering to compensate the fugitive partly in gold, partly in slaves, and the remainder to be several heads of horses. But first, Yocum told him, he would have to see the Cedar Bayou property himself, and determine if the title were clear and transferable. Carey then executed a power-of-attorney so Page could transfer the property, and as the innkeeper prepared to ride westward, he warned the fugitive again to remain close to the attic and not show his face outside if strangers appeared at the Inn.
After Yocum left, Carey decided to walk through the woods to the stock pens where Higdon lived, and along the way he ran into W. H. Irion, whom Carey tended to trust because of their previous acquaintance. He told Irion the complete story of the Brittain killing, his agreement to sell Yocum his property and his plan to flee to Louisiana. Irion feigned great astonishment, but with a selfsame frankness, he told Carey that more than likely the latter would be murdered as soon as Yocum returned. Irion then recounted a few of the murder episodes that had transpired at the Inn, and readily admitted his own involvement in some of McClusky's and Yocum's machinations, which had ended short of murder.
Carey asked Irion to ride hurriedly to Cedar Bayou with a letter for Benjamin Page in order to try to stop the transfer of Carey's property before it was too late. Irion replied that he couldn't because he had no money for the trip, but that Carey should not worry -- that Irion would not stand by and permit Yocum to kill him. Carey, however, pressed his desire, offering Irion his expensive pistol and gold watch to finance the trip, and the latter finally agreed. Carey then penned a brief note to Page, and Irion rode away with the gun, watch, and letter, exclaiming as he dug in his spurs, "I'll defeat old Yocum this time, damn 'im!"
Instead, the scheming Irion rode straight to Yocum's house and gave the letter to the innkeeper's wife. Then he left for Beaumont to sell the watch and pistol and pocket the proceeds. As of that moment, Carey felt that he could no longer wager his life by spending another night in the attic of Yocum's Inn. While the innkeeper was away, he would slip out of the house each day after dark and spend his nights hidden away in the hayloft of the barn. The next Saturday, the same day that Yocum returned, Carey left at daylight for Zeke Higdon's cabin, only to learn that the stock-keeper and his wife planned to spend the day grinding corn at Yocum's mill. Carey later hid out in the woods near the trail, and as sunset approached, he saw the Higdons returning with a cartload of corn meal.
As the fugitive pondered his plight, he considered for the first time the feasibility of returning to Harris County and face the legal music there rather than fleeing to Louisiana without any money. Beset with fright and unaware that Yocum had already returned, Carey began pleading for Higdon to help him in his flight, adding that he already knew a plot to murder him existed. At first Higdon scoffed at the idea, but later, as they approached the latter's cabin, Higdon grew strangely silent and appeared depressed. Later he asked Carey to remain outside while he and his wife discussed a matter of importance in the privacy of their home. While Carey waited, their muffled but upraised voices were sometimes audible through the log crevices, but always their subject of conversation remained a mystery. Finally Mrs. Higdon opened the door and invited Carey inside.
At a glance he could tell that Higdon had been crying. For a second time, Carey inquired about the cause of Higdon's depression, but received no answer, the latter only turning and staring blankly at the wall. At last his wife intervened, "Come on out with it, Zeke! It's Carey's life that's at stake so tell him!"
Higdon commenced in a slow and unsteady voice, remarking first that Yocum was already back from Cedar Bayou with the title to Carey's property, but for payment the old robber planned to substitute murder for the gold, slaves, and horses he had originally promised.
"My life and yours are both at stake if I back down, Carey," he said, "but I ain't no Judas hunting thirty pieces of silver. Yocum made me promise to take you tomorrow morning to a swamp, about seven miles from here, under the pretense of hunting the mule you have running loose. He, his son Chris, and Bud McClusky will be waiting there. If I do not choose to see you murdered, I am to pretend to see a deer and ride away, while they kill you and throw you into the slough with the alligators. My payment for playing Judas is to be your mule, a gun worth about $100, and a good race horse."
Relieved that he had finally found some one he could trust, Carey proffered a solution that he thought might get Higdon temporarily off the hook. Unknown to either Yocum or Higdon, Carey's mule was in the nearby woods, hobbled and grazing, for he long foreseen the possible need for a quick getaway. And about four miles south of stock pens, there lived an old farmer, named E. C. Harris, who raised and cured tobacco, and Carey had already visited him on two occasions to buy the fuel for his habit.
"Early in the morning," Carey suggested, "tell Yocum that I left before daylight to buy smokes at old Harris' place, but will be back by 10 o'clock, and we'll go looking for the mule then. He'll believe that 'cause he knows I'm a slave to tobacco. I'll leave my coat and knife at your place and that oughta convince him that I'll be back."
" Where are you going?" Higdon inquired.
"I guess back to Cedar Bayou and face up to the law. There's plenty witnesses for my defense and maybe I can get a fair trial."
He then shook hands with Higdon and retreated to the woods to find his mule, fully-prepared to rise before daylight and follow the westbound sun toward Cedar Bayou. Along the way he planned to stop off at the residence of a certain Liberty County rancher and tell him where he could find his missing brother's mare with the stocking feet.
As directed, Higdon also rose early the next day, and he and his wife rode through the woods to Yocum's Inn. Old Yocum, his son Chris, and Bud McClusky, each of them heavily armed, stood by the rail fence of the corral as they talked. When Higdon drove up, Yocum demanded in an upraised voice, "Where's Carey, and when are you two heading for the thicket?"
"In two or three hours. Carey left early to go to old Harris' place for smokes, but he'll be back by ten."
"You didn't follow my order!" old Yocum retorted.
"Don't fret over it!" Higdon replied, noting the old killer's piercing eyes and stern facial expression." Carey'll be back soon, and your plan will still carry through. Why, he even left his coat and knife at my place, and you know he wouldn't leave without those. Ask my wife if you don't believe me!"
Old Yocum then glanced at the young woman and seemed convinced after her affirmative nod. "Never mind!" he answered, "I'll change the plan, but you shore cheated yourself out of a fine mule, a gun, and a fast stallion."
He then turned to his son, Chris, and Bud McClusky and directed them to hide out along the trail south of the stock pens. When they sighted Carey, they were to shoot him immediately and haul the body away to the alligator slough. After Zeke and Tabitha Higdon returned to their cabin, they hastily loaded their sparse possessions on the mule cart and lit out toward the west, avoiding the south trail where the killers would be hidden.
In the meantime, Carey arrived in Liberty County and told the rancher about the murder outpost on Pine Island Bayou, spicing his story in places with details about the alligator slough and the skeletons that lay scattered throughout the thickets. And as he rode on, the cattleman began rounding up a posse of friends, a band of vigilantes that eventually would reach 150 men in size. After arriving at the Page residence on Cedar Bayou, Carey surrendered to Judge Moreland, who bound him over, on a $500 bond signed by Page and Dr. Whiting, to the next session of the district court. And later, after a dozen witnesses appeared in his defense, he won a rather easy acquittal based on his justifiable homicide plea.
After the trial, he hurried back to Beaumont and having located Zeke Higdon, who accompanied him back as a witness, Carey appeared before Sheriff Robert West to state his complaint against Yocum and seek the return of his swindled property. But he soon learned that the infamous inn and its outbuildings had already been burned by the 150-man posse of Regulators, led by the Liberty County rancher.
Forewarned in some manner, Yocum's gang of cutthroats had scattered in all directions, and his wife, children, and slaves had been driven from Jefferson County. Some days later, after the old murderer had been tracked to the cabin of a relative on Spring Creek in Montgomery County, the posse dispatched old Yocum to the lower regions with five bullets through the heart.
Bud McClusky escaped to the Neches River bottomlands, and when last reported, he was recognized as he rode across Calcasieu Parish, La., on horseback. And a few weeks later, Chris Yocum was found hanging one morning from an oak limb on the courthouse lawn in Beaumont. As an added token of affection, his vigilante executioners had driven a 10-penny nail into the base of his skull. While lynch justice was usually regrettable and always illegal, somehow it seemed a fitting end for the murderous villains who had brought so much grief to so many trusting patrons.
Frontier intrigue and derring-do passed from Seth Carey's life after 1841. As he had promised old Page, Carey married the daughter on her sixteenth birthday, and later the couple reared a large family on Cedar Bayou. Except for a couple short periods of residence elsewhere, he spent his surviving years tending to his cattle herds and cotton fields on the bayou, and running his sawmill. Long a prosperous farmer, Seth Carey died, nearing his eightieth birthday, still delighted that Providence had seen fit to deliver him from the clutches of the infamous Yocum gang of assassins on Pine Island Bayou.
A true story written by James Henry Fawvor, Sr. (Mid 1960s)
Back in 1876, Cameron Parish was a part of Calcasieu Parish. There was no Cameron Parish at that time and it was a "Bad Man's Land." At that time there were no officers and courthouses and it was a wide open country. The cattle were not fenced up and there were worlds of cattle that would roam from the Mermentau to the Calcasieu River,
There were some pretty bad young men down here. When they wanted meat to eat, they would go out and choose the fattest cow they could find. It wouldn't make any difference who the cow belonged to. They would butcher the cow, cut the meat up in strings about one inch square, salt it, hang it on a line to dry, and it was called "tasso". The old bad men of the country got up a mob with Will Griffith as Captain. Will Griffith was afraid of Ralph Stewart, his stepson. He was living with Ralph Stewart's mother at the time. He got up the mob to murder him, and at that time Will Griffith and Mrs. Stewart had ten children in their family, Other members of the mob were Vilyar Theriot, Charles Theriot, Nicholai Broussardy Sosthene Richard, and Prank Pleasant. They got men from all parts of southwest Louisiana. There was supposed to be about 500 of them. They got up for the purpose to regulate the country but it was done more to murder these two young men and they did murder them in cold blood and that is how they came to be called Regulators. They didn't wear masks. When they wanted to take a man in charge, they would send strange men to keep themselves from being known.
They went to Ralph Stewart's house and got him, but he happened to be pretty much of a man and twisted loose from them. As he ran, they shot him. Will Griffith walked up to him, after he was down and shot him in the top of the head. That happened near Oak Grove. Then they went on down out this side of Cameron at a little thickly settled place that was called Tassoville and captured Zack Yokum. At the time they went in to capture him, he tried to tear pieces of cloth out of his wife's dress to use for wads to load his gun. One of his brothers, Charley Yokum, climbed up an old mud chimney and the Regulators told him to come down they weren't going to hurt him. They took Zack Yokum across to the front ridge and hung him in a hackberry tree on Willow Island. while Zack Yokum was hanging to the tree, Frank Pleasant jumped on him and spurred him while he was choking and dying.
Zack Yokum had a cousin from Texas who was named Doc Addison who had killed two men in Texas and was down here hiding from the law. The Regulators decided to take him. The reason they wanted him was because he was living with Will Griffith's oldest daughter, Sis Griffith. They came to his place about 2:00 o'clock in the morning and hollered to him to get up and make coffee. He hollered back and told then it was too early for coffee. He was at the home of Old Aunt Martha Yokum, the wife of John Rutherford, who had a good picket fence around her house. He had the gates fastened and the Regulators could get in and they began pulling the pickets off of the fence. Doc Addison happened to be well prepared for them. He had two muzzle loaded shot guns, The widow of Ralph Stewart's was there and she would load one gun while he shot the other one. He threw two loads of buckshot into them and he had to wait a little while for the woman to load the other gun. He couldn't afford to use both guns at the same time. By the
time he got the other gun loaded, then he looked to try to find where they were. They must have found somewhere else to get coffee.
The next morning there was four of them laying dead and three others wounded and they sent a friendly man to ask them if they could come and haul them off and they told them to go back and tell them that they could come and get them because he would like to have left them laying there and let the buzzards eat them, but since they would stink, they could haul them off, and if they would come back the following morning before daylight to get coffee that he would have the coffee ready and plenty of buckshot to sweeten it.
Doc Addison left his address with the Yokums and anybody who wanted to have his address. He went back to Yokum, Texas, where he was from and he told them that if they got up another mob down here, he would come back and take care of them.
Ralph Stewart was shot and Zack Yokum was hung because they were wild young men going to dances, fighting, cutting up, and drinking whisky. There were no officers in Bad Man's land at that time. The officers would come down from Lake Charles to get them and they would get on their beautiful horses and leave out and wave to the officers to come on out to the country.
My old Daddy, Tom Fawvor, shot off a derringer pistol and they captured him and they tied him with his hands behind him and he saw who the ones were from down here in this Bad Man's Land and that is why I know exactly who were the ones in the Regulators from here.
Old Captain Manuel Sturlese joined the Regulators with the intention of begging and pleading for them not to hurt anyone. With all the begging and pleading Mr, Manuel did, they decided to turn my daddy loose.
Any time that a bunch of young men get up a mob to do bodily harm to anyone, they are nothing but a bunch of cowards. If Ralph Stewart or Zack Yokum would have had a firecracker to light and throw amongst the Regulators, that would have been the last they would have seen of them.
My mother was Julia Yokum, a sister to Zack Yokum and first cousin to Doc Addison, and she was named after her Aunt Julia Yokum, a sister to Jess Yokum and Doc Addison's mother. Doc Addison's father's name was James Henry Addison and my Uncle James Yokum was named after James Henry Addison. I was named after my Uncle James Henry
Yokum.
