Volume 9, Number 8 - Summer 1987
HISTORICAL LEGACY
By Pauline Layton Barton
The annual Layton Reunion, with about 70 members present, was held on June 27, 1987, at Jack and Tommy’s Clubhouse located at Highway 65 and 165 south of Hollister, Missouri. It was fitting that the reunion was held at this site since John Layton, my great grandfather, had homesteaded this land which included the land where The School of the Ozarks College is located. He is buried near the Cedar Springs school site, less than a mile east of the reunion location.
A week later at Taney County’s Fourth of July Sesquicentennial Celebration (hosted by the historical committee of the White River Historical Society~ Ben Clemons, age 101 of Forsyth, and Ollie Layton, age 84 of Branson, representing Taney County pioneer families reigned as King and Queen over the festivities.
Almost from Taney County’s beginning the fabric of the Layton family is woven into its history. There were Laytons in Taney County in the 1840’s. While the modern computer prints out pages of Layton history going back to pre-Revolutionary War days with the Laytons, Fosters, and Mitchells coming into Virginia from England and Scotland, the move to Taney County really started when two Layton brothers married two daughters of John and Susannah Mitchell Foster. John Layton married Susannah Foster, December 27, 1810, in Spotsylvania County near Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Charles married Sarah Foster at the same place August 2, 1813. Their children were all born and educated in Virginia. These two brothers with their families, slaves, and other possessions moved to the plains of Springfield, Missouri, about 1840. Two of John and Susannah’s sons, Dr. Augustus Layton, a medical doctor and businessman, and John Mitchell Layton were in Taney County in the 1840’s.
It has been said that Dr. Augustus Layton brought the first cookstove to Taney County. In a 1914 interview in the book STORIES OF THE PIONEERS, by E.J. and L.S. Hoenshel, early settler, Ann Jennings Wyatt, states about Taney County, "We all had log houses and fireplaces. I recollect the first cookstove I ever saw. It was a Charter Oak. Dr. Layton got it for his wife, and father sent for one soon afterwards."
In the appendix of Elmo Ingenthron’s book, LAND OF THE TANEY, the following Laytons are listed as officeholders: John Layton held the dual office of sheriff and tax collector from 1848 to 1850; Albert S. Layton was coroner from 1878 until 1880; Thomas Foster Layton was clerk from 1874 until 1886.
Kirbyville as we know it today was called Layton with the postmaster being Austin S. Layton who served from December 11, 1860, to November 20, 1863, when the postoffice was discontinued during the Civil War. Today some have letters with the Layton postmark. From January 21, 1888, until September 24, 1889, there was a Layton Mill post office located on the Springfield Harrison Road near Murder Rock, now Highway JJ. After that the mail was sent to Kirbyville. Miss Edna Layton opened a subscription school at Kirbyville in 1981. This was a school in which parents paid a $1 or $2 per child per month.
The most entrepreneurial Layton in Taney County to date would be Thomas Foster Layton whose nearly perfect Abraham Lincoln-like penmanship remains on many records, business books and ledgers. A letter Thomas Foster Layton wrote on November 13, 1849, from the gold fields of California was published in the
1980 Fall WHITE RIVER HISTORICAL SOCIETY QUARTERLY on pages 16 and 17. Thomas Foster Layton was in charge of two cattle drives with about 1500 cattle in each. One of these drives to California was in 1549 and the other in 1854. He planned to settle down with his wife, Julia Ann Foster Layton, and his children, and run his cabinetmaking shop, but the Civil War intervened. Layton was with General Price and went through the battles of Wilson Creek and Pea Ridge.
After the war, he homesteaded land near Hollister that is still held in the Layton family. He built a Jeffersonian-like mansion with pillared verandas, grand loft, carvings, and satin polished woodwork. He sawed the choice oak and pine at the nearby Layton Mill. The furniture came from Chicago. I have heard that a few pieces are in The School of the Ozark’s Ralph Foster Museum. While some parts were saved, the one hundred year old mansion was replaced by a modern home in the late 1950’s.
Thomas Foster Layton worked for the social betterment of the country. He employed teachers, boarded them, and paid their salaries. His children attended the Clarke Academy at Berryville, Arkansas, and his daughter Virginia married Professor Clarke.
Layton was a lover of fine horses and at one time kept 72 brood mares on his farm. He kept the black-as-jet saddle horses with the tiny white star in their foreheads. Travelers from far and wide bargained for the Layton stock of horses.
Here is a story told to me by Jim C. Johnson of Hollister about my father, Ben Layton. It happened about 1910. Jim’s father, William W. Johnson, had
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developed Hollister into the beautiful English Village. The railroad went along and built the English depot, laid double track and landscaped the right of way through Hollister. Mr. Johnson says it was not unusual for as many as eighteen Pullman cars and special trains to be sidetracked at Hollister. There was a proW lem, though. Stockmen nearby had always had free range for their cattle and hogs and now was no exception. They had no intention of rounding up their livestock. Tourists by way of Kansas City, St. Louis, and Memphis would step off the train in their stylish clothes, see the clear sparkling Turkey Creek and the untouched wooded hills, but the hogs lay in the mudholes in the streets and the cattle ate and trampled the flowers and shrubbery. City officials, Rolland Kite and Bill Johnson, searched for a lawman to handle this problem, but none could be found. Mr. Johnson finally advertised in a Kansas newspaper for a Dodge City type lawman. One arrived that fit the bill right down to the pistols. He was sworn in and sauntered down to the front porch of the local general merchandising store. After listening to the conversation he turned in his badge and caught the next train back to Kansas. The problem continued until one day young Ben Layton rode into town on his horse, and said he understood they needed a marshall. Looking him over, they agreed he looked pretty young. Layton admitted being seventeen. Johnson asked, "How do you know you can do the job?" With a determined look Layton said, "If I tell them to put their cattle up; they’ll put their cattle up. And I really need a job." So they put the star on him, and he put the cattle up and there was no trouble, no shooting, and no fighting. Jim Johnson said that was the end of the trouble. Ben Layton later served as deputy sheriff of Taney County.
While working on his farm March 12, 1920, Ben saw and heard the devastating and killing tornado turn the mining town of Melva, Missouri into a ghost town. He traveled the three miles as fast as his horse would go, without hesitation dived in and pulled the small bodies from the icy swirling waters of Turkey Creek which raised Lake Taneycomo eight feet that day. When others arrived they found Ben comforting the living among those children who had started a day of play by Turkey Creek.
Layton’s are listed in all our country’s wars. In Elmo Ingenthron’s book, BORDERLAND REBELLION, states that First Lieutenant John Mitchell Layton, former sheriff of Taney County who was a Union scout and General Sweeny’s principal guide, had a brother, Dr. A. S. Layton, a Confederate slave owner and the father of two sons Leonidas and Licurgus who served the cause of the South. Licurgus was killed in the early part of the war. The Layton Mill served as a camp for the Union Army.
Other wars came. During World War II, my brother Vernon, toughened and strengthened mentally and physically by hard work and hard times, became a sergeant with the Second Marine Corps and survived the Japanese inferno of Tarawa. He was later wounded and received the Purple Heart for his part in the South Pacific battles of Saipan and Tinian. His younger brother, Harold, barely got into World War II, but was on the front during the Korean Conflict. Springfieldian Floyd Layton’s son, First Lieutenant Marine corps pilot Ronald Dean Layton, is one of the 11 Layton names etched in the black marble Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. He lost his life on his 222nd mission in Vietnam.
It is planned that the Layton Reunions will continue. New faces and new pages will be added to their history while the old faces fade. The youth will be charged to carry on this proud heritage.
—By Pauline Layton Barton
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