CAUDILL FAMILY
Another of the families who settled in early day Roger Mills
County for a period of
time and then move on was the Caudill Family. The family history begins
with Elder Benjamin Everage Caudill, born 1830 in Kentucky. The Elder is not his name, but
denotes that he was an old regular Baptist minister for twenty years
following the Civil War. He was also a farmer. Benjamin served with the
Confederacy as a Colonel in the Cavalry. Before the war ended, he was
captured and imprisoned for a period of time before being involved in an
exchange of Northern officers held by the South. Also his home was
burned by the Union forces before the war ended.
Elder Ben’s eldest son was John Asbury Caudill who also
served in the Confederate Army. He married after the war and his wife
Alice had three sons; but she died shortly after giving birth to Rufus,
the youngest. Rufus was reared by her folks while his older brothers,
Fred and Oscar were reared by the Elder Ben Caudill’s mentioned above.
John Asbury re-married five years later to Kate Brawner and their oldest
son was another Benjamin Caudill, half-brother to Fred and Oscar.
John Asbury moved to south
Texas
with his family in 1879 where he lived out his remaining years; died in
1912. His brother, Samuel
Houston Caudill moved from Amarillo
to Berlin in 1894. He appears to be the first
Caudill to have homesteaded in
Roger
Mills County.
When his family moved, they had two covered wagons and brought their
bedding and part of their household goods; stoves and beds and all the
furniture they had in those early days. They enjoyed the trip very much.
They were on the road about ten days from
Amarillo to Berlin. Samuel Houston located south of Cheyenne where there was
lots of timber, grass and small streams with plenty of fish. Their home
was two dugouts. These were extra large and there was a large white rock
in one of them, and they had a spring with cool water. This spring was
said to be the best in Western Oklahoma.
Samuel Houston later moved to Sentinel where he lived until his death in
1928.
A third brother, Benjamin Franklin Caudill was the second
Caudill to homestead at Berlin,
having moved there in 1901 with his wife, Lucy and their eight children.
{One of their daughters, Lillie Belle would later marry John Harmon
Shufeldt, son of George Shufeldt, the RedMoon Postmaster}.
They had sold their farm in Clay County, Kentucky and moved to Oklahoma---- “the land of Promise”.
This Benjamin Franklin had visited there six months earlier and
had filed on a 160 acre piece of land. He dug a cellar nine miles south
of Cheyenne
to live in before going back to
Kentucky
to collect his family. During his absence, the eighth child had been
born, a daughter, Lucy Mae. Ben and Lucy chartered part of a train,
loaded it with his finest horses, cows, farm implements and their
children. After a five day
train trip, they reached Elk
City, unloaded their belongings and traveled
to their new home. They lived in a dugout near
Berlin, where they remained until they could get
a large two bedroom house built. Ben was very pleased with the land he
had filed on. As stated above, he also had some relatives (his brother
Samuel Houston and wife Flora and a nephew Oscar) that were already
settled nearby and who acquired land and built nice homes. The prairie
grass was as high as a horse’s belly and waving in the breeze. Water
gushed out of their spring and they loved the spaciousness of the
country. They thought their troubles were over!
They asked the neighbors what to plant and decided on castor
beans, since they were told that there was a market for them. When
summer arrived, the beans ripened and all seemed to be going well. The
weather became very hot and the sun reflected on the sand like glass.
The spring dried up, the dugout caved in and the castor beans popped
open like popcorn, scattering all over the ground unable to be
harvested.
Sayre was still in
Roger
Mills County
at that time. Beckham
County was not formed
until 1907. After three years in
Berlin, they gave up on the farm though they
still lived in the house for many years. The spring and the prairie
grass dried up and the sand blew and blew resembling ocean waves. So
they moved to Sayre, a small town nearby and built a livery stable,
wagon yard, restaurant and a small hotel. All the buildings were painted
red and it was called the Kentucky Wagon Yard, since they had come from
Kentucky.
Lucy cooked for the restaurant and they served
savory dishes family style; all you could eat for a quarter. The family
was very busy and never lacked for customers in this growing community.
Ben Franklin had been ordained Primitive Baptist Minister by now and
performed all the weddings and funeral services. One particular couple
came to be married one night. The man’s name was Mr. Hoag and the lady’s
name was Miss Pigg. It was a nice wedding held in the restaurant. The
family lived happily in Western Oklahoma
for many years but now the descendants are scattered in many states.
Benjamin Franklin returned to
Kentucky
in the 1930’s where he died.
Benjamin Emery was the son of Samuel Houston
Caudill. He went to work when he was eight years old for his cousins,
Frank and Oscar Caudill, who were cattlemen. They wanted him to come to
work for them and promised to teach him so he wouldn’t get behind in his
schooling and paid him $15 per month. His parents agreed to let him go,
so at the age of eight, Ben Emery left home to become a cowboy. His
first job was that of a horse wrangler. He had to care for about eight
horses, help with the cooking and getting in the wood. In the fall when
it was time for the roundup, the chuck wagon would start out ahead and
make camp near water and a good grazing place. They always took a cook
with them and supplies from the home ranch. For food, they had plenty of
beef as the cowmen would take turns furnishing the meat. A cowman would
have two of his cowboys go out and rope a calf and throw it down, and
one of the cowboys would cut its throat and the rest would start
skinning it and in just a few minutes, they would have all the nice
round steak they could eat. With this steak, they would have sourdough
biscuits and black coffee. Every man had to take his turn being night
guard as there were a lot of cattle thieves at that time. The cowboys
who were left would gather around the campfire and sing. In the early
days, Ben Emery was in a lot of cowboy celebrations at Cheyenne, OK.
He had one of the fastest race- horses in western OK. When he was barely
ten years old in 1898, he won first prize of $180. His mother, Flora
didn’t know he was going to race and when they called out that Little
Ben had won, she fainted!
His uncle was very good to him in every way but his
schooling. He never went to school much, just learned to read, write and
spell a little. He worked for his uncle for fifteen years and his uncle
gave him the first twenty dollar gold piece he ever saw. Ben Emery was a
very good musician, playing the violin at area dances and picnics.
Ben Emery died and was buried at Sentinel in 1959.
His sister Alice Caudill married my third cousin, Albert Dobbs.
The Caudill Brothers, Fred and Oscar, worked as cowboys for the
XIT Ranch in the Texas Panhandle before coming to Roger Mills County.
They spent from fifteen to twenty-five years in
Roger Mills County
before moving to Texas and then New Mexico. They were
well known cattlemen covering western
Oklahoma
and the Texas Panhandle buying and selling cattle and running these on
the open range while it lasted.
Oscar was named the Best Roper at the 1903 County Fair held in Berlin. Early day newspaper articles from the
Cheyenne Sunbeam and Berlin Herald mention these two cattlemen and their
dealings numerous times. One such article gave a listing of area
ranchers, their brands and location of their ranches. The location of
the Caudill range was at the head of Sandstone and Panther Creeks
northeast of Berlin. One son of Oscar Caudill, by the name
of Robert Caudill, known as Doby Doc, settled in the city of Las Vegas, Nevada.
He was a gambler, casino owner, antique dealer and outright eccentric,
living to a ripe old age of 94.