Sunday, August 21, 2011

Notes on the Eason Family's Continuing Saga


This  marvelous image is of Jesse Eason in front of a Crockett's Bluff store in 1926.  Vickie Schwab Gardner passed this along, having received it from John Cover whose grandfather John A. Eason was Jesse's older half brother.  John Cover's details are listed below.  - DPW

"Floyd Eason told me the photo was taken in 1926 at the old store in Crockett's Bluff.  Floyd was Jesse Eason's youngest son.  His older son was called J.L. Eason  Both sons are dead now, but both lived into their 80's. 

"I have attached the picture of my grandfather John A. Eason's younger half brother Jesse Eason.  I think Jesse was the oldest child of my great-grandfather John L. Eason's second marriage.  My grandfather was about three when his mother died and his step-mother was Etta Watkins Eason. 

"Grand-dad's biological mother's gravestone is in your Crockett's Bluff cemetery;  Emma Caroline Lowe Eason.  I helped some of my mother's younger sisters replace the old hand carved stone with a more modern one about thirty years ago, and would you believe we got her death date wrong by two years!  She died in 1891 but somehow we gave the stone mason 1893.  My grandfather was born in 1887, but some places he is listed as born in 1888.  

"The old John Loyd Eason land in Crockett's Bluff is still in my Eason family.  Robert Eason, my mom's older brother, ended up with the land and passed it down to Maurice Eason who still owns it.  I don't know where it will go when Maurice is gone, but he does have a daughter that I do not know except by name."-John W. Cover


[Like the individuals and incidents in so many posts on this site, this one produces questions.  For example, which of the "old Crockett's Bluff stores" would have been functioning in 1926?  Inman?  Prange?  Schwab?  And what is that apparently freshly killed beast that Jesse has attached to his saddle?  Bob Cat?  I welcome -- in the "Comments" space below this article -- your added information, your questions, and your general reactions to the site.] 

Further note re early Bluff stores:  In Crockett's Bluff as I Remember It David Prange, in captions to two photographs made from the water tank in about 1930, notes four stores: from the north, the Poole Store and the Prange Store; from the south, The Schwab Store and the Inman Store.  In addition, there must have been the August Prange (company) Store that can't be seen in the picture. DPW 8.24.11

Eason Family Note: September 3, 2011



John Cover's notes re his maternal Great-Grandfather, John Loyd Eason, pictured above, taken in 1931:

John Loyd ( b. 1863, d. 1943) would have been 68 years old in the picture, and the baby he is holding is Maurice Eason the older son of Robert L. Eason (b. 1910).  Robert was my mother’s oldest brother, and the oldest child of John Abner Eason (b. 1888, d. 1969) and Mary Malinda Watkins Eason (b. 1894, d. 1962), with mom (b. 1919, d. 1964) being the next child (they lost 2 or 3 between Robert and mom). Great-Grandfather John Loyd Eason arrived at Crockett’s Bluff in 1878 along with his brother, Samuel Abner Eason. In the 1880 census he (John Loyd) was listed as a boarder in the home Nancy Crockett, the widow of David Crockett who died in 1869.