Eliza Coffman Hancock: frontier woman, homemaker, mother

LEGACY COMES TO LIFE

EDITOR’S NOTE: The story of Elizabeth Hancock is told by her great-great-nephew Gerry Gieger. Gerry is a member of The Sons of the Republic of Texas and serves as President of the E.M. Daggett Chapter in Fort Worth.

My name is Eliza Hancock. I was born May 22, 1823, near Decatur, Alabama, the first daughter and second child of Lovell and Caty Coffman. I was called Eliza by my family and friends but was named after my maternal grandmother. My early years were near to those grandparents, Baldwin and Elizabeth (Birdsong) Howard.

Following the demise of my maternal grandfather, my parents determined to move on westward, toward Arkansas. We traveled to Memphis, Tennessee where there was a ferry to cross the Mississippi River.

My father was a skilled wagon maker, so he built ours. It was made of hard wood with a canvas bonnet and steel-rimmed wheels. Our wagon was pulled by a team of fine oxen with a lead horse. After we crossed the Mississippi River, we merged with other families heading the same direction to form a wagon train. Traveling alone was not safe on such an ambitious and dangerous journey. Few people had guns then, but were armed with hand-axes, butcher-knives and hoes, as protection from predators and renegade Indians who had an advantage with their flint-tipped arrows and bows. Bear, wampus cats, and wolves were the main predatory threat as we slept on the ground under our wagons.

My mother was pregnant and needed me to help prepare food for the rest of our family. We walked most of the 350 miles from the big river to our final destination but had to stop every few days to rest the animals. Each day we traveled about 18-20 miles, and on January 1, my mother delivered a baby boy, which we named Jackson. It was always a question of which jurisdiction he was born in, Arkansas, Texas, or IT (Indian Territory, aka Oklahoma). We thought it was Miller County, Arkansas.

We crossed the Red-River at ‘old’ Jonesboro because there was a ford there, then traveled southward to Robbinsville, where Early Texas Pioneer John Robbins had established a settlement. He had been granted a Labor-and-a-League of Land. there. My father acquired 600 acres of land near Ward’s Scatter Creek and built a large house with a dog-run (breeze way) between the living and cooking quarters, and the sleeping quarters. He used timber cut from the land and hauled to a sawmill near Clarksville, and brick for the fireplaces, fired from the clay soil on the land. We also had glass windows to look out because our house faced the main road from Clarksville to Paris. Our Barn was big enough to keep several teams of draught animals, which my father used to transport freight from the river-boat landings near Jefferson to Bonham in Fannin County.

I had learned to read, write, spell and work math problems before we left Alabama, so I was literate, and read the Holy Bible. In addition to cooking and keeping house, I learned how to quilt. We had a loom and a spinning wheel. Fabric was scarce, so we made our own from the cotton we grew. We also darned holes in clothes, rather than throwing serviceable ones away. When they were completely worn out, we saved the buttons in a jar for future use, and good cloth to use for patches. At first we washed our clothes in the nearby creek water, but then got a cast-iron pot to heat the water over a fire in the yard. We used homemade lye soap and hung the clothes on a line to dry, after rinsing them in a half-barrel.

Another of my chores was to keep up with the chickens and goats. We gathered eggs from the nests and milked twice a day. My younger brothers and sisters came along to ‘help’ and learn for themselves. Our dogs were also trained to help.

When I was 23 years old, I married Benjamin Medford Hancock in Red River County, Texas. We had eight surviving children: Jonas, b.1847; Thomas, b.1848; Martha, b. 1849; James, b. 1850; William Lovell, b.1851; Melissa Texanna, b.1856; Sarah Ellen, b.1858; and Benjamin Medford (ii), b.1861.

Medford was a devout Methodist and closely allied to Dr. John Witherspoon Pettigrew McKenzie, an early Methodist missionary to the Choctaw Nation. Dr. McKenzie was the founder of Young Men’s Retreat (a school) that became McKenzie College. It was situated 3 miles south of Clarksville adjacent to and partially on our land.

During the years of The Republic of Texas, the school grew from 16 students educated in a log cabin, to more than 300 students and nine faculty members occupying four large buildings in 1854. It was the largest institution of higher education in Texas during the 1850s and 1860s. (McKenzie College closed during the Civil War and merged with Marvin College, which became Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.)

My husband, Medford Hancock, died on March 24, 1861 from congestive fever (malaria). Fifty-eight (58) days later, on May 15, 1861, I passed away from the same malady. Medford and I left behind our 9-day-old baby and other children for family to raise. I was a proud citizen of The Republic of Texas.

WHO ARE THE SONS OF THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS? The Sons of the Republic of Texas (SRT) consists of members who are direct lineal descendants of those who settled the Republic of Texas from 1836 to February 19, 1846. The purpose of the SRT is to perpetuate the memory and spirit of the men and women who won Texas’ inde-

pendence. They set the course for Texas to become a nation and eventually the 28^th state. LEGACY COMES TO LIFE personifies our ancestors with true stories about real people who changed the course of history! For membership information please visit our website; srttexas.org or email; old300.srt@gmail.com.