Memories from the Homestead: Remembering the Vining family at Garber [Part one]

     Today if you take a drive along Sycamore Church Road off of Highway 248 north of Branson, you'll come to the north entrance of the Henning Conservation area along Roark Creek where the Garber Post Office began in 1895.

When you cross the creek there at the Henning property, go a short distance west and when the road straightens out for aways, you'll be driving on the property of one of the early Garber area homesteaders, the Vinings.

Erastus and Elizabeth Vining and their children moved to the Roark Valley, claiming a 160-acre homestead in 1888. They moved to Taney County from Montgomery County, Kansas, not far from Coffeyville.

Erastus was born June 12, 1841, in Windsor County, Connecticut. When he was sixteen in 1857, he moved to Kansas and in 1862 enlisted, serving in the Union Army, Company B, 9th Regiment of the Kansas Calvary.   

An interesting experience occurred while Erastus was in the war. Vining's 9th Regiment group had camped along the east slope of Blue Ridge on a cold, frosty night. Early the next morning they were routed by a group of Confederates. The Union troops sprang into action except for young Vining. In the middle of the night, his long hair had frozen to the ground. Nearly pulling his hair out, a fellow private ran to him, jerked out his knife, and cut Vining's hair off.

Erastus married Elizabeth Richardson (born in England in 1848) in Kansas City, Missouri, at the old courthouse on July 13, 1865. Settling in Montgomery County, Kansas, three children were born. Their daughter Cora was born in 1869, a son James Walter was born in 1874, and son Charles Augustus was born in 1880.

The Vining and Boraker families of Garber, Missouri in 1904. Three Garber homesteading families all in the same photo! Back row: Minnie and James Vining, Charles “Gussie” Vining, George Boraker (holding baby Lena), Cora Vining Boraker. Front row: Ica Boraker, Erastus Vining, Elizabeth Vining, Annie Boraker (Photo courtesy of Goldie Vining)

Settling in a cabin just to the south of Roark Creek in 1888, their official homestead patent date came on February 12, 1892. Their daughter Cora, who married George Boraker, would claim 80 acres of land about a half mile to the west, near the fork of Roark around 1897.  Their son James and his wife Minnie would homestead 160 acres alongside the Taney/Stone County line, officially receiving their proof of ownership on August 25, 1903.

With the railroad construction coming through the Garber community from 1903 through 1905, the two Vining boys— James and Charles—along with their brother-in-law George, would all find plenty of work with good wages.

Charles, or Gussie, as the Garber residents called him, saw immediately how busy things quickly became during these two years. He would later be remembered as one of the most talented tie-hackers in the valley. His very first day cutting ties with a broad axe wasn't so good. It took him all day to complete one tie, approximately seven by nine inches, and nine feet in length. The next day Gussie completed three, and on the third day, he completed six.

After being involved in timber for over a year, he would soon be employed hauling railroad workers daily in his "wagon-taxi" from their worksites, to a large camp in a field below Garber along Roark near where he had grown up. It just so happened that the new railroad would cut the 160-acre Vining homestead in half, and the side of a mountain above the creek behind their home would be blasted off, exposing a rather impressive limestone bluff, still visible from Sycamore Church Road today.

With many of the railroad workers being from Austria, most of them couldn't speak English. Gussie took it upon himself to tolerate them and was known for offering them corn whiskey, as he had become an experienced moonshiner! Gussie remembered the time two Austrians found his father Erastus unconscious on the railroad tracks one night in 1905 and had carried him to his home and placed him in his bed. 

 "My father had taken sick," Gussie said in a 1947 interview with Bruce Trimble. "With a twirlin' of the head, he fell on the railroad tracks. The furriners saw him fall." Realizing that this was serious, he was carried nearly a mile to the Vining home. Gussie and his family never forgot the "furriners" and their act of kindness. 

Erastus would continue to have health problems, suffering a stroke and partially paralyzed, he would pass away on Monday, March 12, 1906 at the age of sixty-four. His wife and three children were at his bedside during his last moments. He had been a member of the Christian Church for many years. J.K. Ross came down and conducted a short funeral service at the Vining residence, and then he was taken to the Evergreen Cemetery beneath the sighing pine trees.

From farming, to moonshining, to fiddle playing, Gussie would also meet a book author who was writing a novel about the Garber and Mutton Hollow neighborhood in 1905. This circumstance would change everything, and Gussie would recognize years later just how important it really was to his future. 

Stay tuned and I'll bring ya'll part two on the Vinings next week.

Happy trails, everyone!