Note: This
is one in a series of historical stories about local families
in the Trinidad region.
Click here to find out more
about how these stories were collected.
‘Tis a long way from Londonderry
in Ireland to Trinidad, and a lengthy time span, too.
From 1725 to 1939, 213 years, in fact. This is the tale
of an English soldier who left the Redcoats in Ireland
when assigned to aid in the execution of a fellow soldier,
listened intently to his conscience and made the decision
to leave Europe.
But not without consultation with his
young lady friend, a member of the nobility in Ireland
who agreed to his
decision and at the same time agreed to become his wife
without benefit of getting permission from her parents,
members of the Irish Landed Gentry.
John Hanson I first landed with his
bride in Baltimore, and shortly thereafter took off for
the interior where
they settled ON the Greenbrier which was a vast area
and included the Greenbrier river valley. This was in
the 1730's. Between those years and the period about
1754 they migrated down the Valleys of Virginia, settling
finally at Fincastle, Virginia in Botetourt county. There
they farmed and became the parents of seven sons each
of whom served during the Revolutionary War in the cause
of freedom. They were William, James, Samuel, Joseph
and John II, the youngest born in 1760. Two names are
not known.
Young John Hanson II married on April 13, 1785 to Mary
Magdalena Wall of Pulaski county, Virginia. He had earlier
been in the service of a unit commanded by Gen. Anthony
Wayne and had shared in the proceeds of the loot collected
during their assault on White Plains, NY This record
is in the Day Books of Capt. Robert Gamble, their commanding
officer,and was authorized by Gen. Washington and the
Congress of the United States. In 1779 John II was discharged
at the age of 19 after serving three years. He returned
home, married, and the couple migrated to Ashe county,
NC where they homesteaded on 150 acres at the confluence
of Buffalo Creek and the North Fork of New River in the
extreme northwestern corner of North Carolina, near today's
Warrensville and Lansing. The children born in Ash County
were Elizabeth, Mary, Conrad, John Wesley, Rebecca, Sarah
and Polly.
By 1799 they were again on the move,
this time over the ridge into Carter county. From Carter
during the War
of 1812, John II with his siblings, and his children
and parents removed into Clay county, Tenn. From Irvine
in Etill County, Kentucky, the entire family loaded onto
flat boats and rafts and "floated down the Kentucky" to
Indiana.
At Vincennes, Indiana they purchased
land near Bloomington from the land office at the going
rate of $1 per acre.
The Hansons are found in Monroe county,Ind. holding in
excess of 2000 acres in 1854. Old John died earlier, "somewhere
in Kentucky" and probably in Clay county. In March,
1818 his son John II died and Mary Magdalena Wall Hanson,
his widow, and her son Conrad removed to better farming
land which they purchased with Conrad's son James.
James was the first born of Conrad,
born in Estill county, KY in 1816. His mother was Catherine
Schultz Hanson of
Tazewell, Tenn.
James married in Tower Hill, IL to a cousin Mary May.
They farmed there, becoming rather substantial citizens
and raising a large family. In 1868 the mother Mary died
and the first family of James Hanson dispersed. Virtually
all his sons had been soldiers in the 115th Vol. Inf.
Regiment of IL.—eight of them. James then remarried
to Martha Bazelle, a widow, by whom he had a second family.
Morgan Hanson, a son of the first family, recently discharged
from the 115th, left Tower Hill and headed into the west
as an adventurer, hunting buffalo with several of his
former soldier buddies. Returning to Tower Hill, he met
and later married Lenora Myers, born in Newport, IN.;
They were married in Johnson county, Kansas Oct. 30,
1867. From this spot they moved throughout Missouri and
Kansas, living in Mitchell county and later in Norton
county on the Solomon river's north fork. At this locale
the town of Lenora was named for her by Sol Peak, as
she was the first white woman living west of Kirwin,
Kansas. Sol was the new postmaster.
From Kansas, she and her husband moved
westward, through Trinidad in its very earliest days,
and then on to Glorieta,
NM In Glorieta two of her children, Harry F. Hanson and
Carrie Edith Hanson were born in the 1880's. Both were
citizens in Trinidad in the years to follow and both
headed up outstanding families in this area. Harry Franklin
was the father of five sons who lived in Trinidad as
youths and who left in the 1940's Carrie Edith married
Willard Merrill and became the mother of a son and five
daughters. Their descendants are a part of the community
today. The Hanson sons: Raymond retired as a Minn. high
school Principal, lives in Bloomington, MN. Albert died
in l97l in San Francisco and is buried in the local Masonic
cemetery; Ralph is retired from his occcupation as a
highway construction Superintendent in Loveland; Floyd
is a retired air force veteran living in Chanute, Kansas
and Jack (Leroi) resides in Chanute, Kansas with his
family.
"
Mother had her problems." This consensus was written
by a son, Earl Waren, just prior to his death. His mother's
problems were the early deaths of five of her ten young
children within a time span of six years, followed by
the death of her husband within the next year.
Mother, who was Josie Stanfield Waren,
was born in Whitley County, KY in 1873, and came from
a long lineage of Stanfields,
or Stanfills, who originated in Wales. The first American
John Stanfield was the son of Robert and Frances Stanfield.
John was born in Virginia about 1732; he was 21 years
old when first found on tax lists of Granville Co. NC
John married Mary Sherrod. He died in Anson County, NC
in 1784.
Sampson Stanfield, Sr., a son of John
was born between 1763-1766, married Easter in 1875; then
married Nancy
Thomas after Easter's death, removed to Knox Co. KY in
the early 1800's where he farmed 327 acres in 1837, the
year of his death.
Sampson's second son Sherrod was born
Feb. 24, 1802 in NC Sherrod married Susannah Perkins
Nov. 24, 1825 in
Whitley Co. where he died Nov. 5, 1885. He, too, was
a farmer. James Riley Stanfield (the name changes to
Stanfill at this date) was born in 1826 and married Sophronia
Adkins June 22, 1846 in Campbell Co. KY, first. Then,
after her death, he married, secondly, Lottie J. Patterson.
James Riley Stanfill was a Confederate soldier, serving
as a Pvt. in Co. C., Regt.7, KY Vols. between 1861 and
1865. He is buried at Briar Creek, KY.
James' son, Thomas James Stanfill was
born Jan 27, 1847 in Whitley Co., married Aug. 29, 1867
to Juliana Freeman
in Whitley Co. lived at Williamsburg, and removed from
Whitley in the early 1800's to come to Trinidad with
all their belongings loaded into a two wheeled cart.
There he and Juliana (Feb. 11, 1847 – Nov. 6, 1902)
lived and Thomas Stanfill was employed as a railroad
engineer on the Colorado and Southeastern railroad, working
out of their hometown, Hastings. Thomas Stanfill died
Oct. 16, 1916 in Trinidad. He and wife Juliania are buried
in the Odd
Fellows section of the Trinidad Masonic Cemetery under
an unmarked two grave concrete cover in the Stanfill
lot. The ten children of Thomas James Stanfill and wife
Juliana Freeman Stanfill, all born in Whitley Co., were:
James R. Stanfill II, born June 15, 1868; Sophia, born
Oct. 14, 1869 who married Mr Bullock; Sophronia, born
Jam. 29, 1871, married to Jesse Griffith;
Josephine Stanfill (the mother mentioned above) born
Aug. 19, 1873 and twice married, first on August 18,
1890 to William Thomas Waren, a former resident of Little
Rock, AK and Oklahoma, he was born February 5, 1862,
the son of confederate soldier Monroe Waren Jr. and Elvira
Russell Waren by whom were fathered all ten of her children.
After the death of William Thomas Waren in 1916, Josephine
(Josie) Stanfill Warren remarried to William Dunlap of
Hobbs, New Mexico; Flora Sanfill, born June 7, 1879 and
who married Orville Lane; Jennie Stanfill, who was married
to (l)____ Cook and (2) to Walter Armstrong William Henry
Stanfill was born July 22, 1883 and married Nancy Tolly;
and last Willis H. Stanfill. The Lanes, Cooks, Armstrong
and Willis Stanfill all removed in the 1910 era to the
west coast from Trinidad.
Josephine, who was the fourth child
of Thomas James Stanfill, married William Thomas Waren
on Aug. 17, 1890 in Trinidad.
William T. Waren was employed as a railroad engineer
on the Colorado and Southeastern Railroad as was his
father in law. To this couple were born: Pearl Mae
Waren; Juliania Waren on Mar. 9, 1893 in Hastings; Claude
Waren
who died as an infant in Hastings; Earl Waren on Aug.
13, 1897; Ruth Waren on Dec. 12, 1899; Roy Waren on
June 27, 1902, died in 1912; Thomas Monroe Waren birth
date
was April 12, 1904 , died accidentally at age of 2
years; Wallace Waren who died at age one; Marshall Curry
Waren
born Sept. 23, 1908 and died May 16, 1909 and an infant
daughter Rachael Waren born March 12, 1910 and died
one month later in April 1910. A tragic ending for five
of
these ten children, all of whom are buried in unmarked
graves in the Trinidad Masonic cemetery, is that one
and a half months later, the husband William Thomas
Waren also died in Trinidad.
Juliana Waren, who always insisted that
the Warens were Welsh in extraction, was married in Trinidad
to
Harry
Franklin Hanson, a Colorado and Southern Railroad
conductor in 1916. They were the parents of five sons
born in
Trinidad all born in Trinidad. They were: Raymond
Hanson, born
May 23, 1917 and now a retired Minnesota senior high
school principal; Albert Hanson, born March 17, 1919,
deceased: Ralph Hanson, born July 1, 1923 and currently
resident in Loveland, CO; Floyd Hanson, born Aug.
22, 1925 U.S. Air Force, retired and living in Chanute,
Kansas; and Jack (Leroi) Hanson, born August 28,
1934
and who
lives in Chanute, Kansas. The father, Harry Franklin
Hanson died in 1934; his wife Julia Waren Hanson
passed away in March of 1943. Both are buried in the
Masonic
cemetery in Trinidad.
Written by Raymond Hanson
(Note:
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does, please have them get in touch with us so that we
might share some photos of the family here)