There was a time when asking a person in the West where he was from was
a shooting matter. Visitors today have no hesitancy about asking that or
about how long one has lived here or what brought one here in the first
place. Is it more eccentric to spend one’s life here than in a small
hamlet in Vermont or elsewhere? Lack of initiative or drive may be
partly responsible and surely sentiment is. Some of us just love the
home place.
My father, W. E. Watson, came west for his health at the age of
nineteen. Friends in Wisconsin had recommended Silver City and had given
him letters to Mr. Pat Rose and Mrs. Lettie B. Morrill. Among the first
people he met was Mr. A. J. Spaulding, and for several years they were
closely associated. They made Claremont, near the later town of
Mogollon, their headquarters for many prospecting expeditions. This was
during the days of Indian raids but they never encountered an unfriendly
Indian. Once when Mr. Spaulding had gone into Silver City for supplies
and was expected back that evening, Dad hiked over the mountains to
Whitewater and caught a mess of trout. He had returned to the cabin when
a rider came up calling out that the Indians were on the warpath and
were in the mountains and that all the people were to go to Meaders on
the Frisco River for safety’s sake. Dad said he was expecting Spaulding
so would not leave. He took his binoculars and scanned the hillsides. A
movement far up on the canyon wall caught his eye. He watched the brush
intently and presently made out the figure of a man, the queerest he had
ever seen, more startling than an Indian even. Surmounting the pack on
the man’s back was a large rectangular contrivance, attached to his belt
were many packets, in one hand he carried a gun and in the other a
butterfly net. Dad went to meet him. This was the beginning of an
interesting friendship with H. H. Rusby, a botanist who was looking for
medicinal herbs for Parke Davis Co. of Detroit and also collecting
specimens of flora and fauna. Mr. Rusby had seen no Indian sign, nor had
Mr. Spaulding, who returned later that evening. They were not molested
but the next day they learned that Capt. Cooley had been killed not many
miles from their cabin.
My father’s parents were English. His father was born at Littleport,
Cambridgeshire. He worked with his father, who was a bridge builder,
from age 14 until he came to America in 1848. He lived in Chicago for
one year, then joined in the Gold Rush the following year and traveled
overland to California and tried his luck at Placerville. After two
years of varying success he returned to New York and crossed the ocean
to his old home. In 1853 he was married to Miss Sarah Wilson of
Spaulding, in the Ely Cathedral. They came to Chicago, later moving to
Janesville, Wisconsin, where as contractor and builder, especially of
bridges for the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, he was quite
prominent.
On Mother’s side of the family one of the earliest ancestors in this
country was Pieter, son of Claes, who came from Holland to New Amsterdam
in 1636. Very few of the Dutch emigrants had surnames—they were merely
“sons of”. Pieter was later identified in the records as Peiter Claesen,
who in 1655, superintended the bowery and cattle of Peter Stuyvestant.
The entry in colonial records dated July 10, 1655, reads: “Pieter
Clausen agreed to fodder and winter, according to custom, all the cattle
which Petrus Steuyvestant has at present in his bowery at Amersfoot
(Flatlands), also to sow all the land that is suitable for sowing,
provided that he deduct from the rent the grain sown thereon. For said
service the sum of 325 gr(?) be paid; to leave the manure of his own and
the general’s in the bowery.” He was magistrate of Flatlands from 1655
to 1664. When Peter Stuyvestant surrendered New Netherland to the
British, Pieter Claesen was required to take another name or to adopt a
surname and he chose “Wykhof” which meant “Household Courtier” or “Clerk
of the Court,” but the family soon changed to the English spelling of
Wyckoff.
Little is known of the Robbins line except that great grandfather
Wyckoff Robbins was born in Ohio, married and moved to Missouri. One
son, my grandfather, Edwin Augustus, married Betsy Hartwell in Bowen,
Illinois, in 1869. The Hartwells had come from England to Massachusetts
in 1636. Later one of the family had married a French Huguenot named Dee
in New Jersey, whose family had settled first in North Carolina. Betsy’s
mother was that Dee. Her father, John N. Hartwell, married three times
and had fourteen children, an economic necessity in those days. One of
them lost his life in the War Between the States. John N. was a close
friend of young Abraham Lincoln in Illinois, and always supported and
admired him. One of Grandmother’s stories recalled the day she was sent
into the field where her father was plowing to tell him of Lincoln’s
death. They returned to the house and her father prepared for his
journey to Springfield where he went to “pay his list respects to a
great man and his good friend.” Grandfather Robbins had spent nearly two
years in Andersonville Prison during the war. Ill and discouraged, he
did not want to settle down with his family. Then he met Betsy, fell in
love, married her, worked as a carpenter and made a home in Quincy,
Illinois. He was restless so they decided to take advantage of the
Homestead Act of 1862 and find land for themselves in the West as other
discharged soldiers were doing. They went to Missouri, Colorado, and
finally to New Mexico. Farming did not appeal to Grandfather but the
lure and adventure of mining did. However, he found that his trade of
carpentry furnished a better living than the mining game. After several
years in Silver City he came to Pinos Altos as chief carpenter at the
Deep Down where a St. Louis syndicate was building a mill. It was here
that Mother rejoined her family and met Will E. Watson whom she married
in 1889.
Like most American families we are a hodge podge of nationalities.
Members have been farmers and traveling salesmen, doctors and ministers,
missionaries and teachers. Dad tried many things but settled for the
mercantile business. He was “store-keeper” and Postmaster in Pinos Altos
for many years where he worked early and late to accommodate customers,
but he was never so busy that he could not take time off for fishing and
hunting and enjoying the great out-of-doors.