Thank you so much Wilson McCoy, Jr., for sharing your family history and story with us. We look forward to reading more about your family.

I am the oldest son of Wilson Wyatt McCoy Sr, who was born in 1912 on the McCoy ranch, slightly northwest of the ghost town of Cloverdale in Chautauqua County, Kansas. My father was named for his uncle Joseph Wilson McCoy, one of the more famous characters to have ever graced the stage at Cloverdale and, later and longer, in CedarVale.

 

Uncle Joseph Wilson McCoy, JW or Wilson for short, was born in 1854 at Wooster, Ohio and raised on the McCoy farm ten miles north of Wooster, Ohio in 1854. He graduated from the academy at Ada, Ohio in 1873 and graduated with honors from Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois in 1877. In 1879 he took a clerk job in a mercantile establishment at Pawnee City, Nebraska. He was involved in politics while in Pawnee City and became county chairman of the Democratic Party, befriending the first governor of the state of Nebraska, David Butler, who had a large home and cattle ranch near the edge of town.  Governor  Butler helped McCoy become county chairman of the Democratic party and McCoy became involved in local and state politics with Butler. In 1886 McCoy moved to Cloverdale, Kansas and, with his brother Ira and the support of his brother Neal, established McCoy Brothers Mercantile at Cloverdale. In February, 1887, Joseph Wilson McCoy briefly returned to  Pawnee City, Nebraska, married the only daughter of the first governor of Nebraska, Violet Butler, in the Governor's home and brought Violet McCoy to Cloverdale, Kansas.

 

Violet McCoy was a gifted vocalist and had trained with the very best in Chicago for a few years and had also taught music in Pawnee City before her marriage to McCoy. She gave vocal performances at the Baird Hotel in Cedar Vale, gave music lessons, and taught at two or three schools in the county while Joseph Wilson McCoy helped run McCoy Brothers Mercantile at Cloverdale. In late May, 1891, just at the conclusion of Violet's Cloverdale school term, Violet received word that her father had died of a heart attack. The McCoys immediately left Cloverdale for Pawnee City, Nebraska.

 

(To be continued.)

Sherry, I believe the new owner of much of the old McCoy place lives at the house on the McCoy ranch and works in Cedar Vale for a utility company, best I recall.

 

Incidentally, Neal S. McCoy died in 2010, not 2009, and much of the old McCoy homeplace was sold in 2010 or 2011, rather than 2009.

Hi Wilson, We so appreciate you sharing your family history with us. We don't know who owns the ranch but someone in the area may know and will hopefully enlighten us.   Thank you for visiting the website and  we hope you will visit us often. Again, thank you so much for your input.

Best regards to all in Cedar Vale and Chautauqua County!

 

My father, Wilson Wyatt McCoy, was born in 1912 and raised in NW Chautauqua County on the McCoy Ranch near the ghost town of Cloverdale.

 

My grandfather is Neal Alexander McCoy who came to Cloverdale in Chautauqua County from north of Wooster, Ohio as an adventuresome youth of twenty years of age in 1884, taught at the Cloverdale school in the fall of 1884 and in 1885, and, through the help of James Shaver of Cloverdale, purchased acreage slightly north and west of Cloverdale in January, 1886, from Joseph Shaff. (James Shaver's mother and Neal McCoy's father were brother and sister.)

 

Neal A. McCoy and his wife Laura Wyatt McCoy raised four children on the McCoy ranch beginning with Hazel in 1898, then Wayne, then Stewart, then my father Wilson (1912).

 

Stewart, after college, returned to the McCoy ranch, married Alma Fry of Tisdale, and took over running the ranch and eventually acquired 100% ownership after his father, Neal Alexander McCoy died in 1944. Stewart and Alma had one child, Neal S. McCoy, who inherited the McCoy ranch after the death of Stewart in 1982 and Alma in 1993.

 

Neal S. McCoy passed away at his home in Oxford, Maryland in 2009 and his widow subsequently sold most all of the ranch property in late 2009 or in 2010, completing 126 years of McCoys in Chautauqua County Kansas.

 

It was a good ride! Before I pass I hope to meet the new owner of the old McCoy homeplace in Chautauqua County.

 

 

 Ancestry.com, http://www.youtube.com/actor/X4PUWWZhSnY/rance-howard, Wikipedia, Rootsweb, http://www.newkirkcemetery.org/