Frederick Francis William Cavel (1872 - 1944)

Born 6 Nov 1872 in Guss Farm, Christchurch, Hampshire, England

Ancestors

Husband of Priscilla Josephine Smith — married 25 Sep 1892 in Bowie, Montague, Texas, USA

Descendants

Died 21 Jan 1944 at age 71 in Hastings, Jefferson, Oklahoma, USA

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Deb Cavel [send private message]

Biography of William Frederick Francis Cavel

Birth

Date: 6 NOV 1872; Place: Guss Farm, Christchurch, Hampshire, England; Source: Registration of Birth filed in Christchurch, Hampshire, 3 December 1872, naming father as William John Cavel, occupation shepherd, as father and Susan Ann Cavel nee Shave as mother. Samuel Bemister Registrar;

Event

• Arrival in USA: at Galveston, Galveston, Texas, USA,

Date: 21 APR 1873 On the ship "San Jacinto" from Southampton England from Southampton, UK:

• Passenger List of the Ship "San Jacinto" included:
• CAVIL, Susan, San Jacinto, 21 Apr. 1873
• CAVIL, Wm., San Jacinto, 21 Apr. 1873
• CAVIL, Fred, San Jacinto, 21 Apr. 1873

• Title: The Galveston Breman Project; Immigrant Ship Arrivals at Galveston, Texas 1869-1896 Author: The Czech Heritage Society of Texas; The Galveston County Genealogical Society; The Houston Genealogical Forum; The Polish Genealogical Society of Texas Repository: http://geocities.com/galveston_bremen_project/ Text: 21 April 1873 Arrived in Galveston 21 April 1873; http://geocities.com/galveston_bremen_project/

Susan Shave Cavel said the ship's cargo, aside from its passengers, was matches. There was a fire onboard as they entered the Gulf of Mexico, and they barely limped into port, taking on water and in imminent danger of sinking.

Residence

*Date: 1880: Place: Falls, Texas, United States Census: Year: 1880; Place: , Falls, Texas; Roll: 1302; Family History Film: 1255302; Page: 191C; Enumeration District: 038;

Marriage

He married Priscilla Josephine Smith on 25 September 1892, in Bowie, Montague Co, Texas. The ceremony was performed by J.L. Roach. He was 20 and Josie was 14. No more serious young couple could be found on their wedding day. (see image)

FF Cavel, Josie Smith Cavel, Mary Annie and Susie Kizzah 1896 Montague TX

Almost a year to the day later their marriage was blessed by a beautiful baby girl they named after each of their mothers, Susan after Fred’s mother, and Kizziah after Josie’s. She would be called Susie, a dark-eyed little beauty. And on the last day of 1896, she was joined by a little sister, the blue-eyed fair-skinned Mary Annie.

And other children followed; Their first son, William Arthur, was born in Bowie in 1898. Then the family moved across the Red River to Ara, Pickens County Indian Territory (now Claud, Stephens County Oklahoma) where a daughter Myrtle Cleo, was born in 1901. A son, Charlie Hall was born in Ara in 1904. The family moved again to Park Township just outside of the town of Velma late in 1904, and in 1906 a third son, named Frederick Francis Jr. (called “Dick”) was born.

Residence

• Date: 1910: Place: Justice Precinct 6, Brown, Texas, Census Year: 1910; Place: Justice Precinct 6, Brown, Texas; Roll: T624_1535; Page: 9B; Enumeration District: 107; Image: 435.

While he farmed for a living all his life Fred Sr. felt the call to preach. In 1910 there was a terrible drought in Oklahoma and Texas. Since crops were failing Fred took the opportunity to take his family south to Thrifty, Brown County Texas where his parents were living, to study to become an ordained Baptist minister.

Ordination

On the 18 May 1910, he was ordained as a Baptist Minister by the laying on of hands at the Rocky Creek Baptist Church in Contention, Brown County Texas. The Ministers who ordained him were W.J. Gilbert, J.T. Bucker and H. J. Lee from Hog Valley, Crosscut Ohio Conference. These ordination papers were then recorded in the Stephens Co Oklahoma Ministerial Credentials Record, Book one, Page 97 and the Office of the County Clerk of Cotton County, Oklahoma, Book One, Pg 215. (see image)

I'm not sure where his churches were, but I believe one of them was the Immanuel Baptist church my grandmother attended when I was a child in Duncan, some years after his death. She lived across the street from the church, and I attended kindergarten there.

And all the while the children kept coming. In 1911 John Houston was born in Brown County. At the age of four, he developed osteomyelitis, an infection of the bone, which slowly destroyed his right lower jaw. He would later be dubbed “Andy” after the cartoon character Andy Gump which the lack of his lower jaw made him resemble. If this defect made him self-conscious you wouldn’t know it. He was outgoing and rambunctious as an adult, a wonderful and loving husband, father and uncle.

In 1913 Josie gave birth to a set of twin boys, born prematurely, who did not survive.

In 1914 Fred and his older sons built a house on the 40 acres he'd bought earlier on what is now Old Highway No 7 near the Velma turnoff. By the time I was a child, and old enough to remember visiting the old house, there was an oil or gas refinery just over the hill, which smelled pretty terrible when the wind was from that direction.

There was a kitchen, pantry and parlor on the ground floor, and upstairs a bedroom for the girls, a bedroom for the boys, and a bedroom for Fred and Josie. There was a path to an outhouse down the hill in the back and a well a few steps from the back porch to draw water from. The front porch served as a social area.

In 1915 Fred and Josie had a son they named Thomason Howell, so beautiful his mother feared he was fey.

They had been married 25 years in 1917 when they had a portrait taken. (see images) He is smartly dressed in a business suit and tie and looks directly into the camera, while she, in her feminine, but home-made dress looks away, brows slightly furrowed. Her waist-length hair is pulled back and secured in a bun or braid. She had frequent migraine headaches and the weight of her hair made her them even more excruciating. She begged to be allowed to cut her hair. Fred forbade it, quoting 1 Corinthians; "But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering."

So if she was not altogether content I don't think her modern granddaughters and great-granddaughters would blame her. Granddad was very much a man of his time. The day after he died she went to the beauty salon and had her waist-length hair cut.

In 1920, Josie gave birth to their last child, a sweet little girl they named Maud Opal. And then, as the Bible would say, Josie left off bearing, after 11 children in 27 years, nine of whom lived to adulthood, several of whom lived into their 80s and 90s. In a time when many couples lost half their children to diseases caused mainly by poor sanitation the only children she lost were twins who were born prematurely. It was a remarkable feat of mothering, but she was a remarkable mother.

Residence

• Date: 1920: Place: Parks, Stephens, Oklahoma; Census Year: 1920; Place: Parks Twnshp, Stephens, Oklahoma; Roll: T625_1484; Page: 13A; Enumeration District: 259; Image: 957.
• Date: 1930: Place: Parks, Stephens, Oklahoma; Page: Year: Census 1930; Place: Parks, Stephens, Oklahoma; Roll: 1932; Page: 4A; Enumeration District: 21; Image: 392.0.

In the 1920 and 1930 censuses, they are enumerated in Park Township, in their farmhouse on Highway #7. His occupation is listed as farmer, because Baptist preachers of the time supported themselves by working a full-time job, and not by preaching. Preaching was a calling, and not a "job".

For the first time in 1930 he is listed as a naturalized US citizen because although he was just months old when he was brought to America and only five years old when his parents became Americans citizens, and he should have automatically become a citizen along with them, the processing clerk overlooked him, assuming he’d been born in the US. He thus went through most of his life as a British subject.

• Date: 1 APR 1940; Place: Hastings, Jefferson, Oklahoma, Census Year: 1940; Place: Marley Addition, Hastings, Jefferson, Oklahoma; Roll: T627_3299; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 34-10. Residence in 1935: Same Place.

By 1935 Granddad was 63 and had developed diabetes, a disease his mother had for much of her life. All the children were gone, and working the farm had become too much for him, so they rented the farm to a tenant farmer and moved to a smaller house in Hastings, Jefferson County, about 45 miles away. I’ve often wondered why they chose to move to Hastings instead of Duncan, but looking through census and death records I found Granddad’s younger brother Arthur and his wife Bessie had moved to Hastings between 1930 and 1935, and I’m sure Granddad and Grandmother were happy to live near Arthur and Bessie.

Unfortunately, Bessie died on the 7th of August 1936. She is buried in the Hastings Cemetery. When Arthur died in 1951 he was buried at her side.

Fred and Josie lived on a street called “The Marley Addition”. In the 1940 census, there are several streets called “Addition”, each with a dozen or so houses, suggesting Hastings must have gone through something of a population boom in the 1930s. However in the 80 years since all those streets have either disappeared or have been renamed, for not one is on today’s Hastings map. In fact, “driving” through Hastings using the magic of Google Street View, you find horses grazing where houses clearly used to stand, and the town now (2015) consists only of a scattering of 50 homes. The 2013 population stood at 142.

Granddad’s health continued to decline. There was no insulin then, no treatment for diabetes. In mid-January 1944 his condition took a sudden turn for the worse, and he was taken to the hospital in Duncan, some 30 miles away. Grandma Josie stayed at his bedside, and realizing the end was near, the children were called to come.

Death

He sank into a diabetic coma and shortly after 2:00 am on the 21st of January, 1944 he passed quietly, with Josie at his bedside. They had been married 52 years. Source: Handwritten obituary written by my grandmother Josie Smith Cavel for the Duncan (OK) Daily Banner, published Thursday 27 Jan 1944.

Burial

He was buried in the Duncan Municipal Cemetery, and though I have no picture of his stone I visited it many times as a child with my Grandmother. She would pat it, and rub her hands along its surface as if she might conjure him up from its granite surface.

I only knew him through the prism of my Grandmother and his children. I know he was strict and he could be hard on his children but was also a loving husband and he raised a family of children, my father, uncles, and aunts, who surrounded me with love as a child, who gave me a sense of belonging, and who on the whole spoke of him with great warmth and love. As a family, we owe him a debt of gratitude.

Deb Cavel-Gréant Oct 2015

DNA Matches

• Paternal relationship is identified by an GEDmatch test match between Chris Goff and his distant cousin Living Cavel (son of Hall Wayland Cavel Jr.). Their MRCAs are unknown but are through John Cavel and/or his wife Rachel Flemington. Predicted relationship: 5th-8th Cousins, based on sharing 12.2 cm at Chr-5. Requires Triangulation.