Frederich Alfred Becker Sr (1862 - 1908)

Grandma Essie Brady Shoults and Grandpa Charles Raymond Shoults both grew up in rural Dent County Missouri on either side of what is now Route 44 about an hour west of St Louis by car. Grandma lived on a farm North of Jake's Prairie and remembered how long it took by horse drawn cart to take her baby brother to bury in the Licklider Cemetery there, when he died one winter of pneumonia. He was only four years and had only worn gowns his life, having never reached the age to wear his first pair of britches.

I asked Grandma why did she and Grandpa elope and run off to St. Louis to live. She told me the story of the tragedy that happened when she was just a little girl. Two of Grandpa's Uncles died in a mine accident in the Iron Ore mines, owned by the Meramec Iron Company. The year was 1908, and Grandpa was only seven years old, but he made up his mind that he would never work the mines the way his dad, Nelson, and his uncles did.

I visited Cherry Valley, near Cuba Missouri and saw where many of our Shoults relatives were buried. I even found an elderly gentleman that still lived there, who told me he remembered those "Shooolz boys" ...well that's the way he pronounced it, anyway. Then, he told me that I should visit the old Becker house and told me how to get there. Now, I did not know very much about Clara Becker, my great-grandmother and "Charlie's" mother, at that time.

I boldly knocked on the door of the wood frame house and an older lady opened it. When I asked about Grandpa's Uncles, Frederich Alfred Becker and Otto Breatono Becker, I was a little surprised that she knew all about something that happened that long ago. She told me about Clara's mother Margaret Warner. Margaret had a lot of tragedy in her life. John William Becker was her fourth husband (I presume that she had already been widowed three times when she married him) and he had already passed away at the time of the accident. But, she had ten children...all with the last name of Becker.

The lady told me that they brought her two sons to the house and laid them out on her wooden floor. The lady said that her mother was a good friend of the widow Becker and came to help her, but that there was nothing that they could do. After the men (they were in their 30's) were taken away and buried, she said that they could not get the blood stains out of the wood. Great-grandma Becker did not want to live there anymore, and she sold the house to her mother. It was the house where she grew up and lived there after both women passed away. The floor was carpeted, but she told me that if she lifted the carpet, I could still see the blood stains in the wood. I told her that was not necessary!