Lodema King Bent, now 82, bought herself a computer last year and created a gift of heritage
Lodema King Haden Bent and her family gathered at the Historium recently. In the photo, Lodema is holding the 400-page book of the history of the John Harvey King family that she is donating to the Historium. Front row, from left: Jenna Haden holding son Luke, Lodema, Michele Haden Walker. Back row: Logan Haden holding son Levi, Mark Haden holding grandson Lincoln Haden, Jeff Haden, Brittney Haden (in front of Jeff), Ty Haden (back), Mike Haden and wife Maissa, Dillon Walker and wife Corinna, and Daniel Walker with wife Kristi and their children Devyn and Daxton.
Lodema Bent's family history book includes the story of her brother, Travis King, who was a star athlete, playing baseball and basketball during his time at Gainesville High School. During his senior year, Gainesville defeated West Plains for the first time during the Thayer Tournament, Lodema said. Shortly after his graduation in 1953, he died as the result of a vehicle crash in California, where he was planning to play basketball in college. This photo was taken on the baseball field at the old Gainesville School during Travis' senior year.
Homestead house This house, which still stands on the original John Harvey King homestead near Dawt, has been remodeled since this picture was painted by an unknown artist. In her book detailing the history of the John Harvey King family, Lodema King Haden Bent says several generations have lived in the house since it was constructed in the early 1900s. It replaced an earlier house on the land that was homesteaded by John Harvey King in the late 1890s or around 1900. That first house burned.
On May 6, 1906, Lodema Bent's grandfather, Everett Ray "E.R." King, married Alta Ester Hodgson, whose father, Alva Hodgson, had built Hodgson Mill. In the late 1890s, Hodgson also bought the land where Dawt Mill now stands. Earlier mills are believed to have operated on the site since the 1860s, according to the website dawtmill.com. A previous owner had hired L.A. Rogers in 1892 to design a 425-foot dam built of sycamore timbers filled with rocks and a mill race at the site. In 1893, Rogers drowned in the mill pond, and soon afterward, the mill burned. Alva Hodgson bought the property in the late 1890s and rebuilt the mill and also the dam on the North Fork of the White River. This photo shows the construction of one of the dams, it's not known if it was the Rogers or Hodgson version, which was constructed of "stone anchored to submerged oak trees and capped with heavy boards which acted as a spillway directing the current up and over the dam and channeling it into the mill race," according to the dawtmill.com website. The dam was dismantled in 2017 after a 2016 drowning occurred there.
For Christmas 2019, a few months after Lodema King Haden Bent's 81st birthday, her four adult children gave her cash to spend on herself anyway she chose. She promptly went to Walmart and bought herself a new computer and printer.
She was a woman with a mission.
Her daughter, Michele Haden Walker, had asked her to compile the King family history. Michele had been disappointed to find that the Ozark County Historium, in Gainesville, didn't have information about the King family in its genealogy library.
So, shortly after Christmas, Lodema went to work. But she did things the old-fashioned way. She set about digging into her family's roots without internet access.
"I started from scratch. I just used my computer and printer to compile the information I received," Lodema said recently.
"She went through her own records then made phone calls and made arrangements with family members to come visit with them and collect materials they had," Michele said. "She received packages of family information in the mail from distant relatives. Her resourcefulness and willingness to learn electronic equipment and the programs it takes absolutely blows me away. She's amazing."
In addition to spending hours on the telephone, Lodema drove to West Plains, Springfield, Cabool and other towns tracking down leads. "There was usually one person out of each family I could get in touch with that I could get information from," she said. "And then that person might send me to another person, and on it went."
Eight generations, 400 pages
The result of Lodema's monumental effort is a 400-page book of photos, lists, court documents, newspaper clippings and other records covering eight generations of the King family, with details about five of those generations.
The book begins with a mention of Michael King, born around 1802 in North Carolina, and his seven children, including Lodema's great-great-grandfather, James R. King, the oldest, born in 1825 in North Carolina. James and his wife, the former Winney Caroline Miller, were the parents of four children, including John Harvey King, Lodema's grandfather, whose dozens of descendants became the primary focus of her research.
Those two early generations of Kings migrated westward from North Carolina to Missouri. Both Michael and his son James R. King died in Missouri, and James' son, John Harvey King, was born in Crawford County, Missouri, about 1843. That means John Harvey was probably 19 when he enlisted in Company D of the 32nd Missouri Infantry Regiment on Aug. 15, 1862. He served until the Civil War ended and was honorably discharged on July 15, 1865.
Lodema believes John Harvey may have come through Ozark County sometime during his war years and liked what he saw. However he happened to come here, he homesteaded a farm on what is now County Road 318 near Dawt that remains in the family today.
Raising eyebrows, revealing surprises
On April 18, 1871, John Harvey King married Polly Ann Isom Naves in Ozark County. They had three children together before Polly Ann died.
Studying family history always has the potential for raising eyebrows and revealing surprises. That's how some of John Harvey's descendants may have reacted when they saw the "Declaration for widow's pension" filed by his second wife, the former Susan Robinett. John Harvey had died in March 1900, and a few days later, in April 1900, the second Mrs. King had filed for her husband's Civil War pension. When approved, the pension paid her $36 per month.
In the application, Susan King reported that John Harvey's first wife, Polly Ann, had died "about Mar 17, 1880." Susan also reported that she had been granted a divorce from her former husband, Lorenzo Robinett, on Oct. 19, 1880, and that she had married John Harvey King nine days later, on Oct. 28, 1880. (A marriage certificate also included in the book has a different marriage date: Oct. 24.)
When they married, Susan Robinett King became the stepmother of John Harvey's three young children, ranging in age from 2 to 5. Then the couple had seven more children together – a total of 10. Lodema's grandfather, Everett Ray "E.R." King, was born on March 14, 1883, the fifth of the 10 children.
Generations together in a big, two-story home
Like many, if not all, of his siblings, E.R. was born in the big, two-story home John Harvey King had built on the land he had homesteaded. An earlier house there had burned. The second house still stands.
On May 6, 1906, E.R. married Alta Ester Hodgson, whose father had built Hodgson Mill – and also the nearby Dawt Mill. They continued to live in the big house with E.R.'s parents and some of the other siblings.
Lodema doesn't know how it happened, but, of all 10 of John Harvey King's children, her grandfather, E.R., ended up with the family farm. He and Alta raised their 11 children there. Lodema's father, Clyde, was their second oldest. Like his siblings, Clyde grew up on the homestead, and after he married 17-year-old Chloe Zell Looney from Sand Ridge on Oct. 18, 1930, they raised their five children there, too.
It's fun to imagine the life that must have filled the big house with multiple generations living there. In her book, Lodema wrote, next to a photo of the house, that many descendants were born in it – in fact, two first cousins, Lodema's brother, Doyle King, and Max King, son of Clyde's sister Velva, were born in the house one day apart in 1931.
California tragedy
Lodema describes her father, Clyde King, as a "dyed in the wool" farmer and her mother, Chloe Zell, as an excellent gardener. But occasionally the Kings would go to California to find work "where other members of Mom's family lived," Lodema wrote in the book. "But Dad could never stay there too long."
Lodema was born in Kingsburg, California, during one of those temporary moves. She's been told that during that trip her older brother Travis, then probably 4 or 5, "fell out of the car going down the road." But, as the story goes, "he was up and running down the road to catch us by the time we got stopped."
Tragically, Travis died as the result of another vehicle incident in California when he was 18 in 1953, a few months after he graduated from Gainesville High School. He had gone there right after graduation to attend college that fall; he was living with relatives there and working the night shift at a factory, Lodema said. "He and my cousin's husband went to the mountains to go hunting after work one night, and we assume he fell asleep and then hit a tree," she said.
His funeral was held in Clear Springs Church, near the King homestead, on land that John Harvey King and his descendants had donated through the years for the church and adjoining cemetery. The West Plains Daily Quill reported at the time that an estimated 500 people attended. The clipping, along with a photo of Travis posing on the baseball field of the old Gainesville High School, are included in Lodema's book.
Lodema's story
Lodema’s own story is told in the book in words, pictures and clippings. Although she was born in California, she attended one-room schools in Ozark County, mostly at Dawt but finishing eighth grade at Bratcher. She graduated from Gainesville High School in 1956 and married Harold Haden in 1960 in Kansas City.
They had known each other throughout their growing-up years in Ozark County, where Harold's father was a General Baptist pastor. "We connected through different church activities. We'd known each other all those years," Lodema said.
After they married, the couple lived in different places, wherever Harold worked as schoolteacher or principal and also served as pianist and organist at churches throughout the area. Then, after 10 years of marriage and four children, Lodema went back to college and earned a bachelor's degree in business education in 1975 from what is now Missouri State University.
She did her student teaching and then worked as a substitute teacher in Rogersville when the family lived in Springfield. In 1975, they moved back to Ozark County, where Harold worked in the Gainesville schools. "On the same day I had a call from Dora asking me to teach special education there, I also had an offer from Baxter Lab in Mountain Home," she said. "I chose Baxter because it was better pay and benefits. I worked there 25 years."
She and Harold divorced, and Lodema, then in semi-retirement, worked in the Walmart jewelry department in Mountain Home for another 13 years. In 1981, she married Vernon Bent. He died in 1992.
"My goal was to work until I was 80," she said. But health issues got in the way. In 2013, when she was 75, she had five cardiac stents put in.
For years, she had lived at Dawt on her parents' farm on the land her great-grandfather had homesteaded. (Her brother Bob King owns the homestead now. The original house burned long ago and was replaced.) When the historic flood of 2017 occurred, the waters of the North Fork of the White River reached to her garage door. "I still can't imagine it doing that, but it did," she said.
Funeral arrangements. Then 'nothing was happening'
In 2018, she had open-heart surgery, and in 2019, she moved to an apartment in Gainesville. But she remains active in Clear Springs Church, which her family has attended and supported for generations.
She didn't seem to bounce back from the cardiac surgery the way she expected to. A few months later, just as she was finishing the family history book, she was diagnosed with kidney cancer.
"I got busy and got all my stuff done – funeral home, obituary, all that. Then I sat here and waited. Nothing was happening," she said. So she got back to work on her book, arranging to have her distant cousin, Wayman King, print and compile it into huge three-ring binders. She had 20 copies printed, and all have been given to family members – except the one she's donating to the Historium.
Earlier this year, Lodema underwent a double mastectomy. But that didn’t slow her down any more than open-heart surgery or kidney cancer had done. She still stays busy "waiting to see what God has in store."
Putting the book together was both rewarding – and challenging. "In the process of remembering all these people I have known and loved who are gone, you just have to stop and get a breath of fresh air sometimes. It becomes overwhelming. But all in all, it was a good experience," she said.
She compiled her family's story for her children and grandchildren, she said. Besides daughter Michele Walker of Gainesville, she has three sons: Michael Haden and wife Maissa of Rock Springs, Wyoming; Mark Haden and wife, the former Marta Rackley, of Rogersville; and Jeff Haden and wife Crystal of Mountain Home. Lodema also has 10 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
Most of them share the feeling expressed by one of Lodema's cousins when she was given a copy of the 400-page volume. "Oh, my!" she texted Lodema. "I didn't know I had that many relatives."