When Mrs. Adkins heard of her husband's death, she decided to take her children and go back to Missouri where her piople lived. She sold their claim for sixteen hundred pieces of gold. They journeyed across the mountains on pack mules to San Francisco. Here they boarded a sail boat. The boat had to go around Cape horn in order to get to New Orleans. While on board there came a terrible storm. everyone thought the ship would be destroyed, but luck, or God, was with them. They were lost in the Atalntic for six weeks. They were on the ship about three months when John Thomas, the baby, died of seasickness. The mother did not want her baby buried in the sea. As they wee near some land, the captain pulled to shore. here they learned they were on the African shore. The Africans came to the ship. They had chairs strapped on their backs in which they carred the poople to land. John Thomas was laid to rest. They boarded the ship again and was on board threee months before they landed at New Orleans. They got on a smaller vessel and sailed up the Mississippi river to St. Louis. They arrived in 1854. The mother and her children went back to Platt County and they lived with her bachelor brother. In the Spring of 1855 she married Isaac Blessing. They went to Atchinson County, Kansas and settled on a claim on Crooked Creek, latermoving on a prairie claim which proved to be a much better farm. In the year 1860, while living on the claim, Tolbert was hired to drive oxen across the plains on the old Santa Fe Trail to Santa Fe, New Mexico. On the return trip he was killed by on of the freight wagons. Elizabeth married Edmond Clark Quiett. They lived in Atchison County until her death in 1872. She left one child. Frank married and moved to Nodaway County, Missouri. here he lived until his death in 1888. Two of his children were still living in Missouri in 1931. James Columbia Adkins who was then 18 years old, joined the State Militia. his stepfather was in the military service, and came home sick. james took his place, Shortly after peace was declared closing the Civil War. The next spring, he drove a six yoke oxen freight wagon from Leavenworth Kansas across the plains in to Colorado, near denver, returning safely home the same year. he then began working for his undle, Ike dean, in Missouri. in 1868 he returned to Atchison, Kansas. here he married Lucy Ann hays. They livee with her widowed mother and farmed for about three years. They moved to Ottawa, Missouri, where they lived for three years. Dissatisfied, they moved back to their old home at Atchison. In 1889, the Graham and Adkins families packed all their possessions into eight wagons and left Atchison. They startedfor the first opening in Oklahoma. It took them four weeks to make the trip, thus getting there too late to take a claim on the first settlement. They stopped at Bill Alden's claim, stayed there over night then went to Ike Graham's. He had married Effie the oldest daughter of James Columbia Adkins, and had moved on a claim in Oklahoma some few months before. they stayed here until the second opening in Oklahoma. Bill Graham and James Columbia started in a wagon for the second run. They were at Cimmaron crossing when the command was given to start for their claims. adkins settled on a claim ten miles southeast of Perkins, near a little town called Merrick. He and his boys soon dug what was know as a dugout where they lived until they could hue the logs and build them a little log cabin. This log cabin is still standing and has been restored by a grandson Jack Adkins. Tey lived on the claim for fourteen years, then moved on the Dillie place, which ws only a few miles from there, staying there until 1913. In 1913 during the large oil boom, around Sapulpa Oklahoma, they moved on a farm four and one half miles west of the city. James Columbia Adkins died in November 1940 at age 94.

James Columbia Adkins Family Bio