Relationships Father — William Thomas Haynes Mother — Hannah Wife — Margaret Adeline Stover Daughter — Bessie S. Estelle Haynes Daughter — Jama Haynes Son — Sidney Haynes Daughter — Viola Haynes Son — Joe Walter Haynes

Events Born in 1867 in Manchester, England, Middlesex, England, Cheltingham, England, or Essex, England — Nobody seems to know for sure. Married Margaret Adeline Stover in 1890 (?) in Rich Hill, Missouri or Muskogee, Oklahoma. Died March 9, 1942 in Henryetta, Oklahoma. Buried at West Lawn Cemetery.

Sidney Thomas Haynes is a legendary character in our family.  This information is part of the oral history, as I've heard it, that's been told about him within the family.

Sidney Thomas Haynes, referred to in the family in later years as Poppa Haynes, came to America at the age of 16 on a sailing ship.  One story is that he stowed away until he got hungry.  Another story is that he'd intended to make a round trip and was working his way, tending horses.  According to that story, the first night in New York City, the horses escaped from the livery stable during a blizzard.  Some of the horses were never retrieved and the boss blamed Sidney, fired him, and began to beat him with a buggy whip.  The beating was observed by John Wise, who interrupted it.  Sidney, alone and unemployed in a strange country, went home with John Wise.  When John Wise went to Missouri, Sidney went with him.  Sidney never again saw any of his family in England.  I wonder what Sidney's erstwhile boss told Sidney's parents when he arrived back in England.

Sidney worked at many things, including blacksmith, railroad worker, superintendent (or owner — accounts vary) of a coal mine, and engineer.  According to one version of the family history, at one time, he owned a coal mine in Oklahoma, in the early 1900's.  As the story goes, the trains that hauled the coal from his mine used the old style hook-and-chain method for connecting the railroad cars together.  Men were sometimes injured while connecting the cars and Sidney wanted a safer method.  His answer to the problem was to devise a design for an automatic coupler.  He submitted the idea to the Kansas City Southern Railroad, but a clerk who received the letter stashed it away and asked Sidney for more details.  Sidney provided them and the clerk, or the railroad (I'm not sure which) got the invention.  Today, Sidney's automatic couplers are used all over the world.  He was never paid a penny for his invention.

Various stories were told in our family about Sidney.  His wife told me this one, after she was an old woman and Sidney was dead.  She said that, at a time when Bessie (my beloved Grandma) was a little girl, Sidney was working on a ladder near the eves of the house.  Bessie was playing nearby.  Sidney needed his hammer, which he had neglected to take with him but which was near to where Bessie was playing.  He called to her and asked her to bring the hammer to him.  She was busy and didn't want to be interrupted so she ignored him.  He had to ask her several time and eventually, in a fit of pique, she grabbed the hammer and marched over to him with it.  She held it out and said, "Take your damned hammer and keep it!"  At the time, he didn't scold Bessie but, later, he commented to his wife, "I'll bet she learned that word from me.  I'll never say it again."  She told me, "So far as I know, he never did."

Poppa Haynes had a family reputation for being honest.  Grandma told me that some of his friends accused him of being too honest.

Grandma also told me of a trip that they took when she was a little girl.  They were moving to a new home and traveling, with all of their possessions, in a covered wagon.  The wagon was being pulled by two draft horses that Grandma said were Morgans.  They stopped in a little town that was located near a ford across a river.  Before they left, they were warned that the ford was narrow and treacherous.  There was a very deep hole just to the right of the ford and the edge was abrupt and invisible from the surface.  Caution was advised.  When they crossed the ford, Sidney wasn't sufficiently cautious and the right rear wheel of the wagon slipped over the edge.  The draft horses were already beyond the water, starting up the slope away from the river.  All four wheels of the wagon were still in the water.  Grandma was sitting on the seat beside Sidney.  He yelled to his wife to hang on and grabbed the whip.  Grandma said that it was the only time in her life that she ever saw him whip the horses.  They pulled so hard that their bellies were almost down on the ground but they pulled the wagon out of the river.  Horses are good animals.