Story told by Elmer Swagerty, 1972
Sampson and his brother or brothers earned money by transporting goods from Missouri to Kansas and back again. They usually took flour from Missouri into Kansas. Along the route they got into the habit of stopping at a certain farm house where, if they gave flour to the woman of the house and she would in turn make a big batch of biscuits for them.
One of the brothers named Axle (?) left for the west from Missouri and was never heard of again. The only brothers of Sampson would be Thomas James Axley, Pleasant, and William. (Thomas did not go by Axle in any thing found and lived a full life and is in the various census clear up to his death. This remains a mystery.) In later years and several generations later Floyd and Melva were traveling through a small town Clayton in Arizona and stopped for gas. As Floyd gave the attendant his credit card, the attendant asked if he was related to the Swagerty’s that owned the local lumber mill and general store. Could this be descendants of the missing brother? Brian came across a teacher in one of his many workshops who was from this same small town and she noticed his last name. She asked him the same question. Years later that mystery was solved when William Swagerty came to University of the Pacific as a professor and we made contact. His family owned the lumber mill and general store. It turns out Bill is a fifth cousin as we both come down from Frederick born in 1730 in Germany.
Swagerty-Aldrich Family Web Site 