Margaret Nodine was born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1881 to John Benjamin Nodine and Martha J. Watson. Some researchers have traced her father’s family to the St. Maixent area of France, having immigrated in the mid- to late 1600’s to New York under the family name of Naudin.

William Friend’s parents were John Friend and Nellie White who were married on Christmas Day, 1880 in Stone County. There were two sons, our subject, born 1882, and his brother, Anderson S. Nellie White Friend sought a divorce in Forsyth in 1886 after her husband disappeared. John Friend’s eventual fate remains a mystery to this day.

The Friend family name was among the earliest in the upper White River basin, present when Henry Schoolcraft explored the region in 1819. Early spellings of the name, Freund, indicate a German origin although some researchers trace ancestry to Nils Larsson Friend, born in Goteborg, Sweden in 1620 and died in Delaware in 1686.

By the time Taney became a county in 1837, a number of families with the name were located variously at the mouth of Flat Creek in current Stone County and on the North Fork of the White River in present day Ozark County, both located in Taney County during its infancy.

It is thought that Williams Friend’s great-grandfather, also William, homesteaded among the immigrant Delaware Indians in present day Christian County in the decade prior to Missouri statehood in 1820. A number of men with the family name fought in the Civil War in the Taney, Stone and Christian County area. A complete assessment of the interrelationships of these families is yet to be undertaken.

Margaret Nodine and William Friend were married on March 29, 1903 and made their permanent home near Silver Creek at Powersite for the remainder of their lives. Six children were born between 1905 and 1920. They included Gertrude who married Johnny Leafer; Clarence who married Claussie Moore; Troy who married Mabel Rains and subsequently was buried next to his second wife, Betty, in Kansas; Beatrice who married Floyd “Bug” Blackwell and made their home in Taney County; and Wilburn and Phynus who, along with their brother Clarence and families resided most of their adult lives in the Klamath Falls, OR area.

In January, 1947, Margaret had prepared lunch for her husband who was working in the cedar breaks along Silver Creek. She was struck by lightning and killed at the gate to their home. Neighbors sat vigil that night with Mrs. Friend, preparing her for burial while the men of the community constructed her coffin in the yard of the family farm. Her husband lived until 1950 and frequently pitched horse shoes or a soft ball in the lot to the north of the Powersite Store. The couple was buried alongside one another in the Edwards Cemetery. The area to the east of Silver Creek is still known today as Friend Hill.

Courtesy Karen Friend Maggard.