Week 47 #52Ancestors: Soldier

Researching the Bray's of my East Tennessee ancestry has proven to be quite challenging.  Who knew there would be three Benjamin Bray's living in Claiborne, Hawkins, and Hancock counties!  To add to the confusion, two of these gentleman left Tennessee and moved to Missouri sometime after 1850. One would go to Cedar County, Missouri and the other to Ozark County, Missouri.  The big difference is their age and place of birth as Benjamin of Cedar County (formerly of Hawkins County) was born c. 1799 in Virginia and the other c. 1817 in Kentucky (lived in Hancock County).  The two were most likely related as Benjamin of Cedar County was a witness on Henry Bray's will (this is my third great-grandfather) in 1827 Hawkins County, Tennessee along with Benjamin Bray of Claiborne County who was born c. 1767.  Young Benjamin Bray of Ozark County was most likely Henry Bray's son and the subject of this story.

Hawkins & Claiborne Counties would be divided in 1848 to create Hancock County. Map source: Linkpendium

Benjamin married Avarilla Hutchinson c. 1839 and the couple lived near his mother, Margaret McDaniel Wolfe and stepfather, Peter Wolfe until 1850.  The young couple decided to move to Ozark County, Missouri along with several of Avarilla's siblings and extended family. Their son, Thomas, born c. 1851 was the first of their 10 children to be born in Missouri.  The family was doing well by 1860 as their real estate worth was $1,000 and personal estate was $315 but the Civil War resulted in choices that may have led to a family divided.

Ozark County, Missouri map.  Source: mygenealogyhound.com

Benjamin enlisted with the Confederacy in the State of Arkansas and served in Co. A of Frazier's Cavalry Regiment of McBrides Brigade and would lose his life in January 1862 leaving Avarilla widowed with several children under the age of 10 years old.  How sad since his youngest child, Jefferson who was about a year old, would not remember his father.  In fact, it left me with the thought that there was little left to be learned about Benjamin.  Thankfully, a man named Silas Turnbo, who at one time resided in Pontiac, Ozark Co., Missouri, wrote stories and reminiscences of the area's pioneers and Benjamin Bray was included.  In fact, his stories helped connect some of Avarilla's family to the area as they were mentioned in his stories.

Silas Turnbo's Civil War Tales.  Source: ozarkhistory.blogspot.com

Several of the vignettes would be written about the Civil War that included information on Benjamin Bray.  One story regarding Ben Bray mentions he was suspicious of two men who wanted to join his company as he suspected they were spies.  The men were killed and a message was sent to their friends as to where the bodies would be found.  In yet another story, Capt. Bray offered protection to a man and the families in the area if they would enlist.  The man returned to his community to relay the information which apparently angered some as a couple of these men decided to hide along the road in a paw paw thicket with the intent of shooting him.  Unfortunately another man met an untimely death as they mistook him for the other and shot him.  Realizing their mistake, they covered the body with logs, stones, and leaves leaving him to be found much later.  Mr. Turnbo also shared a widow's remembrance of Capt. Ben Bray who died during the War in Springfield, Missouri.

Looking into the Hutchinson/Hutchison family (Avarilla's family) of Ozark County reveals that they were not Southern sympathizers.  It is surprising to learn of the political divide with her family given that Ben and Avarilla most likely moved to Missouri with her sisters.  The sisters' husbands were all Federal soldiers, as Mr. Turnbo would say, as were the Hutchinson men in the area.  In fact, the people of Ozark County were predominately Union supporters.  This most likely explains why Benjamin joined the Confederate army in Arkansas but he didn't travel far given that Ozark county shares a border with Arkansas.

This brings to mind an interesting observation about Benjamin's father-in-law Jeremiah Hutchinson.  He was involved with a mulatto woman named Susannah Hutchinson that is connected to Grainger County, Tennessee.  She was enumerated as a free woman of color on the 1840 Grainger County census and Jeremiah was listed as the next household (source U.S. Federal Census, Grainger County, Tennessee, p. 18).  Susannah moves to Ozark County, Arkansas but with the last name of Asbury. This links her to John Asbury who was enumerated in her household on the 1850 census.  Several researchers have speculated that Susannah and Jeremiah were married but then divorced.  A biography of Templeman J. Hutchinson, who also lived in Susannah's household in Grainger County, is found in A Reminiscent history of the Ozark region, published in Chicago, Goodspeed Brothers, 1894.  The biography that is written before Templeman's death states that his parents were Jeremiah Hutchinson and Susannah King of Grainger County, Tennessee.  This is very intriguing as Avarilla and her family moved to Arkansas soon after the death of her husband.  Did her husband's choices cause a divide with her Hutchinson clan and maybe even the community?  Such is the dark side of war.

A folksong from Southern Appalachia provided on battlefields.org seems an appropriate end.  These are the lyrics of The Rebel Soldier:

O Polly, O Polly, It’s for your sake alone,
I’ve left my old father, My country and my home.
I’ve left my old mother, To weep and to mourn,
I am a Rebel soldier, And far from my home.

It’s grape shot and musket, And the cannons lumber loud,
There’s many a mangled body, The blanket for their shroud:
There's many a mangled body, Left on e fields alone,
I am a Rebel soldier, And far from my home.

I’ll build me a castle on the mountain, On some green mountain high,
Where I can see Polly, As she is passing by:
Where I can see Polly, And help her to mourn,
I am a Rebel soldier, And far from my home.

(Courtesy of Robert Trentham)

Week 2 (2020) 52 Ancestors: A January Passing

Her birth name was Margaret Ann Brown, the daughter of David Brown and Sarah (maiden name may have been Miller) born in 1820 in St. Clair County, Alabama. Alabama had been admitted to the Union just two months before her birth.  Movement into the new territory was described as "Alabama fever" as there was a frenzy to establish land claims as many landowners planned to raise cotton.  As plantations and crops grew then this brought about the demand for slaves.  The Brown family owned a dozen slaves according to the 1830 census.

Map of the State of Alabama and West Florida 1837 (Source: alabamamap.ua.edu)

She married Evan Watkins at the age of 17 in 1838 in St. Clair County, Alabama.  Evan and Margaret were living in St. Clair County, Alabama along with a daughter and a young female slave in 1840 and by 1850 the couple had six children in the household including my 2x's great-grandfather, David Watkins.  According to the authors of the Barrett-Watkins Pioneers of Craighead County, Arkansas, a migration of several families from St. Clair County, Alabama took place in 1851 that included the Evan Watkins family.  Evan and Margaret, along with their eight children, joined a wagon train headed to Arkansas.  As they crossed the state of Mississippi, trouble broke out when one of Evan's wagons, driven by his 11-year old son John, lost its team of mules.  The chaos must have been a runaway team of mules that resulted in injury to John causing the family to stay in Mississippi and nurse John back to health.

The Watkins eventually resumed their travel to Arkansas settling in Poinsett County located in the state's northeast corner.  The area most likely was devoid of Native Americans (Cherokee, Shawnee, and Delaware formerly lived there) as these people left after an event in 1811-1812 known as the New Madrid earthquakes that changed the landscape.  The earthquakes left sunken places in the earth that became known as "the sunken lands."  Evan and Margaret's home would become part of Jonesboro, Craighead, Arkansas that was created in 1858 when Poinsett, Greene and Mississippi Counties were split to create the new county. Margaret gave birth to five additional children in Arkansas likely receiving assistance from a young slave woman named Winnie, born in 1830, who most likely came to Arkansas with the family.

1860 U.S. Federal Census - Slave Schedule for Craighead County, Arkansas (edited) (Source: Ancestry.com)

Heartache would visit Margaret as three sons joined the Confederate service during the Civil War.  Young John would lose his life serving for the CSA, 30th Regiment, Arkansas Infantry, Company H on July 4, 1863 in Helena, Phillips, Arkansas.  He was buried in the Herman Cemetery in Jonesboro.  Another son would be lost to the war named Miller Watkins, age 21, it is said that he died on April 12, 1864 in the battle of Ft. Pillow in Lauderdale County, Tennessee.  Luckily, her third son, Joseph, made it through the war and returned to his home in Arkansas.

John Watkins' headstone (Source: Find A Grave, Herman Cemetery, photo submitted by Kate Wheeless)

Margaret would live to be 61 and departed this life on January 31, 1882 leaving her husband, Evan, behind to live another nine years without his companion of many years.  She was buried in the Herman Cemetery located about a mile west of their home in Jonesboro, Arkansas.  My great-grandfather, James Andrew Watkins, sent a remembrance of Margaret to his relatives in Arkansas for a family reunion (thanks to Luci Murray for sharing this on her family tree):

"Grandma Margaret Ann was part Cherokee Indian and had black beady eyes.  She had a quick cutting way of looking at you, could control those around her with her eyes.  If she did not like you she did not hesitate to let you know it. She cleaned wool, spun her thread and weaved cloth.  Then made all the family clothes.  She made kraut in barrels-put grape leaves and rocks on it to hold it down.  She dried fruit in summer for the winter food. She was a very good cook." 

This writer has doubts that Margaret was Cherokee as former researchers have speculated that she descended from German ancestry.  

Perhaps a verse such as this was said at her funeral:

John 14:1-3

“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”

Herman Cemetery and Herman Missionary Baptist Church in Jonesboro, Arkansas

Week 46 #52Ancestors: Poor Uncle

This story came about while researching a collateral Sutton line and will not be about a family's wealth but how Mildred Poore came to be the mother of a famous Sutton descendant.  It begins several generations back when Thomas Sutton and Hannah Lawson's daughter, Susan, married James Whitten Yeary in 1848 Claiborne County, Tennessee.  The couple raised five boys and one girl and, although some of the children remained in Claiborne and Hancock Counties, several moved to Kentucky.  Their son, Henry Carl Yeary, raised his family in Bell County, Kentucky and continued in the tradition of farming.  He may have been a minister as well. He and his wife, Sarah Minter, had a very large family of 12!

Henry and Sarah Yeary with family (Photo source: Dentons336 tree on Ancestry.com)

Their son Charles Mitchell Yeary remained in Bell County farming the land but broke from tradition and changed occupations to fireman, then policeman, and onto owning a taxi business in Middlesboro, Kentucky.  His first wife was Cornelia Jane Brooks and the union was blessed with four girls and four boys.  Many of their children would remain in Kentucky but their son, Carl, would head to Detroit, Michigan where he worked in an automobile factory (per the 1930 census) and later in a steele mill.  He married a young woman in Michigan named Alice Ect or Eck in 1923.  The couple would have three children but Carl would only know his first two children named Betty and Carl.  He died in November, 1938 at the young age of 34 and would not welcome his youngest son into the world who was born the following spring.  The son was named Henry (according to the 1940 census).

Charles Yeary (Photo source: Brian Tice family tree on Ancestry.com)

A most unfortunate turn of events happened on September 1, 1940 when Mrs. Alice Yeary was involved in an automobile accident or rather it sounds like she was walking and hit by an automobile:

Detroit Free Press (Detroit, Michigan) 02 Sep 1940

Mrs. Yeary, a maid in the children's ward of Wyandotte General Hospital, died at 10 AM Sunday of injuries suffered when she was struck at 6:25 AM by an automobile driven by Wilbur Hooks, 30, of 323 Eureka.

Witnesses said that Hooks' car cut diagonally across Biddle at Clinton and struck Mrs. Yeary after it had jumped the curb.  Hooks, a bartender in a Wyandotte cocktail bar, also was injured when his car ran into a utility pole

Mrs. Yeary, a widow of a year, was the mother of three children.  Police were holding Hooks a prisoner at the hospital.  Assistant Prosecutor Harry Letzer, said that a manslaughter warrant probably would be issued against Hooks.

Her death certificate lists the informant as her neighbor, Elmer Holliday and I often wonder if she had family nearby.  At this point the lives of the three siblings become less public but it appears that young Henry became known as Harvey Lee Yeary, Jr. as he was adopted by his uncle and aunt named Harvey Lee Yeary and Mildred Catherine Poore.  According to biography.com, young Harvey did not know he was adopted until he was a teenager.  He was involved in track and football in high school earning a scholarship to Indiana University but returned to Eastern Kentucky University to earn a degree in History and Physical Education.  After college he moved to Los Angeles where he was encouraged to attend acting school. At this point forward he became known as "Lee Majors".  Many of us remember his roles on the Big Valley, The Six Million Dollar Man, and The Fall Guy just to name a few.  Now that was a long way to get to the name "Poore" but there you have it and to think I had such a crush on this cousin growing up!

Lee Majors 1972 (Photo source: Wikipedia), a 4th cousin.

Week 1 (2020) #52Ancestors: Fresh Start

On March 6, 1871 Richard Benjamin "Ben" Winchester, my great-grandfather, began life in Pickens, South Carolina.  His parents were James Mattison Winchester and Mary Ann Howard who descended from a Winchester line that settled in South Carolina in the 1760's.   The family was firmly rooted in the area.   Ben grew up working on the family farm along with six siblings.  After his mother died in 1878, his father remarried two years later to Rebecca Stansell and she would give birth to eight children.

Flag of South Carolina. Source: Wikipedia

Ben was restless and evidently unhappy on his father's farm.  Some say he and his brother John were punished if they couldn't recite the preacher's Sunday message. He was at the age where we begin to dream of striking out on our own.  Apparently he wanted to go West and discussed it with his brother John and sisters, Martha and Ida or so the story goes that was published in "Richard Benjamin Winchester. An Indian Territory Farmer" by Linda Mae Saunders.  Unfortunately James Mattison Winchester would lose his farm hands as Ben and John would come in from working in the field to get their clothes that were stuffed into a pillow case and let down from an upstairs window by their sisters.  The boys rode off on their horses along with a bed roll, gun, and $1.60 and apparently never spoke to their father again.  They were approximately 19 and 17 years old.  When the young brothers reached Texas, Ben began working on a ranch near Bowie, Texas but young John did not want to settle in Texas and continued further West most likely driving cattle.  He would eventually settle in Wyoming and the brothers lost touch with each other.

Image found on Hayneedle.com

Ben was a cowboy and drove cattle to market in Dodge City, Kansas.  According to Linda's research, the cattle were driven on the Western trail that crossed the Red River at Doan's Store in Greer County and then continued north through the western part of the Kiowa-Comanche and Cheyenne-Arapaho reservations, in what would become Oklahoma, and through the Cherokee Outlet to Dodge City.  The going wage for a day of work on a cattle drive was one dollar.  After the cattle were delivered then the cowboys were on their own to make the return trip which was not paid.

Source: Westerncattletrail.net

In 1900, Ben was living in the Chickasaw Nation with the Davenport family.  Despite being an early settler in Oklahoma, he apparently did not participate in any of Oklahoma's land runs.  The lonely, hard life as a cowboy ended for Ben when he married Mary Alice Matilda Wilkinson on December 23, 1901 in Indian Territory.

Marriage license of Ben Winchester and Alice Wilkinson

To this union were born five girls listed in birth order: Clellie Ruth, Ida Elizabeth, Vada Pearl, Opal Frances, and Matilda Candacy.  My grandmother was Clellie.  The young couple remained in Indian Territory and their third daughter Vada Pearl was born in May 1906 just six months before Oklahoma joined the Union as the 46th state.

State Seal of Oklahoma. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The couple decided to purchase 140 acres of land held by the Chickasaw Nation in 1910.  This was Grady County and there was a school within walking distance for the girls.  The property was also near Alice's brother Richard Wilkinson.  The initial payment of $350.00 (25% of the purchase price) was made and the balance was to be paid in two installments.  Now the man known to many as Ben would become our “Papa.”

Richard Benjamin Winchester

Papa would remain in Oklahoma and learn how to farm the land moving to Comanche County and then back to Grady County.  Papa finally returned to South Carolina in 1918 and visited his many relatives. He would later be contacted by his niece Winnie Winchester who was a daughter of his brother John. She would share the details of John’s life and legacy in Wyoming.  The lives once separated now rejoined. Papa lived to be 92 years old and as my second cousin Aaron Decker says, “those Winchester’s have long telomeres!”

Thanks to my second cousin, Linda Mae Saunders, for providing much of the information in this blog in her book.

Week 45 #52 Ancestors: Rich Uncle

William Calvin Epperson was the younger brother of James Nelson Epperson and that makes him my 3rd great-uncle.  He became a Union soldier on July 1, 1863 for Co. I, 8th Tennesee Infantry at Camp Nelson, Kentucky and died of sickness in Concord, Tennessee on 14 Sep 1863.  William left behind his widow, Nancy, and four young children named Louisiana, Tennessee, Virginia, and John Calvin. His estate was probated in 1865.  The widow and children received "all the bacan on hand and six head of chois hogs & 20 barrels of corn also fiften bushels of wheat allso one cow and one small white hefer for a beef 3 bushels of sault or money to by it with also twenty dollars to by suger & coffee with also the thread and wool on hand & all the potate patches and garden stuffs one hundred lbs. of hunny. A Dalton, P. Holt, R.W. Harvill."  The couple's real estate In Grainger County, Tennessee was sold in 1867 for $700.  By that time Nancy Epperson nee Hopson, had married William Lafayette Rosenbalm in 1866. The couple moved the family to Montgomery County, Kansas by 1870.  Nancy was widowed a second time on 12 Jan 1881 in Kansas and moved to Missoula, Montana shortly before her own death in 1888.  Several of her children had already made Missoula their home around 1880.  It is amazing how lives and economics change in Missoula.

Vintage map of Missoula, Montana 1891 Art Print by Ted's Vintage Art

The most notable of this Epperson line (for me at least) was their daughter, Tennessee "Tennie" Epperson.  Much of the following information was found from a biography published in The Montana Blue Book.  She married on Christmas Day in 1879 in Tennaville, South Dakota to Thomas Lockman Greenough who was born in Iowa and raised in Kansas.  As a young man, he was involved in railroad construction but became involved in lumber when his business partner, a brother named John, died.  After John's death Thomas moved west living in South Dakota and Montana.  He contracted with Northern Pacific Railroad to provide them ties for its lines from the Dakotas to the Idaho-Washington State line then became involved in mining.  Thomas served on the board of many large banks in Montana, Idaho, and Washington and was also involved in politics.

During their marriage, Tennie gave birth to six children named Estelle, Thomas, Harry, John, Ruth, and Edith.  The couple built a grand home for their family on Rattlesnake Creek in 1894 known as the Greenough Mansion. The home had 22 rooms, six baths, and two fireplaces.

The family donated land in 1902 to the City of Missoula for a public park that was adjacent to the mansion.  Explicit instructions came at the time of donation that the land be maintained in its pristine, natural state. Greenough Park is still in use today and contains about 42 acres.

Missoula Parks and Recreation Photo

Thomas Greenough died in Spokane, Washington in 1911 and Tennessee Epperson Greenough would live another 26 years.  She died on July 31, 1937 in Missoula, Montana.

Published in the Helena Independent 3 Aug 1937

One additional article was discovered as I tried to find newspaper articles about this family.  Apparently there was an issue over a trust that was established and who could be a recipient.  The article was published in The Spokeman Review (Spokane, Washington) 8 Dec 1967.  What a legacy!

Source: Newspapers.com