Ahnentafel Roulette: Saturday Night Fun with Randy
Here are Randy’s instructions for this week, should we decide to accept.
1) How old is your father now, or how old would he be if he had lived? Divide this number by 4 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your “roulette number.”
September 4 of this month my dad would have turned 80. Given the Osborne genes, he’d probably still be with us if it hadn’t been for an unfortunate meeting with a staph infection after a hospital stay. So 80 divided by 4 is 20 and that’s my roulette number for this exercise.
2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ahnentafel. Who is that person?
Number 20 on my pedigree chart is my great, great grandfather, John B. Cooper.
[For those of you who read this blog and don't have the faintest what an ahnentafel is, don't worry. All groups have their own lingo, and I suspect ahnentafel is one that is not all that familiar outside genealogy. Here's the definition from the Encyclopedia of Genealogy, where you will learn that it translates to "ancestor table." It is the listing of one's direct ancestors--no aunts, uncles, cousins--just parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. These folks are numbered, with the males being assigned even numbers--their associated female, usually a wife, has odd number obtained by adding 1 to the male's number. So on my chart, my dad's number is 2 and my mom's his 3 (2 + 1). Typically, each male's father's number will be double his number--the numbers double for each generation, in other words. My paternal grandfather's number is 4 and his wife's, my grandmother's is 5, etc., etc. ]
3) Tell us three facts about that person with the “roulette number.”
- John B. and 3 of his 4 brothers all died in the Civil War. He survived Camp Douglas only to die at the end of the war, probably in the Battle of Atlanta. They were the sons of Job Cooper and Elizabeth Landrum Cooper.
- John B. married Mary Mitchell, daughter of Ephraim Miles Mitchell and Rebecca Jones Mitchell sometime in 1857, probably in Shelby County, Texas.
- He mustered into the 18th Texas Cav, Co. A (Darnell’s) in Johnson County, Texas on 15 Jan 1862. The value of his equipment is listed as horse, $125, horse equipment, $20, gun $35, and pistol, $5.
4) Write about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a Facebook note or comment, or as a comment on this blog post.
Done!
5) If you do not have a person’s name for your “roulette number” then spin the wheel again – pick your mother, or yourself, a favorite aunt or cousin, or even your children!
Didn’t have to spin again. 
My father would be 97 if alive today and divided by 4 is 24.25. Since my math skills are so lame (failing to grasp the doubling concept + 1 rule), I decided to pick my gr grandmother Julia Eugenia Pierce Temple Smith.
Julia was the daughter of Susan W. Crim Pierce Temple and James Pierce, born March 11, 1856 or 1857 in Texas. (Julia and her mother married many times) I think her mother Susan divorced James Pierce and John Temple. I do not know how unusual it was to divorce back then, but Susan must have been difficult to live with. John E Temple married Susan Crim Pearce (Pierce) on July 15, 1869 in Webberville Texas. In the early 1870′s John moved his family to Kimble County, camping on the North Llano River outside the present city of Junction. John’s oldest son James Lewis Temple married Julia about 1874. James was a Texas Ranger in the early 1870′s. He was a deputy sheriff in 1877 when the Rangers were called to help establish law and order in Junction Texas. On December 21, 1878 the young deputy was killed by a gunfighter, Thomas H Doran at the old OO Saloon. Doran also died in the fight when John Temple, the deputy’s father appeared on the scene and killed the wounded Doran with a knife. John was County Treasurer at the time. He was never charged for his part in the fight. The 1880 census shows Julia Temple, the widow of deputy Lewis Temple, with two small children listed as member of John E Temple’s household. On October 6, 1885 Julia Temple married J.T. Wagnon (my gr grandfather). J.T. Wagnon owned and published the local newspaper “The Junction City Clipper”. Wagnon was elected Justice of the Peace in 1889. He died March 24, 1891 at the age of 46 years. His young daughter Verna, had passed away four days earlier. Their deaths have been attributed to one of the typhoid epidemic’s that ravaged the local community. On September 29, 1893, Julia married C.W. Smith. (Calup Willard Smith, born in Louisiana) Julia had five children in all; John B. Temple b. 1875?, Lola Alva Temple b. 1877, Vela Wagnon b. 1887 (my grandmother), Verna Wagnon B?, and Pierce Heskew Smith b. 1897. The 1920 census has Julia living with her son Pierce in Mounds Oklahoma. Per death certificate, Julia died April 20, 1926 in Guthrie, Logan County, Oklahoma and was buried in Noble, Cleveland County, Oklahoma on 04/22/1926.
Thanks for leaving your story, too, Bernie. We’re gonna find more about these folks yet.