All My Ancestors

One of the early lessons I remember learning in doing genealogy was to be careful about what places are called.  Someone was relating their experience of looking for their family in Yellow Bush, Mississippi.  Of course, the place name turned out to be Yalobusha county, Mississippi.

I thought of that lesson Friday when a friend and I stopped in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Water Valley, Yalobusha County, Mississippi.  I was going to visit the grave of more Mitchell relatives.  I knew they were buried there because I’d found them on Find A Grave.  But somehow that didn’t keep me from wanting to visit them in person.  And having a fellow genealogist along egging me on meant we were destined to find this place.

Mississippi is new research ground for me.  We originally thought we’d go through Jackson and visit the Mississippi Department of Archives and History on Saturday morning.  However, after dropping my car keys down the elevator shaft from the fourth floor, waiting for them to be retrieved, racing to campus in a downpour and finishing a tough course for the week, I just didn’t have the strength to search for the family of my Adaliza Ellis (1824 LA – 1898 TX) in Jackson.  So we decided to visit some of my family’s graves that were close to our route back to Oklahoma City, and then visit the Memphis Central library on Saturday morning so my partner in crime could pull some Tennessee land grants for her family names, which included James Smith!!  (Is it any wonder she has a presentation on tracking people with common names?)

According to the gate, Oak Hill Cemetery was founded in 1816.

In my experience, this is an old cemetery.  And, as might be expected for a cemetery of this age, there were lots of burials. We had a little trouble finding the graves. But using my iPhone to pull up the Find A Grave images, we located them based on the roofs and telephone poles in the background of the images on Find A Grave.

Oak Hill also a very hilly cemetery, with retaining walls and steps to get to some of the family plots.

Here is the step up into the Boyd plot, the target of my search.  I think there’s a worn image on the first, lower step but the name has been re-tooled on the top step.

And, seeing the grave of Mary E. Mitchell Boyd (1818-1893), wife of Robert Louis Boyd (1800-1868, buried in Byhalia, Marshall County), I have questions.

What are the side pieces?  Are they decorative only?  I took a couple of closeups, though not good ones,  and they have designs on them:

There were other graves that had similar “surrounds” and then there were the ones that were ovals–of various sizes–the small ones were very sobering.

Can anyone enlighten me about these types of cemetery markers?  Some of them, particularly the ones for children, had the names and dates incorporated into the ovals:

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“You have to be prepared for what you might find.”

It’s advice I’ve given lots of beginning researchers and I’ve recently encountered a situation that requires me to take my own advice.

Last year the Oklahoma Historical Society Research Division was fortunate enough to receive a grant to participate in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).  You may know this program as “Chronicling America.”  It is a wonderful, free site that provides digital images of newspapers published before 1923.  Newspapers from several states have been made available, and only recently, the first newspaper from Oklahoma was included.  These newspapers are keyword searchable, and I thought I should give it a spin.

My maternal grandmother’s family homesteaded in Beaver County.  I grew up in adjacent Ochiltree County, Texas.  So it is a part of the world I know fairly well.  I’ve written elsewhere on this blog about searching the Beaver County newspaper for an obit for my great-grandmother and instead finding a news story about her suicide.  My family did not “trade” in Beaver–they instead went across the state line to Perryton, Texas.

So while I didn’t think I’d find much, I thought I’d give it a whirl.  This time I found information about my grandmother’s grandfather.

James Anderton and his wife Sarah Davis Anderton came to Oklahoma Territory, probably about  1904.  There’s a record of a homestead filed 20 April 1905 in Beaver County and the subsequent “proving up” in 1910.  James and Sarah were in their early 60s when they came to Oklahoma from Marshall County, Alabama.  One of their sons homesteaded in Roger Mills County, but others, including my great-grandfather Robert, came on west to the panhandle.  My grandmother told me that her grandmother Anderton used to want to go back to Alabama, but she died in Beaver County, Oklahoma, 11  April 1915.  She is buried in Blue Mound Cemetery, a small country cemetery atop a slight rising in the western part of the county.

A few months later, in June, James applied for his Confederate Pension in Oklahoma.  He had served in Ward’s Battery Light Artillery from Alabama.  Oklahoma was the last state to offer pensions to Confederate vets, and James was awarded about $315 in September, 1915.  He evidently took his pension money and returned to Alabama.  He died in 1918 and is buried at Cochran Cemetery in Madison County, Alabama.

When I decided to try to search the Beaver Herald using the name “Anderton,” I expected to find several false hits on the name “Anderson.”  Instead what I found in the 15 Jan 1915 edition was an account of a the County Commissioners’ reimbursement to James Hood, for “helping arrest Jas Anderton and guarding him.”    In the same record, T. B. Jones is listed as being reimbursed for  ”car hire for Jas Anderton to Beaver.”  And then there’s the listing of B. W. Webber’s reimbursements: one entry for “board for Jas Anderton” and  one for  ”arrest of Jas Anderton, insane, guarding him and bringing him to Beaver.”

Insane?

Despite hearing lots about her family from my grandmother, I heard nothing of this incident.  Perhaps since she was 9, she wasn’t aware of it.  But my main question has to do with the nature of what precipitated this arrest.  The community where the Andertons lived was about 30 miles from Beaver, the county seat.  How did word travel to Beaver that an arrest out in the southwestern part of the county was warranted?  And what was great-great grandfather James doing to make this necessary?  Was it a case of dementia?  Was alcohol involved?  Seems like the record would indicate drunkeness if this was the case.

So many questions.  My next step for this incident is to look at court records in Beaver County courthouse.

Another example of being willing to take what is found and then needing to dig a little deeper.  As Michael John Neill said at the workshop I attended yesterday, we genealogists act like 3 year olds because we constantly ask “why?”

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Written for 52 Weeks To Better Genealogy – Challenge #7

from Amy Lenertz Coffin at http://wetree.blogspot.com/2010/01/52-weeks-to-better-genealogy.html

Play with Google Maps (http://maps.google.com). This is a helpful tool for determining the locations of addresses in your family history. Where your ancestral homestead once stood may now be a warehouse, a parking lot or a field. Perhaps the house is still there. When you input addresses in Google Maps, don’t forget to use the Satellite View and Street View options for perspectives that put you were right there where your ancestors once stood. If you’ve used this tool before, take sometime and play with it again. Push all the buttons, click all the links and devise new ways it can help with your personal genealogy research. If you have a genealogy blog, write about your experiences with Google Maps, or suggest similar easy (and free) tools that have helped in your own research.

As I’ve written here many times, I come from a family of farmers–persons who had land, for the most part.  Those farms and ranches are no longer in the family.  But I can visit any time I like using Google Map.

My maternal grandparents lived on a ranch in South Dakota.

The main buildings were the house and the barn.  The barn, at the time of this photo, sported my grandad’s brand above the doors, Lazy XY.  The house actually faced north, but this is the southern exposure.  It was too cold in South Dakota to have a north facing entry, so we always used the “back porch” as the entry.

My grandparents had moved most of their things back to Texas by the 1980s–they were in their 80s by then and they first spent winters in Oklahoma and Texas with my folks and my aunt and uncle, and later stayed “in the south” year round.  Shortly before my grandmother died in 1998, the house burned.  We don’t know the details, we just know that it burned to the ground.  In a sense, it was a blessing that the house took care of itself–

When I find myself thinking about the carefree summers I spent at my grandparents’ ranch, I look at my photos, but I also often pull up their place on Google Maps:

I can still see the barn and the tree rows planted east of the house to catch the wind and snow.  A trailer home replaces the house for the family that lives there now.  If I really want to, I can move to the right on the map to “roam” the pasture.  And I can follow the road (306th Ave. on this map) a couple of miles down the hill to the little village of Canning where my grandmother ran the country store and post office, and where we lived the year I was in the 6th grade.

This picture brings back lots of memories.

Over there at the left is the beginning of the spring-fed lakes where we swam in the summer time and ice-skated in the winter.  At the right, the “top” of Cactus Loop, is where the school was.  There was a cemetery behind it and a huge hill down the side.  We sledded in the winter and rolled down in tractor tires in the spring.  Why we weren’t killed is amazing to me.  My grandmother’s store and PO was to the left of the intersection of Chesley Rd and 206th St.  It looks like there’s some sort of barn there now.  Above where Spring St, crosses Chesley St. is the church, with another cemetery behind it.  On up that hill takes me back to my grandparent’s ranch.  See the house at the lower right?  I won’t include the name of the people who live here, but my granddad helped build that house–with someone as particular as he was–they got along fine.  The drilled holes for the nails before they pounded them in–no nail guns here.

I have these places, and others, bookmarked on Google Map.  I like visiting them occasionally.  There’s a country cemetery in Beaver County I like to visit–it’s easy to count the miles as I travel down the road, and I know how many miles and which directions it is to visit where my great Aunt Edna and Uncle Gurly lived, and where my great-grandparents lived out there in Beaver County Oklahoma.

And then I can always “drive-by” the house where I grew up (marked with the small white heart)–it’s a different color now but it’s still located across the street from the high school, between the First Christian Church and the Church of Christ on Jackson Dr., and I can drag Main Street if I’m feeling really nostalgic.

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Madora McLarty

Ochiltree Cemetery

near Perryton in Ochiltree County, Texas

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Hubbo had a conference to attend in Rogers, Arkansas over Fall Break.  Knowing that I can always use an opportunity to prowl around ancestral remains in Benton and Washington Counties, I tagged along.

On Thursday, we drove out to Butler Creek Cemetery in Sulphur Springs, AR.  To get there, we had to go through Missouri.  Actually, as our pal at the hotel said, “Why would you do that?”  We evidently didn’t have to go that way, but it’s what all our various mapping programs said.  And it was scenic.

There was this barn, that I initially thought was built of logs, but upon closer inspection, appears to be just roughly hewn wood.

We stopped and ate at a cafe in Noel, Missouri and also admired the view from the gas station.

We chose to try to ignore the conversation in the next booth about the website showing how many people had been killed by a former president.  And also the person sitting in the back smoking.  Can you still smoke in restaurants?

The church and the cemetery could have been anywhere–what I imagine New England looking like in the fall.  I felt like a certified leaf-peeper.

The land for the church and cemetery had been donated by a John C. Givens (1806-1885).  There were cattle in the field back behind the trees and they evidently were trying to persuade us to come feed them based on their mooing.

We had a good time despite it being a cold, misty day.  That might even have added to the day.  The cemetery is old.  The 3rd great-aunt I have buried there died in 1898.  I actually had just found out that she was buried here–I blogged about her in an earlier post and another descendant wrote to tell me where she and some of her family were buried.

I think it’s fairly safe to assume this marker was placed long after her death in 1898.  There is an old crumbling concrete footing around her grave, but the stone looks much newer.  There are no dates on the stone nor are any other names included.  She was Mary Esta Ball and married to John W. Shelman.  Another interesting thing to notice is that the surnames on the four stones from these family members are spelled two different ways–sometimes with two “ls” and sometimes with only one.

Two of Mary’s six sons are buried nearby:  William John Nelson (1864-1943), according to my California correspondent, and George Washington (1873-1923).

You can barely note that the surnames are spelled differently–William’s is Shelman and George’s is Shellman.

Also buried nearby is a young man who is probably the son of one of these men, but I don’t know the story yet.  Perhaps another contact with Diana will help me know more about John William Shelman.

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Charles Winfield Osborne and Gertrude Susanna Mobley Osborne

My great-grandparents

Fairview Cemetery

Pampa, Gray County, Texas

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About a month ago I visited the cemetery in the Texas panhandle where so many of my family are buried. It was a lovely morning–cool and a breeze and a clear sky.  The end of August in that part of the country can be scorching, so it was a nice way to spend the morning.

I went out to photo some gravestones for FindAGrave and to try out my new camera.  I was surprised to find a new directory installed with some new landscaping as well.

The pages on the display boards have a listing of the burials, the year of death, and the location.  This posting is updated monthly.  It’s a great addition that I know the local genealogy society has provided.  Here’s one of the pages:

I noticed that the printout had come from the County Clerk’s office, and I wanted to know if I could get a copy.  I wanted a copy for a couple of reasons–I thought it would make a wonderful addition to the library where I work.  Even though I work and live in Oklahoma, I know that out in the panhandle, the state lines don’t really matter.  Many of the folks who are buried in the Ochiltree County Cemetery in Ochiltree County, Texas, are from adjoining Beaver County, Oklahoma.  My mother, for example, and her parents, are all buried in Ochiltree though their roots are in Beaver County, Oklahoma.

I have also begun a project that could take me the rest of my life to complete.    I’ve begun entering the family data from the Ochiltree County history books into a database and will also enter the same info from the Beaver County book.  So many of the families are intermarried and related through the generations.  Having the cemetery records would help me know when and where many of those folks died and are buried.

And, I suppose, a third reason is that I feel like I know so many of those folks, I just like having the information.  As I drive through or walk through the cemetery, I recognize most of the names–I know the people or I know their descendants.  I’ve said before–I graduated from a school that my parents graduated from.  That same weekend I attended my 40th high school reunion, and as I looked around, I saw folks that I’d gone to school with for all 12 grades.  In many instances, their parents and my parents had also gone to school together.  So having the cemetery book is just another way to know more about my life and that of my place.

I took photos of some of the folks I’ve entered into that database–some of whom were my neighbors as I was growing up.  But here’s the tombstone that I found most interesting on this trip.

and here’s a photo of the requisite graveyard rabbit under one of the tough cedar trees in that windswept place:

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Last week’s Genea-Blogger prompt was to ask a guest to blog.  This suggestion came at an opportune time since my youngest son had just accompanied me to family reunion.  AND he agreed to write this week’s post for me.  Thanks, Dave.  Here it is:

Notes on the reunion in Texas

It had been months since I declined my mother’s request to attend family reunion.  Dad usually accompanied her to these things; and besides, I hadn’t any but the faintest of notions how I was related to the other folks attending.  Indeed, the labyrinthine familial chains binding me to them were reflected in cumbersome titles like “second-cousin-once-removed,” or “third-cousin-once-over-on-your great-great grandmother’s side,” etc.

In any case, my father took sick the week of the reunion thereby leaving my mother without a date.  So, I offered to go.  We left on Friday, July 31st, for Pampa, Texas. Soon into our trip, I was glad I’d gone.  My grandparents lived in Perryton – which is about 60 miles due north of Pampa – so I spent a lot of time as a boy in west Texas.  The sky and farm and ranchlands seem to stretch out into forever in part of the country, and seeing it again brought back pleasant, nostalgic memories.

On the way we stopped in Miami, Texas (pop. 588) so mom could take a picture of her Uncle “Scoops” Osborne’s gravestone.  While looking for Scoops, I noticed an inscription on a gravestone which said “May he rest gently forever and forever gently on our minds.” Standing there in the town cemetery, encased by high hills on either side, feeling a slight breeze on my face, I could think of no more gentle a place to rest.

We arrived in Pampa that evening and settled into our room.  After a nice dinner at “Texas Rose Steakhouse” (I kept calling it “Tokyo Rose Steakhouse” for some reason) mom went to bed and I went out to a bookstore.  Buying a Cormac McCarthy novel, I came back to the room to read the rest of the evening away.

The next day we got up and made our way to the First United Methodist Church.  It was funny meeting these folks and struggling to figure out exactly how we were related to one another; it was as if the struggle brought us together more than any ancestral ties could.  In most cases we simply accepted as fact that we were family, and promptly dispensed with the rest of  the details.  After lunch, mom gave a presentation about the earliest (discovered) male relative, a John Osborne from Tennessee.  He apparently was something of a rascal, leaving his children with not much more than a series of failed business ventures and personal debt.
After the reunion we went to the town cemetery, our last stop before heading home.  It was a lovely place, with long walkways shaded by tall trees.  Mom snapped her pictures and we got into the car for the ride back to Oklahoma City.  We briefly entertained going through Perryton so we could see my grandmother and grandfather’s graves.  We decided against it, with mom saying “Mamaw and Papaw would understand….they know what its like to travel in the Panhandle.”

Thanks, Dave, both for going with me and for the guest post.

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This past weekend I traveled out to the Texas panhandle to my family reunion.  Sometimes I forget how beautiful those wide open spaces can be.  The reunion was held in Pampa, about an hour south of where I grew up on the high plains.  Just this much further south, there are lots of draws and buttes and canyons.  Any romantic thoughts I had of the place, however, were put into perspective when we stopped at the Miami Cemetery gate–the sign reads “watch out for snakes.”  It made my search for my aunt and uncle’s graves a little more tenuous, but I had help–an intrepid brother and son.  Thanks, guys.  Brother T. won the prize for spotting the actual graves.

Lowell Cooper "Scoops" Osborne 1914-1989

Fannie Blanche Tolbert Osborne 1918-1998

….and the view north from the cemetery

Miami, Roberts County, Texas

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Blue Mound Cemetery

Beaver County, Oklahoma

Robert Anderton b. 1881 Marshall Co., AL – d. 1937 Hutchison Co., TX

my great-grandfather

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