Backtracking - William Stinnett's Missing Children

William Stinnett was my great-grandmother's oldest brother.  I had been able to track most of his family up to their deaths with the exception of his daughter Carrie and his son Sherman who disappeared from available records between 1900 when the family lived in Harrison, Arkansas and 1910 after William and Fannie moved to Muskogee, Oklahoma. The last I'd heard of either of them was through marriage records - Carrie Stinnett of Muskogee married Edward M. Carpenter in Wyandotte County, Kansas in 1909 and Sherman married Jenette Barker in Muskogee in 1910.

Carrie Stinnett Randall

After my recent luck picking up the trail of Marion Stinnett I decided to search for Carrie and Sherman again. My luck held out.

I found an earlier marriage record for Carrie in Black Families of the Ozarks Volume 4-A, page 355. These volumes are available in PDF format at the Springfield-Greene County Library. A listing of Wright County, Missouri marriage records shows Toby Duncan of Hartville marrying Carrie Stinnett of Harrison, Boone County, Arkansas on October 18, 1903. Ancestry.com also has this record though the groom's name has been transcribed as Poly Duncan. I can find no other record of Toby and Carrie together, or any information about a divorce,  though I may have found Toby later with another wife.

I also found both marriage and death records for Carrie in Washington state. She died at age 32 just a year after her marriage to Arza Randall. Both records name William and Fannie as her parents. The marriage record has the mother's maiden name as Fannie Kircum but the death record has Bower as Fannie's maiden name. My best guess on this is that the clerk mistakenly recorded Carrie's husband's (Arza Bowen Randall) middle name instead of her mother's maiden name. The marriage record shows a divorced Carrie Carpenter whose maiden name was Stinnette. I know this is my girl. What I may never know is how she ended up in Walla Walla, Washington.

The man that I believe to be Sherman is also in Washington state. Trolling through dozens of Stinnett records led me to an employment application for an Alfred Stinnette whose parents were William and Fannie Stinnette of Muskogee, Oklahoma. Further digging turned up WWI and WWII draft registrations, marriage and death records, naturalization applications for his Canadian wife, listings in city directories and even a hit on a family tree at ancestry.com. The family tree had this man as Alfred Sylvester Stinnette but none of the associated records documented his middle name. I thought he was still a possibility so I started searching for Alfred Stinnette and I found another clue in newspaper archives that strengthen my case for Sherman and Alfred being the same person.

Starting November 15, 1924 the Bothell [Washington] Sentinel printed a Summons by Publication, for plaintiff Alfred Stinnette against defendant Janett Stinnette. Alfred is suing for divorce based on desertion and abandonment and Janett has 90 days to answer the summons. Further searches in Bothell and Seattle newspapers turn up articles where he is called Alfred S. Stinnette. I think the S stands for Sherman, not Sylvester. I need to get my hands on the divorce case to verify that Janett Stinnette is the former Jenette Barker that Sherman married in Muskogee but I do think I'm hot on the trail.

Again, I don't know how these Stinnetts ended up in Washington. Was their move a part of The Great Migration? Sherman's WWI draft registration shows him living in Seattle as early as 1917. Carrie was married in Walla Walla in 1916. Did Sherman and Carrie move west together? I'll let these latest discoveries muddle around in my head for a while and come back to them later.