Rethinking relationships

Excerpt form the 1900 U.S. Federal Census

A newly discovered record at ancestry.com led me to look at the John Stinnett family again. The record was an index to Dolph McCurn's (Dolph Crawford in the 1900 record above) original application for a Social Security Card (Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.).

The application says Dolph was born December 2, 1876 in Marion County, Arkansas and that his parents were Bill McCurns and Lizzie Coker. The 1900 census shows an age difference of 12 years between Lizzie and Dolph. An 1876 birth year reduces that difference to 9 years and also makes him the same age as John Stinnett. I also have to take into consideration the inaccuracy of ages and birth years on census records. John is almost 8 in the 1880 census which pushes his birth year back to 1872. Had John been born in 1876 he would have been required to register for the WWI draft along with his sons and he didn't.

Another anomaly appears in the census record in the two rightmost columns in the image. The question was to how many children had the mother given birth and how many were still living. In Lizzie's case the answer was 6 to both questions. There are 7 children listed in the household - 4 stepchildren and 3 biolological. Is Dolph an adopted child? Is he Bill McCurn's son who was raised by Lizzie with along with the Crawford stepchildren? What is the story there?

Bessie Crawford Payton and "brother" Dolph McCurn.
Picture courtesy of Nanda Nunnelly-Sparks.

I have had DNA matches with descendants of both Will and Fred Crawford. Bessie's descendants haven't tested yet. Dolph had no known biological children. I have talked to Will's descendants in Batesville who knew Dolph as their "uncle" and who believe that Lizzie was his mother.

I have to accept that I may never know the real answer to these questions. For now I will accept that Lizzie was the mother who raised Dolph whether or not their relationship was biological. A family is more than just a bloodline; especially for black people in the years after enslavement. Sometimes you had to make a family with those who took you in and made a home for you. A family is the people who love you, who nourish your body and soul.

Going the Distance

I have often heard how my ancestors walked from Texas to Kansas. I googled the distance  and wondered how they made that walk in what today would be an 8-hour+ drive ...

My paternal grandmother's family migrated from Grimes County, Texas to Oswego, Kansas during the height of the African American Exodus from the South around 1879. They traveled more than 500 miles with a group of about a dozen families mostly on foot, sharing a few wagons that held their household goods and the infirm as needed.

Nellie Washington, my 2nd-great-grandmother was already in her sixties then. She traveled with a son Jeff and three daughters Patsy, my great-grandmother Charity, and Belle, and the eight children between them who ranged in age from 3 to 9. I don't know if there were other family members in the group; these are the ones that I know arrived and lived in Oswego. The sisters appear to have come without menfolk.

The trip took months. They hurried out of Texas as fast as they could but stopped sometimes for weeks in both Texas and Oklahoma where they hired themselves out as farm workers in order to earn money for supplies.

Kansas was not as welcoming as they expected. Neither the State nor Labette County were prepared for the influx of immigrants and little could be done in terms of providing work, food or shelter. My family arrived just before winter hit. They lived in tents and lean-tos by a prone-to-flooding creek in crowded conditions without proper sanitation or sufficient protection from the elements. Even the efforts of the most Christian among the residents were not enough to deal with the numbers of Exodusters who came there. Some of the churches provided shelter in the worst weather, some collected food and blankets. It just wasn't enough. Many of the Black families did not hesitate to go back to Texas when a group of farmers came and promised them train fare and better working conditions if they returned.

My family stayed and endured. Jeff went off to Coffeyville and got involved in transporting whisky and beer from Oklahoma. The sisters worked when they could as farm laborers pretty much as they had done in Texas, earning just enough to keep their families fed. And when that wasn't enough Great-grandma Charity became the mistress of the farmer she worked for in Oswego. That got her son Dennis an apprenticeship with the farm's blacksmith and he went on to become a renowned smithy in the area. She also got a baby girl out of the deal - my grandmother Pearl. Belle married a widower and raised his children along with hers. Patsy died of cancer in 1887 leaving her children to be raised by the rest of the family. Nellie suffered from senile dementia. In her later years she would wander off in search of the children who were taken from her when she was enslaved. County officials declared her insane in 1907 and sent her to the state hospital in Osawatomie where she died ten years later. She was over 100 years old.

This story is pieced together from stories told by my Grandma Pearl Brown Coker and other relatives as well as through official records and newspaper articles. I cannot imagine the hardship or the hope of this family who made the long journey that made me possible. I can only honor them by telling their stories as I know them. I can stand at their graves and say "We are still here." Ase.

Backtracking - The Springfield Connection

I made the big mistake of letting my assumptions get in the way of evidence when I blogged about my Springfield Connection a couple of years ago. I have been so focused in trying to establish a connection between my Arkansas Coker family to the Coker families in Springfield that I refuted the possibility that my main relationship could be through the Stinnett side of my family. I stand corrected.

I initially questioned why a probate record for Shulia Coker's estate named several of my Stinnett relatives and none of my Cokers (except my great-grandmother who married a Coker). I assumed that my relationship to Shulia was through her marriage to Bryant Coker. A relook at the 1880 census for Union Township, Marion County, Arkansas sheds a new light on that assumption.

My 2nd-great-grandmother Nancy Jefferson is in the 1880 census with her children (who are all later recorded as Stinnetts). The next family listed is Martha Upton with her son James and daughters Arshuly (Shulia) and Frank (Frankie). I have looked at this record dozens of times and totally ignored an obvious clue. Though Martha is recorded in a separate household she is not identified as "head"; instead the record says "daughter". I now believe that she is another daughter of Nancy and that explains why Shulia's probate record lists my great-grandmother and her brothers and their families as aunt, uncle and cousins. Duh! Head-smack!

Union Township, Marion County, Arkansas, 10 Jun 1880

This record alone isn't enough to confirm that Martha is Nancy's daughter but it is a lead that makes sense. I will continue to research these families with more focus on evidence. I will have to remember to put my assumptions aside and to be more diligent in data analysis.