Father of Pearl

 My paternal grandmother, Pearl Brown was born 13 Dec 1894 in Oswego, Labette, Kansas. Though many of her official records have 1897 as her birth year, Pearl appears with her family in Oswego as a 4-month-old infant in the 1895 Kansas State Census. The 1897 birth year could easily have been a transcription error somewhere along the line, but knowing my grandmother, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d made a conscious decision to shave a few years off her age.

Pearl’s parentage has been a mystery for many years. Her half-brother, Dennis Brown, was born in Hearne, Robertson, Texas in 1876 to Horace and Charity [Smith] Brown. When Charity left Texas around 1879 and settled in Oswego with Dennis and her mother and sisters, Horace Brown was not in the picture. Yet Charity had three more children born in Oswego from 1887 (Florence Brown) to 1897 (Jeff Brown). I don’t know if Pearl shared a father with these siblings but I am certain that she and older brother Dennis did not. Charity’s children all shared the Brown surname and official records often have her Texas husband’s name as father but I believe this was more for convenience than anything else.

My family always suspected that Grandma’s father was a white man, but the Horace Brown paternity myth prevailed – at least in my immediate family. Years into my research a paternal cousin who was a descendant of Dennis Brown said that the story in her family was that Grandma’s father was indeed a white man, a big land owner and farmer in Oswego named VanZandt. The VanZandts were a prominent family in Oswego, so prominent in fact that a road into town bore the family surname. I never expected to find any documentation of this rumored relationship – and I never did. When DNA testing became commercially available, I had high hopes of finding some link to the VanZandts, no matter how small, in the 70,000+ DNA matches that my father has.

The process of sorting through and researching DNA matches can be a long and frustrating task, particularly for African Americans who are lucky to find any ancestral references prior to the 1870 Federal Census. After I sorted out relatives I knew, and relatives I could figure out through further research, I started tackling the remaining DNA matches that are fourth cousins and closer. I saw surnames and geographic locations that were unknown to me. I saw clusters of matches who were clearly related to each other but for whom I could not find a solid connection to my family that I could document. For example, there is an African American cluster in Arkansas that matches my father’s paternal cousins. There is a group of white matches from Indiana that have strong ties to each other but don’t match any known relatives except me and my siblings and a paternal first cousin.

Ancestry.com recently introduced a new feature that splits DNA matches into the halves that come from each parent by analyzing segments that connect to only one parent or the other and then piecing together overlapping segments. The result is a list of DNA matches that Ancestry can group as Maternal, Paternal or Both (me, my siblings, 1st cousin, nieces/nephews). There is also a group of Unassigned matches. These include people whose tests were not processed in the last update, as well as people for whom there is not enough information to assign them to the other groups. From what I have seen, many of the Unassigned matches are distant cousins with low centimorgans (a unit for measuring genetic linkage). I’ve been browsing matches in each of the categories and the breakdown appears to be accurate.

When I look at my father’s maternal matches sorted by closest relationship, Dennis Brown’s grandchildren are the top four matches. To my surprise the next highest matches are from the white Indiana cluster - and there is not a VanZandt among them.

This cluster of DNA matches bears common surnames and locations in their family lines. There are three sets of common ancestors among them: Andrew McDavid Elmore and Phebe Pugh, Jacob Million and Mary May, and William Holliday and Catherine McKillip. Interestingly, there were many intermarriages among these family groups that explains why their descendants appear the same cluster.

My father’s closest three matches after Dennis Brown’s grandchildren are direct descendants of the Holladay and Elmore families. Two of them are great-grandchildren of James A. Holliday, the third is a great-grandchild of James’s sister Mary Jane Holliday Conrad. I will continue my research but I believe that James Holliday was Pearl Brown’s father.

James was born in 1854 in Indiana. He moved to Oswego in the 1880s and appears in the 1885 Kansas State Census as a married farmer with his wife Mary and four children.

Mary divorced James in Oswego in 1897 and has a marital status of “Widowed” in every census from 1900 until she died in 1919 though James was alive and well with his new wife in Franklin and Kansas City, Missouri where he died in 1937. My father is a high DNA match with descendants of James’s children from both of his wives.

So where is the hook-up between James and Pearl’s mother Charity? DNA is my only tangible clue. Still, I have a story in my head …

James served two short stints as City Marshal in Oswego in 1894 and 1896. Charity Brown had a reputation in Oswego for disturbing the peace of neighbors, family, and friends. She often got into physical frays that resulted in court appearances. She was also known for her “plain and emphatic” language. I can imagine James and Charity crossing paths within the justice system. She also worked as a farm laborer and may have been in James’s employ at some time. Maybe the story can be found in James’s divorce case that I have to order from the Labette County courthouse.

Right now, my father has more than one hundred DNA matches in that Indiana cluster. So far, James Holliday is the only one I have tracked to Oswego, Kansas. He was there at the right time. He was about the right age. And both of his occupations proffered opportunities for him to encounter the Notorious Charity Brown.

Bad Boy Beau

Randolph Coker was known as "Beau" to friends and family. My Aunt Ginny and my father both recalled him as a rascal and a ladies man. They remembered Uncle Beau being in trouble with police and [seemingly] always with a different woman. My research has backed up their stories.

Randolph was born 6 October 1900 in Yellville, Marion County, Arkansas to George W. and Anna {Stinnett} Coker. He was the sixth of seven children and their youngest son.

The family left Yellville in 1909 after a race riot  in a neighboring county and moved to Joplin, Missouri. They lived at 315 Cox St. initially but later moved to 922 North St. which was the family home for more than three decades. Beau attended Lincoln School in Joplin. He and his siblings Lonnie and Bertha are noted in the listing of students at Lincoln School in the book Black Families of the Ozarks, Volume 3-B, available at the Greene County Library in Springfield, Missouri. He was an 11-year-old second grader in the Spring of 1912 and doesn't appear to have gone beyond the third grade (1913) though Lonnie and Bertha completed their elementary education.

Many details of Beau's adult life can be found in newspaper archives in Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma. He had a nose for trouble; and that trouble often included women and alcohol. He had numerous arrests while being under the influence including drunk driving, lewd behavior, assault, and chicken stealing. He seemed to move between Joplin and Parsons, KS. I can imagine the moves being inspired by how much trouble he was in at one place or the other.

There are two marriage records for Beau, one in Parsons and one in Joplin, but no evidence of divorce. He was also arrested with women who were not his wives. No records of any children have been found but I do have a very close DNA match who also matches my father with enough centiMorgans to be a close cousin. My match and I are wondering if Uncle Beau had an affair with her grandmother whose husband was often away from home on his railroad job.

Randolph spent time in city jails, county jails, and finally, in the Missouri State Penitentiary in 1940 according to census records. I know he received a 5-year maximum sentence in a Labette County, KS District Court for the chicken-stealing incident but I don't know how he ended up in the Missouri Pen. That penitentiary has been closed for several years and I haven't found out what was done with prisoner records. The Pen was the first one built west of the Mississippi and was once likened to Russian prisons for the tortures that prisoners endured.

By 1941 Uncle Beau is back in Joplin. According to his WW II draft registration record he is working at his cousin Roy Watkins' shoe shop on E. 4th St. and living at the family home on North St. Beau didn't make the papers between 1940 and 1950 - at least not in digitized format yet. The next records I found for him are related to his death in 1950.

Aunt Ginny once told me that Beau was killed by some white men with whom he had been gambling near Cave Springs, MO. Newspapers reported that his body was found on the Frisco tracks in Springfield, MO with severed limbs and a crushed skull. They implied that he was drunk and fell on the tracks and then hit by a passenger train. A few people who had seen him earlier in the evening said he had been drinking but was not drunk. There was no inquest and the coroner ruled his death as accidental. I thought it was interesting that a son of the man Beau was staying with in Springfield at the time was also found dead on the Frisco tracks a few years earlier. The conspiracist in me has my head spinning with tales of a Frisco killing field; the pragmatist is not surprised by Uncle Beau's untimely end.

Call My Name

I was fortunate enough to have talked to my mother about my name so I know that I bear two of her family names. My first name is that of a second cousin that she admired in the small Texas town where they grew up. My middle name is the name of my maternal grandfather's sister who was accidentally shot by her husband when she was 20 years old. She was returning home from choir practice at church and startled him. He grabbed a gun when he heard a noise and it accidentally discharged. So the story goes.

My surname/maiden name carries my father's family history of enslaved people and their enslavers, indigenous Americans, stolen Africans, Revolutionary War veterans, and endogamous Ozark mountain people.

I have an African name too. Most of my friends and family call me by the name that means "ancient friend" or "sister on the long journey". I am a storytelling time traveler.

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.

Song for My Father

As I have come to face my father's mortality - and my own - as we age, I find myself thinking more and more about the influence he has had on my life. I am his second child, his second daughter, the one he might gift a baseball cap while my sister received pretty ribbons. I share his love of knowledge, of reading, of jazz. I share his eye color, his love of dogs, his dry wit, his cynicism and sarcasm about the state of the world. We are opinionated and stubborn. Our circle of trusted friends is small but loyal. We do not suffer fools lightly and still have not mastered the art of keeping that tactfully to ourselves.

On many levels, Pop is a fiction in my head. He was in the U.S. Navy when I was growing up. The nature of his work kept him away from home during much of my childhood. When he came home after months at sea it was mostly a celebration until he left again. My mother was the caretaker, homemaker, teacher, disciplinarian; Pop was the fun guy who traveled the world and came home bearing gifts from exotic places while Ma raised a bunch of kids - including my father. I still don't completely understand why or how she chose to live the life she lived but that's a story for another day.

My younger siblings have undoubtedly had a different life with Pop. By the time he retired and was home permanently I had left home and was off on my own adventures. I did not share my siblings' experience of a day-to-day father-in-residence but I never felt that I missed out. In fact, our laissez-faire father-daughter relationship allowed us both to live in the memories and imaginings of each other that fit neatly and unconditionally in our hearts.

Half-passed Black

Just some articles I've read ... trying to put my heritage and extended family into perspective.


Passing: How posing as white became a choice for many black Americans

'A Chosen Exile': Black People Passing In White America

The Invisible Line Between Black and White

Exceptions to the “One Drop Rule”? DNA evidence of African Ancestry in EuropeanAmericans

The Passing of Passing: A Peculiarly American Racial Tradition Approaches Irrelevance

The Mystery of Myrtle Coker

Myrtle L. Coker

According to my Aunt Ginny, her Aunt Myrtle hadn't been heard from since she sent a telegram to my great-grandmother in 1933 acknowledging the death of my grandfather, her brother, Lonnie Coker. She was living in Washington State at the time.

Following Aunt Myrtle's trail has not been easy. She appears with the rest of the G.W. Coker family in the 1900 census in Yellville, Arkansas where she was born, then later with them in Joplin, Missouri in 1910.

Myrtle married Bert Patterson January 25, 1913 in Carthage, Missouri. From here the trail gets murky. When Bert registered for the WWI draft (12 Sep 1918) he was working as a horseshoer in Augusta, Kansas but gave 1024 North St., Joplin, Missouri as his home address. His wife Myrtle L. Patterson at that address was listed as next of kin. Bert is recorded as a white male of medium build with brown hair. The address on North Street is just  block from Myrtle's family home (922 North St.) in Joplin.

The 1920 census shows a white family group living in Augusta, Kansas - Albert Patterson, wife Myrtle L Patterson, and niece Clema Watkins, Myrtle's late sister Maud Coker Watkins had a daughter named Clemma. Another coincidence, Myrtle's cousin David Stinnett was also living in Augusta in the same time frame.

I don't know what happened between Myrtle and Bert. She shows up in Seattle, Washington in a 1923 marriage record. Even though the bride's name on this record is Lillian Patterson (the "L" in Myrtle L Patterson?) I was fairly sure this was our Myrtle because one of the witnesses is Alfred Stinnette, who I believe is another cousin, the son of William and Fannie Stinnett of Muskogee, Oklahoma.

Marriage certificate of Lillian Patterson and Arthur S. Ramsden

The 1930 census lists Lillian Ramsden as a divorced beauty shop operator boarding in a house on Warren Ave. in Seattle. Aunt Ginny said that Myrtle used to do hair in Joplin.

Lillian Ramsden marries again in Vancouver, Washington in 1936. This time to Claude Siner. And this time I have a record that ties her to my family. George Coker and Anna Stinnette of Missouri are listed as her parents on the marriage record.

Marriage record for Claude Sine and Lillian Ramsden.

According to articles in the Nevada State Journal (Reno, Nevada, Feb 28, 1945) Lillian Siner filed for divorce from Claude Siner AND applied for a marriage license to Leonard A. Schelling of Tule Lake, California. Both articles appeared in the same issue of the Journal under the headings Marriage Licenses and Actions Filed.

Santa Rosa, California city directories list a Leonard A. and Lillian Schilling from the late 1940s until the early 1970s. After that I found a 1975 death record for a Leonard Schelling in Florida but nothing else on Lillian. I don't know if they were still married at the time of his death or whether this is even the same Leonard Schelling (though the fact that his Social Security card being issued in Oregon leads me toward that conclusion). There is also a 1985 death record for a Lillian Schelling in Napa, California. I'll have to get a death certificate and hopefully confirm Myrtle's identity. 

So here I have Aunt Myrtle (AKA Lillian), white, independent beauty operator, married four times. I would love to have more details of her life. I wonder if she preceded Leonard in death, if they stayed married for 30 years, if she'll turn up with yet another surname; so many questions Aunt Myrtle. I'll keep looking for you.

Memorial Day

There were just three graves in Oakwood Cemetery that my grandmother laid flowers on every Memorial Day – her husband and son in the small veterans’ section, and her mother’s unmarked grave on the other side of the cemetery. She picked flowers from her overgrown backyard – whatever was blooming; most often yellow snapdragons and tiger lilies – and wrapped them in damp newspaper. She gathered her grandchildren and started the two-mile walk to the burial ground before the heat of the day set in.

I have tried to remember the route we took because I know it wasn’t along main roads to the proper entrance of Oakwood. I remember walking along gravel and paved roads and dirt paths trampled by many feet through somewhat wooded areas, finally reaching the cemetery on the southeast side, what I would now call “from the back”.  Perhaps development has changed the route we took; perhaps my child’s mind remembers the nearby park as the woods. I am certain however that we did not enter the cemetery through the front gate. Sometimes the path was choked with undergrowth and Grandma cautioned us to follow in her steps, to watch out for mud … and snakes. Any noise sent us hurrying to Grandma's side and grabbing the apron whose pockets held the peppermints and chewing gum that she will give us after our work is done.

Our first stop is the unmarked grave of my great-grandmother Charity Brown.  Grandma places some flowers on the grass and tells us a story about her mother.  I learned that Charity came from Texas after slavery. She was short and dark and fat and had little bitty feet. Charity's mother's name was Nellie Washington and she died at the state hospital in Osawatomie. A death notice in the Parsons newspaper said she would be interred in Oakwood but hospital records identify her final resting place as the hospital burial grounds marked only by a number that can't be tracked because some other records were lost in a fire. Grandma said Charity Brown didn’t like white people because of the abuse and mistreatment she suffered most of her life by their hand. She loved her grandchildren and spoiled my father rotten.

We walk north a hundred yards or so to the veterans’ graves.  My grandfather Lonnie Coker died when my father was just a year old. We wipe dirt and remove debris from his WWI vet’s headstone before laying flowers there. Grandma doesn’t talk about him. She grabs our hands and moves us toward her eldest son. Cleaning another grave, laying more flowers. I remember Uncle Son though I was very young when he died. He was my father’s older half-brother, more than twenty years his senior. We get our candy now and suck the sweet peppermint discs as Grandma’s eyes pass between the graves of her men; they were gone too soon.

Others have arrived to honor their dead, calling greetings across the headstones as they make their offerings. Heads bent in prayer, tears sliding down a cheek.  You see markers for the lady who used to live across the street and her husband who used to cut hair. The Sunday school teacher, the preacher, the grocery store man. The dead are still neighbors in their silent town, segregated as they were in life from the white folks. We recognize a name and say, “I remember when …”. Saying the name, telling the story, binds us to them.

Grandma walked to the cemetery each May as long as she was able.  My family moved away, I grew up and I’m never in town for Memorial Day any more.  I  do go to Oakwood when I’m home but now I drive through the main gate off Main Street and drive to “our town”. In the back, by the creek that used to overflow during heavy rains and erode the soil around the headstones.  There may be years between visits but I know the way. I can show my nieces and nephews where our people are buried.  I can tell a story of those they’ve never met. They can tell a story of the ones they have. When we say their names we know who we are.

My mother Lois Robinson Coker is there now, not far from her father Charles Robinson. My father's brother Lonnie Jr., Uncle Red, rests next to Grandma and Charity Brown. My father will be there some day. There is no room for me because I didn’t buy a plot when I had the chance. Who will find me and say my name?

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.

Lion Tales

I started blogging about my family research because the thought of writing a book was too daunting but I still needed a way to document who I am, where I come from. It seemed easier to tell the story in little pieces rather than sitting down and organizing documents and photos and presenting them in a way that would not bore me senseless.

It is important to tell the stories of my family. Important to me. And I hope important to those who come after. We are ordinary people who will not appear in history books. We may only be remembered by those who actually knew us as individuals. Our names may be passed down to new generations unaccompanied by the stories of our lives.

Who will tell our stories if we don't?

Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe spoke about the danger of not having your own stories in an interview with The Paris Review ...

"There is that great proverb - that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.  That did not come to me until much later. Once I realized that, I had to be a write. I had to be that historian. It's not one man's job. It's not one person's job. But it is something we have to do, so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail - the bravery, even, of the lions."

These are my lion tales.

UPDATE May 21, 2016
Yesterday when I was searching for my folks again online, I found my own self quoted in a book, Race and Ethnicity in Arkansas: New Perspectives by John A. Kirk, University of Arkansas Press, Dec 1, 2014. I was quoted from a long-forgotten 2011 interview I'd done with Jacqueline Froelich for KUAF Public Radio. Seeing part of our story through a third party encouraged me even more to write our story; to show the direct consequences that American racism had on my family. Our story is not unique I know but I have a strong need to reconcile the events that split us apart and scattered us far and wide, lost from each other for generations.

Backtracking - Marion, Sadie and Lillie Stinnett

There are always a few lost trails in genealogy research. Some people live off the grid. Some die during times or in places where records were lost, destroyed by courthouse fires, or not even kept until after their lifespans. People change their names and identities. They use their middle names instead of their first names; sometimes just initials. They cross cultural and national boundaries. Sometimes just searching the possible permutations of name spellings becomes a daunting task in and of itself.

Every now and then I look back at my list of missing people. As more and more records become digitized I can often pick up the trail of a lost ancestor again. I've been lucky in the past month in finding a few people who had disappeared into the genealogical ether.

My first knowledge of Marion Stinnett came about when I was searching a genealogy site for Stinnetts in Marion County, Arkansas.  I found a marriage record for Marion Stinett and Sadia Dunkan dated January 6, 1897[1]. Both the bride and groom resided in Yellville where the marriage took place. Marion was 21 and his bride was 16 according to the record. Further perusal showed that Richard Stinett had signed the marriage bond. Here was a name I recognized; my great-grandmother had a brother named Richard.

This record sent me on a census search for Marion and Sadie. I found a mulatto Duncan (recorded as Dunkin) family in Yellville in the 1880 census but Sadie was not among them; she was born around 1883.  Marion was nowhere to be found. Sada Stennet later appears as the 17-year-old widowed granddaughter of Harrette Harris in the 1900 census in Harrison, Boone, Arkansas. There is also a 2-year-old Lilly Stennet in the household.[2] Then the trail runs cold. I know Marion died before 1900. Where are Sadie and Lily? I'll skip the details of my hours of searching for this family and simply show the highlights:

• 08 Feb 1898 Death of Marion Stinnett. Announcement appeared in the Feb 11, 1898 issue of The Mountain Echo (Yellville, AR). The article simply stated that Marion Stinnett (colored) who lived west of town died the previous Monday evening.
• 10 Dec 1908 Sadia Stinnett marries John Woodard in Kansas City, MO. The 1910 census shows a daughter Lilly in the household who is the right age for my Lilly. City directories later show Sadie and Lilly living together but John is not with them and no death or divorce record has been found yet.
• 10 Aug 1922 Marriage of Louis Alverez (born in Mexico) and Lillie Stinnett (born in Yellville, AR to Marion Stinnett and Sadie Duncan) in Keokuk, Iowa.
• 01 Jan 1925 Iowa State Census shows the Emmit Reese family living in Mason City, Iowa. He was born in Mexico. The parents of his wife Sadie are Press Dunkins and Sarah Roan (sp.) of Arkansas. Stepdaughter Lillie Stinett lives with them and her parents are recorded as Marion Stinett and Sadie Dunkins of Arkansas. Lillie is shown as single and six years younger.
• 1927 Iowa Cemetery Records lists Sadie Reese buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Mason City, Iowa.
• 1928 Mason City directory lists a Mrs. Lillie Alvarez with a restaurant at 518 6th SW. I'm not sure if this is my Lillie.
• 19 Aug 1929 The Mason City Globe-Gazette prints a legal notice about a real estate contract signed by Emmett and Sadie Reese in 1921 that was in default. Emmett Reese and Lillie Alvarez are named as the sole heirs of Sadie Reese. Emmett has apparently remarried because an Ina Reese is also mentioned in the notice.

This is as far as I've gotten on Marion's family but I'll look back at them in a few months. I'm hoping to find death certificates for Sadie and Lillie and a record of Sadie's marriage to Emmett.

UPDATE Feb 28, 2018

Mason City (Iowa) Globe, 20 Sep 1927

Sadie's obituary appears in the Mason City Globe, Sep 20, 1927. No survivors are named. I found her burial record at ancestry.com in the listings of Iowa Cemetery Records, 1662-1999. She is buried in Elmwood Saint Joseph Cemetery in Mason City.

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[1] Notice of the marriage also appeared in The Mountain Echo (Yellville, Arkansas)
5 Feb 1897, Fri Page 4 as Marion Stinnett (21) and Sadie Duncan (16).

[2] Year: 1900; Census Place: Harrison, Boone, Arkansas; Roll: T623_51; Page: 4B; Enumeration District: 29.

Pearl and Lonnie Coker

I'm not sure how or where my grandparents met. Aunt Ginny thought it may have been when Grandma was working in Joplin but I'm not so sure. I say this because there is evidence that two of his brothers - Logan and Beau (Randolph) - had spent time in Parsons as early as 1911. My grandparents were married November 13, 1918 in Junction City, Kansas. My grandfather had been drafted during WWI and served his military duty at Camp Funston, not far from Junction City.

Lonnie Coker, fireman, circa 1920

Junction City (KS) Daily Union, Nov 14, 1918

Lonnie was born June 4, 1989 in Yellville, Marion County, Arkansas. He moved to Joplin, Missouri around the turn of the century and lived in the family house at 922 North St. By 1915 Lonnie and his first cousin Roy Emmet Watkins are working as bootblacks in Lawrence, KS. The 1915 Kansas State Census lists them at 735 Massachusetts St. which is now in Lawrence's historic downtown district so I'm guessing that is where they worked rather than where they lived. Both Lonnie and Roy are recorded as white. The record also shows that both were born in Arkansas and came to Kansas from Missouri. Lonnie registered for the draft in Lawrence in 1917 but Roy had gone back to Joplin. I have trouble imagining how my grandparents kept in touch in those days before cell phones and private vehicles. Did he propose to her before he moved to northern Kansas? Did she follow him there and cajole him into getting married?

By 1920 Pearl and Lonnie are living in Parsons with Pearl's mother Charity Brown and Pearl's son David Brannon at 710 S. 15th St. The census record (Jan 13, 1920) shows Lonnie as a railway wage laborer. An article in the Parsons Sun on Mar 17, 1920, page 1, says that he is one of the four colored firemen to be retained at the mayor's insistence.

Pearl Brown Coker

Aunt Ginny was the only sibling who remembered her father. Lonnie died shortly after my father's first birthday and Pop has no memory of his father at all. Though Aunt Ginny was only about six years old when Lonnie Coker died she remembers spending time with him visiting relatives and her memories led me to the discovery of cousins who had moved to Salina, KS and to Muskogee, OK, as well as to the confirmation of his service as a firemen in Parsons, KS (The above portrait of Lonnie in his fireman's uniform has been on her wall as long as I can remember). Aunt Ginny remembers her father as a quiet man who used to sit with her and her brother Red on a blanket in the yard of a juke joint waiting for my grandmother to tire of dancing inside. If he was indeed the taciturn man of Aunt Ginny's childhood, it is hard to imagine him with Pearl Brown.

Grandma was in her 50's when I was born. She had no teeth and chewed Day's Work tobacco. She dyed her hair (somehow it always seemed to come out a pinkish-brown color) and she worked cleaning white folks' houses. She would fight anybody who messed with her family and she was in church every Sunday. The only story I remember her ever telling me about my grandfather was that when she first brought him to Parsons she announced to all the women at a dance that she would cut any one of them who messed with her man. I had no doubt that she would do it.

Pearl Brown was born in Oswego, Kansas December 13, 1894, the youngest daughter of Grimes County, TX Exoduster Charity Brown. Though we were always told that her father was a Horace Brown that Charity married in Navasota, TX I don't believe this is true. Horace did not make the trip north with Charity, her mother Nellie Washington, and her son Dennis Brown. Charity had two other children (Florence and Jeff) who were born in Oswego as well. Baby Pearl is rumored to have been the child of a farmer named VanZant who owned the farm where Charity worked. That rumor may have to be put to rest with DNA evidence.

According to census records Grandma was in Checotah, OK in May of 1910. Uncle Son (David Brannon) was born there in October. Family history says Pearl ran off to Oklahoma. Charity Brown is at the same rooming house in the census (and in the census in Parsons in April of that year). Did she go there to bring her wayward daughter back only to find out that she was pregnant by a white man whose family would never allow a marriage to take place? Charlie Brannon wanted to keep his son but Grandma Charity wasn't having it. Charity and Pearl went back to Parsons after Uncle Son's birth. Charity raised the boy while Pearl was doing her wild thing.

Pearl and Lonnie were in their own place at 1311 Wilson in Parsons in 1925. Aunt Ginny was born in 1925 and Uncle Red was born in 1928. They moved to the family home in Joplin for a while in 1931 after Lonnie's father George W. Coker died. By 1932 they were back in Parsons where my father Harry Coker was born. After 14 years of marriage Lonnie died of mitral valve regurgitation on December 7, 1933. Aunt Ginny says he just collapsed at their home at 1325 Thornton. Grandma never married again.