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.