Mr. Ira

 #52ancestors
Week 43: Oct 21-27
Prompt: Quite the Character

 Everyone in that part of the country called him Mr. Ira and he was quite a character.

 I met Mr. Ira just a few days after I married his grandson. We were on our monumental trip from Texas to Norfolk, Virginia where my new husband would be stationed on the aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Independence. We stopped over in Memphis to see his Aunt, Uncle, Cousin, and Granddad.  We were only able to stay one night, but when we left in the wee hours of the morning he was awake to tell us good-bye.  

 Over the years I heard many stories during reunions that showed what a special man he was. One memory that several of the cousins experienced was him teaching them to drive.  When my husband was about 14, he was visiting Granddad. His parents had gone to town and Robert asked to walk down to the corner store to get a soda.  Now this was out in the country and several miles away, so Granddad told him to take his truck. When Robert protested that he didn’t know how to drive, Granddad told him, “It’s easy, just keep it in the middle of the road. If you see anyone coming, just wiggle the wheel back and forth and they will get out of your way.”   That is the way Mr. Ira drove and everyone knew to get out of his way in that part of the county.

 The smell of WD-40 brings back a special memory for Robert. He remembers as a kid sitting on the porch with his Granddad while he dosed his arthritis with WD-40.  He took the big metal can with the screw top and would tip it over to pour the lubricant into his palm, then he would pull up the legs of his overalls and rub the WD-40 into his knees, then elbows, and use the last for his hands. He swore by it. Since he lived until 95 years old, there is a good chance he was right.

 Not too long after his oldest son came back from the war, he and his younger brother Ed were walking down to the river near their house.  They were messing around as young men do sometimes and Son (that is what everyone called John) took aim and fired a shot in the top of the door of the outhouse. Granddad came boiling out of the outhouse, holding his pants up with one hand and threatening to whoop the two boys.  They took off for the river and didn’t come back until they figured he had cooled off.

 On our last trip to see Granddad Ira, our daughter was about 2 years old. We stayed a week and every morning and late afternoon; we spent time with Granddad at the nursing home.  Between those times, we explored Memphis and the surrounding area. Granddad enticed Katy to come to him with chocolates he kept hidden in his top drawer. He was diabetic and wasn’t supposed to have candy, but he and Katy became fast friends sharing the chocolate.

One morning we mentioned our planned trip to the Memphis zoo. He told us about the two black bears that he raised from the time they were cubs. Their mother had died and when he found them, he took them home. They were so cute and fun as babies but then they got too big. They were becoming a danger to be around, so he donated them to the fledgling Memphis zoo.  He was as amazed as we were when we came back that afternoon.  We had a conversation with one of the zookeepers at the bear habitat that told us that the black bears they had were descendants of two black bears that were donated to the zoo years before.  

 Mr. Ira had 2 boys and 6 girls. His brother, Bill, had 7 boys and 1 girl. The cousins laughed when they told how about every other year, they would go to Uncle Ira’s house for a few days and when they went home, they had a new brother.  The next year their cousins would come to visit them for a few days and when they went home, they had a new sister.  The two sets of cousins were very close and had lots of adventures together.

 On one of those adventures, Granddad Ira took the two sets of cousins hunting. There was an area that was fenced on both sides but rather long.  The deer could jump the fence and grazed in the area often.  On this particular trip, a group of the cousins gathered at one end and some including Granddad were at the other end.  The cousins started walking toward the others hoping to scare a deer into the other’s view and they did.  One deer came loping straight toward their sight.  Granddad shot the deer and went to cut its throat to get it ready to butcher.  He slung one leg over the deer and lifted its head by the antlers.  Only his bullet had hit the deer right between the antlers and only stunned it.  When he lifted the head, the deer jumped up.  Granddad was riding the deer around the field, screaming, and yelling as the deer bucked to get him off.  They eventually parted ways. The deer jumped the fence and got away. Although Granddad was tough as nails, he refused to do it again for the ones who missed seeing it.

Ira Lee Evans
1886 Sumner, Tallahatchie County, MS
1981 Cordova, Shelby County, TN

Update: This post was mentioned in Amy Johnson Crow's newsletter date Oct 27, 2020. 

Pride Goeth before a Fall

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 42

#52ancestors
Prompt: Proud

One of my Mother’s reminders was “Pride goeth before a fall.”  I ruefully remembered that awhile back when doing research on my Daves line.

I tried for many years trying to find the parents of Sarah Daves, who married Isaiah Herndon.  I knew her brother was Goodman Daves as she lived with him near the Herndon family when she was 14. I knew that she also had a brother named James who lived with her and Isaiah in 1860. I found Goodman’s marriage record in Henderson County, Kentucky so I knew they came from there before moving to Missouri.  The family was even mentioned in the Turnbo Manuscripts giving many details about the relationships among the Herndon, Daves, and Lawrence families.

Using a spreadsheet and the 1840 Henderson County, KY census, I narrowed their likely father down to two men who both had sons and a daughter the right ages. However, that was as far as I was able to get without going to Kentucky to search the court records that had not been published yet.  One of the men who was a candidate for their father was William Davis.

Then one day as many do, I was searching Ancestry trees and found that someone had found their parents.  I was so excited as I followed their tree back and discovered one of their ancestors was William Richardson Davie.  William R Davie is credited with being one of the framers of the Constitution of the United States, founder of The University of North Carolina, a Revolutionary War Officer, and was the Grand Master of Masons in North Carolina.  He was certainly an ancestor to be proud of and I created a post on Facebook to announce my finding and let my relatives know that a mystery had been solved.  

There were multiple trees on Ancestry that gave this lineage and it seemed solid.  Then came the COVID-19 shut down and I started working from home which gave me more time free from commuting.  I turned to gathering the proofs for this lineage.

I guessed that perhaps the Frederick William Davie who was listed as Goodman, Sarah, and James father went by the name of William tying him into one of the men I suspected in Henderson County. I couldn’t find any information about Frederick William Davie, William Richardson Davie’s son, so I decided to start at the top and work down to them. Not the way you should do genealogical research, but it sometimes works.  As I worked my way down, I ran into a slight problem.  All of Frederick W Davie’s biographies said he had no children.  I did not want to give up this ancestor. However, his will named no children and left his estate to his wife, brother, a niece, and nephews.  A lawsuit in the Supreme Court, Bedon v Davie et al states in section 7 that Frederick William Davie died in April 1850 with no issue [children].   

I went back to those family trees on Ancestry.  Starting with the first one I found, I started tracking all their proofs. Most of them had no real proofs but would list the family tree that they incorporated into their tree.  After tracking it back through multiple trees, I found that the original tree shows a completely different Sarah Daves and with her father, Frederick Daves but not the son of William Richardson Davie.  This Sarah’s birth year and place was wildly different than my Sarah Daves and her father’s information did not match up to the Frederick William Daves that so many trees had listed.

I reluctantly gave up this ancestor and remembered again, “Pride goeth before a fall.”

  

"Cool Gunmen Rob City Cafe: Pair Escapes Police Following $30 Holdup".

 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 41

Oct 7-13
#52ancestors
Prompt: Newest [find]

 

"Cool Gunmen Rob City Cafe: Pair Escapes Police Following $30 Holdup".

Thus started a search that I finally solved while in lock down for COVID-19. My newest find solved the mystery of the newspaper clipping found in my Grandparent's pictures. The article details a time when my Grandpa Golightley was robbed while eating breakfast at the Farrell's Products Co. Cafe. It mentions how upset he was because he couldn't pay for his breakfast after the robbery.

There were clues in the article, but I could not find where this might have happened. There wasn't a date on the clipping, nor the name of the newspaper.  The article mentioned that John Golightley was 42 at the time which meant

 it would have been in the year 1948 as his birthday was on January 1st, 1906.  Since Grandpa was a truck driver, it could have been anywhere.  I searched the internet for this Farrell's Products Co. Cafe, but it must be long gone. I had searched for other people and things mentioned in the article on Ancestry and the internet, but up until now I didn't find anything. 

 The name of the manager, J. B. Adams, was mentioned but that name gave me too many search results. The two police officers who investigated the crime were A. F. Blackshere and R. F. Gaylon.  Bob Owen Stewart was also mentioned as having had a run in with these robbers outside Stewart's tavern.

 The last time Newspaper.com ran a special, I decided to get a 6-month subscription.  After all, that 2-hour commute that I wasn't doing during the lock down could be put to good use doing research. 

 I started searching for the two police officers.  First I found A. F. Blackshere, a city policeman, in the 1954 Oklahoma City Directory.  Second, I found a sympathy notice in the December 28, 1951 issue of the Oklahoma Star, Portland Avenue Baptist Church edition for the death of R. F. Gaylon, Jr., Patrolman. This newspaper was published in Oklahoma City which put both officers mentioned in the article in Oklahoma City.

 Then I found my Grandpa in the 1948 Oklahoma City Directory, "Golightley, John, driver Gilmore, Gardner & Kirk.  He was also listed in the 1952 Oklahoma City Directory, "Golightley John (Eva), driver Gilmore Gardner & Kirk rPO Box 1069 Ponca City". 

 I still don't know the exact date he was robbed or in which newspaper it was published, but I do know it was probably in Oklahoma City, probably in 1948 but certainly before 1951. I haven't given up because new information pops up every day and I have found one more place where my Grandparents lived, if even for a short time.   

Our Oldest Family Bible

 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 40

#52ancestors 
Prompt: Oldest  

Our oldest family Bible is worn and is held together with masking tape. When it was given to me, I had to piece together its history since I didn't remember anything about it.  I received it after both my parents had passed away.  My sister remembered that it belonged to my Dad and that she had seen it as a child.

There were several interesting things in the Bible, a card from the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, some carefully dried flowers, and scraps of newspaper print with poems and spiritual readings. One poem (included below) mentions the year 91, presumably 1891.

 

The title page was missing and the title page for the New Testament was torn at the very bottom cutting off the publishing date, although it shows that it was published by the American Bible Society.  The American Bible Society was organized in 1816 to make the Bible available to all people. They were the first organization to provide Bibles to hotels and the first pocket Bibles to Civil War soldiers.    

Our Bible has a unique latch on it. The latch on the front and the back are still attached but whatever was between them is gone. Doing an image search on Google, I found an American Bible Society Bible with an identical latch. Although the cover was similar, it wasn't exact. That Bible was published in 1892.  There is a date handwritten on the back cover of 1886.  Searching out title pages that match the New Testament page in our Bible, I found matching ones from 1881and 1853.  This has led me to believe that the Bible was published around 1890, perhaps as much as 10 years before or 10 years after that date.

 On the back of the New Testament title page are some handwritten names and birthdates.  This gave the strongest clues of the original owner of the Bible.  Listed were:

 Ewing W. Lamb Born March 4, 1857

Lucy Bell Lamb April 17, 1861

Parents of

Leeland Henry Lamb Born Oct 6, 1880

Mattie Bell Lamb  Jan 21st 1882

Eva May Lamb March 20, 1884

Eli Edward Lamb Aug 10th 1886

 

The ink and handwriting for all names and dates are the same, so it was written after Aug 10th 1886, perhaps when the Bible was new.  At first we thought that the Bible belonged to Myrtle Olive Parker, wife of Leeland Henry Lamb. However, it would make more sense for her to have written her husband and herself with their children, leading us to believe that Lucy Bell Lamb was the original owner and that it passed down to Leeland Henry Lamb, then to his daughter, Eva Maude Lamb to my father, Leeland Johnston Golightley.  Leeland Golightley was saved after he was an adult and his oldest children were born.  We have speculated that his mother gave him the Bible at that time. 

I'm including one of the poems left in the Bible.

 

Why we are happy.

 

We all feel so happy this bright New Year's Day.

For Johnny is taking us both in his sleigh.

He drawing us down to the Temperance Hall,

With evergreen branches to hang on the wall;

For to-night the little Crusaders will meet,

For speaking, and singing and also a treat

Of sweet-cakes and candles, and apples and pies.

I tell you the people will open their eyes

When they see what the little Crusaders have done,

And are hoping to do in the year Ninety-One.

Neither whiskey, or brandy, or cider, or beer,

Is needed, I'm sure, for a happy New-Year.

They only bring sorrow, and hunger, and woe;

That's why we are little Crusaders, you know.