Brands and Barbed Wire

 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 7 (Feb 15-21)

Prompt: Unusual Source
#52ancestors

I’ve found unusual and important information from lots of different kinds of records, but the records themselves were not unusual sources. Most genealogy is being meticulous in searching the usual sources. However, often the family heirlooms are what give you the life stories.

For several years, we had a camping family reunion. On one of those weekends, my Uncle brought my Grandparents branding irons. My Uncle Ted shared stories about using the irons as he was growing up. There are two irons, one a capital M and the other a bar. Up to that point, I thought that my Grandparents brand was a rocking M, but my Uncle who helped in the branding when he was growing up knew it was bar M, a bar over the M.

I discovered that brands are often recorded at the local courthouse. The McCarley brand was not recorded at the courthouse in Duncan, the county seat for Stephens County, Oklahoma. However, there are still several courthouses that need to be searched to see if the brand was recorded.

 Bringing the branding irons to the reunion not only allowed us to learn more about the family but caused us to build more memories. We found chunks of wood left around the foundation of the old house, built a fire, and burned the brand into the wood for anyone who wanted it. I also found some short strands of rusted barbed wire on the old homeplace and wrapped it around the chunk of wood that I branded. My Uncle supervised us to make sure that brand was correct.

 

 

Love in the Old West

 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 6 (Feb 8-14)
Prompt: Valentine
#52ancestors

Valentine brings to mind love stories. I'm sharing the story of my Great Grandparents and how they met. 

Picture the old westerns that you see on the AMC channel. Frontier towns with wood sidewalks and one main road through town. Nocona, Texas was established in 1887 along the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad and was the last stop in Texas before crossing the Red River on the Chisholm Trail. 

Mattie Niblett moved to Nocona to learn the milliner trade. Steaming the felt while making hats created even more heat during the hot Texas summer days. Mattie stepped outside the hat shop to catch a breeze one summer day in 1895. She was standing on the wood plank sidewalk leaning on the railing when Sid McCarley rode through town with a herd of horses headed to Indian Territory with his brothers.

About 1900 in Nocona, TX only 5 years after Sid and Mattie married.  

Found on Linda Ballard Shields Mooney's Pinterest. Originally sent by Tom Chambers.

 Sid was a bold young man of only 21 years old and Mattie captured his eye. As his brothers and horses continued through town, he stopped to talk to her. When the herd was almost out of sight, he told her that he would be back and rode to catch up with the herd.

 Sidney E McCarley and Martha (Mattie) Elizabeth Lydia Niblett married in Indian Territory on December 8th in 1895.

In the Kitchen

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 5 (Feb 1-7)
Prompt: In the Kitchen
#52ancestors

This week I’m writing about my grandchildren’s ancestors again.

Far away from home when we first married, my new husband was longing for home cooking. I knew how to cook but to him home cooking was Japanese food, along with southern Mississippi.  So, trying to be a good wife, I decided to learn to cook the foods that he missed.  I called my mother-in-law to get her recipes, but she cooked like my mother. A little bit of this and a smidgen of that mixed in with ingredients that I had never heard of. Not to mention I was trying to create a dish that I had never tasted.  It was trial and error at its best. I would try. He would taste it and tell me that it wasn’t quite like his mother's but good, just needed a little more of something. No matter how bad it was, he ate it and tried to help me get it right the next time.

After he got out of the Navy the first time, we lived with my mother-in-law for about a month while we painted my parent’s house before moving into it.  During that time and for a long time after we moved out, she taught me to cook my husband’s favorite foods.

One of my favorite memories was when she was teaching me to cook sukiyaki.  It isn’t a hard meal, and it is generally cooked family style. She used an electric fry pan in the center of the dining room table and as the slivers of meat and vegetables cooked, we would use chop sticks to move them from the pan to our plates. Sounds simple but it wasn’t. It took several hours prior to the meal to prepare the beef strips and all the vegetables and yam noodles. Each piece had to be cut in a very precise manner, the same size and with the ends cut at the perfect angle.  As we were cutting the vegetables, I started getting in a hurry and my vegetables were not the perfect uniform shape.  Before I realized what had happened, Mom reached out and smacked my hands with her chopsticks.  I think she was more shocked than I was when she realized what she had done. I had to duck my head to hide my smile at her shocked expression. That is when I knew she thought of me as her daughter. She was so used to handling her two boys that it was an automatic reaction to my carelessness.

Several years later, I was checking my mother’s recipes. I found some written in my Dad’s Mother’s handwriting. Recipes like minced meat pie and rhubarb pie. My Mother told me that her mother-in-law gave her the recipes to make sure she could cook my Dad’s favorites.  I guess my experiences learning to cook Japanese were not much different than what every new wife goes through.

Oh, and by the way, my husband is now a pretty good cook himself and his sushi rolls are tighter than mine.

Gladys & Thomas Osa (aka O.C. or Ocie) McCarley

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 4 (Jan 25-31)
Prompt: Favorite Picture
#52ancestors

I have so many favorite family pictures that it was really hard to choose.  I decided to share the two favorite pictures that I have of my Grandparents.  I've shared them before at different times, but I'm not sure that I shared the story behind the second one.  The first is my grandparents with my mother. My Grandmother was 15 when she got married and was probably 16 in this picture. The picture was probably taken in Marlow, OK. So if any of my relatives in OK know where this gas station is or was, please let me know. 

    

The second picture is of my Grandparents after their children were grown and married. You can see their children's pictures on the piano behind them.  All of them took lessons and practiced on this piano.  As you can see, Grandpa has a twinkle in his eyes.  Grandma told me that he was pinching her on the behind at the time the picture was taken, which explains the look on her face, too. 

Grace Truman Jordan Evans

  

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 3 (Jan 18-24)
Prompt: Namesake
#52ancestors

 

Grace Truman Jordan

 Grace Truman Jordan was born on April 6, 1909 to William and Minnie Lee Jordan.  There was a mystery pertaining to Minnie Lee’s parents. The only record I could find for years was the 1880 census record where M. L. Dottry, was living with her parents,  T  and J Dottery.  For years that is all we knew about her parents.  It seemed easy to assume that Grace Truman Jordan’s name might be the clue needed to find her grandparents. Surely, she was named after her grandfather, T Dottery, making his given name, Truman.

 Alas, that proved to be wrong, her grandfather’s name turned out to be Thomas G. Dottery, which is another story. Where did the name Truman come from?  It seemed like it should be a surname passed down. Could she have been a distant relative to Harry S Truman? That proved to be wrong, too. 

 In the 1850s, Sallie Rochester Ford published a serial story in the Christian Repository owned by her husband, Reverend Samuel Ford titled, Grace Truman, or Love and Principal.  The serial was published as a book in 1857 and republished multiple times[1].  The 1886 edition included an afterword in which “Ford noted that the work was semi-autobiographical and referenced her own personal and public struggle as she converted from Presbyterianism to the Baptist movement[2].” This book was influential in Baptist circles for many years.

 The two sides of the character, Grace Truman, spoke to many of the faithful Baptist women of the last half of the 1800s and early 1900s.  While Grace Truman was the epitome of the faithful, submissive, devoted wife, she was also a fierce warrior of her faith.  She reflected a strength that appealed to many women of that time. The book, Grace Truman, must have made an impression on Minnie Lee Dottery Jordan for her to have named her daughter, Grace Truman.  In fact, there were many girls named Grace Truman after different editions of the book were published. A search of the first name “Grace Truman” with no other information gives over 4 million results in Ancestry.com and 1,184 results in the family trees. 

Grace Truman Evans with niece, Christine and sons, John (Son) and Ed

 Grace Truman Jordan’s namesake was not another relative but a fictional character, a woman of faith. It gives an insight into the character and faith of her mother, Minnie Lee Dottery Jordan.

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[1]Sallie Rochester Ford.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Rochester_Ford

[2] Sallie Rochester Ford: fiction, faith, and femininity: nineteenth-century Baptists offered two general, and different,  cultural messages to women within the church regarding social expectations. - Free Online Library (thefreelibrary.com). https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Sallie+Rochester+Ford:+fiction,+faith,+and+femininity:...-a0138811971

Gunslingers shoot down McCarley

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 2- 2021
#52ancestors 
Prompt: Family Legend

 In the old west, Malcom McCarley and one of his brothers, were fixing a fence. A couple of gunslingers came by and shot one of the brothers. Their father, Mitchel McCarley and another brother rode to Bowie to post a bond. The brother who was able to get away  and a fourth brother rode out after the killers. One of the brothers came back and the other was never seen again.  

 That is the family legend that my Mother brought home from a reunion one year. Despite my grilling her, that is all she knew. Was this a true story and if so, who was the McCarley brother who was shot by a gunslinger?   

 I was very curious about the idea of them riding to Bowie to post a bond.  I thought a bond is what you paid to get out of jail until your trial started. But a legal definition is that "someone receives a bond (monetary payment) and promises to engage in a specific act. Then a failure to perform results in them forfeiting the money. So a bond is an incentive to do something.  I went to the courthouse in Montague County, where Bowie, Texas is located.  While I found some very interesting things, but I didn't find anything about a bond being posted.  I could only guess that it was some type of reward for finding the killer.  

 As I discovered, many of the details in the original story were wrong. In sorting out the brothers, I started with reviewing Mitchel McCarley's sons and finding when they died. Using census records, I determined their last census record and was able to find the date of death for most of them.   Eli and James seemed to disappear after the 1900 census, so I began to concentrate on finding them.

 Then due to the new rootsweb message boards, I made contact with my Mother's 2nd cousin, Jim Hupp, gave me more details about the story as he had heard it. 

 Jim and Eli McCarley were repairing a fence that had been cut during the fence wars of Texas when a group of gunslingers rode up. Jim and Eli were unarmed but the gunslingers shot and killed Jim anyway. Eli got away. Their father, Mitchel McCarley, and another brother, Sidney, rode to Durant to post a reward. While they were gone, Eli and another brother, decided to ride out after them men who shot Jim. The unknown brother returned to Nocona, but the other brother disappeared. A few months later his family disappeared. It was believed that they went to California.

 As I continued to research, I found that James (Jim) McCarley died on April 6, 1904 and was buried in Marshall County, Oklahoma. Of the older boys in the family, Jim is the only one who died that early in the 1900s.  Eli disappeared in the county records around that time, so it appeared that part of the story is consistent. Since he died in Indian Territory, it makes more sense that  Mitchel and Sidney rode to Durant, Oklahoma rather than Bowie, Texas. I haven't been to the courthouse in Durant but the courthouse in Montague County where Bowie is located did not have any records about a reward or about the killing.

Sometime later, when the Library of Congress started digitizing newspapers in the "Chronicling America" collection, I found these articles in The Daily Ardmoreite. 

 April 8, 1904. Henry Paris, who was present at the killing of Jim McCarley by his brother, Oscar Paris, who escaped, was bound over without bail at his trial yesterday.

The Daily Ardmoreite, April 6, 1904.   Ardmore, I.T., April 8 - ? McCarley was shot and instantly killed Wednesday morning, three miles southeast of Madill. Oscar Paris is alleged to have done the shooting. The two men had quarreled about some land, and, it is said, Paris shot McCarley in the mouth, the ball passing through and breaking his neck. Both men were farmers. 

 

Another article, called it a disagreement among neighbors. Oscar Parish or Paris was eventually caught and bound over for trial.  I have searched the court records in several courthouses in Oklahoma and the pre statehood court records housed at the regional archives in Fort Worth, Texas, but I still have not found the trial of Oscar Parish. However the archivist in Ft Worth told me that if the case lasted past statehood, which was possible, then the records would still be at the Oklahoma courthouse.

 Just recently in searching the "Chronicling America" database, I found the following excerpt from a column titled " Technical Points Not in Favor: Criminal Court of Appeals Not Hunting for Excuses to Set Aside Verdicts" in The Guthrie Daily Leader, dated May 10, 1911.

The case of Oscar Paris, sentenced to one year in prison and fined $100 for manslaughter, is reversed in an opinion by Judge Doyle, because the state was allowed to impeach one of its own witnesses, whose testimony helped out Paris' claim of self-defense. Paris killed J.W. McCarly south of Madill on April 6, 1904. 

So, it appears that Oscar Paris/Parish, did not serve any time for killing Jim McCarley.I am still looking for the court case and the appeals. If as in our family story, Jim was unarmed, how could it be self defense? Perhaps that is another detail that was wrong.

And the brother who disappeared? According to census records, Malcolm and his wife, Cassie are living in Socorro, New Mexico in 1910 and Eli lived in Love County, Oklahoma in 1910 until his death in 1933. Love County is very near where the rest of the family was living during those years, so perhaps, it was Malcolm who disappeared from the family.

Godfrey Ragsdale

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 1- 2021
#52ancestors
Prompt: Beginnings

Godfrey Ragsdale

Most of my family beginnings are in the early records of the new country, United States of America. Some go back to the colonization time period with only one line coming to America in the late 1800s.

 One of the earliest which seems as much myth as fact concerns the Ragsdale family.  The Ragsdale family goes back to Robert Ragsdale born in England in 1484.  His son, Henry, was born in 1510 in Kneeton, Nottinghamshire, England. I don't have all the documentation to prove the line back this far, but it is one of my goals this year to get the proofs back to colonial times. William Ragsdale, born in 1738, is my original DAR ancestor.

 Godfrey Ragsdale, Sr. was born in 1615 in Nottinghamshire, England and was the first Ragsdale to immigrate to the new world. Unfortunately, it did not turn out well for him and his wife, Mary.

 In 1642, Godfrey bought land from John Butler in Virginia near Old Town in Henrico County. In 1644, Opechancanough, chief of Tsenacomoco, led the third assault against the English Colonists.  There were approximately 400 colonials killed in the attack on the outlying plantations around Jamestown [1]. In the 1644 attack, Godfrey and his wife, Mary, lost their lives there. 

 Family tradition is that Godfrey and Mary, hid their son, Godfrey Jr. during the attack.  Their infant son was found after the attack and was raised by his maternal grandparents.  Godfrey Jr was willed land in 1646 from John Cookney. Speculation is that John Cookney was Godfrey Jr's maternal Grandfather, making his mother, Mary Cookney [2]. There is some disagreement in that some researchers believe the Cookney's were neighbors who found the infant and raised him as their own as they had no children. It may never be determined if his mother, Mary was actually a Cookney or was the daughter of another colonist in the area.

 Despite the harrowing circumstances of his infancy, Godfrey Ragsdale, Jr. lived to the approximate age of 69. His will was signed 27 April 1697, naming his wife, Rachell, and children, Godfrey the 3rd, Peter, Daniel, and daughter Rachell [3].

 I am descended from the Ragsdales through my paternal Grandmother, Evelyn "Eva" Maude Lamb.

                                      

 

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[1]Rountree, Helen C.  Opechancanough (d 1646). Encyclopedia Virginia. https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/opechancanough_d_1646

[2] Godfrey Ragsdale II (abt 1643-1703). WikiTree https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Ragsdale-42

[3] Brenneman, Ricahrd E. Ragsdale Family in America. 1999. Boston, Massachusetts.