Mary Ann Elizabeth Powell Bass

This was her birthday, the 21st of February, but I missed it this year.  I did make a post (HERE) in 2014 in her honor.  And she's part of an interesting family that traveled from North Carolina, to Alabama, to Louisiana and finally to Walker County Texas.

In Huntsville, Walker County, TX, the Historical Association meets monthly in a museum they've established, in the Gibbs-Powell house.  "It was built in 1862 by Thomas Gibbs, and the Gibbs family was often visited at the home by personal friend Sam Houston. The house has been the home to several generations of Gibbs and Powell families."

"Through the interest of Judge and Mrs. Ben H. Powell III, this home has remained unchanged, and the interior as well as the furniture and furnishings were preserved to be used as a museum."  I can't find any Ben Powells on my family tree of the descendants of James Moore Powell.  But it's likely they are cousins! (Walker County Historical Society)

Thomas Gibbs was brother of my great great grandmother Lucinda Benson Gibbs Rogers. I know I had more pictures of this house, but haven't been able to locate them yet.  So when I do, you'll get a further link!

There's a great history of Walker County Texas at Texas History on Line (HERE)

James Moore Powell

Great great great grandfather James Moore Powell has a birthday today, born Feb 27, 1791 in Bertie County, North Carolina.. I posted a lot about him HERE.and Here.

He was a soldier in the War of 1812, for the Seventh Company of the Warren County Regiment of North Carolina.  He served in 1812, according to the muster rolls.

I covered his life, and that of his wife, Nancy Traylor Powell HERE, and here and Here! especially about their daughter, Mary Ann Elizabeth Powell Bass, who I'll celebrate tomorrow.

Incidentally, when I was 69 years old, I discovered my great grandmother after whom I was named, had been born 69 years before I was.  And Nancy Traylor Powell had been born 69 years before she had, though she was on my father's side of my nuclear family.

 This is NOT the home of the Powell family.  Hope Plantation, built in 1803  near Windsor, Bertie County, North Carolina. The plantation house was built by David Stone, a member of the coastal Carolina planter class, later Governor of North Carolina and a United States Senator.  I'm sharing it here because it was restored in the 1960s from a derelict condition and the property has other old buildings also restored.  I live a long way from the coastal area of North Carolina, but I'd love to visit this site.

The Powells were farming people who moved from one community to another throughout their lives.  James Powell died on the same date as his birthday, Feb. 27 in 1868 in Walker County, Texas.  So he and his family lived through the Civil War.

Walker County Texas also has some great historic sites to visit. The Texas on Line link is Here.

William Lewis Booth, and Hill County justice (and politics)

My great great grandfather (father-in-law of yesterday's post about Eugenia Witty Booth here) was known as a lawyer and judge in Hill County Texas, in the early days.  I don't know where the title Colonel came from, as I don't find records of any military service, but it was probably an honorific.

He lived from Feb 17, 1818 to Feb 24, 1894.  His obituary in the Dallas Morning News of Feb 27, 1894, reads as follows:

"Col. W. H. Booth - Hillsboro, Hill Co., Tex. Feb 26 - Col. W. H. Booth died last night, age 76 years.  He was about his business all day and was suddenly taken sick at 5 o'clock in the afternoon.  He waas one of the oldest settlers in the county and assisted in laying off the city of Hillsboro.  He was a republican, and during the administration of E. J. Davis he was county judge of Hill county.  He was chairman of the Hill county republican executive committee.

I knew he'd been a republican during reconstruction in Texas, but decided to look into E. J. Davis for more information, as he'd been a Governor of Texas who didn't want to give up his office when another governor had been elected...at least that's all I remembered. See Coke-Davis controversy.

Some background on E.J....

Davis was a Whig until the mid-1850s. In 1855 he joined the Democratic party in a fusion against the American (Know-Nothing) party, and he remained a Democrat until after the Civil War. In later politics he supported Sam Houston and opposed secession in 1861, when he ran unsuccessfully to become a delegate to the Secession Convention. After secession Davis refused to take the oath of loyalty to the Confederacy, and the state vacated his judgeship on April 24.

As a result of his opposition to the Confederacy, he fled the state in May 1862. With John L. Haynes and William Alexander, he went to New Orleans, then to Washington, where the men met with President Abraham Lincoln, who recommended providing arms to troops that they wanted to raise. On October 26, 1862, Davis received a colonel's commission and authorization to recruit the cavalry regiment that became the First Texas Cavalry (U.S.).

Following the war..."he represented the border district and was president of the Constitutional Convention of 1868–69. In this period he consistently supported political programs that would have restricted the political rights of secessionists, expanded rights for blacks, and divided the state

In the election of 1869 Davis ran for governor against Andrew J. Hamilton, another Republican, and won in a closely disputed race. His administration was a controversial one. Its program called for law and order backed by a State Police and restored militia, public schools, internal improvements, bureaus of immigration and geology, and protection of the frontier. All of these measures encountered strong attacks from both Democratic and Republican opponents and added to the controversy surrounding Reconstruction in Texas. Davis ran for reelection in December 1873 and was defeated by Richard Coke by a vote of two to one. Davis believed that the Republican national administration was partly responsible for his defeat, and relations between the governor and Washington were strained until he was removed from office by Democrats the following January in what is known as the Coke-Davis controversy.

 From 1875 until his death Davis, contemporarily described as a "tall, gaunt, cold-eyed, rather commanding figure," headed the Republican party in Texas as chairman of the state executive committee. Davis died in Austin on February 7, 1883, and is buried there in the State Cemetery.

 Why all the info about the governor, the General, the reconstructionist? Well let's see about how the law was going about things following the Civil War in Hill county, Texas...

HILL COUNTY REBELLION

Ricky Floyd Dobbs

HILL COUNTY REBELLION. During Reconstruction Governor E. J. Davis and the Radical Republican-dominated Twelfth Legislature of 1870 attempted to control crime in the state. In October 1870 Davis threatened Hill County with martial law for its tolerance of criminals. Conditions in the county seemed improved by late 1870, but in December a freedman and his wife were murdered in neighboring Bosque County, and State Police Lt. W. T. Pritchett moved into Hill County chasing suspects James J. Gathings, Jr., and Sollola Nicholson. Pritchett raised the ire of James J. Gathings, Sr., by seeking to arrest his son. The elder Gathings, Hill County's largest landowner, incited a mob that pushed county officials to arrest and detain the State Police troopers in Hillsboro in early January 1871. On January 11 Davis declared martial law in Hill County and dispatched adjutant general James Davidson and the State Militia to rescue the jailed police. Davidson arrived on January 15 with fifty state militia troops from Georgetown, commanded by Capt. E. H. Napier. Davidson arrested the elder Gathings, his brother Phillip, and his sons-in-law, James Denmember and Dr. A. M. Douglas, for hampering Pritchett's investigation. The adjutant general fined the four $3,000, rather than assessing the entire county as mandated by law. Martial law ended on January 17. Controversy over incidents in Hill and Walker counties led to an investigation by the state Senate committee on militia in February 1871. The committee supported Davis's actions; the senator from Hill County, G. P. Shannon, a Democrat, was the lone dissenter. In 1874, despite a strained budget and Democratic attacks upon Radical extravagance, Governor Richard Coke signed a bill that returned Gathings's money.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: 

Ann Patton Baenziger, "The Texas State Police during Reconstruction: A Reexamination," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 72 (April 1969). Barry A. Crouch, "A Spirit of Lawlessness: White Violence, Texas Blacks, 1865–1868," Journal of Social History 18 (Winter 1984). Ricky Floyd Dobbs, `A Slow Civil War': Resistance to the Davis Administration in Hill and Walker Counties, 1871 (M.A. thesis, Baylor University, 1989). Hill County Historical Commission, A History of Hill County, Texas, 1853–1980 (Waco: Texian, 1980). A Memorial and Biographical History of Johnson and Hill Counties (Chicago: Lewis, 1892). 

...as published by Texas History On-Line HERE.

 

Even though Judge William L. Booth (where did his obit get the initial "H"?) isn't mentioned in the conflicts in Hillsboro, I'm sure he was part of the attempts to have some justice. 

 

Some descendants used some W.L Booth stationary upon which to write a few records of the family...(done originally by Anna Booth Calder and then by Laurie Mae Booth Calder, probably cousins of mine through Billy Booth, his son.) I think the stationary belonged to him and the Calder line is through him.

 

 

 Another obituary tells a bit more about his life.

 

 

 Here we find his personal religious beliefs...a Spiritualist.  "He was president of the Spiritual association of Texas during the life of that association." (Perhaps it was no longer active at the time of his death?)

 

Survived by "Charles Booth of  this (Hill) County, a sister in Minnesota, three children, W.L. Jr, Miss Cinnie and Mrs. H.F. Attaway of Hillsboro, Texas."

 

His sister was Lucinda Booth Slocum who lived until 1906 in the Minneapolis area.

 

W.L. Jr. was really William Legrand Booth...not a true Junior.  And he was known as Uncle Billy in Hillsboro, Texas.  He had 5 children, and his wife successfully divorced him in 1882.  

 

The daughters of William Lewis listed in that obituary are Miss Cinnie, named Lucinda, who never married and lived until 1920, so was a great source of historic information; and Mrs. H.F. Attaway, born Annie Booth and married to Henry Franklin Attaway, and she lived until 1948.

 

Thanks for reading through all this history of one of my ancestors.  I've mentioned him before on my blogs here,  and Here, and about Texas reconstruction HERE. 

Today's quote:

No one dies so poor that he does not leave something behind," said Pascal

 

 

Eugenia Almeda Whitty Booth

Happy birthday yesterday to my great great grandmother, born in Marshall, Texas Feb 24, 1852. 

I spoke about her life already HERE, another blog post a few years back.
 
Interestingly enough, I posted a facebook sharing about Marshall Texas also, because there is a college there, started quite a while after she had already moved to Hillsboro, Texas.   Here's the Texas Historical Association background about Wiley College, established 1873.  
But here's the info on the largest black college west of the Mississippi from yesterday.

February 24th, 1969 -- Rangers sent to Wiley College in response to student demonstrations

On this day in 1969, approximately 100 Texas Rangers, local lawmen, and state police were dispatched to Wiley College, the oldest black college west of the Mississippi River, in response to a series of nonviolent student demonstrations on the Marshall campus. The students were demonstrating over faculty hiring practices, primitive dormitory facilities, and cutbacks in the intercollegiate athletic program. The lawmen undertook a massive search for concealed weapons in the dorms; the search was fruitless, but the school was closed down for several weeks. Further demonstrations resulted in the school administration's agreement in August to improve living conditions on campus. Wiley College was founded in 1873 and chartered in 1882. In 1907 Wiley received the first Carnegie college library west of the Mississippi. In 1960 Wiley and Bishop College students held sit-ins at the local Woolworth store. Their activities and the local reaction made national headlines. These demonstrations helped integrate public facilities in Marshall. In 2004, Wiley College had a student body of 552 and a faculty of 56, and Dr. Haywood Strickland was president.

 Just kind of interesting that they happened at the same dates... 

It's also of interest that Eugenia was Richard Booth's second wife.  Jemima J. Johnson Booth (1847-1868) had been his first wife.  They had two sons, and the second one died at 4 months of age, while Jemima died the day he was born.  So Richard remarried quickly, with his one son still a child, William Lewis "Willie" Booth (1866-1940). He and Eugenia Whitty married July 20, 1869.

Eugenia and Richard Booth had just three children, with the last daughter dying without even being named in 1875.  Their first son was Edwin Whitty Booth (1871-1924), and then they had my great grandmother (after whom I'm named) Eugenia Almeda Booth Miller (1873-1936).  

Yes, I noticed also that Almeda is sometimes spelled Almetta.  I have no idea which is correct, and apparently neither did various ancestors.  Fortunately (maybe) I received Booth as my middle name.

And sadly enough, Eugenia Almeda Whitty Booth probably died in childbirth in 1875, July 13.

Texas Bluebonnets...every spring in Hill Country.

William Henry Conn (1760-1836)

More on the Kentucky Conn families.

William Henry Conn traveled about quite a bit. Or there was more than one man by the same name...and he is frequently confused with a brother named Henry Conn (1764-1835)  They also had another brother, James Conn (1765-?)   Henry is noted for also serving in the Revolution. There's very little information about James, though I did just find his wife's name, and a lot of children as well.

As of today (with the flexible nature of my research at Ancestry) William had been born in Somerset County, New Jersey, possibly as early as 1757.

On Dec 6, 1778 he married Elisabeth Alexander (1760-1845) in Lincoln County, North Carolina, probably in Lincolnton, the main town. That's a long way from New Jersey.

He had served in the American Revolution at some time, under the Virginia State Troops, as "Pri, Cav'y & Inf'y," (Private, Calvary & Infantry) for which he received pensions starting in 1834 in Henry County, KY, (The Pension Roll of 1835, Vol· III, 10 Kentucky).

Lincoln County NC was formed from Tryon County NC in 1779, and his marriage record there is for a bond for marriage in 1778.  The county was named for General Benjamin Lincoln of the Revolutionary War.

William and Elisabeth Conn had eight children, and it looks as if some were born in Virginia, some in North Carolina, and some in Kentucky.  The sources of this information are from other ancestry trees, and seldom from original documents. For instance, Elisabeth is noted to have been born in Guilford County, NC in 1760, but the Guilford County, North Carolina records didn't begin until 1771 when that county was formed out of 2 other counties.

They did both live their later lives in Kentucky.  Henry County, Kentucky was formed June 15, 1799 out of portions of Shelby County, KY.  About 12 counties came into existence in the KY legislature at the same session in 1798.

My ancestor was his son, James A. Conn who I spoke about HERE.  

I'll be climbing up the branches of this tree for a while now...in hopes of learning more about the Conns, or Konns, as they immigrated to America.

The story of Hannah Booth

As lives continue, so does my story about them...

William Lewis Booth had lived in Lawrence County, Indiana, and had 3 children born there with his first wife, Mary Ann McManus Booth, 1818-1842, who was born and died in Lawrence County, Indiana

So none of those documents state that Hannah was James and Nancy Conn's daughter.  But it's more and more likely to me.

Hannah had only one sibling documented, James Erwin Conn, 1824-1870, (born in Lawrence County, Kentucky, three years after the county was established), who later moved to Iowa.  But he also lived in the town of Carr, Jackson County Indiana in the census of 1850, as a farmer.

Carr, Jackson County Indiana is noted for ..."The Medora Covered Bridge (which) crosses the East Fork of the White River.. Measuring abutment face to abutment face, the Medora Covered Bridge is the longest (three-span) historic covered bridge in the United States."  I had quite a search and am not sure yet as to its "long length"...perhaps 460 feet.

Some more logical clues that Hannah Conn Booth belonged to this family are that Nancy's mother was named Hannah, and James had a sister named Hannah.

I'm not only sad to leave my old tree ancestors, I'm sad that these "new to me" ancestors didn't have families who had records of their own ancestors, so this has become a dead end, except for the Conns themselves.  None of the mothers had parents listed beyond one generation. And these Conns didn't come into the US as immigrants in similar areas, so I don't see that they were related to my old family tree of Conns, when they came from England, Ireland or France.

The county names are confusing, and I hope I've copied them correctly, Lawrence County being in both Kentucky and Indiana (but nowhere near each other).  Lawrence County IN is right next to Jackson County IN, so it's easy to imagine Hannah meeting the widower, William Booth, and their marriage taking place in Jackson County IN, as well as the birth of their first child, Richard (my ancestor).  However they don't stay there long, and within a year are in Illinois!

Today's quote:

Every intersection in the road of life is an opportunity to make a decision.

Duke Ellington