More info about Marion J. Phillips, great uncle of my grandmother

Marion J. Phillips

1823–1907

Birth APRIL 23, 1823 • Georgia

Death MAY 5, 1907 • Woodville, Tex

Uncle Marion never married.  But he was an educated man, as shown through some remaining letters to his niece, Ada Phillips Sweet.  He was my grandmother's grandfather's brother.

Selections follow with new edits, from a post on my "When I was 69" blog from Sunday, August 4, 2013

Finding Uncle Marion:

The data on my (Ancestry) site (in 2013) didn't have his death date or place.
I had his birth date and the state of Georgia, but no details.

Uncle Marion had lots of background material.  He was the elder brother of my grandmother's grandfather, William Phillips, who died as a Confederate soldier.  (I don't know why Marion Phillips didn't fight in that conflict).  Uncle Marion was old enough that when his mother remarried to Samuel Gainer, he might not have continued to be part of the household, however he did live with them in 1850 in Georgia, when he was 27.  The whole family gradually moved out to Texas.

Grave in Magnolia Cemetery in Woodville, Texas

Uncle Marion wrote letters between himself and his parents and brothers and sisters and their children from around the Civil War till afterward.  (Some of these letters are on my hard drive waiting for me to transcribe them.)

The Phillips/Gainer family moved to Texas, sometime around the beginning of the Civil War, at least by 1862.   Uncle Marion lived in Galveston as well as Tyler Texas, and I finally found his grave in Woodville, Texas.

Now I actually have a picture of the grave marker, so now I know when he died, and where.

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About Early County, Georgia (where Marion and his brother (GG grandfather) William were born...

This is the birth county of Marion Phillips.  (His mother Mary Phillips later married Samuel Gainer, who raised his siblings.)    Here's info about Early County.  

From Wikepedia:

Early County is a county located in the southwest of the U.S. state of Georgia and bordered on the west by the Chattahoochee River. Created by European Americans on December 15, 1818, it was named for Peter Early.

Prehistoric and nineteenth-century history has been preserved in some of Early County's attractions. It is the site of the Kolomoki Mounds, a park preserving major earthworks built by indigenous peoples of the Woodland culture more than 1700 years ago, from 350 CE to 600 CE. This is one of the largest mound complexes in the United States and the largest in Georgia; it includes burial and ceremonial mounds. The siting of the mounds expresses the ancient people's cosmology, as mounds are aligned with the sun at the spring equinox and summer solstice.

The county area was territory of the historic Creek Indian peoples of the Southeast, particularly along the Chattahoochee River, before European-American settlers encroached and pushed them out during Indian Removal of the first half of the nineteenth century.

The Cohelee Creek Bridge in the county is the southernmost covered bridge still standing.

The only photo I've found of Cohelee Creek Bridge

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Uncle Marion lived in Tyler Texas at least by the 1870 census, where he lists himself as a farmer.

In 1880 he continued to live in Tyler, with a mulatto woman who was cooking for him and he was age 57.

By 1900 he was 77, still living in Tyler County, TX, with help from a widow housekeeper and a boy.  His occupation at that time..."Capitalist."  What a sense of humor he must have had!

At age 84 he died of old age (1907).

I've never seen the Cohelee Creek Bridge, but I have visited the Kolomoki Indian Mounds when living in Tallahassee, FL.

I better read those letters and start transcribing them now...while I can still see those little difficult letters.