The Witty brothers of Eugenia Witty Booth

This week I'm posting about the Booth Family tree.

All 9 of the children of Carroll and Susan Witty lived to adulthood, though my great times 2 grandmother, Eugena Almeda Witty Booth died at 23.

But there are a lot of cousins (a few times removed) from these other Witty aunts and uncles.

The following is a revised post 

John C. Witty, Pvt. (1843-1865) GG uncle

He died in 1865, in the county in which he lived according to several census records.

My Mother: Mataley Webb Munhall Rogers
Grandmother: Mozelle Miller Webb Munhall
Great grandmother: Eugenia Booth Miller
Great great grandmother: Eugenia Almeda Witty Booth, sister to...

John Witty was a private in the Civil War,  Confederate  Regiment, Texas 12th Regiment, Texas Infantry (Young's)  Company:  K  Rank In:  Private   Rank Out:  Private  
1862 enlistment records.

With the great population of Ancestry records, I find that another John Witty lived his whole life in Yorkshire, England. So that wasn't the one born in Alabama who fought for the Confederacy, but was the one who married Keziah!

John and Kesiah Martha Witty (not in America)
This John lived from 1845-1931.
And was married to Kesiah.

What I do know is that John C. Witty was the oldest of my great times 2 grandmother's 9 siblings. He was just 6 years old on the farm in Alabama before she had been born, then moved with the family to Marshall, Texas where Eugenia, the twins and little Susie were born. After 1856 the family moved to his father's land speculation in the new "subdivision" in Hill County, Texas, with the development to eventually be called Woodbury. In the 1860 census for that area he was listed as a stockman, age 16. His father, Carroll Witty, called himself a wagonmaker. 

This was a young man who joined the 12th Texas Infantry for the Confederate cause.  Some Texans didn't want to fight for the south, and some left and joined Union forces.  It was a terrible conflict with brothers against brothers. John's father doesn't seem to have fought in the Civil War for Texas. In some of my reading I saw that the frontier of Texas needed some manpower to defend settlements against the Native Americans. John was only 18 when he enlisted in the military.  And he died in 1865, age 21.

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James J. Witty (1845-1904) was just a year younger than John.  Born in 1845 he was barely old enough to go to the war between the states for the Confederacy with his older brother, John, in 1862.

He didn't serve in the same way however, and was in the cavalry while John was in the infantry.
And he had a surviving widow who eventually applied for his war pension many years after he died.

12th Texas Calvary, W. H. Parsons Regiment , Company "A" of Hill County, TX,

His family had settled in Texas from Alabama, and his father (Carroll Witty) was one of the founders of a community called originally "Subdivision, Hill County, Texas" and later known as Woodbury.

The Hill County Historical Commission tells us: "Woodbury is on Farm Road 309 twelve miles northwest of Hillsboro in north central Hill County. Anglo-American settlers began moving into the area about 1850, and the community was established in 1857, when Carroll Witty, William R. Nunn, and Rev. Thomas Newton McKee purchased property and offered it for sale."

In the 1870 Census for Hill County, TX, James was 25 and living with his parents and listing his occupation as "stock raiser,"  just as he had 10 years previously in the 1860 Census.

After the war, James married a woman who was a widow with one child living with her, when he was 39 himself.  Mary Lou Cobb Brooks and James were married Nov 23, 1884.  Most of her 5 children were adults, and married and having their own families. But the youngest was Bert Brooks, born in 1875.  The date of the marriage was listed on her application for widow's pension, and the location was Shackleford, Texas, where she lived the rest of her life. I enjoyed looking at all the family photos from the Brooks family, including Mary with her grown children...obviously after James Witty had died.

Unknown old house, Moran, Shackleford County, Texas

Moran Texas, 1924 looking west.

Shackleford County, Texas is where James spent his later adult life, and where he and his wife are buried, but in different cemeteries.   She's in the Moran Cemetery, also in Shackleford County, and her youngest son Bert Brooks was also buried there.  

James' death is noted in the Texas Find A Grave site as "J.J. Whitty found dead in his wagon Sept of 1904 on his way home from town, found by Brooksey King (Possible burial place 7 or 8.) Thought to have died of a heart attack."  (Jo Ann Farmers Notes)

The cemetery where his remains are located is unique in that it's a ranch cemetery with many unknown cowboys buried there.  It is listed as the Lynch Cemetery.  "The Lynch Cemetery is located 8 miles southeast of Albany near the Ibex Community on FMR 601. The cemetery began in the summer of 1875 as the final resting place of J. A. Leflet, a young cowboy who worked for the Lynch family on what was then called Fairview Ranch. Founders of the ranch, John C. Lynch and his wife Fannie, arrived in this part of Shackelford County in the 1860's after coming to nearby Stephens County with Fannie's family, the Peter Gunsolus family. After Mr. Leflet was buried in 1875, on a rise a quarter of a mile from the Lynch home, other cowboys on the ranch who died were also buried there, most now are unmarked or unknown."

 James J. Witty is listed as a known grave, and has a legible marker there.

James J. Witty, died Aug. 30, 1904, age 59 years.

Post office, Moran, Shakleford County, Texas

I'll spend some time sharing the great photos of Mary Brooks Witty and her adult children, which I just saw on Ancestry. Though they aren't blood relations, they are close because James Witty married Mary and helped her raise Bert Brooks. The photos are like many of these, giving a good sense of what their lives were like. And Mary even wrote an autobiography. 

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William Wiley Witty (1854-1929) has the same birthday as his sister Laura Dove Witty, on most of his records.

But there is discrepancy on some others.  So though his year of birth is always within a year of the same one, the place is given on some records differently.

So about half the Ancestry listings in families have him born in Marshall Texas on the same birthday as Laura, the other half (out of 10 listings) say he was born earlier in the same month, to the same parents, but in either Missouri or Georgia, these mainly coming from his death certificate and the grave site information.

Now I've got a bit of logic on my side, the Marshall Texas and twin story that I'm presenting today.  His mother gave birth in Marshall 2 years earlier to my great great grandmother, Eugenia.  The Witty children are all on the first census in 1860 in Subdivision, Hill County, Texas...and there's no mention anywhere that Susan Hoke Witty (their mom) could have gone to Missouri or Georgia.  It's just not logical.  Until proven otherwise, I'm sticking with this direct movement of the family from Alabama, to Marshall (eastern Texas) to Hill County (central Texas)

Unfortunately a lot of his, and his children's records in "Find A Grave" use the earlier March 3, 1854 and Missouri information. Maybe that's what he told people in his family. Perhaps he wanted to be a Yankee?

So who was William Wiley Witty?

The 1860 Census had been taken in July, and there he and Laura were both the same age, 6 years old.  The 1870 Census of Precinct 1 in Hill County, Texas, taken in July of that year, lists him as 16, while Laura is 17, both born in Texas.   One of these records gives his birthday a year off, I think.

But skip ahead to the 1900 census for Precinct 2, Hill County, Texas, taken in June, and here is some interesting information that has been added to the data.  He is married and age 46.  That still has the 1854 birth year, including month of March.  He states he's been married 26 years, making his marriage happen in 1874 to Mary Witty.  They have 10 children by that census, and he owns his own farm.  Mary was born in Georgia in Nov. 1854, but William was born in Texas, as well as all their children, according to the census.

The very same 1900 Census also gives his sister, Laura, a clear birthday as March 1854...though they no longer lived in the same area...so a different census taker was recording it.

So I continue, at this time, to think these siblings were probably twins.

As I mentioned his wife was Mary, and one source gives her as Molly, and another says Mary Jane Paschal.  I haven't looked into her family beyond the fact that they came from Georgia to Texas.

AND William and Molly had at least one set of twin children: Stella and Della, born in 1885.

They not only have the same birthday, but were buried under the same headstone, though one died in 1909 and one in 1926. Della, who died first, had actually been married, though there's no information about her husband. Stella was the one who lived longest and had epilepsy, as attested to by her father, following her death in 1926 in a hospital. She had been cared for at home up until the 1920 census at least.

Mrs. William Witty, Molly, after giving birth to 10 children, lived to 79, dying in 1933.
William Wiley Witty, the farmer, predeceased her in 1929, dying at 74.

They had married in Hill County Texas, but lived in Star, Mills County, Texas.  Where is that, you may ask?  Star is a small unincorporated area with agriculture, named after nearby Star Mountain.

From The Texas Historical Association:

The first settlers, (Mills County) like the Indians, subsisted primarily on hunting. A number of the early settlers were German immigrants who toiled, as one put it, in a "place that was a heaven for men and dogs-but hell for women and oxen." Life on the frontier was often precarious; Dick Jenkins and several other early pioneers were killed by Indians. In 1858 Mr. and Mrs. Mose Jackson and two of their children were killed by Indians at Jackson Springs, while two other children were carried into captivity. After a force of settlers routed the Indians at Salt Gap, their pursuers and a company of Texas Rangers recovered the captive Jackson children. In 1862 a band of twenty Comanches raiding for horses was pursued by settlers to the mouth of Pecan Bayou and put to flight after three Indians and one white, O. F. Lindsey, were killed. After Indians killed John Morris, a rancher, settlers pursued them and killed or wounded seven of the twenty-seven raiders. Few of the settlers joined the Confederate Army during the Civil War because their own frontier required protection against the depredations of Indians and outlaws.

During the Civil War and for decades thereafter whites caused settlers more trouble than Indians, as cattle rustlers, horse thieves, murderers, army deserters, and other rogues infested the area. Vigilante committees were formed to deal with criminals, but then these groups degenerated into warring mobs committing criminal acts themselves. A reign of terror followed conflicts between vigilante groups, which broke out in Williams Ranch in 1869. Vigilantes drove out some bad characters, but killed other innocent men; lynchings and assassinations became commonplace. The turbulence lasted until 1897, when the Texas Rangers finally broke up a group of vigilantes who frequently gathered at Buzzard Roost. The first post office in what is now Mills County was established in Williams Ranch in 1877, and the place became a center for the area; between 1881 and 1884 250 people lived there. In 1885 the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway built tracks into the region, stimulating settlement and demands for organization. In 1887 the Texas state legislature carved Mills County from lands formerly assigned to Brown, Comanche, Hamilton, and Lampasas counties. Goldthwaite became the county seat. In 1890 5,493 people lived in Mills County. By that time, the area's agricultural economy was already fairly well-established. The county had 680 farms and ranches, encompassing 142,299 acres, that year.

Sources: Hartal Langford Blackwell, Mills County-The Way it Was (Goldthwaite, Texas: Eagle Press, 1976). Flora Gatlin Bowles, A No Man's Land Becomes a County (Austin: Steck, 1958).

 There are at least 6 graves of Witty's in this Cemetery, very near Star, Texas.  At the information site about the cemetery, it says:

Hurst Ranch Cemetery is in Hamilton County, Texas but has so many Mills County connections from Star, (originally Hamilton County) Mills County, Texas.

I just looked into the 10 children's lives. They almost all had spouses and children...but I won't be following my cousins quite that far. Now to go back to my gg grandmother's sisters...soon!

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This post belongs to the Barbara Booth Rogers Family Tree. Photo shows Mataley Mozelle Rogers, and her mother Mozelle Booth Miller, and my sister Mary Beth Rogers.