Another ancestress who endured difficulties

A repost about the Bass family of Texas, my great grandmother, Bettie (Elizabeth) Bass Rogers.

An edited version from my post on Saturday, December 14, 2013

My grandfather's mother was Elizabeth "Bettie" Bass Rogers.  She was born in Old Waverly, San Jacinto County, Texas mid-February 1860 based upon her parents listing her as 5-1/2 months old on the 1860 census in Walker County, Texas (interviewed on July 31, 1860.)  The original document shows her father Richard Bass as 40, and his wife 35, but the transcriptionist mis-read his age as 20.  It does have a correction through it by pen on the original, so that's understandable.  Bette was to have 10 siblings both older and younger. Her mother was Mary Elizabeth (Mae) Powell Bass (1825-1871) who I recently featured on this blog Here.

Her father Col. Richard Bass lived through the Civil War, as a confederate soldier. (See HERE)

Col. Richard Bass headstone

Her early years in Walker County Texas on a farm (according to the 1860 census her father was a farmer) also had cousins as well as older siblings nearby.  Her household also had a teenage cousin living with them, Emily W. Traylor, 16. Sister Julia A. was 18, brother James M. was 16, and sister Nancy C. was 7.  All her older siblings were born in Louisanna, but Bettie was born in Texas.  Her mother, Mary A. Powell Bass, also had family nearby; the next family listed on the census are the Powells, with 69 year old James M as head of the family. Nancy J. Powell was 36, John T. Powell was 27, and James E. Powell was 4 months old, and there was also cousin Nancy E. Traylor, age 11 living with them.

I spent hours one night looking at the Traylor, Powell, Bass connection.  How did it happen that the Traylor girls were living with a Bass family and a Powell family?  Well, as most of you probably have already figured out, their mother had died, and they were raised by her cousins...one was Bettie's mother, Mary Powell Bass, and one was Nancy J. Powell.  Mary Powell Bass's mother was Nancy Jones Traylor Powell, so they had a grandmother in common..

Mary Ann Elizabeth Powell Bass headstone

But back to Bettie Bass. In the 1870 census for Walker County, Texas, the county had grown from early settlement and the Civil War was over.  Much probably looked very different from the time of 1860, but all we have in a Census record are names and ages, and where people were born, and sometimes where their parents were born.  Thus the migrations of families can be traced.

Downtown Huntsville 1870s

By 1870 Richard Bass was a merchant rather than a farmer, now in the town of Huntsville, Texas.  Bettie now had 3 younger sisters, Ella, (9) Minnie (7) and Mary (5).   Her sister Sarah is 16.  Wait a minute, she had an older sister named Nancy C. who had been 7 in the previous census.  How could her name have changed that much?  There's no answer offered.  The oldest siblings are no longer at home, Julia A. and brother James M. Bass. Emily Traylor is now 26 and still living with them. I wonder if she had some kind of disability...a thought which just struck me, but since she hasn't married by then, maybe.

Downtown Huntsville in the 1870s

Bettie's marriage was in Willis, Montgomery County, Texas, on Dec. 14, 1876, when she was 16, a Thursday evening with the marriage performed by Rev. D. S. Snodgrass, according to Ancestry.com.  She married William Sanford Rogers, age 26, but he only lived another 3 years after their marriage.  William Sanford was known as W. Sam, according to his son, my grandfather. W. Sam Rogers had been born in Walker County, Texas, but in 1870 had been living with his sister-in-law Lucy Gibbs Rogers, in Louisiana.

Women's Clothing 1870s, not Bettie Bass Rogers

And then he married Bettie in Willis Texas. Perhaps the railroad coming into Willis gave some incentive for the family to move to Willis, and their 2 children were born there.  My grandfather George Rogers was born Aug 28, 1877, and his sister Annie Lou Gibbs Rogers was born March 10, 1879.  Their father died May 29, 1879 and is buried in Huntsville, Texas.

Willis became a community when the Great Northern Railroad decided to run a track from Houston to Chicago, and the Willis brothers donated their land in 1870 to the railroad. Willis grew in population after the trains began to travel through the town. There were hotels, dry good stores, and many other successful businesses in the 1870s and 1880s. The tobacco industry played a vital role in Willis' growth and development during that time. Other cash crops of cotton, watermelons, and tomatoes were an important part of the economy through the years. The timber industry, which still plays a role in Willis' economic growth, has been its most stable economic engine for over one hundred years.  (Wikipedia)

The next census record of 1880 included the 19 year old widow, Bettie Rogers and her two children, living still in Willis, Texas, without any reported means of support.  She is listed as head of the household. (There's no 1890 census available.)

By 1900 Census (taken June 6) the small family is living in Galveston, Texas, with Bettie now age: 46; a widowed head of household, address 1828 Church St,  living with son, George Elmore Rogers age 22, and daughter, Annie Lou Gibbs Rogers age 20.  (George would become my grandfather.) Had they moved there closer to the 1880 census? Or perhaps just before the 1900 census? Nobody knows. George was 22 by the 1900 census, so it's very likely he's been helping support his mother and sister for at least the last 5 years. The city of Galveston definitely offered more opportunities for a young man's employment than living on a farm.

In 1900 B. Rogers lists her birthday as May of 1954, making her 46 years old. That census also has a servant living with them, Black, Marie Williams, age 23, as well as a "roomer" named Henry Runge (though listed as Runge, Henry) age 40, a German. But the poor census taker has listed his birth year also a 1854 like Bettie's...so we wonder if he's not 46 like she is. Later I've decided she wasn't born in 1854 because a sister had been born that year...but of course any of these records are subject to being updated.

A short aside to refer back to the huge hurricane of 1900, as described a bit in my blog here.  The family survived it, and I don't know any details about their lives during and after it.  My cousin has said that my grandfather helped clean up all the bodies following the storm. I would imagine every able-bodied male helped with the clean-up. Then in 1905 my grandfather got married.  His sister Annie Lou married in 1906. 

There was no mention of his mother or sister attending his ceremony, which was held at the bride's home in Galveston, as recorded in detail in the society page of the Galveston Daily News. Other of my family members have said that the bride's family was against the marriage, but that's the kind of information that never gets written in records. However, to not have the mother or sister of the groom mentioned as attending, nor being part of the wedding, does support that theory.

Published June 7, 1905

So the next report about Bettie Rogers is a reference on my grandfather's WW I draft card in 1918, where he gives her as his nearest relative, (and not his wife of 13 years.)  Bettie is living at 22nd and L in Galveston, Texas.

Then the census of 1920 (taken Jan. 8) lists Bettie Rogers "Age: 58; Marital Status: Widowed;  Relation to Head of House: Mother-in-law," living with daughter, Annie Lou Wilson and her husband Patrick Wilson and Bettie's three grandchildren, still in Galveston.

On July 17, 1924, at age 64, Bettie Bass Rogers died, as was printed in the Galveston city directory of that year. She was buried in Huntsville TX, according to her death certificate. Her son in law, Pat Wilson, knew who her father had been, but not her mother, in providing information for the death certificate. The certificate lists cause of death as "chronic myocarditis and pulmonary oedema," and her birthdate as Feb. 12, 1860, (rather than 1846).

My grandfather (born 1877) wrote in 1954, of having a Rogers/Ross guardian (an aunt and uncle) that had charge of himself and his sister.  I always assumed Bettie died close to the same time as her husband, after her daughter was born in 1879.  But the guardian doesn't seem to have had the 2 Rogers children in his household in any available census.

The guardian was J. Elmore Ross, whose wife Alice Louella Rogers Ross, was W. Sam's sister. The Ross household in 1880 included a Rogers spinster sister, who taught music. The next available census of 1900 includes a "sister-in-law" named Tawry T Rogers, age 48, but with different parents than Alice Louella and the spinster music teacher! So she probably married into the Rogers family.  I've never heard of her before, so there's a bookmark on future finding out who she was!

Bettie Bass' date of marriage was Dec. 14, 1876  to William Sanford Rogers in Willis, TX, with Rev. D. S. Snodgrass officiating.  Rev. Snodgrass also married the J.E. Ross couple on Jan 18, 1876.

Bettie's birthdate is garbled through various years on census reports, which might have been her own doing.  She didn't follow the tradition of going to live with relations, rather she moved with her young family to a new cosmopolitan city, Galveston. There were limited ways a widow could support her family, becoming a seamstress, or to take in boarders, or selling her skills otherwise. Most census records indicate she was "keeping house." She did have a "roomer" in the 1900 census.

My conclusion about my great grandmother is that she became a bit bohemian in a port town before the turn of the twentieth century. Life had dealt her cards which were difficult for a woman at that time. She may have tried to pass as younger at some times in her life. She may have avoided another marriage by being supported by man who was already married. She definitely seems to have had a life which was on the more shady side of society than the church-going public, those who wrote records of births, marriages and deaths for all to see.