The gaps in mother's care

I'm thinking of the mothers who weren't nurtured, or weren't supported in a two-parent family in raising my ancestors. The first to come to mind are the widows. And then I think of those who moved away from their own parents when they married, then raised their families with only strangers around them.

Then there are the women who as children had only one parent who raised them...thus they missed the love and support of two parents. And I'm not saying having two parents was representative of a nurturing childhood. Those who lived through wars, who had necessity making them change their home location, those who depended upon the earth and then there were droughts or floods. And of course a calamity of an economic depression also would have impacted how much loving care was devoted to children.

Well, I don't mean just about everybody in a generation, though that might have been the case.

Many of my ancestors spent their whole lives just dedicated to survival. That meant shelter, food, clothing, maybe heat from the cold, and maybe having some rest from their daily grind.

When my ancestors moved from East Tennessee to Texas, they were fleeing a situation where crops were failing and then debts came due for purchases of land. My great times three grandfather, Micajah Rogers had owned several businesses and then relocated with some of his older children to east Texas in the mid 1840s. That was after the fall of the Alamo, and the battle at San Jacinto which eventually created the nation of Texas in 1836. 

Micajah must have known Sam Houston, who lived at times and is buried in Huntsville TX. Houston led the independence forces at San Jacinto, became the first president of Texas, and was in and out of politics of the new country of Texas and then finally the new state of Texas in 1845. 

But what of Micajah's wife Cyntha Cannon Rogers? She stayed behind in Sevier County Tennessee when Micajah first went west. I have read a letter to her from him stating that the younger children should return to Tennessee where there were schools for them.

She lost her last three babies within their first years, born in 1838, 1839 and 1841. Others of their children also died in 1829 and 1832. Based on later events in their lives, I can estimate that George, Nancy Terressa, and E. Lafayette went to Texas with their father. I'm not sure that William L. went to Texas at all, for he is now confused with another William L. Rogers who lived in Chatanooga TN most of his life and apparently had different parents.

So Cyntha Rogers was in Texas with her family by the 1850 census. By then her son George W. had married Luci Gibbs in 1848 in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. Cyntha's oldest surviving daughter Nancy Terrissa had married Tom Gibbs (yes brother of Luci) in 1847 in Huntsville, Walker County Texas. The first son of George W. and Luci was my great grandfather, William Sandford, born in Walker County, Texas in Feb 1850.

Cyntha's son E. Lafayette died in the fall of 1850. He had been named postmaster of Huntsville in July of that year, and died in Nov, so his father Micajah took over the job at his death.

That 1850 census of Micajah's household (taken Sept. 15) had had Lafayette (age 21) on it also, as well as younger sisters, Mary (16) and Minerva (14). They may have been the younger children that Micajah wanted to send back to Tennessee for some educating. It is unlikely that young girls would traipse out to Texas without their mother (though she might have been sick)...who at least got there with them by 1850. But both the young girls wouldn't survive until the next census, or the Civil War.

Neither would their mother, Cyntha Cannon Rogers, who died 24 Nov. 1855. Her daughter Nancy Terrissa Gibbs died in 1856. Only son George lived until 1864, and Micajah who survived through the Civil War died in 1873. It's possible William L. Rogers lived till 1887, but we're not sure which one was Micajah and Cyntha's son. 

But I once again got bogged down in seeing how events transpired within a family. Many children born who didn't live. Many young people who died, perhaps from diseases. A very sad family which Micajah had raised.

Then his grandson also died very young, William Sandford Rogers, my great grandfather. W. Sam had married Bette Bass when he was 26, had two children, then died at age 29, 2 months after his daughter was born. So Bette Bass is the subject I should have been talking about as far as a mother who had little support. Next time...