Week 45 (Nov. 5-11): War and Peace

Sergeant Richard A. Gee (Rag = his initials)

This post is about Fanny Witty Gee (1850-1923) sister of my GG Grandmother Eugenia Witty Booth (1852-875), and Fanny's husband, Sgt. Richard A. Gee (1833-1930)

She was a Valentine baby, Fanny (Frances Malone) Witty Gee born on Feb. 14, 1850 in Limestone, Alabama. But I don't know if Valentines Day was celebrated much then.

Her first census listing was when she was 4 months old, and the penmanship is so illegible the transcriber calls her Thomas, though a female child.  At least by 1860, when her family had moved to Texas, she was listed as Fanny.

Fanny married at 17, to Richard A. Gee who had been born in 1833 in Tennessee (17 years older than she was). Some of his records say he was born in Virginia, where his parents were born.  They raised 7 children, who all lived to be adults, (though one died at 19 years of age) and they had 19 grandchildren.  Some of her children and grandchildren lived into their 90s, and one, Ethel M. Stingily, lived to 100, dying in 2013.

Her son who died at 19, has a marker in the same cemetery where she was buried, but I can't find any photos of her marker. So I'm using his because I know how hard it must have been for a mother to lose a son when he had his whole life ahead of him.

Marker for John C. Gee, 1876-1892. In Covington Cemetery, Hill County Texas, where his mother Frances Malone Witty Gee is also buried (1850-1923). Fanny herself was 73 when she died in 1923.

One of these men is Richard Albert Gee. I think it's the older looking one. Rag only had one brother, John O. Gee, born in 1844, so about 11 years younger than Richard (born in 1833!)

Richard Albert Gee was a Sergeant in the Confederacy, and thus had a veterans grave marker when he died in 1930 at age 96. He entered the Civil War in 1861 as a Corporal in Parson's Mounted Volunteers, 12th Regiment of Texas Cavalry, Company A. He discharged with the rank of Sergeant.

Having survived the Civil War, he lived many more years, and it wasn't until 1927 that he applied for Veterans Benefits. His wife Fanny had died in 1923. And Rag only had these benefits until he died in 1930.

Richard Albert "Rag" Gee, (1833-1930)  He's also buried in Covington Cemetery, TX. 

The Find A Grave site lists these children: Jennie Burgess; Lena Mae Stingily; William W Gee; John C Gee; Albert Richard Gee; Marvin Brice Gee. 

For some reason their son Alonzo Benjamin Gee who lived till 1958, wasn't included in that list.

When I recently spent a day with cousins who live a long way away, one of them said that there's a genetic trait that she's noticed from her father to her grandson. Their ears stick out quite a bit. But all the rest of the siblings in her family, and her other children and grandchildren don't have this trait. Must be recessive!  The family I posted about today is on my mother's side of the tree, and this cousin is from my father's side...so no blood relation to the Gee men. I just thought I'd mention it, since us matriarchs are the ones who can remember things like that going down through the generations...and it seldom will show up in anyone's biography!

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