Spencer Clack memorials in Sevierville TN

 Repost from When I Was 69 dated 12/10/2020

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 Unveiling by DAR of the Spencer Clack memorial in Sevierville, TN, 1937.

The Sevier County Court House in 2018

And the memorial stone still stands by its side...

I was able to just walk up to it to get this closeup of the plaque.

He was my great times 5 grandfather...his daughter, Catharine Clack married Rev. Elijah  Rogers, who had a son Micajah Rogers, who had a son, George Washington Rogers, who had a son William Sandford Rogers, who had a son George E. Rogers, who had a son George E. Rogers Jr. who was my father.

Groups of ancestors

 repost from 9/3/2022 When I Was 69 blog

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 I'm going trolling through some of my ancestors, to see if any looked anything like these people! (not counting the dogs.)

Time to do a Sepia Saturday post again! Group of people (14 adults and one boy) and two dogs, one that looks like a wet rug. What on earth would match his strange photo. There's the interaction over on the left between a very angry looking man, and the woman turned toward him smiling...and the woman next to her also looking that direction, but not quite smiling.

Ok, here is Joseph Gresham, 1844-1895, from Alabama. He married "Mamie" Swasey (Mary Ann) 1849-1883, who was my great-grandaunt. Well that's a new relationship to me, never having heard of the term grandaunt until quite recently...and here I have many of them apparently.

Mamie was the daughter of Alexander G. Swasey, 1812-1866, ship captain and the Confederate blockade runner who spent most of the Civil War in a Union prison in Boston Harbor. Capt. Swasey was my great-great grandfather.

Anyway, Joseph Gresham looks like he could have stepped into that group photo from Sepia Saturday.

Alexander John Swasey 1853-1913 was Mamie's little brother and my great grandfather. I don't see him being willing to join the group, since he's posing stiffly in a Bartlett Photo Studio in Galveston, TX.

His wife was Zulieka Granger Phillips Swasey 1858-1935, was my great great grandmother. She's also in a studio portrait.

The photographer is indicated in the little adornment of H. R. Marks, Photographer of Austin TX.

But wait, there's another saved photo of my great great grandmother, known as "Dear Nan" by her family...here on a post card version of a candid pose.

Here she's holding Ada Mary, the only granddaughter born to my grandmother, after three boys. Unfortunately Ada Mary died very young, 1916-1919. But there is such joy in the smile given to that little baby in this picture, it is very precious. And my grandmother went on to give birth to two more boys, one of whom became my father.

I just realized this photo is the only picture I've ever seen of my great-grandmother Bette Bass Rogers 1860-1924 (on right) with her son, George E. Rogers, 1877-1960 (my grandfather) and his first son, Elmore, who was to die before adulthood, 1906-1916. Galveston TX.

But there was a family group photo also! I've been gradually getting myself ready for it. My grandfather George E. Rogers had a big birthday party (his 70th)...and many cousins came! This was at his home in Houston TX...and had to be held outside in August 1947! And I'm even in it, the little girl in second row leaning forward with chin on elbow, with curls thanks to home perms! But my grandmother and grandfather are on the far left in the back row. My mother is on far right in back row. And my father took the photo.

Today's quote:

If I can stop one Heart from breaking / I shall not live in vain / If I can ease one Life the Aching / Or cool one Pain / Or help one fainting Robin / Unto his Nest again / I shall not live in Vain. -Emily Dickinson, poet (10 Dec 1830-1886)

Col. Richard Bass

 A repost from 2014: This week I'm concentrating on the Rogers Family Tree

Richard Bass was born in Perry County, AL  on 3 JAN 1819.  He was the father of my grandfather (George Rogers') mother, Bettie Bass Rogers.  He served in the Confederate army in Mississippi (from Texas).  (Source: Historical Data Systems, comp.. American Civil War Soldiers [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 1999. Source 425.)



His father's estate had a petition against it which gives Richard's birth as 1814.  This date is not corroborated by his census data as well as his grave marker which all reflect an 1819 birth.  So the legal petition in Alabama was probably wrong, but it may have helped in some legal sense for him to be of a different age..  Another source has him born in NC rather than AL.  Wherever he was born, he was the youngest of 8 children of his parents, and his father died when he was very young, and he was raised by a step-father. His mother was Julia Ann Holloman Bass Green.  Father was John Bass, both from Wayne County, NC.  His step-father was Jetson Green, who raised him from when he was around 6 years old. (NOTE: I haven't found anything to substantiate this, besides court documents by Green asking for guardianship...not receiving it, but he did marry Mrs. Bass.)

Richard Bass married Mary Ann Elizabeth Powell on 12 Oct, 1839 in Perry AL, at age 20.  They moved to Louisiana, Union Parish, by the time he was 30, according to the 1850 US Census records.  The birth places of his children put that move between 1841 and 43.

Then the family moved again, according to 1860 Census records, to Walker County, Texas.  His age is listed incorrectly as 20, though he is definitely 40.  At the cusp of the Civil War he was middle aged.

Downtown  Huntsville, Walker County, Texas 1870s

Next census for 1870 shows him in Walker County, working as a merchant, rather than a farmer as he had previously identified himself in census reports.  Being a merchant meant he probably lived closer to a town at this time, perhaps Waverly, where he died.

Most of the Bass children were born in Waverly, Texas or Walker County, Texas.

Col. Richard Bass died 5 May 1880 in Waverly, Walker County, TX, where he is buried.  The Handbook of Texas History says 

In 1986 all that remained of Waverly was a cemetery, a nearby Presbyterian church, and a rural subdivision called Old Waverly, which had a population of about fifty people. Texas historical markers were erected for Old Waverly in 1969 and for the Waverly Cemetery in 1978.

More information about the settlers moving to Waverly includes this:

In the autumn of 1852 some 300 people from Alabama, including slaves, moved into the Waverly area. The town was surveyed, mapped, and incorporated in 1858. According to popular legend the town was named for the Waverly novels of Sir Walter Scott. Some considered Waverly to belong to the South of "moonlight, magnolias, and landed gentry." In reality it was a small enclave of the slave-plantation system imported from central Alabama. Waverly Institute, consisting of a male and female academy, was established in 1856. A post office operated from 1855 until 1872. A Masonic lodge operated from 1861 to 1865, and Methodist, Presbyterian, and Episcopalian congregations were started in town.

What became of the tiny town?

In 1870 San Jacinto County was formed from a part of Walker County, including the Waverly area. At that time Waverly leaders, in fear that the Houston and Great Northern Railroad would bring "tramps and ignorance to the town and kill cattle," refused to give the railroad right-of-way. In doing so they ensured the rapid demise of Waverly. The town of New Waverly was established ten miles west of Waverly in 1870 to take advantage of the railroad and became a prosperous town .

A bit more information can be found here...about Waverly, Texas. 

I've posted about his wife, "Mae" Mary Ann Powell Bass HERE.

Ada & George Rogers Sr. and granddaughters Mary Elizabeth and Barbara Booth Rogers 1948 Houston TX. I'm adding this photo to posts in the George Rogers Family Tree.