Lisa Williams, Author at Honeysuckle Farm, LLC

Brick by Brick

Back in January of 2017 I wrote about my paternal 2nd great grandfather, William LARKIN. To give you an idea of my line of descent from William, I descend from William’s son Ralph (my great grandfather), and Ralph’s daughter Audrey (my paternal grandmother). You can refresh yourself on that post by clicking here: William Larkin: Farmer, Mine Owner, and Road Paver. Ever since that post I’ve been wanting to photograph a few sites that were relevant to that post and to William. I wondered in that post whether any of the brick roads (whether built by William or not) were still present in Tulsa. In the above blog post I mentioned another blog (Tulsa Gal). I asked Tulsa Gal some of my questions- were there still any brick streets left in Tulsa and where would they be, would it be possible to acquire a street brick if any were left and how would I go about doing that, etc. Tulsa Gal used to be a volunteer for the Tulsa Historical Society so I figured she may know the answers to my questions. Alas, she couldn’t answer any of them.

Recently I drove a family member to the airport in Tulsa so they could catch a flight and I found myself with some extra time so I decided it was as good a day as any to go “on location” and get some photographs. Plus, I loved the Tulsa downtown skyline shrouded in fog.

I’d like to share those photos with you in this blog post.

Photo set 1, Roosevelt Elementary School (also seen on some maps as Roosevelt Junior High) now sits where Tulsa Vitrified Brick Company sat when my 2nd great grandfather worked there. [I failed to get the front of the building as I wasn’t familiar with the area and the area was a little sketchy (less so than the Nogales neighborhood though) so I just wanted to get photos and get out. You can see the front of the building at the following locations: Google maps (street view) using the address 1202 W Easton, Tulsa, OK, Tulsapeople.com, or on this Flickr account.]

North half of the building that’s facing Quanah Avenue.

Closer view of Quanah Avenue side of the building.

South half of the building that’s facing Quanah Avenue.

Northeast side entrance facing downtown.

Entire Quanah side of the building. It’s a huge building.

Tulsa Vitrified Brick Company, 1907. Photo comes from the Beryl Ford Collection at Tulsa City-County Library and can be found online at http://cdm15020.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15020coll1/i
d/16998/rec/1.

At okhistory.org I found this great image of the interior area of a brick plant taken around the turn of the century.

Found at https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=BR014 and attributed to “17833, Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce Collection, OHS”.

There were lots of old brick buildings. This one is across the street (Quanah) from the school.

This one is one block East of the school.

Polk’s 1910 City Directory gives the address of the Tulsa Vitrified office as Olympia and MKT Railway. This location is 1 block west and 2 blocks north of where William lived and the Sand Springs Expressway separates what was once the brick plant and what was once the Tulsa Vitrified office. See map below.

#1 is the old Tulsa Vitrified brick plant which is now Roosevelt School. #2 is the Tulsa Vitrified office location. #3 is where William lived. #4 is where you can find exposed brick paving on Tulsa downtown streets. This map is from http://www.abandonedrails.com/Missouri-Kansas-Texas_Railroad which is where I went to try to locate the old MKT Railroad location.

This is the south end of the long narrow lot where William lived. The entire lot is empty now as is the lot south of William’s.

Side yard of what was William’s lot at 121 N Nogales.

William had the corner lot at Nogales and Archer. The house in this photo is just East of William’s lot and is one of the very few houses that wasn’t boarded up and abandoned.

So far, we’ve talked about every location I photographed except the exposed brick paving on Tulsa streets. Yes- you CAN find old brick paving that is exposed on Tulsa streets! I found it on North Cheyenne Avenue around the Archer and/or Brady street intersections. I can’t be more specific as I had just left the Nogales street neighborhood which is very sketchy and I was somewhat jittery and nervous. I can now tell you from experience that that place is WELL outside my comfort zone when I’m traveling alone and no one really knows where I’ve gone. You can see the brick paving photos below.

Intersection. I’m pretty sure it was Brady and Cheyenne.

There were nice large sections of exposed brick paving.

There is one more thing we haven’t discussed and that’s how I go about getting a Tulsa Vitrified brick. Well, apparently they do occasionally get sold here and there by collectors. There was no photograph that accompanied this sale and I didn’t want to create an account just to check it out (although it does say ebay so perhaps you can go there and begin your search for a brick). However, I will share the website address where I first encountered someone selling a Tulsa Vitrified brick: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/19c-tulsa-i-t-marked-indian-territory-oklahoma-1. One of us needs to have a Tulsa Vitrified brick!!

________________________________**********_____________________________________

Resources I used for this blog post include the links above as well as:

Tulsa City-County Library (Polk’s 1910 City Directory for Tulsa, OK) at http://cdm15020.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15020coll12/id/1603/rec/1

I reviewed Steve Morse’s site to make sure that street names hadn’t changed over the years so I knew I was giving you the correct locations. You can find his site at https://stevemorse.org/census/changes/TulsaChanges.htm.

Background history of the Owen Park area: http://tulsapreservationcommission.org/owen-park-properties/

http://www.tulsapreservationcommission.org/pdf/bookletowenpark.pdf

https://www.livingplaces.com/OK/Tulsa_County/Tulsa_City/Owen_Park_Historic_District.html

And, Wikipedia for a little background information when I was trying to find the path of the old Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railway line. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri–Kansas–Texas_Railroad

I hope you’ve enjoyed the blog post today. Some days and some tasks seem so overwhelming. I’m feeling the ‘overwhelm’ today. When you’re feeling that way remember William the brick paver. He helped build a road but he didn’t build it all at once. He only laid one brick at a time, brick by brick by brick. Breathe in, breathe out, and lay one more brick. That’s how we get it done. I hope your week is fabulous!

Your companion bricklayer,

Lisa @ Days of Our Lives blog

Martha Frances Scott Latty, a Catawba Woman

I’m currently working on one of my Native American lines. I was excited to find my maternal 4th great grandmother, Martha Frances SCOTT LATTY, mentioned in someone else’s blog. I’d love to provide the link so if you’re interested you can check it out, too. But first, I want to give you a little information. The line of ascent goes from grandma, Mrs. Jessie BATES, to her mother Laura BULLOCK to Laura’s mother, Druziller LATTY BULLOCK, to Druziller’s father, Jefferson LATTY to Jefferson’s mother, Martha Frances SCOTT LATTY.

I’ve never written about Martha, who went by Fannie, so I was excited to find someone else’s blog that included her. Hopefully when I’m finished with the current research project that involves her I can share that with you here on my blog. Until then, please make time to visit Indian Ancestry 101’s blog by clicking the blue link in this sentence. While you’re making time to include other blogs, don’t forget I have a Resources page that includes other blog links with our family information that will be helpful to you. You can find the Resources page at https://honeysuckle-farm.com/resources-for-family/.

Enjoy! I hope you’ve had a fabulous and restful weekend!

Lisa @ Days of Our Lives blog

New + Old = A Happy Blogger

Oh happy day! I finally had the time and the bandwidth/internet service to get all my old LiveJournal posts ported over to WordPress. You can now read and search each and every blog post I’ve written all here in one place. Enjoy! I know I will.

Until next time,

Lisa @ Days of Our Lives blog

The Mitchell’s of Sugar Creek

This blog post is about Margaret Mary MITCHELL WINTON, sister/sister-in-law to my paternal 5th great grandparents, John MITCHELL and Winnie SULLINS MITCHELL. For reference, the line of ascent goes from my dad’s dad to his dad (Mark DRAKE) to Mark’s dad (Ervin DRAKE, also known as Poppy) to Ervin’s mom (Hester MITCHELL DRAKE) to Hester’s dad (Mordica MITCHELL) to Mordica’s dad and also my 5th great grandfather John and John’s sister Margaret Mary MITCHELL. I’ve talked about the MITCHELL and SULLINS families in the following blog posts:
Oh Children Let Us Think On Eternity! (This post talks about Winnie SULLINS MITCHELL’S brother and John MITCHELL’S sister who were married- Nathan SULLINS and Rebecca MITCHELL SULLINS. In this post we begin to get a view of just how spiritual the MITCHELL family was. We’ll be looking into that a little more today.)
Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword, Part 4- The Finale (In this blog post I mention that John MITCHELL is Scottish.)

A Little Drive Up to Sugar Creek

As I mentioned yesterday, my dad needed to get out of the house yesterday so I planned a little road trip that included family history. Up to this point in the trip, we’d only been to a location connected to my mom’s family. Now, it was time to continue on our journey. We traveled about 15 or 20 miles away to a location bordering the Pea Ridge National Military Park. What brought me to this place was an incredible cache of stories about the MITCHELL family that I found on Ancestry. The stories were contributed by Katherine Joyce Matlock. (By the way, you should really check out Katherine’s blog, Matlock Wigley Genealogy Online.) Through the stories Katherine contributed, I learned that Mitchell’s Camp Ground in Polk County, Missouri (our MITCHELL family members were early and influential settlers in that area) was named after our family. The MITCHELL family was a deeply devout Methodist family with several of the men becoming preachers. One of my favorite stories, and the one that inspired me to go to Sugar Creek, was about John and Margaret Mary’s mother, Elizabeth HOOSANG MITCHELL. I will quote it:

“Elizabeth Mitchell, consort of Morris Mitchell, died at age of 93, buried at Mitchell’s Camp Ground, September 4, 1858. There were 700 relatives at the funeral. Her body was carried by grandchildren and great grandchildren from the home to the churcb. As they crossed the creek, they began singing, ‘We are traveling to the grave, to lay this body down, etc.”. [The Arkansas Family Historian, Vol. 16, No. 1, Jan/Feb/Mar 1978.]

It is said that at the time of her death, Elizabeth HOOSANG MITCHELL had 720 living descendants. Elizabeth and husband, Morris, lived long enough to see 18 of their descendants become preachers. Adding to the story above, The Arkansas Family Historian article states:

“Our maternal grandmother, Rebecca Mitchell Anderson, told us of having attended this funeral in 1858 were hundreds of her relatives formed the funeral march here at this Mitchell Camp Ground. Can’t we see and hear the 700 and more relatives marching with the coffin of this Matriarch as they sung, ”We Are Going to the Grave to Lay This Body Down”?

So after reading this article, you can imagine I had high hopes for this song. I was up until almost midnight last night searching for this song. The closest thing I found last night exceeded all my hopes and expectations. Hear it below:
Long Time Traveller by The Wailin’ Jennys
I did a little more research today and learned that, sadly, this isn’t the song. I have yet to find an audio recording or tune to go with the actual song but here is what I did find (starting at the bottom of the page at song 295 and continuing through the top of the next page):

mitchell camp meeting funeral song p2 — The two preceding images were found at Hymnary.org.

The rest is up to your imagination!
So this was what drew me to the Sugar Creek/Pea Ridge, Arkansas area. I have not found any information that would lead me to a homesite so we just drove around the area and looked. It’s a beautiful area and I hope to get back there soon to tour the battlefield.

Margaret Mary MITCHELL WINTON

Margaret was the Mitchell family member living in the Sugar Creek area. She moved there sometime between 1860 and 1869. Her husband, William WINTON, died at Pea Ridge, Arkansas in 1869. All of their 10 children were born prior to their move to the Sugar Creek area so at this point, there is no way for me to know whether they were there during the Civil War or moved there after.
There is one Civil War era story that I wanted to share with you that relates to William and Mary MITCHELL WINTON. This is how it was related in The Arkansas Family Historian article:

“A decade after the death of Elizabeth Mitchell found mambers of their family embroiled in the bitternesses of the Civil War. As one writer said, “some of the sons went North and some South”. At least three of the family men were killed in Mississippi on the side of the Confederacy.

The most vivid Civil War incident involving the Mitchells was that of Reverend Anthony Bewley, son-in-law of William and Mary Mitchell Winton, and husband of their daughter, Jane. The Reverend Bewley took an abolishionist stand in an inflammed pro-slavery area of Texas. He was charged with inciting slaves to riot. Pursued from Texas to Missouri by bounty hunters, he was taken from his wife and returned to Ft. Worth where a lynch mob broke into the jail and hanged him. The evidence of his guilt was a letter he was alleged to have written. It was later proved to have been forged.”

Margaret died in 1881 and is buried in the Sugar Creek/Pea Ridge area. She outlived William by over a decade and she never remarried. Her daughter Jane did remarry about 3 years after the death of her husband, Anthony BEWLEY.

Finishing Thoughts

It was a nice relaxing drive in Northwest Arkansas on Friday. It’s always so interesting to see the places where past generations lived out their daily lives.
I hope you have a great week next week. Take some time for a relaxing drive for yourself. You deserve it! I’ll leave you with a couple of photographs I took in the Pea Ridge/Sugar Creek area.

Pea Ridge Battlefield Pea Ridge AR — Three cannons on the Pea Ridge battlefield.

Pea Ridge National Military Park Pea Ridge AR — Signage on the back side of Pea Ridge National Military Park.

Pea Ridge National Military Park 1 — Signage on the back side of Pea Ridge National Military Park.

Twelve Corners Road Old Sugar Creek Township — A storm was blowing in by the time we got to Twelve Corners Road but the sky was beautiful.

Wishing you much more justice than Anthony Bewley received,
Until next time,
Lisa @ Days of Our Lives blog

The Latty’s of Cross Hollows

This blog post is about Matilda WALLS DUNHAM LATTY, sister/sister-in-law to my maternal 3rd great grandparents, Irena WALLS LATTY and Jefferson LATTY (and his brother Ellis LATTY). For reference, the line of ascent goes from my mom’s mom to her mom (Laura BULLOCK RITER) to Laura’s mom (Druziller LATTY BULLOCK) to Druziller’s mom (Irena WALLS LATTY) AND Irena’s sister, Matilda WALLS DUNHAM LATTY. I’ve talked about Irena and Jefferson in these blog posts over on the old section of the blog at Livejournal:
You Got a Document for That?
Speling- Hoo Neds It??

Matilda Latty of Cross Hollows

My Dad needed to get out of the house today so my husband and I planned a little road trip and picked up my parents after lunch. We took an hour drive over into Northeast Arkansas. Our first stop: Cross Hollows, Arkansas. This is a very interesting place and has so many layers of history to it. See the historical marker below:

Cross Hollow AR pic — Cross Hollows, Arkansas historical sign #1- Cherokee Trail of Tears, Civil War (Confederate & Union), Butterfield Stage Coach Route. It was also the Butterfield mail route although it isn’t listed on the sign here.

Here is another Cross Hollows sign sitting right next to the sign above:

Cross Hollow AR 2 — Second Cross Hollows sign.

For a more detailed history about Cross Hollows, I recommend going to The Civil War Muse. Although I love the history of Cross Hollows, I had a more personal reason for bringing my parents here. My maternal 4th great aunt, Matilda J. WALLS (DUNHAM)(LATTY), lived in Cross Hollows in 1870 when she filed a claim with the US Southern Claims Commission.

Latty US Souther Claims Commission file — Matilda Latty’s claim filed with the US Southern Claims Commission via Ancestry.

Matilda was the sister to my maternal 4th great grandmother, Irena WALLS (and sister-in-law to my 4th great grandfather and Irena’s husband, Jefferson LATTY). Not only that, but Matilda’s second husband was Jefferson’s brother, Ellis LATTY. Matilda appears at the Cross Hollows location in only two records that I’ve found. One is the 1870 census (Cross Hollows, White River Township, Benton County, Arkansas on 5 September 1870) where she appears with the LATTY name, LATTY children, and her mother (Delilah WALLS), but her husband (Ellis LATTY) is not listed in the household. She likely moved to Cross Hollows around 1862 as best I can tell based on dates from various records that also list locations.
The second document is her claim filed with the US Southern Claims Commission where she filed for $156 for corn and fodder taken by “Colonel Phillips Cherokee Regiment Indian Troops”, better known as the 3rd Regiment Indian Home Guards.

Colonel-Phillips — Colonel Phillips, 3rd Regiment Indian Home Guards. Photo found at Northeaster State University.

In compliance with the government procedure for filing claims, Matilda named witnesses. Her witnesses regarding the truthfulness of her claim included Charles T. DUNHAM (probably her son who would have been old enough to remember the incident), and Delily WOOLS (my best guess is this is actually Delilah WALLS- Matilda’s mother). Matilda also had to provide witnesses as to her loyalty to the US Government and those witnesses were Samuel RAMSEY (Matilda’s niece’s husband), Charles WALLS (most likely Matilda’s brother and the father of Martha who was the wife of Samuel RAMSEY), and John GORDON (most likely Matilda’s brother-in-law who was married to Matilda’s sister, Elizabeth). Matilda’s claim was ultimately denied, but I never found any explanation as to whether it was ‘barred’ or ‘disallowed’ nor the reason why. I’m guessing Matilda’s claim was barred rather than disallowed. I’m basing that on information I found at North Carolina GenWeb’s site which explains why claims might be barred versus disallowed. My best guess is they considered her a Confederate sympathizer since her brother-in-law, Jefferson LATTY, fought for the Confederacy. But again, that’s just a guess.
All of this information put together tells me that Matilda was in the bustling Cross Hollows area when Union troops were quartered there (and possibly early enough to have seen the end of Confederate troops quartered there as well). If she was present to witness the Butterfield Overland Mail service in Cross Hollows, she only witnessed the very end of it as the Butterfield Overland Mail service ended in 1861 (which is also when the Confederate troops moved out of Cross Hollows). Wikipedia has an image of the Butterfield Overland Mail service schedule:

1280px-John_Butterfield's_Overland_Mail_Company_time_schedule_dated_September_16,_1858 — By Overland Mail Company – California Department of Parks and Recreation. This time schedule, No. 1, Sep. 16th, 1858, can be downloaded by the public on the California Parks and Recreation internet site in the “Stagecoach History: Stage Lines to California,” by choosing at the bottom of their page “View and download Overland Mail Company timetable.” The link for this site is here.. Or you can do like I did and go to Wikipedia.

She would have witnessed the Butterfield Stage Line, though. It discontinued service during the war (1861-1865) but resumed service in 1865 and it followed the newly-created Old Wire Road. (Information from White River Valley Historical Quarterly). Wordpress blogger Myra H. Mcilvain has two photos worth looking at. One is of a beautifully restored Butterfield Stagecoach and the other (at the same link) is a map of the Butterfield Stage Line route.
Crossing the Hollows of History
It’s so hard to stand in 2019 Cross Hollows (a very peaceful, rural area) and envision 12,000+ Civil War soldiers quartered there for the winter or envision the Overland Mail or Butterfield Stagecoach barreling through the middle of it. It doesn’t seem to take long for nature to reclaim land once trampled barren by humans. I’m glad for that. It was a lovely drive today and this is only part one of the drive. Stay tuned for part two in which I discuss my dad’s MITCHELL line.
Until then,
Lisa @ Days of Our Lives blog

The Late, Late Show

I’ve been working on my family history tonight and I think I’ve made a discovery about my maternal 2nd great grandfather, Nicholas Wilhelm REITER. I want to share it with you and get your thoughts. It concerns the draft during the Civil War.

Civil War draft poster found at the National Archives. This is an example of what one of the draft posters looked like so you can get an idea of what he may have seen posted around town.

I’ve written about Nicholas before and you can find those posts here:

Occupation: Cabinetmaker (The most recent of 4 posts on the old blog at LiveJournal.)
Lost and Found, Part 1 and Part 2 (They’re long. Sorry.)
Reiter and Davis Marriage (This is very much my OLD style of writing- more oriented toward research than telling the stories of my ancestors. Still, it’s worth a look I think.)

Nicholas has been hard to research. He immigrated from Germany with his parents when he was very young according to my granny BATES, but I have not been able to locate immigration records that I’m certain are his. I don’t know who his parents or brothers were and have been unable to locate him in records prior to his marriage to my maternal second great grandmother, Sarah DAVIS REITER. In addition, there are so many ways to spell his last name (and even multiple ways to spell his first name!) that it becomes overwhelming very quickly. (And let me tell you, I get tired of OCR programs hitting on the word ‘typewriter’ and passing that off as a search result for ‘Nicholas Reiter’!) So, I was pretty excited when I found the following article as I’m fairly certain this is him. The first article I found was in German and I’ll post a shortened version of it below. After I’d gone to the trouble of translating it, I found an article in English that was basically the same information. I wish I could say I translated it using my own skills but alas, I used Google translate. I used to be fluent in German after taking 4 years of it in high school but that’s been a very long time ago. German was, however, my favorite foreign language to learn. But I digress…

First, the article in German from the Minnesota Staats-Zeitung out of St. Paul, Minnesota dated 4 June 1864, found at newspapers.com:

Newspaper article written in German indicating Nicholas Reiter’s draft notice into the Civil War.

Here is an article out of the St. Cloud Democrat with basically the same information. I included the whole article here because it only lists Stearns and Morrison Counties as opposed to numerous counties like the article in German. The print is tiny. Sorry about that! If you’re looking for Nicholas’ name, go to the town of Wakefield (right before Morrison County). He’s in the second column right above the glitch or paper crease mark.

Article indicating the draft of Nicholas Reiter into the Civil War.

I know this doesn’t seem like much, but it’s the first new information about Nicholas that I’ve found in a very long time so I was really excited to find these. Hopefully this new information will lead me to more information about him. I would love to get one more generation back on this family line. Feel free to beat me to that research if you want. Just don’t be surprised if I ask you to write a blog post about it!!

Until next time,

Lisa @ Days of Our Lives blog

William Riter & Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders

This blog post is about my maternal great grandfather, William Sherman RITER. William was married to Laura Ann BULLOCK. I’ve written about William in the following blog posts, in case you’re interested in catching up before you read this post:

Times for Remembering (includes a much better photo of William)

Lost and Found (the first of a two-part series about William’s life after the war)

Lost and Found, Part 2 (the second of a two-part series about William’s life after the war)

Week 4- Weekend Wrap-Up (includes a short paragraph about William)

For one week every summer I have all my grandsons over to my house for Cousin Camp. One of the activities I was planning for this coming summer was a family history related activity so they can begin to learn about their ancestors and the stories that belong to those ancestors. The activity involves some cute little magnets I created on Shutterfly. Here’s William RITER’s:

I tried to get a better picture of it, but you get the general idea. So if this magnet were chosen, I would tell the boys the story about my maternal great-grandfather, William Sherman RITER, and how he was one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. In the process of planning this I thought it would be fun to get a picture book about Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders to read to the boys so they could learn more. I was unable to find a picture book that I felt was appropriate for my grandsons so the thought entered my mind that I could write one and self-publish. I began doing some research in preparation to write a short picture book story. In the process of gathering information I have begun to doubt whether William RITER was really a Rough Rider. But let’s back up to the beginning so I can show you how the whole Rough Rider story came to be.

Rough Rider in Town!

The above article was taken from Newspapers.com. It’s a copy of a news item from The Sedalia Democrat, Page 1, 30 March 1899. William had just been mustered out at Augusta, Georgia on 27 March 1899. He had served in the Spanish-American War with Company E, 15th Minnesota Volunteer Infantry out of St. Paul, Minnesota. The 15th Minnesota had an outstanding reputation and, at least according to newspaper articles of the time, the people of Georgia were sad to see them leave. What I found interesting when looking through newspapers was that you could follow his train trip home by watching newspapers along the route he took. Every time a group of the 15th Minnesota arrived in town, the newspapers were covering it. So, between March 27th and March 30th I could follow his progress from Georgia to Oklahoma. (By the way, when he enlisted for this war he lived in Wheaton, Illinois but at some point he acquired land in Oklahoma and that’s where he went after the war.) As I continued researching, I learned that the Spanish-American War was a war that Americans very much supported (thanks to false and misleading stories pushed by the media- sound familiar???) and the servicemen were loved and welcomed back home (unlike the shameful situation with Vietnam and the servicemen returning from that war).

In researching William’s service online, I found such conflict in the records that I don’t know what to believe anymore. In addition to the question of whether or not he’s a Rough Rider, there is the issue of whether he went abroad during his service. According to newspapers, the 15th Minnesota was going to go to Camp Allyn Capron in Puerto Principe, Cuba on 27 November 1898. The plan was for them to serve a short stint and come back home in 1899. Wikipedia supports the statement that on 27 November 1898 the 15th Minnesota sailed from Savannah, Georgia to Nuevitas, Cuba for “occupation duty”. However, Theodore Roosevelt’s own book about the Rough Riders says nothing about William RITER or the 15th Minnesota. (You can find his book online at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Theodore_Roosevelt_Rough_Riders.djvu.) Then there is this website that shows the 15th was in Cuba between December, 1898 and December, 1899 as well as the above article referencing William as a “Rough Rider”. In any case, by late November 1898 the war was over. According to newspaper articles, the 15th Minnesota was mustered out and sent home from Augusta, Georgia on 27 March 1899 without having gone abroad to serve.

But what about the Rough Rider claim? Well…if William was a Rough Rider, I haven’t been able to prove it through records. The only positive indications I have are the story that Granny BATES always told and the newspaper article at the top of this blog post that referenced him as a Rough Rider.

Below are William’s pension cards:

I have been unable to obtain his service records from the National Archives although I know someone in the family does have them because once I saw one paper out of his service file. The National Archives told me the records were “lost”. I have a hunch they were being filmed and if I requested them again I might actually get them- as long as I paid them another fee, of course!

So, once again I’m leaving you with a mystery. My quest to write a little story for my grandsons hasn’t gone so well this week. I have no idea what story I will tell them in place of the Rough Rider story but I’m sure I’ll come up with something that will interest them. In the meantime, I want to leave you with a few more photographs that I found interesting.

This is Company H of the 15th Minnesota Infantry. I include it because I would imagine an image of Company E would look much the same. This photo was found at the US Genweb website.

The 15th Minnesota Spanish American war drum. This photo was found at the Minnesota Historical Society’s website.

The 15th Minnesota Regimental battle flag. This photo was found at the Minnesota Historical Society’s website.

Stay warm and dry this week, friends!

Until next time,

Lisa @ Days of Our Lives blog

Oh Children Let Us Think On Eternity!

This past weekend I was doing some research on various lines of my dad’s family. Monday we got a day off from school due to weather so I continued my search and focused on my SULLINS line. Specifically, I was looking at my paternal 6th great grandparents, Nathan and Winefred MAYS SULLINS. In order to give you some idea of how we fit into the SULLINS family, the line of ascent goes from my great grandpa Mark DRAKE to his dad Ervin to Ervin’s mom Hester MITCHELL to Hester’s dad Mordica to Mordica’s parents (John and Winnie SULLINS MITCHELL and Mordica’s grandparents Nathan and Winefred MAYS SULLINS.

During my search, I came across a website I want to share with you. The Cole Family website includes a page with a handwritten letter from Nathan and Rebecca MITCHELL SULLINS (Nathan was the son of Nathan and Winefred). I loved the letter and would like to share it with you here but I also encourage you to go look at the Cole Family website and see what you can find for yourself.

This particular photo is a screenshot of a portion of the Nathan and Rebecca MITCHELL SULLINS letter that I found on Ancestry. However, the entire original, handwritten letter is on The Cole Family website at the link above.

Here’s the transcription below. You can find more details about the letter and view the original handwritten letter at the link above.

Athens Tenn Apr. 19 1848

Dear Son & Daughter
I now send you a letter to let you know we are all alive. According to our age we enjoy as good health as could be expected. Morris got home
yesterday about 12 o’clock. We was glad to hear you was all well, but
sorry to hear you expected to go so far off. I once was young but now I
am old, by the help of providence we have raised 12 children, there is 11 yet alive so far as we know, they are now scattered in 4 states. My
children are near to me. When I was young and able to labor with and
for my children I then had pleasure. I now am not able to labor much
nor to travel and when I think of a child leaving me so far that I never
expect to see its face again in the flesh its as much as I want to bear. Mary has always been a good obedient child.

[page 2]
Oh children let us think on eternity that there is a God to serve and a
heaven to obtain that is more sacred to us than all this world’s goods.
We want you to write to us when you locate and tell us where you are
and where to direct our letters. Annis lives in Green Co. Mo. direct your
letters to Springfield to John Murray.

[page 3]
Family Record
(NOTE FROM LISA: On page 3 there is a list of names and dates, as if it
were copied from a family Bible to pass on to the receiver of the letter.
I won’t transcribe that here. You can find that information at the link
above.)

No more at present but remain your affectionate parents
Nathan and Rebecca Sullins

I love this letter so much. I can feel every pain of this momma’s heart as she worries about her children moving far away and never being able to see them again. I can imagine that she’s thinking about grandbabies she will never meet as well. If she’s anything like me, she’s thinking about all the bad that could happen and how much she would like to spare her children from experiencing the bad things. More than that, she’s worrying about their spiritual well-being. Oh how I can relate to this momma as she pours out her heart in a letter to her daughter!

I Once Was Young But Now I Am Old

Like Rebecca, I can remember being young once, too. I can remember when Bart and I decided to move to Idaho and I remember receiving a letter from my mom. A letter where she poured out her heart to me and wished me not to move so far away. Things sure do cycle back around, don’t they? And when we saw my son off to his eternal home, nothing was more important in that moment than his spiritual well-being and whether I would see him again in eternity or be separated from him forever.
Yes, I sure can relate to my 6th great aunt Rebecca as she poured out her heart to her daughter in a farewell letter.

So Fades the Summer Cloud Away

So fades the Summer cloud away;
So sinks the gale when storms are o’er;
So gently shuts the eye of day;
So dies the wave along the shore.

I want to leave you with one last thing about Rebecca – her obituary.

Obituary of Rebecca MITCHELL SULLINS. Found on Ancestry.

Sweet Rebecca. I hope you are spending eternity with your children whom you loved so much and so well.

Until next time,

Lisa @ Days of Our Lives blog

Salem Revisited

Sarah Bassett's Indictment. — Sarah Bassett’s Indictment.

I recently binge-listened to season 1 of a podcast called Unobscured. I highly recommend it. The host, Aaron Mahnke, spent a whole season researching the Salem witch trials. It was very interesting. In 2011, I traveled to Massachusetts and visited the towns of Salem and Danvers. When I was in Salem I attempted to locate the place where the accused witches were hung. I wasn’t able to find anyone who knew for sure so I visited Gallows Hill Park and there on top of the hill I left a small bouquet of flowers by a tree to honor and remember our ancestors who were accused during the trials.

Gallows Hill Park, Salem, Massachusetts.

When I listened to the Unobscured podcast I learned that they have finally located the spot where the witches were hung. (Where is the Real Gallows Hill) It’s on the same block as a Walgreen’s between Proctor and Pope Streets. I’m pretty sure it was the Walgreen’s I stopped at to ask if anyone knew where the hanging location was! I was right there and no one knew! I was disappointed, but figured Gallows Hill Park was probably the closest I would ever get in my lifetime. I hope one day I can return to the exact spot and pay my respects again.

BostonGlobe.com photo of Proctor’s Ledge- the location where the accused Salem witches were hung during the 1692 Salem witch trials.

In the meantime, I am going to rerun one of my posts from the old blog at LiveJournal about the Salem witch trials as they pertain to our family. Another website you can take a look at that pertains to one of our witchy ancestors is Lee Wiegand’s website. Our ancestor was Sarah (BURT) BASSETT (my 11th great grandmother). Her daughter, Elizabeth, married John PROCTOR. John was hung as a witch. Elizabeth’s death sentence was put on hold because she was pregnant. By the time she had her baby, the witch hunt craze was over and her life was spared.

John Proctor’s stone at The Salem Witch Trials Memorial in Salem, Massachusetts. Found at https://honeysuckle-farm.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/3ab1b23b3851a67d516525605036e7dd-salem-witch-trials-salem-massachusetts.jpg

I wonder what Sarah (BURT) BASSETT’S life would have been like without the witchcraft craze. Out of Sarah’s family alone, the following were accused witches in 1692: her eldest daughter Elizabeth (plus this daughter’s husband, stepson, son and daughter; out of these, the young men were tortured in an effort to get them to confess), Sarah’s daughter-in-law Sarah (HOOD) BASSETT (wife of her son William), and her daughter Mary (BASSETT) DeRICH (Mary suffered additional tragedies within her family while imprisoned for the witch allegations). Her grandmother, Ann (HOLLAND) BASSETT BURT, had also been accused of witchcraft in an earlier case in 1669. So you can see, the various trials and accusations affected Sarah’s life in a big way. It must have seemed to Sarah that it was never going to end.

Sarah (BURT) BASSETT’s daughter, Sarah, was my 10th great grandmother. This second Sarah married Thomas ELWELL. Thomas and Sarah’s sister-in-law, Esther (DUTCH) ELWELL (married to Thomas’ brother Samuel), was also one of the accused in 1692. The women of the DUTCH family were no strangers to witchcraft trials either. The stories go on and on like that – like a chain – one family connected to the next and to the next and to the next. If you’d like to go deeper into the story of this family, you can read about Elizabeth’s trial here. You can learn about John PROCTOR’s trial here.

In any case, please review the links above and then read my 2016 post about our family in the witch trials.

Until next time, I leave you with the words of this old English blessing:

~ May your joys be as bright as the morning, your years of happiness as numerous as the stars in the heavens, and your troubles but shadows that fade in the sunlight of love. ~

Lisa @ Days of Our Lives blog

Mourning

Today I’m mourning the loss of an incredible man. My life, my school, and my community are better for having known him.
Mr. Shackelford met his life goal on Sunday morning. He is now celebrating in Heaven with his Savior Jesus and loved ones he’s missed for years.

Rest In Peace, Mr. Shackelford. You ran a great race.
~ Lisa

Author: honeysucklefarm.ok

A Little Drive Up to Sugar Creek

Margaret Mary MITCHELL WINTON

Finishing Thoughts

Matilda Latty of Cross Hollows

Rough Rider in Town!

I Once Was Young But Now I Am Old

So Fades the Summer Cloud Away