Tombstone Tuesday: What Happened to Stephen Paul?
Stephen Paul was born in Robeson, North Carolina around 1836 to parents John H. and Mary (Wise) Paul. John and Mary had both been born in North Carolina and after they married in 1825 they produced a large family. By 1850 there were thirteen children enumerated, ranging from William (25) down to Catherine (3) – in the middle of the pack was Stephen, age 14.
It’s likely that the Paul family had departed North Carolina sometime between 1848 and 1850, settling in Henry County, Tennessee where they were enumerated in 1850. Around the age of twenty, young Stephen Paul was married to fourteen year-old Narcissa Ann Gresham (spelled Grissum on their marriage record) in Carter County, Missouri, where the Paul family had migrated to following the 1850 census.
This article was enhanced, complete with sources, and published in the April 2018 issue of Digging History Magazine. The entire issue was devoted to the Civil War. Should you prefer to purchase the article only, contact me for more information.
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Mining History: The Rock Springs Massacre
By the mid-nineteenth century there were few Chinese immigrants who had made their way to America. In early 1849, there were only fifty-four in the entire state of California, but that would change as word spread and gold rush fever took hold.
The prospect of work, either in the mines or whatever supporting job could be found, brought Chinese men fleeing rebellion and poverty in their own country to California and beyond. Chinese immigration continued apace until in 1876 there were over 150,000 Chinese immigrants in the United States, 116,000 in California alone.
Most men came alone, calling themselves “Sojourners,” implying they never intended to stay, but rather someday would return to their homes and families in China. As menial and low-paying as some of the jobs they took, the Chinese still earned more money in America – and if they were careful and saved it, would amass what to them would be quite a fortune.
When it became necessary to build a railroad heading east out of Sacramento, it was the Chinese workers who took on the back-breaking and dangerous work of laying track and blasting tunnels through the mountains. Of the approximately twelve thousand Chinese who helped build the Central Pacific railroad line, about one-tenth, or twelve hundred, were killed.
When the Central Pacific met the Union Pacific in Utah in 1869 there was a great ceremony – and then thousands of jobs disappeared, many of which had been filled by the Chinese. Yet, they stayed even without their families and continued to find ways to continue working, especially in the West during the mining boom years, from Tombstone, Arizona to the mining camps of Montana.
Today, the saying goes that illegal immigrants should be welcomed because “they do the work most Americans won’t”. To a certain extent that was true in the mid-to-late 1800’s for Chinese immigrants. They were willing to work and, truth be told, were probably exploited.
It became apparent that in many cases, however, Chinese workers accepting lower pay were displacing (or replacing) Caucasian workers. In the summer of 1870 white workers in San Francisco held large demonstrations – the Chinese were no longer welcome. The following year a riot broke out in Los Angeles and twenty-three Chinese were killed, yet no one was charged with their murders.
In 1882, the United States Congress unsuccessfully tried to limit the number of Chinese immigrants by passing stricter immigration laws. Years before the Chinese had worked in the gold mines, but now they were being hired to work in the coal mines, often replacing other immigrant miners of Scandinavian, Italian, Welsh or Irish heritage. Again, the Chinese were simply willing to work for much lower wages.
The Union Pacific line stretched across southern Wyoming in large part because of the area’s large deposits of coal, and the Union Pacific owned some of those mines. When the railroad became bogged down in financial difficulties, they cut miners’ pay. To continue boosting their bottom line, the company required its employees to shop in their company stores where prices were much higher. Unsurprisingly, this brought labor unrest and strikes.
After one such strike in 1875, Union Pacific brought in Chinese miners. The Chinese miners outnumbered white miners three to one at that point, and by 1885 there were six hundred Chinese and three hundred white miners working the mines of Rock Springs, Wyoming. Newspapers across the country were already filled with articles and editorials calling for stricter Chinese immigration.
On the second day of September 1885, after white immigrant miners had struck and failed in their attempts to establish a union, tensions boiled over. The Chinese, brought in ostensibly to break the strikes, were allowed to work the richest coal seams, according to History.com.
An armed mob of white miners converged on the area of Rock Springs known as “Chinatown” and began killing the Chinese, even as they scrambled to flee the mob. That day was a Chinese holiday and most of the miners were not at work. Paul W. Papa, author of It Happened in Wyoming, described the scene:
They fell upon the Chinese, beating men with the butts of their guns and robbing them. If a Chinese man didn’t have a weapon, he was released – after, of course, he was robbed of all his possessions. If a Chinese man didn’t stop, he was shot. The Chinese panicked. They ran to their homes, but found no safe haven. The mob easily broke down the doors of the hastily built shacks and beat the men as the screaming women wrapped their arms around crying children – partially to protect them and partially to prevent them from seeing their fathers being so severely beaten.
Not only were the Chinese killed, some were mutilated, scalped, decapitated or hung – some acts so despicable and heinous I won’t mention them here. At least twenty-eight Chinese were killed and about fifteen wounded, although some sources believe the toll could have been higher.
When the Chinese returned the following week, escorted by United States troops, they discovered horrifying scenes of the carnage left behind. In an essay entitled The Rock Springs Massacre, author Tom Rea describes the scene encountered by a trainload of Chinese miners:
Perhaps the odor of burnt things gave the men some idea of what they were about to see. Mixed with it was a sicker, sweeter smell – the smell of dead things that had started to decay. The 600 Chinese coal miners had been traveling all day – toward San Francisco, Calif., they had been told, and safety. Then they stopped, and the sound of the boxcar doors being slid open came rumbling down the train. . . . the men knew immediately where they were. They were right back in Rock Springs, Wyoming. . . . Rock Springs’ Chinatown was gone. Even more horrifying, there still were bodies in what had been Chinatown’s streets. . . . Some had been buried by the coal company, but some [these] had not. Many were in pieces. These were bodies of their friends, sons, fathers, brothers and cousins, murdered by a mob of white coal miners.
The railroad, however, presumably brought the miners back to bury their dead and then get back to work. Understandably, some of the Chinese were afraid to return to work, but after the threat of being fired (and never hired again) if they didn’t return, many acquiesced and went back to the mines. Some found a way to leave Rock Springs and never returned.
Even after all of the carnage and willful murder of the Chinese, in broad daylight no less, no one would step forward as a witness. No charges were ever filed against the white miners. After Chinese diplomats tallied damages in the amount of almost $150,000, Congress finally agreed to reimburse the miners for their losses.
Camp Pilot Butte was built between Rock Springs and Chinatown and troops were stationed there for several more years. The Chinese, however, gradually departed Wyoming, even as the federal government continued to look for ways to limit their immigration to America.
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Surname Saturday: Purchase
The Purchase surname originated as an occupational name, although it’s uncertain when the name began to be used as a surname and passed down to succeeding generations. According to New Dictionary of American Family Names, the name referred to “one who acted as a messenger or courier; a nickname for one who obtained the booty or gain; one who pursued another.”
House of Names indicates this surname is “a classic example of an English polygenetic surname, which is a surname that was developed in a number of different locations and adopted by various families independently. That is what I came across when researching this week’s Tombstone Tuesday article (read it here) on Philander Purchase.
The spelling variations encountered in my research for that article proved to be a bit overwhelming to trace (at least in the limited amount of time normally assigned to research for an article). Some of the known spelling variations of this surname include: Purchas, Purchass, Purches, Purchis, Purkiss, Purkess, Purkis, Purkeys, Purkys, Purkes … and I’m sure more. Possibly all related, but confusing for family researchers.
Aquila Purchase
One of the first people bearing this surname to make, or should I say attempt to make, the trek across the Atlantic to New England was Aquila Purchase. Aquila was born in 1589 to parents Oliver and Thomazine Purchase in Sommerset, England. In 1625 he was appointed as master of the Trinity School in Dorchester, a position he held until he departed for New England in 1632.
Aquila, his wife Ann and their children (it appears Ann was with child) left Weymouth, England, headed for Dorchester, Massachusetts. However, Aquila never made it to the shores of America. He died at sea but his family survived; his son John appears to have been born in 1633 after Ann arrived with her children.
Despite the fact that Aquila never lived in America, he still had an impact on its history. Interestingly, from his line came the thirteen President of the United States, Millard Fillmore:
Henry Squire (c1563-bef1649); Somersetshire, England, had a daughter:
Ann Squire (1591-1662), who married Aquila Purchase (c1588-c1633), in 1614, and had a daughter:
Abigail Purchase (1624-1675), who married Sampson Shore (c1615-c1679), in c1639, and had a son:
Jonathan Shore (1649-1724), who married Priscilla Hathorn (b. 1649), in 1669, and had daughter:
Phoebe Shore (1674-1717). who married Nehemiah Millard (1668-1751), in 1697, and had a son:
Robert Millard (1702-c1784), who married Hannah Eddy (c1704-1739), in 1726, and had a son:
Abiathar Millard (1744-c1811), who married Tabatha Hopkins (b. 1745), in 1761, and had a daughter:
Phoebe Millard (1780-1831), who married Nathaniel Fillmore, Jr. (1771-1863), in 1796, and had a son:
Millard Fillmore (1800-1874), 13th President of the United States.
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Ghost Town Wednesday: Graham, New Mexico
Gold and silver were discovered in the late 1880’s in what is now southwest Catron County, New Mexico. Preferably, in order to contain costs, gold and silver needed to be processed as close as possible to the mines. However, the problem in this particular area was that Whitewater Canyon, where the majority of the mines like the Confidence, Blackbird, Bluebird and Redbird were located, was too narrow.
The next best location was at the mouth of the canyon and in 1893 John T. Graham arrived to build the mill, and in so doing had the mill town that would spring up named after himself. The mill location, however, had its own set of challenges since there wasn’t enough water to run the steam generators. Nor was there sufficient water to supply the town of around two hundred residents.
This problem necessitated the construction of a four-inch water pipe which ran from the high mountain waters down to Graham, a distance of about three miles. To prevent freezing, the pipe was packed around with sawdust and encased in wood. By 1897, mining operations had increased substantially enough to require a larger generator, which in turn required a larger water supply.
An eighteen-inch pipe was constructed parallel to the original four-inch line, and, at least for that period of history, considered to be quite an engineering feat. In order to provide adequate support for the pipes, holes had to be drilled into the canyon walls to ensure the pipes were braced sufficiently to remain in place. At various places, the pipeline rose some twenty feet above the canyon floor.
The pipeline, of course, required monitoring and repair, which meant walking along the eighteen-inch pipeline – referred to as the “catwalk”. After all the extraordinary efforts and engineering feats undertaken to provide sufficient water for the mining operations, the mill never proved to much of a success. The post office, established in 1895, closed in 1904. After the mill closed for good in 1913, the town faded away.
Still, the short-lived town of Graham and the surrounding area had its share of famous (or infamous) folks. Whitewater Canyon was a favorite hideout for Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch, as well as Apache warriors like Geronimo. William Henry McCarty, Jr., a.k.a. “Billy the Kid,” may have passed through the area at some point – William Antrim, his step-father, was the town’s blacksmith.
Today all that remains of the town of Graham are a few remnants of the mill. The Catwalk, however, has become a national scenic trail. Long after the town closed down and the pipelines had fallen in disrepair, the Civilian Conservation Corps, a public works project enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in response to The Great Depression, rebuilt the catwalk. Amazingly, some of the original eighteen-inch pipes provide support for the present structure. The Catwalk today is approximately a 1.1 mile hike from trail head to the end (2.2 miles out and back).
Note: According to this Forest Service web page, the area is undergoing some restoration, perhaps as a result of recent flooding in the area.
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Military History Monday: Quattlebaum Military Service
Today’s Military History article continues the story of the Quattelbaum (Quattlebaum) family whose American progenitor, Petter Quattelbaum, arrived in America in October of 1736 (see this past week’s Surname Saturday article here).
Johannes Quattelbaum, son of Petter, had seen action in the Revolutionary War, serving under Brigadier General Francis Marion, a.k.a. the “Swamp Fox”. His son John was born on December 1, 1774 in the Saxe Gotha Township, two miles north of present day Leesville, South Carolina. After the war Johannes moved his family to a Dutch settlement on Sleepy Creek, but John returned to his birthplace and married Sarah Weaver on August 5, 1798.
John and Sarah Quattelbaum had five children together before Sarah died on January 6, 1809. John was left with five young children to raise and the following year he married Metee Burkett, daughter of a fellow soldier who had fought alongside his father Johannes. He and Metee had four sons.
Sometime in 1809 John moved his family to a place on Lightwood Creek, about four miles south of Leesville, where he would establish mill operations: a flour mill, grist mill and lumber mill. There he gained a reputation as an industrialist who also manufactured cotton gins and rifles. The development of the last two industries were especially well-timed and profitable – demand for the cotton gin was high and the Quattelbaum rifle was well-known and sold throughout the country.
After receiving a commission as captain of his local militia company, John served during the War of 1812 with Lieutenant Colonel Rowe and the South Carolina Militia in defense of Charleston.
According to family history (Quattlebaum: A Palatine Family in South Carolina), “Captain Quattelbaum was a man of forceful character. He had positive opinions and expressed them readily. His integrity and devotion to duty gained him the respect of all who knew him.” John had been educated entirely in the German language, but would later acquire the English language.
On December 9, 1840, Metee died and near the end of his life John lost his eyesight and lived with his son, General Paul Quattlebaum, until he died there on November 25, 1853.
Brigadier General Paul Quattlebaum
Paul Quattlebaum was born on July 8, 1812 and at the age of three the family moved to the location where the mill operations were established. Perhaps a reflection of his father’s integrity and influence, Paul distinguished himself early in both military and public service. At the age of eighteen he was elected captain of his militia company. On September 3, 1835 he married Sarah Caroline Jones, widow of Samuel Prothro, and the daughter of Colonel Mathias Jones.
Just a short time after his marriage, the governor requested that Paul raise a company of volunteers to fight the Seminole Indians in Florida; he was again elected captain of the company. The following year his company was mustered into federal service in Georgia as part of the First Regiment, Infantry, South Carolina Volunteers. Their campaign in Florida was successful and upon his return home, Captain Quattlebaum was promoted to Colonel of the 15th Regiment, 3rd Brigade, South Carolina Militia in 1839.
When his boyhood friend, Brigadier General James H. Hammond, ascended to the governorship of South Carolina, Colonel Quattlebaum replaced him and was promoted to Brigadier General in 1843 and served in that position for ten years. Paul Quattlebaum was a busy man – not only serving in the military but in public service to his state and community.
Paul was many things it seems, including industrialist, following in John’s footsteps. He established a successful lumber mill operation – installing perhaps the first water-turbine wheel and the first circular saw to be used in the state. He improved upon John’s flour mill and Quattlebaum flour was marketed throughout South Carolina. The mill would also later furnish flour for the Confederate Army.
The Quattlebaum rifle continued to be manufactured as well, its reputation maintained by Paul’s leadership and oversight. It is believed that General Quattlebaum introduced the first percussion-cap locks in the state, mounted by on gun barrels made in his factory. Flint and steel locks were made obsolete by this innovation and the rifles were used by the Confederate Army.
From 1840 to 1843 he served as a state representative and from 1848 to 1851 as a state senator. In the 1830’s he had been a member of the short-lived Nullifier Party which supported states rights to the extent they believed that federal laws could be ignored (nullified). In line with advocating states rights, Paul later became a secessionist – as both a member of the Secession Convention and signing the Ordinance of Secession.
Paul Quattlebaum, however, would be precluded from field service during the Civil War due to a back injury and his advanced age. He did provide counsel to the Confederate Army and took a small part in defending the area around Columbia during the war. His home, as a signer of the Ordinance of Secession, was targeted for destruction by fire. The major in charge of carrying out the attack, personally set fire throughout the house while his men ransacked. However, the family’s slaves were able to help the family save the house.
Paul Quattlebaum died at the age of seventy-eight years in 1890. Two of his sons, Paul Jones and Theodore Adolphus served during the Civil War, both noted for distinguished and historic service.
Theodore Adolphus Quattlebaum
Theodore was born on May 11, 1842 and on January 1, 1860 entered the Arsenal Academy in Columbia to begin his military career. By the following January, it appears he had transferred to the Citadel in Charleston because he was on hand for what came to be considered the first shots of the Civil War (although it didn’t officially start for another three months).
South Carolina had just seceded a few weeks before and on January 9, 1861 Citadel cadets fired upon the Star of the West, a civilian steamship which had been hired by the federal government to deliver supplies to Fort Sumter. While the ship didn’t suffer serious damage, the captain decided it best to abandon the mission.
Theodore left the Citadel and enlisted as a private in Company K, 20th Regiment, Infantry under the command of Captain W.D.M. Harmon on December 31, 1861. By April of 1862 he had been promoted to second sergeant and steadily moved up the ranks until his promotion to lieutenant in 1864. Company K was engaged in fighting around Averysborough, North Carolina in 1865 at the Battle of Smith’s Farm.
Although the battle ended as a draw, Lieutenant Theodore Adolphus Quattlebaum was mortally wounded on March 16, 1865 and died the following day. He had been fighting a rear guard action and covering the retreat of General Joseph E. Johnson when he was felled. His body was buried in a marked grave by his body servant and later his remains were transferred to the family cemetery in Lexington County, South Carolina.
Several other members of the Quattlebaum family served during the Civil War. In fact, according to Ancestry.com, there were forty-seven Quattlebaums who served the Confederacy – none in the Union Army, however. This family, with German roots, was Southern to the core.
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Surname Saturday: Quattelbaum
For the first two generations after arriving in America, this German family from the Palatinate region, spelled their surname “Quattelbaum” but eventually settled on a slightly different spelling as “Quattlebaum”.
The second part of the name, “baum”, means “tree” in German. There are a couple of theories as to what “quattel” means, however. One theory is that “quattele” may have meant “quail” and the other that perhaps quattel was a fruit of the apple or quince family. In his family history, Quattlebaum: A Palatine Family in South Carolina, Paul Quattlebaum thought perhaps the fruit might have been more plum-like.
The quattel was thought to have been a “slow-growing tree, so slow-growing that the planter seldom lived to reap the fruit from the tree he planted. Hence, a man was said to ‘plant his quattels’ when he did something for posterity.”
Petter Quattelbaum
It is believed that all Americans who bear the Quattlebaum surname descend from Petter Quattelbaum (notice the different spelling), who arrived at the Port of Philadelphia on October 19, 1736. Of those who arrived that day from the Palatinate, Petter Quattelbaum was the second name on the list of those who not only swore an oath of allegiance to their new country, but also renounced citizenship of their former homeland.
Petter’s wife, Anna Barbara, three daughters (Gertraud, Maria Catherina and Anna Barbara), possibly son Mathias and his mother Maria made the journey with him. A pattern had developed as families from the Palatinate region began to immigrate to America, where they settled in New York, Pennsylvania or the Carolinas. Later generations migrated southward from Pennsylvania just before the Revolutionary War to Virginia and North or South Carolina. From the Carolinas those same people groups would venture farther out into new frontiers, first Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, and then on to places like Texas and Arkansas or the far west.
In 1739 Petter’s name appeared on a petition for a road in Berks County and in 1742 his son Johannes was born in Williams Township (now Lehigh County). At some point, however, Petter and his family returned to Philadelphia, Paul Quattlebaum surmising that many Palatines were skilled artisans and that perhaps an urban vs. a frontier environment was more profitable for him and his family.
About ten years after the family’s arrival in America, Petter’s daughters began to marry, but before daughter Anna Barbara was married in 1749, Petter died on January 14, 1748. His death record was the second one to be entered into the Record Book of the First Reformed Church of Philadelphia. At the time of his death, he left behind Anna Barbara his wife and nine children. One month following his death the youngest child, two-year old Johanna, also died.
According to Paul Quattlebaum, her record of death was the last of that family’s to appear in Pennsylvania as the family headed south to Virginia. By the time of the Revolutionary War three of his sons, Mathias, Johannes and Peter, were living in what was called the Dutch Fork part of South Carolina, an area populated with German-Swiss families.
Johannes Quattelbaum
Johannes settled in an area south of where Mathias and Peter had remained. His first son, John, was born on December 1, 1774. In March of 1778 the South Carolina General Assembly adopted a new constitution and Johannes’ name appeared on the jury list for Saxe Gotha, the township where he lived in the Orangeburg District.
At that point in time, however, there had been little or no fighting in that part of the state. As the war escalated, it became clear that soldiers were needed to defend their way of life and Johannes joined the fight, serving under Brigadier General Francis Marion, a.k.a. the “Swamp Fox”. Another soldier he served with, Thomas Burkett, would later become son John’s father-in-law when he married Meta Burkett.
Following the war, Johannes purchased land and was part of a Dutch settlement on Sleepy Creek and Little Stevens Creek. After his first wife died, he remarried at some point and perhaps had two more boys and two girls. While it is unclear exactly when he died, he deeded land to his son George on February 16, 1813. Since his name didn’t appear on the 1820 census, Johannes Quattelbaum died sometime between 1813 and 1820.
The next three generations following Johannes Quattelbaum – that of his son John, grandson Paul and great grandson Theodore Adolphus – were highlighted with distinguished military service. I’ll write more on the lives of these three men and their military service, spanning from the War of 1812 through the Civil War, in Monday’s Military History article.
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Feisty Females: Ida Bell Wells-Barnett
Ida Bell Wells was the oldest daughter of James and Lizzie Wells, born in slavery (temporarily) on July 16, 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Less than six months later, all slaves were set free by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. James was a master carpenter and Lizzie, a deeply religious woman, was a cook for the Bolling family.
Following the Civil War, Ida’s parents were both active in the Republican Party and James, as a member of the Freedmen’s Aid Society, helped to found Shaw University (now known as Rust College), a black liberal arts school in Holly Springs. Ida had been well-educated, but while away during the summer of 1878, her life changed drastically when a yellow fever epidemic swept through Holly Springs.
James and Lizzie and one of Ida’s siblings died, leaving Ida to care for her remaining siblings. She dropped out of school but eventually found a job as a teacher to support her family. In 1882 she and three of her youngest siblings moved to Memphis, Tennessee to be near other family members. Ida taught school and also continued her education at Fisk University.
Following in her father’s footsteps, Ida became an activist for civil rights, as well as a teacher, journalist, crusader against lynching and a suffragist. In 1884 an incident occurred on a Chesapeake & Ohio train to Nashville when she was asked by the conductor to give up her first-class seat for a white man. The practice of segregation had been outlawed with the 1875 Civil Rights Act, but railroads often skirted the law and segregated their passengers.
On principle, Ida refused to move to the so-called “Jim Crow” car – this incident occurring over seventy years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat. As the conductor attempted to forcibly remove her from her seat, Ida bit the man’s hand. She related the details in her autobiography:
I refused, saying that the forward car [closest to the locomotive] was a smoker, and as I was in the ladies’ car, I proposed to stay. . . [The conductor] tried to drag me out of the seat, but the moment he caught hold of my arm I fastened my teeth in the back of his hand. I had braced my feet against the seat in front and was holding to the back, and as he had already been badly bitten he didn’t try it again by himself. He went forward and got the baggageman and another man to help him and of course they succeeded in dragging me out.
Upon her return to Memphis, Ida employed an attorney, sued the railroad and won a $500 settlement – only to have it overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court. Ida began to write articles which were published in various black newspapers and periodicals. She would later become the owner of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight, a larger platform from which to advance the causes she was fighting for.
She openly criticized the Memphis school system for its lack of funding for poor schools and was dismissed by the Memphis school board in 1891. Thereafter, she became a full-time journalist and activist. In 1892 three black men had opened a grocery store in Memphis and became successful enough to begin drawing customers away from another store (white-owned) in the neighborhood. After a confrontation with whites, the three men were arrested and taken to jail, only to have the jail overrun and the three African-Americans lynched.
Ida’s efforts to outlaw lynching were met with anger by white Tennesseans, and the offices of the Free Speech were destroyed. Yet, Ida was undeterred by their threats and continued to campaign for anti-lynching laws (which were never passed). Ida had been traveling in the South researching the practice of lynching when her newspaper offices were destroyed. She received death threats warning her against returning to Memphis, but continued to travel and lecture, both at home and abroad, with her anti-lynching message.
In 1898 she led a protest in Washington, D.C., calling on President William McKinley to act. That same year she also married attorney Ferdinand L. Barnett of Chicago. They had four children together, but Ida struggled to balance her home and activist, eventually forcing her to curtail her travel and speaking schedules.
Even though she was never able to compel legislators to enact anti-lynching laws, she fought on. In 1896 she founded the National Association of Colored Women and in 1909 helped to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She and Mary Church Terrell, another civil rights activist, were the only two women to sign the petition which led to the organization’s founding.
She joined the national suffragist movement, integrating it by refusing to remain at the rear of a 1913 march in Washington, D.C. In 1928 Ida began writing her autobiography, Crusade for Justice, but never finished the book – the book ended in the middle of a sentence and her daughter later edited and published it posthumously.
In her final year Ida was running for the Illinois State Senate and kept up a demanding and busy schedule. Even though she had been a tireless crusader most of her life, some of the last pages she wrote in her journal were filled with doubts about what she had accomplished during her lifetime: “All at once the realization came to me that I had nothing to show for all those years of toil and labor.”
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett died on March 25, 1931 of kidney failure, active until her last days. She had once said: “I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap.”
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Ghost Town Wednesday: Stiles, Texas
“It isn’t likely that a tourist will ever see the old Reagan County Courthouse at Stiles unless he is looking for it, or just flat lost.” That’s what a contributor on the Ghost Towns web site had to say about Stiles, Texas. It’s a bit off the beaten track these days.
Stiles had a storied history dating back to the mid-seventeenth century when Captains Diego del Castillo and Hernán Martin were sent out to explore an area which would later be Texas. Castillo and Martin passed through the area and camped a night or two near where Stiles was eventually located near the Centralia Draw. A short-cut to the Santa Fe Trail would later be carved out nearby as well.
Around 1890 Gordon Stiles and Gerome W. Shields came to the area and were later joined by P.H. Coates, a rancher who had already begun building a sheep ranch in the 1880’s. In 1894, Stiles submitted an application for a post office which was accepted. By the early 1900’s the area had increased enough in population to warrant a split from Tom Green County.
In 1903, by a vote of 40-1, Reagan County was formed. Since no other village or town of any size existed, Stiles was the natural choice as county seat and the location of the county courthouse. An amusing story about the county’s founding was related in a 1964 article by Joe Mosby in the Big Springs Daily Herald:
The move for forming the new county had a brush with disaster, though. Texas statutes required that a petition for a new county had to be submitted bearing names of a percentage of residents of the area. Promoters of the petition for Reagan’s formation fell two names short, and there was despair for a moment. But at the last minute the signatures reading “John Donohu” and “Bill Donohu” were added. No one said much, but John and Bill were the names of a pair of outstanding mules that had labored hard in the early days at Stiles. “Donohu” had a mighty similar sound to “Do Know Who” so the settlers later chuckled.
Before a permanent courthouse was built, Sheriff Henry Japson would chain prisoners to a hitchrack. As Mosby related in his article, “[O]ne later prominent citizen of the area vows that the end of his drinking days came right there at that hitchrack.” When the bond election to fund the courthouse and jail was held in August of 1903, the results were the same as the election to form the county – 40-1.
A frame building replaced the temporary structure, but by 1911 an even more substantial two-story structure was built. Gordon Stiles owned the general store where the many of the town’s activities were centered, so the town was named after him. The land where the permanent courthouse was built had been donated by Stiles and Shields.
The new courthouse, constructed of stone quarried from the Centralia Draw, was said to have been the nicest in West Texas at the time, perhaps valued as much as $25,000. By this time, there were also around one hundred homes in Stiles, along with a newspaper and telephone service. All Stiles needed to prosper and survive long-term would have been railway access.
In 1910 the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railroad wanted to run their line from San Angelo through Stiles to Fort Stockton and Toyahville. However, one of the largest landowners in Reagan County refused to grant access across his land. The rail line instead was located about twenty miles south near a big lake (said to be full of huge catfish and alligators). The result? The town of Big Lake was established in 1912 and by 1919 was approximately the same size as Stiles.
But, of course, Big Lake had a railroad and Stiles had lost out. For several years, Big Lake fought to become the new county seat. Their fate and that of Stiles seemed to have been sealed, however, when in 1923 the Santa Rita oil well just west of Big Lake brought more people to the area and a booming economy. The oil strike also greatly benefited the University of Texas – quite a bit of the land in Reagan county was owned by the school.
In 1925 the vote finally swung in favor of Big Lake (292-94) and Stiles began to decline. The abandoned courthouse served as a school, and a sometimes community center and dance hall for a time. Mosby reported in 1964 that the building served as storage for the county road department and residence for a county worker. It’s only governmental function at that time was its use as a voting precinct.
One tragic event marred the history of Stiles, however. Henry Japson had served as the county sheriff for years – in fact the only sheriff the county had ever employed – and was said to have been quite wealthy. He was a long-time friend of James Belcher, an English immigrant who had built a prosperous ranching operation in the area and was himself quite wealthy.
In 1964, in a retraction of sorts to Mosby’s January 26 article, James Belcher’s daughters stated that they believed a disagreement had arisen over the recent appointment of their father to represent the Drover Cattle Loan Company of Kansas City, a post which Henry Japson had previously held. According to the daughters, the two men had encountered one another in the county clerk’s office on February 19, 1918.
As Belcher stepped out into the hallway, shots were fired by Japson and Belcher fell dead. Sheriff Japson was said to have gone to his car, returned to his office, shut the door and then killed himself, or as one newspaper related it – he blew his brains out.
According to the Texas Escapes web site, someone tried to set the courthouse on fire in 1999. The building is now gutted and appears to be surrounded by a security fence. Historical markers have been placed near the courthouse and at the Stiles Cemetery. To reach the abandoned town site, head north on Highway 37 out of Big Lake and at 12.5 miles make a hard left turn. The courthouse will be on the south side of the highway.
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Mothers of Invention: Patsy O’Connell Sherman
Today’s “mother of invention” article features another “parent-friendly” product (last week it was disposable diapers). As you will see, she could also be characterized as a “feisty female”.
Patsy O’Connell Sherman was born on September 15, 1930 in Minneapolis, Minnesota to parents James and Edna O’Connell. During her high school years, Patsy took an aptitude test which showed her best career choice would that of housewife. In that day, how many young women do you think received that same recommendation? Patsy, however, refused to accept that result and demanded to take the boy’s aptitude test.
According to the Minnesota Science and Technology Hall of Fame, she wanted to attend college but certainly didn’t want to spend all that time and money educating herself only to become a housewife. The aptitude test for boys revealed a much different career path – she would be well-suited to be either a dentist or a scientist.
In 1952 Patsy graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry and mathematics – and the first female attending the school to do so. As an example of how things have drastically changed, after graduating Patsy took a “temp job” at Minnesota-based 3M Corporation. She was contracted to assist in developing a new type of fuel line for jet aircraft through the use of fluorochemicals. The reason her job was considered temporary? At that time women hired to work in laboratories were considered temporary employees, assuming they would leave to get married and have a family.
In 1953 while working on the fuel line project, a lab assistant spilled some of the chemicals she had been experimenting with on her white canvas shoes. Attempts to clean off the spilled drops were unsuccessful, but she noticed that later the area where the chemicals had spilled were clean while other parts of her shoes where dirty.
She and fellow scientist Samuel Smith worked together and on April 13, 1971 received approval for United States Patent 3574791 for “invention of block and graft copolymers containing water-solvatable polar groups and fluoroaliphatic groups.” The fluorochemical polymer that Patsy and Samuel developed was marketed by 3M under the trademark name of Scotchgard™. Development of their invention presented another challenge for Patsy, however – at that time women weren’t allowed to be inside the textile mill where performance tests were conducted.
3M continued to develop the Scotchgard™ line of products and Patsy received sixteen other patents, sharing thirteen of them with Samuel Smith. Patsy was the first person to develop an “optical brightener” – something that gave detergent manufacturers the right to boast that clothes washed in their product would be “whiter than white.”
Patsy O’Connell married Hubert Sherman and had children, but she defied the “norm” and remained at 3M her entire career. By the time she retired in 1992, she had advanced through the ranks and was manager of technical development. She received several prestigious honors throughout her career and beyond, including induction into 3M’s Carlton Society (1974) which honors the company’s best scientists, the Minnesota Inventors Hall of Fame (1989) and the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2001).
Her husband died in 1996 and Patsy died on February 11, 2008. She apparently passed on her love of science to her two daughters – one is a chemist at 3M and the other a biologist. Patsy Sherman, the “accidental inventor” once remarked:
You can encourage and teach young people to observe, to ask questions when unexpected things happen. You can teach yourself not to ignore the unanticipated. Just think of all the great inventions that have come through serendipity, such as Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, and just noticing something no one conceived of before.
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Surname Saturday: Tinker
Most sources agree that today’s surname is of occupational origins, perhaps referring to someone who was a mender of pots and pans (“tinner”). The earliest individuals bearing a particular surname, especially an occupational one, were usually employed in that profession. The occupational name passed to succeeding generations even if the occupational tradition was not, especially after The Middle Ages.
The Internet Surname Database disagrees with the type of occupation, believing that the name did not necessarily refer to someone who mended pots and pans, but perhaps one who sold them – a peddler. Their premise is that the name derived from the Middle English word “tink(l)er” because “they made their approach known by tinking, by either ringing or making a tinkling noise.” Another reason for their theory is that during King Edward VI’s reign a law was passed basically outlawing peddling: “No person or persons commonly called Pedler, Tynker, or Pety Chapman, shall wander or go from one towne to another . . . and sell pynnes, poyntes laces, gloves, knyves, glasses, tapes, or any suche kynde of wares whatsoever or gather connye skynnes.”
A person bearing this surname was recorded in 1244 in “The History Of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital”, but one of the first instances may have been recorded in 1243, during King Henry III’s reign, in County Somerset for Robert le Tinker. The name may also have appeared as “Tinkler” at times – Edward Tinkler was listed in the Yorkshire Poll Tax of 1379.
Thomas Tinker
Thomas Tinker, thought to have been the first Tinker to come to America, was a passenger on the Mayflower and made the journey because of religious persecution. Before their arrival in the New World, forty-three Pilgrims signed their names on November 11, 1620 to a document called the “Mayflower Compact” which would govern the settlers. His name is also inscribed on the Plymouth Rock Monument.
The Compact had been signed while still on board the ship and the original intent was to disembark in the colony of Virginia, but storms forced them to take refuge in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, later named Plymouth after the port city in County Devonshire.
Thomas, his wife and son were likely English separatists who had resided in Leiden, Holland for a time to escape persecution. Thomas Tinker was a wood sawyer by trade. The names of his wife and son were not noted, recorded by William Bradford as “Thomas Tinker, and his wife and a sone.”
The journey was not an easy one and two deaths occurred before landing in Massachusetts. Sickness had already been rampant and upon arrival the Pilgrims were faced with even more challenges. Sadly, Thomas Tinker and his family all perished – “all dyed in the first sicknes” according to William Bradford. That would have occurred sometime between December 1620 and January 1621, but no specific date was recorded for the Tinker family’s death. They were likely buried in unmarked graves in an area referred to today s “Cole’s Hill”.
John Tinker
John Tinker was born in England around 1614 perhaps and his name began to appear in Boston records around 1635. It’s possible that John’s parents also immigrated around the same time. In 1639, while away in England, John wrote a letter to John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and enclosed a letter for his mother.
It appears that John Tinker was a well-educated man who had obtained a social position worthy of being addressed as either “Mr. Tinker” or “Master Tinker”. Records show that he was a merchant or trader as well as an attorney. John married Mrs. Sarah Barnes, a divorceé with two daughters (her husband had deserted his family), but it’s unclear when their marriage occurred.
Curiously, her divorce from William Barnes was not recorded until 1649 – and Sarah died in 1648. Following her death, the care of her daughter Mary was entrusted to Richard Cooke, a tailor in Boston and Alice was cared for by John Tinker. Some speculate that perhaps Cooke was Mary’s uncle, his wife being Sarah’s sister.
Sometime prior to December 9, 1649 John married his second wife Alice Smith (Alice signed her name “Alice Tinker” as witness to a land transaction on that date). In 1654 John was made a freeman and in 1655 was offered a sizable piece of property in Lancaster, Massachusetts in exchange for his governmental service as the town’s clerk. In 1659 he and his family removed to Pequot in the Connecticut Colony.
In Pequot John was again active in governmental as well as church affairs. Not long after his arrival the minister of the First Congregational Church in New London departed and John filled in until a new pastor arrived.
While serving as the Chief Magistrate of New London’s Court, John refused to prosecute someone who had spoken out against the King of England. Three of his fellow citizens took exception and charged him with treason, after which John charged them with defamation.
The suit went to the General Court at Hartford, but before it could be settled John Tinker died in October of 1682. The Court, however, regarded those charges as attempts to malign Tinker’s character and levied fines against his accusers. Out of respect for his reputation, the expenses of John Tinker’s illness and funeral were borne by the Colony of Connecticut.
One more Tinker story. In 1663, too long after John’s death, his wife Alice was found to be “with child.” Of course, this type of thing was not tolerated in the Puritan community and Alice had to appear before the General Court. Before the Court she shockingly admitted that the father of her child was Jeremiah Blinman, son of a former minister. Apparently, Alice only paid a fine – otherwise she could have been subjected to more stringent and obvious forms of punishment (think “scarlet letter”). Jeremiah also paid a fine in 1663.
As it turns out though, Jeremiah was not the father, but a married man by the name of Samuel Smith, a New London commissioner. Samuel deserted his wife and moved to Virginia before Alice’s baby was born – records and depositions seem to indicate that he admitted responsibility after his wife Rebecca filed for divorce on the grounds of desertion. The divorce was finalized in 1667.
Meanwhile, Alice Tinker had married another man, an attorney by the name of William Measure, in 1664. Alice, her five children by John Tinker and William Measure moved to Lyme, Connecticut soon after their marriage and remained there until their deaths.
What happened to the illegitimate child? Sarah Tinker was born in Lyme in 1664 (whether before or after Alice’s wedding to Measure is unclear). A record exists in the land records of Lyme listing Sarah as the “daughter of John Tinker”, entitling her to an allowance of land equal to that of any heir of the land’s original owner.
Sources:
Descendants of James Stanclift of Middletown, Connecticut and Allied Families, by Robert C. and Sherry [Smith] Stancliff
The Ancestors of Silas Tinker in America from 1637, by A.B. Tinker (1889)
Did you enjoy this article? Yes? Check out Digging History Magazine. Since January 2018 new articles are published in a digital magazine (PDF) available by individual issue purchase or subscription (with three options). Most issues run between 70-85 pages, filled with articles of interest to history-lovers and genealogists — it’s all history, right? 🙂 No ads — just carefully-researched, well-written stories, complete with footnotes and sources.
Want to know more or try out a free issue? You can download either (or both) of the January-February 2019 and March-April 2019 issues here: https://digging-history.com/free-samples/
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