The Cemetery Families & The Civil War

As reported in a previous post, I found confirmation of the deaths of Edward and Robert Cagle at a date prior to November, 1864, in the Fannin County Probate Minutes, Book E, page 421. Thomas C. Hale’s appearance before the Court on that date is documented there. He made a report to the court on his efforts to settle the estates of Susan C. Cagle, Edward C. Cagle, and Robert Cagle, and asked to be discharged of any further duties. Knowing that these Cagle boys had died young and without descendants provided some closure, but left many unanswered questions. On the advice of a fellow researcher, I turned to Laura Douglas, Special Collections Librarian at the Emily Fowler Library in Denton. Laura was my much appreciated guide into the rich world of Civil War military records. There I found true closure for Edward and Robert Cagle.

Edward & Robert pledged themselves to fight for the Confederate States by enlisting in the 22nd Texas Cavalry on Dec. 17, 1861 in Honey Grove, Texas. Edward was 19 years old, and is described in his military records as 5’ 10” tall, with fair complexion, light hair, and grey eyes. Robert was 24 years old, 5’ 8” tall, of dark hair and complexion, but sharing with his brother the trait of grey eyes. Both listed their occupation as ‘farmer’. The young men mustered in on Jan. 13, 1862, at Fort Washita, Oklahoma. They each came with their own horse and rigging, and the value was duly noted in their records. Edward mustered in as a private and Robert as a sergeant.

The 22nd Texas Cavalry was organized under Colonel Robert. H. Taylor and included recruits from Fannin, Grayson, Collin, and other North Texas counties. In July of 1862 the 22nd joined the 31st Texas and the 34th Texas to form a cavalry brigade. The combined troops saw their first engagement on Sept. 30, 1862 at Newtonia, Missouri in a successful skirmish against Union forces. Edward, however, did not see any of this. While the military records do not supply any detail, they do document his death at home in Fannin County on March 22, 1862. Robert’s military career did not long outlast his brother’s. He also died prior to the brigade’s first action, succumbing to accident or disease on August 24, 1862, at Ft. Gibson, Okla.

After their early success at Newtonia, the troops fell back into Arkansas where illness, changes in command, and reclassification from cavalry to infantry demoralized the men. The Handbook of Texas Online states that the struggling troops fought as a “dismounted cavalry” at Prairie Grove, Arkansas on December 7, 1862, before moving to Ft. Smith in Jan., 1863, and then marching through snow to the Red River in Feb., 1863. Glory continued to elude the 22nd during the remaining years of the war. The surviving troop returned to Texas in March, 1865, where it was disbanded in May of that year.

Pages from the Fold3.com military records of Edward and Robert Cagle.

Based on this early success researching the Cagle family, I eagerly began seeking details on John Bonham’s Civil War history. His story proved more elusive. I had two references to work from. The first being a family history written by John’s granddaughter. Pine Cones and Cactus, by Eddie Gist Williams Addison (As told to Thelma Lacy), was published in 1980, at San Angelo, Texas. In it, the author states,

“My mama, Charity Josephine (called Tatty by the younger children) Bonham, was born in Arkansas on May 19, 1862.  Her mother was Penelope Edward Boone, and her father was John Bonham.  Grandma Penelope (Penny) was born in 1827 in Tennessee.  Grandpa John was born in 1817 in North Carolina.  Grandma’s parents were born in Tennessee and Grandpa’s in North Carolina.

Mama told me about living in Arkansas during Civil War days.  She remembered when Grandpa rode off to fight for the South.  She said he managed, somehow, to slip home and help with the planting in the spring and the harvesting in the fall and then make his way back to the front lines, leaving Grandma and the children and a few slaves to manage the big farm.

She remembered when he came back after the defeat of the Confederate troops, battered and beat - with nothing left to do but pull up stakes and move on to another place, another beginning.”

The problem with this recollection is that Tatty could have been no more than an infant when her father enlisted in the Confederate Army, as she was only 3 when the war ended.  It seems likely that she related family stories to her daughter, not her personal memories. In any case, the account provides an evocative glimpse of how the War affected the Bonham family.

The second reference I had was an article in The Bonham News (Vol. 44, No. 100, Ed. 1, Tuesday, April 12, 1910), found on The Portal to Texas History. In the column, Observations by the Way, Ashley Evans recounts a visit with John Bonham, stating,

“…Stopped first at John Bonham’s. He is 88 years old. He wore the grey four years and was with Shelby. At the close of the war he cast his lot with the good people of this county.”

Despite these tantalizing tidbits, I found nothing in the official military records that I could definitively attribute to ‘our’ John Bonham. I had hoped the Muster Rolls might provide a fix on when his service to the Confederacy ended, thus providing a more defined window for the migration of the family from Arkansas to Fannin County, Texas. That hope was disappointed and will have to wait for another day.

Charity Josephine (Tatty) and John Posey Gist, from Pine Cones and Cactus.

Turning to the Wilks family, I was able to find the service records of eldest son, Jefferson Wilks (the younger sons were children during the war). He was a member of the Union Army, serving in Company E of the 30th Regiment of the Iowa Infantry. He began his military career as a private and ended as a sergeant. The Regiment was mustered in on Sept., 20, 1862, and served in a number of distinguished campaigns, including the siege of Vicksburg, the battle of Lookout Mountain, and the battle of Missionary Ridge, prior to marching to the relief of Knoxville on Nov. 28, 1863. In Dec., 1863, the Regiment was assigned garrison duty in Alabama, an assignment that lasted until late spring of 1864. Jefferson Wilks died on April 10, 1864 in Claysville, Alabama at the age of 23 or 24.

Find-A-Grave provides the following information about Jefferson,

“Killed in action April 10, 1864, Claysville, Ala. … Would have been buried close to death site. Then possibly moved to a national cemetery as an unknown abt 1867.”

I have not been able to find confirmation in the military records of Jefferson dying in action. Nor have I found a record of a battle corresponding to the date and location of his death, so I have some reservations about the accuracy of this report. However, Claysville, Alabama was a strategic location due to the ferry there across the Tennessee River. It is possible that Jefferson died in a skirmish defending the ferry. It is also possible that Jefferson died of disease. Within the Regiment, eight officers and 65 enlisted men were killed in battle or mortally wounded during the course of the war. Three officers and 241 enlisted men were lost to disease (https://military.wikia.org/wiki/30th_Iowa_Volunteer_Infantry_Regiment). This sad statistic speaks volumes to the conditions the enlisted men suffered outside the immediate threat of battle.

Union Cavalry Camp, Library of Congress.

Story by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

The Unidentified & The Bonham Mysteries

In 1860, John William and Penelope Bonham were living in Mountain Township, Polk County, Arkansas. Included in their household were their children, Mary, Frances, Nancy, and John, as well as Salitha Bonham (age 64) and Mack Bonham (age 18). John was 37 and Penelope 30. John and Penelope had married in Tennessee in 1847. In 1866, their baby girl, Louisa, was laid to rest along side Charity Bonham (a woman of 53) in what has come to be known as the Bonham Cemetery in Fannin County. Charity and Louisa died one month apart and share a headstone. The headstone establishes Charity as the wife of David Bonham and Louisa as the daughter of John and Penelope. John & Penelope Bonham are buried in Smyrna Cemetery and their descendants are the source of the family references stated here. These are the facts we can verify.

Family records indicate that the Bonhams left their home in Arkansas at the end of the Civil War and made their way via the Military Road to Fannin County where a sister of John’s was already living. This sister could be Casepha Bonham Cosner Allen, the 2nd wife of Wilson Bruce Allen, founder of Allen’s Chapel, though there are no definitive records establishing her relationship to John, and Casepha’s birthdate has been impossible to pin down. Some references place her birthdate in 1835, some in 1849. The first date places her in alignment as a possible sister to John, the second would make her more probably a daughter. In 1861, Sarah A. Bonham was married in Fannin County to James A. Wilson. She could also be the sister referred to. The family records indicate the sister was married to a doctor and James A. Wilson was a physician. These questions about the sister reflect the difficulty of pinning down information about John’s family. Was Salitha his mother? Mack and David his brothers? Charity’s birthdate precludes her being John’s mother, but John’s father was also named David, so Charity could be a step-mother, though she is generally accepted as a sister-in-law.

We are also left to wonder who was in the party that migrated from Arkansas to Texas. I cannot account for Salitha and Mack after the 1860 census. Mack, being in his prime, could easily have stayed behind or struck out on his own. Salitha would have been nearing 70. Did she make the journey? Had she died in Arkansas in the intervening years? Did she stay behind with Mack? Do she and Mack account for two of the unmarked graves in the Bonham Cemetery?

David and Charity’s story is another mystery. I have not been able to discover where they were living prior to Charity’s death here in Dec, 1865, despite scouring the census records for all Bonham’s in Arkansas and surrounding states for 1850 and 1860. Clearly Charity made the journey with the family from Arkansas. Did David come or had he died elsewhere? Could he be one of the unmarked graves? Though, if other members of the family were buried in the Bonham Cemetery why were there no markers for them, given the obvious love and care given to Charity’s and Louisa’s graves? Having exhausted all the clues and avenues that I could find or think of, I turned from the Bonham family to the question of what other families the unmarked graves might represent.

Local lore has it that the burials at the Bonham site were made by folks ‘passing through’. The burials themselves suggest the possibility of a group struck by catastrophe in what might be a temporary location. The graves are shallower and less sophisticated than those at the Wilks site, even though they are contempororary. It seemed clear that the migration from Arkansas might have been a group of several families traveling together, but it took a suggestion from a fellow history buff to give direction to that notion. He mentioned that traveling parties would often be made up of neighbors, the neighbors often being connected by marriage. His suggestion sent me back to the census records. Assuming that the census takers would work in an area, completing it before moving on to the next, I focused on the entries to either side of the Bonham’s in the 1860 Arkansas census. I searched the 1870 census for Fannin County for the surnames I found. I was hoping to find some of the people known to have been living near the Bonham’s in 1860 living in Fannin County in 1870, giving me a set of families to research further. Despite casting a wide net, I essentially struck out. I did find some of the same surnames, but none of the same individuals. For the moment, I am stymied and will have to let the mysteries be.

The grave of Charity & Louisa at the base of an enormous oak, decorated in the spring of 2018 by Ginger & Wanda, photo by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

Reinterment Site in Willow Wild Cemetery, photo by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

Story by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

The Unidentified & The Wilks Mysteries

The overwhelming surprise when the Wilks and Bonham Cemeteries were disinterred was the number of unmarked graves found. What we had assumed to be the resting place of two well-marked families became a much more complicated situation. Like the Cagle family (see previous post) the outline of the Wilks family emerged early and seemed complete.  But again, my assumptions were called into question.

With the exception of Mary Wilks, whose grave was marked only by a metal funeral home stake, the Wilks graves had lovely tombstones - richly decorated and graceful, with touching symbols of birds, lambs, twining ivy, and clasped hands. Each stone was also graced with loving sentiments carved in script. Mary died in 1932 and was presumably the last of the family to be buried in the cemetery. While her grave was not given a stone, it remains hard to imagine any prior Wilks burial remaining unmarked given the beautiful tombstones standing witness to a family who honored their dead with great care.

But there are mysteries to be solved in the Wilks family just as there are in the Cagle family. The information in the historical record poses questions and the three unmarked graves lying between the Wilks and Cagle rows (see schematic below) beg explanation. These graves could be from either family or from neither family. Only the results of the scientific assessment of the remains will provide true closure. In the meantime, we can work to develop educated guesses as to who these souls might be and the records do provide some possibilities.

Gray markers indicate the relative position of the unmarked graves found. Yellow markers indicate the Cagle row. Green markers indicate the Wilks row.

Though the Wilks family did not buy the Cagle farm from Susan and Martin Cagle’s heirs until 1873, clearly the Wilks developed some association to the farm or the immediate surrounding area soon after arriving in Fannin County in 1865 (see newspaper article here regarding Fannin County Old Settlers Association meeting in Dodd City, Texas on Aug. 1-2, 1917, in which Milton Wilks is listed as having arrived in Texas in 1865). Margaret Wilks was buried in the Wilks Cemetery in 1869 and Thomas Wilks joined her there in 1871. Perhaps the Wilks were tenants of the Cagle heirs. Perhaps the cemetery was already in use at the time of Margaret’s death as a community cemetery rather than a private family cemetery. We do know that when the land was sold to the Wilks sons in 1873, 1/4 acre was held out of the original 214 acre land grant. Perhaps this quarter acre holdout is a reference to the cemetery.

The 1870 census for Thomas Wilks includes Cornelius Edwards, age 27, working as black smith, Sarah Edwards, age 26, keeping house, and Warren Edwards, age 3, in addition to sons Madison, Newton, and Milton Wilks, aged 19, 16. and 14, respectively. Thomas is listed as a farmer and the boys as farm laborers. The three graves between the Cagle and Wilks rows are those of children. With Cornelius and Sarah in their prime child bearing years, and given the rate at which young children were lost in that era, these could be Edwards graves.

Poking deeper into the census records related to the adult Wilks children, I found a reference in the 1880 census to Mattie Wilks, one-year-old daughter of Newton and Mary Wilks.  The 1890 census is missing and Mattie is not mentioned in the 1900 census, though she would have been 21 by this time and perhaps married. I’ve not found any reference to Mattie other than that one census entry. If Mattie died as a baby or young child, she could be lying in one of those unmarked graves. However, it would seem strange for her resting place to remain unmarked when the resting places of her little brothers are so beautifully marked.

In that same 1880 census record, the Newton Wilks household includes Tenny Martin, white, servant, age 7. Setting aside the heartache of imagining a seven year old servant, Tenny must be added to the list of possibilities. If she died young, an unmarked grave would seem consistent with the sad circumstances of her life.

Finally, we have the tragic case of Alvie Wilks. Alvie died at the age of 8 after being severely burned in an accident. Her mother also suffered severe burns while trying to save Alvie. The mother lived, but little Alvie succumbed. Alvie’s death certificate places her burial at the Wilks Cemetery but her grave was not among those marked. Either there is an error in her death certificate or she is one of our unidentified children. It stands to reason that she will be identified during the scientific assessment of the remains given the abundant family DNA available from well-marked close relatives disinterred, and the availability of living descendants of her family. It would be comforting to see her placed in a marked grave among her family when the remains are re-interred.

Story by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

The Unidentified

As we wait for the first bit of scientific information to emerge from Dr. Whitely and her team about the remains removed from the Wilks and Bonham Cemeteries, I want to explore several lines of inquiry that could shed light on the unidentified remains found. These lines of inquiry include looking at the occupation of the land, the families on the surrounding properties, the early road systems in the area, and further details and gaps related to the information we have about the Cagle, Wllks, and Bonham families.

To begin that effort, I pulled all the known burials in Fannin County dating from 1838 to 1852 from the Fannin County GenWeb site. I used these dates because 1838 is the earliest recorded burial in Fannin County and Martin Cagle, the first fully documented burial in the Wilks & Bonham Cemeteries, was buried in 1852.  The initial on-site assessment of the removal team was that the burials to the east of the Cagle row in the Wilks Cemetery were older graves, so my focus was on the period prior to Martin Cagle’s death. My intent was to map the ‘hotspots’ of early Fannin County settlement by locating where the known burials were, hoping that the pattern produced might provide clues as to these early Wilks Cemetery graves. The surnames of other early burials in the area would, I thought, provide good starting points for further research. I used the map of all known cemeteries in Fannin County from the GenWeb site as my starting point. The result for the northeastern part of the County is show below, with the current path of Bois d’Arc Creek highlighted.

There are a few scattered locations along Red River, and then a concentrated area south and east of Bois D’Arc Creek.  The only known burials in the 1838-1852 time frame along the western side of Bois D’Arc Creek are those at the Wilks Cemetery itself (dark red dot on the map).  The Wilks Cemetery stands conspicuously alone. Certainly there are burial grounds we will never know about where the only markers were wooden posts that have completely disappeared, but it seems likely these would be in proportion to the marked graves that have remained. And perhaps this pattern should not be surprising, illustrating early settlements spreading into the area from the more established communities to the east, overland and along the River.

Studying this map, I began to think about how one would choose a burial ground for a loved one in frontier conditions. If there was a community cemetery in a given location, how wide an area was it likely to serve? What distance was considered nearby, what distance a long journey? To what extent would the area creeks limit travel in a time of few roads? These sorts of questions led me to the creation of another map.

Base map from “Texas Land Survey Maps for Fannin County”, by Gregory A. Boyd, J. D., used with permission of the publisher.

In this one, I highlighted the major creeks (in red) on a map of original land grant awardees, estimating the original course of the creeks prior to the creation of Coffee Mill Lake (in light purple). A ‘basin’ of sorts emerged (highlighted in pink) around the Wilks & Bonham cemeteries. The headright names provide a starting point for the original claimants of the land, and the creeks a reasonable boundary of an extended community.

In an attempt to put the ‘basin’ in context within the larger land area and the earliest settlements in Fannin County, and to explore the distances between them, I created a third map. Using the Google Earth app, I drew a five mile radius around key areas. I am told by old-timers from the Carson area, that even in the early 20th century a trip to Bonham was a two day affair in horse-drawn wagon. One day was dedicated to the drive into town and taking care of business. By then it was late, and folks would stay over night then start the journey home the next morning. Given the well established road system at that time, I felt safe in assuming that a five mile journey in an area of few roads would be a significant distance.

These maps have given me a lot to think about and a wealth of questions to pursue. They will guide and inform my research going forward as we piece together as much as we can of the story of the Unidentified.

Story by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

Finding Living Descendants - The Bonham Family

Shortly after our project went public with the launch of this web site, I was contacted by my friend, Nancy Vermillion, to tell me that she was related to the descendants of John & Penelope Bonham, the parents of little Louisa Bonham. It was a thrilling breakthrough after weeks of unsuccessful research. On October 14, Ginger and I met Nancy at Willow Wild and she took us on a tour of the Bonham family burials there. We started at the plot that James Bonham had purchased for himself, his late wife Elaine, and the reburial of Louisa and Charity Bonham. Elaine’s body had already been moved to the new plot from her resting place in California. The tombstone commemorating Charity and Louisa had also been relocated from the Bonham Family Cemetery though their bodies had not yet been disinterred.

James Bonham plot in Willow Wild Cemetery, photo by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

Charity & Louisa Bonham headstone and foot stones in Bonham plot in Willow Wild, to the right of the headstone of Elaine and James Bonham, photo by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

Charity & Louisa Bonham headstone, cleaned and in its new location, photo by Ginger Sisco Cook.

Visit to Willow Wild Cemetery, photo by Ginger Sisco Cook.

While at Willow Wild, we also visited the burial of James Bonham’s parents, Willam A. and Marye M. Erwin Bonham. William Arthur Bonham was the son of John William Bonham Jr., and grandson of John and Penelope Bonham. Though none of the children of William and Marye currently live in Texas, Nancy mentioned that the family was planning to gather in Bonham in November for a memorial service for Elaine, Charity, and Louisa. She agreed to make introductions and try to arrange a meeting for us with them. We were very hopeful, but also mindful of the fact that the family would be here for a short time and for a specific purpose. We said goodbye to Nancy with fingers crossed.

Resting place of Marye Erwin and William Arthur Bonham in Willow Wild Cemetery, photo by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

On Nov. 3, 2018, I had the immense pleasure of meeting with the Bonham family around the dining room table at Granny Lou’s. James and John Bonham, sons of William and Marye were present, as was the widow of their brother Arthur Erwin Bonham, along with wives and cousins of their generation. The next younger generation of the family was also generously represented. We shared research, family stories, photographs, and fellowship. The family has a treasure trove of history, first compiled by William Arthur Bonham in the early 1980’s and updated by Arthur Erwin Bonham in 1992. One of those treasures, Arthur Bonham’s memories of the farm south of Bonham can be read here. The farm was near Bonham State Park. The house was built by Arthur’s father, John William Bonham Jr, son of John and Penelope Bonham, and brother of Louisa Bonham.

Photos courtesy of Janice Bonham West.

Bonham Family Farm in 1914-1915, photo courtesy of the Bonham family..

Bonham Family Farm as it appeared in 1992 during a previous family reunion, photo courtesy of the Bonham family.

Marye Erwin and William Arthur Bonham on their honeymoon in 1925, photo courtesy of the Bonham family.

The family lore shared around the table was fascinating. John Bonham was born in the early 1800’s (the family pegs the date as no later than 1820) in North Carolina, the son of David and Charlotte (aka Charity) Bonham, who had arrived in North Carolina in approximately 1810, coming from Europe as a married couple. In addition to John, their children included Sam, Bill, and an unnamed daughter. David Bonham was lost in the Seminole Wars and his body was never recovered. Sam was similarly lost near the Great Salt Lake in another, later, encounter with hostile Indians near the end of the Civil War. Curiously, there is a reference in 1832 to a Charity Bonham in a Bastardy Bond registered in New Hanover County, North Carolina, indicating that she might have had a child with no confirmed paternity or family support. Was the child truly born out of wedlock, or did this stem from the loss of her husband, and therefore her means of support? Charity’s fellow bondsmen were Joseph Eakins and Williams Moore, neither of whom can be directly related to the Bonham family, and the record provides no other details.

John and Penelope Boone Bonham came to Texas at the end of the Civil War from Mena, Arkansas by way of the Military Road. They owned several slaves, but expected to be separated from them at the first military checkpoint, and so left them behind. They chose their Fannin County destination because a sister of John Bonham was already settled here, married to a Dr. Allen.

When asked the obvious question about our namesake Alamo hero, the family says no kinship to James Butler Bonham has ever been found, though John’s wife, Penelope, was a relative of Daniel Boone.

The family history is rich and detailed, but not without its contradictions. The tombstone of the Charity Bonham buried in the Bonham Family Cemetery states a birthdate of 1812. If correct, this Charity would have been much too young to be the mother of John Bonham. Some of the family records refer to a David Bonham dying in the Gun (Gum?) Springs area. If this is correct, then he is not the David Bonham who disappeared in the Seminole Wars, but perhaps the son of that David. And if the son, perhaps the Charity born in 1812 is his wife, and a sister-in-law to John and Penelope.

Then there is what we know from public records. John & Penelope married in Stewart County, Tennessee in 1847. Their first child, Mary, was born in Tennessee in 1849. By the time their third child, Nancy, was born in 1857, they were living in Arkansas. They are recorded in the 1860 Census living in Mountain Township, Polk County, Arkansas with four children ranging in age from 2 to 13 years. John’s age is stated as 37 (placing his birth year in 1822-1823) and Penelope is listed as 30 years old. There are two other family members in the household, Saletha Bonham, a female of 64, and Mack Bonham, a young man of 18. Saletha is of an age to be John’s mother, though if she is the mother of Mack, he was born when she was in her mid-forties - less probable, but not impossible.

In the 1870 census, the family is living in Fannin County, Texas. Josephine, age 8, is listed as having been born in Arkansas. Little Louisa is not represented as she was born and died in the interval between the census years. George is 3 years old and Hesakiah is an infant. George and Hesakiah are reported as having been born in Texas. Saletha and Mack are no longer members of the household. Neither the public records or the Bonham family have any additional information on either of them. The two are a mystery, as is the whereabouts of David and Charity Bonham in 1860, how Charity came to be in Texas in December of 1864 when she died, whether David had come to Texas with her, and what their relationship was to John & Penelope. That she shares a tombstone with their baby daughter who died one month later than she is certainly an indication of a close relationship, but we can’t say with certainty what that relationship was.

Perhaps Saletha was John’s mother. If we assume that she was the wife of the lost David Bonham rather than Charity, and we further assume that the David who was the husband of Charity was another son, then some of the pieces do fit together more cleanly. But this is a web of speculation with no supporting evidence.

Then there is the reference to the sister of John married to Dr. Allen - the reason for the family choosing Fannin County for their destination. Capt. Wilson Bruce Allen, founder of Allen’s Chapel, was married to Cassipha Bonham. It was a second marriage for both of them. Cassipha was the widow of C. D. Cosner. However, neither Mr. Allen nor Mr. Cosner were doctors, and the marriage to Mr. Allen did not take place until 1880. There are references to C. D. Cosner being a merchant in Honey Grove in 1865, so it is possible that Cassipha was the sister living in Fannin County and the details have become jumbled over time. There is also a record of Sarah Bonham and James A. Wilson being married on 7/10/1861 in Fannin County. James A. Wilson was a doctor, so perhaps Sarah is the sister who anchored the family here. The marriage record stands isolated as a single fact with no corroboration.

We may be forced to “let the mystery be”, but we will always be delighted to be a part of the journey with the Bonham family.

Photo courtesy of Janice Bonham West.

Story by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

Continuing the Search for Living Descendants

Shortly after meeting Beulah Hipp for the first time (see the Nov. 22 entry in this blog), I was doing geneaology research one afternoon when a name leaped out at me. Rebecca Wilks married Martin Putnam White on April 4, 1869 and I had begun tracing their descendants. The name of one of their grandsons seem very familiar. In fact, I was sure that the grandson was the patriarch of the While family I had known most of my life. A few text messages and a visit with my high school friends, Johnnie and Brenda White, served to confirm my hunch. A couple of days later Johnnie and Brenda came over to show me the White family history that Johnnie’s brother, Donald White, had compiled some years back. We spent a couple of delightful hours paging through the notebook and the treasures it contains, some of which are depicted below. Donald has since contributed priceless family photos and correspondence to this project.

Marriage License, Martin Putnam White & Rebecca Wilks, courtesy of great-grandson, Donald White.

Martin Putnam White & Rebecca Wilks, courtesy of great-grandson, Donald White.

Having discovered Beulah, and then so shortly after, the connections to the White family, I felt I was on a roll. As Ginger and I continued to flesh out our plans for this project and as I got deeper and deeper into the research, the Wilks, Cagle, and Bonham families of the mid-1800’s became more and more real to me. Connecting with Wilks grandchildren and great-grandchildren intensified that feeling and the goal of finding living descendants of each branch of each family took hold. I was naively enthusiastic about the prospect and that’s when I made the discovery that any more experienced genealogist might have warned me of. The records are spotty, they can be maddeningly silent, they can be tantalizing with possibilities and probabilities that you can’t prove. It would be months before I made another connection despite relentless searching.

In the meantime, Ginger and I had been putting this project web site together. We launched the site on Oct. 8, 2018. Shortly after, I was contacted by a friend who had learned of our project via the web site and our announcement of it in the Fannin County History facebook group. Nancy told me that she was a first cousin, through their mothers, to descendants of the Bonham family, and though none of them lived in the area, they were planning to gather in Bonham in November. Nancy agreed to give Ginger and I a tour of the Bonham family burials in the Willow Wild Cemetery and to try to arrange for us to meet the family while they were in town, plans that worked out beautifully as a future story will detail.

From that point, things began to happen quickly. In mid-October, I was contacted by Julia Cagle Ryder, who had seen one of our project posts and thought she might be related to Martin & Susan Cagle. She and I collaborated on the research that followed, working backwards from her line and searching for ties. The story of her family proved very interesting, and our search will also be the subject of a future post.

In late October, through facebook, I was able to contact Kimberly Wilks Haley, GGG granddaughter of Thomas and Margaret Wilks through their son, Newton Wilks. I was able to share with Kim the pictures and postcards I had received from Donald White, her distant cousin but someone she did not know.  The pictures of Thomas, Margaret, Milton, and his sisters are photographs she had never seen (see them here).  It was a very rewarding moment for me as these bits of the puzzle came together. Of the five Wilks children who came to Texas with Thomas and Margaret, we now had made contact with the descendants of three.

At about the same time that I made contact with Kimberly, I had reached out to another facebook user who I thought might be the Betty Vick I had heard mentioned as a Wilks family member. I got no response initially and assumed I had been wrong. Just recently, Betty got back to me. She is descended from Thomas & Margaret via their daughter, Julia Wilks Little, adding another branch of the family tree to our living history.

In future posts, I hope to give voice to the family lore of each of these descendants, all of whom have welcomed the work that Ginger and I are doing. A fact that we are eternally grateful for.

Story by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

Letters to the Departed - Bonham Family

This post continues the story of the decoration of the graves with the letters written to Charity & Louisa Bonham. (If you haven’t read the previous “Letters to the Departed” posts, Ginger and I conducted a ritual in early June of decorating each grave with a wildflower bouquet and a letter expressing what we might say to the recipient if we could.)

The Bonham graves date from Dec, 1865, some fours years and a few months after Susan Cagle was laid to rest. Since we do not know the dates of the deaths of several of the Cagle family members, we cannot say whether the two burial sites were active at the same time or what their relationship, if any, was to one another.

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Charity,

Your history is hard to piece together.  Your tombstone declares you to be the wife of David Bonham.  You lie next to the little daughter of John Bonham, the son of a David and Saletha Bonham.  I do not know when Saletha Bonham died, though I do see evidence of her being alive in 1860.  I take you to be David’s 2nd wife, much his junior, as your step-son appears to be only about 5 years younger than you.  I cannot tell how long you and David were married, I cannot find any record of David’s death, and I can find no evidence of children borne by you.  Your marriage might have been a short one, yet clearly at your death you were living with or nearby your step-son, his wife, and his children.  You were carried away just before Christmas in 1865.

How did you come to be buried so close to the Cagle family plot, already well established, and yet separate from it?  Perhaps at that time each family kept a burial plot on their land, rather than the community collectively setting aside a location for a shared cemetery.  Perhaps the Cagle plot was somewhat abandoned - both Martin and Susan Cagle had died, the boys perhaps lost, and Mary, nearing womanhood, might have been living elsewhere with Frances and her husband.  It seems unlikely that the Wilks had yet arrived in the area at the time of your death. 

How is it that, of all the Bonhams, only you and little Louisa lie here?  I will have to let the mystery be.  Rest well.

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Louisa,

It appears that your parents and older siblings migrated to Texas from Arkansas sometime after May of 1862.   I am basing that on the record of the birth of your sister, Charity, in Arkansas in 1862, and the record of your birth in Texas in 1864, though your brother John’s obituary states that he came to Texas with his parents in 1865.    If that is the more accurate date, then you made that trip from Arkansas with your family.

You were a bright toddler approaching your 2nd birthday when you left this earth on Jan. 4, 1866, and were laid to rest next to your grandmother, who had died only two weeks before you.  There could have been no joy for your family in this holiday season.   I have been told an old story of your family passing through and leaving the graves there in the woods in their wake as they moved on, but this seems unlikely.  I see much evidence of your parents and siblings in the annuals of Fannin County for years to come.  I have even found a photograph of your brother, John, as an old man.  However, you and Charity do lie here alone, so perhaps there is some kernel of truth in the old story - your family did not put down roots here, even if they did so elsewhere in the County.  

I am told that the two of you will be moved to a Bonham family plot in the Willow Wild Cemetery.  You will be in the bosom of family at last, though I might have wished that you were to be placed in Smyrna with your parents.  It is lovely there, and Willow Wild seems such a big and bustling place compared to your intimate place here among the trees.  May your dreams be sweet wherever you lie.

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Bonham Family Gravesite, photo by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

Lovely Basket Ginger Made to Honor Charity & Louisa, photo by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

Story by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

Letters to the Departed - Martin & Susan Cagle

There are cemetery traditions that have been followed for generations in both my family and Ginger’s.  In my family we visit the cemetery on the first Sunday in May, decorating the graves, visiting, reminiscing about loved ones that have passed, and sharing the family history and lore with the youngsters.  The day always ends in a big spread at my cousin’s house.  For my generation, it is a day not to be missed.  In early June of this year, Ginger and I decided to pay homage to our friends in the Bonham and Wilks Cemeteries by decorating their graves.  I wrote letters to each person, and Ginger made posies from wildflowers we gathered in the meadows surrounding the cemeteries.  In a series of posts, we want to share with you images of the decorated graves and our letters to the departed.  This initial post will focus on Martin and Susan Cagle.  

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Martin,

When you and Susan married, the independent nation of Texas was just a few weeks old.  As the old saying goes, you weren’t born in Texas, but you got here as soon as you could.  Your daughter Martha, your fifth child, was born here in 1845.  You were truly a pioneer.  I think about the life you lived, arriving in a sparsely populated Fannin County, finding the land you would settle, making a home.  Perhaps farming the rich Bois d’Arc Creek bottom lands.  I know life had to be hard, and yet, growing up on a farm myself, I imagine it was rewarding.  Certainly you knew Nature’s beauty and abundance in a way that few have an experience of today.  You owned land, you owned slaves.  You appear to have enjoyed some level of prosperity.  You died young, only 43.  You left behind a young wife and six children, the oldest 14 and the youngest less than 2.  I wonder how you died.  Did an accident befall you, did you waste away from a fever? I think of how grief-struck your family must have been.  How large the hole left in their lives, both practical and emotional.  I think of Susan and the older children struggling to go on without you.  

You were not the first burial in the cemetery.  There is the unknown grave that could have preceded you, and there is the grave that I believe must be that of your little daughter Martha who died in 1850.  But your tombstone holds the earliest recorded death date, 12/11/1852.  You have been resting in peace in this lovely spot for almost 166 years.  You were a slave owner, something that in life would have divided us, but today I wish you nothing but peace in the new home being prepared for you.  May you rest well.

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Susan,

Left, at the age of 38, a widow with six children, the oldest no more than 14 and the youngest a toddler, did you regret the move to Texas?  Did you pine for home and family?  Or did you pull your children around you and thrive?  I see you on the Fannin County Tax Rolls in 1858, and as a head of household in the 1860 census, so I know you stayed on the land and carried on.  You & Martin had buried little Martha back in 1850.  By 1860, your eldest daughter, Frances, had married, and you had buried another child, a son, Martin, who died as a teenager.  The other four children were still living with you - Robert, a young man of 23, Edward a lad of 19, Mary blossoming at 13, and John a youngster of 9.  Did any of you have an inkling then that time was running short for you?  Or that a brutal war that would change your family forever was about to break out? By August of 1861, the Civil War had already begun as the children laid you to rest.  You and Martin share a lovely tombstone -  tall, graceful, and richly decorated.  The other Cagle graves have only small slabs with carved initials - no embellishment, no details.  I imagine the children raising the monument to their lost parents, and I hope they were all together to dedicate it, before the eldest boys rode off to war.  Robert is known to have served in the Confederate Army.  Edward was of an age to serve.  Neither appear in the annals of Fannin County after the war, and the grave marked ESC is possibly Edward’s.  John is likely the JHC buried next to you, the date of his death lost to history.  Like Frances, we know that Mary grew up, married, and had children, though, sadly, I can find no living descendent of either of them in this area today.  I think of you as a strong woman in a line of strong pioneering women and I salute you.

Cagle Monument Decorated, photo by Ginger Sisco Cook.

Wanda Photographing the Decorated Graves, photo by Ginger Sisco Cook.

In our research, we have managed to connect with living descendants of both the Wilks and Bonham families.  We have not been able to identify any living descendants of the Cagle family.  In sharing the following family tree, I hope to add substance to the lives of Martin and Susan, but I also hope that a reader will recognize a name and come forward to help us flesh out their story - to help us make that living connection.

Story by Wanda Holmes Oliver.