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.

The Disinterment of the Graves, Part III

On March 6, 2019, we return again to the Cemeteries. The work is complete at the Wilks site and the Bonham site is now yielding up its own set of surprises. The Bonham site holds not two graves, but twenty-three graves. Charity and Louisa Bonham have not been alone after all. We arrive in the early morning to an enormous work area from which twenty-one burials have been recovered. A recovery is underway under a pavilion, and one last burial shaft remains to be addressed.

Bonham site in early light, photo by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

The remains at the Bonham site are not as well preserved as the remains at the Wilks site, tending to be bone fragments rather than whole skeletons. The soil at the Wilks site is better drained and less acidic, and there was less damage there from the overgrowth of forest. As at the Wilks site, many of the burials are of infants and children. The graves, generally, are more shallow, and in one case an adult and two children were found in the same grave shaft. It is easy to read these as hasty burials and to speculate that perhaps they are the result of an overwhelming epidemic of some sort. The DNA work on these remains will be more difficult due to the deteriorated condition of the bodies, and we must hope that sufficient information can be retrieved to shed some light on these families. Some grave artifacts have been found, including ruby red beads, some buttons, and some pins. In one of the better preserved cases, the individual found is estimated to have been about 6’ 3” tall, unusually tall for the era.

The graves at the Bonham site are more randomly placed, but there is some organization along 6 irregular rows. Charity and Louisa are the westernmost burials. Then in a staggered row to the east of them are 4 graves, one to the north and three to the south. Continuing to move to the east, the next row has 4 graves - 2 at the northern end of the perimeter and 2 to the south beyond a sizable gap. The next row is the most regular with 8 burials in a line. The next row has 3 widely spaced graves, and the final row has one grave. The following schematic is illustrative, but not to scale.

For illustrative purposes only.

In the final count, 34 graves were recovered from the Wilks Cemetery, 23 from the Bonham Cemetery. Of 57 graves, 34 were unmarked. The 23 burials at the Bonham site included 8 adults, 3 juveniles/adults (could be teenagers or small adults), and 12 infants.  At the Wilks site there were 13 adults, 9 juveniles, and 12 infants/toddlers.  (These numbers are courtesy of AR Consultants and are based on what they observed in the field. They may change after they conduct their complete analysis.) Perhaps the biggest job is only just now beginning with the effort of trying to identify as many of the unknown remains as possible.

Emptied grave, Bonham Site, photo by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

Ginger documenting the Bonham Site, photo by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

Bonham Site, photo by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

After visiting the Bonham site, we walk down to the Wilks site. In the relentless march of time, it is no more. The Texas Historical Commission has been asked to release the site, and once this release is given, the clay soil found there will be harvested for use in building the dam.

Final view of the Wilks Cemetery, photo by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

Walking from the Wilks Site out towards what will be the basin of the lake, photo by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

Looking to the future, photo by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

The re-interment of the recovered remains will not begin for some months - not until the scientific work back in the lab is complete. So we leave our friends in Dr. Whitley’s capable hands with a whispered blessing. We will remember.

Wilks Cemetery as we knew it, photo by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

Bonham Family Cemetery, photo by Wanda Holmes Oliver.

Story by Wanda Holmes Oliver.