Shakin' the Family Tree

Family History Through the Alphabet: A is for Ashmore

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 23:33:42 GMT

In my line of direct ancestors is Andrew Sawyer Ashmore. He was my 3rd great grandfather.

I don't know where the middle name came from, although some records and other family trees indicate he favored the name enough that he called himself Sawyer. Sawyer Ashmore's mother was Mary Henderson, so it wasn't a case of carrying on the maternal surname.

Here's what I do know about Sawyer Ashmore.

He was born in 1798 (probably in Lawrence Co., TN) to Joshua Ashmore and Mary Henderson.

About 1815, he married Elizabeth McCarley (whose parents are unknown to me) in Lawrence County.

He and his father were listed on the Lawrence County tax list in 1826.

Apparently, he was not old enough to vote in 1818, because only his father was listed in the Lawrence County list of registered voters that year.

In 1838, Sawyer and Elizabeth, along with his younger brother, Robert, and two younger sisters - Cynthia Ann (Burris), and Lucinda (Carrell), moved to Pope County, AR. Members of Elizabeth McCarley's family also made the same trip, as did Sawyer's 78 year old father, Joshua. I have a visual image of the elder Ashmore being helped up into an ox drawn wagon.

Sawyer and Elizabeth Ashmore had four, and possibly five, children, one of whom was my great great grandmother, Elizabeth Adeline Ashmore.

He farmed 170 acres of land in what was Conway County, AR (but is now Pope County) for 15 years prior to his death on 9 Oct 1853.

He was buried in the McCarley Family Cemetery, not far from where my dad lives now.

This is not the original gravestone, and Elizabeth's date of death -
3 Nov 1875, must not have been known by the descendants who placed it.

I am taking the Family History Through the Alphabet challenge, albeit starting a few months late.

comments

An Ashmore cousin came to call...

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 13:24:44 GMT

He found me through my Find a Grave entries.

We've been corresponding for the past few days, and made an interesting discovery.

One of my Burris cousins was his first grade teacher in a little one room schoolhouse at Gumlog in Pope Co., AR.

I love it when this happens.

comments

Just neater than snuff...

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 21:11:40 GMT

Amazing how easily thinking about one thing can immediately cause me to think about my family history.

Like, I killed my subscription last month to our only daily, statewide newspaper. (If you are curious, here's the link to my open letter to the paper in my "everything else" blog.)

Until 1991, it had competition by the newspaper I read, the Arkansas Gazette.

Which led me to looking up the history of my paper.

Which led me to the name of the editor of the Gazette during the 1957 desegregation crisis in Little Rock.

Harry Scott Ashmore.

Who, as it turns out, is my 4th cousin, twice removed.

I didn't know him personally.

But still.

That's neat.

comments

Taking care of business...

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 17:19:51 GMT

I am documenting my family history, not just my pedigree.

So my collateral relatives are documented as well.

Some of those families have what appear to be very tragic stories.

One example is the family of James Joshua Ashmore (my second great granduncle), and his wife, Ardena Mahala (Matthews) Ashmore Stewart.

James Joshua Ashmore was the son of Andrew Sawyer Ashmore and Elizabeth McCarley, born in Lawrence Co., TN on 16 May 1821.

He was 17 when his family made the ambitious move from Lawrence County to Pope County, AR.

Ardena's parents were Steven John Matthews (born in Lawrence County) and Sarah Perkins. If the Matthews family was not part of what I have now come to understand was a sizeable migration to Pope County, then they came shortly afterward, because James and Ardena were married in Pope County on 7 Jan 1842, when Ardena was 18.

Working their land, they began having stair-step children - eight in all, over the next 11 years.

Stephen Robert Ashmore was born in 1842;
William James Ashmore was born on 22 Nov 1843;
Sarah Elizabeth Ashmore was born on 14 May 1845;
Mary Louisa A Ashmore was born on 7 Sep 1847;
Martha Jane Ashmore was born on 12 May 1848;
Joanna M Ashmore was born in Dec 1850;
Georgia Ann Ashmore was born on 21 May 1852; and
Margaret Alice Ashmore was born on 21 Jan 1853.

And then, James Joshua Ashmore died, on 18 Mar 1856. He was buried in the McCarley family cemetery, on his parents' homeplace, where his father had been laid to rest a couple of years earlier, and where his mother would be buried in 1875.

Ardena's youngest child was 3 years old, and her oldest - son Robert - was just 14.

She had a farm to work and children to raise. She needed some help.

On 25 Nov 1856, Ardena married Robert H Stewart. Two years later, Ardena died.

What would happen to the children, the oldest of whom was only 16?

The extended Matthews family - and some of their in-laws - stepped up to the plate.

In the 1860 census, four of the Ashmore children were living with their maternal grandparents. Robert, Martha, Georgia Ann and Margaret had a home with Steven and Sarah Matthews in Gum Log, not far from their family farm.

Sarah Ashmore had married (at the age of 14), on 14 Aug 1859, to William H Hall. She was not found in the 1860 census living with him. She and her brother, William and sister, Joanna were living in the home of William and Lucinda Gideon.

Lucinda (Matthews) Gideon was their great grand aunt. It is possible that Sarah was either widowed and pregnant (she would have a son, James H Hall in 1861), or William Hall was away fighting in the Civil War and was not present for this census. Joanna Ashmore later married George Henry Gideon, one of the sons of William and Lucinda Gideon.

Mary Louisa was living with Claiborne Harrelson in 1860. Leroy Matthews, her maternal uncle, had married Claiborne's daughter, Lavena, in 1854, and the couple made their home with Lavena's father.

Three families re-arranged their households and took in the Ashmore kids.

Because that's what families did.

All eight of the children of James Joshua Ashmore and Ardena Mahala Matthews lived to adulthood, and raised large families of their own.

Two of the sisters - Mary Louisa and Margaret - married Bowden brothers, James and Charles.

All of the Ashmore children lived in or around Pope County their entire lives, close to the place familiar to their parents - the place two families in a wagon train chose in 1838 to make a new home.

And tragedy turned into triumph.

comments

Connecting more dots...

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 15:23:46 GMT

I met my second cousin yesterday.

He and his wife traveled from Texas for a reunion of his leg of the Burris family that will be held in Fort Smith this weekend.

He wanted to see St. Joe Cemetery, where his grandfather, Walter Monroe Burris, is buried with a whole bunch of our Burris clan. He also wanted to see the old homeplace where our ancestor, James Littleton Burris, built the cabin that housed so many Burris descendants.

We decided to rendezvous at a gas station at the Atkins exit off Interstate 40.

I called Dad as we left the gas station so he could meet us at the cemetery.

I had to call when we left, because within 10 minutes, we all lost all cell phone signals as we headed up into the modest mountains of rural Pope County.

As we gathered outside the cemetery gates, we had a discussion about how we were related.

My second cousin (sorry, guys but the family tree software says Carl is my second cousin, and Dad's first cousin, once removed) descends from James Littleton Burris and Elizabeth Adeline Ashmore like this:

James and Adeline Burris
George Washington (Sr) and Mary M (Wharton) Burris
Walter Monroe and Grace (Bowden) Burris
Cecil Blain and Arlie Ann (Fridell) Burris
Carl

For my dad, it goes like this:
James and Adeline Burris
George Washington (Sr) and Mary M (Wharton) Burris
George Washington (Jr) and Addie Louise (Herrington) Burris
Dad

G W (Jr) and Walter were brothers.

The old cabin that was the original homeplace was demolished in the mid 1960s and there is not even a footprint left. The old well, dug by hand, is still there, but covered.

We went on to Dad's house - just across the road - and this time, I was all ears as Dad and Carl started swapping the details of the stories they heard.

We used to grow our own wheat. Dad's dad told him about how they used to get the wheat ready to take into Atkins to the mill, and would load the wagon the night before and put it in the barn. Then, they'd get up before sunup the next morning and make the trip into Atkins to the mill. They got back home after dark.

Apparently, that trip got *really* old and my ancestors decided to have their own mill - in the barn. Carl's dad told him about how that mill was built - with leather bearings, no less (James Burris was a tanner) - and used a mule or a horse to go round and round to grind the wheat.

And wouldn't I love to have a photo or a piece of a millstone?

Carl hadn't realized that after the 1838 migration of our Burris and Ashmore ancestors from Lawrence Co., TN, where young James Burris and Adeline Ashmore walked most of the trip and fell in love, they had not immediately married.

They were married on 12 Nov 1840. I always figured it was because Adeline was only 15 during the trip, but something Carl told us made me wonder if it wasn't for a more practical consideration.

Carl said not long after the large ox-drawn wagon party - of not only our Burrises and Ashmores, but a whole bunch of their neighbors - got to Center Valley, 20 year old James Burris took off with a gun and an ax, to go find him some land and build a home.

By the time he had been gone for about three months with no word to the folks back in Center Valley, they began to fear he was dead.

Then, the sigh of relief - James came back. And the homeplace was built, and another move undertaken, this time to the fertile land next to Isabell Creek, where most of James and Adeline's 10 children were born. (The first died - most likely stillborn - and was buried in the first grave in Old Baptist Cemetery in Center Valley.)

We swapped photos during our visit, and Carl had a real gem.

Walter Monroe Burris and first wife, Grace Bowden, undated family photo

We have scant few photos of Walter, and none as a young man. To see Grace's image was very precious.

This journey through my family's history is a real delight.

To meet a cousin who shares much of my history - he at age 82, my dad at 75, and me at age 53...

Well, that's just beyond words.

comments