Shakin' the Family Tree

When I went to Pope County to see my folks this past weekend, they loaned me a couple of local history books.

One was History of Pope County, Arkansas. (Pope County Historical Association of Arkansas and Hunter Publishing, 1979.)

I found several entries of interest in the section of family biographies for people in our family tree.

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An entry about Joshua Alfred Ashmore at page 136:

Joshua married Sept. 1, 1853 in Gum Log, Nancy Melinda Guest, who had recently come on a wagon train with her parents, Moses Holland Guest...and Sarah Minerva Turner from Milledgeville, Georgia. In spite of his southern wife, Joshua was a northern sympathizer when the Civil War broke out. A target of the "night riders," he hid out in swampy places until he got to the Union Army where he enlisted. He became sick with malaria, and Nancy went to his camp to nurse him, leaving their children, William Anderson (b 1854), Samuel Henry (b 1857), Sarah Elizabeth (b 1860), Nancy Ann (Nannie) (b 1862), and infant Eliza Adelaide (b Jan 1865) at home. She got pregnant while at camp and Mary Jane was born 11 months after Eliza in 1865. Robert Holland was born in 1870.

Joshua died May 11, 1871, never fully recovering from the exposure he endured during the Civil War.... Originally written by Helen Peters Mauk.

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More information on page 16 about little Grace Electra Shinn, daughter of Josiah Hazen Shinn and Mildred Carleton Williams:

...About where the pool hall is on Main Street, the Judds lived in a two story frame house. They may have kept boarders, but at least Mrs. Judd fed folks. Every day at noon she would come out of her front door and ring an old fashioned dinner bell, loud and long.

It was at Mrs. Judd's house where I first came in contact with death. Professor Josiah H Shinn, who later wrote a history of Arkansas, was superintendent of our public schools, and his family lived at the Judd home. His daughter, Gracie, was a classmate of mine, and she died at Mrs. Judd's house. Her classmates marched from there to the cemetery, the girls dressed in white, and all of us with a black band on our arm. Originally written by Miss May Russell.

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I learned on page 27 that Mary Ann Shinn was a heckuva housekeeper, but often late with supper.

Mary Ann Shinn Booher kept a neat house. Her table was always set at all times with the plates turned down and the whole table covered with a misquito (sic) net. Her dining room floors, as were all the floors in her house, was scrubbed with a shuck mop end (sic) lye soap as thick as molasses, then rinsed and dried. She had mirrows (sic) hanging on all walls above the washstands. As she passed through a room, she would glance into the mirrow and smooth her hair or dust the puff cotton across her nose that took the shine off. Her one failing was her slowness to get things done. Many times she would be 9:00 o'clock at night getting the supper on the table. Originally written by Geneva Taylor Booher.

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And was surprised to read on page 35 of the decidedly unpastoral conduct of the Rev. Warren Washington Strickland when provoked to righteous anger...

It is said the Rev. W. W. Strickland, first moderator of the Sulpher Springs [Cumberland Presbyterian] Church, believed in strict order while he was preaching. During those days there were a lot of ruffians and it was nothing unusual for Rev. Strickland to ask the boys to behave and if they didn't, he would walk back and slap or hit them with his fist and keep on preaching. Originally written by J. B. Lemley.

Last spring, a little over a year to this day, my dad and I went to take photos of the McCarley family cemetery, long abandoned and quite neglected.

As we emerged four-wheel drive hell, we came across an old abandoned homeplace on our cousin-in-law's land. We didn't stop then, but I have been dying to get photos of it ever since.

My plat book says that William Alfred Freeman got a land patent on that parcel in 1845. The home, which shows signs of two additions, probably will not be standing much longer. If any of the Freeman descendants are interested, below are photos of how it looks now, as well as the little bit of Freeman family history I've been able to piece together.

Because as can be expected, one of the Freemans married into the Burris clan...

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Dad and I saw the house from the side on that first trip, and discussed whether it was really a house or an old barn.

You get the front view first.



It's a shotgun house, as was common in the South (best seen from the rear).



However, as Dad pointed out to me, it didn't start that way.

The house had two additions to it over the years, as you can see in the side view here, with different styles of siding on each addition and the original.



As I looked at how small that first section was, I wondered how many people the home had sheltered before they decided to add on.

William Alfred Freeman probably did not live there very long. He got the land patent in 1845, but died by 1847. His widow, Mary Elizabeth Ward lived until 1873.

I found three of their sons in the 1850 census in Conway County (this land was at that time in Griffin Township, Conway County, and did not become Pope County until later).

Those sons were Alfred (born in 1822), Thomas (born in 1825) and Jesse (born in 1831). Alfred was married by the 1850 census, and he and his wife, Kezziah Mariah Bass, had two sons, Richard and James.

Thomas was a newlywed at the 1850 census, having married Lucinda Angeline Burris, daughter of John Burris and Cynthia Ann Ashmore. Jesse was still single.

So it's possible that in 1850, the first section of that house provided a home for as many as eight people. (Side view with sections marked in red below.)

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The house stood on rock pilings.

Dad noticed that several of the rocks had been chiseled to make them fit snugly together.



Because of the shape of this one, we wondered if it had been flipped over at the entrance to make a step more stable.



Even if they hauled the rocks from the creekbed nearby, it's still about a quarter of a mile away.

And then, they chiseled them by hand.

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I don't know who lived in the house when the Freemans left it, or if anyone did.

But it's a little bit of history in the woods of Pope County, and I wanted to be able to remember it, even after it is gone.

He was my great grandfather, the son of James Littleton Burris and Elizabeth Adeline Ashmore. In the line-up, he was their sixth child, and fourth son.



I got a scan of the photo above - a much earlier one than I had ever seen before - when I was allowed to go through family papers and photos at the home of one of my aunts.

Below is the photo that I was used to seeing.



The obvious age difference aside, he doesn't look as serious in the first one as he does in the second.

I've been pondering that.

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George married Mary Mathilda Wharton on 7 Oct 1877 in Pope County, Arkansas.

They had their first child, Richard Benjamin Burris, on 3 Oct 1878, just about about nine months before George's father had his fourth child with his girlfriend down the road.

Since they all lived so close together, that had to be at least a little awkward.

A few months after George and Mary had their third child, Walter Monroe, George's final half-sibling was born. (I say that assuming that I have identified all the children Martha Vick had with James Littleton Burris, and also assuming he had no other girlfriends.)

Right about the time George and Mary's eighth child, Ottis Gileston, was born, Martha Vick died. James Littleton Burris obtained guardianship of his two minor sons, Richard and Charley Hill, on 1 May 1893.

When James L Burris died two years later, Richard and Charley will still minors. Someone had to step up to the plate.

Care and control of his minor half-brothers fell to George. He was granted guardianship of both boys two months after the death of their father.

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Naturally, I have all these unanswered questions.

First of all, why George?

He had three older brothers. And he certainly had enough on his plate. By 26 October 1895, George and Mary had seven living children of their own, and had just buried their infant son, James Thomas Burris, four days before George's father died in August.

I looked to the other brothers.

George's oldest brother was John Thomas Burris. He served as a federal marshall for 14 years, so it could have been that he wasn't around much to be able to rear a teenaged boy and his pre-teen brother. John and his wife buried their young daughter, Roxy, on 5 Oct 1895. Maybe their grief was just too fresh.

James Franklin Burris (next in line), lost his wife in 1894, and probably needed some help himself raising their three young children. (He would remarry in 1897.)

I know the next brother, William Andrew Burris, and his wife Maria Isabella Wharton, had already moved to the Chickasaw Nation in Indian Territory (later Oklahoma), because that's where their seventh child, Ira Herbert Burris, was born in 1891. So Bill wasn't around to help out.

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George carried quite a weight on his shoulders. Until 1901, he was guardian of two of his half brothers. The court discharged him and dissolved the guardianship in the April session.

Shortly after the 1920 census, there was not a single child of James L Burris and Martha J (Vick) Hill left in the hills of Pope County, save daughter Hetty, who died between 1896 and 1897, and is most likely buried in an unmarked grave not far from the Burris homestead.

I have to wonder if that has anything to do with the serious look on his face.

I'll probably never know.

Ada Lenora, wife of W A Strickland. June 12, 1870 - April 10, 1928. God gave, He took.
He will restore. He doeth all things well.

She was the daughter of Cicero Tiner and Phebe Emmaline Boyd. She married William Alexander Strickland on 1 Apr 1891 in Pope Co., AR, and is buried in Oakland Cemetery at Atkins.

Thanksgiving, 1899...