Shakin' the Family Tree

Was researching some of my Williams family descendants this morning, and ran into a puzzle.

Not that puzzles in my family are out of the ordinary or anything...

But now I'm really curious.

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Homer Franklin Wells is my first cousin, twice removed.

He was the son of James Webster Wells and my great grand aunt, Margaret Letcher Williams.

He married Ruth Haseltine Hester, daughter of Charles E Hester and America Gooch, date unknown. He and Ruth had two children, Margaret Hester Wells Roper and Calvin Ratcliff Wells.

The Hester family hailed from Virginia. Historic documents indicate their roots were deep in Virginia soil. Ruth was born in Virginia.

In 1930, Homer and Ruth were living in Richmond, VA - a long way from Arkansas where Homer was born. Homer was a foreman for a foil manufacturing company.

In 1940, they were still married, but living about a mile and a half apart in Washington DC. Homer lived in a boardinghouse run by a man named William Miner, who was a marble cutter. Homer was a gardener for the War Department. The address of the boardinghouse was 1113 Massachusetts Avenue NW. Along with several other men, there were two men who worked for the FBI living there. Not all the men had government jobs.

Ruth was living with the kids at 2000 16th Street NW. Her occupation was saleslady.

That seemed curious to me. Why were they living apart in 1940?

It got even more curious.

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Ruth died in 1943. She was buried in Hillcrest Cemetery, Louisa, Louisa Co., VA, the town where she was raised, and in the same cemetery as her parents.

In 1951, Homer was living in Manhattan, KS. It was there that he applied for a membership in the Arkansas Chapter of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, based on the Revolutionary War service of our many greats grandfather, Jesse Williams, who served in Ens Union's Company, Lux Regiment in the Maryland Infantry.

When Homer died in 1953, he was buried in Ft Leavenworth National Cemetery, Ft Leavenworth, KS - not with his wife. His burial was arranged and marker ordered by his daughter.

And I cannot find any trace on the internet of anyone looking for Ruth's family, or anyone besides me looking for information on Homer Franklin Wells as an adult.

ETA: Thanks to Rainbow, I know now that America Gooch was America Gooch Tisdale.

I took photos of 55 Confederate soldiers' gravestones while I was at the cemetery.

That is just a fraction of the more than 1,300 Confederate soldiers and veterans buried in the cemetery, with over 1,000 of those graves in the Fowler section of the cemetery known as Confederate Soldiers Rest.

Many of those graves remain without a military marker, but 945 do have a numbered concrete markers placed there by the Confederate Historical Association in 1886.

Included in this entry are the 55 photos I took, along with a brief transcription of the information on the stone, so that people searching for any of these soldiers might be able to find them when using Google or other search engines.

If your relative is among these 55 men, and you want the photo of the gravestone for your own personal genealogy or family records, I am expressly waiving copyright on the photos used for that purpose. Just right click and save the photo to your computer. I retain copyright for any photos that someone might want to use for a commercial purpose.

In other words, if you want to make money off the deal, we will have to get all formal with a written agreement about that.

While I was at Elmwood, I purchased a copy of John W Cothern's book, Confederates of Elmwood, which was carefully researched over a number of years. It has additional information about each of the soldiers, and I can do look-ups for anyone who thinks his or her Confederate soldier relative may be buried at Elmwood. Leave a comment with your request and I will reply to your comment here.

( Click here for photos... )