Furnished for Burial Purposes

Receipt, dated March 18, 1893

"March 18, 1893

Received from Wm Sawyers Guardian

Lanie Sawyers 65/100 Dollars

in full for goods furnished for burial purposes

$0.65        Maloney Bros"

This receipt was one of many my great-grandfather Gee Sawyer kept tucked away in a trunk at his farmhouse in Warrensburg, TN. It answers a question I had for many years about one of his nieces, Delaney Sawyer. 

Delaney Sawyer was born about 1878 to Gee's brother Jake Sawyer and his wife, Sarah Elizabeth Fox. She appears with them on the 1880 census, living across the Nolichucky River in Cocke County with one younger sister. There are no further public records for her. She is not recorded in any local cemetery. No marriage records have been found. There were notes in Gee's chest indicating his older brother William had taken guardianship of Jake's children after Sarah died in 1884.

William, who never married, served as the head of the family once his father died. In 1880 his widowed and paralyzed mother was living with him, as was a widowed sister and her children, and Gee, his youngest brother. 

This receipt from Maloney Brothers (one of two stores in Warrensburg) confirms William's guardianship of Delaney and tells me she died in March, 1893. Her mother and Sawyer grandparents were buried at Josephs Chapel in Cocke County so she may have been buried there. With whatever was needed for burial purposes. 

Sources: 

Sawyer Family Papers.  Privately held by Susan Popp Clark . 2000.

 1880 U.S. census, Cocke, Tennessee, pop. sch., Chuckey Knobs, p. 360B, ED 61, dwelling 204, family 213, Delaney Sawyers; NARA film T9, roll 1248.

1880 U.S. census, Greene, Tennessee, pop. sch., District 4, p. 65C, ED 046, dwelling 162, family 162, William Sawyers: NARA film T9, roll 1258.

Uncle Herbert Bit the Bullet

Herbert Sawyer 
(1895-1923)

 The story of my great-uncle Herbert Sawyer's death was too gruesome not to share. And far too gruesome not to remember. He died young. Before my mother was born. Before his younger siblings were fully grown and came to know him as adults. Thus what we and our parents heard about Herbert growing up was little more than the tale of his death. And that his nephew Bob, Jr. resembled him. Which is an understatement. 

But what a tale. His youngest sister told me Herbert was a bit of a hypochondriac, implying he would have lived if he'd only skipped the dentist. I asked her what they did for toothaches and she answered. "Pliers." I don't doubt her, but I can't blame Herbert for seeking an alternative. 

The (Knoxville) Journal and Tribune
March 28, 1923
From Sawyer family photo album

 My mother suspected he was given too much ether and, in an effort to reassure me, said he received grossly inadequate care by modern standards. But this was 1923 in a small town in East Tennessee. Modern dental care was still to come. The newspaper speculated he died of strangulation. Which leads back to inadequate care. Because if you are performing dental surgery on someone you ought to at least notice them choking.

Whatever happened, his family mourned their son and brother. And eventually came to treat his death as a great, if tragic, story. Which they shared with relish. Until my mother realized I was going to need extensive dental work. Under anesthesia. And shut down all mention of Uncle Herbert in my presence. 

I hate going to the dentist. 

Aunt Emma Got Hold of the Camera

Sister by Emma Sawyer

 Two words I heard whenever I was with my great (very, truly great) aunt Mary Kathryn McKenzie (aka Sister) were frolics and fooling. She was my grandfather's youngest sister, the 9th of ten children. As such she spent many years both checking in on her older sisters and younger brother who lived on the family farm. She eventually moved back home to care for them. She and they laughed. All. The. Time. 

I am going through their photo albums now and laughing, as well. Aunt Emma Sawyer had a wicked tendency to shoot pictures of her sister regardless of what she was doing. And to keep them. All those "looks" she received from Sister were surely followed by laughter from both of them. 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Isabella Bryson McAdams Hale (1776-1855)

One of the first ancestors to capture my imagination was my 4th great-grandmother Isabella or Ibby Bryson. I first learned about her when I was 12 years old. According to information handed down in the family she was born 14 September 1776 to John Bryson and Margaret Carson. Her father died shortly after her birth in July 1778. Her poetic name, 1776 birth date and a father who died during, though not necessarily in the Revolutionary War sparked adolescent speculation about her life. When I grew up and began seriously researching my family she was one of my first projects.

I learned then, and continue to learn, that what I know is far surpassed by what I do not. What I know (or at least believe I can support) is that Ibby married Hugh McAdams in June of 1800 in Greene County, TN. The family record lists the date as 12 June 1800. A register of marriage licenses and bonds now available online gives a date of 9 June 1800. They had five children - Margaret (b. 1802), Mary (b. 1804), Thomas Cunnningham (b. 1806), Samuel Bryson (b. 1809) and Jane (b. 1811) - before Hugh's death on 13 December 1814 in Washington County, TN. Hugh's estate documents suggested he had been a cabinet maker. I have since learned that he may have been an influential cabinet maker. A PhD candidate at Middle Tennessee State University is examining his work for her thesis. I look forward to her analysis.

One year after Hugh's death Ibby married a widower, Joseph Hale. Their daughter Louisa was born about 1817. Learning of Louisa's birth was startling to me. She is not mentioned in the seemingly comprehensive family record passed on by her half-brother Thomas.

In 1816 Ibby's only known sibling, Samuel Bryson, died without having married. She was the executor for his estate. Ibby is mentioned in her husband Joseph Hale's will. According to the family record she died on 1 June 1855 and was buried in Fairview Cemetery with the children of her sons Thomas and Samuel. Standing at her grave was one of the most emotional moments of any of my research trips.

I do not know where she was born or when she came to Tennessee. Son Thomas stated she was born in Pennsylvania in the 1880 census. Son Samuel said Virginia. I do not know if Carson was her mother's maiden name. I suspect not since the only mention of her in the family record is of her death in a listing where the other women are listed by their married names. I have no information on her father beyond his presumed existence and death. I have never found any documentation that names a John Bryson or Margaret Carson that I could tie to Ibby's parents. I am not even certain of her date of death, for she is nowhere to be found in the 1850 census.

I cannot connect her with any of the established Bryson or Carson families found in the area. I have not made any DNA connections that point clearly to Ibby, though she is high on my most wanted list. I assume she was Scots-Irish, assume she was associated with the Presbyterian church, though her second marriage was performed by a Baptist minister. I hope to learn more about her parents, but their lives on the 18th c. frontier make that problematic.

Written for Amy Johnson Crow's blogger challenge 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.

Sources

• 1880 U.S. census, population schedule, Tennessee, Washington, District 16, enumeration district (ED) 035, p. 549A, dwelling 6, family 6, McAdams, Samuel; digital images, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 14 Feb 2014); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T9, roll 1284. 
• 1880 U.S. census, population schedule, Tennessee, Washington, District 17, enumeration district (ED) 035, p. 663B, dwelling 263, family 272, McAdams, Thomas C.; digital images, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 14 Feb 2014); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T9, roll 1284. 
• FamilySearch, "Tennessee Marriages, 1796-1950," database, FamilySearch (http://new.familysearch.org : accessed 14 Feb 2014), entry for Izabel Brisson. 
• FamilySearch, "Tennessee, Marriages, 1796-1950," index(www.familysearch.org : accessed 14 Feb 2014), Joseph Hale and Ibby Mc Adams. 
• Washington, Tennessee, Probate Court Books, 1795-1927 Vol. 00: 328, Hugh McAdams Estate, 6 Nov 1815; digital images, Family Search (www.familysearch.org : accessed 14 Feb 2014). 
• Washington, Tennessee, Probate Court Books, 1795-1927 Vol. 00: 342, Samuel Brisons Estate, 22 Oct 1816; digital images, Family Search (www.familysearch.org : accessed 14 Feb 2014). 
• Washington, Tennessee, Probate Court Books, 1795-1927 Inventories, 1844-1857, Vol. 02: 530, Joseph Hale Estate, 24 Jan 1856; digital images, Family Search (www.familysearch.org : accessed 29 Jan 2014).

A Snowy Day

We are having a true winter in St. Louis this year. Indeed, much of the United States and Canada is preparing for record cold temperatures over the next two days. Today's snow sent me back to my photo albums hunting for wintery days. I found a few, though none of my uncles or male cousins. Either they were behind the cameras or looking outside at their snow crazed sisters.

Chicago, near the stockyards, c. 1928. Anna, Mary, and Helen Hricak. 

Warrensburg, TN c. 1932. Mary Kathryn Sawyer. 

The Home Place Brought Home

Memories of my grandfather's Sawyer brothers and sisters are fixed in one spot - the farm house near the Nolichucky River their parents, Gee & Catherine Conway Sawyer built. As a girl I would sit on the floor or the porch steps as they rocked and laughed and told stories of long ago frolics. As I grew up we gathered there for weddings, birthdays, reunions and funerals. My children slept upstairs in the rooms the aunts and uncles had occupied 90 years earlier - probably in the same beds.

That house in Warrensburg is my home place - the spot were I feel most connected with my Tennessee family and history.

The family sold the house and farm after the last aunt died. Since then I've carried the home place with us as we've moved. Catherine's milk pitcher (filled with sea glass from Cape Cod) is in the living room. Gee's powder horn and shoe forms sit on the family room bookshelves. Quilts the aunts made are in the guest room.

But my favorite piece of my Sawyer home is the pie safe Catherine's father, Porter Conway, made for her when she was married in 1886. Aunt Mary Kathryn gave it to me a couple years before she died. Bless station wagons. I piled the luggage on the car seats with the children and put the safe in the back, wrapped in blankets. We drove home to Michigan where it sat in our family room filled with cookbooks and table linens. Today it's in our kitchen in Missouri. Someday it will be in my daughter's home.

It's a primitive oak cupboard and more than well used. No original patina here. It was painted, stained, stripped and repainted more times than I could ever count. The hinges were replaced when the doors fell off (ten children raiding a pie safe will do that) and fake wood knobs were added at some point. I hate them and keep meaning to replace them with something fun or funky. Odds are my daughter, like her great great-aunts Selma and Mary Kathryn, will paint it when it becomes hers. As she should. She remembers Mary Kathryn and while her memories and feelings about the home place are far different from mine, she still hears the Tennessee voices in her head.

Old and young, 1941 - Wordless Wednesday

My great-grandmother Catherine Conway Sawyer and her eldest great-grandchild, c. 1941 at home in Warrensburg, TN. 

Archie Sawyer & Sally Killion - What I was told

From Flickr by hubertk

Growing up I was told my great-great grandparents Archie & Sally Killion Sawyer had come over the mountains from the Carolinas to Cocke County after the Revolutionary War.  They had nine children - James, Linnie, Andrew, Barbary, William B, Elizabeth, Crawford, Jake and my great-grandfather, Jehu (or Gee). Most of the children remained in Cocke or Greene counties, but James settled in North Carolina, had twins and a son Leroy. Linnie moved away after the Civil War and contact was lost with her family. I was told that Archie died January 2, 1881 and was buried at Joseph's Chapel in Cocke County. We were kin to the Killions and Killians in the area and to the Sawyers over the mountains in Madison County, NC.

That was it. The sum total of our knowledge.

My aunt dug into census records in the 1970s and reported that Archie had been born in South Carolina around 1795 and that Sally was born around 1810 in North Carolina. Once I began researching in the 1980s the census records provoked as many questions as they answered.  The 1880 census enumerated Sally (listed as Sarah) living in Greene County with her son William. She and her daughter were both listed as widowed. Given that I believed Archie died in 1881 this was surprising.

1880 Greene County TN census listing for Sarah Sawyers

I wondered if he had left the family (giving him LOTS of credit for an 85 year old man) and searched the census records for Cocke, Greene, Jefferson, Sevier Counties in Tennessee and Madison and Buncombe Counties in North Carolina. He was not to be found.

On my next trip back to Tennessee I went to Joseph's Chapel to see Archie's grave. (Did I take a camera?  I was young. I had diaper bags, juice boxes, Cheerios, even toddlers. No camera.) Once I found the tombstone I was surprised to find it read Sarah Killion, wife of Archibald Sawyer with the dates 23 September 1812 - 2 January 1881. That's according to my notes. Will I swear to the spelling? Not a chance. I'm not even sure if it read Sarah or Sally - Archibald or Archie. (Remember, I was really, really young.) What I will swear to is that it was NOT Archie's grave, but his wife's. There was no marker for Archie. Given the 1880 census record I feel confident that Archie died sometime before the 1880 census and was probably buried at Joseph's Chapel. 

Guess what's on my agenda this summer?

UPDATE

I was wrong in stating I did not have a camera! Photograph of Sarah's gravestone is here.

1880 U.S. census, population schedule, Tennessee, Greene, District 4, enumeration district (ED) 46, p. 65C, dwelling 162, family 162; digital images, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T9, roll 1258.  

The rivers run ...

With a blog named for the Nolichucky River, this year’s Blog Action Day! theme of water is a natural. As are rivers. Rivers move. They rage, flood, flow, wash and meander. They define our migration, our settlements. They are our boundaries, our highways. We sing of them, write of them, dream of them.

And when I was young, we watched them burn.

Even 20 years after the 1972 Clean Water Act my children, growing up along the Grand River in Michigan, were forbidden to swim in the river and all but disinfected after swimming in Lake Michigan near its mouth. While I still worry about the long-term health effects, today’s Grand is renewed. 

My 'heritage' rivers - the Nolichucky in North Carolina and East Tennessee and the Rika in the Ukraine - are smaller mountain rivers draining into large watersheds. The waters of the Nolichucky flow out of the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina, feeding into the French Broad, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers. The Rika, rising in the Carpathian Mountains, flows south to the Tysa (Tysza) and eventually drains into the Danube north of Belgrade.  

Relatively remote and with limited human populations nearby, they have not been polluted to the extent the downstream rivers have been. Still, there are threats to each from runoff waters. 

Siltation, or the sediment from soil erosion, is the greatest threat. The resulting cloudiness in the water reduces the light available to the river ecosystem, damages water filtration systems used for power generation and drinking water, and can even inhibit recreational uses. Logging in the Smoky Mountains during 19th and early 20th centuries dramatically increased erosion and runoff. Commercial development is the largest contributing factor today to siltation in the Nolichucky. Logging and desperately needed development in the Carpathian Mountains compete with the environmental threats to the Rika, though the Ukraine and six other governments have signed an agreement to promote sustainable development in the mountains. 

Increased levels of E. coli and contaminants from fertilizers and pesticides also threaten the rivers. 

I was pleased when I investigated the current state of the Nolichucky River to find it being monitored and improving in quality. Farmers and developers are being encouraged to limit livestock access to the river and to install drainage systems to reduce stormwater runoff. These actions resulted in improved water quality in the three sections of the river being monitored for poor quality. One section was so improved it was removed from the list. 

I have not been able to investigate the water quality of the Rika. Instead, I have watched as red sludge from an industrial site oozes into the Danube and threatens more villages in Hungary. Depressing as that vision is, I hold onto the improvements made here following the Clean Water Act and hope that similar efforts in Central and Eastern Europe will lead to cleaner rivers there.

For further information on

• Efforts to monitor and protect the Nolichucky River see the Middle Nolichucky Watershed Alliance website.
• Logging in the Smoky Mountains see Part III of the outstanding film series Appalachia: A History of Mountains and People. Even better - watch the whole series. 
• Tennessee's Nolichucky watershed management plans see the 2008 report.
• The 2003 agreement to protect and develop the Carpathian Mountain region, see The Carpathian Convention.
• Logging in the Carpathians see "The Contribution of forestry to sustainable development in the Carpathian Mountains" by Anatoliy Deyneka. Presented at the 2009 World Forestry Congress.
• Maps of the Rika, the Tysza River Basin and information about the Danube Watershed see the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River website.

Photograph from the U.S. National Archives.

Not so Wordless Wednesday: Mystery Women of Greene County

Last month Elizabeth posted a fantastic photograph from her grandmother's album, Parasol Girls at Little Bytes of Life. I was smitten with it and have gone back to look at it several times. She mentioned that it might have been taken in Greene County, TN. I have my own stash of mystery women from my aunt Selma's photo albums - taken in and around Greene County at the same time she thought her photo might have been taken.

I am not saying any of these women were Elizabeth's Parasol Girls, but I do see a resemblance. Their summer frocks were prettier than these (especially that striped jacket!), and the parasol far more evocative than the wall, but that's not the point. Actually, there is no point. Not having enough mysteries in my research I'm manufacturing more...

Still, take a look at this woman. Picture her with glasses, leaning against a ladder, under a parasol. Then give me virtual slap upside the head and tell me to get back to work. (But you see it, don't you?)

Photographs:  Unknown. Digital Images. From photo albums of Selma Sawyer, Greene County, TN. Privately held by Nolichucky Roots [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE], 1997.

Wordless Wednesday: First Wheels, Greene County, Tennessee

Girl in Buggy, Greene County, Tennessee

This photo is from a photo album belonging to Selma Sawyer that was stored in a chest in her home near Warrensburg, TN until 1997.  Most of the photos in the album seem to date from the same time frame.  Some have been dated c. 1918.

Girl in Buggy, Photograph, date unknown. Digital Image.  Privately held by Nolichucky Roots [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE], 1997.

Summer Frolics

One of my great-aunt's favorite words was frolic. I would ask her what they did before summer camp and movies and Girl Scouts and she would laughingly say, "Why we would frolic!" The word would roll off her tongue and dance about my head as she told stories of picnics and parties and car rides through the Tennessee countryside. She was the youngest of ten high-spirited children who grew into high-spirited adults.

I remember her voice as I look through the photo albums she and her sisters kept. They certainly did frolic during those long ago summers.  She remained ready for frolics and adventure well into her eighties, though the photographic evidence of those later frolics seems to have vanished. 

Frolic in the creek c. 1918.  Note the stylish newspaper hats.

Frolic with Ice Cream Cones, c. 1918

Baseball Frolic Gone Bad, c. 1925

Motor Frolic, c. 1930

Beach Frolic after WWII.

The next generation frolics at Myrtle Beach about 1948.

Treasure Chest Thursday: Books, books and more books

I know it's not really mine, or even my family's, but my favorite treasure right now is an amazing library on the other side of my keyboard.   I love, love, love Google Books.  It's such a gold mine for genealogy.  Knowing that they are constantly adding new material, I try to search 3 or 4 times a year for information on my toughest projects.  This time I found gold.  


I have been researching the family of Edward Turner (d. 1805, Fauquier County, Virginia) for more than 20 years.  His daughter Sarah married Joseph Conway in 1788 shortly before they moved to Tennessee.   I've learned a lot about Edward, but I still don't know who his parents were or where he was born.  Virginia and Maryland are littered with Turners and at least three Edwards were in Fauquier at the same time.  I believe he is linked to a Northumberland County Turner family but haven't found absolute proof.  Ironically, I knew more about his daughters because they had the good sense to marry men with somewhat unique names before he died and his estate settlement papers referred to both their husbands and the locations where they were living.


Dreams of DNA testing filled my head but I couldn't tell if any of the Turner men already tested were descended from my Edward.  I needed to learn more about the sons.  They've proven elusive.  Estate records name John, William, James, Edward, Lewis, Sarah, Mary and Ann.  A possible fourth daughter, Elizabeth, died in Kentucky about the same time as Edward.  The records showed that William was in the Natchez Territory, Sarah in Tennessee and Mary in Kentucky.  The inference was the others were in Virginia, but there was very little trace of them there.  Hints of other family migration to Kentucky, Alabama and Mississippi have proven impossible to confirm.


Until I headed to Google books and searched for "edward turner fauquier".   There, in Alexander K. Marshall's Decisions of the Court of Appeals of Kentucky (Cincinnati: Henry W. Derby, 1848) was a case, John Turner et al., Executors, v John Debell, Executor, that proved that Edward's son James and an unnamed brother/executor had moved to Fleming County, KY where James had died.  The other brother had remained in Virginia.   John & Lewis were named executors in the law suit so one of them ended up in Kentucky and the other in Virginia.   Even better is the fact that a known descendant of James Turner has been tested and his DNA matches the Northumberland County Turners.   My own legal thriller - complete with forensics!  The book, by the way, was digitized this past January.  


I kept looking and found a nugget on son Edward in a biography of his previously unknown (to me) son W.H. Turner of Campbell County, KY in a late 19th c. book, Kentucky: a history of the State.... by William Henry Perrin (F.A. Battey, 1887).    He, too, had left Virginia for Fleming County before moving to Campbell County late in his life.    


So now I know where four of Edward's sons went from Fauquier County.  James and Edward went to Kentucky along with their sister Mary.   Lewis appears in the 1820 Fleming County Census so he's presumably the one named in the appeal living in Kentucky.  John stayed in Virginia (though I still find little evidence of him).   Only William, who headed south along the Natchez Trace remains unaccounted for.   Not the mother lode, but enough to keep me digging.