A Very Special Day: 52 Ancestors 2026 Prompt “A Day in the Life”

 

Thomas Shields and Hilda Finch Paine’s Elaborate Wedding: August 28, 1897

Thomas Shields: 1867-1936 (Paternal Great Granduncle)
Hilda Finch Paine: 1870-1962 (Paternal Great Granduncle’s Wife)

 

August 28, 1897 was a very special day in the life of Great-Granduncle Thomas Shields: it was the day he married Hilda Finch Leeds Paine in a posh ceremony in Englefield Green, Surrey. The local newspaper devoted a huge number of column inches to a glowing write-up of the festivities under the headline “Interesting Marriage in Englefield Green.” The amazing details and locations were interesting indeed.

Thomas Shields was the third of Thomas Shields and Margaret Sutherland Shield’ four sons. He was born June 28, 1867, and trained as an engineer. He took a position as an instructor at the Royal Indian Engineering College at Cooper’s Hill in the Englefield Green area of Surrey. His future wife, Hilda, was born in 1870 to Leeds Paine and his wife Ellen Barbara Finch, who lived in a large country house called Heath Lodge, not far from Cooper’s Hill. The couple met and became engaged. Hilda was twenty-seven on her wedding day. Thomas was thirty.

Leeds Paine, Hilda’s father, was a man of wealth and influence in the area, so the wedding was large and apparently lavish. The article noted that “over one hundred invitations were issued” and included a list of eighteen socially significant guest families including an Archdeacon and a Colonel. The article also stated that, “A large number of spectators assembled and were highly interested in the proceedings.” It makes me think of wedding scenes from Downton Abbey or Pride and Prejudice where the townspeople gathered outside the church to see the fashions and finery of the characters’ weddings.

St. Jude's at Englefield Green, Surrey

The church, St. Jude’s at Englefield Green, is a beautiful old building, and was a stunning setting for the wedding.

The article included wonderful details about the bridal party and their attire.

“The bride…was attired in a white sild bengaline, trimmed with pearls and chiffon, an early Victorian bonnet trimmed with ostrich feathers and orange blossom, and she carried a beautiful shower bouquet, the gift of the bridegroom. Her four bridesmaids, who were all children, wore pale green surah silk frocks with white satin ribbons and early Victorian bonnets with ostrich feathers and pink roses. They carried baskets of pink roses and maiden hair fern…the page, who was dressed in green velvet…wore a gold pin…and the smallest bridesmaid a gold heart locket and the three others gold brooches with chrysoprase hearts…”

A 1900 Chrysoprase heart brooch--possibly similar to the ones presented to the bridesmaids. The green color carried out the green theme in the dresses and pageboy outfit.

I have included photos of weddings from the same time period to give an idea of what Hilda and her wedding party might have looked like.

English weddings from around 1897, showing the hats, bridesmaids dresses, and the gentlemen's attire. Probably similar to the garments worn at Thomas and Hilda's wedding.

The ceremony was conducted jointly by Archdeacon Baly, who was the chaplain of the Royal Chapel at Windsor Park (a connection to the Royal Family) and Rev. J.F. Hobson, former chaplain of the Royal Indian Engineering College. An organist and choir performed the hymns “The voice that breathed o’er Eden” and “Thine, forever, God of Love”.

The newspaper noted that, “After the ceremony a reception was held at Heath Lodge where the band of the 1^st Berkshire Volunteers was in attendance.”

Heath Lodge, 1960s

I was able to find a photo of Heath Lodge. The home has now been converted into an elegant hotel called the Fairmont Windsor Park. The hotel website noted that the building was “formerly a private home, Heath Lodge, at the beginning of the 19th century, until the property was purchased by Baron John Henry Schroder along with the Dell and 160 acres of land in 1864.” It is unclear when Leeds Paine acquired the property. Heath Lodge was what I would call a stately home. During World War I, the British government pressed the owners—no longer Leeds Paine-- to use the Lodge as a hospital, noting that it had ten bathrooms and could accommodate 120 beds. The photos below show the size and grandeur of the building. The reception must have been elegant and impressive. The bride and groom left together at five p.m., on their way to a honeymoon in Devonshire.

Heath Lodge around 1960, then a hotel.

To my surprise, nearly half the length of the article was comprised of a “List of Presents”. The gifts and their gift-givers were listed in detail. This must have been uncomfortable for the guests, as their taste and the monetary values of their gifts were on full display for their peers and the public. Some of the more unusual gifts were a sewing machine, a pickle frame, and a spirit tantalus.

List of Gifts

I enjoyed finding Thomas’ relatives among the gift-givers:

R. Shields, Thomas’ brother Robert, gave the couple books.

Mrs. Smith, Thomas’ sister Bethia, a fruit stand. Bethia’s children, two of whom were bridesmaids, gave scent bottles.

Mr. and Mrs. MacNiven, Thomas’ sister and brother-in-law Euphemia Shields and James MacNiven, gave a set of plated egg cups and stand.

Miss Shields, Thomas’ sister Margaret, gave silver napkin rings.

Malcolm Sutherland, the best man and cousin of the groom, gave silver bon bon dishes.

John Sutherland, Thomas’ uncle, a hall set.

Perhaps my favorite gift was Thomas’ gift to his bride: a bicycle. I wonder how she liked it. It was a charming detail. Apparently there was a huge bicycle craze in England between 1896 and 1900, as bicycles switched from the wobbly Pennyfarthings with the giant front wheel and tiny rear wheel, to bicycles with equal sized wheels, including ones with low central bars to accommodate ladies’ skirts. Presumably Thomas’ gift looked much like this 1897 Ladies’ Victoria Triumph. I imagine the newlyweds cycling through the countryside on weekends.

Ladies' Victoria Triumph Bicycle, 1897.

Thanks to the discovery of this wonderful wedding write-up in the Egham Staines newspaper, I can envision this amazing day in Thomas Shields’ life. Thomas and Hilda had a long life.together, raising a son and two daughters.

 

Sources:

“Interesting Marriage in Englefield Green”. Egham & Staines News and Weekly Journal. Egham, Staines; England. September 4, 1897 issue.

Information on Heath Lodge. https://www.fairmont-windsorpark.com/location-and-surroundings/

Egham Museum entry on the Schroder family of Englefield Green, owners of Heath Lodge. https://eghammuseum.org/the-schroder-family-of-englefield-green/

Related to a Traitor? 52 Ancestors 2026 Prompt “Possibilities”

 

Was Philip Taylor the Nephew of Benedict Arnold?

Hannah Arnold: 1742-1803
Philip Taylor: 1757-1820 (Maternal 5^th Great-Grandfather)
Patience Taylor Archibald: 1800-1834 (Maternal Fourth Great-Grandmother)
Nancy Archibald: 1821-1912 (Maternal Third-Great-Grandmother)

 

I was surprised to receive a notice from Ancestry claiming that Benedict Arnold, infamous Revolutionary War traitor, was my husband’s 6^th Great-Granduncle. With the 250^th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaching, I decided it was an appropriate time to investigate this possible connection to a major figure in the Revolutionary War.

Benedict Arnold

According to the lineage line Ancestry provided, my husband’s third-great-grandmother, Nancy Archibald, was the daughter of Patience Taylor, who had married John Archibald in Daviess County, Kentucky in 1820.

Patience was the daughter of Philip Taylor and his wife Mary Welsher. Patience was born in 1800 in Daviess County, Kentucky, and died in 1834.

Patience Taylor Archibald Headstone, Nalley-Taylor Family Cemetery in Buel KY

Philip Taylor, Patience's father and my husband’s 5^th Great-Grandfather, was born in 1757 in Springfield, Pennsylvania. During the Revolutionary War, he served in the 5^th Battalion of the Pennsylvania Continental Line. His grave marker notes his service. Following the war, he moved to Kentucky and first married Hannah Atherton, and following her death, married Mary Welsher in 1799. Philip died in 1829.

Philip Taylor Headstone, Nalley-Taylor Family Cemetery in Buel KY

The next question is who were Philip Taylor’s parents? And that is where the connection to Benedict Arnold starts to fray.

According to the Ancestry chart I included above, Philip’s parents were Henry Taylor and Hannah Arnold. The chart shows that Hannah’s parents were Benedict Arnold and wife Hannah Waterman. Benedict and Hannah’s oldest son was named Benedict as well; Major General Benedict Arnold was born in 1741, and his sister Hannah the following year, 1742.

There are several immediate problems with Philip Taylor’s supposed parentage. First, Benedict and Hannah Arnold were born and raised in Connecticut, not Pennsylvania. How would she have met Philip’s father?

Second, and more importantly, historic records are quite clear that Benedict Arnold’s sister, Hannah, never married. She kept house for her brother until his marriage to Margaret Mansfield in 1767, and then Hannah remained in the household to help with their three children. Following Margaret’s death, Hannah served as the children’s surrogate mother. She died in Montague, Ontario in 1803, where she was living with Henry Arnold, one of Benedict’s sons.

So how did this error come about? It appears there was another man named Benedict Arnold living in Middletown, Connecticut, married to a woman named Mary. They appear in church records as parents of children Hannah, baptized in 1740; Fenner, baptized in 1738; and Patience, baptized in 1739. However, I can find no record that this other Hannah Arnold was married to a man named Taylor. I had even attached a document written by another Ancestry user titled “Hannah Arnold Could Not Have Been the Mother of Philip Taylor Born Abt 1757 in Pennsylvania!!!” Why hadn’t I paid more attention to that at the time I first read it? The author of the document fails to provide any real proof one way or the other.

Philip Taylor’s true parentage remains murky. I looked at records on FamilySearch, and his profile shows his father as Henry Taylor of New Jersey and a Mary Dupuy from “British Colonies”—not very specific. The only records attached to Mary Dupuy are birth records of children born in Philadelphia that lack documentation. Henry Taylor died in New Jersey; there is no proof that he ever left the state or had any children born in Pennsylvania. I am not prepared to accept these people as Philip’s parents; there are too many details that do not seem to fit.

Philip Taylor’s Findagrave entry has a note stating: “Phillip, Benjamin, and Arnold were brothers, their father was Henry Taylor.” I was able to find another Findagrave entry for Benjamin Taylor in the same area of Kentucky. He too apparently served in the Revolution and was born in 1756, a year before Philip. I have found no record of a brother Arnold. Philip did name two of his sons Benjamin and Arnold, so he might have been naming them in honor of his brothers. Without further evidence, however, these relationships are all hypothetical.

What I can confirm is that there is no possibility that my husband’s 5^th great-grandfather Philip Taylor is Benedict Arnold’s nephew. Thankfully, Philip Taylor was not related to a traitor; instead he was a patriot and served honorably as a private in the Revolutionary War.

Perhaps someday I will find records that prove who Philip Taylor’s parents were. In the meantime, I have made sure to remove the Arnolds from our family tree.

 

Sources:

Findagrave entries for Philip Taylor, Patience Taylor, Benjamin Taylor. https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2530369/memorial-search?cemeteryName=Nalley-Taylor+Family+Cemetery&page=1#sr-125151072

Kentucky Marriages, 1802-1850. Author Dodd, Jordan. Ancestry.com.

Kentucky, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1783-1965. Ancestry.com.

Pennsylvania, U.S., Revolutionary War Battalions and Militia Index, 1775-1783. Philip Taylor. Ancestry.com.

 

Hard-Working Till the End: 52 Ancestors 2026 Prompt “An Unexpected Strength”

 

Hold on to Your Hats! Margaret Smith Martin: Thirty Years as a Milliner

Margaret Elizebeth Smith Martin: 1846-1912 (Maternal Great-Grandaunt)

 

While examining records pertaining to Great-Grandaunt Margeret Smith Martin, I was taken aback by her death certificate. Margaret died on April 22, 1912 at age sixty-six. The doctor recorded the cause of death as “Angina Pectoris and Nervous Prostration”. The angina was chest pain, of course, but nervous prostration? A bit of research told me that in the early 1900s, that diagnosis was given to patients exhibiting exhaustion caused by chronic stress and overwork. The doctor also provided a contributing cause of death: “Hard Work.”

I had to know more about this woman who the doctor believed had literally worked herself to death.

Margaret Elizebeth Smith was born February 16, 1846 to parents Elijah F. Smith and Nancy Vanlandingham Weir in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. She was the fourth of their eleven children, and was my husband’s great-grandfather Willis Smith’s older sister.

Margaret married young, at age sixteen, in 1862 during the early days of the Civil War. Her husband, David H. Martin, was a twenty-five-year-old farmer. While he registered for the Union draft, I have found no record that David Martin served during the war.  

Margaret and David had three children between 1864 and 1868, son John and daughters Naomie Emma and Lula Bell “Lucy”. David farmed and ran a store of some sort early in the marriage. Then in 1892, he started a tobacco manufacturing company, producing plug tobacco. 

As the news article above notes, this type of business had the potential to build a fortune. However, I don’t believe David Martin was one of the lucky ones. It appears the family needed more money than he was able to bring in, so Margaret turned to the millinery trade.

When she put her millinary business up for sale in 1910, she stated that she had been in business for 31 years. This means she started her business in 1879. While the 1880 census states she was “keeping house”, she must also have been earning money designing and selling hats. While milliners usually deal only in women’s hats, it appears that Margaret sold children’s hats as well, as the advertisement below shows.

I have been unable to locate newspaper advertisements for her business during the early years. She placed frequent ads in the local Greenville newspaper starting in 1908. She even ran a thank-you message for her customers.

She ran some clever promotions to spur sales. The brief item below shows that she offered a gold watch as a prize for customers who made a purchase. In addition, she ran clearance sales.

She made hats for all income levels in her community as well. One advertisement noted that her hats sold for prices ranging from 35 cents to $20.

Her work as a milliner was not her only business. She also ran frequent advertisements selling “Black Minorcas Eggs”, so she was raising chickens as a side hustle.

Black Minorca hen, known for laying large, white eggs.

Margeret continued working until sometime in 1910 when she put her business up for sale and her house up for lease. She died just two years later from, according to her physician, the complications of hard work.

Her obituary supported the death certificate’s assertion, reading in part:

“She was a woman of nerve and untiring energies, devoting her life to the betterment of her family. She was engaged in the millinery business for many years, and although often meeting with misfortune and adversities, yet she was courageous and bore her misfortunes with fortitude, always cheerful in her undertakings. She continued in business until wearied and weakened with complicated disease…”

It sounds as if Margaret exhibited great personal strength throughout her life, and provided not just important but essential financial and emotional support to her husband and children. I am grateful that a bluntly worded death certificate led me to this unexpectedly inspiring woman.

 

Sources:

Advertisements from the Greenville Record and the Madisonville Hustler.1908-1910.

“Death of Mrs. David H. Martin”. Greenville Record. April 25, 1912. Greenville, Kentucky. Accessed on Newspapers.com.

“A New Tobacco Manufactory Probable.” Owensboro Weekly Messenger. Dec. 29, 1892. Owensboro, Kentucky. Accessed on Newspapers.com.

“No. 283 Draws the Gold Watch.” Greenville Record. Apr. 7, 1910. Greenville, Kentucky. Accessed on Newspapers.com.

 

The Cemetery that Moved: 52 Ancestors 2026 Prompt “At the Cemetery”

 

The Houston Family, Provine Cemetery and the Propaganda Power of the Tennessee Valley Authority

William “W. L.” Houston: 1867-1917 (Maternal 2nd Cousin 2x Removed)
Mary Nall Houston: 1879-1910 (Wife of Maternal 2^nd Cousin 2x Removed)
 

While I was reviewing Ancestry records for cousin William Houston and his wife Mary Nall Houston, I was surprised to discover a link to a database called the “Tennessee, U.S., Relocated Cemeteries Index, 1787-1975”. I had never heard of this database, and had no idea why William and Mary, who were born and died in Kentucky, would be included in such a database. I did some research and discovered that the database was created by the Tennessee Valley Authority, the country’s “largest public energy provider” which also manages the Tennessee River to prevent flooding. The TVA built a series of hydropower dams on the river, creating huge reservoirs that flooded towns, farms, homes and cemeteries along the river. The database lists all the graves that potentially were to be or actually were relocated before their cemeteries ended up under water. The list was huge. I was stunned. I am ashamed to admit I never thought about the personal costs to communities and families that lived in the path of huge hydropower projects like the TVA. I wanted to learn more, and I wanted to know what happened to William and Mary Houston’s graves.

William Lee Houston was Bruce’s second cousin twice removed, the son of George Houston. George was the nephew of Bruce’s second-great-grandfather William Parker Leachman. William was born on September 15, 1867. He became a farmer in McLean County, Kentucky. On October 18, 1899, when he was 32 years old, he married nineteen-year-old Mary Nall. The couple had two children, Mary Lee and George Garrison Houston, before Mary’s death in 1910.

Tragically, the children were orphaned just seven years later when Willie died unexpectedly on February 4, 1917. His son went to live with Mary Nall Houston’s brother and his family, and daughter Mary Lee married William Kennedy two years later.

                                       Gravestones of Mary and William Houston

William Houston and several of his brothers and cousins all lived and farmed around the community of Gilbertsville in Marshall County, Kentucky. When William and Mary died, they were buried in the Provine Cemetery, which was probably in Gilbertsville as well. 

Town of Gilbertsville in 1938, before it was razed by the TVA.

The town lay on the banks of the Tennessee River, and when the TVA decided to build a dam and create the Kentucky Lake Reservoir in the late 1930s, the area was condemned and bought up through eminent domain. The entire town of Gilbertsville was demolished in the 1940s and relocated west of the original site, which is where the dam now lies.

Downtown of the original Gilbertsville, Kentucky, circa 1938. All these buildings were razed.

I searched for the original location of the Provine Cemetery. Nothing. Not one record. I found a document that mentioned the full name of the cemetery was the Provine Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery. When I searched for Provine MB Church, I once again found no records. The church no longer exists, and there is no history that it ever existed. Even Findagrave is totally silent on the fact that the Houstons and hundreds of other people who had been laid to rest in the original Provine Cemetery were now in New Provine Cemetery, located in the community of Benton, miles west of the town of Gilbertsville. The cemetery description on Findagrave says nothing about the first Provine Cemetery. It is as if the existence of the original cemetery is some deep, dark secret.

Location of New Provine Cemetery in Benton area.

When I studied maps of the new cemetery, I could see it lies next to the Briensburg Baptist Church, which has its own cemetery on the opposite side of the church. A third cemetery is located across the road—perhaps another “relocated” cemetery? I wonder if the church donated or sold the land as an act of charity towards the displaced dead and their families. 

New Provine Cemetery

The New Provine cemetery is obviously a newer cemetery. It lacks any mature trees, and is quite barren. Knowing that much of it consists of reburials makes sense. The rows of graves are ruler-straight with no empty spaces between graves. I examined the list titled “Provine Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery, Marshall County, Kentucky TVA Cemetery Relocation Project 1940-1942”. The list included the names of 375 people buried at the original Provine. When I compared random names from that list with the TVA records of relocated graves, all of those individuals appeared in the TVA records, with the notation that the graves were relocated in 1942. Much of the New Provine Cemetery is obviously made up of graves from the original cemetery.

This must have been huge news at the time. People who had lived in the area for generations were now being forced to sell, and they probably received less than market value as compensation for their lost homes, businesses and farmland. And all those cemeteries—all dug up and moved to different locations. People must have been upset. There must have been concerns over how government money was being spent and about how families were being hurt. But bizarrely, I can barely find a mention of what was happening in the local newspapers. Why?

The only newspaper mention of Provine Cemetery’s relocation is a public notice posted by the cemetery’s board on the relocation, asking interested parties to attend a meeting with a TVA representative to “express your desires”. One of the board members was John Houston, William’s brother. The Marshall County Courier didn’t cover what happened at the meeting or how the community felt about the decision to dig up the graves and move them. Once again, why?

Marshall County Tribune Courier notice, Feb 13, 1942

Apparently, the governmentmade sure to suppress any dissent. Newspapers were discouraged from covering the personal tragedies involved in this forced relocation of thousands of people. A book by Laura Beth Daws and Susan L. Brinson argues that the TVA ran a very successful propaganda campaign to create a positive image in the press. A review of the book by Charles Kenneth Roberts in the Journal of Southern History stated:

“Through a blitz of press releases, speeches, photographs, and carefully cultivated relationships with reporters and editors, the TVA ensured “overwhelmingly positive” media coverage (p. 94). Thanks to these efforts, the media, especially local papers, told the stories and used the interpretative frameworks that the TVA wanted. As a result, Daws and Brinson note, ‘Two potentially contentious issues were noticeably absent from press releases: the removal of families and displacement of graves from the reservoir areas’(p. 105).”

The horrifying thing, from a genealogical perspective, is that it appears records of the lost communities, property records showing ownership of farms and business, and even pre-TVA maps of the areas were destroyed, so the history of what existed before the creation of the TVA and Kentucky Lake is mostly gone. The only pre-TVA dam plat maps that still exist were created by the TVA to detail the properties that were to be acquired. The only reason the maps exist online today is because they seem to have been “liberated” from the TVA by one single person.

Houston family farms marked in red. 1938 TVA plat maps.

These plat maps show some of the farms still owned around 1940 by William Houston’s brothers and relatives: Joe, John and “Hum”, which I believe was William’s brother Herman or “Herm” Houston. Herm was also buried in Provine, but he died after the creation of Kentucky Lake, so he was buried in New Provine and wasn’t relocated like William. It is sad to look at the map and see all the land the family was forced to give up. They had to relocate, just as their brother’s coffin was relocated.

Photo of workers clearing the land to be flooded by the Kentucky Reservoir, early 1940s

I am grateful to have discovered that William and Mary’s graves were relocated. It led me to learn about the human costs of the Tennessee Valley Authority. School history books portray the TVA as all positive, bringing reliable and affordable electricity to rural areas. But progress came with a high price tag for many families who had built their lives along the Tennessee River.

 

Sources:

Roberts, Charles Kenneth. Review of The Greater Good: Media, Family Removal, and TVA Dam Construction in North Alabama, by Laura Beth Daws, Susan L. Brinson. Journal of Southern History 86, no. 1 (2020): 216-217. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/soh.2020.0028.

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/748731

https://tva-azr-eastus-cdn-ep-tvawcm-prd.azureedge.net/cdn-tvawcma/docs/default-source/environment/land-management/cultural-resource-management/tva_cemetery_data_12-2020.pdf?sfvrsn=4facc689_2

Relocated Cemeteries: Tennessee Valley Authority. https://www.tva.com/environment/environmental-stewardship/land-management/cultural-resource-management/relocated-cemeteries

Provine Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery, Marshall County, Kentucky TVA Cemetery Relocation Project 1940-1942. Submitted by: Bill Utterback http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000033 http://files.usgwarchives.net/ky/marshall/cemeteries/provine.txt

https://history.ky.gov/markers/site-of-old-gilbertsville

Photos of old Gilbertsville. https://www.fourriversexplorer.com/kentucky-dam-historical-photos/

 

 

The Alice, Texas Surprise: 52 Ancestors 2026 Prompt “Unexpected”

An Unexpected Two Year Sojourn in Texas

Willis Smith: 1853-1928 (Maternal Great-Grandfather)
Cora Leachman Smith: 1864-1943 (Maternal Great-Grandmother)
Lorene Smith Jandy: 1903-1994 (Maternal Grandmother)

 

While reading Lorene Smith Jandy’s memoir, I discovered that she, her parents and some of her siblings had spent two years of her childhood living in Texas. We always knew that she was born in Oklahoma Territory before it became a state, and that her early childhood was spent in New Mexico. I assumed that she lived there until the family relocated to Kentucky, where she attended school and graduated. I believed we were the first members of the family to have called Texas home when we moved to San Antonio in the late 1980s. The discovery of the Smith family’s sojourn in Alice, Texas was unexpected. We now live just 220 miles from where Lorene and her parents spent about two years.

Willis, Cora and Lorene Smith, probably a few years after their time in Texas

Lorene Smith was born in Oklahoma Territory in 1903, but her family moved to a homestead near Clovis, New Mexico while she was very young. When she was about six years old, the area suffered a series of severe droughts that led many homesteaders to give up their land and move. The homesteaders were desperately poor and the crops were failing; people were nearly starving. The Smiths were in the same situation. Lorene recalled:

“Wheat was the main crop that Dad and the boys would try to raise. One year we planted 50 acres and not a grain came up. So by the end of four years most people were just packing up and leaving any homes and barns they had built. They couldn't rent them, they couldn't sell them, they couldn't do anything but leave them behind. Thus ended our stay in New Mexico. People left and went anywhere they could go, principally back east. There was no point in trying to go farther west at that time with the drought hitting.”

Homesteader home in northern New Mexico abandoned around 1910

The family was still living in Curry County when the 1910 census was taken, but they seem to have moved shortly after that. Clovis was in Curry County, which lies along the Texas border in the northeastern part of New Mexico.

Map of Curry County, New Mexico with Texas border highlighted in red.

Probably the proximity to Texas led the family to move there rather than go back to Kentucky, despite having no family or friends in Texas, while they had extensive family support back in Kentucky. I find it a surprising decision. Lorene wrote:

“We moved to ten acres near Alice, Texas, about 40 miles from Corpus Christi, where we lived for two years. Dad did not have a church in Alice. He may have had a church at a town called Bentonville, but this is no longer to be found on a Texas state map. Dad earned almost no salary in Alice. Home missionaries had no status in Texas and we were considered ‘poor white trash’… Our nearest neighbors were Mexicans, Jose Moreno and his sister Josefa, who married a Cardona. These two equally poor families lived fairly near us… "

Alice, Texas marked in yellow with red dot. Bentonville is second red dot. Corpus Christi at far right.

We lived in a very small rudimentary, one-story frame house built up on stilts about two feet off the ground. The dogs lay under the house in summer to keep cool. Our "box house" was made of wide vertical plank siding and had two big rooms and two small. A huge, spiky century plant, which took up most of the front yard, was our only decoration. True to its name, the century plant blooms only once in a hundred years. Ours didn't bloom for us but looked old enough. I can't remember any lawn grasses there but recall the Mexicans always sweeping the bare dirt of their yard. We had no fireplace because it was not supposed to get cold there, but once in a while we had a "norther" that would blow down and our neighbors would come over shivering under shawls and say "Mucho frio." Those are my main memories of Texas. When I lived there, I loved the song "Juanita" and thought that Texas was a wonderful state and was very loyal to it. You heard a lot about the Alamo and Texas history. I have not been able to hold such a favorable opinion of Texas since I grew up.

Dad and Charlie grew sugar cane for hay. The rows were planted close together and they mowed the field with a large mower. The end of the blades stuck out and cut off one leg of our collie dog so that it had to be put out of its misery, probably shot. It was Charlie's dog and he cried terribly over losing it.

I remember another incident when I must have been seven or eight years old. Our cow, which was penned in a small corral, had gone rabid. She was butting her head into the heavy black iron kettle that held her drinking water in typical rabid response. Charlie had to lasso her from his perch in a tree by throwing a rope over her horns and tie her to a tree to prevent her breaking out. We had drunk her milk the night before. Mother called a state office in Austin and was assured that the family was safe since the infection was in the cow's blood stream, not its milk."

I did a little research on the Alice, Texas area, discovering that Bentonville, where Lorene thought her father might have had a church, was an unincorporated town with only fifty residents which lay seven miles from Alice. I also discovered that while the Smiths were living there, farms around Alice were starting to transition from cattle ranching to growing crops and vegetables as farmers turned to irrigation. This explains the Smiths’ sugarcane crop, which requires a lot of water. Lorene made reference to this in another section, stating:

“This was a truck farming area and Texas had good soil. We tried to grow strawberries but the big cutter ants took over. These ants would tear off a piece of leaf, hold it above their heads like an umbrella, and march back to their anthills. I can still see Mother and Charlie wearing leather gloves going down the rows of strawberries and squeezing the ants to death with their fingers. It was the only way we could get rid of them.”

Alice, Texas downtown around 1910.

The area near the Rio Grande and the border with Mexico was also dealing with attacks from bandits and revolutionaries from Mexico during the 1910s. The state sent the Texas Rangers to deal with the border raids, and later the federal government sent the National Guard and other military units to stop the incursions. As one might expect, relations between white residents and Hispanic residents like the Smiths' neighbors were tense during this time period.

From 1912-1916, the town of Alice became the headquarters for the Texas Rangers serving in South Texas. The Smiths seem to have lived there from about 1911-1913, so they were there when the Rangers were working out of Alice. Lorene’s recollections of her school days featured a reference to the Rangers’ status in the community:

"We lived two miles from town. I walked to school, attending my first real school there. After they tested me on reading and spelling, I was put into third grade with Miss Sadler. (Note: Lorene was probably seven or eight years old—young for third grade) The teachers stressed multiplication tables, and I remember a boy named Robert Ross who could recite all twelve tables as smoothly as the barking of a dog. None of the rest of us was that good. I had to struggle a little bit with my math. I got along all right there in school so far as my own lessons were concerned because I was as quick as any of my older classmates.

I had the unhappiness of having to walk home with two girls named Schoenbaum. Their father was a Texas ranger and they were, in their own opinion at any rate, high in Texas rural society. Schoenbaums lived a half mile or a mile away from us. They had a big old ranch style home and mulberry trees, a typical Texas setting. They had a brother named Gayhart. Lottie Schoenbaum was in third grade with me and her sister Cathy was younger. We would walk home down the road of sand six inches deep, and I remember we had to pass Dr. Atkinson's home. We could have a heavy downpour and in half an hour the sand would absorb the rain, so the road was never muddy and one could go barefoot. Lottie was always teasing me, belittling my book satchel, my lunch pail, or anything she could. My cloth satchel advertised that "My Mother uses Kingfisher Flour."

One day I went home crying and Mother said in anger, "I just wish you were big enough to knock Lottie down." Of course, she didn't mean it and didn't think I could do it. But I took my cue from her remark and a few days later when Lottie started in, I just dropped everything and started to pummel her. It took her so by surprise that I won the fight, even though she was bigger than I. (This tactic of taking people by surprise has stood me in goodstead through the years in dealing with and disciplining school kids. Take them by surpriseand you can pretty much do with them what you want.)

Lottie then became a friend of mine, one of those peculiar twists in human nature. ManySaturdays I would be invited over to their home and we would have good times together. We used to climb trees and eat mulberries; that was the one thing that was plentiful.

Many years later Mr. Schoenbaum was sent to prison for shooting and killing a man who was having an affair with his wife. I lost all trace of the Schoenbaums and practically everybody else in Alice when we left there after two years. It's about the only place I ever lived where I didn't keep contact with people afterwards.”

I was fascinated by Lorene’s story of the Schoenbaums, so did a little research. Given that she was so young when they lived in Texas, her memories were amazingly good, but there were some striking differences from the actual facts. Researching the story was an unexpected bonus.

While Lorene had the names of her schoolmates, Lottie and Cathy, correct, she was a little off with her memory of their last name and their brother’s name. “Gayhart” was actually Gerhardt, and the surname was Schoenbohm. Lottie’s father was also named Gerhardt, and he was a German immigrant to the area. He was not a Texas Ranger. He was employed by the Texas Mexican Railroad as a conductor and station master in Alice for fifteen years. Probably a different classmate of Lorene’s had a father in the Texas Rangers and she confused the two fathers.

Texas Mexican Train Depot where Mr. Schoenbohm was stationmaster. Circa 1910.

Lorene’s memory of Gerhardt Schoenbohm’s fate was also a bit off. Rather than many years later as Lorene claimed, the shooting occurred in 1914, only one year after the Smiths left Alice. On August 18, 1914, Schoenbohm travelled by train to Brownsville. He was partially disguised, having colored his hair, darkened his skin, and shaved his mustache. He checked into a hotel under an assumed name, Lee Burgess. He had sent a letter to a man named Ed Dubose, asking him to meet him at the hotel.

Dubose was anxious about the meeting, so enlisted his brother, H.G. Dubose, the head of the United States Immigration Service in Texas and a former Texas Ranger, to accompany him to the meeting. Both Dubose men carried pistols. When they arrived at the hotel, a gunfight ensued. Witnesses said fifteen to twenty shots were fired, and when the shooting stopped, both H.G. Dubose and Schoenbohm were dead. Ed Dubose was injured. He refused to say much about the incident, including why Schoenbohm wanted to kill him. He simply claimed self-defense, and was fortunate that a hotel employee said Schoenbohm fired the first shot. Ed Dubose was never charged with a crime.

Corpus Christi Caller headline from August 18, 1914

The Corpus Christi Caller Times reported that “the theory has been offered that domestic difficulties in the Schoenbohm family was one of the reasons.” So Lorene was probably correct that Mrs. Schoenbohm’s infidelity led to the incident. However, Schoenbohm paid a far higher price for his actions than Lorene’s claim of a prison sentence. He paid with his life.

As for Lorene’s friend Lottie, her family moved to Corpus Christi after her father’s death. Following her high school graduation, she married a classmate in 1920. She had several children, and seems to have had a good life.

When the Smiths left Alice around 1913, they moved back to Kentucky. Willis Smith found a job as a minister in Dawson Springs, and the family remained there for the rest of Willis’ life.

I am so glad that Lorene wrote about the Smith family’s years in Alice, Texas. I have been unable to find a single record that shows they lived there, so without her memoir, those two years would be nearly forgotten. This unexpected discovery enriched my understanding of Lorene’s childhood.

 

Sources:

“Alice Texas: 1900-1990”. MB50’s “Liquid Mud” Rant. https://mb50.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/alice-texas-1900-to1990/

Corpus Christi Caller Times. Corpus Christi, Texas. Headline. August 18, 1914.

Vintage postcards of Alice, Texas.