Before I Forget

My family has lost Louis. No known stories exist as to where Louis settled, if he married or when he died. The many researchers--both experienced and hobbyists, have found little on the eldest son of Hannah Wosta Wiser Leeper. First, let me tell a little of what's known.

1. The 1860 Fed. Census in Chambers County, Texas has a 16 year old "Louis Wiser" living with his mother, Hannah Leeper, two younger Wiser brothers, and his five year old half-brother, Sam Leeper. He is a German immigrant, and Chambers County is in southeast Texas near Galveston. (Click on the two census photos to enlarge)

2. A Louis Wiser next appears in nearby Harris County, in a marriage to Susan Davis on August 8, 1867. Source: Texas, Marriages, 1837-1973. No ages or hometowns are listed. Again, I do not know if this is MY Louis. Nor do I find ANYTHING else about this couple in any Texas census or any other census. I did find an African-American Susan Wiser in an 1896 Dallas City Directory listed as a "laundress." Censuses elsewhere (New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Louisiana) have Louis and/or Lewis Wiser/Weisers, but they are of different ages or birthplaces and appear to have been married to spouses other than a Susan. There is even a Confederate soldier from Alabama named Louis Wiser. No age or further info is given on him at Fold3's database. Wiser researchers have wondered if perhaps Louis had died while serving in the Civil War. There was a hint among now-deceased Wiser "kin" that Hannah Wiser's elusive husband (the father to the four boys from Saxony) was possibly a sailor on one of the many ships carrying European immigrants to America. If so, perhaps Louis followed his father's occupation?

3. Texas historians have a journal called STIRPES that is now online at the Portal To Texas History website. A wonderful database! I found this from a March 1984 edition of Stirpes with a transcription of male voter registrations from 1867 Chambers County, Texas:

Please note the young gentleman numbered as 197 (see first column on left), a Louis Wiser, native of Germany, "naturalized" in Texas in 1859 claims to have been a resident of Chambers County for 13 years. Arithmetic tells me he entered Texas about 1854, which year is about the time Wiser family stories indicate our Hannah immigrated from Hamburg. Or Hannover (depending upon which census you read). 

And yes, I read every other page in this Stirpes and found no mention of any other Wiser, Wysor, or Weisers. None. Had the other brothers all moved elsewhere (Liberty County?)?  Hannah, a female, was unable to vote so her name would not have appeared. She was a landowner, thanks to her husband, Sam Leeper, who was given hundreds of acres of land for his service during the battles of Bexar and San Jacinto. 

But that's another story. I will update this Louis Wiser search when I figure out where to access naturalization records--if any, for 1859. Thanks for stopping by!

UPDATE 14 Dec 2020: 

A Louis Wiser appears on line 22 of this 1870 U.S. Federal census page from Chicago Ward 9, Cook County, Illinois. It doesn't say much, but I'm not finding many Louis Wisers in this census who were 26 year-old immigrants with THAT spelling. 

[Holler at me if you can't read the image well]



 

I really enjoy reading old newspapers archived online. Time flies while searching for family--living or dead. But you know what is annoying? Searching for articles or obituaries containing two keywords: WISER and COFFEE. Both names prominent in my ancestry. Run either name through a database and you're likely to come up with thousands of hits. And very often you are not allowed to narrow the selection to "exact" or a specific search.

Hence coffee ads, articles mentioning ladies' groups having coffees, sentences of "none the wiser" -- all these clutter my searches. 

I am envious of researchers with obscure unusual names in their family tree.

Thanks for listening to my mini-rant. Now back to my 1904 Versailles, Missouri newspaper search for John Coffee.

Radio personality Paul Harvey was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His birth name was AURANDT. You can see why he might have assumed an easier name for his vast audience.

While searching Tulsa newspapers for a December 1921 death notice of my paternal great-grandmother, I found another death which made front page news. Harry Harrison Aurandt.  Paul Harvey's dad had been murdered in early December 1921. His funeral was attended by hundreds. Aurandt, a former police administrator, left behind a young wife, a daughter and three year old son Paul (Harvey) Aurandt. The photos of the Klansmen at the cemetery? Aurandt's funeral was held seven months after one of the worst race riots in our nation's history. Was the Klan's presence that day a show of strength? Unity? The family denies Aurandt's involvement in the Klan. 

See the rest of the story from The Morning Tulsa Daily World newspaper of Dec. 22, 1921 -  Please click the pages within this gallery:

Author Paul Batura's biography on The Paul Harvey Story (with foreword by Mike Huckabee, yes, the very same!) has this on Aurandt's death. His book is freely available on Google books, from which I snatched these snippets: 

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No one will know. Okay, the NSA will know. But they don't care. I'm not the least bit seditious.

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I have looked for years for the death date of my maternal Great-Grand-Aunt Lizzie, and found it just last night. THANK YOU, ANCESTRY DOT COM! This was a minor brick wall for me. No one I spoke to in the last 18 years knew what had happened to Aunt Lizzie in her dotage. Or where she had been buried. Our Great Aunt Helen told me she thought Lizzie had died/buried in Missouri. My Dear Old Mom (are you reading this, LOL!) spoke fondly of how her Aunt Lizzie was a lot of fun and quite energetic when she (as a child) last saw her some time in the 1940s. She recalls how Lizzie played with her younger sister Nancy. 

When Elizabeth was born December 1, 1873 in Versailles, Missouri, her father, John Hanna Coffee, was 21. Her mother, Nancy (James) Coffee, was 19. By the time of the 1880 Federal Census, the family had moved to Cooke County, near Sherman, Texas. Lizzie is seven years old, and her little brother, John Willis Coffee, is five. I know of no other siblings. Why did this family move hundreds of miles from their central Missouri roots? A new railroad had just connected Missouri to Texas. The MKT or "Katy" railway went through Indian Territory, and my father's Ackley relatives once worked on building this same railroad outside of Tulsa. I can only imagine that Lizzie's parents took the Katy north and south a few times rather than risk riding a wagon through a very untamed Cherokee Nation. Think True Grit here. Lizzie had a two or three ex-Confederate soldier uncles who also settled in northern Texas, so this young Coffee family would have lived near "kin" at their Sherman, Texas home.

By 1894 the family is back in Morgan County, Missouri where Lizzie's mom, Nancy Coffee, dies in early August, at age 40. Her obit doesn't mention a cause of death. Perhaps the family returned to Missouri because Nancy was ill and wanted to be near family?  I can only imagine her husband and two children were devastated. I have seen a transcription of an obit from a cousin-researcher who indicated it had been published in a local paper in 1894. Her tombstone, however, has an 1895 death date. Nancy had plenty of siblings. I hope someday to connect with a researcher descendant of this James family who might have a letter or family Bible indicating a cause of death. While Missouri has a great vital records' web presence via its Secretary of State, I don't yet find a death certificate for her--if one even exists. 

Soon after, in April of 1897, a 23 year old Lizzie marries a 58 year old widower, Jerome Page. Jerome already has six children (the youngest, age six) and Lizzie bears him another three: Monta Belle, five months later; Albert, in 1900; and Roy in 1902. Successive censuses find Lizzie living in rural Morgan County up until she appears as "widowed" in the 1940 Census, living with her daughter's family.

This is the last I find of Aunt Lizzie until her death in Los Angeles on December 5, 1953--four days after her 80th birthday. Have you memories of her or recall stories told to you about John Willis Coffee's big sister, Elizabeth (Coffee) Page? Please share

WOW! I found online a city directory, known as "Polk's Directory," for the year 1913. It lists my Mother's Great-Grandfather: John Hanna Coffee. See the right-hand column for "J H COFFEE." Evidently he had a grocery store with a combined restaurant in the town of Kingston, Marshall County, Oklahoma. I knew from his obit (that appeared in the Kingston newspaper) that he had a local business. But other than the "confectionery" store listed as his "Occupation" in the 1910 Federal Census, I had not found any mention of how he made a living. Until now. See for yourself:

He died in 1913, and his will was hotly contested by his two heirs. But that's another story, folks

This from the National Archives' "Prologue Magazine" -- Gold Star Mothers' Pilgrimage

During the 1920s, the Gold Star Mothers' Association lobbied for a federally sponsored pilgrimage to Europe for mothers with sons buried overseas. Although many of the women who belonged to the organization had visited their sons' graves, they realized that women often could not afford the trip to Europe. In their testimony, these women placed great emphasis on the bond between a mother and son. The bond between wife and husband seemed almost secondary in the congressional debates. The bond between fathers and sons was barely considered--the association maintained that the maternal bond surpassed that of the paternal bond.

In 1929 Congress enacted legislation that authorized the secretary of war to arrange for pilgrimages to the European cemeteries "by mothers and widows of members of military and naval forces of the United States who died in the service at any time between April 5, 1917, and July 1, 1921, and whose remains are now interred in such cemeteries." Congress later extended eligibility for pilgrimages to mothers and widows of men who died and were buried at sea or who died at sea or overseas and whose places of burial were unknown. The Office of the Quartermaster General determined that 17,389 women were eligible. By October 31, 1933, when the project ended, 6,693 women had made the pilgrimage.  

Thank you for popping in. I welcome your comments and/or "upvote."

Kenny was my Mom's cousin. We hadn't seen him in years because we lived several states away. Was sorry to hear he had passed far too soon. A researcher sent me a photo of his grave in the Clovis Cemetery in Clovis, California. The inscription is sweet. I don't know how he died, but I imagine it was heartbreaking for his family. His obit in the Fresno Bee newspaper on January 12, 2001 reads:

 RUMINSON, KENNETH WAYNE -- Services for Kenneth Wayne Ruminson, 53, of Fresno  will be at 1 p.m. Monday at Clovis Pentecostal Church of God.  Mr. Ruminson, an X-ray  technician for University Medical Center, died Tuesday. Visitation will be from noon to 5 p.m.  Sunday at Whitehurst Funeral Chapel. 

He was born in Alameda County, California on September 3, 1947 and was adopted by Walter & Elisabeth Ruminson--their fourth child. Elisabeth, a/k/a Aunt Betty, was the second daughter of Elta Dorothy (McCormick) and John Willis Coffee. I hope to find a photo of my cousin to add here. My Dad took video long ago and I think he appears in a few clips from the early 1960s. 

My 2nd Great (paternal) Grandmother from Germany had eight (possibly nine) children. Among them, two sets of twins. They all survived childhood. 

But not so for her granddaughter, Alice Clayton, who had ten children with husband, William Horton, in southeast Texas. That is a hot HOT part of the state. In reviewing their history, I realized something awful. 

Only four of their children lived past age 27. Two of them died at age 26, and the other four died as infants.

On one memorial page was written:

Daughter of William Horton & Alice Clayton. Died of cholera infantum - Sometimes called "Summer Complaint" because it appears during hot, wet months. It was often a fatal form of gastroenteritis occurring in children, which is not true cholera but appears as such. 

In memory of the Horton babies: Lillie Edna, Perry Edward, Clara Alice, Osborne Douglas, Will Milton, Daisy Louise.

While looking for my COFFEE and JAMES families in southern Oklahoma, I read this discouraging word from The Caddo Herald newspaper - October 2, 1914:

It took a Bryan county jury but a short time Saturday afternoon to give Red Scott, the white man charged with living in adultery with a negro woman near Bokchito the extreme limit and returned a verdict in the district court at Durant sending him to the penitentiary for five years.

This case attracted a great deal of notoriety by reason of the fact that the good citizens of Bokchito had become very much incensed over the matter, and had threatened summary punishment to Scott if he did not leave the adultery. According to the testimony of witnesses Scott had been living there off and on for the past 8 years.

------

I wonder if the punishment would have been the same had she been Caucasian, and he African-American? Oh wait. A lynching would have occurred long before the couple reached the jailhouse. This area of Oklahoma is known as "Little Dixie" after all. 

NOTE TO SELF: Read Oklahoma statutes to determine when "race-mixing" was no longer considered a heinous crime. Considering that "women and children are as chattel" was only just voted out by the Oklahoma Legislature in the late 1980s, it may not have been that long ago.