Before I Forget

At long last, I've found a distant cousin arrested for moonshine.

Well, he and his Stoneburner in-laws were found with "mash" after a raid. Does that count? 

Meet Samuel Perry McIntire: 

Published 14 Jan 1927, Friday, p.1, The Stillwater Gazette, Stillwater, Payne County, Oklahoma.  


Attention Willhelm cousins:  Perry was a 2x GGrandson of our James Andrew Wilhelm. (I'm a 4x ggrandchild). His mom was Nancy Ellen Wilhelm who married James W. McIntire in McDonough County, Illinois in 1874. They later moved to Kansas. Soon after Oklahoma became a state, many of their children slipped over the border, married and raised families. I suspect some are still nearby. 

This is their dad's obituary from 1925:

James was 73 when he passed. But only three years earlier he was mentioned in a Chautauqua County, Kansas paper. I am grateful to "TracyMart" on Ancestry who alerted me to this tattle of a a piece from Friday, 17 Feb 1922:

-- Page 5 of The County Liner & Cedar Vale Commercial paper in Cedar Vale, Chautauqua County, Kansas.

Isn't genealogy WILD!

          I've lost track of my maternal 2nd Great-Grand Aunt Elizabeth Wilhelm Conatser Whitmire.

          Born in Tennessee about 1838, she moved with her family to Arkansas before 1850. She appears in the 1850 Fed. Census with her parents and siblings:  Pleasant Wilhelms age 38, Jane Wilhelms age 38, Elizabeth Wilhelms 12, Mary A Wilhelms 9, Welcom Wilhelms 7, Archibald Wilhelms 5, James Wilhelms 1. Yes, that spelling of "Wilhelms" was used in the transcription. The family lives in White Oak township, Franklin County. 

          The 1860 Fed. Census shows them still in Franklin County as:  "P. Wilhelm" age 47, Jane 46, Elizabeth 20, Welcome (my GG-Grandpa) 15, "C" 14 (Archey), James 10, Angelene 9, and Pleasant age 6. 

          An ugly war soon occurred, and their world turned upside down. Brother Archey was killed. Another fought and was twice taken captive. 

          Elizabeth meets recently-widowed Daniel Conatser. They marry in August 1871. 

           Marriage of Daniel Conatser and Elizabeth Willhelm by Lewis B. Phillips, justice of the peace. Daniel was 46, Elizabeth was 33 years old. 

          Knowing that she was 33 when married in August of 1871 is a strong hint as to her birth year. Census data also gives an approximate birth year. But is not always reliable.

Source Information:  Ancestry.com. Arkansas, Compiled Marriages from Select Counties, 1779-1992 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004.

          This marriage popped up in three different records--often misspelled, making CONATSER a challenging surname to research:

          After her husband Daniel Conatser died shortly before April of 1880, our 40 year old Elizabeth was left to fend for herself. She appears on the census with her five-year old daughter "M.J.", living with her parents, Pleasant and Virginia Wilhelm. But the spelling on this document. Crimeny!



          And next door to the Wilhelms are Bennet Whitmire and his wife, Mary. See the last two lines of this 1880 Federal census page:


          Neighbor Mary Whitmire died in February 1891. Bennet later married Elizabeth Conatser in 1897. He was 74, she was 59. He died in 1903 and was buried near his first wife. 

          I last find Elizabeth in the town of Hill, Johnson County, Arkansas in the 1900 Fed. Census living with "Bennie Whitmire" 77 and her 86 year old mother, Virginia Wilhelm. Elizabeth's age is given as 61. Did her daughter "M.J." live nearby, I wonder?

Found yet another mention of my ancestor Welcome Wilhelm. He and his victim, Willie Berry, are in the fourth paragraph:

I couldn't crop just the paragraph about my mother's great-grandfather. Had to share the whole article.

It is so verrrry Texas, amirite?

My mother had a faint memory of hearing her elders discussing this event.

She thought her grandfather Edgar might have witnessed the shooting.

Or that Welk's family may have seen the killing. She wasn't certain. 

I hope not! Edgar would have been 13 years old, and the eldest of Welk and Mary's seven children. No child should witness that.

Do you know more about that sad day in November 1882?


--  New Orleans' Times-Picayune, published November 13, 1882, on page 2. 

In Rhea County, Tennessee on September 29, 1835, Pleasant Wilhelm obtained a marriage license to marry (Virginia) Jane Lockmiller. They are my maternal 3rd GGrandparents. 

          "License Bond
           Pleasant L Wilhelms
           Jane ? L_Miller
           Sept 29th 1835"

This clipped section is easier to read. 

via Ancestry.com. Tennessee, Marriage Records, 1780-2002. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008.

Do you also descend from Jane and Ples?

Two copies. One shows the cropped portion. The other, the whole page from which it was taken.



Familysearch has:

Name: Pleasant Willhelms
Event Type: Marriage
Event Date: 15 Feb 1877
Event Place: Franklin, Arkansas, United States
Event Place (Original): , Franklin, Arkansas, United States
Gender: Male
Age: 22
Birth Year (Estimated): 1855
Spouse's Name: Nancy A Gains
Spouse's Gender: Female
Spouse's Age: 18
Spouse's Birth Year (Estimated): 1859
Page: 283

Citing this Record - https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:N974-V4Z

"Arkansas, County Marriages, 1837-1957," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:N974-V4C : 18 March 2019), Nancy A Gains in entry for Pleasant Willhelms, 15 Feb 1877; citing Marriage, Franklin, Arkansas, United States, county offices, Arkansas; FHL microfilm 1,034,243.

Front page of The Galveston Daily News, Galveston, Texas, on November 9, 1882.  

Highlighted in yellow on page 4 of this paper is a brief account of Willie Berry's death at the hand of my maternal 2x Great-Grandfather, Welcome Wilhelm.


Other articles have mentioned different locations for the murder scene (as posted elsewhere on this blog) and used initials only for the given names of the two men. Dear editors, please do not use initials. Ever.

I have since made acquaintance with many Texas records in search of Mr. "W. Berry." #manyverymany

So on this lovely April day of pandemic shelter-in-place I am HAPPY to have learned Mr. Willie Berry's full name.

With a name and possible birth location, I hope to learn more of William or Willie Berry's past. Did he have family in Texas? If married, was his wife pregnant with their eighth child when he was killed, as was my GG-Grandmother Mary Wilhelm? I hope to find him in a Kentucky census. Let's hope "Willie" wasn't a nickname. 

How on earth did he get crosswise with Welk Wilhelm?

Let me re-phrase that.

What on earth provoked Welk to shoot Willie Berry?


Source:  The Galveston Daily News. (Galveston, Tex.), Vol. 41, No. 199, Ed. 1 Thursday, November 9, 1882, newspaper, November 9, 1882; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth462323/m1/4/: accessed April 2, 2020), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, texashistory.unt.edu; .

Ailsey Willhelm married Jacob Cline in Alabama on September 5, 1849.  Even though a marriage record exists, genealogy geeks find it way more fun to locate a newspaper spread describing the glorious wedding ceremony. 

Or not. I found only a paragraph on page 3. This Huntsville paper doesn't say where they wed or from which county the record was filed. Only that the couple lived in nearby Marshall County. See the third sentence that I clipped from Newspapers.com:  

It was a second marriage for both, as this couple's previous spouses had died. Neither Jacob nor the widow McCulley were spring chickens. Ailsey (how DOES one say that name?) was about 56, and is only identified as "Mrs. McCullouch." And no, I did not spend extra time reading later papers for a retraction of her misspelled name. Papers were (and are) often rife with errors. 

Should any cousins read this, Ailsey was our 4x GGrandfather's little sister, and the daughter of Tobias Wilhelm.

But, hey!  Let's not stop there. What's the news of the day in Huntsville, Alabama? See three clips from The Democrat's front page. Mind you, on the FRONT PAGE:

You saw the motto under the paper's "flag," right?    (stirring background music plays here)

                  "Unawed by the influence of the rich or the great, the People must be heard, 
                    and their rights vindicated."

Fine words for rich white guys. Not so much for females or those enslaved. 

In Madison County, Alabama on 5 Sep 1849 several enslaved people were mentioned in an ad in the Huntsville Democrat paper. Their slave-owner appears to be Richard Pryor. See the article below. 

Knowing this may appear in a Google search, I'm listing the names of the enslaved humans for family historians who may be looking for them:  Rachel aged 34, Nancy aged 45, Judy and child aged 16, Moses aged 10, Amanda aged 7, Patty aged 13, Eliza aged 8.

I hope their descendants can trace back to these seven people.


                  "A married woman or feme covert was a dependent, like an underage child or a slave, 
                  and could not own property in her own name or control her own earnings, except under 
                  very specific circumstances. When a husband died, his wife could not be the guardian 
                  to their under-age children."


#TheyHadNames

          At Squires Chapel in Stephens County, Texas on November 8, 1898, a fight broke out among several men. Shots were fired. Three men killed. One fatality was Roscoe Phillip McCarty. He had accompanied his older brother, John Franklin McCarty, to help John in his personal fight against the Squires. 

May 17, 2019  UPDATE:  Here's another article from a Kansas paper with a slightly different take on the November 1898 killings:

          Roscoe left behind three children--the youngest was only two. His 31 year old widow, Addie Martha, is my maternal great grand-aunt.

          The eldest daughter of Welcome Wilhelm and Mary Ann (Cowan), Addie was no stranger to heartbreak. On this same date just 16 years earlier, yes, on a November 8th, Addie's father had shot a man for insulting his wife. Because he was facing a punishment of hanging for killing Mr. "W. Berry," Welk fled the state. After sending a few letters to his parents, nothing more was heard from him. 

          John F. McCarty, Roscoe's brother, was found not guilty of murder the next year.

          Poor Addie lived but five more years, leaving her children orphaned in 1904.  

          I appreciate "psfraiser1" on Ancestry for sharing some of the news articles about Roscoe's death. She credits Newspapers.com, from which I also downloaded copies. 

In 1850 Emily Jane Rogers, married Jeremiah Monroe Wilhelm in Texas. "Jerry" was my maternal first cousin--five times removed, the son of Richard Wilhelm and Sarah Seymour Wilhelm. I am posting Ms. Emily's obituary for one of her descendants. 

Jeremiah and Emily had five (known) children:  James (1852-1868), William Jackson (1855-1943), George Washington (1858-1931), Mary Thomas "Mollie", wife of Rev. John Patrick Beaty), and Emily Lavina Wilhelm (1864-1953). The children were all born, raised, and made their homes in Texas.  

I love this photo of Emily Jane Wilhelm. I don't know the year, do you? She's what, between the ages of 40 to 70? Does she have on her "Sunday best" or perhaps a mourning dress? She skin is light complected, so she seems to have put forth effort to stay out of that hot Texas sun. 

Her husband, Jeremiah, was allegedly murdered in 1865. Might this photo have been taken soon after? For more on her husband's death, see:

https://www.ancestry.ie/boards/surnames.wilhelm/717.1/mb.ashx

I'm really interested in any articles or stories about Jeremiah Wilhelm's death and/or his involvement in the Walker-Wilhelm feud, and welcome any links or comments below. Thanks!

Please see the link below to her memorial on Findagrave to learn a little of Mrs. Wilhelm's siblings and parents.

By the way, I just noticed I have four George Washington Wilhelms in my database. That's one more than the total of Andrew Jackson Wilhelms I have researched. Dare I ask if any Franklin Delano Wilhelm or Richard Milhaus Wilhelm cousins exist? 

Sources:  

          I am grateful to Findagrave.com volunteer Jackie West who shared this photo of Emily Rogers in November of 2011. 

          The obituary was published in The Comanche Chief newspaper on 11 March 1921, p. 5, in Comanche, Texas. I obtained this copy from Newspapers.com/   ("Grandma Wilhelm," really?)

          See Mrs. Wilhelm's Findagrave memorial via   https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/67136870

          Finding proof that supports a family mystery? That's what I call a great day! But learning that your ancestor murdered a man? It's a sobering feeling.

          Read what The Galveston Daily News reported on June 2, 1893 about Welcome Wilhelm:

          Just a few days earlier, this paper reported that the perpetrator had been captured. Wait, who was the poor fellow who was wrongly accused of murder. What a fright he had! 

          In her Willhelm Family Record, my Great-Aunt Beatrice Willhelm Steeves wrote this about Welcome's flight from Texas:

My grandfather, William Welcome Willhelm, at about the age of 18 joined the war between the States in Co. C, 15th Northwest Arkansas Infantry.  In one of the battles the flag bearer was shot and grandfather rescued the flag before it hit the ground and carried it through the battle.  A bullet aimed at him, hit a coin in his pocket and made it look like a thimble.  He was captured in the battle of Vicksburg, when on July 3, 1865, General John C. Pemberton, commanding the 50,000 Confederate troops around Vicksburg forced to surrender 37,000 men and 172 cannons to U.S. Grant Commander of the Union Army.  After the war, grandfather went to Texas, married and had a family of 3 boys and 5 girls.  Just before the birth of his youngest child in 1883, some trouble came up and grandfather's life was threatened.  Due to the lack of law and order on the Texas frontier, grandfather was advised, for his sake and the sake of the family, to move his family.  He left to look for a place to move to and then returned to await the birth of his daughter.  When the baby was born, he left again and went to Arkansas to his father's place.  In December of that year he sent grandmother some money.  That was the last the family ever heard of him.

           Welk's parents, Pleasant and Jane (Lockmiller) Willhelm, were living in the Boston Mountains in Madison County, Arkansas. (near Fayetteville)  A pretty but rugged place. I would think it a good place to hide. But it would also be the first choice of the Williamson County Sheriff should he care to send in "the law."

          I saw True Grit. Did any Texas Rangers try tracking my ancestor?


WHAT WILHELM LEFT BEHIND:

          William Welcome Wilhelm married Mary Elizabeth Cowan in Florence, Williamson County, Texas just before Christmas in 1866. Having grown up in Arkansas, Mary and Welk were new Texas residents. Both had many relatives living in the same counties in Texas and Arkansas. Did they know each other as children or meet after Welk's service in the War? Perhaps their families knew each other from Tennessee before the Wilhelms had moved to Arkansas in the late 1840s?

          Mary had eight children with Welk in Texas:  

                    Addie Martha "Mattie" born 19 Oct 1867 in Bell County, 

                    William Edgar born  28 Aug 1869 in Bell County, 

                    James Arthur born 15 Oct 1872 in Granger, Williamson County, 

                    Mary Virginia "Jennie" born 26 Feb 1875 in Bell County, 

                    Grace Idena born 8 July 1877 Circleville, Williamson County, 

                    Joseph Flemon born 4 Jan 1879 Williamson County, 

                    Ollie Josephine born 30 March 1881 Williamson County, 

                    and Alice Emily born 20 April 1883 in Williamson County.

          The 1880 Federal Census records Welcome and Mary's young family living in Precinct No. 6 in rural Williamson County, Texas. Welk is working as a blacksmith. Their oldest "Mattie" is 12, and little Joseph is two years old. 

          As of this writing I do not find a "W. Berry" in the 1880 Census for Williamson County or surrounding counties. There ARE several families with the surname Berry. But none named "Barry." Knowing names and dates are often incorrect in newspapers, I look for variations. Among the many archived newspapers from that time, I've not found any mention of Mr. Berry's untimely death. I will update here when I learn more of Mr. Berry at Donahue Creek.

          Imagine Mary's horror when Welk left her five months before the birth of their last child. My heart goes out to her!

          To the best of anyone's recollection from elders now long gone, Mary last heard from Welk a few months after he had fled to Arkansas in 1883. She had the support of her parents and siblings, but to our knowledge did not remarry.

          She died June 1, 1894 at the age of 51. She is buried in the Katemcy Cemetery in Mason County, Texas near her father, William Flemon Cowan. I've long wondered how her family coped after losing Welcome. My great-grandfather, Welk's son, grew to be a stern, exacting man who was later estranged from his brothers and sisters. He was but 13 when his dad had left home.

          How did that event shape Edgar's history--and ours? 


UPDATE:  Found a similar article in a Dallas, Texas newspaper. This account has a different year for the murder:

Sources: 

--  The Galveston Daily News, Galveston, Texas, published June 2, 1893, Fri., p. 7  from The Portal to Texas History via https://texashistory.unt.edu/ 

--  Citation: Year: 1880; Census Place: Precinct 6, Williamson, Texas; Roll: 1333; Family History Film: 1255333; Page: 541A; Enumeration District: 161.

--  Steeves, Beatrice Willhelm Reiswig, 1907-1995. Willhelm Family Record & Hurley Family Record. 1973. Raw data.fdfdrf St. Helena, Napa, California, USA.  A family history and genealogy of Tobias Willhelm (1760-1834) and Daniel Hurley (1817- 1859) and their descendants

--  The Dallas Morning News (Dallas, Texas), published Sat., 27 May 1893, p. 5