Where to Begin? (Getting to the Good Stuff)

William Calvin Cheatham, part 1

So, where to begin?  Well, the logical place would be with my grandfather, Armon D. Cheatham, Jr., which I am labeling as Generation 1.  But honestly, I don’t really have a whole lot for him right now.  I have a bit more for his father, but his grandfather is who I have been researching lately, so that's who I am going to post about first.

When I started with my research, I didn’t have too much for him.  No photos, no draft registration cards, not much of anything.  Then I found voter registration lists.  My mom sent me a couple of photos.  I felt like I knew him a little better, but the census information was a little crazy (I’ll explain later) so I was still feeling sort of confused.  And then, I hit the treasure trove of information:  old newspaper articles.   I don’t know if it is luck that he lived in the right place or the right time (or a combination of both), but I somehow stumbled upon the digitized catalogue of the Arizona State Archives, which gave me articles from the time he lived in this state.  That led me to the National Archives and its collection of historic newspapers from New Mexico.  So I felt like I was getting a pretty good picture of him.  And then, somehow, I came across the Portal to Texas History and struck it rich as far as information goes.  So now I feel like I really know him, but as you’ll see, the craziness presented by the census records was only the tip of the iceberg!

I’d like to give you all fair warning at this point:  I have somehow miraculously managed to gather so many primary source documents for this ancestor that, by beginning this process with him, you will undoubtedly be disappointed with everyone who comes afterward (I tried the whole newspaper search for his father and came up pretty much empty-handed).    Anyway, here’s the reason you came to this site in the first place (not to hear me blab about research and stuff), the first ancestor we are going to explore – W. C. Cheatham.

William Calvin Cheatham

I have so much information for W. C. Cheatham that I had a hard time deciding the best way to present it all.  I think I’ve come up with a plan, but if I don’t like how it turns out, I’ll change it up for the next family member.  Which means, of course, for the sake of consistency, I might have to redo this part at some point.  I have decided to begin with the excerpts from my grandmother’s family history book that pertain to him and go from there.  

So here are excerpts from pages 6 - 17 (the typed version).

I would like to stop for a moment and say that I love the way my grandmother wrote this like a story.  It really has a way of making the people and events come alive. If you have read your own copy of the family history recently, you will notice that I had to cut and paste these parts together to remove sections about other branches of the family.  Also, I removed some great narrative portions about other Cheatham family members, since I plan on talking about those stories more when I present those ancestors.

 Okay.  Back to W. C.  There is sooooo much information here.  Lets summarize what we do know:

William Calvin Cheatham was born in Angelina County, Texas in 1852, to Edmond C. and Delilah Springfield Cheatham.

He married Amelia Virginia Blackshear on July 2, 1871.

In 1877, he had three children and was living in Bufflo Gap, Taylor County, Texas.  His wife was pregnant when he went to his mother's funeral and the first three children died. (How sad!)

W. C. and Amelia had four more children before she died (sometime during 1885).  Two of these children also died. (Even sadder!)

W. C. remarried a Mary Brookerson, and had four more children, one of whom died as an infant.  (Holy cow!  Poor W. C.!)

By 1900, W. C. had left Texas, and was living in Gray, Lincoln County, New Mexico.  His father was living with him.

W. C. and his family moved to Duncan, Arizona sometime between 1900 and 1905.

W. C. moved from Duncan to the Phoenix metro area in either 1917 or 1918, and he lived in Scottsdale before moving to Laveen.

At some point before 1922, W. C. bought Laveen Store in partnership with his two sons.

By 1922, W. C. had 40 acres (presumably for farming) and had built two wood frame, two bedroom houses (this last bit becomes relevant soon!), where he lived with his wife, Mary.

That's a lot of specific details that can be put onto one of those nifty genealogical data sheets, but I didn't feel like I really had a sense of who he was at this point.  All I really knew about William Calvin Cheatham is that he liked to be called W. C., and that he grew up and raised a family in Texas before coming to Arizona by way of New Mexico.  Once in Arizona, he owned a store and farmed.

So, way back a few years ago when I started doing genealogical research for my husband's family, I discovered that you can get some pretty interesting information off of Census records.  So that is where I started with W. C.  In my next post we'll see what they have to say about him.

                                                                                                                                                - Therese