Still Wrapping Up in Texas! (a.k.a. So Much Speculation!)

William Calvin Cheatham, part 15

Well, we are almost done with Texas, folks.  We now know where W. C. was, and a lot of what he was doing, between the years of 1880 and 1899.  Before that, though, there are still some questions:

First of all, where exactly was W. C. born?  If you remember, the family history says that he was born in Angelina County Texas.  The 1860 Census, which was taken when he was eight years old, says he was living in Cherokee County, which at one point had been a part of Angelina County, but was divided from it in 1846.  So really, the census records don't give a clue as to where he was born (other than to say "Texas").  His death certificate actually says "Alto, Texas," which is in Cherokee County, but of course, he did not fill out the information on the death certificate himself (not that it would necessarily have mattered, since he couldn't seem to remember what year he was actually born in!).  So, as far as our primary source data is concerned, W. C. himself might have never lived in Angelina County.   But wait!  When I first started researching W. C., I only had access to the index to the Texas county tax rolls.  But the index only shows the person's name, the county they were being assessed a tax in, and the year.  That's it.  Now that I can look at the actual rolls, though, I can see whether they were a resident and what kinds of property they actually owned.  (You know, if a person reported a horse or other livestock and not just land, then it is a good indication that he actually lived there.)  Sooooo, if we check to see which county W. C.'s father was living in at the time, that should give us a pretty good idea of where he was born.

Okay.  W. C.'s father was E. C. Cheatham.  He shows up on the tax rolls for both Angelina and Cherokee counties during the 1850's.  The first thing I have to ask myself before I go any further is, how do we know that this is our E. C. Cheatham?  Well, I did some searching and only came up with four other guys named E. C. Cheatham in Texas.  The first one can't be him, because he was born around 1859 and was married to someone named Paulina.  The second one can't be him because he was living in Collin County, TX in 1892, and we have a newspaper article telling us that our E. C. was living in Lampasas County in that year.  The third one was not only far too young, but was still living in Texas in 1910.  The fourth one I only found on the Find a Grave website, but his headstone says he died in 1873 at the age of 93, so once again, not our guy.  Add to this the fact that other Cheathams turn up on the rolls in Angelina County at the same time as E. C., who just so happen to have the same names/initials as his brothers, first cousins, and son, so I am going to say with confidence that the E. C. Cheatham on the tax rolls is W. C.'s father.

The second thing I ask myself is, in which county's rolls does he show up in 1852 or 1853?  Why both?  Well, if you recall, W. C. reported both as his birth year on multiple occasions.  I've decided that it is most likely that he was born in 1852, but I'm going to check 1853 to be safe.  So here's what we've got:

Angelina County:

E. C. appears on the tax rolls off and on between the years of 1849 and 1862.  (I'll save the details for his own post!)  

In 1852 he is shown on the resident rendered roll.  He owned no land, but had 1 horse, 4 cattle, and some miscellaneous property that included some hogs. 

In 1853 he is not on the rolls for Angelina County.

This makes me say that he was definitely living in Angelina County in 1852, because he reported livestock.

Cherokee County:

1855 is the first year that E. C. shows up on the tax rolls for Cherokee County.  He is just listed for the purpose of the poll tax, because he did not report any property at all.

Okay.  This sounds simple, right?  Well, only if we are going to accept 1852 as W. C.'s birth year.  W. C. was born in January, and E. C. Cheatham is shown on the Angelina County tax rolls with livestock in both 1851 and 1852.  So I think we can be sure that his family was there in January of 1852.  But in 1853, E. C. Cheatham is not present on either tax roll.  So if we are going to accept 1853 as W. C.'s birth year, we can't be absolutely certain where the family was living.  To complicate matters, he doesn't show up in either county in 1854, but is on the rolls for both counties in 1855!  Neither one in that year shows any property at all, so there is no clue there.  Of course, as my son pointed out, the fact that he's not on the rolls could just mean that he didn't report, because there were no unrendered rolls for those years, but knowing that doesn't really help us solve our problem, does it?   (You see, sometimes research is fun, and sometimes, not so much!)

If we are looking only at the tax rolls, I would say Angelina County is the safer bet, especially because it lines up better with the 1852 birth year I am leaning toward.  So what do we make of his death certificate that says he was born in Alto, Texas?  Well, maybe his father moved the family there permanently by the time W. C. was old enough to remember things, so that is where he remembers living as a child?  (Honestly, when I actually show you those things you are going to be pulling your hair out because it is pretty much impossible to say which of the two counties he was living in for multiple years.)  Or maybe the family was living in Angelina County, but his mother went into labor when they were in Cherokee County for some reason and couldn't make it home?  Oh!  Maybe he was living on and working land that spanned both counties, which could explain why he would report for both in the same year, but that doesn't really solve the Alto problem because that town is not on the border.  I guess there are probably a whole handful of maybes that we could come up with, but none of that helps us any!

I'm going to have to mull this over a bit, folks.  Right now I want to say I'm going with an 1852 birth date with an Angelina County location.  If anyone wants to argue otherwise, I'd love to hear your reasons before I put up the family data sheet in a few weeks!

Putting aside the whole birth date/location problem for now, the next we see W. C. is on the 1860 census, in Cherokee County, which I mentioned above.  After that, the next time we can be sure of where he was would be the end of 1878 in Taylor County.  So, where was he in the 18 years in between?  Take a look at this map:

The green and light blue are the counties in which W. C. may have been born.  The orange is Taylor County, where he spent his last twenty years in Texas.  That's a fair distance for him to just up and move from one to the other, not to mention the fact that the Texas frontier was only gradually expanding westward during his lifetime. The yellow (Anderson County), red (Robertson County), and purple (Lampasas County) are all going to come into play as we try to fill in the years when W. C. was a teenager and young adult.

Let's review what the family history has to say about this time period:

The first thing this tells us is that W. C. married Amelia Virginia Blackshear on July 2, 1871.  (Hold on a sec.  I just noticed that it says that W. C. "is your grandad Cheatham's grandfather."  That would be true for me, but I think this comment was directed to my mother's generation, which would make this a typo - W. C. Cheatham was her grandad's dad.)

Okay, back to the marriage.  If you recall, I told you all before that the marriage index available online actually says that one "W. H. Cheatham" married an " A. V. Blackshear" in Robertson County, TX (outlined in red on the map) on that date.  When I mentioned this before, I was wondering whether that was a transcription error.  I had no way of knowing, because the original record was not online, only the index.  Well, guess what?  I finally found an actual digitized copy:

Robertson County, Texas Marriage Records - Cheatham & Blackshear (transcription)

This is a typed copy of the original records, so it is better than an index.  At the very bottom of the right-hand page we see "W. H. Cheatham to Miss A. V. Blackshear," with the marriage license issued on June 20th and the marriage taking place on July 2nd (executed by one W. D. Anderson, who is not described as a "minister of the gospel" like some of the other ones.)

This document, although it is nice to have, still doesn't tell us if those initials are a transcription error or typo.  We would need the original to be sure.  Well, guess what?  I found that too:

Robertson County, Texas Marriage Records - Cheatham & Blackshear

Although we can see that there is a transcription error on the record, (the original says the license was issued on June 30th, not June 20th!), unfortunately the error is not one of initials.  This clearly says "W. H." Cheatham, not W. C. Cheatham.  So, is this our guy or not?

Well, if you look back up at the map, you can see Anderson County outlined in yellow.  This is where Amelia Virginia lived, at least until 1863, when her family falls off the records for some time.  So we have no evidence before this that either W. C. or Amelia Virginia were in Robertson County.  Several months ago I tried searching the 1870 census in that county, and didn't find them (and by searching I mean reading every surname on the 246 pages).  Trying to be thorough, I looked for a W. H. Cheatham as well, and didn't find him either.

This really isn't too surprising, though, because I have discovered that a whole lot of Texans (my husband's family was in Texas during the 1800's as well) just seem to fall off the records in the 1870 census.  I can think of a couple of reasons why this might be the case.  First, after the Civil War, people were moving around all over the place, either because their land was ravaged, their family members were killed, they lost their plantations, new lands were being opened up, disillusioned men were wanting to move to places of new opportunity, you name it.  I've found all kinds of people who were in one place in 1860, missing from the records in 1870, and somewhere entirely different in 1880.  Second, all the former slaves, who had been listed on the census slave schedules, were now reported on the regular census.  I found a newspaper article from 1890 in Abilene saying that it was census time and there was only a specific number of days the census takers were allowed to conduct the census. The city was worried that their population would be under-reported because there was no way the census takers would be able to record everyone in time (because their population was growing so fast that there were not enough census takers appointed).  Maybe there was the same problem in 1870 - the government underestimated how many census takers they would need and they ran out of time and everyone didn't get recorded.  (Which strikes me as really bizarre, but was apparently a thing!)

So, as I was saying, I didn't find W. C. or Amelia Virginia in Robertson County in the 1870 census.  So, maybe they didn't get recorded.  Or maybe they hadn't arrived there yet.  Maybe the " A. V. Blackshear" on the marriage record wasn't even Amelia Virginia!  (I know, that doesn't sound very plausible, does it?)   Or maybe it was Amelia Virginia, but she actually married some other Cheatham first.  ( My husband's great grandmother had been married to a guy who was shot and died, leaving her with three young children.  So she married his first cousin, who had the same last name.)  Of course, if this were the case, we would expect to find a W. H. Cheatham somewhere, right?

I have only been able to find three actual W. H. Cheathams in Texas in any of the records online, one of which was married in Robertson County, but not until 1908, and the other two married in Anderson County in 1883 and 1890.  (So none of those could be a first husband who died.)  And when I actually search the online family trees, I don't come up with any other ones, so maybe that's not the answer at all.

This is pretty much where I sat after finding the copy of the actual marriage record a few weeks ago -   with a marriage record that was recorded in a plausible year, but in a place that we have no evidence either person ever lived, that showed only initials, one of which was incorrect. What was I supposed to make of it?

You know what?  Just now, while pondering this predicament, it dawned on me that I now have access to tax rolls for counties all over Texas.  If W. C. was married in Robertson County, maybe I can find him there!  But wait - since W. C. would have only been 19 years old that year, he probably didn't own any property.  And I'm pretty sure men had to be 21 in order to vote back then, so he wouldn't be listed for the purpose of the poll tax, either.  So it isn't likely that I'll find him there.  (Okay, I actually just checked on the poll tax thing, and it turns out it had nothing to do with voting until after the decades we are looking at.  It was actually just a way to raise money for public schools.  It was, however, paid by men between the ages of 21 and 60, so I was right on that part!)  So, I'm thinking it will probably be a waste of time to look.  On the other hand, I probably won't be able to sleep tonight if I don't just go and check those tax rolls anyway.  Hang on while I go take a look.

Okay, it is actually now almost 24 hours later.  Scanning primary source documents is very time consuming.  (Now you know why my blog only gets a new post every two weeks!)  Lucky for you, you only had to wait like two seconds to find out if he was there - he was!  His father actually shows up in Robertson County in the year 1869, when W. C. would have been about 17 years old.  So I'm assuming that he would have moved there with his whole family.  (Now why didn't I think of that before?  And why in the world was I just going to check the year 1870 anyway?!?!)

Although he probably arrived at the same time as his father, W. C. first shows up on the tax rolls in Robertson County in 1874.  (Funny thing, though - his father drops off that year!)

W C Cheatham - Texas County Tax Rolls, Robertson County, 1874

According to the family history, W. C. would have been about 22 years old in that year. (Although, if we are going with the 1853 birth year, that would put him at 21 years old, which would explain why this was the first year he is listed!  Hmmmmm.  I had settled on 1852, but now I'm waffling again.  Which, incidentally, once again puts the birth place into question!)

Anyway, according to the family history, W. C. would have been married with two children by this time.  And, of course, you know me, now I am wondering what Robertson county was like while W. C. was living there.  I'm assuming from the steady increase of the number of names on the tax rolls, that, just like Angelina and Cherokee counties before, Robertson County was kind of on the frontier when they arrived.   Here's a bit of info from the Texas State Historical Association website:

Despite the havoc wrought by the war and Reconstruction, the county began to recover by the late 1860s, in large part due to a rapid increase in population. Between the 1860 and 1870 the number of inhabitants doubled, increasing from 4,997 to 9,990, and in the following decade it more than doubled again, rising to 22,383 in 1880. One reason for the rapid increase in population was a steady influx of white farmers from the states of the Old South, attracted to the county by its abundance of rich and relatively inexpensive land. But even more significant for the rapid growth was a steady rise in the number of black residents. Because of shortage of labor that followed the Civil War, Brazos valley farmers traveled to parts of the Old South to recruit black farm hands, who arrived in large numbers over the next decade and a half. As a result by the 1880s blacks accounted for a majority of the population (53 percent), a position they would continue to occupy until the turn of the century.

Remember when I said that W. C.'s father was on the Robertson County tax rolls beginning in 1869, which meant that W. C. should have been there as well?  That made me think that maybe I had just missed them when looking through the census.  So you know what I did?  Yep.  I looked through all 246 pages again.  You know what I found?  A big fat mess is what.  The census taker was either really lazy or had really bad handwriting, or both.  It was terribly hard to read, and a whole lot of names were spelled wrong.  Now, what I didn't mention before, is that I found some other Cheatham relatives on the tax rolls for Robertson County.  Some other Cheathams that I had no idea about the first time I looked through the census.  So, having those names (initials, actually - those Cheatham men really loved their initials!) in the back of my mind, this time while searching the census records something jumped out at me:

According to the family trees that are online, F. M. "Cheetum" (or "Chatwin" as the transcriber deciphered it) was E. C.'s first cousin, Francis Marion Cheatham.  Once I noticed that, I found this further down on the page:

Here we see one W C Cheetum, age 22, born in Tennessee.  The age is about four years off for our W. C., who was not born in Tennessee, but his father and the older Cheathams living near him were.  There is a W. J. Cheatham (at least that's what it looks like!) in the tax rolls for Robertson County starting in 1873, but I didn't find a W. J. on any of the trees with W. C.'s closer relatives.  I found a marriage record for a W. J Cheatham who married a Mary in Robertson County in 1870, but not until after the census was taken and this shows a child already born.  Plus, his age would also be off by three years and the birthplace wrong as well.

So who is this?!!!  Maybe it actually is our W. C. who lied about his age and married someone else before he married Amelia Virginia.  Maybe his wife and daughter died, and then he married again.  (If that was the case, it would make his story even more tragic!)  Maybe he had been lying about his age for some time, maybe to join up in the Confederate army, or maybe because he was too young to get married, and that is why, later on, he couldn't remember what year he was actually born in.   Of course, if he was lying about his age here, you would think that he would have reported himself for the tax rolls, right?  So maybe this is actually just another cousin who never shows up in any documents or the online family trees.  (Blah.  I really, really hate maybes.)

So, where does this leave us (besides being more confused than ever)?  Right back where we started, I guess, with the question about the wonky marriage record.  I'm guessing that, because the date was in our family history, it must have come from the family Bible, because there was no internet back when my grandmother wrote it, so where was she going to come across that information?  And since the Bible is said to have belonged to W. C.'s mother, (who it seems was probably living in the same county as he was when he married), she probably wrote it in herself.  So I guess I'm back to the marriage record really being for W. C. and Amelia Virginia, but maybe the Robertson County Clerk was just hard of hearing!

By the way, here is a photo of Amelia Virginia that I've had since way before I even decided to start this blog and just forgot to put up:

Amelia Virginia Blackshear

W. C. shows up in the tax rolls again in 1875:

W C Cheatham - Texas County Tax Rolls, Robertson County, 1875

There he is, second from the bottom, sandwiched right between his father and F. M. Cheatham.  And he is still reporting only two horses.

So, the next year would be 1876, and I have to tell you, I was getting pretty excited while searching this database, because I was like, I am finally going to solve the mystery of where W. C.'s mother lived when she died!  You know, because if she was there in 1875, it's likely she was still there in 1876.  And if W. C. was not, that would correlate nicely with the family story that he was away at her funeral when his children died.  Unfortunately, the online tax rolls for Robertson County are missing the years 1876 - 1881.   Uuuuggghhhh!!  Of course it would be missing!  To make matters worse, A - L of 1882 are pretty much gone (there are like, three fragmentary pages), and neither E. C. nor W. C. is listed on the rolls for 1883.

Well, that all felt like a short-lived victory. . . Although . . .  it dawned on me just now that if I could find E. C. on the 1880 Census for Robertson County it would at least give me a stepping stone in the middle of the missing records, making it more likely that he had been there in 1876.  And you know me, I decided I had better go through the census page by page in case his name was spelled wrong and that's why the search tools weren't finding him.  Guess how many pages I had to read through this time?  470.  Yes.  470.  (That's three hours of my life that I will never get back.  So much for publishing this some day soon!)  I found F. M. Cheatham and some young men who most likely are his sons, even though they are not listed on his online family tree, but of course I didn't find E. C.  He was probably on the 15 pages that were missing from one of the sections (highly likely, because he was on the tax rolls for precinct 4, and the missing pages were from a town that I saw online was in precinct 4).  You know, I think I mentioned earlier that I am pretty sure that I am living proof that Murphy's Law is a real thing.  This is just more evidence proving my point!

Anyway, we now have a gap of five years in which we are not sure where W. C. was (assuming we take his word that he was in Buffalo gap by 1878, since he doesn't show up in the Taylor County tax rolls until 1880).  Now, I would like to admit that, in this post, I actually shared information out of the order in which I originally found it (because things seemed to make way more sense that way).   I actually had some clues weeks and weeks ago about where he was during those years:

• W. C.'s son, A. D. Cheatham, reported on his draft registration card that he was born in 1877 in Lampasas County, Texas, not Taylor County like the family history says.

• We have a newspaper article saying that W. C.'s father was visiting him from Lampasas.

At this point I was pretty sure that W. C. might have been in Lampasas before moving to Buffalo Gap.  So I did a newspaper search in that county and I found this article:

The Lampasas Leader
(Lampasas, Lampasas County, TX)
22 Sep 1900

This says that one Wm. C. Cheatham was running for the office of tax assessor some time in the 1870's in Lampasas.  He was running on a Greenback ticket, which was a relatively short-lived political party based on a platform of going off the gold/silver standard and just printing tons of paper money which would help everyone who had gotten themselves into debt (hence a whole lot of farmers).

Here is an example of a Greenback ticket:

Considering everything I've learned about W. C. so far, and considering the scarcity of other W. C. Cheathams in Texas at the time, and considering the two clues above that indicate he was actually in Lampasas in the 1870's, I figured it was highly likely that this was the William Calvin Cheatham from our own family.

Of course, I didn't really have any proof of this.  Just a handful of circumstantial evidence.  But then, after I finished downloading the Taylor County tax rolls, I had another V8 moment:  Lampasas would probably have tax rolls, too!  (Sometimes I amaze myself at how long it takes me to figure this stuff out!)

If you take a quick peak at the map up above, you will see that Lampasas County is about halfway between Robertson and Taylor counties.  Which was encouraging, because it fits nicely with W. C.'s trend of moving westward.

Here's what I found:

The 1875 and 1876 tax rolls were digitized together.  I didn't find him in the section I believe was 1875 (which is actually what we would expect, since he was in the Robertson County rolls that year).  I also didn't find him in the section for 1876, but the records were kind of a mess, with some partially missing pages.  The rolls for that year were dated June, so it is possible that, even if W. C. wasn't on one of those missing pages, he could have moved there well before his first child died in November (you know, because of the family story about them dying while he was away at his mother's funeral).

Actually, let's talk about that whole story for a minute, shall we?  Let's assume for a moment that W. C. and his family did live in Lampasas County by the end of 1876.  And let's assume that his father and mother were still in Robertson County.  How far would he have had to travel in order to get there for his mother's funeral?  Well, using modern roads, it is about 120 miles from the town of Lampasas (at the bottom center of the county) to the town of Headsville, where I think W. C.'s father may have lived.  Now, I did a bit of research and, realistically, a man on horseback, riding the same horse the entire trip, would travel about 24 miles per day on average for a several day trip.  So that would be five days.  Assuming 5 days there, 5 days back, and maybe a week in between, we are looking at W. C. being gone for about 15 days.  I checked the dates on the family data sheet for the deaths of W. C.'s first three children, and they actually span a period of 6 weeks.  Which doesn't add up.

 I would also like to point out the fact that, since embalming wasn't a thing people did back then, a person would be buried within a day or two - maybe a couple more if it was winter - of their death, which means that W. C. couldn't have technically arrived in time to attend his mother's funeral, since she would probably have been already buried by the time he even got the news of her death.  Maybe he got word that she was very ill, and he went home to see her before she died, but she hung on longer than expected and he ended up being gone for much longer than he thought he would be.  Or maybe all three children didn't actually die while he was away.

While I'm poking holes in the heretofore recognized version of events, I would also like to point out something I noticed just last night.  In the 1900 census, E. C. Cheatham reported that he was married for 40 years.  The family history shows that he was married December 29, 1847.  I'm assuming that this date came directly from the family Bible (which belonged to his wife), because I haven't found an actual marriage record anywhere online.  If E. C. and Delila had actually been married for 40 years, they would have been married until 1887, not 1876, which was when W. C.'s children died.  Our version of events is starting to look a bit like Swiss cheese, isn't it?

You know, when I started this project, I thought I was just going to find some nifty primary source materials that would answer my questions and fill in the unknowns.  Never in a million years did I think that I would come up with information that not only didn't corroborate, but actually contradicted, the family story!

I have to remind myself, though, that the story was already at least third-hand information when I read it, so I shouldn't be too surprised if it isn't completely accurate.  (As much as it pains me to admit it - I mean, family stories feel kind of sacred, don't they?)

(Sigh!)  Okay, back to the tax rolls.

In 1877, we actually do find W. C. on the Lampasas County tax rolls!!  (Yay! Research is fun again!)

W. C. Cheatham, Lampasas County Tax Rolls, 1877 pg. 1

W. C. Cheatham, Lampasas County Tax Rolls, 1877 pg. 2

There he is, down on line 18.  He didn't report having any land, but he did report 1 carriage/buggy/wagon, 2 horses/mules, and 5 head of cattle.   Nothing too interesting.  Except for the fact that this confirms that A. D. Cheatham actually was born in Lampasas County, not in Buffalo Gap.

Here is a little snippet about Lampasas County, taken from the book Images of America: Lampasas County by The Lampasas County Museum Foundation, Inc.:

I also read that the population in Lampasas County increased nearly fourfold between 1870 and 1880, yet in 1880, according to the census records, its population was still only about a quarter of that in Robertson County.  So it seems that, in his adult years, W. C. moved from smaller, to smaller, to yet smaller towns until he ended up in Duncan.


W. C. is on the rolls there again the next year:

W. C. Cheatham, Lampasas County Tax Rolls, 1878 pg. 1

W. C. Cheatham, Lampasas County Tax Rolls, 1878 pg. 2

We can see his name right in the middle of the page.  He is not reporting any land again, and not even a horse (?!), but he is reporting a dog, which was a category added by the assessor for the purpose of assessing a dog tax.  So, as confusing as this lack of property is, at least I now have a new image of W. C. in  my head - one that includes a dog.  And isn't that half the point of doing this research anyway - to get a better picture of things?

Now, we would expect this to be the last year that W. C. is listed on the rolls for Lampasas County, since by his own testimony he was in Buffalo Gap by the end of 1878.  But look here:

W. C. Cheatham, Lampasas County Tax Rolls, 1879 pg. 1

W. C. Cheatham, Lampasas County Tax Rolls, 1879 pg. 2

Did I say his lack of property was confusing for the previous year?  Well now the fact that he has property is confusing!   W. C. was supposed to have been in Taylor County the year before this, but here he is reporting (it's the rendered roll) that not only does he live in Lampasas County (it's also the resident roll), but that he also owns 100 acres of land, 5 horses/mules, 7 head of cattle, 8 hogs, and $19 worth of miscellaneous property!  I wonder if he was just fudging things a bit in that newspaper article dated the 28 November 1890 in which he claimed that he had been a resident of Taylor County for 12 years. (Because that sounded better than 11?)   Or, you know, maybe I have this all wrong - did they report their land at the end of the previous year for the following year's taxes?

Well, I looked it up! (You knew I would, didn't you?)  In the present day, residents of Texas have between January and April to report all property owned on January 1st of that year.  The appraiser's rolls are finished and sent to the tax collector between the end of July and the 1st of October.  That would explain why the tax rolls we are looking at were mostly dated July through September, with a few Junes, Novembers, and even a December thrown in there.  Assuming things were the same way back in the day,  I should be viewing all of those as being a picture of what they owned in the first month of the year, and where they lived in the first quarter of the year, with them probably being able to get away with not reporting at all if they were no longer a resident before the April deadline.

Does that mean any of my reasoning done so far needs to change?  Probably very likely!  Yikes - I should have looked that up in the first place!  Okay, I did a cursory glance back at just this post and this is what I've got:

W. C. could have arrived in Lampasas County early on in 1876 and still not show up on the tax rolls.  If he already had cattle by January 1st of 1877, it is more than likely that he was already living there by November of the previous year.  So all that worrying about whether or not he lived there when his mother and children died was all for nothing!  (Ha!  Can you believe that?  I think I just learned a valuable lesson about not checking out how things work before I make assumptions.  But, yay!  The family story is saved!)

Also, if W. C. was reporting himself on the tax rolls for the first time in 1874, his birthday was after the 1st of January, so that actually points to an 1852 birth date, right?  (But guess what I somehow barely noticed when I went back to confirm his birth date?  The family data sheet - which presumably got its information from the family Bible = W. C.'s mother's very own hand, says January 17, but his death certificate says January 19!  Not fun, folks, not fun at all.)

Anyway,  I guess that W. C. could have reported his property in Lampasas County in the first month or two of 1879 and then got the bright idea to head out to the newest boomtown.  If so, he probably figured that if he had been there for say, eleven years and nine months by the end of 1890, it was close enough to twelve and he might as well round up when giving his credentials!

1879 was the last year W. C. is shown on the Lampasas County tax rolls.  Assuming that all of the rolls reflect resident and property status at the beginning of the year, then when we consider that W. C. shows up on the 1880 rolls for Taylor County, that would tell us that he actually moved there some time in the second half of 1879 (because what are the chances that he rolled into town on January 1st with his lone horse pulling two carriages, buggies, or wagons?)

I'm going to have to go back and double check all of my previous assumptions based on the tax rolls at some point before I finish up with W. C.  Which is hopefully going to be within the next month or so.  (I have two more posts with new information, and then a final summary post.)

Before we wrap things up here, though, I want to share a couple of photos that my mom just sent me yesterday (perfect timing - yay for moms!):

William Calvin and Mary (Brookreson) Cheatham

I love this photo because it shows us a younger W. C.  (Is it just me, or can we see a bit more of family resemblance in this one?)

I am guessing that this is W. C. and Mary's wedding photo, since it is dated 1887, which is the year they were married.  They probably got married at the minister's house (The marriage certificate was signed by Alpha Young, M. G. - which probably stands for minister of the gospel because he is listed on the census as a minister - on Tuesday the 18th in Abilene.)  I noticed from the marriage announcements in the newspaper that the majority of couples did not get married in the church.  The marriage usually occurred at somebody's house, so W. C. and Mary probably went over to the portrait studio for a photo right after they were wed.  W. C. would have been about 35 years old.

William Calvin Cheatham Family, Buffalo Gap, 1890's

I also love this photo, because it shows where they lived, which really helps round out the story in my mind (And look - the dog!)  This photo came to me with a labeled version listing the family members from left to right:  Shelton, El, Dee, Unknown, Mary, William.

So let's talk about the date and place for a moment.  I've labeled this as being in Buffalo Gap during the 1890's for three reasons:  First, in my earlier post about Abilene (here), I put up a view of the city from 1884.  It is pretty much flat for as far as the eye can see, and the houses are relatively close together.  This doesn't look anything like that.  Second, this looks like a farmhouse, not a house you would find in town.  The third reason requires a somewhat lengthy explanation:

Check out the height difference between Dee and his father - W. C. was 5' 11" and A. D. was 6' by the time he was grown.

Remember this picture?

That's Dee in the back row, towering over everyone else (even his brother Elmer).  He would have been about 21 years old, so fully grown.  I did some more research into boys' clothing trends and am pretty sure that this photo was taken in 1897 or 1898 (little boys generally were not dressed in patterned shirts after the age of six).   In the homestead photo above, Dee is about halfway between the height of his stepmother (she's listed as  5'2" or 5'3" on the voter registrations) and father, so probably a good six inches shorter, which means he hadn't had his growth spurt.  So, in the homestead photo, it's very unlikely that he was older that 17 (especially because he was not wearing a vest, and a man wasn't considered fully dressed without one back then) and could have been as young as 14 (boys transitioned into long pants around that age).  So, actually, he had to be older than 14, because his two brothers were already wearing long pants.  Which makes me think that the youngest boy can't possibly be Shelton, who was still in short pants in the photo where Dee is grown!  That means the boys would actually be Elmer, Calvin Malone, and Dee.  (Calvin Malone didn't die until 1897!)

The family lived in Buffalo Gap between 1879 and 1889, and then again between 1895 and 1899.  If the photo was indeed taken there, it would have to have been during the latter period, even though those dates are cutting it close as far as Dee is concerned.  Hmmmm.  Let's consider this, then:  the photo was taken while the family actually lived in Abilene, in which case, it is not actually a picture of their own house.  It could be the house of the other woman standing in the picture (maybe one of Mary's sisters), in which case, again, one of the boys could actually be her son, although the woman doesn't have long skirts, so she is probably actually still a teenager, so, actually, probably not.  (The one thing I am certain of, though, is that the boy on the left can not be Shelton!)  Well, now I'm a little bummed - I feel like I totally understand the saying 'ignorance is bliss' right now.  Is there a saying about thinking too much being the cause of problems?  If not, there should be!  But....it's still a great picture and even if it isn't their own house, their's was probably pretty similar when they lived in Buffalo Gap.

Okay.  I think that's it for today!  My next post is going to take us back to Duncan, because I got some more newspaper articles from the state archives.

By the way, I added my email link on the bottom left-hand side of this blog, so if anyone wants to contact me with comments, questions, or suggestions, or just wants to throw cool stuff my way (like maybe a higher quality copy of that homestead photo or any taken in Duncan or Laveen?), I'd love to hear from you!

                                                                                                                                            - Therese