Okay. Today we are going to finally finish up with W. C. Cheatham. (For real this time!)
I've actually come across quite a few new documents, even since my last post, so if I stuff it all into this one, it is going to be loooooong. But I promised that this would be it, and "part 20" is a nice round number to stop on, so I'm going to cram it all in here anyway.
I have so much information and so many different ideas about how to proceed swirling around in my head right now that I'm not even sure what this is going to look like by the time I'm done. I had originally intended to just throw up a finalized timeline and direct you all to the W. C. Cheatham page where you can view/download all of the documents at once, but over the past couple of months I've run across random bits of stuff that would have gone into other posts had I had them at the time, but since I didn't, that means I have to share them now or not at all. Of course, I don't really consider 'not at all' to be an option, so this might be a bit of a mess. Just warning you.
I think I am going to start with the timeline, and add in the new stuff where it seems to fit chronologically. (Funny thing, I thought the timeline was finished, and I saved it as a pdf, and then day before yesterday I discovered something new, and thank goodness I didn't fix the timeline and re-save it as a pdf yet, because just five minutes ago I discovered something else new! This is a never-ending hobby! Maybe I'll actually have time someday to stick all of this information on my Ancestry tree!)
Anyway, let's talk about the timeline a bit. I thought it was going to be a bit more cut and dry by the time I was finished, but it's not. It seems the more things I discovered that could be added to the timeline, the more I just traded one unknown for another. So there are going to have to be some "circa" and "before" and "at least by" phrases attached. (Sigh.) Oh well, what can you do?
W. C.'s timeline has been constructed from all of the documents I've collected: census records, tax rolls, voter registrations, newspaper articles, property deeds, death certificates, our family history, miscellaneous publications, and other documents. I would like to remind you that, pretty much all of the sources have the potential for error (whether intentional or by mistake), but in my experience, some are more reliable than others. I'd like to comment on two specific types for just a moment . . .
Other family members' documents, and family histories. Two types of documents that can both give us valuable information and lead us remarkably astray.
Let's tackle the other family members' documents first. I just wanted to throw out there that, oh, about four weeks ago, well into my research of W. C., it somehow dawned on me that if I had looked at his children's documents to see what was recorded as their birthplaces, that could really help me out with the timeline. (Which is really pretty ironic, seeing as how the whole way I knew to go looking for the family in Lampasas, Texas was because of his son A. D.'s draft registration card!) Of course, as we discussed before, sometimes documents like death certificates aren't entirely accurate, but in this case, assuming we are going to trust them, they can help us narrow down the family's move from Buffalo Gap to Abilene. I'll come back to this in a minute.
Now, about the family history. . . that's a tricky one, because we don't know exactly where all of the information came from. Of course, the actual stories have been passed down by word of mouth, and they are sometimes reliable, but sometimes not so much. Take, for example, the story of W. C. moving from Duncan to Phoenix, to Laveen, as told by his various grandchildren:
This is from the family history, and says that around 1917 or 1918 W. C. moved from Duncan to Scottsdale and then to Laveen.
This is from the Laveen Centennial History, and was told to the editor by someone in the family. It says that W. C. was living in Phoenix in 1914, at 16th St. and Henshaw (which, by the way, is now Buckeye Road).
This is from a different section of the Laveen Centennial History, and says that W. C. went from Texas, to Duncan, to Phoenix, to Scottsdale, ending up in Laveen in 1918.
These two clips were from another section of the Laveen Centennial History. They say that W. C. moved from the area of Abilene, Texas to New Mexico to Duncan, ending up near 16th Street and the Salt River around 1912.
Each of these versions offers some truths and some untruths (and even some almost truths). W. C. did move from Texas to Duncan, by way of New Mexico, and then to Phoenix in 1912, where he did own land very close to 16th St. and Buckeye. He did move next to Scottsdale, ending up in Laveen around the turn of 1918/1919. He did not leave Duncan in 1917 or 1918, he was not the clerk of the Laveen school board when he first moved there, and he did not live in "Capstead" (although that is pretty close to Capitan, which I doubt most people have ever heard of). Also, the last version makes no mention of him as co-owner of the Laveen store, but implies that he was a part of Dee's dairy operation, which is also not correct. So, where does that leave us? I guess with a bunch of fascinating stories and somewhat accurate information. I suppose, from a fact-gathering viewpoint, we should probably rely on primary source documents first, and fall back on the oral histories to guide our research and fill in the blanks with things that are probably or just maybe true.
But what about what the family history has to say regarding dates and places and even names? Some of the information on the family data sheets contained in the history came from family Bible pages - I now know that for sure. In my mind, those are very reliable sources. But other pieces of information most likely came from gedcom files. And the problem with that is that anyone can create one and put anything they want in it. And then people take it as being perfectly reliable. Even though it is often terribly NOT. Here is an example:
(Ignore that part that is circled - this document came to me that way.) This is a gedcom page that someone researching our family got from someone else researching our family. It was posted online in 2005. I didn't scan the second page of this, but it showed that source #3, held at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was an ancestral file. Ancestral files are created from pedigree charts, family data sheets, and gedcom files. Which means from a bunch of stuff that like a million people submitted. Which at least half of those people copied from other people. Which is how we come up with people thinking that W. C. and his daughter Delila were both born in Alto Springs, Robertson Co., Texas. Even though neither one of them was born in Robertson County. And even though Alto Springs is in Falls County, not Robertson County. (And Falls County was not created out of Robertson County, either.) Incidentally, I was just on Ancestry.com yesterday, and multiple people are still using this information on their trees!
So, gedcom information get passed around and copied and everyone thinks it must be good information because, hey, people know the information about their own families, right?
I think we've learned by now that people know bits and pieces of information about their own families.
If we had created a gedcom file for W. C. and his children before we had access to all of the data that is now available online, it would have looked at least somewhat different. (For example, the data sheet for A. D. Cheatham in the back of our family history clearly states that he was born in Buffalo Gap, which is not true.)
Oh, and since I'm picking apart sources, I've spent a lot of time in the past month clipping newspaper articles (which is why you've had to wait so long for this post), and let me tell you something about obituaries! Those things are written by the same people who fill out the death certificates and tell the oral histories. People like me, and you, and everybody else who is giving at least second-hand information (because nobody is filling out their own death certificate). I'm not even going to go into the (probable) errors that I found in the ones from our family. Instead, let's take a look at what the obituaries might tell us that would be relevant to setting a timeline for W. C.
W. C. - His obituary is pretty unhelpful, other than telling us he was 74 years old. This would give us an 1852 birth year.
A. D. - His obituary is completely unhelpful, because he didn't leave Duncan at the same time as the rest of his family, and there is no guarantee that he arrived there at the same time either, since he had already been out on his own while the rest of the family lived in Capitan. (Although it does say that he was a native of Lampasas, which would have led me on the same hunt as his draft card, assuming I didn't just dismiss that as a crazy mistake.)
Elmer - His obituary says that he died in January 1957 at the age of 72, and that he was born in Buffalo Gap. That would mean that the family lived there in August of 1884.
Shelton - His obituary says that he died in January of 1954 at the age of 66, and that he was born in Abilene. That means that the family would have been living in Abilene by November of 1887. The obituary also says he came to Arizona "50 years ago," which would be 1903/1904 (depending on how they did the math, since he died in January).
Lila - Her obituary just says that that she died in 1976 at the age of 87 years, and that she "moved here 64 years ago," which would have been 1912.
Leonard - I couldn't find an obituary for Leonard.
Most of this information we have been able to discover by using newspaper articles, but if those had not been available, these would have actually been quite helpful (but also misleading) in sketching out a rough timeline.
There are actually even other documents belonging to family members that can be helpful as well. In this case, the death certificates of his children didn't tell me much, but I found a couple of birth certificates for Lila's children, which name her birthplace as Abilene. Which means the family should have been already living there in February of 1889, which is one month earlier than we had evidence for. And Leonard's draft registration says that he was also born in Abilene, which means the family would have still been there in 1891.
If I try to reach back into my brain and remember all of the information that has been packed in there over the past several months, I think the only bit that might not match up with what we have discovered by now is that the family lived in Abilene by the end of 1887. I'm pretty sure that the family didn't actually move into town until 1889 (remember, W. C. was keeping the poor farm in 1888). So this could be another case of remembering where you lived when you were a little kid, not realizing that you were actually born elsewhere.
Which brings us back to W. C. and his unresolved birth location. The tax rolls have me leaning toward the Angelina County location listed on the data sheet in our family history, but the fact that his death certificate says Alto (Cherokee County) keeps me from completely accepting that. So I think this is one place where, for now, I am just going to have to put an "or."
Funny thing about W. C.'s birth information, though - I noticed that the family history lists his birth date as January 17th, but his death certificate lists it as January 19th. I was wondering what might have caused that little problem. Well, look at this:
Yes, that is an actual copy of an actual page from Delila (Springfield) Cheatham's family Bible. (Woohoo!) A grandaughter of Shelton Cheatham sent this my way (Thank you!) - her father, Roy, had copied pages from it way back when he was doing genealogy research himself.
You have no idea how excited I was to get this. (Okay, maybe you have some idea.)
Let's step back from W. C. for a moment and just talk about this as a source. We know that the Bible was originally owned by W. C.'s mother, and was passed to him. This means that the original entries would have been written by Delila (Springfield) Cheatham, and maybe also the ones for W. C.'s first three children too, and then the dates for the children who were born after Delila died would have been written by W.C.'s first wife, Amelia Virginia (Blackshear) Cheatham, and then the later entries would have been written by his second wife, Mary (Brookreson) Cheatham. If I had the whole Bible (or pages from it) I'm pretty sure that we would see three different handwritings. I'm guessing that this page was written by Delila, for a couple of reasons: the entries are for the older generations of the family, and the handwriting and grammar are not the greatest. Delila is the most likely of the three women to have been under-educated.
Here is the family data sheet that Roy Cheatham put together:
If you look carefully at the bottom, you can just make out that he has written that Amelia Virginia and Mary Brookreson were the two sources, and I'm assuming this is because they were the ones writing the information in the family Bible. (Except he left out Delila (Springfield), who I'm convinced filled out the page above.) I am going to believe, then, that all of the names and dates from W. C.'s father down to his children (excluding some death dates) came from the family Bible and are thus first-hand information, making them accurate. (I would love to see the rest of the record pages from that Bible!)
Anyway, getting back to W. C. and his birthday . . . look back at the Bible page. Click on it and enlarge it. Is that a 17 or a 19? Hmmmm. Those darned fountain pens! When enlarged even further, it looks more likely to be a nine than a seven, and since W. C. was going with the 19th as his birth date later in life, I'm going to accept that. Why in the world he couldn't get his birth year straight, though, when it was written down plain as day in a Bible in his possession is beyond me.
(And here is just something funny that I noticed and thought I'd share: in the bottom left box, after the birth entry for Delila, someone had started writing the information for E. C. again. It is very clearly in a different handwriting - maybe a young W. C. got hold of the Bible and decided to practice his handwriting!)
Anyway . . . . Talking about sources took forever, but I say all this so that when you look at the timeline (and my new family data sheet) you will know that a lot of effort was put into collecting, interpreting, and cross-referencing sources to try to get the most accurate information possible, and you will understand why my version might not match some of the information that is floating around on the internet.
Alright then. The timeline.
You can find this timeline in its complete form, and without all of the extra comments and documents thrown in around it, on W. C.'s page as a part of his family data sheet. You know, the brand new, handy-dandy data sheet that I devised that shows all of the sources attached to the corresponding information. You know, for the purpose of being able to determine how reliable that piece of information is. (Have you noticed that that's a big deal to me?)
If you go to W. C.'s page (you can find it under "Cheatham" in the left sidebar), you'll notice that I've put an "updated on" date near the top of the page. I'll change that date every time I add something new that I've found or change information on the data sheet.
William
Calvin Cheatham (1852-1926)
Timeline
(original version)
1852
19 Jan
|
Birth - Angelina County or Cherokee County, TX
|
1853-1863
|
Residence
– Angelina County, TX and/or Cherokee County, TX
|
1864-1867
|
Residence
– Cherokee County, TX
|
1868-c. 1876
|
Residence
– Robertson County, TX
|
2 Jul 1871
|
Marriage
to Amelia Virginia Blackshear
|
29 Mar 1872
|
Birth of
first son, Willie P.
|
19 Jul 1873
|
Birth of
daughter, Laura Belle
|
19 Aug 1875
|
Birth of
daughter Mary Frances
|
1876-1879
|
Residence
– Lampasas County, TX
|
Nov-Dec 1876
|
Death of
first three children
|
12 Sep 1877
|
Birth of
son, Armon Deconda
|
1879-1899
|
Residence
– Taylor County, TX
|
1879-1889
|
Residence
– Buffalo Gap, TX
|
8 Jun 1879
|
Birth of
daughter, Erences Leona (location not definite)
|
However, I also discovered that there are deed records for Lampasas County available online, and I managed to find some interesting stuff that clarified some timeline events:
This shows four deeds:
W. C. purchasing/receiving land - Mar 1878 (filed Jul 1880)
W. C. purchasing/receiving land - Nov 1879 (filed Mar 1880)
W. C. selling/granting land - Nov 1879 (filed Jul 1880)
W. C. losing land in a tax sale - Jun 1880 (filed June 1880)
So, we already knew that W. C. was in Lampasas County before 1878, but we assumed he moved to Taylor County some time before the beginning of 1880, because the tax rolls show what he owned property in that county on January 1. I'm not quite sure what to make of the filing dates, then. For land W. C. sold, the purchaser would probably be the one filing the deed, but for the land he bought, it is a bit weird that those two weren't filed until well into 1880.
Looking at the actual deeds can shed a bit of light on the situation:
| W C Cheatham Lampasas County Deed Records - 1878 (from Singleton) pg1 |
W C Cheatham Lampasas County Deed Records - 1878 (from Singleton) pg2 |
W C Cheatham Lampasas County Deed Records - 1879 (to Frierson) pg1 |
| W C Cheatham Lampasas County Deed Records - 1879 (to Frierson) pg2 |
W C Cheatham Lampasas County Deed Records - 1879 (Note from Frierson) |
W C Cheatham Lampasas County Deed Records - 1880 (Tax Sale) |
My guess is that W. C. never filed the original deed when he purchased the land, but then handed it over to Mr. Frierson when he sold the land, and Mr. Frierson filed both deeds later, when he himself decided to do something with the land. I'm also guessing that, when he decided to move away and knew that he wouldn't be around on 1 April 1880, W. C. signed the promissory note over to somebody else to whom he owed money.
I think that is a plausible explanation that fits with the timeline I had already constructed (W. C. was on the 1880 census in Taylor County before three of these were filed). As for the final deed, that is for a tax sale, because W. C. did not pay the $2.50 he owed before skipping town. (I wonder if poor Mr. Frierson was on the hook for the taxes, since W. C. no longer owned the land when the tax sale was held. Maybe that's what prompted him to finally file the deed!)
So what does this do for our timeline? Well, we now know that W. C. was still in Lampasas County on the 29th of November, 1879, because the deed says that he and his wife appeared in person. So, remember how I said he wouldn't have just rolled into town on the first of January with one horse pulling two carriages/wagons? Well it looks like he came pretty darn close.
But guess what? There are also court records online for Lampasas County, and I found W. C.'s name on the index. I looked up the case record, which was dated the 10th of May 1880. Surprise, surprise, it involved the exact same piece of land! (Here it is if you want to read it.)
| Lampasas County Civil Court 1880 (pg1) |
Lampasas County Civil Court 1880 (pg2) |
This time, W. C., Mr. Frierson, and Mr. Witcher (the man to whom W. C. signed over the $50 promissory note) were being sued by one Mr. Abney for approximately $50 as partial payment for the land. Because W. C. could not be served (this would be on account of him having moved to Taylor County), the case against him was dismissed, but the judge ordered that the land be auctioned off to pay off the debt. Crazy thing, though - this came just 23 days before the land was auctioned for the tax sale! What a mess! (Of course, none of this helps with the timeline, except to give even more evidence that W. C. really was no longer in Lampasas in 1880.)
So this is what our final timeline looks like now:
1852
19 Jan
|
Birth - Angelina County or Cherokee County, TX
|
1853-1863
|
Residence
– Angelina County, TX and/or Cherokee County, TX
|
1864-1867
|
Residence
– Cherokee County, TX
|
1868-c. 1876
|
Residence
– Robertson County, TX
|
2 Jul 1871
|
Marriage
to Amelia Virginia Blackshear
|
29 Mar 1872
|
Birth of
first son, Willie P.
|
19 Jul 1873
|
Birth of
daughter, Laura Belle
|
19 Aug 1875
Nov 1879
|
Birth of
daughter Mary Frances
|
1876-
|
Residence
– Lampasas County, TX
|
Nov-Dec 1876
|
Death of
first three children
|
12 Sep 1877
8 Jun 1879
Dec 1879
|
Birth of
son, Armon Deconda
Birth of
daughter, Erences Leona
|
Residence
– Taylor County, TX
|
|
Dec 1879-1889
|
Residence
– Buffalo Gap, TX
|
We can add in the month that the move from Lampasas County to Taylor County was made, and we can rightly place the birth of Erences in Lampasas County.
Okay. On to Taylor County. This is what we have at this point:
Dec 1879-1899
|
Residence
– Taylor County, TX
|
Dec 1879-1889
|
Residence
– Buffalo Gap, TX
|
1880
|
Occupation:
stock raising
|
c. 1880/1881
|
(served
as district court clerk)
|
c. 1881-1883
|
Occupation: dry goods store
Business
partnership (real estate): Cheatham & Cunningham
|
6 Jun 1881
|
Death of
daughter, Erences Leona
|
5 Apr 1882
|
Birth of
son, Calvin Malone
|
c. 1883-1886
|
Occupation: notary public, real estate agent
|
c. 1883-189(?)
|
Occupation: Deputy Sheriff/Deputy Tax Collector
|
24 Aug 1884
|
Birth of
son, Elmer Verdwell
|
1885
|
Occupation:
farming
|
8 Jan 1886
|
Death of
wife, Amelia Virginia
|
18 Jan 1887
21 Nov 1887 |
Marriage
to Mary Melvina Brookreson
Birth of son, Shelton Conroy |
1888
|
Occupation: farming/keeper of the Poor Farm
|
c. Feb 1889-1894
|
Residence
– Abilene, Taylor County, TX
|
So, the first occupation held by W. C. when he moved to Taylor county was stock raising. We know this from the 1880 census. While I was working on the W. C. Cheatham document page for this blog, I noticed that I had a copy of the census agricultural schedule for the same year. I could have sworn that I already shared that with you, but when I looked back through my posts on Texas, I couldn't find it. (Of course, that doesn't mean it wasn't actually there - if it was, you can just ignore it now!)
There he is up on line four - the one with the line drawn through his name. (I swear I've mentioned this before!) Not sure what that was all about, maybe because he didn't own any land, but it does show that he owned cattle - $2955 worth, which would be just over $74,000 today! And you'll notice also that not only is the box for owning land not checked, but neither are the boxes for renting, so maybe he was just doing the open range thing on unsettled land.
On the same day that I found the Lampasas records, I also discovered that there were some court minutes from Taylor County online. Even though the database says "Civil Minutes," it turned out to be the proceedings of the Taylor County Commissioners' Court. All of the business seemed to be about appointing, paying, and receiving reports from county officials, as well as items dealing with schools, elections, taxes, and the building of bridges and roads. So I guess basically the management of the county.
I didn't come across an index for this at first , so I just started scanning through the minutes, beginning in the fall of 1879, looking for W. C. Cheatham. (After I scanned through oh, about 1700 pages - that is not a typo - I somehow stumbled on the index (you know, because of the way they lump stuff together on the microfilm), but as it turns out, it didn't list all of the pages I found for W. C. anyway , so it's just as well that I scanned every page.)
The first mention I came across was in August of 1880:
So, W. C. was appointed to fill out the remainder of the term as constable of Buffalo Gap (the town was still precinct one in that year). Which means we can add that to the timeline!
Before I go further, I just want you to know that if you click on the title of each excerpt, it will take you to the whole page. But . . . there are a whole lot of pages, some of which I won't be sharing right now, so I am going to combine them all into one pdf document and put it up on W. C.'s page so you can download them all together.
Okay. The next mention I found was in February of 1881:
This tells us that W. C. was already a deputy sheriff by the beginning of 1881. Usually, the sheriff himself attended these proceedings but W. C. was "present and acting" in the sheriff's place for the entire February through April terms of court, as well as the first and last days of the May term. (I didn't find anything saying that W. C. got paid for that, but the sheriff always did, so maybe he paid W. C. for those days. W. C. also got paid for doing things like feeding the prisoners - it seems a lot of the pay was per service performed.)
And on the same day:
Well, look at that! W. C. was District Clerk for the year 1881! (I love these old documents!!!) Notice that he had to present a bond of $5,000 as surety that he would perform his duties well. (That would be more than $125,000 in today's money - other court documents show that officials would have multiple people backing their bond - Mary Brookreson's father consistently backed the sheriff, whose bond was a whopping $18,572 - almost half a million in today's money!) And in case you are curious, on the 18th of February it was approved that the district clerk would be paid $46.25 per quarter (which was almost as much as the judge got paid!), but he also got paid periodically for "ex officio" services (in the month of May alone he was paid more than $40 for services performed as clerk). So, a pretty good gig.
(Crazy thing - the minutes actually tell us in which room of the old courthouse W. C.'s office was located - the building still stands in Buffalo Gap, and is now a museum, so it's possible to actually go and stand where W. C. went to work every day! To watch a quick, interesting video about the courthouse/jail, click here.)
The next time we see something other than clerk or deputy sheriff duties is in August of the next year:
This tells us that W. C. was a trustee on the Buffalo Gap School Board. We can add that to the timeline as well, although we don't know whether he served just the one year of more.
The minutes show that W. C. was district clerk through November of 1882, at which point the office was going to be combined with county clerk for the following year. The current county clerk was re-elected to the combined position. So we can fix the timeline to say that W. C. was district clerk for two years.
There is a gap of about six months where we don't hear anything else about W. C. in the minutes. And then, there is this:
Apparently W. C. had been collecting scrip issued for services as district clerk and deputy sheriff, and lost them in a fire (maybe their house burned down or one of the kids chucked them in the fireplace). While reading through the minutes, I noticed that sometimes the county employees were paid from a county fund, but sometimes (maybe if there wasn't enough money in the coffers?) they were issued "scrip." I don't know if it was credit (since it wasn't a company, there wouldn't have been a company store, but maybe it was like an IOU for the county fund) or if it was land scrip. I did come across these the other day:
| |
|
Maybe, if it was land scrip, W. C. used it to purchase the county land set aside for sale to raise money for the schools or the "lunatic asylum." (And on a side note, you would be amazed at how often the Commissioners' Court minutes mentioned taking someone away to the insane asylum!)
After this, we don't see W. C. again until 1885:
This isn't really something that would go on the timeline, but it is interesting. Remember, Taylor County had only been around for about seven years at this point, so they were putting in new roads and bridges all over the place. W. C. was appointed as part of the committee to map out one of the new roads. The minutes have several entries after this one updating the progress and showing that W. C. got paid for using his team to grade the road (or build a ditch alongside it or something - I don't remember!)
The minutes from 1886 mostly deal with the dire circumstances caused by the ongoing drought in Taylor County. The county had actually decided that they should establish a poor farm back in 1884, but things had gotten so bad by this point that it actually sent out five ministers, one commissioner, and the county judge into other parts of Texas to ask for help:
The county adopted various measures to help those in trouble (employing them to help build roads, handing out seed wheat and other supplies, etc.), and finally had the poor farm up and running in early 1887 (for some reason they were waiting for someone to get a patent on a specific piece of land they wanted). You're probably wondering why I keep going on about all this - well, guess who was the very first superintendent of the Taylor County Poor Farm?
| Taylor County Commissioners' Court Minutes 17 Feb 1887 (pg1) |
Taylor County Commissioners' Court Minutes 17 Feb 1887 (pg2) |
So, this is another change to our timeline. We knew from that one newspaper article that W. C. was keeping the poor farm in 1888, but now we know that he actually started in 1887 (almost one month to the day after marrying Mary Brookreson).
I absolutely love that this document tells us the terms of his contract with the county: For one year, he would be paid $1000 plus 50 cents per day per each pauper in his care, as well as 40 cents per day for each convict he guarded. (The convicts were anyone convicted of a misdemeanor who refused to pay their fines, but apparently they thought they might try to escape because they had to be guarded!) W. C. had to care for and manage all persons on the poor farm, as well as supply four horses, a wagon, and harnesses. The county supplied feed for the horses and seed grain. Later, we see that the county also provided tools and clothing for the residents. (The inflation calculator shows that this was a base salary of about $27,000 in today's money, plus about $14 per day for each person on the farm.) The minutes show that he averaged about 5 residents at a time, so with just the per diem allowance alone, he would have earned enough money in one month to buy a good horse. Now that sound like a pretty lucrative job!
And speaking of guarding convicts:
How W. C. came up with $1 per night of guard duty, I don't know, but the county found it reasonable and paid it.
There were lots and lots of entries in the minutes about the poor farm - too many to share unless I were doing a whole post just on that topic. If you are interested, you can read all about it in the compilation of select pages from the minutes that will be on W. C.'s page soon (as soon as I have time to compile those select pages into one document!)
Now, back to the timeline: For some reason I had assumed that the poor farm was near Buffalo Gap, which is why I assumed that the family didn't move to Abilene until 1889. But, apparently the county chose an 80 acre tract of land "south of Abilene." This means that the family probably wasn't living in Buffalo Gap in 1887. They weren't necessarily living on the poor farm either, since it may have been close enough for W. C. to commute from Abilene. And remember that W. C. filed an affidavit saying his family had been using the three lots they owned in Abilene as their homestead? Since I can't find the deed records for those years online, I don't know what year they were actually purchased, but since Shelton reported on more than one document that he was born in Abilene, and since his birthday was in November of 1887, I'm going to say that the family was indeed residing in Abilene, whether on the poor farm south of town or in the town itself. So we can change that on the timeline too!
But when did W. C. stop keeping the poor farm? The court minutes show that his bid was chosen and he continued to supervise the poor farm in 1888 and 1889, but that the county refused to accept any of the bids put forth for 1890 and instead sold the poor farm land in October of 1889. (Ironically, they bought new land and opened a new poor farm within a couple of months. Either W. C. didn't put in a bid or he just wasn't chosen - he did have his hands full with all of the Alliance Association duties by that time anyway, so he probably wasn't even personally overseeing the poor farm for most of 1889!)
Oh, and this is so silly - look what I just found in a file folder on my computer:
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So this is what our timeline looks like now:
Dec 1879-1899
|
Residence
– Taylor County, TX
|
1886
|
|
Dec 1879-
|
Residence
– Buffalo Gap, TX
|
1880
|
Occupation:
stock raising
|
1881-1882
|
Served as District Clerk of Taylor
County.
|
c. 1881-1883
|
Occupation: dry goods store
Business
partnership (real estate): Cheatham & Cunningham
|
1881-at least 1891
6 Jun 1881 |
Occupation: Deputy Sheriff (ex officio Deputy Tax
Collector)
Death of daughter, Erences Leona |
1882-?
|
Served as trustee on the Buffalo Gap
school board.
|
5 Apr 1882
|
Birth of
son, Calvin Malone
|
c. 1883-1886
|
Occupation: notary public, real estate agent
|
24 Aug 1884
|
Birth of
son, Elmer Verdwell
|
1885
|
Occupation:
farming
|
8 Jan 1886
|
Death of
wife, Amelia Virginia
|
1887-1894
|
Residence – Abilene, Taylor County, TX
|
18 Jan 1887
|
Marriage
to Mary Melvina Brookreson
|
21 Nov 1887
|
Birth of
son, Shelton Conroy
|
Feb 1887 –
Sep 1889
|
Occupation: Superintendent of Taylor
County Poor Farm
|
Before we move on to the Abilene section of the timeline, I want to show you a couple of things I found about W. C.'s time in Buffalo Gap (the first time he lived there):
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And speaking of patents, do you remember that newspaper article where W. C. was selling territory for a new patent windmill and I was like what in the world does that mean? Well, look at one of the deeds from Taylor County that I was able to actually find:
So, he was selling territory - county rights to the invention (whatever that means, exactly)! And for his efforts, he and his partner would receive 50% of all sales.
Okay. Back to the timeline again:
1887-1894
|
Residence
– Abilene, Taylor County, TX
|
18 Jan 1887
|
Marriage
to Mary Melvina Brookreson
|
21 Nov 1887
|
Birth of
son, Shelton Conroy
|
Feb 1887 – Sep 1889
|
Occupation:
Superintendent of Taylor County Poor Farm
|
1889-1890
|
Occupation: served as secretary of the Taylor County
Farmer’s Alliance, as business manager of the Alliance store, and as book
keeper for the Alliance cotton yard.
|
26 Feb 1889
|
Birth of
daughter, Delila Talitha
|
1890
|
Served
as secretary of the Abilene branch of the Aberdeen, Dakota Building and Loan
Association.
|
1890-1894
|
Occupation: owner of commission & real estate
business
|
2 Jul 1891
|
Birth of
son, Leonard McCleod
|
1891
|
(still serving
as Deputy Sheriff)
|
23 Apr 1893
8 Oct 1893
|
Birth of
son, Early
Death of
son, Early
|
Nov 1894-1899
|
Residence
– Buffalo Gap, Taylor County, TX
|
Occupation: farming
|
|
23 Feb 1897
|
Death of
son, Calvin Malone
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Most of the information for W. C.'s time in Abilene came from newspaper articles. As far as their second stint living in Buffalo Gap, I didn't really find much. I haven't found anything else that indicates that corrections are needed on this part of the timeline, either. So that brings us to the family's next move, to New Mexico.
1899-c.
1903/04
|
Residence
– Lincoln County, New Mexico
|
1900
|
Residence
– Capitan (Gray), NM
|
Occupation:
carpenter
|
|
Served
as Justice of the Peace (ex officio coroner & mayor)
|
|
1901
|
Served
on the Capitan school board
|
1902
|
Occupation: general store manager
|
Appointed
as Notary Public, served as a Knights of Pythias officer, and was prospecting
for gold.
|
|
Summer 1902
|
Residence
– Nogal, NM
|
Occupation:
contractor/builder (business partnership)
|
|
c. Jan 1903
|
Residence
– Capitan, NM
|
b. summer 1903
|
Residence
– Roswell, NM
|
This section of the timeline shows them living in New Mexico by sometime in 1899. If you think back to my last post (I know it's been awhile!), I shared two pieces of information supporting this year. The first was the fact that the last deed transaction on the indexes of Taylor County show W. C. selling property in June of 1899. The second was the November 1899 newspaper article, saying that Mrs. Brookreson "and the others" had gone to New Mexico. Since we previously discovered that W. C. had to have been in New Mexico long enough to get elected as Justice of the Peace for the year 1900, that is too much of a coincidence for the two to not be related. That means that W. C. moved to New Mexico some time in the second half of 1899.
I haven't come across anything new as far as dates or facts on this part of the timeline go, but I did find another document to add to our collection. Remember those newspaper articles that said that W. C. was called back to the land office because there was a dispute involving his homestead claim? (To recap - in 1900 somebody said he abandoned his claim, the land office sided against W. C., he appealed, and the case was reheard in July of 1901. We never found out the final outcome.)
Well, look what I found:
This shows that in August of 1902, W. C. was granted a patent for his homestead land. I am assuming that this is the same claim - first, because he didn't live in New Mexico all that long, and second, because there were actually two listings for the same claim on the BLM website, only one of which had a document attached.
The cool thing about finding this document (other than the fact that having the document is cool, of course), is that we can now see exactly where W. C.'s land was located:
The blue box shows the 160 acres of W. C.'s homestead claim. The map shows that there was a creek on his land (I think that's what it is showing? If you click on the title it will take you to the pdf, where you can enlarge the map to read it more clearly.) and that it was nice and flat, even though the rest of the area was very hilly. I guess that means it was a good place to farm, even though it doesn't look like he was doing any farming while living there. The red star shows the center of the original town of Capitan. (Currently, the "village" stretches from that point all the way to where W. C.'s land was located.) If I did the math correctly (the map scale is in "chains!"), W. C. would have had to travel about a mile and a half into town each day for work, which isn't too bad at all. (Well, actually, one of the newspaper articles said his office was in "North Capitan," also known as Coalora, which was about a mile and a half to the NW of Capitan. Oh - so still about the same distance. Ha!)
There was that one newspaper article that said W. C. found gold and staked some claims, and I tried looking online to see if I could find anything about that, but I didn't have any luck. (If anyone knows if there is a way to look stuff like that up, let me know!)
And that is it for New Mexico, because, unfortunately, there just isn't very much online from that state.
Oh! I just remembered that the family history shows that W. C.'s father died while they were in New Mexico, and since he was undoubtedly living with them, I'll put that on the timeline as well.
Okay. I'm going to put up the (slightly) updated timeline for New Mexico and the part for Duncan together, because the transition between the two is relevant to what I am going to share next.
btw June/Nov
|
|
1899-c. 1903/04
|
Residence
– Lincoln County, New Mexico
|
1900
|
Residence
– Capitan (Gray), NM
|
Occupation:
carpenter
|
|
Served
as Justice of the Peace (ex officio coroner & mayor)
|
|
1901
22 Nov 1901
|
Served
on the Capitan school board
Death of father, Edmond C. Cheatham
|
1902
|
Occupation: general store manager
|
Appointed
as Notary Public, served as a Knights of Pythias officer, and was prospecting
for gold.
|
|
Summer 1902
|
Residence
– Nogal, NM
|
Occupation:
contractor/builder (business partnership)
|
|
b. Jan 1903
|
Residence
– Capitan, NM
|
Spring 1903
|
Residence
– Roswell, Chavez County, NM
|
c. 1903/1904 - Jan
1912
|
Residence
– vicinity of Graham County, AZ
(possibly in Grant
County, NM b. 1908)
|
Occupation
– farming
|
|
1908
|
Residence
– Duncan, Graham County, AZ
|
Served
as a delegate to the Graham County Convention.
|
|
1909-1910
(possibly longer)
|
Occupation:
carpenter
Business Partnership:
Bailey & Cheatham
|
Knights
of Pythias – served as Chancellor Commander, Master of Exchequer, and
District Deputy Grand Chancellor
|
|
1911 (or earlier)
|
First
Presbyterian Church 0f Duncan - Sunday School Superintendent, Elder/Trustee
|
Occupation: general store clerk
|
Once again, most of what we know about these years comes from newspaper articles, so I looked back through the ones from New Mexico and decided to make those small adjustments for 1903. One article showed W. C. being unanimously chosen as a candidate for justice of the peace on Jan. 9th, so I changed the "circa Jan" to "before Jan" because that makes it more clear that he was already there at the beginning of that month. The other said that W. C. had been residing in Roswell "for some time" already on July 9th, and since it didn't say "for a short time" or "recently" I figured that it was probably more than a month since he moved, which would be at the latest the end of spring. Of course, he could have left in January after losing the election (if you look back, this seems to be the trend for him), especially if he didn't have ready work in Capitan, so it could have been winter of 1903, although if I put "winter" it will sound more like December. Anyway, W. C. probably had to come up with a plan after he lost the election but before he actually left, so I think spring will work for the timeline.
Now, do you see what I did there on the timeline for the move to Duncan? First, we have no idea how long the family stayed in Roswell before moving again. It could have been a few months, or it could have been a year. Second, the records hint that W. C. might have actually been living on the New Mexico side of the border (in Grant County) and not on the Arizona side until 1908, which is why I wrote that they resided "in the vicinity of Graham County, AZ." (Maybe someday I'll take that field trip over to Graham County and then into New Mexico to look at their archives and find some more information!)
The Bailey & Cheatham business partnership came from an Arizona/New Mexico business directory which only covered two years, but it is quite possible that it existed before and/or after that time. And speaking of which, I find it very interesting that, from the year 1900 onward, we keep seeing W. C. involved in the building trade. The newspaper article from Nogal, NM implies that he was an experienced carpenter, which means that he learned the trade at some point while living in Texas, even though we have no documentation showing that.
And now I would like to share a (not very good quality) photograph with you all:
Brookreson Family Reunion
Buffalo Gap, Taylor County, TX
circa 1905
I actually found this on an Ancestry.com tree of the Brookreson family before I started this blog. After looking at all of my photos while writing one of my posts, I was like, hey, that guy right there looks like W. C.! And that lady next to him looks like his wife Mary! (seated, 4th and 5th from the left) The photo had the caption "Brookreson Family Reunion, circa 1905." I tried looking in the Taylor County newspaper articles to see if there was any mention of a Brookreson family reunion in that year and didn't come up with anything (which could be because it was never mentioned, or it could be because the search tool was faulty, or it could be because there are many missing issues of the Abilene newspaper - for example, none of the dates around baby Early's death are online.) I was thinking at first that maybe the photo was actually taken around 1911, when W. C. went back East for the church convention and then he and Mary visited in Buffalo Gap, but I have another photo taken the same day that only has the Brookresons in it, and Mary's mother, who died in 1910 is in the photo, so that idea flew out the window. And then, a couple of weeks ago, my mom sent me this photo:
W. C. Cheatham Family
Brookreson Family Reunion
Buffalo Gap, TX circa 1905
So, obviously taken on the same day. Only three people in the photo, so they must have been a nuclear family. The young man in back looks suspiciously like the young man in this photo:
Shelton Cheatham
(age unknown)
This photo strip is of W. C.'s son, Shelton. And do you remember the newspaper article from November of 1900 saying that Shelton was going to live with his grandfather and attend school in Buffalo Gap? Well, he would have been 13 at the time, which meant he was going to high school in Buffalo Gap, which meant he would be finishing in approximately four or so years, which means that, maybe, there was a family reunion that corresponded with his high school graduation and that is why he and his parents were there circa 1905. It fits perfectly, doesn't it? (Like I said before, I love it when the pieces start to fall into place!)
That means that these photos were taken shortly after the family moved to the Duncan area, which is why I waited until now to show them to you.
And here is the final portion of the timeline:
Jan. 1912-1926
|
Residence
– Maricopa County, AZ
|
1912-c.1917
|
Residence
– Phoenix, AZ
|
1914 |
Occupation: farming & ranching
Knights of Pythias member Served as clerk of election for Maricopa County Wilson precinct |
(c.1917)-1918
|
Residence
– Scottsdale, AZ
|
Occupation:
ranching
|
|
c. end of 1918-1926
|
Residence
– Laveen, AZ
|
Occupation
– farming & ranching
|
|
Dec. 1919-1925/26
|
Occupation
– general store owner
(business
partnership w/sons)
|
1920-1923
|
Served on Laveen school board (clerk).
|
1921-1923
|
Served
as president of the Laveen farm bureau, as a committeeman on the Arizona Pima
Cotton Growers Association, as a
councilman on the Salt River Water User’s Association, and on the building committee for the Laveen Woman's Club community house project.
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1926
5 May
|
Death –
Laveen, Maricopa County, Arizona
|
We know with 100 percent certainty exactly when W. C. left Duncan, and that he first settled in Phoenix. The moves to Scottsdale and Laveen are a bit wishy washy, but we have a newspaper article from the beginning of January showing that W. C. was already in Scottsdale, and there is no telling when he made the move (The 1917 Maricopa County land ownership plat map shows him with land in Phoenix, but we have the deed showing he didn't sell that until 1919, so the last time we know for sure he was in Phoenix was when he registered to vote there in 1916.) which is why I put "circa 1917" for the beginning of his residence there, and I think, based on the combination of deed records, oral histories, and the documents related to him taking custody of Elmer's children make the end of 1918 the best guess for when he moved to Laveen.
You'll also notice that I dated the ownership of the Cheatham Bros. store having an end of 1925/26. I've come across two different sources (one was an oral history, and I can't remember the second source, but I made a notation of the fact!) saying that they owned the store for six years. Since it was purchased at the very end of 1919, I guess those six years could be 1920-1926.
So that's it for the timeline. Let's just talk about W. C. himself for a minute, shall we?
When I first started researching him, I thought of him as William Calvin, that poor guy who suffered so much loss. Well, I don't know about you all, but I feel like now I really know him!
I think W. C. was a gregarious, type A personality, maybe even somewhat restless man who wasn't afraid to take risks and wasn't going to pass up a great business opportunity when he saw one. He had his hands in everything, and was constantly running for public office and holding leadership positions.
Early in my research, after I started noticing how often W. C. jumped from one thing to another, I started to wonder if he wasn't a bit of a flake. Not only that, but maybe a sore loser as well, since he always seemed to move shortly after losing an election! But the more I read through the Taylor County newspapers, the more I realized that he was likely just a product of his day - the decades around the turn of the century were a time of tremendous progress and optimism, and so many of the men who, like W. C., lived in frontier boom towns seemed to have an enterprising spirit about them. In both Taylor County and New Mexico, property and businesses were constantly changing hands. Maybe the reason he ran for office in the first place was because his current employment situation had changed and, after losing, he needed to find a new opportunity. Or maybe he was just an ants-in-his-pants kind of guy for his whole life who had nothing holding him back from moving on.
Whatever the reason, in Texas, in New Mexico, and in Arizona, there are plenty of articles saying that W. C. was a well-liked and respected man.
I have a big binder of genealogical research at my house right now that was put together by someone from Elmer Cheatham's line, and this is how it sums up William Calvin Cheatham:
He was a farmer.Well, that's what everyone thought, huh? As it turns out, he was also a grocer, real estate agent, district court clerk, deputy sheriff, stock raiser/rancher, poor farm superintendent, bookkeeper, business manager, carpenter, justice of the peace, entrepreneur, and prospector, not to mention all of the different leadership hats he wore. So maybe his abbreviated bio should instead read:
He was a jack of all trades.You know, as a lover of history and research enthusiast, I had a lot of fun delving into W. C.'s life. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
Here is the link for the William Calvin Cheatham page, where you will find all of the documents and photos related to W. C. in one place. You can also find it over in the left sidebar under the title Documents by clicking on "Cheatham." It will probably take me a few weeks to get everything up there, so check back periodically until you find that everything you want is available!
- Therese
