A Tale of Two Grandpas, Part Two

When I was in third grade, one of my best-loved teachers, Mrs. Starke, would seat us in a circle, where we would recite our favorite passage from a book.  At least, that’s how I remember it.  But it actually might have been that she read to us, mostly from Shel Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” and when I, in a quest to impress, decided to memorize a long-ish Silverstein poem, Mrs. Starke then allowed me to recite for everyone one morning.   

Funny, I can still remember the opening lines of that poem: “He rode through the woods on a big blue ox / He had fists as hard as choppin’ blocks / Five hundred pounds and nine feet tall … that’s Paul.”  (I always giggled at the part later on when “he scratched his butt and wiped his nose.”)

The point is that my brain remembers that all of us recited from books, but after checking with a few fellow former Starke students, I think it was just me because I kept memorizing Silverstein poems to get a spotlight at circle time. (How awesome was Mrs. Starke to let a kid do that?)  Quite a few years have passed since third grade (yeah … let’s not bother to count them!), so it’s understandable that I may have mixed up my facts a bit.

Our ancestors were no different.  They mixed up facts, too.  Quite a lot, as I’m discovering!  And like the tall tale of Paul Bunyan, they sometimes exaggerated those facts.  

Even the most benign embellishments on facts can lead to bigger stories, and over time, these stories get harder to prove or disprove.  This brings me to “Confederate Grandpa,” William C. Thomason.  Check him out in the picture below.  Doesn’t he look like he has a few stories to tell?

(photo courtesy of Emma Cape)

In my previous post, I introduced “Union Grandpa,” my great-great-grandfather, James K. Polk Sloniger (“JKP”).  This post will focus on another great-great-grandfather, William C. Thomason, who I call “WC” (and have previously referred to as “Confederate Grandpa”).

Unlike JKP, whose service in the Union Army is documented, it remains unproven whether or not WC served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. WC’s obituary claims that he did, at the Battle of Shiloh, no less, with his father afterwards coming to collect him “on account of his age.”  It then goes on to say that WC “ran away and joined Quantrill’s Band.”  My eyes just about popped out of my head when I read that little tidbit, and I have since made it my mission to research as much as possible to discover the truth about WC, my grandmother Alice Mae’s “Confederate Grandpa.”

Confederate Grandpa’s Beginnings  

It’s not too much of a stretch to believe that WC was present at the Battle of Shiloh when you know that he was born and raised in Purdy, Tennessee, fewer than 15 miles away.  

Map borrowed from www.sonofthesouth.net

According to his death certificate and obituary, WC was born on November 1, 1848, which would make him not even 14 years of age in April 1862, when the battle took place. I believe that WC was actually born a little later, perhaps in 1851, because he is not listed in the census record of his father’s household recorded on November 13, 1850, in McNairy County, TN (see Year: 1850; Census Place: District 12, McNairy, Tennessee; Roll: M432_888; Page: 95B; Image: 196).

Imagine a boy as young as ten running off to fight in a major Civil War battle.  No wonder his father was having none of that and came to retrieve him.

To help me understand WC’s desire to be present at Shiloh, I read a book called “Seeing the Elephant:  Raw Recruits at the Battle of Shiloh,” written by Joseph Allan Frank and George A. Reaves. The authors relied on the personal writings of Shiloh participants for their research.  My takeaway was that, at the time of Shiloh, troops were extremely impatient to engage in battle.  They were confident that it would take just one major battle to decide the outcome of the war, after which they could all go back home.  

Added to this motivation on the Confederate side was the intense pressure from the community for local boys to go out and defend the homefront against an invading federal army.  

WC was one of four boys in a household of nine children born to Solomon G. and Margaret (Massengill) Thomason.  By 1860, it was just his father, one sister who had not yet married, a widowed sister and her infant son, and the four boys (ages seven to 15) at home. WC’s mother died in 1859; an older sister, Harriet, died in 1860; the other sisters were married with their own families.  

WC’s father, known as Sol, had moved to Tennessee from his birth state of South Carolina, settling first in Henderson County, and then in McNairy County by 1840.  According to the 1862 IRS tax lists, Sol owned 1,400 acres in McNairy County valued at $3,000 (see Ancestry.com, U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862-1918).  

Sol Thomason was a farmer. He was not a Union man. Sol’s story will be the subject of another post, but for now, just know that he was murdered in 1864, leaving WC free to pursue whatever trouble he could find.  And, if WC’s obituary is to be believed, this included joining a group of guerrilla fighters known for one of the bloodiest events in Kansas history, the Lawrence massacre of 1863.

I hope that WC didn’t participate in that event, or in any other guerilla-fighting. Fortunately, there is no proof to this claim either.  I have found nothing on record to indicate that he was associated with William Clarke Quantrill (rosters do exist of Quantrill’s followers) or anyone else associated with Quantrill.  

Researching WC prompted me to do more reading on Quantrill, confederate raiders, and James Lane and the pro-Union Jayhawkers (or redlegs, as they were known). Two books that gave me perspective:  “Jayhawkers:  The Civil War Brigade of James Henry Lane,” by Bryce Benedict, and “The Devil Knows How to Ride:  The True Story of William Clarke Quantrill and His Confederate Raiders,” by Edward E. Leslie.  The truth is that both groups were responsible for much suffering and death along the border of Kansas and Missouri, a border war that was a war within a war, and a truly awful time in our nation’s history.

With no evidence that WC ever left Tennessee during the war, where did that leave him afterwards?  The next place I find WC is in Nashville, Tennessee.

Year: 1870; Census Place: District 10, Davidson, Tennessee; Roll: M593_1521; Page: 373B; Family History Library Film: 553020

See the first red arrow from the left in the snapshot of the 1870 census record above?  That’s WC’s name, listed alphabetically (misspelled “Tomason”) in a line of … see the next red arrow … “Convicts in Penitentiary.”  WC was in the pen!  (The last two arrows are pointing to boxes which are notably not marked, indicating that WC could read and write.)

How did WC end up here??

I was doubtful I’d find the answer to that question, but sometimes I surprise myself!  

An online search turned up an intriguing entry on a website containing the text of Goodspeed’s History of Humphreys County, Tennessee.  (If you aren’t familiar with Goodspeed’s histories, Goodspeed was a company that published several state histories and biographical sketches, usually by county, back in the 1880s.  Really useful stuff to any genealogist.)  Here’s what caught my eye:  “... in 1869 ... Jep Thomas and W. C. Thomason were convicted of assault with intent to kill, and were sentenced to penitentiary for the term of ten years each.” (See http://files.usgwarchives.net/tn/humphreys/misc/humhist.txt.)

If you notice, right below WC’s entry in the snapshot of the census record above, the inmate’s name is Jesse Thomas, age 26.  Aha!  I believed I had found out why WC was in the pen. Assault with intent to kill. Yikes!

You know, one doesn’t always know what kind of dirt one is going to turn up on one’s ancestors.

Still, how could I be 100% certain it was my W.C. Thomason?  W.C. could stand for Walter Campbell or Wilson Chadwick, right?  

I turned to the website of the State of Tennessee’s Library and Archives, where I found WC’s name included in an index of the “Papers of Governor John Calvin Brown.”  For a small fee, I could order the file on W.C. Thomason, which I did, forthwith, and hot dang, I was not disappointed!

First of all, yes, it was my WC, but I was quite surprised and fascinated by the contents of the file. In it were numerous letters and sworn statements testifying to the good character of WC and his father, Sol, advising that a mistake had been made in finding WC and his co-defendant, Jasper (a/k/a Jesse) Thomas, guilty of the charges. Petitions from citizens of McNairy, Humphreys, and Obion counties, along with letters from local politicians, the constable of Humphreys County, citizens who had served on the jury, and the defense attorney were addressed to Tennessee’s then governor, Dewitt Clinton Senter, between 1870 and 1871.  After a new governor, John Calvin Brown, came into office in 1872, there is nothing in the file until January 1873, when a man known only as S. Venable takes up the cause.

S. Venable was actually Simeon Venable, an attorney in Memphis with political connections who felt compelled to help my great-great-grandfather due to his brother’s friendship with a brother of WC. (It is not known for certain which brother, but I suspect it was WC’s older brother, James W. Thomason.)  In one of S. Venable’s letters, it is implied that WC’s brother was murdered because of said friendship. Another story to hopefully unearth one day.

Judge Venable (as he is addressed by others) started by getting a former Confederate brigadier general, General Marcus J. Wright, to write to Governor Brown on behalf of WC. General Wright, who was also a native of Purdy, Tennessee, has the distinction of being one of only two Confederate generals buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Judge Venable didn’t stop there. He sent correspondence to Governor Brown at least eight times himself (pleading the case that the two men were convicted on “illegal incompetent evidence,” i.e., the two men were framed), persuaded a few other friends who were military dignitaries to write letters, met with the governor personally, and even got the prosecuting attorney himself to request that WC be pardoned. Judge Venable was on a mission, and in April 1874, a little over four years after being sentenced and taken to prison, WC was pardoned by the governor of Tennessee.

Thank you, Judge Venable. Without you, I wouldn’t be here.

One of several letters from S. Venable to Gov. John C. Brown

WC’s Pardon, dated 4 Apr 1874

Lest you think that WC got out of prison solely because of his connections, there is credible evidence to support that he and Jesse Thomas were in the wrong place at the wrong time and set up, including the statement of a witness who said that WC was “in the stone house in a state of intoxication” at the time of the shooting. (Haven’t we all been there?)

Also, in a weird twist, Governor Brown pardoned WC’s co-defendant, Jessie Thomas, nearly a year before getting around to pardoning WC.

Confederate Grandpa’s New Start

So, what does a young man who just spent more than four years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit do when he gets released?  It appears that WC packed it up and moved to northeastern Arkansas, where a number of Thomason family members had already made their way.  

WC starts down a new road in Greene County, AR
(“Wet Day in Greene County,” photo credit:  Greg Vaughan, used with permission)

In Greene County, Arkansas, WC’s first wife, my great-great-grandmother, Margaret Ann Thomason, had lost both parents as a young child and was living with her sister, William Alice (“Alice”), in the care of their maternal grandmother, Mary Acenith (Bledsoe) McDermit (I’ve also seen this surname spelled McDermott) (see 1870 census record, Census Place: Friendship, Greene, Arkansas; Roll: M593_54; Page: 294B; Family History Library Film: 545553).  

In October 1873, the Court appointed Margaret and Alice’s uncle, James W. Thomason (not WC’s brother, a different James W.), as their guardian.  He was tasked to care for the girls and the property that they had inherited, which included just over 60 acres of land.  The guardianship was apparently not a happy situation for the girls, which may explain why my great-great-grandmother married so very young.  

According to a court report filed in 1876 by James W. Thomason, Margaret married WC in February of 1876.  That same year, the girls’ grandmother filed a complaint against James W. Thomason for “misusing, maltreating, and cruelly treating” Alice (see complaint of Mrs. McDermit, page 19, Probate Records 1876-1885, Vol. 2, Arkansas Probate Records, 1817-1979, FamilySearch.org).  Alice would petition for another uncle, William McDermit, to be her guardian in the July 1878 court term (see page 234 of above noted records), and when he failed to post the bond, she petitioned for WC to be her guardian during the October 1878 court term, at which time bond was posted and WC was issued Letters of Guardianship (see page 241 of above noted records).

I have to stop here and comment on the question of the girls’ ages.  In the 1870 census (taken in July), the girls are referred to as Wm Ann, age 8, and Mary A., age 5.  If Mary is actually Margaret, which I believe to be the case, she would have been only 11 years of age at the time she became a wife.  The only other record I have which notes the age of my great-great-grandmother is an 1880 census record, which says she was born in August 1862.  Because Alice outlived Margaret by more than 50 years, I have several census records as well as her death certificate to reference.  Alice’s birth year on these records varies from 1862 to 1867 (her death certificate and gravestone both say December 1863).   I really don’t know for sure, but I am tempted to say that Margaret was the older sister, not the younger.  In the probate documents concerning their guardianship, Margaret is named first whenever the two are mentioned together.  Also, Alice is said to be a minor under the age of 14 in a June 1876 document, which means that she couldn’t have been age 8 in July 1870.  She would have had to have been born in 1863 or later.  Either way, Margaret was very young to be married, especially according to our modern sensibilities, although it’s understood that times back then were rather different.

In 1878, WC and Margaret’s oldest son, Genadious George Stanton (“Stant”) Thomason, was born.  Stant has been keeping me on my toes.  As the informant on WC’s death certificate, and the one who likely contributed the information contained in WC’s obituary, Stant appears to have been confused on a number of points, including not only WC’s birth year (as has been earlier pointed out), but also the year of his marriage to Margaret (the obituary states 1877, but court documents clearly indicate the year was 1876).  Stant also provided incorrect names for WC’s parents on the death certificate.

I was sure that Margaret and WC must have met and married in Arkansas, but on his World War II draft registration, Stant (who was born February 29, 1878) names Enville, TN, as his place of birth.  Enville is located in Chester County, which was formed out of parts of McNairy, Madison, Henderson, and Hardeman counties in 1879.  If this is truly where Stant was born, it could mean that WC and Margaret were married there rather than Arkansas and/or that Margaret accompanied WC back to his childhood home for a time.  It’s hard to be sure where Stant was born since he goes back and forth between Arkansas and Tennessee as his birth state in government records.

To add to the confusion, the obituary of WC and Margaret’s oldest daughter, Pearl Elizabeth (born November 7, 1881), claims that she was born in Nashville, TN.  However, on every census record I have found in which Pearl appears, her birth state is listed as Arkansas.

I’m learning that the only thing you can be certain about in genealogy is not being certain.

Genadius George Stanton “Stant” Thomason, who passed away in 1956, might have been amused by my current efforts at pinning down dates, names, and locations for our family tree.
(Photo courtesy of Emma Cape)

According to the federal census of 1880, WC lived with his wife, Margaret, infant son Stant, and a cousin named George W. Thomason in Gainesville, Greene County, AR.  (See Ancestry.com, Year: 1880; Census Place: Gainesville, Greene, Arkansas; Roll: 45; Page: 293D; Enumeration District: 103).  Gainesville was the happening place to be in Greene County at this time, but after railroad tracks were laid a mile away from the center of town, Gainesville endured a similar fate to WC’s hometown of Purdy, TN:  it began to die, losing citizens to nearby Paragould, where a train station was located.  (Purdy lost out to nearby Selmer in the same manner.)

WC and his family relocated to Marmaduke, another town in Greene County, AR, at some point prior to 1890, when, according to WC’s obituary, he began a term as mayor of the town. WC and Margaret’s son, Franklin (“Frank”), born in 1887, named Marmaduke, AR, as his place of birth on his WWII draft registration, so maybe we can hang our hats on that year.

Between Pearl and Frank, in 1885, another daughter, Maggie, was born. (Unfortunately, I believe Maggie died between 1895 and 1900.)  My great-grandfather, Thomas Madison (who went by “Mat”), was born on October 10, 1890. His mother died the following summer, and in the fall of 1891, WC resigned his position as mayor of Marmaduke, packed up his young family, and headed to Ness City, Kansas.

I have often wondered what caused WC to choose central Kansas as his new home. The world is not a vacuum, and people generally have some existing connection with a place or other logical reason for moving to a new area. Or, did my ancestor just close his eyes and point to a spot on the map?  

I think the answer lies with his sister-in-law and former ward, Alice.  When next I find Alice in a record, it’s the 1900 federal census, living in southeastern Kansas with husband Wesley Rinely and their five children (the oldest of whom was born in Kansas in 1888) (see Year: 1900; Census Place: Lincoln, Crawford, Kansas; Page: 5; Enumeration District: 0079; FHL microfilm: 1240477).  Alice’s husband, a native of Iowa, was at that time working for the railroad in Crawford County, KS, but previous to that, he had settled in Ness County, KS, with his parents and siblings (see Year: 1880; Census Place: Eden, Ness, Kansas; Roll: 391; Page: 350C; Enumeration District: 391).  

In a Ness County newspaper from 1913, there is an account of Mrs. Rineley (Alice) visiting her brother-in-law, WC, after first visiting another brother-in-law, O.P. Rineley, in nearby Beeler, and it is stated that she had removed from Ness City 21 years before.  The timing (1892) makes me think that perhaps WC had an opportunity to purchase or rent the home that Alice and her family were vacating.  At any rate, I know that WC was there by 1892 when he made the Ness City newspaper due to an unfortunate encounter with a cow:

(From Ness County News, 21 Apr 1917, as part of the newspaper’s featured stories
from 25 years before (Ness County’s “Pioneer Days”))

Confederate Grandpa Makes Kansas Home

In early 1893, WC married Alice White in Ness City.  He was 41 years of age, with four children.  It was a new start in a city on the plains.

Ness City, early 1900s
(picture from Kansas Historical Society website, kansasmemory.org, used with permission)

WC and Alice went on to have five children together, starting with Ira Lewelling in 1894, then  James Morrell in 1896, followed by Mabel Velma in 1899, Myrtle in 1901, and finally Solomon Leedy in 1903.  WC worked as a molder, a farmer, and a laborer during this time to support his family.

You might be interested to know, however, that WC’s expertise was in corn-cob pipe-smoking:

(From The Wichita Eagle, 26 Aug 1903)

Early in 1905, WC became a widower once again when Alice died.  WC was again left to raise several children alone, but this time he did not re-marry, nor did he immediately move away from Ness City.  He did, however, make plans to move back to Arkansas:

(From Ness County News, 13 Jun 1914)

Ultimately, WC stayed in central Kansas, from time to time visiting his adult children who had moved to nearby Great Bend, until finally he made the decision to move there himself.

(From Great Bend Tribune, 11 Aug 1914)

In Great Bend, WC suffered a mishap that was a tad more serious than a dip into the river, particularly for a man in his sixties:

(From The Hoisington Dispatch, 27 Apr 1916)

Despite his age, WC wasn’t finished working, and next I find him in Towanda, KS, where he appears to have been peddling meat and fish along with son, Stant, while son Leedy worked as a teamster in the oil industry.

Year: 1920; Census Place: Towanda, Butler, Kansas; Roll: T625_524; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 39

I realize the image above is a little hard to read -- indeed, a transcription of the record on Ancestry.com says “Mach Fish Match,” which makes no sense -- but I think the words “meat” and “fish” are involved (see red arrow above).  Given that this area of Kansas had recently witnessed one of the largest oil strikes in the state’s history (see "We Are All In This Together:  Immigrants in the Oil and Mining Towns of Southern Kansas"), this suggests to me that WC and Stant followed the money to this part of the state, perhaps selling fish and game to the large populations of immigrant workers and their families camped along the oil fields.  

My grandmother, Alice Mae, was born in El Dorado, KS, during this oil boom.  Her father and WC’s son, Mat, was employed as a roustabout in Towanda in 1920 (see Year: 1920; Census Place: Towanda, Butler, Kansas; Roll: T625_524; Page: 10B; Enumeration District: 39).  Also living in Butler County during this time was Mat’s older brother, Frank, whose employment in El Dorado included work as a painter, a policeman, and a pumper in the oil field.  

History comes alive to me when I plot the movements of my ancestors.  Just knowing the context of what was happening in the towns in which they chose to live and what their occupations were helps me to envision their daily lives.  The influx of wealth and immigrants to the area, at a time when our country was entering the fray of World War I, must have been a unique time for all involved, not to mention to a man like WC, advancing into his seventies after witnessing firsthand the tragedies of a nation at war, including the murder of his father.  

The last record I have of WC before his death is the 1930 federal census.  He lived in Great Bend, KS, with my great-grandfather, Mat, and Leedy, the youngest of WC’s sons, just a few houses down from the Sloniger residence (remember Union Grandpa?  Mat’s father-in-law?).  Mat worked as a plasterer, while Leedy took odd jobs. The two sons were each divorced, caring for their father, now 79.

WC would live until 1938, almost in time to see the U.S. become involved in yet another war overseas.  

In his long life, WC had experienced his share of conflict and loss, losing family members and the family farm thanks in large part to the Civil War.  He had experienced life on the “inside” and lost four years of his life to it.  He had endured the losses of two wives and children (besides Maggie, there was another child born to Margaret who died, but I do not know the name or age of this child). Yet, WC had also witnessed the reunion and reconstruction of a divided country and the massive expansion of industrialization and urbanization. Things had progressed quite a bit since that legendary jaunt to Shiloh in 1862.

WC’s roots in Tennessee had been all but stripped away from him by war and imprisonment.  I can’t help but to wonder if, in the new frontier of twentieth-century Kansas, WC romanticized, boasted, and stretched the truth about being a Confederate soldier and member of Quantrill’s band to hang onto something of his identity in a fast-changing world.

If nothing else, I’ll bet it made it for good storytelling, the words wafting through to later generations like smoke from a corn-cob pipe.