Finding the Smiths Pt 2: The Matriarch

FINALLY! I’m finally able to post again after a month of radio silence in which real life thwarted every effort to write for fun, and a severe case of writer’s block wouldn’t let me be great! A side effect of genealogy blogging for fun I suppose. Its labor intensive and you want to make sure everything you share is as correct as possible. Afterall, it’s your family’s legacy!

But I’m thankful the Christmas season has given me the gift of time (thank you Jesus 😊). I’m ready to continue with the series on my Smith family! In the first post on the Smiths, I shared how I used the newspaper to weave together the stories of their lives (If you haven’t read the first one yet or need a refresher, definitely start there!) Once I figured out how to peel back the layers, I found that my family with the “oh so common” name wasn’t so common after all! And I soon learned that the paper trail that laid out the Smith family saga didn’t begin with my 2x great grandfather William Smith.

Those blessed old newspapers that led me to William, also gave me the keys to step back through the door to the previous generation and find his mother! I didn’t just break down the brick wall, I smashed through it — with a little help from a research angel, a lot of deductive reasoning, and some plain ‘ol thinking outside the box.

Discovering Martha

I can’t stress enough how I never thought I’d get this far on this branch of my tree. Remember, for years I didn’t even bother trying to research William Smith because I assumed I would get nowhere. But we all know what happens when you assume too much! 😊

And even with all the wonderful discoveries I made about the Smith family’s lives and origins from reading old newspapers, I still didn’t work very hard to take it a step further and try to find them before they landed in Kansas in 1879. I did check the 1870 census in Tennessee and Illinois since the 1880 census indicated their older children had been born in those states, but I didn’t find any trace of a William or Nancy Smith anywhere on the 1870 record, so left it at that.

Then last year I received a message via Ancestry from a kind lady who was with the Coles County Illinois Genealogy Society saying she believed that she had found William’s mother, a woman named Martha Smith. My first reaction: say what?!?! How?? How could she possibly know this was the right William Smith’s family?? I’m glad you asked!

A somber anniversary leads to breakthrough

She said the historical society had been working on a project about the victims of a devastating tornado that hit Mattoon, IL in 1917 to commemorate the 100^th anniversary. Among the artifacts discovered for the project was a newspaper obituary for Martha. The article mentioned her lone survivor was a 76-year-old son named William who lived in Larned, Kansas. It went on to say that this son had served as a cook for the Union Army during the Civil War.  Whelp! These were the same details I found about William in his own obituary. So, there was no doubt, this was MY William’s mother! This Martha Smith was my 3x great grandmother that I hadn’t been looking for and never thought I’d find.

It was initially a bittersweet find. I was elated with such an unexpected family discovery of course, but at the same time, the circumstances of her death laid out in the article were rather sad. Martha died at the age of 103. She lived such a long life only to die of a terrible injury suffered during a storm rather than of old age, warm and content in her own bed. But on the other hand, what an extraordinary life it must have been! She’d lived just as many years free as she had lived enslaved. I needed to know more, and Martha instantly became my new research mission.

Familiar names, new faces

From Martha’s obituary, I gleaned some important info that helped me research her and her family further. It spoke of two other sons that had preceded her in death — Wiley and Horace Smith. If these names sound a bit familiar, it’s because these were also the names of William’s sons. He’d named his children after his brothers. More proof that this was the right family connection! It also called Martha’s son Wiley “one of Mattoon’s best-known colored men…” which intrigued me. What had Wiley done to earn such a distinction? I headed back to the newspaper archives to see if the Mattoon papers had written anything about the family before Martha’s death the same way the Larned papers had covered the goings on in William’s family.  Once again, the local news came through for me!

“The well-known colored citizen…”

In addition to Martha’s obituary, there were several articles published in the Mattoon newspapers mentioning the family over the years, including obituaries for both Wiley and Horace. Wiley’s was quite extraordinary. It was a frontpage story and an entire column was dedicated to celebrating his life! This was a mainstream newspaper, not an African American publication which was usually where the most stories about our people were published during this time. It said the funeral arrangements were “…in the hands of a committee of physicians with whom he was closely associated during the past thirty years of his activities, and with others whom he had come to serve later… the funeral will be one of importance.” Apparently, Wiley had started out working as a janitor for one or two of the doctors in town and had become an indispensable “right hand man” to nearly all the important physicians that had worked in Mattoon during that time. I even saw an article that mentioned his boss, Dr. Fry, was running for mayor and Wiley was acting as his campaign manager! It went on to say that the group of physicians had gathered at Wiley’s home annually for years to enjoy a fancy opossum dinner and it was a much sought-after invitation. Apparently that ugly creature was a true delicacy 100 years ago?? LOL.  

But although Wiley’s obituary was an awesome artifact that helped illuminate the life of my long-gone family member, it also illustrates why you should try to find as many sources to corroborate your facts as possible. Unfortunately, the author got a few things wrong. The article states that Wiley had two children born to his first marriage—Philo, living in Mattoon and William living in Larned, KS. It also mentioned that there were no living relatives besides his children and brother Horace. We already know that at the time of Wiley’s death in 1912, his mother and brother William were both still alive. Also, earlier census records indicate that Wiley did have two children, Philo who was mentioned in the obituary, and a daughter named Maude. There was never a mention of a son named William, however. Since his brother William was living in Larned at the time, I believe that the newspaper just got their facts mixed up. Even so, this was a lovely example of my how my family had been respected and loved in their community.

Horace wasn’t as lauded as his older brother, but his obituary did offer a nice remembrance of his life. And I was able to glean some useful info from it. It said he had moved to Mattoon around 1873, which matched up with William’s timeline. So, my best guess is that the entire extended Smith family packed up and left Tennessee to seek out a better life all together. Everyone except Wiley. I found a short mention in the paper of Wiley moving to Mattoon in 1881—a couple of years after William headed west with his young family to Kansas.

Then another article about a visit William made to Mattoon in 1909 drew my attention because it said this was the first time Wiley and William had seen each other in 39 years! After a little more searching, I found another article in a Larned paper that said this was William and Nancy’s first visit back to Mattoon since leaving 30 years earlier. So William hadn’t seen his mother in all that time either. I can’t imagine being separated from my mama for so long! But I suppose frontier travel wasn’t so simple for former slaves who were trying to build their lives. Still, I wonder if the brothers had any idea that it would be nearly four decades before they’d see each other again after their last farewell in Tennessee? I hope the family was at least able to exchange letters over the years.

Reclaiming forgotten family

I circled back to census records to see what other info I could locate on the Mattoon Smiths. I hoped to find them on 1870 in Tennessee, but like William and Nancy, I found no trace unfortunately. Since 1880 was the earliest I could find that included them, I carefully mined that one for clues about earlier times. It was a valuable piece of the puzzle because it included family members I hadn’t seen anywhere else. It said Martha was born in Tennessee and her mother was born in North Carolina — a fact that would help me connect some dots later. She was living in the household with her young adult children — daughter Celia, age 23, son Horace, age 22 and “adopted daughter” Sallie, age 15.

Until I read the 1880 census, I had no idea that Martha also had daughters. They were never mentioned in either hers or her sons’ obituaries. Nor had I seen these names on any other census records. Interestingly, a 13-year-old granddaughter named Mary was also listed in Martha’s household. It said both Mary and her mother were born in Tennessee, but her father’s birthplace was listed as Alabama. So right away I suspected that she might have been another daughter of my William and Nancy. This was also surprise info because this older daughter was never listed amongst their children on any other record. If she was indeed their daughter, why was she living with her grandmother and not with her parents and siblings in Kansas? And whatever happened to Celia and Sallie?

I took a shot in the dark and searched for Celia, Sallie and Mary in the Mattoon newspaper archives and luckily found mentions of all three! Sadly, it was their obituaries that I’d found. All three ladies had died young between 1880 and 1896. Sallie died of tuberculosis just a few months after the census was taken. Mary’s 1887 obituary said she died at age 19 in the home of “Mr. and Mrs. Allen Hawkins”.  Mrs. Allen Hawkins turned out to be her aunt, Celia, who had married Allen Hawkins in 1880. Lastly, Celia suffered the same fate as her sister, dying of tuberculosis in 1896.

This was another example of the importance of chasing down multiple sources to research our ancestor’s lives. Moreover, it illustrates the genealogy void left by the destroyed 1890 census. These ladies of the family would have been lost to time and never reclaimed if I ended the search too soon!

Finding Celia led to discovering even more elusive names to add to the family tree. Her Illinois marriage record included the names of BOTH of her parents! Due to extensive family separations during slavery and family units simply not being listed together in slave owner’s records, finding the partners of formerly enslaved women prior to 1870 can be nearly impossible. I have William’s death record, but his father is listed as “unknown”. Not uncommon for formerly enslaved people. But thanks to this marriage record, we know that Celia’s father name was Joshua Glass. Since I found Celia’s, I searched for the record of Wiley’s second marriage since it took place in Illinois as well. I found it and learned that apparently Wiley was a junior! His father’s name is listed as Wiley Smith. Every record I’d found for Martha listed her as a widow, so my assumption is that her children’s fathers both died before emancipation.

I’m not certain that either of these men were my direct ancestor because William was much older than his younger siblings, but it’s possible. William did name his own son Wiley as well, so perhaps it was a family name passed down from his own father. I am nevertheless glad to discover their names and reclaim them back into my collective Smith family memory.

Where do we go from here?

Finally, the 1880 census revealed one more interesting bit of info that I hadn’t seen before. All three of Martha’s children in the 1880 household are listed as having been born in Missouri. Although subsequent census records and even their obituaries indicated they had been born in Tennessee, I tend to trust the earliest records I find on people. So, the records indicated that Martha had children in three different states—Alabama (William), Missouri (Horace and Celia) and her native Tennessee (Wiley). How was this possible?? Moreover, how was it possible that the family had maintained their family bond as Martha was sold or shuffled from one state to the next? These questions needed answers! And these questions set me off on the next stage in my search for the Smiths—discovering the origin story. To find it, I was forced to spend a lot of time searching for and getting to know the people who had enslaved them. Part III coming up soon!