Rev. James Wright Edwards,

a Christian Co. pioneer

(1807-Sept. 22, 1893) 

 

Submitted by Randy McConnell

April 2006

 

Randy has generously shared these for publication with the Christian County Mogen Web site. No data may be reproduced or published without permission of the author.

 

When James Wright Edwards first scouted northern Christian Co. in 1849,¹ the Guin Prairie grasses grew taller than a man, and scarcely a tree broke the horizon. Since the 1830s, the residents of Maury Co., TN like Edwards had received reports about this new Ozarks country near Springfield, either in letters or newspaper dispatches reprinted from the Ozark Eagle.

Old friends -- like the Keltners from Giles Co. and Walter McConnell family from Maury — had resettled here several years before and were thriving on the prairie upland south of Springfield, even though most of the James River bottom had been claimed.

James W. had achieved middling prominence in Maury Co. as a Disciples of Christ minister, elected constable, farmer and shoemaker, but the country was becoming heavily settled – the second most heavily populated county in Tennessee. Many of his friends, neighbors and kin had lost their lands in the recession of 1842, and all lived in the shadows of their cousins, the Pillows, and the Polks, who owned large estates in southern Maury. The children were reaching the age to marry, and their prospects were meager in Middle TN with its high land prices.

James W. likely  spent the winter of 1851-52  -- not 1849 -- with Jared E. Smith in northern Christian Co. because Edwards patented a 40-acre land grant there on April 26, 1852 before returning to Maury Co.

James W.’s report to friends and kin helped bring a flood of southern Maury and Giles Countians in the fall of 1852² to southern Greene Co., which then included northern Christian. Among them were his brothers, his wife's Kenamore parents, sisters and their families, the Macks, Inmans, Gingers, Faughts and others in search of new promise. Those who did not make the trip in 1852 came two years later. Most arrived with considerable capital and soon owned much of the land around modern Nixa and north to the James River valley.

These families eventually founded the present community of Nixa, one of the fastest growing cities in Missouri today. James W.'s original farm of 680 acres covered much of northern Nixa; his two eldest daughters owned another large area; his son operated one of two stores at the crossroads that became the Nixa post office in 1878; and the family drug store became an early Nixa fixture.

James W. took a leading role in the pro-Union area’s  affairs in the Civil War, serving in the county Home Guard in his 50s and on the Christian Co. Court during the desolate days when Union militia, rebel troops and bushwhackers clashed regularly. He married, as his second wife, a widow whose husband had been kidnapped and presumed murdered by rebels. He was allied with the Radical Republicans of Greene Co., led by his old friends, the Macks, and considerable evidence supports his involvement in a slave-running operation from Arkansas to the North.

When formal hostilities ended (but bushwhacker activity bore on), he owned and operated the historic Riverdale mill and continued preaching and marrying at a nearby church, but in the late 1870s, he fell upon hard times and died in relative poverty in 1893.

He was buried beside his first wife Patsy Kenamore, up to a dozen relatives and two former slaves in the old family graveyard that dated from her death in 1866, alongside modern U.S. 160 just north of the Nixa city limits.

But the tract passed out of the family hands, and the owner in 1940 tore out the stones and wrought iron fencing without notice. Intimidated by the man's local prominence, hobbled by weak state laws and dispersed over time, the remaining family members had little recourse as growth crept along the Springfield-Nixa corridor.

Eventually in the 1990s, the owner’s son offered to arrange for a state archaeologist to visit -- to disprove that any bodies were buried there. But the diggers found the remains, and the owners paid for their reburial at McConnell Cemetery, where a large monument has been erected among James W.’s extended family. 

From Maury to Missouri

James W. Edwards was the son of Nancy Edwards and likely Mordecai Edwards, who are mentioned in the 1816 bastardy case of his sister Jane.

Some researchers have suggested the parents are Mark Fielding Edwards and Nancy Hammontree of Lincoln Co., NC, but the evidence is sparse. James W. told the 1880 censustakers that his father was born in Scotland although the father and older brothers were likely born in North Carolina.

By the 1820 census, mother Nancy Edwards was living in southern Maury Co. with six males, apparent sons or grandsons born in 1794 or after, and a young female; the father had died by then although Williamson and Maury Co. files contain no records of his probate.

James Wright Edwards was born around 1807 in Tennessee. He went by his middle name of Wright, at least early in life when the 1830 census lists him as such. Some descendants refer to him as Wright; the Christian Co. centennial history called him “Uncle Wright Edwards.”

He married around 1830 to neighbor Martha “Patsy” Kenamore (1813-1866), probably in Giles Co. where records were destroyed; abstracts of Middle Tennessee marriages do not list the license, but his brother’s records are shown in Maury Co. at about the same time.³

Patsy was the daughter of Creek War veteran William and Mary Johnson Kenamore of Maury Co. and the granddaughter of Revolutionary War veteran Abner Johnson Sr. and wife Nancy Brackett of Amelia Co., VA, Rockingham Co., NC and Maury Co. The Kenamores (formerly Genheimers) were descendants of German Palatinate mayors who came to America in 1732 and migrated to South Carolina; the Quaker Johnsons came from Aberdeen, Scotland in the late 1600s to plantation VA and eventually North Carolina before all converged on Maury Co. in Middle Tennessee.

Wright and Patsy settled in Bigbyville, a village south of the Maury Co. seat of Columbia that boasts fertile soil for farming and rich pastures for horse raising.

James W. and Patsy Kenamore Edwards had a male, likely his nephew William Carroll Edwards, age 10 to 15, living with them in 1830 in Maury Co. Ten years later, they are shown with a son, Irvin Wright, and daughter Matilda. Several early children likely died as infants, and the Edwardses added Martin Luther, Nancy C. and Clarinda to the family before coming to MO.

James W. was elected Democratic constable in Civil District 7 of Maury Co. on March 2, 1844. But he also served as a minister of the Christian Church (Disciples), which the family attended in Bigbyville; he presided over the marriages of many of the extended Edwards-Kenamore-Johnson-McConnell-McCafferty-Gooch family after coming to Missouri.

Less well known was his work as a shoemaker, which is listed as his occupation in the 1850 Maury County census; his trade brought him into repeated contact with the McConnells, particularly the Rev. William C., who was a tanner and Disciples of Christ preacher in southern Maury. James W.'s nephew Carroll also worked as a tanner, perhaps with neighbor McConnell.

Although early family histories describe James Wright as a wealthy man, he was merely middle-class by Tennessee  standards, owning real estate on the edge of Bigbyville worth $2,000 in 1850; his wealth came after his arrival in Missouri, where low land prices magnified his worth.

The Kenamore family history⁴ tells of James W. coming to Christian Co. in 1849, laying stake to 600 acres and returning to Maury Co., TN to retrieve the other members of the Kenamore family the next year. Instead, James W. likely came to Christian Co. in 1851 with Jared Ebenezer Smith, who had married Sarah Roberta Mack, the daughter of James W.’s neighbor John A. Mack and cousin Sarah Sophia Mack.

Growing evidence supports the view that the large Maury Co. wagon train with the Edwards and related Kenamore families did not arrive in Christian Co. until October or November 1852.⁵ Another group came two years later, after the death of the Kenamore family matriarch, Nancy Brackett (Mrs. Abner) Johnson, who lived into her 90s.

The families likely took one of two paths. One “road” to Christian Co. crossed the Mississippi at Helena, Phillips Co., AR to the military road west on Crowley's Ridge, and travelers then cut from Forsyth, MO north.⁶ Another route — near the Trail of Tears — required emigrants to go north of Nashville to Hopkinsville, KY, Jonesboro, IL, the Weaver ferry on the Mississippi, Jackson, MO, and then Farmington, Caledonia, Hartville and Springfield.⁷ Both routes cut through rugged terrain in south-central MO or northern Arkansas.

James W. quickly began building his own plantation in Missouri, adding to his early 40-acre land grant.on Nixa’s north side.

On April 9, 1853, James W.  paid William T. and Sarah Burford of Greene Co. $2,040 for 680 acres, a fee simple transaction, on the stretch of Guin Prairie that now comprises the northwest portion of Nixa.⁸ The land was near the farm of Walter McConnell and the property of his sons; the McConnells came west from Bigbyville and Campbellsville, TN in 1842 and 1845. The Burfords lived elsewhere in the county and had been holding the land for investment.

The comparability of his real estate's value in 1850 and the purchase in 1853 suggest that James W. simply reinvested his sales proceeds from TN into a farm here, although the cheaper price of western land left him with a virtual plantation, in both TN and MO terms.

In the 1856 Greene Co. tax list, James W. owned the 680 acres that were the core of his holdings for 15 years, five horses, seven cows, 12 mules, a scarce "pleasure" carriage and $100 in notes for cash loaned to others.

The prairie was considered among the finest farmland in modern Christian Co. The total value of his property, according to the Greene Co. assessor, was $4,705 in 1856. The value grew to more than $8,000, according to the 1860 census, or a vast sum in the context of the area economy. The size of James W.'s holdings placed him in the league of the plantation holders south of Springfield on the Kickapoo and Guin prairies and the James River valley — the Crenshaws, Wards, Steeles, Sanderses, Pattersons, Paynes, Owenses, Fulbrights, Blakeys, Danforths, Vintons, Macks, Phillipses, McElhanys, Bowens, Shorts and O'Bryants.

The Edwards-Kenamore families had come from Maury plantation country, where their cousins, the Pillows, and the family of President James K. Polk held estates totaling thousands of acres. In Missouri, the Edwardses and Kenamores settled similar ground.

Many of these Greene Co. plantation families were extensive slaveholders. James W. had no slaves in the 1856 tax list despite his large acreage, but at least two blacks were buried in the desecrated family burial ground.

These blacks may have been freed slaves from other large farms who became James W.'s hired hands after the Emancipation Proclamation; the 1870 agricultural schedule shows that James W., virtually alone among Christian Co. farmers, hired farm workers for cash.⁹ 

The battle over slavery and for the Union

By the late 1850s in Greene Co., James W. became a leader among those settlers who feared the designs of fire-breathers on both sides of the slavery debate, but moved strongly to the Union side. On April 5, 1858, he served on the resolutions committee of the “Union meeting” held in Springfield to oppose and prevent dissolution of the country over the slavery issue.¹⁰ Among other speakers to the group was Col. Marcus Boyd, another Middle TN migrant and first cousin of late neighbor Walter McConnell.

Evidence of James W.'s leanings is found in ties to the Macks from southern Maury Co., who appear to have come with the Edwardses to MO in 1852.¹¹ The Macks led the Radical Republican faction of Greene Co. during the Civil War.

The original John Mack and his sons had come from Pittsylvania Co., VA c. 1800, and a marker at their original homestead on the Pulaski Pike in Maury Co. noted, incorrectly, that they were the first permanent white settlers in the county.

The Edwards settled nearby, and a complex web of relationships linked the two families.

John W. Edwards, the minister's nephew and son of brother Jeremiah Edwards, married Narcissa Mack, the daughter of John Mack who died in 1855.¹² John A. Mack¹³ had signed as a witness to James W. Edwards' Greene Co. deed in 1853. Macks were shown as niece and nephew of James W. Edwards' daughter in a later census.

John W.D.L.F. Mack (1820, TN), known as “Alphabet,” bought part of Grant Kenamore's holdings just west of James W.'s farm in 1859; Grant was James W.'s brother-in-law. Mack in-law Jared E. Smith, or J.E. Smith,¹⁴ later a Greene Co. state representative who married a Mack, arrived before the others and bought the land due west of James W. and sold it in 1852 to James H. McConnell.

The newly arrived Macks began their ascent to political power in Greene Co. just before the war opened.

In August 1859, Alphabet Mack was elected Greene Co. circuit clerk, and he was named county attorney the following year. He and other officials siding with the Union fled Springfield in 1861 and early 1862 during the Confederate occupation, but he returned to win a lopsided victory over moderate Col. Marcus Boyd to become state senator from Greene and Christian Cos. in November 1862. In 1864 and 1865, the family literally seized control of the county with assistance from Gov. Thomas Fletcher,¹⁵ who threw elected Democratic officials out of the Springfield courthouse and replaced them with the Macks.

Robert A.C. Mack (1835, TN), a young doctor/lawyer, who had residences in both Greene and Christian Cos.. by 1860,¹⁶ became county school commissioner by late 1863. He was appointed Greene Co. clerk Jan. 4, 1864 and local military agent for widows, orphans and disabled soldiers — a lucrative position — in April 1864. Mack apparently lost the election or didn't seek another term that fall because Gov. Fletcher ousted Democrat M.J. Hubble under the new state constitution to install Mack as county clerk again in April 1865.

John A. Mack, a Springfield attorney, became probate and court of common pleas judge in April 1864, again thanks to the ousting ordinance. Alphabet Mack was named county attorney on April 15, 1865 and again in January 1866, and he chaired the county Radical Republicans.¹⁷ The family held sway until 1870 when Robert A.C. Mack was elected circuit clerk as a Radical Republican, but Democrats swept the other offices.¹⁸

One branch of the Mack family owned Wilson Township, Greene Co. farms adjacent to Lewis A.D. Crenshaw (1820-Dec. 23, 1884),¹⁹ another wealthy Middle Tennessean, just across the James River from the James W. Edwards farm.

The next link north of James W. on the “underground railroad” was said to be Crenshaw, who in the early 1850s assembled hundreds of adjoining acres north of the James River into one of the Greene Co.'s largest plantations with a 14-room mansion.²⁰

According to stories passed down in the family and circumstantial evidence, the Rev. Edwards formed a link in the “underground railroad” to help slaves and others escape from Arkansas north before and/or during the Civil War; he reportedly was assigned to take them to the Crenshaw mansion south of Springfield for their next leg toward freedom. The old mansion was riddled with hidden rooms and tunnels and served as a refuge for Union soldiers, sympathizers and refugees from the Confederates in the Civil War.

By all appearances, Crenshaw also functioned as the behind-the-scenes money man for Mack's political network.

Crenshaw came to Springfield from Nashville in 1841 and settled south of the city in 1848 with no land; he still had none recorded by the 1851 tax list. But his property was worth $20,000 by 1860, and 10 years later, it was valued at $55,000: his personal property totaled another $35,000. His family said his wealth was founded on profits from an 1849 expedition to California, where Crenshaw brought 27 male settlers and goods that he sold for exorbitant prices.²¹

Although Crenshaw held 14 slaves in 1856, those holdings had little influence on his pro-Union activities, including the apparent transport of blacks and Union sympathizers safely to the North. His slaves in fact provided an essential “cover” for his activities. The route from Crenshaw's Springfield mansion had two outlets to the North: one through west-central Missouri to Topeka, Des Moines, Chicago and Canada; the other through St. Louis to Chicago and northward.²²

Crenshaw was so pro-Union that in June 1861, he set out for St. Louis with Sempronious H. “Pony” Boyd (a future congressman, ambassador and son of Marcus, the McConnell cousin) and Dr. E.T. Robberson to urge Gen. Nathaniel Lyon or his aides to send troops to southwest Missouri and avert a Confederate takeover.²³

At this time, Confederate Gen. Gideon Johnson Pillow -- the cousin of Martha Edwards, the Kenamores and Johnsons from Maury Co.²⁴ -- was invading southeast Missouri, and a large portion of the state militia had gone over to the rebels, including a major contingent at Sarcoxie.

The delegation of three Greene Countians instead encountered Col. Franz Sigel at newly captured Rolla — heading the first federal troops into southwest Missouri for the war — and Sigel escorted the men back to Springfield. The Battle of Wilson's Creek followed in August 1861 with Sigel operating under the command of Lyon, who was killed.

Although he was 54 when the war began, James W. served from May 8 to July 27, 1861 in the pro-Union Greene and Christian Cos. Home Guards,²⁵ who fought in the Battle of Forsyth that summer and helped capture the town briefly for the Union.²⁶

James W. had no qualms about his side in the war — unlike daughter Matilda's brother-in-law, Rep. William Shakespeare McConnell of Cassville, a tepid Southern sympathizer who was elected to the Missouri House in 1860. Even though the secessionist Legislature fled to his hometown, McConnell at first refused to attend their rump session in 1861 and then refused to vote on a secession resolution.

W.S. was tried for treason by the military government, but acquitted. Federal troops kept him under house arrest for two years because, as a lawyer, he represented Southern sympathizers. His hotel became a military hospital for the duration. 

Judge James W. Edwards

James W. soon became part of the scramble by pro-Union forces to take over the county courthouses and local political apparatus of southwest Missouri.

The party system had broken down into the anti-emancipation Conservative Union Party and the pro-emancipation Radical Republicans; the once dominant Democrats, with their slaveholding faction, no longer functioned in Greene and Christian Cos. No one was allowed to vote without taking an oath of allegiance to the Union and the essentially military Gamble provisional government in Jefferson City.

The southwest Missouri elections of 1862 were rife with family connections.

For Congress, incumbent John S. Phelps²⁷ of the new Conservative Union Party faced a challenge from Sempronious H. “Pony” Boyd, the McConnell cousin, running as an Emancipationist-Radical Republican.

For the State Senate, Col. Marcus Boyd, Pony's father, was running on the Conservative Union ticket instead against John W.D.L.F. “Alphabet” Mack of the Radical Republicans. Standing for a Christian Co. Court seat was James W. Edwards, whose political affiliation is unrecorded.

The results of the election in Christian Co. were believed lost in the courthouse fire of 1865. But the Capitol Fire Documents collection contains this letter, which was burned at the top of both pages, among files salvaged by townspeople from the Secretary of State's office and stacked on the Capitol lawn as the statehouse fire blazed in 1911:²⁸ 

Ozark, November the 24th, 1862

Christian Co., MO

To his Excellency, the Governor of the State of Missouri:

I, John Pettijohn, Clerk of the County Court in and for the County of Christian, do hereby certify that for Congress, John S. Phelps received 71 votes.

I hereby certify that for Congress, S.H. Boyd received 325 votes.

I hereby certify that for County Court Justice James W. Edwards received 144 votes.

I hereby certify that for County Court Justice Joel Hall received 135 votes.

There were two county court justices to elect. They were both of them duly and constitutionally elected. But owing to circumstances that I will state, they failed to cast lots for the time of holding said offices. The federal army had taken the courthouse for a hospital. The court failed to attend to that and other business. I will send you the time of there (sic) holding of office in a short time. Hope you will excuse under the cirumstances.

John Pettijohn 

With Christian Co. only in existence since 1858, the election appears to have warranted the election of one judge to a two-year term and another for four years, but these district judges' slots were not determined in a random drawing.

The surviving state records also provide no clue about James W.'s opponent, although other counties provided detailed lists of the election results. As the letter states, county officials had neither the time nor the facilities to provide lengthy accounts of the election for the state.

James W. probably drew the two-year term because his name has not yet been found in the records of 1866, when the longer term would have expired, after the courthouse fire. The fire also consumed his record of service to the county.

The election tide, however, was clearly discernible. The area, once Democratic with moderate-sized slaveholdings, elected the Emancipationist/Radical Republican ticket in a landslide. Alphabet Mack outpolled Marcus Boyd 630 to 258 in Greene Co., according to the History of Greene Co. ²⁹ Sam Headlee and Jared Ebenezer Smith, both formerly of Maury Co., won Greene Co. state representative slots as Emancipationists.

As a county judge, James W. likely had the influence to guarantee safe passage for slaves, white Union sympathizers, soldiers and supplies that were smuggled north from Arkansas. “Safe passage,” of course, was a relative term because of the lawlessness on both sides of the war, but James W. could have guaranteed that the local sheriff, deputies and militiamen cooperated on the Christian Co. leg of the trip.

James W.'s election gave state Sen. J.W.D.L.F. “Alphabet” Mack, who had been promoted in 1862 from private to adjutant and captain of the 72nd Regiment, Enrolled MO Militia, a political lieutenant on the southern front of the greater Springfield area. 

James Wright Edwards

and Susan Arminta Ellen Sink

James W. and Patsy Kenamore Edwards had another son, John Riley or “Pete,” and daughter Mary after coming to MO, but Patsy died shortly after the war. She was still living in April 1866 when James bought her late father’s farm and allowed for a distribution of the proceeds to other heirs. Her stone was destroyed about 1941 by the family who bought the Edwards cemetery site.

As a shoemaker, even after moving to MO, James W. often patronized a local tanyard where he met his second wife. Susan Arminta Ellen Sink (Jan. 31, 1834, Pokagon Township, Cass Co., MI-Jan. 17, 1917, Nixa) was the daughter of David William and Delilah Dillon (or Lucinda Moffett) Sink, originally of Franklin Co., VA, although the mother died in Michigan while Susan was young. David  operated “Davie's Jerk” southwest of Nixa and remarried in Michigan to Wealthy Ann Hartwell, a Virginia native.

Susan married first to John C. McDaniel on April 22, 1852 in Greene Co. MO.³⁰ Susan's granddaughter recalled the couple had three children before they fell victim to bushwhackers in the Civil War. Two young children had died and lay in state in the home, when raiders carried away John, and Susan never saw him again.³¹

Susan's brother, Capt. Stephen Sink, commanded the Union troops in charge of Ozark Co., MO.

James W.'s activities and Susan's ties made them targets for the bushwhackers still marauding through the countryside long after the war officially ended, and James W. was often away from home on public or religious affairs.³²

In one story told by a daughter, probably from around 1871, Susan hid the two youngest children in a smokehouse and forced the youngest, Leanna Ellen, to breastfeed so she wouldn't cry as raiders plundered the farm. Susan and Ellen nevertheless were detected although daughter Martha, stuffed in a barrel, remained hidden in the darkness.³³

Of course, hiding in a smokehouse, when raiders were looking for food and money, wasn't a capital idea. 

The decline of James Wright Edwards

James W. Edwards began his life in Christian Co. as one of its wealthiest and most prominent men; he died in poverty, according to Kenamore family historian Blanche Doran. No probate files have been found.

He was still well-to-do in 1870 — in fact the wealthiest farmer in the area even though he had deeded substantial land to his daughter, Matilda, and her husband, John W. McConnell. Deed records show that James W. and Susan sold McConnell 80 acres northeast of Nixa on Aug. 25, 1867 for $200; the land was part of James W.'s original holdings  in Missouri. The other children also received or bought land in the same area from James W.

The 1870 agricultural census records show that James W. held 400 acres, with 100 in cultivation, valued at $9,600 – despite plummeting land values -- with $430 in farm equipment. He had eight horses, six mules, three milk cows, six oxen, three other cattle, 30 sheep and 50 pigs. James W. raised wheat, corn and oats, and he was among the rare farmers who reported that they paid for hired help, likely the blacks, perhaps Herndons, who are buried in the family graveyard.

After 1874, almost all the land that now forms the site of northern Nixa passed from James W. to his nephew, William Carroll Edwards, and other family members. On the 1874 tax list, James W. still owned 40 acres on the northern edge of current Nixa, possibly his patent land, plus 158 acres at Riverdale.

James transferred hundreds of acres to his younger children to protect the property in a dispute with the county and state over back taxes – including a ploy in which local citizens refused to bid on his land as it was sold for delinquent taxes and James bought it for rock-bottom prices.

James W. Edwards' landholdings quickly were reduced to a 5-acre tract in Riverdale on the Finley River where he was operator of the historic Riverdale Mill until Jan. 14, 1876, according to Bygone Days, a local history. The state of Missouri sued him for back taxes on March 5, 1878.

Generally speaking, James W. Edwards himself was quick to take a dispute to court and once sued over the accidental (or mischievous) castration of a jackass by John Morrow and James McDaniel.

This jackass, however, was special — "Old Norman," James W.'s vehicle for reaching his church services each Sunday. Even when he was too aged and infirm to mount the animal alone, his daughters by the second marriage boosted him up on Sunday mornings so he could preach at Old Dry Bones Church near Riverdale. The church's men would help him unmount and boost him up again after the services to send him home.

The court files indicate he loaned the jackass to the two young boys, who returned the animal castrated. According to the family's version of the story, the horse was taken without permission and castrated with barbed wire — certainly a more colorful saga: Old Norman is supposed to have contracted blood poisoning after the crude operation and died.³⁴

By 1880, James W. was still living with his second family near Riverdale as a farmer with Abraham Harp, 56, boarding as a laborer.

James W. performed his last marriage of record when he wed Jacob Castlow or Castillo³⁵ and Melvina Pope, both of Nixa, on Aug. 17, 1891. Jacob had first married James W.'s niece, Amanda McCafferty; Melvina was the sister of Rebecca Jane Pope McConnell, who had married John W. McConnell after his first wife, James W.'s daughter Matilda D., died in the early 1870s.

James W. was buried beside his first wife Patsy Kenamore in the old Edwards family cemetery on U.S. 160 north of Nixa, along with about a dozen relatives and two black farm workers. The bodies were removed from the site in the 1990s and reinterred at McConnell Cemetery near Nixa.

After James' death on Sept. 22, 1893, Susan Sink Edwards moved in with daughter “Minta” Edwards and Carey Harding, who were living in Finley Township, Christian Co. in 1900. Susan later joined another daughter, Martha, and husband Gerome Bolin.

Susan Sink Edwards died Jan. 15, 1917 and is buried in McConnell Cemetery in the Bolin family plot.  She died of heart disease and arteriosclerosis, according to the opinion of Dr. L.W. Fowler on her death certificate.

Children of James W. Edwards

and Martha H. “Patsy” Kenamore  

Irvin Wright Edwards (Dec. 15, 1836-July 11, 1914)

Irvin, a Union Civil War veteran who drew a pension for his service as an infantry sergeant, served as the Nixa postmaster from 1889 to 1893. He was elected Nixa's justice of the peace in 1894, with his nephew James Wright McConnell, and re-elected at least in 1896.

Born in Maury Co., TN, Irvin began the war as a sergeant under Capt. William Vaughn in Co. B, the Christian Co. Home Guard, from May 8, 1861 to July 27, 1861. He then joined Co. A., 72nd Regiment, Enrolled Missouri Militia, as a private under Capt. Jackson Ball from July to October 13, 1862 when he “enlisted in the U.S. service.” But his service card does not indicate the unit, which qualified him for a pension.

Irvin married Harriet Jane Herndon (1846-1931),³⁶ the daughter of William Holman Herndon of Galena, on Nov. 20, 1862 in Stone Co., MO before the Rev. Mathew Duff McCroskey of Porter Township, Christian Co.³⁷ Irvin and Jane had at least one son, John Irvin, in 1866.

That same year, Irvin was charged with felonious assault with intent to kill, but the outcome is unknown. In these generally lawless days in the wake of the Civil War, Irvin's brother Martin also was charged with assault in a possibly related incident.

The 1880 census shows that Harriet Jane was living with two sons: John Irvin and William Holman, born in 1879. William was the son of another man, probably Irvin's brother Martin. Irvin had split with Jane before 1880, when he was living with his brother John R. “Pete.” Jane finally divorced Irvin in a case filed in 1883, and she married his brother, Martin "Sant" Edwards, another mill hand, although the license records have not been located.

Irvin lived with his cousin's wife Narcissa (Mrs. William Carroll) Edwards at the turn of the century. She died in 1906 and by 1910, he resided with two sisters of his stepmother: Martha J. Sink Herndon and Frances A. Sink Hunt.

Irvin is buried in McConnell Cemetery with son John Irvin and daughter-in-law Ona A. Faught Edwards.

John Irvin Edwards (March 26, 1866-Aug. 20, 1923) married Ona (Jan. 22, 1869-Sept. 22, 1944), daughter of John W. “Jack” Faught and Mary Ann McConnell, on Oct. 14, 1886. They lived on an 80-acre farm southwest of Nixa. Records show that John I. took out a $55 loan from the county school fund to help buy his farm, and it was repaid in April 1897.

The couple had seven children:

— Ernest (July 26, 1887-March 27, 1960) married Alpha Pruitt (Feb. 28, 1892-May 9, 1955). They were parents of Ellis, who married Evelyn Robb in 1915; and Clay (m. Cleda Bell Leach).

— Roscoe (March 5, 1901) married Ila Wiggins (Aug. 2, 1916-Jan. 31, 1986). Their children were Roscoe Jr. and Shirley (m. Ray McPeak).

— Girtie (Oct. 9, 1889) married Alva Bolin (June 7, 1888-May 23, 1967) and raised Blon, Leon (m. Grethel Emlet), Herman (m. Dorothy Smart), Wallace (m. Opal Watson), Ilene (m. Leon Watson), Norman Lee (m. Ethel Mae), Carol Lee (m. 1. Jenkins and 2. Howe), and Wanda Mae (m. 1. Rathman and 2. Craig).

— Bertha (Aug. 9, 1893-Aug. 21, 1947) married Clarence Livingston (Oct. 8, 1901-October 1976), and they had one daughter, Reba who married Philip Hughes.

— Vesta (March 23, 1896-May 12, 1973) married Allen Glenn (Jan. 16, 1893-Oct. 6, 1963), and the couple had five children, Ward (m. Ruth Nix), Nell (m. Ben McDonald) and Irene (m. Johnny Warren), Dorothy, and Doris (m. Keith Young).

— Birdie (Nov. 15, 1896-Nov. 26, 1896).

— Reba (Dec. 15, 1906) married 1) Grady Thompson, who committed suicide, and 2) W. Jennings "Sandy" Baumberger (Sept. 1, 1905). Reba and Sandy owned a farm near Brookline, MO; she retired after a long teaching career in Greene County public schools.

— Lorene (Dec. 4, 1909) married Lloyd Flood (January 1906) and raised Donald, Wilma Jean (m. Robert Gamble), Betty Dean (m. Jim Green), Rollin D. (m. Barbara Powell) and Ervin (m. 1. Mary Sharpton and 2. Judy Reynolds). 

Matilda D. Edwards McConnell (1836-1873)

(See separate section) 

Martin Luther Edwards (1840-1930)

“Sant,” 5-feet-11 with dark hair and blue eyes, was a so-called three-year volunteer in the Civil War — one of the soldiers that formed the backbone of the Union effort. Martin began the war as a sergeant in Co. B. of the Christian Co. Home Guards under Capt. William Vaughn from May to July 1861.

He then enlisted in Co. G, 24th Infantry Volunteers Nov. 25, 1861 at Rolla, transferred to Company D and mustered out on Oct. 14, 1864, near the end of the war in the West. Martin began as a private, but was promoted to sergeant in February 1863.

The regiment advanced on Confederate Gen. Sterling Price in Springfield just as Martin became sergeant and pursued Price into AR where Martin fought at the Battle of Pea Ridge in March. His unit patrolled across northern Arkansas and southern MO until it was assigned to KY for the last half of 1863. The troops then moved into Mississippi and the 10-week Red River campaign. They occupied Alexandria, LA, in April and May before moving to Vicksburg and Memphis; Martin mustered out in St. Louis.

Before his lengthy military service, Martin was arrested and tried for disturbing religious worship with his cousin William Hedgpeth and Thomas Payne, son of Larkin Payne and Rebecca Huddleston. Their 1861 conviction for disrupting religious services at a camp meeting near modern Nixa, based on the complaint of L.C. Faught and others, was overturned by the Missouri Supreme Court. A separate case that also reached the Supreme Court involved similar charges against Martin and his cousin, Young Lafayette Stubblefield of Greene Co., but this conviction was upheld.

Martin married Martha Tennessee ("Cynthia" or "Tensy") McConnell (May 7, 1844-Jan. 14, 1913), daughter of Alexander and Mary D. Wood McConnell and granddaughter of Walter and Mary Elizabeth “Polly” Parker McConnell, on Oct. 8, 1865. Shortly after, in 1866, he was charged with assault in Christian Co., but the alleged victim and outcome are not known.

The couple lived on an 80-acre farm that, by 1870, had 20 acres in cultivation. Martin mainly raised corn and wheat as well as a few hogs and milk cows.

Despite his early convictions and appeals, this war veteran was a rising star in county politics, following in his father's footsteps. Martin was elected sheriff of Christian Co. in 1870 but the office was declared vacated in April 1872. The Radical Republicans had given circuit courts unparalleled powers to remove local officials when they couldn't control disorder, and Martin's alcoholism became a growing problem in his early 30s.

The office of sheriff at the time included ex-officio duties as county tax collector – a combination of responsibilities that extended back to early days in England. In 1872, the state sought to collect against the bond posted on behalf of Martin as sheriff and collector, which included security by his father, brother Irvin, cousin William Carroll, brother-in-law John W. McConnell, apparently George M. Ray (later county assessor) and a Faught. In 1872, Martin further was charged with failing to turn over funds to the county treasurer and a year later with fraud, apparently related to his actions as sheriff.

Martin and Martha were separated in February 1876, and she filed for divorce later that year. The handwritten divorce petition, drafted by a local lawyer, contains the allegations (marked out but legible) that "on sundry occasions, (Martin) cursed the plaintiff and used offensive language in her presence and by calling her a damned liar. She further stated that defendant is addicted to habitual drunkenness and that he has been so addicted to habitual drunkenness for more than one year." Martha complained that Martin had “wholly refused and neglected” to support her and the two children.

Martha asked for custody of her children — Homer Mordecai "Mord" Edwards, 9, and Dora, 7 — because, she alleged, Martin's alcoholism had made him unfit to care for the children. She also sought the restoration of her maiden name, which was granted. She and the children appear as Edwardses in the 1876 census and, in 1880 under the name McConnell, living with her brother William C. and wife Lydia.

Martha took the couple's 80-acre farm, which now lies in northwest Nixa, as part of the settlement.

Martha, using the name McConnell, remarried to Anderson Andrew Pendleton (March 4, 1821-March 7, 1910), the member of a large landowning family in Porter and Finley Townships, in 1889. The couple was living on a Porter Township farm in 1900, but 10 years later, Martha was living with her daughter Dora Aven after Pendleton died.

After his divorce, Martin moved into the home of Homer G. and Lucy A. Gilmore next door to father James W. Edwards; Martin, in 1880, worked at the Riverdale mill that James W. had owned, but control had passed into Gilmore's hands. Martin remained active in the community and headed the county grand jury in the early 1880s. But he is still remembered by descendants as "an old drunk."

Living nearby in 1880 was his sister-in-law Harriett Jane Herndon Edwards (1846-1931), then separated from brother Irvin.

In 1879, Jane had a son, William Holman or “Willie” who likely was the son of Martin — and is so attributed in at least one family genealogy. It is possible that Jane and Martin had been involved for several years, but the McConnell and Edwards families didn't risk the scandal of citing that relationship in Martha's divorce papers.

Martin and Jane married after her divorce was final from Irvin c. 1885, although the license is not found in Christian Co. The couple moved to Sherman, Grayson Co., TX, where Martin died in 1930; Jane didn’t mention him in talks with her grandchildren in MO although he was still living.

Jane and Martin had one more child, Roscoe, in TX. Jane died in 1936, when she was 91 years old, at the home of Roscoe and Pearl Edwards in Sherman. When granddaughter Reba Edwards Baumberger visited in 1928, Jane complained persistently about Pearl's cruel treatment of her; but Reba says that Pearl was simply overwhelmed by the extra duties, often washing both in the morning and evening because she did not have enough linens to deal with the incontinent Jane.

Martin and Jane are buried in Shannon Cemetery near Sherman.³⁸

Martin’s and Martha's daughter Dora Ica Edwards (March 8, 1869-Jan. 4, 1947) married William A. Aven of Nixa on Sept. 27, 1885, and the couple farmed several places in Porter Township. William (April 3, 1868-March 27, 1960) was the son of John Duff Aven and Sarah Rose.  William and Dora had at least eight children: Claude Elmer (August 1886-March 17, 1960, m. Bessie McCroskey), Elsie (September 1888), Virgie M. (Feb. 15, 1891-Feb. 2 1893), Florence (September 1893), Iva (March 1896), Mattie (1900), Merle (Dec. 1, 1902-Dec. 25, 1990) and Archie (1907, m. Ward).

Merle married George "Buster" Owen of Nixa and had two children: Georgia (m. Lowell Sanders of Nixa); and Leon, who had two children, Larry Owen of St. Louis and Lana Gordon of Nixa.

Dora Edwards Aven, her mother and most of her family are buried at Payne Cemetery.

Homer Mordecai, known as Mord (Feb. 10, 1867-March 27, 1940), moved with his mother and uncle-stepfather to Sherman, Grayson Co., TX where in 1890 he married Erma Pauline Moore, a native of Mississippi. The couple had at least nine children: Pearl Flora (1891-1969, m. Duke); Herschel E. (January 1894); Clemmie or Clementine (1896, Nixa-1993, Wichita, m. Clarence Drake Sanders and Peter Stroberg); Harrol or Harold Glenn (1899-1985, m. Lillie Price);  Britton T.; Russell Lowell; Nora Tennessee (m. Arthur Knox and Joseph M. Park); Carrie Modean (1910-1998, m. Walter Wesley Stephenson); and Vallie (m. Ennis Leverette).

After their marriage, Mord brought his wife back to MO by 1896.

A prominent Republican with close connections to the courthouse crowd, Mord was appointed a federal census taker in the spring of 1900 for Porter and Logan Townships. Such jobs paid cash wages far above the prevailing level in the county and were prized. After that appointment, a Nixa correspondent of the Ozark newspapers began reporting each week that a prominent citizen and farmer was acting strangely and had been seen outrageously drunk in town; the reporter publicly threatened to expose the man.

On July 30, 1900, the Christian Co. Court — which had jurisdiction over such matters then — ordered Mord Edwards taken to Nevada State Hospital, then known as a state lunatic asylum, by Sheriff D.R. Walker. Dr. G.P.S. "Shack" Brown, married to Mord's cousin Eva Edwards, was paid $10 for the examination.

Upon his release, Mord moved to Oklahoma and then Sherman. He returned on occasion, including August 1905, when the Ozark newspaper reported that he and County Recorder of Deeds Frank Edwards, his cousin, had been on a picnic to Bengal (MO), a tiny and forgotten Christian Co. village.

By Jane Herndon, Martin had two attributed sons:

-- William Holman Edwards (1879, Nixa-1975, Sherman, TX) married Lena Cherry (Nov. 11, 1882-September 1941, Sherman, Grayson Co., TX).

-- Roscoe Herndon Edwards (1885, Nixa-1960, Sherman, TX) married Pearl McDaniel (July 18, 1885-April 1957, Sherman, TX). 

Nancy C. Edwards Nokes (Jan. 3, 1848-Feb. 5, 1919)

Nancy, named for her grandmother Edwards and great-grandmother Johnson, wed John Tillman Nokes (May 22, 1844-Aug. 11, 1895), the son of Archibald G. “Nelson” and Flora Ann Elam Nokes,³⁹ on Dec. 7, 1866 in Christian Co. They owned most of the land that now comprises north-central Nixa although they also had lived to the south in Galloway Township.

The county's centennial history says the Nokes family came from Knoxville or “Nokesville,”⁴⁰ but they actually were former residents of Cannon Co. in Middle Tennessee. Flora’s parents – Reuben and Leah Lance Elam – had moved to Taney Co. in the 1840s from Cannon Co. with her brothers. Reuben died there after 1844, and Leah and the sons all relocated to Porter Township by 1860, although the men soon moved to Lamar and Kansas.

John Tillman was the oldest of the 11 sons and one known daughter of Nelson and Flora Elam Nokes.

John T. Nokes enlisted in Co. A of the 72nd Regiment, Enrolled Missouri Militia, like most of his neighbors, on July 28, 1862. He and brother George Washington Nokes were “taken prisoner” on Jan. 10, 1863, but the state militia records don't indicate how long or by whom they were held. At the time, the Union militia forces were preoccupied with the Confederate occupation of Springfield.

The Nokes brothers resurfaced Nov. 1, 1863 when they enlisted in the 16th Missouri Cavalry Volunteers. They were not mustered in, however, until August 1864, when John T. was promoted to first sergeant and George W. was named fifth corporal. They saw limited action around Licking, Salem and Lebanon before the regiment was disbanded in July 1865 at Springfield.

John T., who became a Porter Township JP in the 1870s, and Nancy C. are buried with their son, Wesley B. (March 3, 1887-April 7, 1968), in tiny Nokes Cemetery in north-central Nixa.

The Nokeses, particularly sons Wes and “Bunk,” were known for their talents as fiddlers.

John T. and Nancy had 10 children, but she reported in the 1910 census that five were dead. At the time, she was living with sons Wes and Harvey. Complicating the trail of their descendants was the censustaker’s decision to give only initials in the 1880 census. Of the known children:

— Julia or Julian (1868) is shown as a daughter in the 1870 census and a son “J.” in the 1880 census.

— W. J. "Bunk" (Sept. 29, 1869-March 12, 1964) married Lillie Mayabb (1874-1963) on Sept. 16, 1884 before JP William “Jay” McConnell. Bunk described himself as a “traction engineer” in 1910. They had two children: Homer (June 1899) married Annie Inman; and Lena married Hugo H. Hedgpeth (Feb. 6, 1903-Oct. 21, 1946) and then Nolan Inman. Bunk and Lillie are buried in Payne Cemetery.

— Maud (1872) married Joseph S. Mayabb on Sept. 2, 1896 before JP Irvin W. Edwards. This couple may have moved to OK.

— Margaret Belle (Nov. 15, 1877-April 1, 1908) married Louis Frederick Carsten (Sept. 9, 1869-Sept. 20, 1936) on Sept. 15, 1893 before JP Jim Wright McConnell, a cousin. The couple had at least six children: Johnny (July 1894); Anna (July 1896); Sylvia (March 1898); Claude (January 1900); Royal; and Frederick.

— J.B. (1879), a son.

— Wesley B. (March 3, 1887-April 7, 1968) married Sarah Glidewell of Nixa on May 7, 1910 before JP Jim Wright McConnell.

— Harvey (March 1889), a barber while young, was living with sister Belle and Lute Carsten in Nixa in 1900. Harvey later became manager of the pre-Depression Nixa bank headed by Walter Keltner. 

John Riley Edwards (1855-1927)

“Pete” married Callie Clemens Chaffin (1858-1937) on Nov. 15, 1885 in Christian Co. He earlier operated a store at the crossroads that became Nixa. In 1878 he bought out his competition from James J. Faught and operated a drug store until the turn of the century. It was the scene of the violent shootout between Ben Slay and Pete that left Slay dead and Harvey McConnell seriously wounded in 1897.

In 1910, Edwards described himself as a farmer.

One family genealogy says Callie Clemens Chaffin Edwards was a relative of Samuel Clemens, the author known as Mark Twain, but if so, the relationship extended back to Virginia.

Pete and Callie, who are buried in McConnell Cemetery, had four children:

— Oscar P. (May 18, 1887-Aug. 10, 1941), a World War I infantry veteran who married Nan Melton (Dec. 10, 1883-March 15, 1945). They, too, are buried in McConnell Cemetery.

— John P. "Pud" (Dec. 1, 1890-Jan. 7, 1945) who married Eva Mae McConnell (May 2, 1897). The couple, who is buried in McConnell Cemetery, had at least two children, Oscar and Jewell.

— Lucy Bell who married Roy Sparkman, son of James Alexander Sparkman and his first wife, Ophelia Virginia Pruitt, and in 1910 remarried to Oliver McConnell.

— Patsy (1886-1981) who married Everett Rhea (1884-1952) and had 11 children: Allen; Grace (m. Ronald Gammon), Republic; Ivan; Miles; Guy Allen; Oscar; Blon; Clyde; Stanley; Wayne; and William. Patsy and Everett are buried in McConnell Cemetery.

Callie had two daughters by a previous marriage in Maury Co., TN to Jerome W. Chaffin, a cousin of the Christian Co. Chaffins. She and Jerome wed on Nov. 30, 1875. The disposition of that marriage – and the reasons behind her move to Missouri -- are uncertain.

Daughter Effie Chaffin (May 1882, TN) married and divorced Tull Campbell of Nixa after an earlier marriage to a Rhea. Campbell became the second husband of Mary Alice Dewitt Inman and stepfather of Ida Mae Inman McConnell.⁴¹

Another Chaffin daughter, Annie (Nov. 2, 1880-May 9, 1966) was known as an Edwards because of Callie’s second marriage, wed Reuben Hedgpeth (1873-1946) and had five children: Claude P. (1898-1957), Guy (1901), Hugo (Feb. 6, 1903-Oct. 21, 1947), Blon (1906) and Virgie (1909). Callie Edwards was living with this family in 1910, next door to John Irvin and Ona Faught Edwards. 

Clarinda Edwards (1851)

Clarinda or “Callie” apparently died as a teenager or was married during the era for which records were destroyed at the courthouse. She is not shown in the 1870 census. 

Mary Edwards (1858)

Mary may have been missed by census takers in 1860, but she appears in James W.’s household in 1870. By then he had remarried to Susannah Sink, and Mary is listed separately with Julie Gooch, the daughter of Thomas T. and Elizabeth Caroline Kenamore Gooch who is likely serving as a mother’s helper to the Edwards family.

No Edwardses match her description in the Christian Co. marriage records. 

 

Children of James W. Edwards

and Susan Arminta Ellen Sink 

 

Martha Virginia Edwards Bolin

(Oct. 12, 1867-Aug. 29, 1948)

“Matt” married the younger Gerome "Rome" Cicero Bolin (Oct. 3, 1869-Aug. 30, 1958) in January 1889. The couple took over the homestead of Rome's parents Granville (Aug. 23, 1827-Feb. 6, 1903) and Cassinda Ruyle (1830-1910) Bolin two miles southeast of Nixa.

Rome taught the principles of crop rotation and contouring to younger farmers — well before the hilly Ozarks was concerned with soil conservation — and the family home was usually the scene of Sunday baseball games and horseshoe pitching contests. Hog killings were hard work, but produced festive fall Saturdays.

The Bolins were members of the Nixa Christian Church — the old Faught Church. They are buried at McConnell Cemetery.

Matt and Rome had at least eight children:

— An infant (d. Jan. 20, 1890).

— Harrison (Feb. 21, 1891-Feb. 5, 1972, d.s.p.), buried at McConnell Cemetery.

— Niles Horace (Feb. 18, 1893-Oct. 19, 1980) married Maggie Ball (Sept. 4, 1897-April 5, 1968), and they had two children, Ashford and Kathryn. Niles and Maggie are buried at McConnell Cemetery.

— An infant (d. June 6, 1895).

— Loyd (Oct. 14, 1898-Oct. 18, 1964) married Ella Stewart (1904-1938) and had two children, Sharon and Verlin Lee. Loyd then remarried to Edith Mae Cook (1909-1965), and they had Noel Clay, Louella Fern, Bernice (Woods), Cletus and two children, Benny and Leslie, who died as infants. Loyd, his wives and the infants are buried at McConnell Cemetery.

— Silas (May 22, 1901-Jan. 10, 1981) married Rosie Maples, and they had four children: Marjorie (Jones), Eugene, Marcelle (m. Nolan Inman) and Virginia (Blevins).

— Irvin (Nov. 13, 1903-June 17, 1974) married Gracie Maples, and their children were Juanita (m. Orville Tennis), Betty (m. Harold Rainey), Ava (Haworth), Kathy (Holland) and Jerry J.

— Cassinda Susan "Lucy" (Oct. 25, 1907-Nov. 13, 2000) married William Clifford Cook (Oct. 16, 1913-July 2, 2004), and they lived at Route 1, Clever. They had one son, the late Clifford Jr. who was born and died the same day in 1940.

Leanna Ellen Edwards Callison (1871-1949)

“Black Berg” married Sigel Callison (1861), the son of James (1826) and Catherine (1831-Aug. 8, 1894). Callison was named for Col. Franz Sigel of the Battle of Wilson's Creek.

Sig narrowly escaped death in February 1900 when he was innocently lounging in the McWilliams & McMahan's "drug" store, which apparently doubled as a saloon in Nixa. A drunken Cal Hedgpeth, who had been ejected and locked out for noise and mayhem, used his revolver to blow off the lock, but the bullet passed through Sig's hat. Hedgpeth was arrested by deputy constable Zack Faught.

Black Berg and Sig, a day laborer in early census records, had 11 children:

— James R. “Candy Jack” (December 1884, d.s.p.).

— John Frank (October 1886) married Maisie Pearl LNU and again to a woman unknown in California. By Maisie, Frank had three children: Elbert, Cleo and Ruby. Maisie and daughter Ruby were injured fatally in a tornado that destroyed much of Hurley, MO, where the family was living. They and Cleo are buried in Wright Cemetery south of Clever.

Frank and his son Elbert moved to California soon thereafter, and by his second marriage, Frank had eight children: Susie (m. Bill Morgan), Exeter, CA; Judy (m. Winn), Exeter, CA; Leo, Exeter, CA; Bonnie (m. Cecil Brooks), Exeter, CA; Carol (m. Parker), Phoenix, AZ; Betty (m. Fulton), Neland, CA; Margaret (m. Johnson), Oakdale, CA; and Albert of CA (may be Elbert, who was still living in 1886).

— Eva Adaline (April 9, 1888-1976) married John Henry William Amos (Sept. 20, 1883-Sept. 5, 1951). The couple, buried at McConnell Cemetery, had four children: James Franklin (July 15, 1908, m. Erva Alice Murray Gardner); Loyal Jasper “Jack” (Aug. 28, 1911, m. Hazel Stahl), former manager of Toombs & Faye of Springfield and later owner of his own sash and door company; Nile Ardrury (Jan. 8, 1917-July 14, 1989, m. Jo Lunsford), another Toombs & Faye manager who retired to Lockwood, MO before his death and managed a golf course; and Zola Lee (January 1927, m. Bill Gaylor).

— Frederick (February 1892) married Pearl ?. Three of their sons died in military service: Billy, a World War II aviator who died in Saipan; Tommy, killed in action in Korea; and Bob, a Marine who threw himself on a grenade after a recruit pulled the pin and panicked. Also born to Frederick and Pearl were: Roxie (m. Ed John), Burlington, WA; Virginia (m. Lonnie Letterman), Chico, CA; Betty (m. Edward Brown), Gordville, NV; James (m. Terri), Tulare, CA; Barbara (m. Dave Stock), Visalia, CA; Freddie (m. Pat).

— Christa L. (August 1894) married Ed Cline and had at least two children, Noel and Hazel.

— William “Willie” (February 1896) married Linnie Stockstill and had three children: Ray, Reno, NV; Anna Lee (m. Owen), Auburn, CA; and Mary (m. Roberson), Roseville, CA.

— Archie (August 1899) had one daughter, Patty, who married Pat Mitchell and lived at Grove Spring, MO.

— Howard married Lucille Jennings and had two children: Howard Jr., Danube, CA; and a daughter in Wesville, OK.

— Shirley had one son, deceased.

— Lula married Leroy Marable and had a daughter living in Springdale, AR.

— Jessie married Glen Wall and had five children: Geraldine, Betty, Peggy, Donald and James. 

Emily Arminta Edwards Harding (May 12, 1873-1966)

Minta married Carey Harding (April 21, 1872-Feb. 18, 1957) on July 6, 1893. Pete Amos recalled that Uncle Carey was a specialist on Ozark herbs and knew where to find ginseng, blood root, yellow percune and may apple.

Minta and Carey are buried at McConnell Cemetery along with son Harry. Daughter Lena and her husband, Buddy Faught, lie in Payne Cemetery.

Among the seven children of Minta and Carey Harding:

—    Roscoe (1894), pastor of the Nixa Baptist Church, married Gertie Tennis and had two children, including Aluwee (Sprague).

— Christina (November 1897-Nov. 26, 1900).

—    Lena V. (Dec. 10, 1899-April 4, 1993) married Buddy Faught (July 23, 1893-July 16, 1963) and raised six children: Otalee, Aaron, Don, Roxie, Okla and Peggy.

— Harry (Nov. 20, 1903-1913).

— Faye (Sept. 30, 1908-April 24, 1989) married Frona Davis (July 14, 1906-April 8, 1982), and they had four children, Clara Mae, Billy, Harry and Christie. Faye and Frona are buried at McConnell Cemetery.

— James Ophare (Feb. 25, 1912-Feb. 4, 1984) married Mildred Brewer, and they had two children, Jimmy Lee (Jan. 28, 1940-Oct. 2, 2000) and Gerald Don (July 13, 1944-May 20, 1966).

— Clell (Aug. 28, 1916-June 12, 2005) married Leota Maynard (March 13, 1919-Nov. 11, 1992), daughter of Bert and Ella Payne Maynard, and had Kathryn (Russell, d. 1972) and Frank Wayne. Clell and Leota are buried in Payne Cemetery. 

Children of Susan Sink (Edwards)

and John C. McDaniel 

Susan and John C. McDaniel — who was kidnapped during the war and never returned — had three children, two of whom died young. The family has not been located in the 1860 census to determine the names of the other two children.

Surviving was the eldest, Elizabeth McDaniel (March 1853) who married John A. Gooch on Oct. 15, 1869 before her stepfather, the Rev. James W. Edwards.

John Gooch was the nephew of James W. Edwards — the son of Cassidy residents Thomas Threatt Gooch and Elizabeth Carolina Kenamore, the sister of James W.'s first wife.

John and Elizabeth settled on a farm southwest of Nixa and had at least these children:

• Allie married W.M. Mayabb of Nixa.

• Thomas Shirley “Shed” (November 1878) married Olive Todd of Nixa and then Minta Cox.

• Elizabeth “Lissie” (November 1881) married Floyd Hunt (May 1873), the son of Judy Hunt and Henderson Maynard, on Jan. 1, 1899 before JP Henry S. Evans. Their youngest daughter, Ruby Hunt Denney, lives in Arnold, CA.

• Elvert B. “Pot” (May 1885-1954) married cousin Cora McConnell (Feb. 9, 1884-1967), another Kenamore descendant who had first married and divorced Henry T. Wade. Pot and Cora were married on March 13, 1910 with Rev. Peter W. Roberts officiating. Pot and Cora moved in with his parents next to Rebecca Pope McConnell's home before taking over their own farm. They are buried at McConnell Cemetery.

Their children were Rena, Fount, Maxine and Lester. Fount, who lived in the James River Valley near Nixa, married Wilma Jane Stoneman and fathered two sons, Darrell and Johnny Duane. Rena married Ed Gideon, and the couple has three daughters, Charlotte Cumber, Glenda Dorris and Bonnie Weaver. Maxine married Ray Painter.

• Susie “Suede” (March 1885) married Frank Hedgpeth and had four children: Delphia (Caughron), Victor, Linville and Clell.

• Kate (April 1889) married George W. Nagel of Ozark on Feb. 10, 1910 before her cousin, JP James Wright McConnell. The Nagels had five children: Verna, Boyd, Mayolah, Floyd and Clarence.

• Lucretia (Oct. 11, 1895-Sept. 25, 1989) married Kenamore cousin Seymore McConnell (Oct. 24, 1890-July 11, 1988), the son of James Wright and Mary Frances McCafferty McConnell, on Nov. 22, 1913 before Rev. Peter Roberts. Seymore and Lucretia are interred at McConnell Cemetery.

The couple had five children. Rayma, who married Harry Young, had two sons, Keith (Jan. 15, 1935) and David. Elva Lee (March 27, 1916-1993) married Blaine Gwalthmey and had two children, Jimmy and Annette. Glenn (April 30, 1918), who married Earl Frazier,⁴² has two children, Michael and Judy. Carl (May 20, 1926) married Shirley House and fathered two children, Carrie and Albert. Norma Jean (Nov. 26, 1929) married Dale Hecox, and they are the parents of Stephen, Kathy, Pamela and Gregg.  

The Sink family 

David William⁴³ (1784, PA-1867) and Wealthy Ann Hartwell (1797, VA-1880) Sink⁴⁴ formed one of the few southwest Missouri families to come from Michigan, arriving in Porter Township before 1850. David's moves, back and forth between Virginia and Michigan before coming to Missouri, were not unusual for the time because the old Northwest Territories, including Michigan, opened for settlement after 1800, and Virginia families flooded there. Many of his neighboring families in Michigan, including the Layman/Lehmans, were Virginians related by birth.

The Sinks had been among thousands of German emigrants, who made their way from Pennsylvania to southwest VA. David’s grandfather Michael had come to Philadelphia Co. from Germany as a child with his parents by around 1725 and lived in Coventry Township, Chester Co. after 1753.

David was the son of Susan Plybon and Stephen Sink, who are found in Chester Co. in 1790 with one adult white male, two white males under 16 and four white females in a Coventry Township household. But tax records show that by 1799, Stephen and his brother Abraham – who had kept the family tavern outside Philadelphia after father Michael died – had migrated to Franklin Co. in southwest Virginia with many relatives.

By 1820, David was found in a household adjacent to father Stephen with his second wife. David first married Asenath Arthur Aug. 22, 1807, but then re-wed to Delilah Dillon on Aug. 16, 1813, both in Franklin Co.   Shortly after 1820, David and his family relocated to Michigan, probably Cass Co. in its southwest corner, although the site is not definitely known. By 1827, however, they had returned to Virginia where two daughters were born. By 1831, the family had returned to Cass Co., MI.

When Delilah died is uncertain, as is the number of wives that David had. Susan Ellen Sink’s death certificate says her mother was Lucinda Moffett (a pioneer southwest Virginia family), as does an old Edwards family genealogy.  Both Susan and her older sister Frances named daughters Lula while brother Stephen named a daughter Lucy. No record, however, has been found of a marriage for David Sink to Lucinda Moffett, likely in Virginia in the late 1820s. Regardless, David quickly remarried to Wealthy Ann Hartwell on Feb. 15, 1838 in Cass Co., MI after his earlier wife died while or shortly after giving birth to son Samuel Preston in January 1837.

David worked as a leather tanner, and the family tanyard in Porter Township, Christian Co. was known as "Davie's Jerk," which had a dozen shallow pits over which hides were stretched and covered with green wood ashes and water. After curing, the hides were "jerked" over poles to remove the animal hair.

In 1850, in typical German fashion, the Sinks were also intensively farming their 21-acre tract, ranging two horses, three milk cows, six other cattle, 30 sheep and 22 hogs while growing 40 bushels of wheat, 350 of corn and 120 of oats.⁴⁵

The county's centennial history says the Sinks were buried on what became Ripplin' Brook Farm, owned by the 1950s by step-grandson Paul Wasson.

By Asenath Arthur, David had three children who remained in Virginia:

n      Easom (1808, Franklin Co.) who married Nancy Chitwood in 1831 in Franklin Co. and died during the Civil War.

n      John (1809-1891, Franklin Co.) who married Martha A. “Matkin” Bowman in 1839 and is buried in Bowman Cemetery in Virginia.

n      Asenath (1811-after 1870,  Floyd Co., VA) married William S. Bird Jr. in 1828 in Franklin Co. and had at least 14 children.

By Delilah Dillon or perhaps Lucinda Moffett, David had:

n      David Jr. (c. 1814), who apparently died young.

n      Elizabeth (c. 1816, Franklin Co.) married Stephen Perdue (1815-1874), son of Isaiah Perdue and Mildred Wingo, in 1838 in Franklin Co., VA and eventually moved to Kentucky and Ohio.

n      Jesse (c. 1818-Jan. 14, 1885, Daviess Co., MO) who married on July 26, 1837 Julia Ann Wray, daughter of Chesley Wray of Franklin Co.  The couple moved to Daviess Co., MO where they both died in 1885 and are buried in Salem Cemetery.

n      Stephen Raleigh (Feb. 18, 1823, MI-July 7, 1888, Nixa), a Mexican and Civil War veteran, married Sarah Victoria Herndon, daughter of William Holman Herndon, on March 5, 1867 in Christian Co. They had at least four children: David A. (1868), Lucy A. (1869), Arminta Emily (April 1871) and Edward Holman (November 1872, m. Myrtle Killian). 

Stephen served for slightly more than a month in 1846 in the Mexican War at Ft. Leavenworth, KS as a member of the Third Regiment, Missouri Volunteers. By mid-September, the War Department rescinded its request that MO Gov. John Cummins Edwards raise extra forces. Stephen was discharged Oct. 1.

He began the Civil War as a private in the Christian Co. Home Guards and served less than a month before he was discharged, along with a handful of other neighbors like Carroll Edwards. Stephen enlisted in Co. A, Enrolled Missouri Militia in August 1862 and served until the next February, leaving as a private. He re-upped under government order in May 1864 — and in September became captain of the unit containing virtually all the Christian Co. “recruits.” Records of the Fourth Missouri Military District show that Stephen and his forces were in charge of keeping order and fending off rebel forays in Ozark Co. — a bastion of bushwhacking — under the direction of Brig. Gen. Colley B. Holland.

Within two months, Stephen's moment in the sun had passed, and the 72nd Regiment disbanded in November 1864.

Stephen and the family are not found in the census for 1880, but he died near Nixa in 1888.⁴⁶ Son Edward reappears in the 1900 census, single, with mother Sarah V. (March 10, 1841, Goochland Co., VA-Sept. 13, 1901, Nixa) in southern Porter Township. Of her five children, four were still living.

Stephen and Sarah Victoria are buried in Payne Cemetery, Nixa.

Son David A. married first to Nettie Connett (October 1863, IN), apparent daughter of the Rev. Alfred Connett of Riverdale who conducted the service, on March 7, 1893. He remarried Jan. 23, 1910 to Mary Guthrie (July 27, 1873, IL-Jan. 18, 1917) of Nixa before JP Jim Wright McConnell. David and Nettie had at least two children, Lloyd (January 1895) and Leslie (September 1897); however, the couple divorced, and David lost custody. David and Mary (1874, IL) are shown without children in the 1910 census in Porter Township. Mary is buried in Payne Cemetery.

Among the daughters, Minta married Thomas J. Daugherty of Ozark in 1894, and Lucy A. took F.Alvin Toney of Nixa as her husband on Feb. 15, 1896 before JP Irvin W. Edwards. Minta (April 6, 1871-Jan 16, 1940) and Thomas J. (April 30, 1872-Dec. 14, 1942) are buried in Payne Cemetery.

Sarah Victoria had married first during the Civil War to David Marion Wallace, who died, and they had a daughter, Ella Jane (May 22, 1864-1926) who married John Wasson.

n      Silas M. (1824, VA-May 5, 1900) married Frances Layman in 1842 and had a son, Joel D.

n      Mary Ann (March 19, 1827, Franklin Co., VA-June 8, 1908, Missouri) married John B. Griffin Sept. 6, 1844 in Pokagon Township, Cass Co., MI. He likely was the son of Samuel Griffin and Philatheah Leaming, early pioneers of nearby LaPorte Co., IN, and brother of Frank Griffin who came to Porter Township. John and Mary Ann are found in Porter Township in 1850, 1860 and 1870 and are buried at Griffin Cemetery, although the dates are wrong. While an early reading of the cemetery indicated John died in 1870, for example, he was living in the Cedar Creek neighborhood of Scott Township in eastern Taney Co. with Mary and daughter Callie (b. 1872) in 1880. They had at least nine children: Charles (m. Margaret Walker, 1865, to Douglas Co.); Franklin; Silas (to Wise Co., TX); John; Samuel P. (m. Mrs. Eliza A. Blaine Lyman and Lettice White in Taney Co.) ; Francis (m. Eliza Haislip, 1865); Jane; Margaret; and Callie (m. W.A. Brown in 1890).

n      Frances Ann (1828, VA-1915, Nixa) married John Hunt (1813, VA) before JP Thomas D. Pendleton on April 6, 1854 in Greene Co.

John had been married first to Mary Ashlock in 1834 in Trigg Co., KY, and they had eight children: James G. (1834), Major Moses (1837), Charles H. (1840), Sarah A. (1841), George Washington (1843), Robert Lafayette (1847), Elizabeth Mary (1850) and Margaret Jane (1853).

John was the brother of Elijah Hunt (Jan. 24, 1811-March 22, 1864) of Clay Township, Greene Co., who was murdered in his home by Union soldiers in the Civil War and buried with wife Sarah B. Alexander (Oct. 15, 1816-Dec. 1, 1861) in Hunt-Dodson Cemetery, Greene Co.

Even before the murder of his brother, John had come to the attention of the Union forces, specifically the provost marshal’s office. On July 31, 1862, the provost marshal’s records show Hunt was living at Ozark, but had never belonged to a rebel group. He was considered a “conditional” Union sympathizer and expressed admiration for Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president who had Kentucky ties. “I have talked a great deal” about his opinions on the war, said Hunt.

On Sept. 15, 1862, Hunt was placed on parole and ordered to report weekly to the provost marshal’s staff in Springfield and at any time “when called.”

In an undated entry, the situation grew more serious: Hunt was charged with “habitual disloyal speech,” swapping a gun to a rebel, running south when Union forces approached, threatening Union sympathizers and confession to violations of his parole.

These charges may have had some relationship to Hunt’s departure from Christian Co.

John and Frances moved to the Dickens community near Taneyville, Taney Co. by 1870. John died in the 1870s, leaving Frances with seven children to raise: her step-daughter Margaret J. and natural children Elijah David (1856, MO), Martha F. (1857), Susan Ellen (1859), Parthena (1862), Joseph (1864) and Lulu (1866).

In 1880, Frances headed a household near Forsyth, with son David, his wife Louisiana Tobias Henderson (1856, AR-1933, TX) (shown as a “daughter”) and Lulu in the house with the first four of David’s nine children: Robert J. (1866, MO), Mabel (1867, MO), Joseph L. (1868, MO) and Coleman (1870, MO). Parthena had married Henson A. Stewart, and Susan Ellen wed James Montgomery. Brother Joseph died in 1880, likely before the census was taken. David was a lumberjack who eventually moved to Comanche Co., TX and New Mexico where he was killed by a falling tree about 1890.

In 1910, Frances said only one of her seven children was still living. Explaining the situation is difficult because the Taney Co. courthouse burned in 1885, and early records were lost.

Frances Ann returned to Christian Co. by 1910 to live with her sister Martha Herndon and stepnephew Irvin W. Edwards near Nixa. Frances died Sept. 29, 1915 in Porter Township from tuberculosis, according to her death certificate. She is buried in McConnell Cemetery with her sisters Susan and Martha

n      Josiah (1831, MI). No record is found after the 1850 census although Josiah came to Missouri. He may have been the J.A. Sink who enlisted in the Webster Co. Home Guard in 1861.  He likely had died by 1880, when the U.S. census lists no comparable Josiah, J.A. or Joseph.

n      Samuel Preston (January 1837, Cass Co., MI-March 31, 1907, Wynnewood, Garvin Co., OK). Samuel married, before 1860 and likely in Greene Co., Mildred W. Hunt – the daughter of James Hunt and Lucretia Minor who came from Virginia and married in Mt. Vernon, IL just east of St. Louis. Mildred was born in Centralia, IL in 1839. Samuel and Mildred are found living with his parents in 1860 in Porter Township and separately in 1870. They curiously had no children, or none that lived, before November 1865.

Samuel played a far less visible role than his brothers in the Civil War, serving in the Home Guards and under his brother in Co. A, 72nd Regiment, Enrollment Missouri Militia. According to Texas records, he also served in the 15^th Missouri Union Infantry. 

After serving as administrator of his father's estate, Samuel is found in 1880, in his early 40s, in Swan Creek Township, Taney Co., with Mildred and seven children: Mary L. ( November 1865), Melissa Wealthy “Wes” (March 28, 1867), William (March 1869), Hallie Ann(1872), Lavada (1874), Charles (March 1877 or 1879) and Clyde (March 1880).

Shortly after 1880, Samuel and his family moved to Sherman, Grayson Co., TX where Mary and Melissa married in 1882 to two White brothers, William and Frank.  They were soon joined there by Martin Luther Edwards, the son of the Rev. James Wright Edwards and stepson of Susan Ellen Sink.

The family apparently moved into southern Oklahoma as it was opened for white settlement. Samuel died in Wynnewood, Garvin Co., OK on March 31, 1907 of tuberculosis and is buried in Oaklawn Cemetery there. Mildred, who died Oct. 25, 1923,  is not buried there.

n      Martha Jane (August 1835, Cass Co., MI-Jan. 3, 1916) married as his third wife William Holman Herndon (1814, Goochland Co., VA-November 1881) of Cass Township, Stone Co., MO, apparently during the Civil War in Christian Co., where the records were destroyed.

William H. had been one of two slaveholders in the township before the war, but from the first shots, he had joined Union units in the 14th and 8th Regiments, Missouri State Militia cavalry volunteers. In 1860, he held seven slaves, including six he may have fathered; the loss of those slaves forced him out of extensive, labor-intensive tobacco farming after the war.

William H. died on his 272-acre Stone Co. farm in early November 1881, and Martha moved near Nixa; she is shown in the 1900 census living alone next to Narcissa (Mrs. Carroll) Edwards. Martha reappears with her sister Frances Hunt and step-nephew Irvin W. Edwards in a Nixa household in 1910.

Martha J. is buried at Payne Cemetery.

David Sink and Wealthy Ann Hartwell had two more children:

n      Nathaniel F. (March 15, 1839, Cass Co., MI-Aug. 12, 1876, Newton Co., AR) married Mary Elizabeth McCaslin, the orphaned daughter of Andrew and Matilda Kenamore McCaslin of Maury Co., TN, on Nov. 30, 1855 before JP Thomas D. Pendleton in Greene Co.  The wedding occurred about a year after Elizabeth arrived in the Ozarks; her mother, a widow, had died on the wagon train from Tennessee, although grandparents William and Mary Johnson Kenamore settled in northern Finley Township.

Nat matched his brother's exploits in the war. After an uneventful first stint with the Christian Co. Home Guard, Nathaniel was named a corporal in a new Co. F that patrolled Christian and Stone Cos. in July and August 1861 as the forces of Gen. Sterling Price massed to defeat the federal troops under Gen. Nathaniel Lyon at Wilson's Creek. Nat's commanding officer, Capt. Harvey Stevens, was killed on a scouting mission into Stone Co.

Nat returned as a corporal under Capt. Jackson Ball when Co. A., 72nd Regiment, Enrolled Missouri Militia, was formed in July 1862, and he was promoted to second lieutenant in January 1863. The next month, Nat and his comrades were mustered out, and he returned to the rejuvenated 72nd as a mere private in September 1864 for two final months of action.

His service card in the Missouri Archives, however, is incomplete. In June 1865, Nathaniel “Zink” is shown with the 35th MO Infantry Volunteers in Little Rock, AR, where he voted with his military unit for the new state constitution and railroad law.

After the Civil War, Nathaniel and Elizabeth moved to Scott Township near Forsyth, Taney Co., where in 1870 they had five children: Stephen (1857), Matilda N. (1859), Nathaniel Jr. (1862), Empire (1866) and David W. (1889), all born in Missouri. They added a sixth, Gary W., in 1873 before Nathaniel Sr. died in August 1876 in Newton Co., AR. He is buried in Tom Thumb Cemetery in Erbie, Grant Township, Newton Co.

By 1880, Elizabeth was living near Harrison, Boone Co., AR with her children. Matilda married there about 1882 to Lysander C. Roark and, after the turn of the century, the couple relocated to McIntosh Co., OK.

In 1900, Elizabeth resided in Lee Township, Boone Co. Her burial site is unknown.

n      Daniel (c. 1840, Cass Co., MI), who died young.

 

The Edwards family 

The family of James Wright’s mother -- the widowed Jane Edwards -- in 1820 in southern Maury Co. contains noticeable gaps, but four likely sons – Jeremiah, William, James Wright and Pinckney -- and a daughter, Jane. William Carroll Edwards, the apparent son of Jane, accounts for another of the six males in the home, but one is not accounted for. After 1820, Jane likely had another child, Charlotte. 

William Edwards and Anna Berry (Kenamore)

William Edwards (1805, TN-before 1880, Searcy Co., AR) married the half-sister of his brother James W.’s wife Martha “Patsy” Kenamore --  Anna O. or Q. Berry (1804/5-after 1880) -- before 1826 in Giles or Maury Co., TN.

Anna and William Edwards are found in Maury through 1840, but moved just south to Giles Co. by 1850. William and Anna relocated in the 1852 or 1854 wagon trains to Christian Co., where their son had a child in February 1855.

Anna and William had at least three sons; William Jr. (1826), who may have married Mahala Lovell in Giles Co.; James Mordecai (Aug. 7, 1829, Maury Co., TN-Feb. 18, 1885, Newton Co., AR) who married a member of the Johnson family, Martha Lucinda Stubblefield⁴⁷; and Isaac Carroll (1843, Giles Co.), named for his grandfather. They also had at least three daughters: Nancy W. (1836, Maury), Caroline A. (1838, Maury) and Narcissa M. (1846, Giles) who may have married before the 1865 fire destroyed the Christian Co. records.

Ann and William moved from Finley Township to St. Joe Township, Searcy Co., AR by 1869, but before 1880, William died. Ann was living near Harrison in 1880 in Jefferson Township, Boone Co., AR at the home of her granddaughter, Mary Elizabeth Edwards – daughter of James Mordecai – with her husband, Samuel Henry Rose, and their two children.

Anna in censuses consistently reported her birth year was 1804 in Tennessee, or about the same as her husband. That would leave an odd nine-year gap between the first two Kenamore children – and place the marriage of William Kenamore at the extremely young age of 16, assuming his birth date has been correctly recorded.

Anna instead was the daughter of Mary Johnson Berry Kenamore from the first marriage to Isaac Berry in Nashville on Jan. 13, 1803 – which also accounts for Anna’s decision to name a son Isaac in 1843.

In the most telling circumstance, Mary left a bequest for Anna in her will with her other daughters, but Anna didn’t share in the division of proceeds from the sale of William’s property in 1866 after he died.

After Mary’s marriage to William, Anna apparently used the maiden name of Kenamore, which is how she is remembered by descendants, instead of Berry.

In another twist to this disordered family, the marriage of James Mordecai Edwards and Martha Lucinda Stubblefield is reported to have occurred Nov. 19, 1854 in Charleston, Mississippi Co., MO, which is along the Mississippi River on the eastern edge of the state.

The marriage indicates that their families participated in the 1854 – or second stage – of the Johnson-Kenamore-Edwards family migrations to Christian Co., MO. The ceremony in Charleston also indicates the families took the northern route to Christian Co.

Jeremiah “Jerry” Edwards and Polly McKissick

James Wright’s brother Jeremiah Edwards, born c. 1800 in North Carolina, married Mary "Polly" McKissick Dec. 2, 1828 in Maury Co.  

In 1852 or 1854, Edwards, known as Jerry, settled his family in then-Greene Co., MO, where he is found on the tax rolls in 1856 (with one poll) and as member No. 92 of the First Christian Church of Springfield, based on a membership roll through 1866. The family then is lost.

The First Christian Church at Fulbright (now College) and Main streets had attracted the early first families of southern Greene and northern Christian counties, including the Fulbrights, Paynes, Painters, Maupins, Weavers and Robertsons. Also attending was Washington Merritt, who settled with his father Drury at Delaware Town, Christian Co. in the 1830s.

Just before Jeremiah joined, the church was swelled by new Mack family members, including Alphabet, R.A.C., William L. and John A. Mack. Also joining were Nathaniel A.H. and Mary C.V. (Mack) Murphy⁴⁸ and Jared E. Smith, the Radical Republican state representative who married Sarah Roberta Mack. Later, Jeremiah's daughter-in-law, Narcissa J. Mack Edwards, also joined.

While James W. Edwards and the Macks took a leading role in the Union movement, the church paradoxically was considered a hotbed of pro-slavery and Confederate sentiment. When Col. Franz Sigel marched into Springfield on Sunday, June 24, 1861, one of the Union troops' first acts was to enter the First Christian Church and place all the male members under arrest. The men were marched to the courthouse to take the Union oath of allegiance; the women were told to go home.⁴⁹

Whether Jerry Edwards still belonged to this church in 1861 is uncertain. He is not included in the Greene or Christian Co. censuses of 1860, and even if he lived in the area, he may have left the church. Sometime after 1852, when the Rev. Charles Carlton became pastor, the church split, and the dissenters formed a Church of Christ.

Carlton left the church in 1861 to become a Confederate chaplain. The Macks remained in the First Christian Church because Carlton and a successor, Kirk Baxter, conducted the marriages in the family.

Jerry Edwards had married into a politically and socially prominent family in the Maury-Giles area. The McKissicks hailed from Scotland and Iredell Co., N.C., and then Maury Co.

Polly was descended from Robert McKissick (McCusick), the immigrant, who served with the English army for seven years, fighting at the Battle of Duquesne (PA), before he was discharged in Havana, Cuba in 1763 at the end of the French and Indian War. He settled in Rowan/Iredell Co., NC near the McConnells.

Robert's son John (May 29, 1765-Feb. 2, 1837) married Mary Elizabeth Marshall (Oct. 10, 1765-Nov. 15, 1851), the daughter of George and Isabella McEwen Marshall and purported relative of John Marshall, the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, who established the principle of constitutional interpretation by the high court.

John and Mary Marshall McKissick moved to the old McKissick Spring at Harpeth, Williamson Co., TN in 1803 along with her uncle William McEwen, who had raised her. (Walter McConnell later settled in the same area.) John is buried at Reece's Chapel Cemetery, near the old McConnell-Edwards-Kenamore-McCafferty settlement in southern Maury County; his son Robert lived next door to the Edwards families there, including Jerry and sister Polly.

Jerry and Polly McKissick Edwards had eight potential children living in the home in 1840. Five were males — one age 15-20; three 10-15; and one 5-10. One daughter was 10 or under while another was five or less. The 1850 census indicates he was prone to housing relatives and farm hands.

Among the only known or likely children:

n      Eliza (1829), last found in the 1850 census with Jerry and Polly.

n      John W. (1831), also cited in that census, married Narcissa J. Mack (1840), the daughter of John and Sarah (Mack) Mack, in Greene Co., MO in November 1856. The couple bought property in Greene Co. from Jared E. Smith in 1856 and disposed of her interest in John Mack's estate to her brother, Alphabet Mack, in 1859. 

On July 7, 1861, John W. enlisted in an elite, independent company of Greene Co. Home Guards under Capt. Colley B. Holland, who began the general in charge of the 4th Military District (SW Missouri) later in the war. This unit helped guard the entrance to Springfield in the Battle of Wilson's Creek and existed until Oct. 5, 1861 or well after the other local guard units were disbanded by gubernatorial order.

He later served in Co. B, 72nd Regiment, Enrolled Missouri Militia, under Capt. Jared E. Smith. from 1862 to 1864, with some periods of deactivation. All John W.'s service came under Gen. Holland.

Although they are not found in the 1860 Greene or Christian Co. censuses, John and Narcissa reappear in the 1880 census of Washington Township, Greene Co. with John reporting that he worked as a farmer. They had at least seven children: Mary E. (1859), Leona B. (1862), Donna I. (1865), John C. (1868), Sarah A. (1871), Edna A. (1874) and Jeremiah P. (1878), all of them born in Missouri.

Narcissa was still living in 1914 when the Fairbanks history, The Past and Present of Greene County, Missouri, was published and cited her.

n      • Another possible son, Nathaniel (1830), lived with the Craig family in Maury Co. in 1850. 

William Carroll Edwards and Narcissa Johnson

William Carroll Edwards (Sept. 21, 1815/8-April 3, 1898⁵⁰) was likely the nephew of James Wright, William and Jeremiah Edwards -- the son of their sister Jane, who was named in early bastardy proceedings in Maury Co. The existence of an Uncle William may explain why this Edwards was known as “Carroll.”

Jane was brought into court by Nancy and Mordecai Edwards, her apparent parents; at the time, in cases of illegitimate births, county officials attempted to determine the fathers to ensure that adequate support was provided so county taxpayers did not inherit the liability. Jane, however, refused to name the father.

The papers include this excerpt: “"Know all men by these presents that we Jane Edwards, Mordecai Edwards and (attorney) William Pillow are firmly bound to James T. Sandford, chairman of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions for the County of Maury on 20 Feb 1816. The conditions of the above are such that the said Jane Edwards has been lately delivered of a bastard child, which is likely to become chargeable to the county and on information of the same by Nancy Edwards and by her request we have this day caused the said Jane Edwards to come before us to declare on oath that the father of the said child…who being examined touching the premises did refuse and still doth refuse to declare on oath who the father is…Signed, Jane (x) Edwards, Mordecai Edwards.”

The justices of the peace were Abner Pillow and John Matthews. Receipt of money enclosed from Abner Pillow for $3.125 "in full of my part as informer" was signed by Nancy (x) Edwards, 21 Feb 1816.

The Pillows were cousins of the Johnsons and Kenamores in the neighborhood and large plantation owners.

William Carroll could have been either a) an illegitimate child (the first or second) of Jane Edwards or b) an extremely late birth to Nancy Edwards. However, the fact remains that the family already had a likely son named William.

"Uncle Carroll" went for a bride no further than the family of his aunts: he married Ursula E. Kenamore, daughter of William and Mary Johnson Kenamore, on March 6, 1839 before JP Andrew Scott in Maury Co.. Her fate is unknown, but she probably died in 1845; the censuses indicate no children from the union.

Carroll remarried on Christmas Eve 1846 to Narcissa Evaline Johnson (May 31, 1825-Feb. 11, 1906) before JP John Mack near Columbia, TN. She was the niece of his first wife and granddaughter of Abner and Nancy Brackett Johnson by their son Abner Jr., who emigrated to Christian County and built the post-Civil War courthouse in Ozark.

Narcissa's obituary in the Ozark Tribune states she and Carroll moved to Christian Co. in November 1852. Carroll had been a tanner in Maury Co., preparing leather for uncle James W.'s shoemaking trade, but turned to farming in Christian Co.

Carroll enrolled in Co. B of the Christian Co. Home Guard as a private under Capt. William Vaughn in May 1861, but was discharged within less than a month. Carroll later served in Co. A., 72nd Regiment, Enrolled Missouri Militia, but was discharged early, on Christmas Day, 1862. He, like uncle James W., did not serve in the company's second tour of duty in 1864.

Carroll and Narcissa often provided rooms for teachers at Faught School near Nixa, including H.F. Davis, the newspaper's editor, in 1876. The descendants of particularly Carroll Edwards largely resisted the precipitous decline of educational standards in the Ozarks, compared to the high levels of learning found in Maury Co., TN.

Almost eight years after Carroll died, Narcissa rose on a Sunday morning, Feb. 11, 1906, to prepare for a visit by all her children. While sweeping, she fell across a bed and died of heart failure.

The couple had at least 10 children (the following list includes infants, based on an unverified Internet list that contains so much data that it likely is based on a family Bible):

n      John Pinckney (Nov. 8, 1847, Maury Co.-1943), who became a lumberman, rancher and banker in Ozark Co., MO, moving there from Nixa about 1880. He was living in Ozark in 1860 as a student-boarder with the family of John R., a carpenter, and Mary A. “Polly” Weaver; John P. married the family's daughter Martha Susan on Oct. 10, 1869.

John P. was too young to serve in the county Home Guards when the war began, and he appears to have exaggerated his years when he enrolled in Co. C of the 16th Missouri Cavalry on Feb. 4, 1864. His papers say he was 18, but he had just turned 16. Nevertheless, Capt. Jackson Ball of Nixa was impressed enough to name John P. first corporal when he was mustered in August 1864. By his own admission, John P. “was not in any important battle.”⁵¹

After he joined the regiment, John P.'s troop saw action in Dallas Co., Boonville, the Battle of State Line, Marmiton, Little Osage River and Texas Co. In the war's final days, he saw action in skirmishes from Salem and Licking, MO to Spring River, AR from Lebanon to Warsaw while on scouting missions before the unit was disbanded on July 1, 1865 in Springfield.

John P. returned to Nixa and school, which he attended until 1867, at age 20, and then was drawn into lumber and milling businesses centered in Douglas and Ozark Cos. He eventually moved to Rockbridge, Ozark Co.

In 1906, the Rockbridge Bank was organized with $10,000 in assets, and John P. was named cashier, or general manager. Within a year the bank declared its first dividend as evidence of its “carefully guarded” deposits. He continued operating his lumber and mill businesses and farmed 900 acres by 1915. He lived on a 160-acre spread with 125 acres under cultivation.

While a politically active Republican, John P. never ran for partisan office, unlike his brother Frank, although he served as a school district director. He was secretary and treasurer of the local Masonic lodge and, after his age overcame his desire to hunt and fish, filled his leisure hours with reading.

John P. and Martha Susan Weaver had five children: Walter (1870-1962, m. Hattie Barber) of West Plains; Floy (1874-1945, m. Charles Crockett of Thayer); Emma, who died young; Daisy (1876-1942, m. Wesley Naugle); and Carl, an Ozark Co. farmer (1879-1919, m. Florence Augusta Harris).

John P. then married and divorced a woman named Martin.

John P. remarried to Mary Frances Potter (1866-1941), a native of Douglas Co. and daughter of William R. Potter. They had five children: Charley (1887-1979, m. Ina Souder), a Rockbridge engineer; Hugh (1889-1964, m. Lola Haynes); Abbie (1893-1979, m. Taylor Luna of Hulbert, OK); Addie (1899-1989, m. Luther and Charley Alms); and Allie (1903, m. Claude Gardner).

n      Mary Jane (Aug. 28, 1849, Maury Co., TN-Sept. 30, 1850, Farmington, St. Francois Co., MO). The information on this daughter, apparently taken from a family bible, suggests that the Edwardses were related to families in Missouri’s Lead Belt, where some Christian Countians took refuge during the Civil War.

n      Melissa Ruth (July 6, 1851-Oct. 24, 1853, Christian Co.).

n      Eliza Alaoma (Aug. 31, 1853-after 1914), known as Allie, married Augustus "Arch" W. Ward (1846, MO-Sept. 1912), son of well-to-do farmer William T. Ward of VA and Wilson Township, Greene Co., a neighbor of Lewis Crenshaw. William T., who enforced the new voting restrictions in Wilson Township after the Civil War, owned a large plantation in the James River Valley, and he may have been Crenshaw's uncle or cousin; Crenshaw was the son of William T. and Susannah Ward Crenshaw.

 In 1880, Allie was keeping house for her husband, three children, father-in-law and several of Arch's brothers on the James River valley farm. The children were Pearl (1875), John W. (1876) and Melissa N. (1879). Assisting Allie was Julie Gooch, her cousin and daughter of Thomas T. Gooch and Elizabeth Carolina Kenamore.

n      Calidona Ann "Callie" (Jan. 31, 1856-1928) was married at least once to Joseph Hedgpeth, but took back the Edwards name after an apparent divorce or “separation.” She is listed in the 1900 census as a "widow" with her nephew, Carl Edwards (July 1779), and mother.

n      Narcissa Evaline (April 14, 1858-Sept. 22, 1950), known as Eva, married Dr. G.P.S. (Gabriel Pierce Shackleford) "Shack" Brown (June 21, 1853-Aug. 26, 1915), the Christian Co. coroner and Nixa physician, in 1875. He was the son of attorney/Judge John D. (1798-1863) and Jane Bray Brown, natives of Randolph Co., NC who had settled in Arkansas and then Greene Co.

A graduate of Keokuk (IA) College, G.P.S. Brown opened his practice in Ozark in 1877, but moved to Nixa the next year to live on a 40-acre farm. He also had an interest in the Nixa drug store. His brother, E.B. Brown, was a doctor in Billings as was another brother, Joseph Addison, who practiced in Springfield. A sister, Lydia C. (Jan. 31, 1831-May 14, 1888), married Anderson A. Pendleton (March 4, 1821-March 7, 1910), who remarried to Martha T. McConnell Edwards (May 7, 1844-Jan. 14, 1913) after Lydia's death.

Shack and Eva had five children: Maude A. (April 11, 1877-Feb. 14, 1952), an early Nixa postmistress who on Jan. 20, 1895 married Harvey McConnell (Dec. 7, 1876-Jan. 13, 1955), son of George and Sallie Keltner McConnell; Homer E. (1879-1942); B. Gratz, named for a Missouri governor (July 7, 1881-March 2, 1882); Frank L. (1883-1958, m. Effie Cline in 1903); and Lillian G. (Aug. 27, 1885-December 1865, m. Claude Omer Meyers in 1909).

Shack and Eva are buried in Payne Cemetery with Frank and Effie, Gratz, Homer and the Pendletons. Maude and Harvey are buried in McConnell Cemetery.

n      Martha Frances (Sept. 20, 1860-March 20, 1861).

n      Franklin Terry (March 26, 1863-Aug. 26, 1957), was elected Christian Co. recorder of deeds from 1895 to 1907, and the Christian County Republican called him the "hardest working" member of the local Republican party

He married Hester Hedgpeth (March 8, 1871-Oct. 31, 1961), the daughter of Leroy (May 4, 1851-Sept. 16, 1892) Hedgpeth and Julinda Shipman, as his second wife. Frank and Hester had a son, Bryan (July 1899), and a daughter, Lois M. (1903).

Hester was a Keltner cousin of Frank’s first wife; he married initially on Feb. 1, 1893 to Lona M. Keltner, the daughter of Frank and Mary Patterson Keltner, by whom he had a daughter Elma or Emma, but they were divorced in 1896. In 1900, Lona was living again with her parents using the Keltner name for both herself and her daughter in the census.

As a youth, according to a local newspaper, Frank first dug the so-called John Phelps mine south of Ozark at Alma, MO in 1880 with Marion Smith.

He moved from Nixa to Ozark around 1900, but grew restless. In March 1907, after leaving county office, he visited western Oklahoma to scout for relocation property, but returned to take a job with the Globe Clothing House. He later had a state inspection job.

n      Cordelia Florence "Cordie" (July 13, 1867-Feb. 27, 1962) married William Grant “Billy” Faught in December 1887, but they were divorced within two years. She took back her maiden name, described herself as a "widow" in 1900 and died single. The biographical sketch of John P. in Missouri: the Center State says Cordie was the widow of John Faught of Greene Co. who died, despite the documentary evidence. 

n      James J. , I. or L. (1869), who appears to have died young. 

Charlotte Edwards and Wiley W. Hedgpeth 

Charlotte or Charlotta Edwards Hedgpeth (March 26, 1822-April 28, 1865, Porter Township) is well documented as a member of the Edwards family, but the family’s structure is so murky that her true place is unknown. She likely was the second illegitimate child of Jane Edwards, who was the daughter of Nancy and possibly Mordecai Edwards of Maury Co., TN.

Charlotte was born well after Nancy’s husband is believed to have died because Nancy headed her own household in 1820 Maury Co. Charlotte’s birthplace is often given as Nashville – where Jane may have gone after her first illegitimate child in 1816 – but the remainder of the family had not lived there.

About 1837 in Giles Co., Charlotte married Wiley W. Hedgpeth (Jan. 29, 1814-Oct. 31, 1870), who also is of uncertain parentage, although several Hedgpeth families lived in southern Maury and northern Giles Co. By 1840, the couple lived in northern Giles Co. with their first-born daughter, Martha.

During the 1840s, Wiley and Charlotte moved to southern Maury Co. near the other Edwards families and the broader Kenamore-Johnson clan.

In late 1852, the Hedgpeths loaded their belongings and headed for the Ozarks like virtually all of the rest of the families. Joining them was Wiley’s apparent brother, Judge (a name, not a title) William Hedgpeth and his wife Roseanna Keltner, who settled further east in Christian Co. near Sparta.

Charlotte died just as the Civil War ended, and Wiley remarried quickly on Sept. 20, 1865 to Ruth A. Horn (1843-1932), daughter of Josiah and Nancy Horn, who lived west of Ozark.

After Wiley’s death, Ruth eventually moved to Reno Co., KS to join her daughter Laura, and Ruth remarried to E.H. Cogswell about 1899 in Reno Co. She died in Springfield, MO in 1932 while visiting her son Clarence. She is buried in Lonestar Cemetery in Pretty Prairie, Reno Co.

Wiley and Charlotte are buried in Payne Cemetery.

Among the children of Wiley and Charlotte:

n      Martha A. (Dec. 3, 1838-Feb. 7, 1905) in 1863 married Dr. Thomas Jasper Watts of Rogersville. A graduate of the early Ozark High School and an early schoolteacher himself, Watts began studying medicine in 1858 and practicing in 1861. He operated a well-appointed, 400-acre farm, and he and Martha had two children. They are buried at Hunt-Dodson Cemetery in Greene Co.

n      William R. or P. (1840-1916) married Elmina Shipman of Christian Co. They are buried in Payne Cemetery.

n      Matilda E. (Dec. 8, 1842, Giles Co., TN-July 3, 1895) married Charles Thomas Herndon, son of William Holman Herndon of Galena, Stone Co. and Margaret Houchins. Charles was named for his two grandfathers: Charles Houchins and Thomas Herndon.

The couple had three sons: Charles Thomas Jr (m. Susan Holland); William W.; and Thomas. The couple lived early in Porter Township, Christian Co., but are not found in late 19^th-century censuses and are buried in Hunt-Dodson Cemetery, Greene Co.

n      Mary Jane (1844-January 1937) on Nov. 19, 1871 married Daniel McCabe Ramsey, a native of Rockcastle Co., KY who worked on Thomas Watts’ farm and wed the sister-in-law. Ramsey appeared to specialize in renting and revamping rental properties in the area, and the family lived around Christian Co. until they moved to Polk Co. and in 1899 relocated to Kansas. Daniel committed suicide, despondent over farming troubles. Mary Jane died in Wellington, Sumner Co., KS and is buried at Forrest Hills Cemetery, Ashton, KS.

The couple had six known children: D. (Nov. 5, 1872-1874); Lena Ann (March 10, 1874-Feb. 22, 1966, Wellington, KS); Sarah Myrtle Elizabeth (Dec. 18, 1878-June 25, 1959, Wellington, KS); John Jasper, Jan. 23, 1881-Feb. 12, 1971, Wichita, KS); Charles Ulman (Sept. 4, 1882-Dec. 16, 1949, Arkansas City, KS); and James (1887-1888).

n      James married Carline or Caroline France.

n      Frances N. (Jan. 21, 1849-March 29, 1938) married William Joseph Herndon (Feb. 15, 1846-Dec. 30, 1923) – another son of William Holman Herndon and Margaret Ann Houchins -- on Feb. 10, 1867 before the Rev. James W. Edwards in Porter Township. By family legend, Joseph —enrolled in a Civil War unit on the same day as his father. He enlisted in Co. A, 72nd Regiment, Enrolled Missouri Militia, — a largely Christian Co. unit — from July 28, 1862 in Springfield to Feb. 1, 1863. The unit's major clash came with Confederate Gen. Marmaduke, who attacked Springfield on Jan. 8.

Joseph then enlisted as a private in Co. H., 6th Regiment, Provisional Missouri Militia, a federal unit, from April 1 to Sept. 14, 1863, when he was discharged at Ozark but immediately reupped in Co. L of the same regiment until Dec. 30, 1863. He then was transferred to U.S. service but the card fails to mention the unit, although it carries him on the roster of the 6th Regiment until June 7, 1864.

The research of his great-great-grandson Lyle Sparkman of Green Forest, AR found that Joseph volunteered as a private in 3rd Battery I, 2nd Missouri Light Artillery, a federal unit, on Dec. 22, 1863 and was mustered in Dec. 28, serving until his honorable discharge Aug. 23, 1865.

The unit saw little action until it was sent to Nashville, TN where on Dec. 13, 1864, tens of thousands of Union and Confederate troops squared off for possession of the city. Routed by federals under Maj. Gen. George Henry Thomas and Maj. Gen. John Schofield, who had been chief of staff under Gen. Lyon at Wilson's Creek, the Confederate forces under Gen. John Bell Hood fled Davidson Co.⁵²

On Dec. 7, 1868, Joseph and Francis had a son Joseph or “Jode” (m. Cora/Cordie Hoffman of Nixa, Dec. 8, 1891) and lived in Porter Township. In 1892, Joseph was operating the first livery stable in Nixa, but he is shown as a Porter Township farmer in 1900. He died Oct. 24, 1935.

Altogether, the Herndons had eight children, although only seven reached adulthood.

Their other known children were: Margaret Elizabeth or Maggie (Dec. 10, 1870-Nov. 22, 1954, m. George W. McDaniel, Sept. 15, 1888); Cordelia Jane (Oct. 22, 1873-May 19,1918, m. T.B. Bolin, Oct. 1, 1889 and then Elijah McWilliams); Walter Franklin (March 28, 1877-Dec. 7, 1947, m. Eva Painter, Dec. 23, 1900); Appolonia (Sept. 12 1879-June 8, 1943, m. Albert Faught); and Robert C. (Nov. 16, 1884-Oct. 20, 1920).

The final known daughter was Ella Bell Herndon (Nov. 16, 1884-1957), the twin of Robert, who married James Isom Tyler (1869-1940), the abandoned child of Rufus Benjamin Tyler and the late Margaret Wilson. James was part of the extended Inman clan of Porter Township with three Wilson aunts who married sons of Elkanah Dulaney and Sarah Jane Moore Inman; when his father remarried and moved back to Arkansas, James Isom remained with the Inmans. Ella and James moved to Anadarko, Caddo Co., OK after they married in 1907 with an influx of emigrants from Christian Co.

Joseph Sr., Francis, Jode, Maggie, George and Robert are buried at Payne Cemetery. Cordelia is interred at Ozark Cemetery. Ella Bell and James are buried in Memory Lane Cemetery in Caddo Co.

n      John W. (1851, Maury Co., TN)

n      Robert Franklin (1854-1936) on Nov. 16, 1882 married Ann M. Foster, who died in 1902, and then wed Julinda Shipman (Nov. 16, 1858-1931) on Sept. 17, 1910.

By his marriages, he had seven children, all born in Rogersville to him and Ann: Mabel M. (1885), Frank H. (May 1887-1944, m. Etta Catherine Stone), Zula L. (1889), Allie L. (1891), Ava (Aug. 22, 1893-Aug. 6, 1970, m. William Andy Stone), Hobart A. (1896) and Anna M. (1902).

He lost Ann and most of his children to typhoid.

He is buried in Hunt-Dodson Cemetery in Clay Township, Greene Co while Julinda is interred at Payne Cemetery.

n      Millard F. (July 21, 1856-May 9, 1940) married Zuileka Isadora Mack (1860-1893) in Greene Co. on Dec. 15, 1877, soon had an infant daughter Mabel and lived on a farm in Wilson Township in 1880. He married again in 1895 to Catherine “Kate” T. Farrell.

Zuileka was the daughter of Dr. Marshall H. Mack and Lucy Ann Herndon and granddaughter of William Holman Herndon of Cass Township, Stone Co., MO; she was the niece of Millard’s brothers-in-law, William Joseph Herndon and Charles Thomas Herndon.

Millard eventually married a third time to Sarah “Sally” Baker. He is buried at Hunt-Dodson Cemetery.

He and Zuileka had at least these children: Thacker Austin (Dec. 15, 1881-Feb. 12 1920); Herbert Leslie (Dec. 23, 1883-Oct. 11, 1941); Charlotte “Lottie” Ann (Sept. 7, 1887-June 29 , 1919); Lelia Belle (Nov. 19, 1889-Jan. 4, 1975); Lola Lucretia (Jan. 2, 1892-Sept. 15, 1979); and Etta Mabel (April 27, 1880-Aug. 9, 1951, Montana).

n      Wiley N. (June 3, 1858-Feb. 3 1859).

n       Lula (May 3, 1861-Nov. 1, 1862).  

n      Emma (May 16, 1864-April 29, 1865) died a day after her mother, suggesting complications from childbirth. 

¹ The date of 1849 has been passed down from generation to generation in the family, but no letters or records document this trip. It likely came in 1851 with Jared Ebenezer Smith of Maury Co., who remained in Greene Co., MO with his family. James W. likely stayed there for the winter, patented land in April 1852 and then returned to Maury Co., where he prepared the families to leave again for Greene Co. that October.  His patenting of the 40 acres and his purchase of more than 600 acres were later combined in the memories of descendants.

² Also fueling this migration was an 1850 act of Congress that awarded federal land bounties to militia veterans from the War of 1812 and simultaneous Creek War. The Creek War found thousands from Maury, Giles, Williamson, Davidson, Hickman and Lincoln Cos., TN enlisting in TN and Alabama (then Mississippi Territory) units under Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson to defeat the Creeks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend and effect the Indian cession of eastern Alabama to the U.S. These bounties shortly were extended to widows of these veterans.

 

³James W. Edwards and Martha Kenamore apparently were married in neighboring Giles Co., where the Kenamores had lived as early as 1812. The courthouse there lost its marriage records in the fire of 1858 and the federal occupation of 1864.

⁴ By Blanche Wasson Doran, Springfield Public Library, Shepard Room.

⁵ The Ozark newspaper obituary of Narcissa Johnson Edwards, the second wife of William Carroll Edwards and granddaughter of Abner and Nancy Johnson, said she and her husband arrived in Christian Co. in November 1852. William Kenamore, James W.'s father-in-law, bought 190 acres near the defunct village Cassidy in what became Christian Co. on Nov. 4, 1852.

⁶ Francis Faught Inman took this route when she fled from Ozark back to Giles Co., TN in early 1862 with her young children.

⁷ Details of this route are found in the family papers of pioneer Pleasant Wear of Mt. Vernon, an in-law of the McConnells.

⁸ Greene County Deed Book F, p. 194. The legal description of the property was N 1/2 of NE 1/4, Section 13; E 1/2 of NE 1/4, Section 14; W 1/2 of SW 1/4, Section 12, W 1/2 of NW 1/4, Section 13; E 1/2 of SW 1/4 of Section 11, E 1/2 of NW 1/4, Section 14; SE 1/4 of SW 1/4 Section 11; E 1/2 of NW 1/4, Section 13; W 1/2 of NE 1/4 of Section 14; all in Township 27, Range 22. The warranty deed was witnessed by J.A. Mack and H.L.W. Burford. (See Mack family.)

⁹ James W. may have hired the former slaves of William Holman Herndon of Cass Township, Stone Co., who based on available evidence, fathered at least six mulattoes. James W.'s son Irvin married Herndon's daughter Jane in 1862; James W. and William Holman Herndon married Sink sisters later in life. Herndon's former slaves and perhaps children had left Stone Co. by 1870; some had reappeared in Springfield by 1880.

¹⁰ History of Greene Co., MO (Western Publishing Co., 1883) cites a James H. Edwards on page 257, but no such man of standing existed in the county. The old cursive W was apparently misread as H.

¹¹ Three elderly Mack brothers lived nearby in Maury Co. in 1850: John, b. 1769, VA; Robert, b. 1775, VA; and William, b. 1774, VA. John Mack Sr., 81, was living with apparent second wife Lucy, b. 1790, VA, amid the Kenamore-Edwards-McKissack-McConnell-McCafferty neighbors in south Maury Co. in 1850. Justice of the Peace John Mack, perhaps this man, conducted the marriage ceremony of William C. Edwards, James W.'s brother, and Narcissa Johnson in 1846. The Edwardses and the Macks seem to have been related, perhaps through the Wright, Johnson, Duke, Matthews or Murphy familiies. The Macks began buying their Greene Co. holdings in November 1852, at the same time as the Edwards-Kenamore families.

¹² Greene Co. Deed Book J, p. 514. Narcissa J. Edwards and her husband, John W. Edwards, were heirs and distributors to one-fifth of the estate of John Armenius Mack, deceased. On July 13, 1859, they sold their interest in lots on Peach Alley and Boonville Street in Springfield for $500 to John W.D.L.F. (Alphabet) Mack of Greene Co., her brother. Alphabet (shown as John W.D. La Fletcher in marriage records) and Narcissa Mack were children of the John Armenius Mack (1799, Rockingham Co., NC-1854, Greene Co.) who married Sarah V. “Sally” Mack, his own cousin – as opposed to the John Armenius Mack (1807, Pittsylvania Co., Va-1869, Greene Co.) who married Sarah Sophia Mack, also a cousin. Alphabet had married two Murphy sisters, Sarah N., who died c. 1848, and Mary Josephine on Sept. 12, 1850. These Murphys later married into the family of Thomas and Elizabeth Carolina Kenamore Gooch in Greene Co. The 1850 Maury Co. census shows the household of John Mack 51, Sarah (Mack) 48, Lydia 18, Robert 15, Narcissa 12, Ellen 8, and Diana 5 (HH #745-p. 592). Next door was the widowed J.W.D.L.F. Mack 29, Jane 6, Sarah 4 and John 2 (HH #746-p. 593).

¹³ John Armenius Mack (1807-1869) was a cousin to Alphabet and Narcissa, and he married his cousin, Sarah Sophia Mack, on Feb. 5, 1829, in Maury Co. In 1856, he owned 520 acres in what became southern Greene Co., including 160 acres in Section 1, Township 27, Range 22 that lay on the James River just north of James W. Edwards. John A. didn't hold slaves despite the size of his holdings. The 1850 Maury Co. census shows J.A. Mack 43, VA, Sarah (Mack), 43, KY, Marshall 18, William 17, Robert 14, Rowan 11, Osman 8 and John 6 (HH#742-p. 592).

¹⁴ Jared Ebenezer Smith, or J.E. Smith, married Sarah Roberta Mack, daughter of John A. and Sarah Sophia (Mack) Mack, on Dec. 16, 1846 in Maury Co., TN. Jared led the family excursion to MO, coming in 1851, according to the History of Greene Co.. and worked early as a farmer and carpenter. In 1853 he borrowed the funds for a grist and planing mill, foundry and machine shop — the first steam machinery in the Springfield area. In 1856, he sold land to John W. Edwards, the nephew of James W. Edwards. Jared headed a company of Home Guards that guarded the outskirts of Springfield during the 1861 Battle of Wilson's Creek and served as captain of Co. D, 72nd Regiment, Enrolled Missouri Militia from 1862 to 1864, when it was disbanded. In 1862, he was elected as a state representative from Greene Co. and, two years later, was elected the state register of lands on the Republican ticket. He later served as county treasurer for two years. In 1868, he and son-in-law John R. Ferguson opened a drug business that was dissolved five years later; he then entered the crockery and “queensware” business. Smith was elected to the legislature again in 1876.

¹⁵ Alphabet Mack was a possible relative of Fletcher, essentially a military man and political neophyte. The “F” in J.W.D.L.F. stood for Fletcher, according to a marriage license in Maury Co. Fletcher, however, had been born in Herculaneum, Jefferson Co., MO to a family from Kentucky. Part of the Macks had lived in KY before settling in Maury Co. in the 1820s.

¹⁶ R.A.C. (Robert) Mack is listed as a physician, age 25, born TN, in the 1860 Christian Co. household (#884) of John T. and Narcissa Walker, both 36, from TN, and their children, D.C., Margaret, J.T. and Nancy. The Walkers were likely kin of the Macks and others among the Maury Co. emigrés, based on naming patterns. R.A.C. Mack also is shown as a lawyer, age 25, TN, in the Springfield home of his brother, J.D. (Alphabet) Mack, in Springfield. Robert, later the county clerk, married Martha M. George Oct. 13, 1869 before the Rev. Kirk Baxter, pastor of the First Christian Church in Springfield; Robert  apparently married Lucinda McFarland, divorced her in January 1869, married Martha George and then remarried Lucinda McFarland, whom he divorced in 1884. Lucinda also remarried to Samuel Rainey and divorced him in 1875. His cousin Robert D., son of John A. Mack, farmed next to the Crenshaw mansion and married Sarah V. Dryden, daughter of David A. Dryden of Christian Co.

¹⁷ Hundreds of Democrats lost their right to vote and professional licenses after the war under the oath laws, and the Macks and their Radical faction held sway in the county until 1870. Alphabet Mack chaired the county GOP convention that year, which nominated brother R.A.C. Mack as circuit clerk. Only R.A.C. won that fall as Democrats swept the county elections. Alphabet Mack became a wealthy land developer in Springfield.

¹⁸ Information on the Mack family's political activities is abstracted from the History of Greene Co., MO (Western Publishing Co., 1883.

¹⁹ Known to friends as “Lew,” his full name is shown on his stone at Maple Park Cemetery in Springfield: Lewis Allen Dickens Crenshaw, who was born in Nashville to William Crenshaw of VA and Susannah Ward of NC. The family had four sons and a daughter, Susannah (Mrs. Jabez) Townsend. Only Susannah and a brother, R.A.C. of St. Louis, are mentioned in William T. Crenshaw's will. Lewis married first to Mary Louisa Crenshaw, a cousin and daughter of Virginian Crawford Crenshaw of Porter Township, on May 30, 1850. Mary Louisa Crenshaw died Oct. 5, 1865, perhaps in childbirth, and Lewis remarried in 1867 to Frances “Fanny” Smith, probable relative of Jared E. Smith. Lewis and Mary Louisa had five children: Walter (1854), John (1858), Mary (1860), Fanny (1862) and Robert (1865). Lewis and Fanny Crenshaw had at least three children, including Susan (1869) and Thomas T., who became a wealthy lumberman.

²⁰ The Crenshaw mansion was located off Murray Road west of South Campbell Street in 1917-era Springfield. On May 30, 1917, ”Baby” Lloyd Keet — son of Mr. and Mrs. J. Holland Keet of Springfield and brother of then 3-year-old Judge James H. Keet — was kidnapped by the Piersol-Adams gang and later found dead in a cistern at the Crenshaw mansion, the victim of a laudanum overdose to keep him quiet. A book on the Keet kidnapping, The Inside Story of the Kidnapping and Murder of Baby Lloyd Keet (William L. Barde), says the house was reached by a lane that ran through a quarter-mile of undergrowth and then the 40-acre walnut grove L.A.D. planted.

“The house, a huge 14-room structure of colonial style of architecture, was erected with brick made by slaves on the place before the Civil War. The house faces east....A wide porch extends entirely across the front of the house. there is another large porch at the rear, with a portico above. A large hall runs through the house, and many of the rooms are of an enormous size. There is a wide fireplace in every room, with the old-fashioned dog irons. On the top of the house is a cupola, which commands a view for miles around. No person approaching form any direction could escape the eyes of a watcher stationed there.” Barde, p. 38.

”In a closet of an upstairs room is an entrance to a false attic, which was constructed as a place of refuge in case of necessity, because of the unsettled conditions in the days just preceding the Civil War....So cleverly concealed is its entrance that only by chance would one unfamiliar with the place discover it. A person hidden there would be practically sure of escaping detection. In fact, within its confines, several persons could easily secrete themselves.” pp. 38-39.

At the trial, caretaker Dick Crenshaw testified that a secret shaft opened into the false attic. (pp. 88-89)

Fannie (Smith) Crenshaw and the family were using it only as a summer home, spending winters in the south in 1917. It had been unoccupied since the previous year, although she had moved furniture from the mension in April 1917 while leaving old paintings on the walls and several four-poster beds. Dick Crenshaw, the caretaker, lived in a cottage distant from the mansion and seldom visited it.

²¹ A posthumous biography in Missouri: the Center State (pp. 614-617) recounts a family story that Lewis went to California in 1849 at the head of a long train of wagons loaded with goods and 27 men who served in exchange for their expenses. The group included Joseph Washington McClurg, who returned to Camden Co. and became governor of Missouri from 1869 to 1871. In California, Lewis fitted a store with his merchandise and sold it “at a big price.” Within a year he returned to Springfield, where he brokered horses and began a hardware business in the Civil War after Confederates were ousted from the town. This history says he assembled a 3,000-acre ranch four miles south of Springfield; others say the farm totaled 1,200. There he built the brick Crenshaw mansion and plant ed a 40-acre grove of walnut trees. He also promoted the Kansas City & Memphis Railroad, which began with a stretch from Springfield to Ash Grove.

²² Making Free: The Story of the Underground Railroad, William Breyfogle, J.B. Lippincott Co.: Philadelphia, 1958.

²³ History of Greene Co., MO, p. 287.

²⁴ Gen. Gideon Johnson Pillow of Maury Co. (June 8, 1806, Williamson Co., TN-Oct. 8, 1878, AR) was the grandson of John Pillow and Ursula Johnson,  who was the daughter of Gideon Johnson of Amelia Co., VA, and Rockingham Co., NC. Ursula was the sister of Abner Johnson, who married Nancy Brackett in Rockingham Co., NC in 1783. Abner and Nancy's daughter Mary married William Kenamore; their daughter Martha married James W. Edwards. Gideon Johnson Pillow served as a major general in the Mexican War and brigadieral in the Civil War for the Confederacy.

²⁵ Military service records, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City.

²⁶ A James W. Edwards then joined Co. A., 72nd Regiment, Enrolled Missouri Militia, from July to Oct. 13, 1862 under Capt. Jackson Ball of Nixa. The records show he “enlisted in U.S. service,” on that date, like Irvin Wright Edwards, but the MO military records fail to show what unit they joined. Another James W. Edwards lived across the James River in Greene Co., and he likely is the man who enrolled in Co. A., 72nd EMM and the U.S. service.

²⁷ A longtime congressman, Phelps served as Walter McConnell's attorney on his land bounty application in 1851 for service in the Creek War (War of 1812).

²⁸ Capitol Fire Documents, Folder 16431, Missouri State Archives, found Aug. 18, 1993.

²⁹History of Greene Co., MO says Mack carried Christian Co. 266 to 26, but the clerk's report makes no mention of the Senate race.

³⁰ Greene Co. Marriage Book A, p. 236. Marriage performed by Justice of the Peace A.H. Walker.

³¹ Recollections of Cassinda Susan “Lucy” Bolin (Mrs. William Clifford) Cook, Route 1, Box R, Clever, MO, interview, August 1993. The young McDaniels are not found in the 1860 censuses of Stone, Greene and Christian Cos. to determine the names of the other children. No records of John C. McDaniel's enrollment in the Christian Co. Home Guard or other Missouri units is found in State Archives records, which do not include any enlistment in the U.S. service.

³² James W. is not listed with the family in the 1876 state census, which shows Susan as the head of the household. Through January 1876, he was operating the Riverdale mill, but no explanation has been found for his absence other than a census error. The family was intact in the 1880 census.

³³ Pete Amos manuscript.

³⁴ Pete Amos manuscript.

³⁵ The spelling of this family likely will never be known. It is shown as Castloe, Costlow, Castilow, Castle and Castoe in records.

³⁶ Edwards family genealogy, Reba Edwards Baumberger, privately published, undated.

³⁷ Stone Co. Marriage Book A-B, p. 68., recorded Feb. 20, 1863.

³⁸ Interview, Reba Edwards Baumberger, Aug. 22, 1993.

³⁹ Archibald G. “Nelson” Nokes (Dec. 7, 1817-July 6, 1870, Christian Co.) married Flora Ann Elam (Dec. 17, 1824-Feb. 25, 1905, Christian Co.), whose brothers also came to Porter Township, and these members of the Christian Church had at least 11 children: John Tillman, George Washington (July 12, 1845-Oct. 15, 1918,, m. Annis J. Keltner, 1870), Leah Melissa (Dec. 11, 1848-Jan. 16, 1924, m. Albert Stiffler, 1869), Nelson J. (1849, m. Elizabeth Cloud, 1869), William T. (1851, m. Mary Ann Bolin, 1878), Newton Jasper (1852, m. 1. Nancy Catherine Blevins, 1873, 2. Lucinda Bolin, 1903, but divorced), Henry E.R. (Jan. 28, 1854-Jan. 27, 1910, m. Sarah Hall, 1885), Andrew Jackson (1856, Mary Queen Victoria Hall, 1882), Columbus M. “Dutch” (July 8, 1858-March 4, 1919, m. Sarah E. Bolin, 1884); Abraham Lincoln (m. Sarah Ellen Prewitt/Pruitt, 1881); and Elisha Grant “Bud” (unmarried).

⁴⁰ A Nokesville does exist in Prince William Co., VA, near Washington, D.C.

⁴² The son of William Shackelford and Clemmie Frazier and grandson of M.D. “Dick“ and Cal McCroskey Frazier of the Boaz-Clever communities.

⁴³ The Amos manuscript and the children's naming patterns suggest that William was the middle name of David, and he may have used it in the community. Several possible Davids lived in Franklin Co., VA, where he likely grew up, so William would have distinguished him from cousins or nephews.

⁴⁴ The Edwards genealogy compiled by Pete Amos (1986) lists the parents as William Sink, born in Michigan in the early 1800s, and Lucinda/Linda Moffett, born in VA. Glenda Dorris, a descendant, reports that Susan’s death certificate says her mother was Lucinda Moffett. No record of this marriage has been found.

Curiously, some genealogies of William Holman Herndon list his first wife as Lucinda Moffett, too, although she was Margaret Houchins. Herndon’s third wife, Martha Jane, born in Michigan in 1836, likely had the same mother as Susan, so some confusion may have existed among family.

Christian County: Its First 100 Years gives David's date of death as 1872. But Christian County Letters of Administration, Book A, p. 12 shows that son Samuel was appointed to administer David's estate on May 24, 1867.

⁴⁵ 1850 Federal Census Agriculture Schedule, Porter Township, Greene Co., MO.

⁴⁶ Soundex, a phonetic index of census data, was established to prepare for the Social Security system and help prospective pensioners establish their birth dates. In 1880, the files include only the households with minor children. The computer-based 1880 census shows no listing for Stephen or his family in the U.S.

⁴⁷ Martha Lucinda Stubblefield was the daughter of Alvis “Ann” Johnson Stubblefield, the daughter of Gideon and Celia Travis Johnson of Maury Co. and granddaughter of Abner Johnson Sr.

⁴⁸ Nathaniel A.H. Murphy married Mary C.V. Mack on Dec. 17, 1844 in Maury. The couple sold James H. McConnell the McConnell Cemetery site in Porter Township in1852. Nathaniel A. Hill Murphy, born in 1825, later married Amanda Gooch, the daughter of Thomas Threatt and Elizabeth Carolina Kenamore Gooch, in Missouri in 1868.

⁴⁹ Information on the First Christian Church and its membership roll comes from Garnet Tien, “First Christian Church, Springfield, Missouri,” Ozarkin’, Vol. IV, No. 1, Spring 1982, pp. 1-6. The story of the June 1861 occupation by Union troops is confirmed by commercially published histories of the war years. Although the Tien article says Sigel himself made the mass arrest, others ascribe it to an emigrant German major who spoke broken English.

 ⁵⁰ Payne Cemetery abstract.

⁵¹ Missouri: the Center State, 1821-1915, Vol. III, p. 438. Much of the information on John P.'s life after the military and living in Christian Co. is drawn from this quasi-centennial history, which included a two-page biography largely dictated by John P. The set was printed by S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., St. Louis, in 1915.

⁵² Lyle Sparkman, P.O. Box 204, Green Forest, AR 72638, a descendant, has compiled a detailed account of Joseph's regimental history and the Battle of Nashville.