Mugtoe
Cuddly Puppy
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The Reed Line (Oxsan)
The Reed Line
I want to tell all of you just a bit about one line of the family tree that so far as I know has not had a lot of looking at by us at least. It is a line developed back through the Roarks. As you may or may not know my fathers’s mother (wife of John Alfred Arrington (Jack) Turrentine) had the maiden name of Jemimah Dora Roark. It is through her and her parents that we come to the Reed line and if we follow that line back we come to the Reverend Isaac Reed So keeping that in mind we shall start at Reverend Isaac Reed and eventually come to Jemimah Dora Roark Turrentine my paternal grandmother who some of you will remember
Reverend Isaac Reed
Rev Isaac Reed was my great-great-great-great-grandfather. He was born on 6-6-1776 in Pendleton , South Carolina and he died on 11-23-1848 in Panola County Texas. So he was born about a month before the Declaration of Independence was written and died three years After Texas entered the United States as a state. He is buried in the Old Bethel Cemetery in Panola County Texas. On 9-17-1797 he married Elizabeth Harper (born 3-30-1779 died 1848). They were married in Pendleton SC. Isaac Reed was at the time of his marriage and for some considerable time thereafter a farmer and occasional preacher in SC in the Pendleton area. He was an ordained elder in the Presbyterian church but also had some connection with the Congregational church.Isaac and Elizabeth had eight children while in South Carolina but only six survived to adulthood.
There is very little that I can find on Rev Reed’s parents. I know that his father was Nathaniel Reed (born 6-2-1749 died 1781. ) Nathaniel Reed was born and died in Pendleton SC. Isaac’s mother’s maiden name was Elizabeth Bateman and she was born in Ireland. We also can determine that Isaac had only one brother who was named William Reed. William Reed moved to Tennessee. There William became known as "Silver Billy" by his fellow Tennessee citizens because he invariably came to land auctions in a wagon loaded with sacks of silver dollars which he used to pay for the land he bought on the spot–in silver. I found no sources that informed me WHERE Silver Billy got the silver dollars.
Isaac and Elizabeth came to Texas in 1834 (two years before the battle of the Alamo and San Jacinto). Texas at that time was still a province of Mexico and it was against the law to preach any religion except Roman Catholicism. Despite this law the Rev. Isaac Reed stood beneath a tree on 5-3-1834 and preached what might have been the first Protestant church service in the State of Texas. This was in Nacadoches Texas. Over a hundred people gathered to hear his two hour sermon. The organizational meeting to establish a protestant church in the town of Clayton in Panola Counmty Texas was held in the Rev Isaac Reed home.. This church was the first Protestant church in the State of Texas.
Children of the union of Isaac and Elizabeth Reed are as follows:
Dr. William Reed *-----b 1-12-1798 d 3-1-1863
Mary Polly Reed--------b 1800 d ?
Frank Reed **---------died in infancy
John Reed--------------dates unknown
Elizabeth Reed---------b 1812 d 1855
Isaac H. Reed***------b1813 d 1836
Margaret Reed****—b 12-31-1808 d 1-20-1856
* This Dr. William Reed was not truly a medical doctor but rather a herbalist. He later was Chief Justice (presiding judge) of Hamilton County Texas. He died in 1863 of smallpox. He is burried in the Hamilton Cemetery.
** Earliest appearance that I can find of the given name "Frank" in the family. It reappears in every generation down to my son Frank
*** This son when only 23 discovered an Indian stealing corn from the family corn crib in Panola County and in the ensuing scuffle was shot and killed by the Indian. The name of the county by the way , Panola is a corruption of the Cherokee word "Ponolo" meaning cotton.
**** We are direct descendants of this Reed.
William M. Roark (b 9-16 18 in Smith Co TN died 12-10-1862 in Cherokee Co TX) on 1-1-1826 married Margaret Reed (b 12-31-1808 d 1-20-1856). William M Roark is my great-great-great-grandfather and Margaret Reed is of course my great-great-great- grandmother. From this union came the following children:
Elizabeth Harper Roark----b 9-2-1832 d 5-29 1910
Julia Ann Roark-------------b 6-6-1835 d-6-6-1913
Calvin Morgan Roark-------b 1840 d1840
Frances Mary Roark--------b 8-2-1841 d 4-26 1908
Emaline Roark---------------b 1842 d 1843
Nancy Chambliss Roiark—b 1845 d 1845
Sarah Adaline Roark--------b 4-28-1847 d 4-3-1888
Franklin Reed Roark Sr.*-------b 12-13 1830 d 1-18-1863
* Our direct ancestor and continuation of the "Frank" given name. Franklin Reed Roark Sr. .is buried in the Selman-Roark Cemetery, Alto, Cherokee County Texas
Franklin Reed Roark on 1-1-1857 married Susannah K. Power (b. 6-10-1840 d 5-15-1906)
Note that the last two generations of our ancestors got married on New Years Day.
Children of this union were as follows:
William Franklin Roark*-------b9-13- 1857 d 2-10-1938
* There may have been other children of this union but I have so far been unable to find them. This man is my great grandfather Roark and I remember him well. I attended his funeral. Granpa Roark was a very stern taciturn man, lean and tall and with a handlebar mustache ,. He was a farmer and small scale cattle raiser and lived in the area of the town of Lancaster all of the time that I knew of him–although I think that he was born in either Cherokee County or Hamilton County. He is the villain (along with his son Robert) of the story "A Chore For Jamie" which I wrote.. He was not one of my favorite relatives when I was a kid—and both he and his wife had no use for my grandfather John Alfred Arrington (Jack) Turrentine who married his daughter Jemimah Dora.
William Franklin Roark married Martha Elizabeth Scogin (b 6-8-1953 d 6-6-1940) . Both William and Martha are buried in Red Oak Cemetery on FM 342 near Red Oak TX. I have pictures of all the Roark tombstones in that cemetery.
Children of this union were:
Franklin Reed Roark Jr.-------------b 1-21-1878 d 9-28-1950
Jemimah Dora Roark*---------------b. 3-27-1879 d 12-26-1950
Oscar Roark---------------------------b 1-29-1881 d 7-1-1881
Walter Lee Roark Sr. **----------- b 9-10-1882 d 11-29-1932
Ola Victoria Roark***---------------b 10-15-1885 d 8-1-1896
Willie May Roark---------------------b 4-2-1884 d 10-6-1885
Roy Luther Roark---------------------b 9-19-1887 d 8-2-1965
Claude Roark****---------------------b 1-30-1893 d 2-15-1985
Rufus Cortez Roark Sr.****---------b 1-30-1891 d 5-27-1957
Robert S. Roark (Babe)****---------b 5-11-1893 d 12-15-1963
* Jemimah Dora Roark is our direct ancestior.. She was not a pleasant person to be around really—although my mother told me to act as if she was whether I wanted to or not. I know nothing about her Scogin ancestry except that her father died when she was young and her mother remarried a man whose last name was Coon–and I have a picture of him. I don’t know why there is only one "G" in Scogin
** I never met Uncle Walter but he and his wife Aunt Mildred were very kind to father when he was 19 years old. Dad entered Bethel College in Bolivar Tennessee where Uncle Walter lived. Even though he had a football scholarship it only provided for some of his tuition and fees and Uncle Walter hired Dad (at 19) to supervise a chain gang of black convicts cutting railroad ties in the swamp and paid him to do so. Much later after Uncle Walter had died mother and I stopped in Tennessee on the way to Michigan and I met Aunt Mildred and their daughter Martha Mildred both of whom were delightful peopkle. Aunt Mildred told me I looked like Jack Tuirrentine.
*** This child had a tragic end. At eleven years of age she was warming herself before the fireplace in her nightgown and her clothes caught fire and she died from that accident, She is buried in the Red Oak Cemetery and I have a picture of her grave marker. She is the origin for the name of my Dad’s sister Ola Mae of whom both he and Mother were very fond.
**** I knew all of the uncles thus marked. Uncle Claude was a jolly fellow married to Aunt Emma. I liked him. He came to Carlsbad once in 1936 and took our whole family to El Paso and Juarez on a vacation outing.. Both he and Aunt Emma were very pleasant. Uncle Rufus I also knew well. He was the only blacksmith in Lancaster for many years when I was a kid and I used to spend many hours watching him beat red hor iron in his shop in Lancaster.I also knew all of his children. Uncle Robert you know about from reading "A Chore For Jamie". He was a spoiled brat. He never married, He was a lawyer and bail bondsman and according to Doc some even less desirable things in Dallas. The rest of the Roarks I did not know.
Jemimah Dora Roark married John Alfred Arrington (Jack) Turrentine.on 2-1-1894 in Red Oak Texas. J.A.A.Turrentine was born in 1867 in Tennessee and was lost at sea and presumed dead in 1907. According to Aunt Mildred Roark and Uncle Claud Roark Dora as a young girl was a raving beauty. I have heard both of them however say that she was effectively illiterate. When I first knew her in the 1930s she could read and did so at great length but all of her reading was centered aiound magazine stories. According to Aunt Mildred Jack Turrentine was fluent in several languages and was an inventor of some note especially in the field of improvements to cotton ginning machinery, He was also an amateur gunsmith and blacksmith. He had a fine set of tools which were stored in the attic of the old Stewart place in Lancaster—I have seen them. He also had the remnants of a terrific library there which I have also seen including several diaries which were handwritten in what I took to be Arabic script and some pages in French and a few in English. Dora dumped all of these books (which she referred to as "books of the Devil") into a roofless and floorless shack on the farm where after a few months of rain and snow they became a vast puddle.–that also I saw. Most of his books however were taken by Aunt Mattie and put into a school library and the school burned later and the books were destroyed.
Children of this union were:
Mattie Flora Turrentine*----------------b 1895 d ?
Roy Lee Turrentine**-------------------b 1896 d 1901
Ola Mae Turrentine***-----------------b 1898 d 1936
James Wilson Turrentine****----------b 1900 d 1918
Frank Turrentine+-----------------------b 7-21-1905 d 11-17-1977
John Alfred Arrington (Doc) Turrentine++—b 1906 d 1981
* My Aunt Mattie was a hoot. She married Rex McClung and they had about six kids. Rex was a preacher and never made much money. Aunt Mattie developed a brand of floor sweep (used in those days to collect dust from wooden floors) and furniture oil and sold it door to door. She had twin boys (Walter and Warner McClung) who were rather famous in the Navy and were known as The Texarkana Twins. They had several ships shot out from under them in WWII but came through the war unscathed. Their brother Pat McClung (who was my age and my favorite) was killed in the last days of WWII by a Japanese kamikaze plane. The remainder of her children are still alive (Hayden, Ruth, Dorothy and Martha) and live mostly out in California. Aunt Mattie had a terrific sense of humor was altogether a jolly lady and loved my Dad beyond measure.
** Roy Lee had a tragic death at age 5 when he drowned in Lake Cleburne on a family outing.
***Aunt Ola Mae I remember although not too well. She was a great favorite of my Dad and my mother. She married Wayman Davis and had two children Wamon David Davis (W. D.) Jr. and Juanita Davis who was always called Billie and who I was and still am very fond of.although I have not seen her in years. Aunt Ola Mae died in 1936 and W. D. and Billie came to live with us for a time at Dalhart.
****James Wilson Turrentine always called Jim died when he was 18 years old of pneumonia. He was married to Lila Thrash but it was just a formality because he died within a day or two of the marriage.
+ My Dad and the continuation of the "Frank " given name tradition. I couldn’t have asked for a better father.
++ John Alfred Arrington Turrentine who was always called Doc (because a Gypsy fortune teller prophesied that he was going to be a great physician was very close to Dad and thought that my mother was a goddess. He was a 32nd degree Freemason by two different rites (the York rite and the Scottish rite). He was during his life a farmer, a lumber yard worker, a railway conductor, and a turret lathe operator and later a general machinist. He had a rigid code of personal ethics. He married late–in his early forties to Wilhelmena Teats and they had three children now grown and about their lives. Uncle Doc died of lung cancer in 1881.
Frank Turrentine married Ouida Ethel Hamilton (b 10-16-1908 d 9-30-2000)
From this union there was a single child:
Charles Franklin Turrentine*---------------------b 5-4-1927 d Not yet–put down them shovels.
Now you can see how we are descendants of the first Protestant preacher in the state of Texas (maybe)
__________________
quote:
Originally posted by magnolia
never waste a hardon, trust a fart or pass up a breath mint when offered.
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11-27-2005 11:05 AM
