At the Library

I spent one morning at the Sherman Public Library. I chose the Pioneers of Grayson County to research to see if any of my relatives were listed in the book. While perusing the book, I found this jewel. A picture of my Great Grand Parents in their early years. 

I did find some interesting stories that I am compiling for another post.

Lindsey Hamilton Scoggin 1823 - 1907

Nelda Reynolds, a cousin that is responsible for the majority of the research of the Scoggin/s family wrote this eulogy for Lindsey Scoggin at his memorial service we did for him so that he had a proper burial and tombstone. The highlighted paragraph tells about Lindsey and his family coming to Grayson County and where they settled.

Eulogy for Lindsey Hamilton Scoggin and Julia Ann Lawrence Scoggin

             Lindsey was born April 9, 1823 in Newton County, Georgia and died September 25, 1907 in Grayson County, Texas.  No one here today ever met him or shook his hand. None of us have ever seen a photograph of him.  Yet we know that he was a man of courage and vision with a deep Christian faith, a sense of duty and history, and a love of family.

      His parents were William Dulaney and Mary Cleckler Scoggin.  The records tell us that from the beginning the Scoggin family members stuck together.  They lived close to each other and moved together westward across Georgia. By 1830 the large family was in Troup County, Georgia.  The 1832 Land Lottery opened new land to the north and in 1835 William moved his wife and four children to Chattooga County.

    Then tragedy struck. Lindsey’s mother died when he was fifteen, and he lost his younger brother and sister. Facing the future with courage and faith, Lindsey’s father William married again, this time to Elizabeth Sewell, and began rebuilding his family.  It must have been a time of great celebration when once again the Scoggin household on the farm at the foot of Little Sand Mountain had a mother and a growing number of little brothers and sisters.  There were no schools. All of William’s children were taught at home to read, write and perform calculations.  They were expected to work in the fields and to attend church with the family.  In 1843 Pleasant Grove Baptist Church was built near William’s farm. Lindsey’s grandmother Winnie Watson Scoggin was a charter member there.  The Scoggin family had their own pews as did another family, the Lawrences.  It was probably at that very church that Lindsey met Julia Ann Lawrence, the daughter of Malachi Lawrence and Isabelle Grimsley, and they were married on September 8, 1845 in Chattooga County, Georgia.  

      Living in Dirt Town Valley among their many relatives, Julia Ann Lawrence and Lindsey Hamilton Scoggin began farming and started their family. By 1860 Lindsey and Julia had eight children.  

      Then tragedy struck again.  It must have been the most difficult decision of his life when Lindsey, then thirty-eight years old, answered the call to duty. Leaving his wife and eight children, he joined Company I of the 35^thRegiment of the Georgia Volunteer Infantry and marched away to Virginia in September 1861.  Almost immediately Lindsey was assigned to hospital duty where he was exposed to every illness that beset the men of the Confederate army; measles, mumps, chicken pox, small pox, typhoid fever and pneumonia.  He was a hospital patient himself by April of 1862. Finally, his health in ruins, he was sent home to his farm for a sixty day furlough.  He arrived at his farm to find his wife grieving for her brother who had been killed in the Civil War.  Within three months she lost her brother, her father and her mother. Lindsey’s health did not return, and he was separated from the army in February 1863. Basic supplies like sugar and salt became scarce and very expensive if they could be found.  Then the war came to Georgia. They could hear the cannons from the Chickamauga battlefield just miles from their farm.  In September 1863 the Union army swept through the valley taking everything including farm animals, food, horses and wagons.  Again it must have been family support that saw them through this difficult time.  

    The years following the war brought five more children.  Like his father, Lindsey wanted an opportunity to start over with his family on a new farm. For the first time in his life, Lindsey left the comfort of the Scoggin and Lawrence families leaving behind the valley where they had lived for forty years.  Lindsey, Julia and their thirteen children loaded into eight wagons and arrived here in Grayson County November 1875.  They settled on a one hundred acre farm touching White’s Creek near Elmont.  The family attended the Elmont Baptist Church where Elder T. B. McComb had served as the minister since 1869.  Grayson County marriage records show that T.B. McComb married two of Lindsey and Julia’s children.  

       In 1889, Lindsey allowed his biography to be published in a book called ABiographical Souvenir of Texas, and in doing so, he provided the only written documentation of the genealogy of the Scoggin family. He must have had a sense of history that told him how important this document would be to his descendents.  Julia died the following year in October of 1890.  Lindsey, his daughter Margaret, his son Gilbert Lawrence and his grandchildren continued to live on the farm until 1907 when Lindsey passed away on July 25. He was laid to rest beside his beloved Julia in Van Alstyne Cemetery.  He was a Baptist, a Mason, a farmer, a son, a husband, a father, a grandfather and a soldier.

    As I thought about this event and these two ancestors, the following poem came to mind.

A Confederate soldier lies buried here

Beside his beloved wife Julia so dear,

More than a hundred years have passed

Since their family gathered last.

To honor them we come today,

With great respect we want to say,

“Your memory lives while here you dwell.

Thank you both for lives lived well.”

Nelda Scoggin  Reynolds

  

Eulogy given at the tombstone dedication ceremony for

Lindsey and Julia Scoggin by:

Nelda Scoggin Reynolds

(Great, great granddaughter)

October 30, 2010

I Would Like to Meet.....

WOW! This is a loaded question. There is no way that I could just list one person; however, there are many people that I would love to meet and I have many questions to ask them. I would love to meet ALL of them. I have a very inquisitive mind and would love to know their story.

• I would ask the ones that came to Grayson County - Why did you come? What brought you here?
• The ones that fought in the Confederate way I would ask - Where did you fight? What battles? and What was it like?
• Since I have done a great deal of cemetery pictures - I would ask the ones that I do not have or know where they are buried, where they will be buried so I can document their burial sites.
• Even though I knew them, but was way too young to ask questions that are important to me toady, I would love to MEET up with my parents and grandparents just to ask personal questions that I never thought to ask while they were living. 

To anyone reading this, make sure to talk to your living elderly family members. In a blink of an eye, they may be gone and so will your answers to questions that you may have someday.

Unusual Names - The Dawson Family

Ephraim Dawson  - 2nd great grandfather
Arphaxad (Arphaxton) Dawson - 3rd great grandfather

When Ephraim A Dawson was born on December 10, 1840, in Franklin, Illinois, his father, Arphaxton, was 35 and his mother, Mary, was 35. He married Lucinda Parsons on July 8, 1868, in Cooke, Texas. They had six children in 13 years. He died on January 28, 1926, in Collinsville, Texas, at the age of 85, and was buried in Cooke, Texas.

When Arphaxton R Dawson was born in 1805 in Oglethorpe, Georgia, his father, William, was 25 and his mother, Judith, was 23. He married Mary Horn and they had 13 children together. He then married Jane Caroline Stalcup and they had three children together. He died on October 19, 1862, in "The Great Hanging of Gainesville".  He has a fascinating story that will show up as a post of its own. At this point, I have not found out where his body was taken after the hanging. Some times his name is spelled Arphaxad, and I have no idea what the R is in the middle name.

Ephraim had two sisters that also could make the list - Minerva and Canzada Dawson.

Challenge

I have several challenges with my genealogy, but I think the biggest "challenge" I have for myself this year, other than keeping up with this blog, is that I want to find out why each of my families came to Grayson County and settled here. In the previous post I showed an approximation when each family came, but now I need to know why! This will take some major research on my part.

I just read Grayson County: An Illustrated History of Grayson County by Graham Lundham, written in 1960, looking for reasons why people came to Grayson County. There were several interesting stories in this book, such as.... the early settlers conflicts with the Indians, a journal of what it was like  and how long it would take to travel from Nashville, Tn to Grayson County, and life of the early settlers as they got to Grayson. However, I still do no know WHY my family came to Grayson County.

Hopefully, as I find the information I will come back here and add it.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

This year I have a different idea for this blog. I am sure that I will not make the 52 blogs in 52 weeks, but I will at least have a topic for my blogs and a reason to blog. I love genealogy and family history, so this was the perfect project for me this year.

FIRST
That is the topic for the first blog. I think I will start by writing about first things first. I was born in to Kenneth and Bennie Scoggins. So when I think of my direct ancestors, I usually start with the Scoggins line. However, I can easily expand this to other lines. I then remembered a file that I have where I composed a list of when each of the family lines FIRST came to North Texas - Grayson County.

Scoggins

1875 – Lindsey Hamilton came to Grayson County

1876 – 1879 Birth and death of John Henry and Julia Paton Scoggin – Grayson C.

1880 – Lindsey/William – Grayson County (prec. 4), Texas

1897 – Sally and George Marlow Married – Howe

1904 – William and Sarah bought Scoggins home place

Taylor

1881 – Sally Lucille Taylor – Flora, Madison County, Miss

1882 – Collin County, Tex (Sally in Texas)

1886 – Near Gunter (Birth of Shelby Russell Taylor)

1897 – Sally and George Marlow Married – Howe

1902-1904 Bought Tioga home place

Henderson

1855 – John Henry Henderson – Moreau, Cole Country, Missouri

1870 -  John Henry in census in Cooke County

1874 – John Henry married Mary Bean in Cooke County

1875 – John Robert Henderson – Cooke, County, Texas

1894 – Henry Eaf Henderson – Collinsville, Grayson, County, Texas

Francis

1910 – Calvin and Cora in Gunter, Texas

September - December

Well as stated earlier, this was not the year for blogging. So I will finish the year out with a list:

• Gunter Tiger Football. We went 14-1. We lost to Canadian in Vernon, Texas one game before the state game. Rick and I went to lots of football playoff games. We went to the Star and watched 5 games and then to ATT to watch 2 games.
• Ladies trip. We went to Upper Peninsula Michigan and Mackinaw Island. The fall foliage was at its peak and breathtaking.
• Diana and I went to Greg's to babysit the girls the first of November.
• Jerry went to South Texas to be a snow bird, and then he went to Italy.
• Chad and Tara came home for Thanksgiving with the news that they just found out they are pregnant. It totally caught them off guard.
• We had Christmas on the 23. Chad and Tara came in on the the 22. They left the morning of the 25 for Wimberly. Greg and Lisa came in the night of the 25. They left the girls with us, and then we took the girls to the airport to meet back up with them after they had gone skiing at Lake Taho.
• We didn't do anything on New Year's Eve. I watched a movie to pass the time away so I would make it.
• We have had lots of rain since the middle of October. We are well saturated.