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.

May to August 2018

Well this is not the year for my blogging. Time is just going too fast. So to catch up with this year, I will continue doing bullets.

• Fitz had to wear ear molds, had to be dilated twice a day, and did great with everything. Tara did not fare as well. She had a rough 8 weeks of recovery. I am not for sure if Fitz was ever put down the first 10 weeks of his life. I think someone was holding him around the clock.
• Fourth of July was a blast as always. Greg and Isabel came in on June 19. Lisa brought Anja the weekend, and then she went back to Tennessee to work. Jenna and her group came both weekends. Diana and I cooked daily for the group. It varied from 12 to 48 people coming through the kitchen on any day. Chad came the first weekend without Tara and Fitz. They came the second weekend and stayed through July 6. We had babies everywhere - Anja, Marlow, Molly, Jackson, Isabel, Fitz. Then we added Kelle's twins and David Dunn's baby - Rhodes. At our house every bed and couch was full several nights with all of Greg's, Chad's and David's families plus Rick and I. It was wonderful.
• After everyone left, Rick and I went to the New Mexico cabin to check out the wild fires that had burned 35,000 acres between Ute Park and Cimarron. Amazing! We drove the circle Taos, Red River, and Angel Fire.
• July 20 Fitz had his reconstructive surgery. Diana and I went to Houston for four days. He did very well. On of the interns was a Beta from Lubbock. Chad took a new job and left NOV during this time. He will now be working for Cougar Oil.
• July 27 Rick had his rotator cuff surgery. This was much harder than he expected. He missed work Thursday and Friday. He laid around until Monday, when he went back to work. It took him three weeks before he started feeling good. We watched more movies these three weeks than we have in years.
• Cheryl had both hips replaced this year, so we did not get to have either one of our first two ladies' trips this year, so we are behind on traveling. Diana did take Rick F. to Colorada in their rig.
• August 4 we had a Streetman-Harris reunion out at Roger and Teresa's at the lake. All were there but Kevin and the triplets, Drew, and Kendall's family.
• Rick sold the lake houses this summer. This was sad to me, because this was one of our first projects we did when we started dating. He did buy his dream car - a 67 GTO.

God is good all the time - All the time God is good. Still blessed.

Fitzgerald Carl Davis - April 30, 2018

Monday morning I got the call that I had been anxiously awaiting for four weeks, however, I was not ready. Things started flying, and forty minutes later I was dressed, car was packed, and Diana and I were on a road trip to get to Houston before Fitz was born. About an hour into the trip, Chad let us know that it would be an all day event, so the stress level went down a little. We got there and the waiting game began. Mark, Penny, Russ, Blake, and Diana made the waiting room our home away from home for the next four days. Fitz was born about 5:40 PM. We got to see him about 8 PM for a few moments. He was much larger than guessed - 8 pounds 4 ounces. Diana and I went to Chad and Tara's to stay the night. Blake and Mark went to Dallas. Niki came in during the night. Then we got the early morning text, everyone dreads. Fitz has some issues and had to go to the NICU. He would be facing surgery. Again we dressed and fought the Houston traffic to get back to hospital. We found out that the things that develop the 7th - 9th week after conception can be affected. So the many tests began. What we know for sure is that there is a cyst on his ears, they fold over, and his anus is not developed nor can he be circumcised at this time. Over the next several days he was tested for hearing, eyes, spinal column, bones in his arms and legs, and his heart. We knew on Wednesday that we were not going to get to see him anytime soon, so we drove home Wednesday night. Fitz finally passed all his tests, the parents passed the dilation test, and so he got released on Saturday night. He will be facing several surgeries in the coming months. Even though Fitz had an emotional start, God blessed us and prayers were being answered daily/hourly. He is a beautiful little boy that has many of his father's characteristics -  his looks, he likes his buppy, and he already moves a lot. Maybe Chad will see why we called him "the worm" by the time he was two weeks old.

Pictures to follow!

January, February, March... Where did it go?

Here it is the end of March, and I am awaiting the birth of Fitzgerald Carl Davis. I have no idea where these three months went. I can assure you that I blinked, and time moved on. I did much better in 2017 with posts. Looks like to catch up I will just do the bullets to highlight some of the events:

• Rick and I did a road trip in February to Tennessee for us to see Greg and the girls. Lisa was out of town. It rained most of the time we were there, but it was good to be with the girls after 5 months. Rick helped Greg with a building project in his basement/garage. 
• We got Bro, Rick Ballard as a pastor, and Tim Posey as a music director. Both are fantastic.
• Rick and I are helping with the children's program at night at the church.
• Greg, Lisa, and the girls came home for Easter. Diana had all her kids. We played in the park. went to the church for the Easter Egg hunt, had our own egg hunt and firework show.
• Tara was put on light rest at 34 weeks so they did not get to come Easter. She had dilated to a three. So her North Texas showers were canceled. 
• Rick and I went to Houston for the Mecum Car show. This ended up the same weekend that Blake had moved their family shower to Houston. I did not go to the shower because of the show, but we did meet up with all of Tara's family at their apartment. Rick did not get his GTO. 
• We are still going to baseball games, basketball games, and track meets of the grandkids. Sunday night meals are still a family ritual.
• Diana and Rick got a new Montana fifth wheel. It is very, very nice. Marlow is sassy as ever, and Jackson has started walking.
• Jerry came back from South Texas.
• Rick and I went to Lake Travis with several from the church to work with the Baptist Builders on a Camp Retreat site. We gutted a trailer house, then started building it back.
• We did not get to go on our Spring Break girls' trip, because of Cheryl's hip replacement surgery.
• Don Hankey passed away.
• Brandi took the computer job at the Elementary school for this spring. Mindi and Jeremy have separated. 

Life is going on. Hopefully I will add pictures to this post and will do better the next three months. So far now, God is still good and blessing us daily.