Welcome to my blog!

Who knew that my curious nature would lead me to dip my pen, so-to-speak, and enter the world of internet blogging to share my personal experiences in amateur genealogy? I certainly never dreamt of such a thing. The rich experiences of finding fascinating people from generations ago (or not-so-long-ago) whose names I’d never heard, but with whom I share the very building blocks of my physical being, have become too precious to keep to myself!

This is for my daughter. She was a motivator before she knew or cared about her family history. I just knew she would, one day, and now she does. She’s my biggest encourager. This is for my husband who, as an adult, learned his last name came by legality not by blood. This is for my future grandchildren and their grandchildren, should I be so blessed. This is for my nieces and nephew and their children, present and future. This is for my son-in-law who humors me when I’m dying to share something new I’ve found. His ancestors are some of the most memorable! This is for anyone who isn’t bored by my frequent tales of those who came before us, passed their DNA to us and who were family even without the DNA connection. Our ancestors teach us, present tense, about God, human nature, failure, success, struggle and grit. Judgement is left to the reader to determine under which category each story falls

In all honesty, first and foremost and without shame I admit, this is for ME! It’s been a long time coming, but recording our ancestors into perpetuity starts with one post…

“I wish you could find out what happened to my daddy.”

My family “research” began through tunnel vision—MY surname and my surname only, SCOTT, was my complete focus.  It was the end of the 80’s and the closest and oldest member of my SCOTT family, my beloved Papa (pronounced pop’aw), Joseph Fornie SCOTT, had already passed away.  By default, my font of information was his wife, my sweet Mamo (pronounced mah’maw), Ethel Olena STEWART SCOTT. Her mind was sharp and her memories, sweet. BUT every conversation with Mamo about my SCOTT family history elicited a melancholy response from her, “I wish you could find out what happened to my daddy.”

Spoiler alert: I did!

Recently I found my notes from one of those conversations I had with Mamo SCOTT back in the 80’s. Everything she knew about her father fit on a single sheet of pencil-scratched paper that I’d torn from her notebook, a stenographer’s notebook she most likely used for letter writing. According to those notes, her father’s departure happened when she was 13 months old and her little brother “Jack” was one month old. Obviously, her knowledge of those events was not firsthand, being too young to remember, but the math worked with their birthdates. Her father, best known as “Tassie” STEWART, worked in Birmingham, Alabama as a streetcar conductor during the week and returned home to Hanceville, Alabama on the weekends. It was circa 1910. A daily commute wasn’t a reality, after all. When her father failed to return home, her grandfather and her Uncle Joe traveled to Birmingham with photograph in hand and talked to his employers at the railyard. They were told no STEWART worked there, but the picture looked like an employee named SMITH who was transferred to Athens, Alabama, along with a secretary. And that’s all Mamo knew–for ALMOST her entire life. I took that tiny bit of information and hit the genealogy rooms of the libraries in my area, exhausted their resources and came up dry. I tried.

Fast forward to January of 2000. While visiting Mamo at the rehab center where she was living, I broached the subject of her father. She explained that she had spent a lot of time with Uncle Joe’s (William Joseph ALLRED) and Aunt Addie’s daughters, especially in the summers after the annual “protracted meeting.”  It was Uncle Joe who told her things about her Daddy. On that day in 2000 she retold her story almost exactly as she had a decade or so earlier. What had changed over the years was the availability of a wonderful new tool in every household, the World Wide Web. I can still hear the racket of the dial-up modem and remember peeking through a squinted eye at the phone bill every month!

Hey kids, in the old days we used to pay for internet access by the minute!

I also remember the glory days when you could do an internet search and the massive results included EVERY instance those search terms were found within sites, as crude as the sites were, without algorithms and targeted results, full of information, no fluff, can you imagine? It truly was glorious! But I digress.

In the world of genealogy, as we approached the new millennium, message boards ruled. One would post a query to a board that would have been categorized by surname, location or interest and then WAIT for a response. Thankfully, my great grandfather had an unusual middle name.  Mamo had to spell it for me: H-i-s-t-a-s-p-e-r-u-s STEWART, nicknamed Tassie, and she thought his first name was Franklin. The day after my visit with Mamo I sat at my gigantic computer at home in Arab, Alabama and composed a query for information on Franklin Histasperus “Tassie” STEWART. I included his name, place and time period, but not the whole story. I posted my query then WAITED–for two months.

That name!

At the end of March 2000, I got a hit on my query from someone named Bruce, in Panama City, Florida. His “Grampa Frank” had a funny middle name, too. Thankfully, Bruce didn’t get hung up on spelling and hit the “reply” button. A flurry of electronic mail communications ensued. In between our emails he called his mother, Maxine, in Iowa, informing her of what he’d learned from me, as unsubstantial as it was. One at a time, the puzzle pieces fell into place. Within a couple of days we, three, concluded that my Tassie and their Frank had to be the same person. With reasonable confidence, I could finally tell Mamo what happened to her daddy!

Fact vs. Fiction

As it turns out, Maxine’s father, Frank, was a bit of a mystery to her as well. He shared very little about his extended family and what she was told about his early life was sketchy, at best. As we shared information, some of what she knew as fact was actually fiction, most likely meant to distract from the truth.

Maxine²: “I’m afraid I’m very unsure about my father’s family (Stewart).  They lived on a plantation near Birmingham, Alabama before the Civil War.  There were 28 slaves on the plantation so it wasn’t too large.” “Frank was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1885” and his “mother died when he was 9 months old…a Negro ‘mammy’ in the home of his grandfather whom Frank Called ‘The Old Colonel’ took care of Frank. The Old Colonel had fought in the Civil War, the Colonel died when Frank was 12, which seemed to have left him devastated.”

The Research: Frank’s paternal grandfather, Joseph L. STEWART appears to have lived his entire life in Morgan County, Alabama, not on a plantation near Birmingham. I ruled him out as “The Old Colonel.”

Frank’s maternal grandfather, Joseph ALLRED, lived on 300 acres in Blount County, Alabama (in present day Cullman County after the lines were redrawn) which could be considered “near Birmingham.” I found no evidence that he enslaved people. He enlisted with the 2nd Ala Engineer Corps, CSA and left service with the rank of private. He died in 1911 when Frank was 25 years old. Joseph ALLRED was an industrious man – a farmer, dry goods merchant, letter carrier (on horseback), shoemaker, postmaster and according to his Civil War service record, a blacksmith.

Frank was born in 1885, not in Birmingham, but near Hanceville, Alabama. He did live with his ALLRED grandparents for a period of time.

The story of the Old Colonel, enslaver on a plantation (and his premature demise) and the “Negro mammy” is debunked, although the details seem familiar, borrowed, perhaps, from plots in literature and film? We’ve proven that Frank took creative license with the chronology of events. Subterfuge?

The ALLRED family’s version of Tassie’s early life³: Gladys ALLRED GRAHAM (1904-2000) wrote that after the death of Tassie’s mother Litia, his father, George, moved with him to north Alabama. George remarried, but the new wife didn’t want the boy, so they put him on a train south to Hanceville. Tassie’s grandmother “saw him walking up the road with his little sack of clothes…crying.” He was about nine years old. “Grandma and Grandpa ALLRED took care of him until he was grown. His father and stepmother disappeared into oblivion.”

The Research: Tassie’s mother, Litia Jane ALLRED, did indeed pass away when he was a baby. She was killed circa 1886 in a fiery accident. (Or was it? To be explored in a future post.) His father, George STEWART, moved home to Morgan County, Alabama, fathered a daughter with a 14 year old girl in 1888, and married the young mother in 1890. Their marriage license is the last record I have of George’s life. (It has to be said: like father, like son.)The stepmother moved west to Texas and started another family.

We have photographic evidence that Tassie was with his maternal grandparents when he was about 12 years old.

The Research: In 1900 Tassie, at age 15, was still living with his ALLRED grandparents in the Pleasant Hill community (present-day in the area of the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament.) He married my great grandmother Alice MEADOWS in 1907. A baby girl was born to them circa 1908 but died in infancy. In 1909 another baby girl was born, my Mamo Ethel. The following year a son, Earl “Jack” was born to Tassie and Alice.

Much like the weaving of eyewitness accounts through the Gospels, we (the Alabama and Iowa STEWART families) managed to create a reasonable timeline of events from various accounts and records. In the summer of 1910 most likely, “Tassie” went to his job in Birmingham, but “Frank” left there, never again to contact any of his Alabama family. From that point forward, he dropped his unusual middle name and his middle initial and became Frank STEWART. Definitely subterfuge.

It seems Frank inherited the work ethic his grandfather Joseph ALLRED modeled. Maxine told of the hard times they endured and how Frank worked anywhere he could to support the family.

The Research: Frank lived in a Birmingham boarding house (perhaps only during the weekdays) in April 1910 and worked as a streetcar inspector. His son, Earl “Jack”, was born in June. Assuming he didn’t leave until after the birth of his son, his departure was probably in July or soon thereafter, as was told to Mamo. There are various unproven family theories on the reason for his disappearance. From April 1910 to September 1918 there is no paper trail for Frank, leaving an eight-year gap when his whereabouts and details of his life are unknown at the time of this writing.

Frank’s 1918 World War I Draft Registration card listed his home address as Norfolk, Virginia where he was employed by the Norfolk Navy Yard. He listed a friend in Dallas Center, Iowa as his “nearest relative.” Logically, one can assume that having a friend there means he was there himself before this time.

Indeed, Frank had returned there by January 1920, where he lived and worked and on June 20^th of the same year, he married Miss Lillian HERR.

The “brick road” is possibly the Lincoln Highway*, The Main Street Across America, the first national memorial to President Abraham Lincoln, dedicated in 1913 and improved through the 1920’s.

There is an indication that Frank was a “constable”, a law enforcement officer with limited authority who served small towns in support of the local sheriff’s office.

Frank’s first child with Lillian, a son, was born in 1921. In the years following, they grew their family, adding another son and four daughters.

In 1950 as empty nesters, Frank and Lillian moved to a farm in Clarksville, Arkansas. Lillian passed away on January 8, 1952, at the age of 55.

Maxine: At age 82, Frank was living independently in Omaha, Nebraska near his daughter Rozella in Council Bluffs, Iowa when he had surgery for a burst appendix. He was recovering and was going to be released the following day, and the doctors told him he had to decide who he was going to live with. He refused.  He said not to worry that he would be gone tomorrow. A nurse was assigned to watch his room overnight. He was dead by the following day, the 14th of March 1968.

Eureka!

For a long time, I thought that Bruce and I finding each other in 2000 was the magic moment that facilitated the solving of our great mystery.  It was only recently that I learned differently: In the Spring of 1999, Bruce published his own query in the Allred Family Organization Newsletter publication, which had/has a nationwide reach. He was seeking information about Frank’s mother, “Jane Allred.” He also listed her son’s funny name “Hoziekial(?) Franklyn Stewart” and other identifying information. Mr. Woody JACKSON, 78 years old, in Sevierville, Tennessee, whose mother was an ALLRED, answered Bruce’s request. Woody knew about Frank’s life when he was still Tassie. This was THE pivotal moment for those of us searching for answers! Maxine, and her husband Chris, made a trip to Tennessee. They learned a different spelling of Frank’s funny name, sufficiently similar though for Bruce to respond to my query. More importantly, Woody told Maxine she had a “sister named SCOTT.” Woody JACKSON, a historian himself, held the knowledge needed to reconnect a once-fractured family line. He is the hero of this story!

We were gifted with a two-sided, bittersweet coin. My excitement about the solving of our biggest family mystery was tempered by my heartfelt concern for Maxine. At age 77 she was understandably overwhelmed by revelations about a father she thought she knew. Maxine said, “[Frank] was a very stern, strict father who held very high standards for his children.” Reconciling his actions with those standards was a difficult pill for Maxine to swallow. She could have been bitter, and rightfully so, but it was with sweetness that she embraced the fact that she had another family, the secret her father had taken to his grave.

Having lived almost a century with the reality that she’d been abandoned by her father and knowing few details about him, Mamo might have embraced bitterness, as well, yet I don’t believe there was a bitter bone in her body. To the end she was naturally curious and hopeful of learning more about him. She had long suspected there were siblings out there somewhere. When the suspicion became reality, the knowledge alone seemed to be a sweet relief.

On Easter Sunday in 2000, the two STEWART families came together. Bruce and his wife Susie, Bruce’s mom and dad Maxine and Chris traveled to Alabama where we were able to introduce the (half) sisters, Maxine and Ethel.

In the Summer of the same year, 2000, my Daddy and I attended an Allred family reunion in Hanceville, Alabama where we got to meet Woody JACKSON and many more Allred cousins. It was a pleasure!

Ethel Olena STEWART SCOTT passed away August 17, 2001, at the age of 92. I’m thankful she lived long enough with a clear mind to find out what happened to her daddy and then to meet her sister. She was survived by Maxine and another sister she didn’t meet.

Verna Maxine STEWART STRAMPE passed away August 19, 2014, at the age of 91. She was the last remaining survivor of her eight siblings.

Here ends the first installment of FAMILY HEROES and villains. Chronologically, the discovery of Frank STEWART, a resurrection of sorts, falls in the middle of the life of my family research but holds its place at the pinnacle above all others in the 25 years since.  As a matter of fact, I took a little break from research at that time, being overwhelmed myself and having the attitude that all other discoveries would pale in comparison. Many times I said, “How will I ever top that?” Thankfully, I got over it!

The STEWART family story doesn’t end here. A future post will address what happened when I found the correct spelling of that funny name, H-I-S-T-A-S-P-A-S.

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*Want to dig a little deeper? Check out these links:

• The Lincoln Highway ; Lincoln Highway in Nebraska

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¹ Birmingham Public Library (Alabama), Birmingham De Luxe book, 1910, F334.B68 A23 1910

² Letter from Maxine STEWART STRAMPE to Bonnie RICKE, 1986.

³The Allred Family, compilation by Gladys ALLRED GRAHAM