A to Z April Challenge: U is for Ursula

This is Day 21 of the A to Z April Challenge.  My theme is women with unusual names although I must cheat now and then or I’ll have a name and no story.

is for Ursula Clarissa Boyd.  My half-second cousin twice removed was the daughter of William Preston Boyd (a.k.a. William H. Jollett) and Hattie Echols Boyd.  She was born March 25, 1887 in Giles County, Virginia.  In 1909, she married John Arthur Hebb in Monroe County, West Virginia. 

They lived most of their married life in Beckley, West Virginia, where Hebb was an electrician for a coal mine.  They raised five sons, most of whom also became coal miners.

The 1940 census for Beckley, West Virginia recorded that “Ersie” had taken back her Boyd surname, suggesting she was divorced.  She was earning a living as a laundress and her sons were still with her.  John Arthur Hebb, meanwhile, had a new family:  a much younger wife and six children, the oldest of whom was 12.

Interesting.  Why?  Because John Arthur was still head of household with “Ersie” and the boys in 1930. (Doing the math….)  Ever in search of the dirt, I then checked for the 12-year old in the 1930 census to see where she was.  What a surprise:  just 11 miles away in Slab Fork, that frisky J.A. Hebb was head of household for his young wife and 2 children too.  Was he leading a double life? 

No wonder Ursula took back the Boyd name.

I Urge you to Unite with Umpteen Users over at A to Z April Challenge  to Uncover some Utterly Unequal blogs.

© 2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.

Mystery Monday: Part 3 Man on the Run - The Letters

Mystery Monday is a daily prompt at Geneabloggers that asks us to share mystery ancestors or mystery records – anything in our family history research which is currently unsolved.  With any luck fellow genealogy bloggers will lend their eyes to what has been found so far and possibly help solve the mystery.

Click HERE to read Part 1 The Early Years and HERE to read Part 2 The Getaway.

In 1876 William Henry Jollett ceased to exist at the same time that William Preston Boyd appeared on the scene with no signs of a past.  At least a past that could be verified. 

William Preston Boyd’s past began in August of 1876 when he married Harriet Lavina Echols, daughter of Harrison Perry and Clarissa Atkins Echols. Their marriage record in Giles County, Virginia states William was a widower and his parents were George A. and E. A. Boyd of Virginia.  If such a couple existed, there was no record of it that could connect to a son William Preston.

William and Hattie led an unassuming life on a farm raising thirteen children, first in Giles County and then in Monroe County, West Virginia.  In between babies and harvest, William was careful to avoid any legal entanglements that might raise suspicion.  Land was either quit-claimed or purchased in Hattie’s name.  William Boyd’s past ended in 1924 when he committed suicide by a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

William and Hattie Boyd
Photo courtesy of Tim Rugenstein

Son Kyle Emanuel  Boyd came across a series of letters written between the 1890s and 1914 that aroused suspicion about their father’s past, letters that also hinted at a reason for their father’s suicide.  Apparently William Boyd’s past was too much to live with or his past deeds were about to be revealed. 

But whatever dark secrets William harbored were burned by Kyle’s son Dexter who swore the truth would never come from him.  He preserved only parts of the letters that would confirm that William Boyd was indeed William Jollett. 

Click to enlarge

The earliest letters had been sent to agencies, sheriff’s office, and ordinary citizens of Warren County, Rockingham County, and Page County under the ruse of trying to find William H. Jollett who was ostensibly an heir to some land and money.   They were signed supposedly by Kyle Boyd.  Kyle knew he had written no such letters.  Besides, the earliest letters were written when he was just a young boy making it even more unlikely that he would have written them.  

Surely Kyle was taken aback when he saw reference to William Jollett’s father Emanuel, which was his own middle name.  One letter from John W. Breeden of McGaheysville, Virginia confirmed that the Jollett family believed William Jollett to be dead.  

Today’s Boyd family believes that William and Hattie wrote the letters themselves out of curiosity about his family and to determine if he was still a wanted man.  But wanted for what?  He had already served time for horse theft.  Certainly there had to have been something else more horrible than that, something that was not subject to any statute of limitations for prosecution.  Otherwise the need to invent a new identity made no sense.  Otherwise suicide made no sense. The only explanation that seems reasonable is murder. 

According to one letter, William Jollett had gotten Vinie Martin “in a family way.”  Then when that fact became known, he rode out of town and into obscurity.  Was THAT the shameful act?  Or could his involvement with Vinie have led to murder?  Could William have killed an irate father or perhaps a protective brother?  Or was the horrible act something else entirely?  Only Kyle and Dexter knew, and they took it to the grave.  As one letter concluded, “and the rest is known to all.”

Next time -  What became of Vinie Martin? And who were the Lichliters who apparently could “give all information anyone wants”?

Part 4 (Oct. 22) – Annie Found

©2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.

Sepia Saturday: A Jollett by any other name

Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family history through old photographs.

The obvious topic for this week’s Sepia Saturday should be the movie theater, but since I’ve done that already, I have no choice but to look for inspiration in the movie being shown in the prompt, “The Ex-Convict.”

The world of the family historian is usually rather dull and pedestrian.  It means sifting through census records, studying handwriting and fiddling with magnifying glasses to discern the name of a missing ancestor. It means posting inquiries on surname boards and county forums in hopes of connecting with a distant cousin who wants to share information.  It means creating a family chart with 7 generations only to have your husband/daughter/cousin/BFF say, “Wow that’s a lot of work. What time does the game come on?”

If it weren’t for the few criminals in my family tree, I’d have nothing to look forward to as a family historian. 

Actually, most of my ancestors' crimes are not THAT shocking:  a couple of guys perpetrating fraud and some Confederate deserters.  I have a wife abuser and one murderer – maybe it was manslaughter. 

But my favorite criminal actually served some serious time.  Yes, in jail.  The joint.  The clink.  The pokey.  The slammer.  The hoosegow.  The Big House. 

And the crime?  He was a horse thief.

In the nineteenth century, a horse was more than just transportation; it was a means to making a living.  Even more than that, it was essential to survival when one needed to escape from harm.  Horse theft was a serious crime that led to the hanging tree out west.  But here in Virginia, William H. Jollett (my great-grandfather’s nephew, my first cousin three times removed) got to spend about four years of a five-year sentence in Richmond’s “Greybar Hotel.”  

1870 Richmond Census
Click to enlarge

Horse thieves were considered to be no good, dirty, rotten scoundrels. And by all accounts, William H. Jollett was just that.  He reportedly ate soap in order to get sick enough for ol’ Doc Shuller to approve his early release from prison so that he could recuperate at the home of his father’s half-brother in Rockingham County, Virginia.

From there William Jollett’s life really went to hell. He got a young girl “in a family way” and then took off on his sister’s black mare.  From that moment William H. Jollett ceased to exist.  He is nowhere to be found in census records, death records, or land dealings.  

But a year later in 1876 a Giles County, Virginia, girl named Hattie Echols married one William P. Boyd, a man who did not exist before then.

William and Hattie Echols Boyd
photo courtesy of Tim Rugenstein via Dexter Boyd

Boyd researchers have some strong evidence that their ancestor William Preston Boyd was the notorious William Henry Jollett, a man on the run for committing some unknown act more horrific than stealing a horse and getting a girl pregnant, a man whose questionable and shameful past was revealed only to two who succeeded in taking the truth to their graves.

It would be absolutely criminal to miss what’s showing over at Sepia Saturday.  

©2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.