Mystery Monday: Part 4 Man on the Run - Annie Found

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 for Part 1 The Early Years.

Click HERE for Part 2 The Getaway.

Click HERE for Part 3 The Letters.

Many years ago, my sister and I spent a lovely afternoon with our maternal grandfather’s cousin Vessie Jollett Steppe.  We were on a fact-finding mission in our early days of genealogy research, and Vessie was just the person to talk to.  She identified people in old photos and talked at length about various members of the Jollett family. 

Then she asked US a question:  In your research, have you run across anything about Annie Found? 

Annie who? 

As if trying to recall just exactly what she had heard as a child, Vessie said she had always heard about a baby girl being left by a Jollett boy on somebody’s doorstep.  She didn’t know who the boy was, where this was supposed to have happened, or even in what time period.  And who dubbed the baby “Annie Found”?

Of course, we were no help with that little mystery, so it became a little scribbled notation on a legal pad.

Fast forward about thirteen years.

A few weeks ago, I heard from “Patricia,” one of several Boyd family researchers.  In her Internet surfing, she found a page from the now-defunct Geocities where I had housed my research.  And because Patricia is such a good thinker, she immediately noted a possible connection between my Annie Found story and her Vinie Martin story.  Could Annie Found be the illegitimate child of Vinie Martin and William Jollett, a.k.a. William Boyd?  Was he the Jollett boy who deposited a baby on someone’s doorstep as he fled out of town in 1876?  And whose doorstep?

Among the letters that William and Hattie Boyd had sent to people in Rockingham County, Virginia was a response that could be a clue.  It said a family named Lichliters “. . . can give all information that anyone wants.” 

The mention in the letter of other names, Ruby, Georgie, Helen, and Oscar, led us to David and Sarah Munch Lichliter in Shenandoah County, the same county William Jollett visited when he was released from prison, the same county he rode through in his mad escape to Giles County.  Perhaps coincidentally, the 1880 census shows David and Sarah with two daughters:  Ida age 2 and – wait for it – Annie age 4.  Doing the math makes it clear that her birth year corresponds with the time that William Jollett disappeared.

1880 Shenandoah County, Virginia Census
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So did David and Sarah FIND little Annie on their doorstep?  The family Bible simply records Annie as their daughter.  But really, would anyone write “Found on a doorstep” in the family Bible?  It’s doubtful.  For now, the notion that we might have found Annie Found is only conjecture.

And what about Vinie Martin?  What became of her?  Not so surprisingly, there was a Virginia Martin in the 1870 Page County, Virginia census, the same county where William Jollett and his family lived.  Vinie sounds like a reasonable nickname for Virginia.  In 1876, she would have been about 17 or 18, certainly old enough to have attracted a man like William Jollett.  But whether this is THE Vinie Martin we don’t know for sure. 

In 1878, just two years after the reported incident with William Jollett, this Virginia Martin married Daniel Cullers of Shenandoah County.  The Cullers were neighbors of – are you ready for this? – Sarah Munch Lichliter’s family.  Munch, Lichliter, and Cullers families were living side by side for decades.  Certainly it’s not unthinkable that a woman like Vinie would be curious about her child, insert herself into the community where she could observe from a distance, and meet someone to marry.

Now if you aren’t already dizzy from trying to keep up with this soap opera, grab the Dramamine.  In the 1880 Warren County, Virginia census we find Daniel and Virginia Cullers and two daughters.  Warren County is where William Jollett and his wife Mary Elizabeth Martin were living when he was tried, convicted, and sentenced for horse theft.  And thus the story comes back to where we began.

1880 Warren County, Virginia Census
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Remember, I’m not claiming that Annie Lichliter was Annie Found or that Virginia Martin Cullers was the same Vinie Martin, but the circumstantial evidence is strong.  For now, however, that’s all it is – circumstantial. 

While I am satisfied that the letters offer enough clues to prove William Jollett and William Boyd are the same person, the Boyd researchers would like definite confirmation through DNA testing.  I have contacted several Jollett men, but so far none have responded.  The more compelling mystery for both of us is the terrible story that prompted William Boyd’s grandson to burn crucial parts of the letters.  Searches for court records and newspaper articles have produced no answers.

In that sense, William H. Jollett / William Preston Boyd remains a mystery.

©2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.

Mystery Monday: Part 2 Man on the Run - The Getaway

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.

In 1870 William Henry Jollett was sentenced to five years in prison in Richmond for stealing a horse.  Despite a rigorous search through newspapers and court records, Boyd researchers found no explanation for his crime. 

By 1874, William must have been eager to get out of prison because he made himself ill by eating soap.  In what must have been William’s plan all along, Dr. Shuller approved his early parole in October in order for him to return home to recuperate.  What brought on this sudden need to get out early?  He had survived most of his term; what’s one more year? 

Maybe it had something to do with his wife, the former Mary Elizabeth Martin.   Birth records for Warren County, Virginia include the birth of little Emma C. Jollett, June 1874, with parents listed as William H. and Mary E. Jollett.  Barring the possibility of conjugal visits, this blessed event came with a significant question mark.  Certainly if William got word that his wife had delivered a baby while he was behind bars 150 miles away, he most assuredly would be eager to get home.

As the story goes, William was to have left prison and gone to Shenandoah County to be with relatives for several months.  From there he was to have gone to McGaheysville in Rockingham County, Virginia, to stay with his father’s half-brother John Wesley Jollett.  While there William visited a neighboring family quite often and supposedly got a young girl named Vinie Martin pregnant. (Odd – another Martin girl!)  When the truth was made known, he fled on his sister Nancy’s black mare and was never heard of again.  That was 1876.

But William was not the only one to make a getaway.

Who were these relatives in Shenandoah County?  In my research, any close relatives like aunts and uncles and cousins would have been in Page, Rockingham, and Greene counties.  Nobody in Shenandoah County.  But in both the 1870 and 1880 census, William’s own family was missing – no widowed mother, no brother, no sisters.  My best theory is that his mother likely remarried, but to date I have found no marriage record.  Likewise, all his sisters were of marrying age, so they probably disappeared among thousands of wives named Susannah, Margaret, Sarah and Nancy.  If William’s mother Anna did in fact marry, it is also possible the children were using their step-father’s name.  So now I’m wondering if the relatives in Shenandoah County might then be his mother or sisters.  And of course, there is always the possibility that someone confused the TOWN of Shenandoah (which is in Page County) with the COUNTY Shenandoah, making finding this family a little more difficult. 

Another disappearing act was performed by William’s own wife, Mary Elizabeth.  Where was she in 1870 while her husband served his prison sentence?  Where was she when he got out?  Where was she when he disappeared off the face of the earth in 1876? 

1870 Warren County, Virginia
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She eluded me for awhile, but I caught up with her.  In 1870, Mary Elizabeth was living with her father Absalom and a long list of Martins, whose relationships are not indicated.  Mary Elizabeth is listed as a Martin.  However, based on the 1874 birth record of her daughter, Mary Elizabeth and William were not divorced, so it is likely that enumerator error can account for her name being listed as Martin rather than Jollett.  There are some very young children, possibly hers.  

1880 Warren County, Virginia
Click to enlarge

The 1880 census is where the story gets interesting.  Next door to Absalom Martin is the Lookingbill family: John and his wife Mary E., and children Samuel L. (13), Elizabeth (9), Emily C. (6), Laura (3), and A. Franklin (1).  It’s not a big stretch to conclude that Mary E. Lookingbill was Mary Elizabeth Martin Jollett.  And Samuel has to be the same Samuel who was 2 in the Martin household in the previous census.  Emily C. at age 6 lines up quite nicely with the birth record for Emma C. Jollett, born in 1874. Just coincidence?  I don’t think so.  A death record for A. (Augustus) Franklin Lookingbill confirms his mother’s MAIDEN name was MARTIN.   

So, it appears that the two oldest Lookingbill children, Samuel and Elizabeth, were probably William Jollett’s children.  But his bad behavior and subsequent punishment left Mary Elizabeth vulnerable.  She may not have been faithful, but it appears she carved out a stable and satisfying life for her family while William Jollett was riding that horse out of Rockingham County and on to Giles County where he was reborn as William Preston Boyd. 

Next time – the letters that sent present-day Boyd researchers on the hunt for their great-grandfather William P. Boyd, a.k.a., William Henry Jollett

Part 3 (Oct. 15) – The Letters

Part 4 (Oct. 22) – Annie Found

©2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.