The story goes that William Hearn Simons and Alice Dora Morris met at a dance in Lovelaceville, Kentucky, and were married in the spring of 1880. William was 25, Alice was 18, and they were my great-great-grandparents.
They were also the first of my ancestors on the Shelton line to be photographed.
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| William Hearn Simons and Alice Morris Simons, circa 1900 |
What’s Going On?
What was happening around 1880 when William and Alice are entering adulthood?
- Eleven-year-old John Greenock arrived in Chicago with his mom, joining his father who had already been there a couple of years.
- Jacob Rebman and Sarah Ann Trier had a baby named Flora in Northbrook, Illinois.
- The United States was recovering from The Panic of 1873.
- Down in Tombstone, there was a gunfight in the empty lot behind the O.K. Corral.
- Fonso won the 6th running of the Kentucky Derby.
Wagon Train to Texas
In the 1880 Census, the newlyweds were living with William's uncle William G Hearn in Ballard County. Alice was an orphan and had been raised by her grandparents. William's mother Cinthelia was a widow living nearby with her other four children.
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| William H. Simons, c. 1885 |
It was around this time that Cinthelia and all of her children, William and Alice included, packed up and set out for Fort Worth, Texas. I don't know what drew them there, but neighboring families were doing the same thing. Alice's father James Monroe Morris, for example, had married into the Grigsby family, and with them he migrated to Fort Worth a few years earlier in 1876. In fact the Grigsby's story mirrored that of the Simons -- the patriarch died, and the widow and all of her adult children decamped to Texas. Their stories would be further intertwined when William's sister married a Grigsby boy a few years later.
Whatever their reasons, they were not alone. Between 1880 and 1890 Fort Worth more than tripled in population. The railroad had just recently reached Fort Worth, making the town a center of the cattle business. The town's red-light district known as Hell's Half-Acre attracted future television icons like Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday to its gambling tables.
The Simons were in the Fort Worth area by 1882, when William and Alice's first child was born. They were still there when their second child was born in 1884 and possibly for Number Three in 1886, but by then they'd had just about enough of Texas. Somewhere between 1885 and 1888, William and Alice returned to Kentucky, leaving the rest of the family behind.
The decision to move back must have been momentous. There are 600 hard miles between Fort Worth and Ballard County. Automobiles were not yet an option, and the train would have been too expensive. According to my mother they travelled by covered wagon. On good dirt roads with favorable weather the trip probably took a month. Apparently they traveled during the winter, since they crossed into Kentucky on a frozen-over Ohio River.
The Children
William and Alice had the following children that we know about:
- Bertha Lee, born June 20, 1882 in Texas. She was my great-grandmother, so more on her later.
- Dora Belle, born February 1st, 1884, also in Texas.
- Mary Ethel, born February 2nd, 1886, probably still in Texas but there is some confusion.
- Katie Mae, born January 29, 1888, back in Ballard County, Kentucky.
- Eva Lena, born March 27, 1890
- Ruble Clare, the first boy, born June 5, 1892.
- Keys Moss, the other boy, born August 14, 1894
- Stella Ann, born April 23, 1896
- Nellie, born April 4, 1898
- Alice, born March 3, 1900
- Zeryl, born September 25, 1906
Those first ten kids showed up like clockwork, one every other Spring. William and Alice had quite a rhythm going.
That list comes mostly from the Census; I know of no birth records for any of the children. On the 1900 Census Alice reported that she had 12 children, and 11 of them were still living. If that's accurate then they had lost a child, and there was an unknown child since we can account for only 10 kids at this stage.
The mystery deepens in the 1910 Census, in which Alice reported that she had a total of 13 children (Zeryl was born in the interim), but again only 11 were still alive. All of the children listed above were still alive, so if all this is accurate then there must have been another child, somewhere in that regular rhythm, who left the house before 1900 and died before 1910.
In the 1900 Census, Bertha and Dora Belle had already moved out. The only reason I even know about them is because Bertha was my great-grandmother and the two sisters were close. Perhaps there was another sibling who also escaped that small, noisy house before 1900?
On the other hand, if you've had 11 kids I would imagine it's easy to lose count. If the 1900 Census were simply wrong, and Alice had 10 living children and not 11, then all of the surviving children would be accounted for.
Tater Hill
According to my mother, William and Alice and their brood lived in a place affectionately known as Tater Hill. From the Census we know it was near Hinkleville in Ballard County, and my mom reported finding a deed for a 26-acre plot in an area called Herrin Wash near Humphrey Creek, possibly somewhere around here.
By the 1910 Census, the five eldest daughters had all married and were living on their own. Two of the daughters had married before they turned 16.
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| Ruble, left, and Keys Simons |
By this time, all of William and Alice's children aside from young Zeryl were married and producing squads of grandchildren. One of those grandchildren was my grandfather Marshall Jackson, and another was Virginia Iglehart Burrows, daughter of Nellie, who in her later years lived near my parents in Arizona. Those two cousins told my mother that Alice would cook meals for such large gatherings that they couldn't all be seated at once; the guests had to eat in shifts. The younger children ate first, seated on sorghum barrels. The older children would try to hurry them along by whispering to them that they were eating Old Crip, the favorite pet chicken.
By 1920, William and Alice were living with their youngest daughter Zeryl, now 17 and an old maid by their standards, and oldest son Ruble and his family. According to my mother, the plan was to pass the farm to Ruble and Keys, but it was too small to support two families so Keys moved elsewhere. The farm burned in the late 1920s, and the Simons lost the property.
The 1930 Census finds William and Alice now living on their own in a rented house. At 74 years old, William was making a living as a farm laborer.
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| William H. Hearn at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair |
The Last Round-up
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| Texas, 1937 |
In 1937, William and Alice went back down to Texas, this time most likely not in a covered wagon, to visit their extended family. In the group photo taken by a photographer from The Dallas Dispatch, William is seated in front, next to his sister Elizabeth "Aunt Lee" Grigsby. Alice is standing at William's right shoulder, next to her sisters. Their daughter Bertha, my great-grandmother, kneels next to her Aunt Lee.
Most of that large group photo are Simons, descendants of Cinthelia. But Alice and her siblings took the opportunity to have a little Morris reunion at the same time. By this time Alice's brother Alvin was living in Oklahoma, sister Tommie lived in Louisiana, and youngest sister Addie lived in Tennessee.
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| Morris siblings, probably in Texas in 1937. From left to Right: Alice Simons, Alvin Summerfield Morris, Tommie Knight, and Addie Coleman. |
William Hearn Simon died not long after that reunion, on December 20, 1938. He was 83. The cause was listed as chronic nephritis. According to the death certificate, William and Alice were living in LaCenter, Kentucky at that time.
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By 1952 Alice was living in the comparatively larger town of Paducah, at the Burnley Rest Home, just across the street from a cemetery. But she wasn't always resting. In 1954 she convinced her daughter Stella to drive her first to Memphis, to pick up her sister, and then to Shreveport, where they visited Alice's ailing sister Tommie. We know about that because The Times of Shreveport reported on the visit.
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| Marshall Jackson visiting his grandparents' graves in 1995. LaCenter, Kentucky |
Alice's nine daughters had a dizzying number of husbands. So far I've counted a total of 19, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were more. Zeryl had three husbands, Katie had four, and Stella had five!
Alice died in 1960, at 98. Her obituary notes that she left 143 descendants. That's a lot of sorghum barrels.
Previously: Cinthelia Hearn and William Louis Simons
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