Digging Up Your Family: Smith Family (Tennessee)

I would like to know what this used to say and what it was…

Last week when my mom and I drove up to Tennessee to place the headstones for the Craft family we also got a chance to see where my great-great-grandmother Margaret Elizabeth “Lizzie” Summers lived when she was living in Hurricane Mills, Humphreys County, Tennessee. Donny Baker, my first cousin twice removed, took us to not one, but TWO houses Lizzie lived in! It was pretty exciting for us and my great-great-aunt Kat.

I got photos of the houses, but what I thought was pretty neat were the outhouses. Not because they were outhouses sitting out behind the houses themselves, but because Lizzie, and her children and grandchildren (including my grandmother) had actually sat their behinds on the seats in those outhouses.

It may seem silly, but knowing that I was seeing a place where people went for privacy just made it special.

This outhouse is from the first house we visited, on the paved end of the road.

Lizzie’s butt sat here!

This is up on the hill behind the second house, which was on the non-paved section of the road.

Lizzie’s butt sat here, too!

Gosh, just think about how each person had to tromp out to these little buildings in the snow and rain just to be alone and read the Sears & Roebuck catalog!

I keep running across ancestors that make me scratch my head, and then make me want to pull my hair out. This is one of those ancestors (insert Law & Order “bomp bomp” here).

Margaret Elizabeth “Lizzie” Summers supposedly was born on March 15, 1870 in Tennessee. I say supposedly, because I cannot find her on any census from 1870 and by the time most were enumerated that year she would have been several months old, thus appearing somewhere. And I get that date off of her death certificate and the 1900 census. Where was she? If someone can find her in 1870 I will be forever grateful.

So, by all accounts she was born to mother Amanda. In 1870 Amanda is found in Danville, Stewart County, Tennessee living with her parents, Pink (Basil Pinkney Summers) and Emily (Duffel) Summers, and her siblings, Greenberry, Clementine, Anderson and Rufus. The census was enumerated on August 12, 1870. So where is Lizzie? The census also states that Amanda is Single. Not Widowed. Not Married. Not Divorced. Single. So from this we can gather that Lizzie was illegitimate. Well, if she actually existed at that point, I mean.

In 1880 Lizzie finally shows up on the census enumerated in June 1880, either on the 15^th or the 5^th, it’s kind of hard to read. By now Houston County, Tennessee (ca. 1871) had been formed, part of it from Stewart County, and that is where they are shown living. Amanda is now living with her mother (Widowed), her brother Greenberry (Single) and a 19 year old boarder named “Ritchard”. Also living in the household are Amanda’s THREE children: Lizzie (age 10 years), Leona (age 6 years) and “Infant” (Leon Edward, age 1 month). Amanda is still Single. Not Widowed. Not Married. Not Divorced. Single. Which means that all three of her children were illegitimate.

So who was Lizzie’s father? Did all three of Amanda’s children at this point have the same father?

After 1880 we don’t see Amanda on the census records. She apparently died in 1889, after having married James Anderson Proctor late in the year of 1880 after his first wife, Paralee, died of consumption in February the same year. Lizzie married William Glenn Cathey August 26, 1889. Depending on exactly when Amanda died (which we don’t know…the Mortality Schedules were also destroyed for the years following 1885 along with the 1890 census…sigh), I think that the marriage may have been set up. On the same day, by the same person, Leona also married. Lizzie would have been 19 years old and Leona would have been 16 years old. Amanda’s brother Greenberry had signed and witnessed both bonds for the marriages. James Anderson Proctor remarried for a third time to Sarah Hamm (Sallie J Hams on Family Search) on December 26, 1889 in Montgomery County, Tennessee. I don’t know where Amanda’s other illegitimate child, Leon, is at the time but I am assuming he stayed with Greenberry. Her other children that she gave birth to after marrying James Anderson Proctor continued to live with him, moving to Missouri with him later.

In 1900 Lizzie and William Glenn Cathey are in Indian Bayou, Lonoke, Arkansas. Will’s occupation is shown as “tipping blocks”, which if anyone knows what that is, please enlighten me. Lizzie is at home with their four children: Riley (age 10 years), Archie (age 6 years), George (age 4 years) and Katie (age 2 years). Katie is their only child born in Arkansas.

In 1910 Lizzie shows up on the census as Elizabeth Cathey, widowed, living in Humphreys County, Tennessee. Apparently William Glenn Cathey died in 1906 (and is buried in Nolan Cemetery in Humphreys County, Tennessee near Hurricane Mills), though I have yet to find proof of his actual death and I have not seen his headstone as of yet. The children living with Lizzie are: Alvy (Acra Archie, age 16 years), Arlee (George, age 13 years), Katie (age 12 years), Lorine (Ludie Mae, age 7 years), William (Willie Richard, age 4 years) and Maggie (age 2 ½ years). All of the children also carry the Cathey surname. I had seen one source that pinpointed Lizzie and William “Bill” Green Smith’s wedding to a specific date in 1909, but we can see that as of April 27, 1910 Lizzie was not shown as having remarried, nor had she changed her last name to Smith. There were two Smith families living on either side of her, but neither of them had him living in their household.

I still haven’t seen exactly when Lizzie married William “Bill” Green Smith, but I am hoping to find it, or have it shown to me, soon.

By 1920 they had married. Lizzie and Bill are living in Humphreys County, Tennessee with their children: Maggie Smith (age 9 years), Luda Pearl Smith (age 7 years), Walter James Smith (age 4 years), Arlee Cathey (age 24 years) and Willie Cathey (age 14 years). So, I guess I can ask the obvious here: Maggie Cathey in 1910, Maggie Smith in 1920? Were they the same person? If so then she lost 3 ½ years somewhere along the way. And if they are the same person then she was illegitimate since Lizzie and Bill were not yet married by her birth. Two other scenarios for her birth: Maggie Cathey was a different Maggie and William Glenn Cathey is her father, thus making his death date NOT 1906 or Maggie Cathey’s father is a “mystery man” (much like Lizzie’s father). If Maggie Cathey and Maggie Smith are not the same person, then what happened to Maggie Cathey? On a separate note, Ludie Mae, one of Lizzie’s daughters with William Glenn Cathey, is living next door to the Smith family with her husband, Cam Daniel.

In 1930 Lizzie is living in Humphreys County, Tennessee with Bill. Their son, Walter James (age 14 years), is also living with them. The other two people listed as living in the household are Ludie Mae’s son Raymond (age 3 years, ALSO listed as living in Ludie’s household!) and Lizzie’s uncle, Greenberry Summers (age 84 years, though his death certificate for the same year says 86 years).

The census records end there (for now…they are released every 72 years, so next year in 2012 the 1940 census will be released…yay!).

Bill Smith died October 5, 1946 of lobar pneumonia at Western State Lunatic Asylum (as it was known then) where he had been for 26 days (he only had pneumonia for 3 days before his death).

At some point, from what my mother and I have been told, Lizzie lived with her daughter Ludie Mae. I am not sure if that is where she was living when she died or not. From her death record I know she was living in Waverly, Humphreys County, Tennessee.

Margaret Elizabeth “Lizzie” Summers died in at Weakley County Hospital in Martin, Weakley County, Tennessee on October 20, 1952. The cause of death was cerebral hemorrhage due to hypertension. She is buried in Crockett Cemetery, Hurricane Mills, Humphreys County, Tennessee along side her husband, William “Bill” Green Smith.

Going back to the matter of Lizzie’s father: the Proctor family, for some reason, wants to claim Lizzie, Leona and Leon as James Anderson Proctor’s children. I’m not sure why they want that. I figure it would be more savory to say that JA Proctor was nice enough to take into his home this woman with three illegitimate children rather than say that he was such a bastard that he cheated on his first wife and fathered not one, not two, but THREE children with some other woman. Lizzie’s death certificate says that James Franklin Summers is her father. James Franklin Summers, at least the one I know about that is connected to the Summers family, is Amanda’s uncle, her father’s brother, who was, at the time of Lizzie’s birth, married to Tennessee Porter Outlaw. There were plenty of other James Summers that lived in Tennessee, in or near Stewart County, in 1870, also. When I inquired at the Tennessee Archives about Lizzie’s parents’ names having been written in on the death certificate Chuck Sherrill sent me an email saying

“Regarding the handwritten addition of the names of Mrs. Smith's parents, it appears to me that someone reviewed this certificate after it was typed and noted that there was missing information. This reviewer marked the omissions with a star. Someone then went back and obtained the needed information and wrote it in by hand. Whether that additional data came from the original informant (Walter Smith), or from some other source, is not clear.

I looked through about 50 certificates surrounding this one and found only one other with a red star on it. That person did not die at the hospital. I had thought the review might have been done by hospital staff, but apparently it was done at the Health Department.”

So either way, we still have no clue who Lizzie’s father was. And I can’t honestly say that Amanda Summers was Lizzie’s mother, either. Why, you ask? Because so far my autosomal DNA that I submitted has not matched anyone that is related to the Proctor family. If any of the descendants of James Anderson Proctor (and his Proctor Family) and Amanda Summers (and her Summers family) or their children submitted DNA, I would match up to them somehow. So far, nada.

We also understand that Lizzie may have been Native American. Neither Lizzie or her daughter Katie wanted anyone to know that they were “Indian”, going as far as to keep themselves covered from the sun in order to not tan. Another time my grandmother, when she was young, repeated a derogatory remark she had heard from her father about Native Americans to Lizzie. Lizzie turned around and backhanded my grandmother off the porch.

Let’s recap:

Who was Lizzie’s biological father?

Who is this mysterious Maggie Cathey?

When did William Glenn Cathey die?

When did Lizzie marry William “Bill” Green Smith?

Is there anyone out there that can answer the mysteries of Margaret Elizabeth “Lizzie” Summers?