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Notes:
I knew my grandparents only briefly. I always knew my grandfather as "Pa
Henry" and my grandmother as "JoEllen." I have vague memories of Pa Henry
cracking hickory nuts for me to eat and seeing JoEllen in the nursing
home.
Henry was born near Columbiana, Alabama, and moved to Whitewright,
Grayson County, Texas, with the
family in 1892. The 1900 census has Daniel, Martha, Henry, Perry, Villa,
Robert, Willie, and Jenetta living in Collin County.
Ellen was born near Atkins, Arkansas. I don't know when she moved to
Texas. She is listed in the 1900 Collin County census as a step-daughter
in the household of Thomas M. Geer. According to that census sheet,
Thomas and Sarah Geer had been married 10 years.
Ellen's middle name has been spelled different ways. Her own death
certificate has her name as Ellen Joan. Virgie's birth certificate has
it as Ellen Joan, but her death certificate has it Ellen JoAnn. My
father's birth certificate has it as Ellen, with no middle name, and his
death certificate has it Ellen Joann. Notes he made gave her name as
Ellen Joann. A photocopied page from the family bible listed her name as
Ellen Joe Ann Torrence Evans. Her obituary, reproduced below, has it as
Ellen Joan.
Henry and Ellen applied for a marriage license in McKinney, Collin
County, Texas, on
6 November 1900.
According to a note written by Herbert Evans, "William Henry Evans,
twenty-nine, and Ellen Joann Torrence, seventeen, were married on
November 11, 1900, in the farmhouse home of her mother and stepfather."
Their marriage license is in my
possession.
I don't know where Henry and Ellen lived immediately after they
married. By the time of
the 1910 census, they were in Tarrant County. They moved to Oklahoma and
lived there for several years. In 1920, they were in Fannin County,
Texas, and
by the 1930 census, they were back in Collin County.
Ellen's obituary:
Van Alstyne Woman's Mother Dies at 72
McKinney -- Mrs. Ellen Joan Evans, 72, died at Quitman Saturday.
Survivors are four sons, W.R. Evans, Pasadena, Tex.; C.R. Evans of
Mineola; J.O. Evans of Union, Miss.; H.O. Evans of Henderson; five
daughters, Miss Virgie Evans of Mangrum, La.; Mrs. R.L. Dalrymple of
Denton; Mrs. Jack Kizzia of Hot Springs, Ark.; Mrs. E.C. Nixon of Van
Alstyne; Mrs. A.S. King of Chula Vista, Calif.; three brothers, E.L. and
I.W. Torrence both of Kansas; J.A. Torrence of Russellville, Ark.; and
three half brothers, C.W. and G.S. Geer of Westminster and O.M. Geer of
La Porte, Ind., and 22 grandchildren.
Funeral services will be held Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Westminster
Baptist Church conducted by the pastor and Rev. Howard McSpadden of
Denton. Burial in Elm Grove Cemetery directed by Crouch-Moore Funeral
Home of McKinney. Tracing where they lived. Henry and Ellen
moved several times during their married life. They married in November
1900, so they missed being captured as a household that year's census. I
don't know where they lived between their marriage and the 1910 census,
but according to that census, Henry, Ellen, Mamie Virgie, Rual, and
Bessie (Edwin died in February 1906) lived Tarrant County, Texas.
Family sources have the children from Mamie to Clarence being born
in Handley, which is in Tarrant County. (Bessie was born in 1909 in
Euless, which is also in Tarrant County.) Between the time Clarence
was born in November 1911, and when Madge was born in July 1914, the
family moved to Binger, Caddo County, Oklahoma. (Since I was born and
raised in Texas, I have to wonder why anyone would ever voluntarily move
to Oklahoma?)
By 1920, they had returned to Texas, where William H, Ellen, Mamie,
Virgie, Rual, Bessie, Clarence, Madge, and John are found in the 1920
census for Fannin County, Texas That census was taken in February 1920,
about a month before my father was born.
According to my father's memoirs, he "was born at home on March 8,
1920.... At the time, my family lived
about one and one-half miles southwest of Ector, Texas, a small village
in Fannin County. " They lived on what he called "The Gilley Place,"
land owned by William Henry Gilley, Henry Evans' brother-in-law. (Henry
Gilley married Emma Francis Evans in 1911.)
Going back to my father's memoirs it appears that the family was
forced to move because Henry Gilley reneged on a deal with Henry Evans.
According to my father:
"After our skimpy crops were harvested in
the fall following my second birthday [1922], we moved up the road a
piece to The Ford Place. The reason we moved was on account of Old Man
Gilley. Papa was a trusting soul; I think that sounds better than
suggesting that he sometimes was a bit gullible. He always told the
truth and he expected everyone else to do likewise. But I know better
than that. Papa had a verbal agreement to buy the farm where I was born.
Took everything he had saved, bought materials and, with Grandpa Evans'
help, put up a brand new house while the family occupied rented quarters
in town.
"When the house was
finished, my family moved in and I was born shortly thereafter. Then
about a year later, Old Man Gilley went back on his word and sold the
farm, new house and all, to someone else. And if that does not justify
calling him a thieving old son-of-a-bitch, I don't know what would."
In a later passage,
my father wrote "Buddy Benton was
my first playmate. It was his folks that bought The Gilley Place out
from under us, but that was not Buddy's fault, and besides, I didn't
know anything about that rotten deal back then. So we had some great
times together, being that he was the nearest neighbor my age."
So, in the fall of 1922, Henry and Ellen "moved up the road a piece
to The Ford Place." Then, in the fall of 1923, they moved to The Frost
Place, less than a mile north of Ector. A year later, according to
my father, Henry and Ellen moved to The Sherley Place. "My
family was to move only one more time before I went out into the world
on my own. Our move from The Frost Place to The Sherley Place came in
the fall of 1924. The new farm was 90 acres of Johnsongrass-infested
blackland located about a mile and a half southwest of Westminster in
northeastern Collin County. " (In an e-mail, Aunt Fran said
she remembered The Sherley Place as being 78 acres.) This is the house in which
Frances was born.
In April 1930, William H., Ellen, Rual, Bessie, Clarence, Madge,
John, Herbert, Linnie, and Frances were, according to that year's
census, living in Collin County, Texas.
Henry and Ellen remained on The Sherley Place, southwest of
Westminster, until 1942, when they moved into Westminster. In an e-mail,
my Aunt Frances wrote: "When I was a junior in high school in 1942, as I
started home from school one day, Daddy met me in 'town' and told me
they had moved to Westminster! No one had even hinted to me that we
were moving! We lived in three different houses in Westminster before
your dad bought what was called 'The London House,' the nicest home in
Westminster, for them."
"After we moved
to town, Daddy moved his cows too and we pastured them in the cotton gin
lot (your dad used to work at that gin in the summer). In the three
rental houses, there wasn't enough room for a garden, but when your dad
bought the London House, we always had a big garden. "
Aunt Fran said that rent back then
was $8.00 a month, which came out of Pa Henry's "old age pension" of
less than $25.00 a month.
The move to "The London House" took place probably in 1945, after my
father was discharged from the Army Air Corps. Aunt Fran said "The
London House" was the only house they ever lived in that had an indoor
bathroom. (I remember my father saying that Pa Henry never really got
used to using the indoor plumbing.)
For a short time, Henry and Ellen lived with my parents on a small
farm near Linden, Texas. At the time, my father worked for the Soil
Conservation Service. At some point, they went into a nursing home in
Paris, Texas. |
