The Parsons Family
The young couple on the opening page are my great-grandfather and -grandmother about 1855, probably not long after they were married in the pineywoods of Pike County, Arkansas. My grandfather, Edmund Lonzo Parsons, called Lonzo all his life, was born to them in 1866 in Pike County. He was the seventh of eleven children, nine of whom lived to have families of their own. Below is the family in the spring of 1874. Lonzo is the boy on the right end behind his mother's shoulder.
Left to right, top row: Richard Lafayette, Louisa Marenda Ellen (m. Wisener), Narcissa Nancy
Elizabeth ("Sissie," m. McAllister); middle row: Thomas Jefferson, Joseph Lemuel,
James Thomas, Mary Ann, Edmund Lonzo; bottom: Dennis Houston, Tarissa Ann (m. Wall).
The eldest son, John William Parsons (b. 1854), and the eldest daughter, Eletha Jane Parsons
(b. 1857), are not in the photograph. John William drowned while swimming in Wolf Creek at age
ten, and Eletha Jane died just short of her sixteenth birthday as a result of burns she received when
her dress caught fire while she was working at a wash pot. The youngest child, George Monroe,
was not born until the October after this photograph was taken.
Great-grandpa Jim had migrated to Arkansas from Alabama sometime in the early 1850s. His father, John Parsons, born about 1804 in Tennessee, had migrated from eastern Tennessee to Cherokee County, Alabama, in the early 1830s. And John's father, Thomas Parsons, had taken possession of 160 acres of land, the southeast quarter of section 25, township 3, range 2 west, in Hiwassee District of McMinn County, Tennessee, on July 28, 1824.
According to the 1830 McMinn County, Tennessee, census, Thomas was age 40-50, born between 1780 and 1790. We do not know where Thomas moved from. In the 1850 census of Cherokee County, Alabama, John stated that his father was born in Tennessee, but that could be incorrect, and it is possible that Thomas immigrated to Tennessee from Virginia, the Carolinas, or some other state. It is also possible that he had been a farmer farther north or west in Tennessee. A Thomas Parsons is mentioned in Anderson County in 1810-12 and in 1813-15 in Lincoln County.
Note that our Thomas is NOT the Thomas S. ("Strick" or Strickland) Parsons who was born in Lunenburg County, Virginia, in 1785; married Susanna Ingram; and died in Pulaski, Giles County, Tennessee in 1857. Although the two Thomases were about the same age, plus or minus five years or so, I have found no information anywhere that connects them. Quite a bit is known about the background and life of Thomas S. Parsons, but little is known about the background of our Thomas or his life before he arrived in McMinn County.
Many family history buffs have also falsely conflated Thomas S. Parsons's wife, Susanna Ingram, with one of the wives of Thomas Parsons of McMinn County, Susan Madice. Nowhere is there any evidence that Susanna Ingram's middle name was Madice. The Rutledge Family Bible in which Susan Madice is named as the mother of Rebecca Parsons Rutledge does not include the name Ingram.
Thomas died in late 1835 or 1836, according to McMinn County probate records. At that time he was married to a Jane or Jane Ann; we don't know her family name. On the 1830 census, Jane is also listed as being between 40 and 50 years old.
Thomas's probate records show that he had the following eight children living in 1836, when he died:
A. John Parsons, b. 1804, Tenn., d. sometime before 1860, probably in Alabama + Eletha Jane Sewell, ca. 1828, Tenn., b. 1805, Tenn., d. 1883, Pike Co., Ark. (Eletha is buried in Brocktown Cemetery between present Delight and Murfreesboro, Pike Co., Ark.).
Eletha Jane Sewell Parsons
(photo scan courtesy of Robert A. Smith)
B. William Parsons
C. Rebecca Parsons, b. May 11 1814 or 1815, d. August 5, 1860 + John Rutledge, January 20, 1835, in Cherokee County, Alabama. They moved to Independence Co., Arkansas, about 1850.
D. Thomas Parsons + Nancy Waters, 2 Oct. 1839
E. Mary Parsons + Creaghead or Craighead ?
F. Nancy Parsons + James O'Nail, 2 Mar. 1840
G. Emanuel (also spelled Immanuel, Manuel, Mandewell, Manderville, and other ways in various land and probate records) Parsons, who for good reason went by "Mann," b. 1811, 1818, or 1820 in Tennessee, d. 14 Mar. 1880, Eastland Co., Texas + Rebecca McDowell, 27 Nov., 1843, McMinn Co., Tenn. Rebecca was born about 1820 in Tennessee and died 26 Feb. 1893 in Eastland County. Mann and Rebecca moved to Arkansas sometime around 1850 and to Texas sometime between 1875 and 1880.
H. Joseph Parsons, b. about 1825-27? In the Thomas Parsons probate records, Joseph is listed as being under the guardianship of his mother, Jane. He married Parthena Crawford in 1843. In February 1849, Joseph is shown as owner of forty acres of land in section 4 of Township 9 south, Range 11 East, of Cherokee County, Alabama, but the family soon afterward moved to Independence County, Arkansas. Joseph took land in Independence County in 1856 and 1857, and he bought 40 acres of land from his brother-in-law and sister, John and Rebecca Parsons Rutledge, shortly before Rebecca's death in 1860. A family story is that Joseph joined the Confederate Army and was killed at the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862, but to my knowledge that information has not been documented. Another story, found by Joseph's descendant Nancy McDonald handwritten on the back of an LDS family group sheet, is, “Joe Parsons was killed in 1869 by bushwhackers. A group of men came by his house and asked him to show them where something was. He and his family were moving. He unhitched one horse from the wagon and left with them. He was killed.” We do know that in the 1870 census Parthena is listed living with the family of her eldest son, George.
According to a Bible record of the Rutledge family, the mother of Rebecca Parsons Rutledge was a Susan Madice. We don't know whether any of the other children were Susan's as well, although we can assume that some of them were.
We do not know the correct birth order of Thomas's children. John was probably one of the oldest if not the oldest. William also must have been one of the oldest, since he was one of the executors of his father's estate in 1836. Emanuel was born in 1811 (according to his headstone), 1818 (according to the 1860 Pike County, Arkansas, census), or 1820 (according to the 1850 Cherokee County, Alabama, census). Joseph was probably the youngest, since he was still under the guardianship of his mother when Thomas's will was probated in 1840.
Thomas Parsons appears to have been a fairly well-to-do farmer by the standard of the times when he died. His estate was valued at nearly $300. He left his widow, Jane, among other things, four sheep, two cows, a steer, a mare with a colt, two sows and their pigs, two plows, a clock, a bedstead and furniture, two spinning wheels (one for flax and one for cotton), a coffee mill, a table and cupboard, a slate and an arithmetic book, cooking utensils, and plenty of leather for making shoes.
To his daughter Mary Craighead he left a loom; to his son William he left 11 pigs, a bay mare, some chains, and 25 dozen measures of oats. To his son John he left only one thing, a horse, but it was valued at $100.75, the most precious single thing on the inventory. Another indication of Thomas's economic status is that he willed farming implements and materials to twelve men who were not related. Perhaps some of them were hired hands, though some of them probably were creditors.
The census of 1830 shows that John and his family were living near Thomas, but that in Thomas's household was another man aged 20-30; two boys aged 15-20; and one boy in each age group 10-15, 5-10, and under 5. Besides wife Jane, females in the household numbered two aged 20-30; one each 15-20, 10-15, and 5-10; and three under 5.
Shortly before Thomas's death, probably in late 1835, John moved with Eletha and their children Narcissa Tate, James Thomas, William, and infant Delphia Ann to Cherokee County, Alabama, following the opening of that land to settlement. John was living in Cherokee County in the censuses of 1840 and 1850. On 1 May 1845, he conveyed to a George Clifton the east half of the northwest quarter of section 30, Township 8 South, Range 11 East (80 acres). A look at a map of Cherokee County shows how close John's land lay to the Georgia state line in the northeastern part of the county.
View of John Parsons's land looking northward
from CR 56/97 (Dutch Cove Road), October 2006.
An old family story, passed on to me by my father, Roy Parsons, says that the family may have moved across the state line to Floyd County, Georgia ("The Flatwoods north of Rome, Georgia"), shortly after 1850. I have learned from Mike Rutledge, however, that the area north of Farill and Lawrence, Alabama, is referred to as the Flatwoods or Pineywoods. Those communities are on the Rome highway (Alabama State 9), and as the map shows, John's land was about five miles north of a point on that highway about halfway between the two communities.
John may have died in Georgia, or he may have moved back to Alabama before his death, but in either case the Cherokee County census of 1860 lists Eletha (erroneously written as Eliza) alone as the head of the household with her younger children.
Back in Tennessee about 1840, Nancy, Thomas Jr., and Rebecca's husband John Rutledge had consolidated their interests in Thomas Sr.'s farm with Mann, and in March 1840 Mann sold the farm to a James Parkison. By 1845, Mann and Rebecca had joined his older brother John in Cherokee County, Alabama, where their first child, Elizabeth, was born in 1845 or 1846. On 20 September 1848 Mann registered the southwest quarter of the northwest quarter of section 3, T 9 S, R 11 E, and on 20 Feb. 1849 brother Joseph registered the northeast quarter of the southeast quarter of section 4, T 9 S, R 11 E. However, in the 1850 census of Cherokee County, Ala., 26th District (dated 17 Dec.), the listing of Emanuel Parsons (spelled Immanuel) and his family immediately follows that of John Parsons and his family, indicating that they were living near each other.
The property owned by Emanuel and Joseph Parsons, John and James Rutledge, and Andrew Jackson Herron, husband of Narcissa Tate Parsons, the eldest child of John and Eletha, is also shown on the map of northeastern Cherokee County.
John Rutledge owned the southwest quarter of section 27, T 8 S, R 11 E, from February 1838, but sold the western half of that quarter-section in 1845. James Rutledge, his brother, owned the western half of the northwestern quarter-section of section 34, T 8 S, R 11 E, in 1840.
Mann Parsons moved to Arkansas sometime before 1860, for in the spring of that year he bought two 40-acre pieces of land in Pike County. The registrars wrote his name as "Mandamell" and "Manderville G." His nephew James Thomas Parsons, John and Eletha's eldest son, bought 40 acres in a nearby section. By 1870, Mann and Rebecca had moved again. Mann shows up in the land records for Garland County, Arkansas (this time as "Mandawell," in 1875. By 1880 Mann and Rebecca were in Eastland County, Texas. They died there and are buried in Providence Cemetery, which today is surrounded by Lake Leon and almost forgotten. The cemetery was found by William Lee Cox, who recorded the information from the gravestones.
More on the children of John and Eletha Sewell Parsons