Information provided by Bob Carlin
JOSEPH DOBSON WAGONER
Born May 28, 1861 in Alleghany County, NC, to Jacob Wagoner (October 11, 1807-August 19, 1882) and Margaret “Peggy” Andrews (January 8, 1816, in Orange County, NC-March 24, 1908). Joseph was the eleventh child and the youngest boy.
Left school after the fourth grade, learned to read and write.
September 16, 1870, nine-year-old Joseph and his three older siblings were living with their parents in Gap Civil outside of Sparta, NC.
June 16, 1880, Jacob and Peggy still in Gap Civil without Joseph.
Married Margaret Ann “Maggie” Duncan (born around 1859) May 1, 1879, and the couple had eight children: seven girls and one boy. Farmed.
Eight children total, including daughter Stella Beatrice, who also became a banjoist, born in Sparta, NC January 23, 1892. As well as singing, Joseph played the fiddle and was a fine banjoist and was responsible for teaching her to 'double thumb' the latter. "If you don't double thumb, you can't play the banjo, it sounds like a chicken pickin' up corn," said Joseph Wagoner. With only one banjo to pass around, learning was not an easy task. Stella had two older sisters who played, and explained: "As the runt of three, I was always last to get the banjo." These three girls all played in the older downpicking style. Discontinued her music making after marriage at the age of 18.
Daughter Pearl, born around 1898, also was a banjoist.
January 1, 1910, Stella first marriage in Alleghany County, NC. Peggy, her mother, consents for both parents, so, possibly this is when Joseph had his (according to family lore; see Ray Alden’s writings) sojourn to Iowa.
February 5, 1911, Joseph applied for a marriage license so that his sixteen-year-old son Mahlon Conley Wagoner (b. June 5, 1894) could marry Zollie Wilson in Alleghany County, NC. Mahlon was a fiddler.
October 2, 1914, Stella marries Adelbert George Smith in Eaton, Madison County, NY.
June 1, 1915, Joseph, Margaret and daughter Pearl were living southwest of Utica in Cross Roads, Eaton, Madison County, NY.
By mid-January 1920, Joseph and Margaret had moved in with their son Mahlon C. (born around 1894) and his family, renting a farm in East Nottingham, Chester County, PA.
April 2, 1930, living with Mahlon in Lower Oxford Township, Chester County, PA. Appears that Margaret by this point had died.
May 22, 1940, still living with Mahlon, who had moved his family to Joppa, Arlington Township, Harford County, MD. It is around this time that home disc (?) recordings were made of Joseph’s banjo playing, which seem only to survive in a second or third or fourth generation form on cassette.
Legal residence in Joppa, MD, with Mahlon. “Farming.”
Died November 27, 1955, after a month-long illness from Bronchial Pneumonia at (home of?) Olevia Irwin, State Road, Bryan Township, Surry County. Buried in Allegheny County?
More on the Wagoner family is covered here in an essay by Ray Alden.
http://fieldrecorder.org/the-kimble-wagoner-families/