The Wheat Brothers: Myths and Legends, Part III

In "The Wheat Brothers, Part I," I profiled Samuel Wheat, who is my 3rd great-grandfather. Brothers Benjamin and Josiah were the subjects of Part II. In this post I'll talk about William, who is also my 3rd great-grandfather, and tell you what I know about John, the fifth brother. 

Wheat Genealogy has this to say about William:

WILLIAM -- born c. 1785; married Hester Whitley and lived in Alabama, in Tennessee, and in 1833 went to Texas

If William actually was born in 1785, that would make him the second oldest of the brothers for whom we have birth dates. Josiah was born in 1779, and Samuel was born in 1787. It is also interesting that the 1850 census gives William's birth place as Kentucky. While I think I have eliminated Loudoun County as the origin for the brothers, both Josiah and Samuel consistently gave their birth place as Virginia. 

William married Esther Stephenson in Madison County, Alabama, on 15 September 1813. Esther and Samuel's wife, Cynthia, were daughters of Robert Stephenson and Elizabeth Whitley. Another sister, Susannah, who married Thomas N. Ming, is also my 3rd great-grandmother. Thomas and Susannah's son, William F. Ming, married his first cousin, Susanna Wheat, daughter of Samuel and Cynthia. Just to give you some perspective, out of my mother's 8 great-great-grandparents on her paternal line, 5 of them are either Wheat brothers or Stephenson sisters. 

The Stephenson sisters were granddaughters of William and Esther Whitley, notable pioneers of Kentucky. It's no wonder that the author of Wheat Genealogy misnamed William's wife as Hester Whitley. 

I have not corroborated the statement that William lived in Tennessee. In 1810 a William Wheat, living in Mississippi Territory east of the Pearl River in what would become Alabama, was involved with a petition to Congress for the division of the territory; the petitioners felt themselves too far removed from their territorial representatives. (It was 1817 before Mississippi was admitted as a state and the eastern half of the territory was designated Alabama Territory.) In 1815 he appeared on the tax list for Madison County AL. On 1816 he appeared on the Mississippi Territory census. He may have served in the Mississippi militia in the War of 1812; a William Wheat served in Lt. Col. Neilsen's detachment formed in Amite County, Mississippi. However, Amite County MS is in the Gulf area bordering with Louisiana, which seems too far from William's home in Madison Co. AL for this to be the same William. In 1830 William's family (1 m 40-49; 1 f 40-49; 1 m 10-14; 1 m 5-9; 2 m under 5; 1 f under 5) is living in Limestone AL. There doesn't seem to be much time for William to have lived in Tennessee, unless it was before 1810 or after 1830; however, Tennessee was a staging area for settlers waiting to move legally to Alabama, so William might have lived there briefly before 1810.

The Biard Family, a family history compiled and written by Maud Biard Smith in 1929, states that Robert S. Wheat, William's son and future brother-in-law to the Biards, came to Texas in December of 1832 with his parents. (He would have been 13, so he undoubtedly did not come alone.) According to Smith, the Wheats were living in Red River County near Clarksville when two Biard brothers came there from Alabama in 1836. So we have at least some hearsay evidence that William Wheat was in Texas in 1833, but we know he was there in 1838, as you will see below.

The Biards--mother Rebecca (Stone) Biard, sons William Washington, Andrew Jackson, and John Gaines, and daughter Minerva Jane Biard Stephenson--came to Lamar County, Texas, in 1846. (Lamar was formed from Red River County in 1840.) Smith wondered why they came to Lamar County. She thought it was because "the Wheat boys, three of one set and three of another, cousins to the first" were already there.

I wish she had spelled out which "Wheat boys" she was referring to. Because she mentions him by name, it appears that one of them was Robert S. Wheat, and by her statement I conclude she means that one set consisted of Robert and his two brothers, Samuel and Henry. But who are the other three brothers, cousins to Robert and his brothers? It's unlikely she could be talking about Samuel's sons, as they were living in Arkansas in the 1830's, or Josiah's sons who were living much farther south in Tyler County. I think she's talking about Benjamin's sons, James, John, and William. I haven't found documentation that proves they were in Texas in the 1830's, but we know they were in Lamar County in the 1840's and 50's. 

The connection to the Biards is an interesting one. Apparently, Robert S. Wheat returned to Limestone County, Alabama, sometime before October 1845 when he married Elizabeth Finn there. She was the daughter of Edward Wilson Finn and his wife, Martha Mullins. Elizabeth's sister, Delila, had married Andrew Jackson Biard in 1833, and another sister, Amanda Menifee Finn, had married William Washington Biard in 1840. So the Biard brothers were now Robert's brothers-in-law. Robert was also related by marriage to the Biards' sister, Minerva Jane. Her husband was William Stephenson, son of Logan Stephenson and his wife (and cousin), Mary "Polly" Stephenson. Polly was another of the Stephenson sisters, so Robert's aunt; William Stephenson was his cousin.

In October of 1950 Maud Biard Smith was asked to tell about the history of Biardstown in the column, "Backward Glances," in The Paris News (Paris, TX). In the first installment, published 3 October 1950, she wrote that 

"The first person to own the land on which Biardstown is located was Robert S. Wheat, a native of northern Alabama, who had come to Texas with his parents in December, 1832, and had fought in the battles for Texas independence. As a reward for his military service for the Republic of Texas [I've found no record of what that was, but bounty warrants for military service began at 320 acres for 3 months service; for Robert to get 1,000 acres he must have served nearly a year] he was granted a tract of land, a First Class Headright, numbered 242, containing five labors and...1,000 acres of land. The patent for this land was signed in Austin by President [of the Republic of Texas] Anson Jones, November 7, 1845."

She goes on to describe how the two Biard brothers, William Washington and Andrew Jackson, both unmarried, had come to Clarksville in 1836, where they stayed for two years. After returning to Alabama, they married the Finn sisters. "When Robert Wheat came back to Alabama and married their sister-in-law he told such wonderful stories about the Republic of Texas that the Biard brothers and all their families decided they wanted to live in Texas."

In the next installment of the story, published in the paper on 4 October 1950, Mrs. Smith told the story of how the Biards made the trip to Texas. It sounds harrowing. Keep in mind, this is almost 15 years after the Wheats came, so their journey was probably even worse. Their remembrances of the journey were just never written down.

In The Biard Family, Maud Smith estimated, to the best of her knowledge, the date that the Biards left Alabama for Texas. She wrote, "The nearest I can come to fixing the date of the trip to Texas is this: A. J. Biard buried a child in Alabama, Feb. 24 1846, and S. H. [Sam Houston Biard, son of W.W. and Amanda] Biard was born at Clarksville, Aug. 27, 1846. So they came between those dates."

Here is how she described the trip:

"They procured two flatboats, fastened them together and loaded them with all their possessions, including chickens, cows, at least one pony, and a wagon. They stayed close to the river, and helped the boat along with long poles, and at times with the pony. At night lanterns were lighted on the boat to guard against collisions.

They were four months making the journey. Coming from Limestone County in north Alabama, down the Tennessee River to the Ohio; down the Ohio River to the Mississippi; down the Mississippi to Red River [In The Biard Family she recounts the story of one of the Biard children, Matilda, who fell off the boat into the Red River and was rescued by her brother James]; then up Red River to the mouth of Mill Creek near Clarksville. 

There they ran onto a sandbar and stayed three weeks. They sent word to Robert Wheat, who had come back to Texas and was living in Clarksville, of their arrival. He came with wagons and carried the movers and their possessions to Clarksville where they stopped long enough to make a crop in 1847."

Not long after their arrival in Texas in October of 1846, the two Biard brothers, William Wheat ("a cousin of Robert Wheat"; this has to be Benjamin's son) and a fourth man, William Cheatham, bought Robert's 1,000 acres at $2 an acre. In the summer of 1847 the four men built log cabins on their land. Washington Baird later gave this first house to the Christian Church for their meeting place and built a second house, "the first house built in the present village of Biardstown, which was built on his land and named for him." 

I have not been able to find Robert's father William on the 1840 census, but I think I know where he was: what later became Wheatville in Morris County. Wheatville, which no longer exists, was in the area of present-day Naples in Morris County. The area has gone through many county changes. According to the Handbook of Texas, the area that is now Morris County was part of Red River County when it was established by the Republic of Texas in 1836. In 1846 the state of Texas established Titus County which included all of what is now Morris County; finally Morris County itself was established in 1875. So when the Wheats were said to have lived in Red River, Lamar, Titus, and Morris counties, they're really talking about what was Red River County in 1836.

Texas counties where the Wheats lived

I've known about Wheatville for a long time, but for years I didn't know exactly how the town was connected to my branch of the Wheats. A little over a year ago I got an email from a man who wanted to share some information about Confederate papers that had belonged to Robert S. Wheat. (I never did figure out how he found me.) The email spurred me to do some research on Robert and led me to discover his 2nd wife and their children, which I wrote about in the blog post, "Cousin Communication." In researching Wheatville, I found this website with information about Wheatville prepared by Glenda Brown Scarborough. She wrote:

"Wheatville was indeed the true beginning of present-day Naples, Texas. It received its name from the William Wheat family sometime before 1852. William Wheat received a Land Grant for 20 labors of land by the Board of Land Commissioners for Red River County on the 27th of April, 1838. By using the classification of land grants and references to the locations of homes, it is felt that William Wheat was living in the Morris County area as early as 1836."

William was definitely in Red River County, Texas, in 1846, because he appears on the Texas Census for that year. William was in Red River County on the 1850 federal census with wife Esther and sons Samuel and Henry, both age 27. Since I couldn't find William on the 1860 census, I have assumed he died sometime in the 1850's; however, Esther, age 84, was living with son Samuel on the 1870 census, so maybe William was alive in 1860 and the census record is just missing.

In 1830 William and Esther Wheat had five children, but as far as I know, only Robert, Samuel, and Henry lived to adulthood. 

Robert S. -- I have already said quite a lot about Robert S., but here is just a thumbnail sketch of his life. First, I have no idea what the S. stands for. His name is consistently given as Robert S. Wheat, but nobody ever spells out his middle name. Wouldn't it be amazing if it was Stephenson? It is not unlikely, as his grandfather, Esther's father, was Robert Stephenson.

He was born 23 February 1819 in Madison County, Alabama. Conflicting marriage data has him marrying Elizabeth Finn in Limestone County AL on either 10 October or 14 October 1845. On the 1850 census he and Elizabeth are living in Tyler County with son William E. and daughter Harriet Gordon. In 1860 they are in Titus County with additional children, Lawrence W., Charles L., Louis N. B., and Samuel Henry. 

On 1 May 1863 at the age of 44 Robert enlisted in the 33rd Regiment, Texas Cavalry, in the Civil War. His unit was mostly occupied with patrolling the Rio Grande and later escorted prisoners who were captured in a raid into Indian Territory to Camp Ford in Tyler, Texas. Robert's discharge from the C.S.A. in June of 1864, shown below, was "by reason of Surgeon's Certificate of Disability."  

Contributed to Ancestry.com by ddscott2008

Apparently, some time in the 1860's Elizabeth died. By the 1870 census Robert had married Mary E. (Corprew) Sheppard, widow of Williamson B. Sheppard, and they were living in Grayson County. On the census the Wheats' blended family included five of Robert and Elizabeth's children; Mary's daughter by her first marriage, Mary; and Robert and Mary's son, James. Still in Grayson County in 1880, Robert and Mary had had two more children. 

After such an interesting life, Robert S. Wheat had a sad end. On the 1900 census he is age 81, living in the North Texas Hospital for the Insane, possibly suffering from senile dementia. He died in 1901 and is buried in the Hall Cemetery, Howe, Grayson County, Texas.

Samuel -- As I mentioned above, on the 1850 census of Red River, Samuel and his brother Henry, both born 1823, are living with their parents. I'm still not sure whether they were twins. Later censuses consistently show Samuel's birth year as 1821, but then Henry's headstone says he was born 18 October 1821. Nothing I have found proves or disproves that they were twins.

Samuel married Rebecka (Beckie) Box on 13 June 1852 in Red River County. Samuel and Rebecka appear on the 1860 census of Cass County with their three daughters, Mary J., Margaret, and Esther. On the 1870 census they are in Grayson County with four more children, two boys and two girls. As I mentioned above, on that census Samuel's mother, Esther, age 84, is living with them. Samuel's brother Robert is living next door.

Samuel and Beckie are living in Parker County on the 1880 census. Four teen-aged children are still living at home, and two more daughters have been added to the family. Samuel, age 79, and Rebecka, age 65, are living in Eastland County on the 1900 census. They have been married almost 50 years. Two adult children are living with them.  

It appears that the end of Samuel's life was rather sad, as well. On the 1910 census of Nolan County, Samuel, age 88, widowed, is living as a "Lodger" with the family of W. J. Edwards. I have tried to find some family connection, but it appears that "Lodger" is the correct word for what Samuel was to this family. It's possible that this is not our Samuel, since there are no family members to compare, but he fits the parameters of birth date, birth place, father's birth place, and mother's birth place.

This timeline of Samuel's life leaves me with questions. Why was his family in a new county every 10 years? These were not adjacent counties, or a situation where the family remained in the same home but the county name changed. It looks like the family hopped a couple of counties west every time they moved, and finally Samuel ends up alone in Nolan County. Where are all those children he raised, and why are they not taking care of their father in his old age? There has to be a story there.

Henry Clay -- I've written about Henry Clay Wheat before in the post, "The Mystery of J. Wheat." After doing some intensive research in Grayson and Collin counties in Texas for all the Wheats that lived there at about the time my great-grandfather, J. (Joseph) Wheat married my great-grandmother, Cynthia Ming, I determined that Henry Clay Wheat was the best bet to be my 2nd great-grandfather. 

Henry's headstone at the Cottage Hill Cemetery in Celina, Collin County TX, says that he was born 18 October 1821. The 1850 census of Red River County is the first time he appears on a document, along with his parents and brother Samuel. Weirdly enough, he is the same age, 27, on the 1860 Titus County census in which he appears with wife and children. (He had married Caroline Farris in about 1855.) On 1 March 1862 he enlisted in Company K, 23rd Texas Cavalry, C.S.A., which is also acknowledged on a military headstone at his gravesite.

On the 1870 Davis County census he catches up those ten years, as he is enumerated at age 47 with wife Caroline, and five children, including Joseph, age 13. He appears on the 1880 census in Grayson County as a widower with daughters Lucy, Mollie (Henrietta), and Emma. (Daughter Elizabeth, "Lizzie," married John Alexander Cooper in 1882.) I have been able to trace all of his daughters as they married and had children, but son Joseph just disappears after the 1870 census unless . . . he is the J. Wheat who married my great-grandmother Cynthia Ming, his 2nd cousin, in 1877 and appears with the Ming family on the 1880 Collin County census. 

 

There were a couple of details that didn't quite match, the biggest being that the J. Wheat on the 1880 census with Cynthia gives his father's birthplace as Arkansas and his mother's as Mississippi. Caroline was born in Mississippi, which I thought was a good sign I was on the right track, but Henry was born in Alabama, not Arkansas. 

Now I am beginning to wonder if my Joseph is the son of James or John, Samuel's sons who were born in Arkansas in the 1830's. Either of them would be just the right age to be Joseph's father; but speaking of disappearing, James and John just vanish after the 1850 census in Milam County (Salado). If either of them really is Joseph's father, it makes my family tree even more gnarly. Cynthia Ming's mother was Susanna, the sister of James and John, so if Cynthia married a son of one of those men, her uncles, she would have married her 1st cousin.

Henry Wheat, who may or may not be my 2nd great-grandfather, died on the 4th of July, 1893.

And finally--

JOHN -- "went to Kentucky"

There are John Wheats all over Kentucky in the early 1800's, but how do you connect one of them with the other Wheat brothers if they have all moved to Mississippi Territory? 

The 1800 federal census shows a John Wheat in Prince George's County, Maryland. A John and a Zachariah are on the tax list of Bourbon County KY in 1800. Called the "Second Census of Kentucky," this is a compiled list of 32,000 taxpayers based on original tax lists on file at the Kentucky Historical Society. Hard to tell anything from this, except that John and Zachariah would have been heads of household in 1800.

1810 is the first federal census in which I found Wheats in Kentucky. A John and a James are in Adair County. Hezekiah, Joseph, and Zachariah are in Bourbon County. Hezekiah and Joseph are possibly the sons of Charles Wheat from Montgomery County, Maryland, according to Wheat Genealogy. A Samuel and his wife, both younger than 25, with no children, are in Lewis County. A John with young children is in Green County, and a Bazel, also with a young family, is in Madison County. 

In 1820 two men named John are enumerated in Kentucky--one in Adair County and one in Green County, probably the same men that appeared on the 1810 censuses in those counties. Assuming that each of them would be the oldest male in the family, they both fall in the 26-44 column, which would be about right for the John I'm looking for. 

Three John Wheats appear on the 1830 census for Kentucky--John K., 30-39 in Bourbon, possibly the son of Zachariah who was in Bourbon County in 1810. Again, that family appears in Wheat Genealogy with documented parents and children. The John in Green County is 50-59, so is his wife, and they have six children that vary in age from 5-9 through 15-19. The John in Russell County is 50-59, with a wife 40-49, and possibly a married son or daughter, 20-29, with his or her spouse, as well as 3 teenagers and a son 5-9, which could be a child or grandchild. By age, which is really all I have to go by, either the John in Green County or the John in Russell County (or neither) could be the fifth Wheat brother.

Both the John in Green and the John in Russell are still living in 1840, both 60-69. The John Wheat in Green County wrote a will, probated 3 November 1845, mentioning wife Sarah (possibly Hudson), sons James, Booker, and William, and daughters Mary, Nancy, and Elizabeth. Some trees on Ancestry show John Wheat and Susannah "Sukie" Gatton as parents of John of Green County. The same trees give conflicting information about the origins of this Wheat family in Prince George's County MD and Loudoun and Bedford VA. 

John in Green County could still be our fifth Wheat brother--lots of trees have the wrong parents--but John in Russell County seemed more likely to me. It appears that John of Russell also passed away between 1840 and 1850 (he was 60-69 in 1840), leaving a wife named Martha. (Some trees show her as Martha Rosson, probably because the researcher found a John Wheat who married a Martha Rosson in Albemarle Co. VA in 1843; it seems unlikely that John would leave Russell Co. to marry someone in Virginia, or that she could be the mother of his children when they were all born by 1830. Do people not do the math?) Martha was living with daughter Parthena Bibee (husband Allen) in 1850 and with son Samuel in 1860. 

This John's children include Samuel (usually shown as Samuel Baker Wheat although I've not seen that on any document), Drury, Parthena, John R., Alfred, and Blatchley Calvin Wesley. Some trees also include another son named John Wesley. The two children that are of most interest to the question of the identity of our John Wheat are Samuel and Alfred. 

Alfred married Amanda Eastland, and they moved first to Georgia in 1850 (where Drury was living with his family), and then to Van Zandt County, Texas in 1860. Van Zandt is not a county that any of the five brothers ever lived in, but it is in that same northeastern quadrant of Texas where most of the brothers lived.  

The other connection to Texas comes from three children of Samuel (Baker) Wheat, the oldest son of John of Russell. They are Doctor H., Valentine, and Samuel. Doctor (yes, that's his given name) and Valentine were twins. 

Doctor married Nancy Margaret Paul in Russell County in 1866; sometime between 1866 and 1870 they moved to Collin County, TX. I had seen Doctor's name before. When I was trying to find the father of my great-grandfather, J. (Joseph) Wheat, who was in Collin Co. in 1880, I did research on every other Wheat family in Collin Co. I saw Doctor's name but finally eliminated him as having any connection to my Wheats. (That was before I started looking for the fifth brother, John.) Valentine moved to Texas between 1870 and 1880.

This was just about the time last night when I thought, "It would be nice if I could find Doctor or Valentine living next door to one of our known Texas Wheats. Then I would know that they knew they had cousins from Kentucky living in Texas, and maybe we could theorize that they had maintained contact with John and knew that Doctor and Valentine were his grandsons."

Be careful (or happy) what you wish for! About this time I located Valentine on the 1880 census of Bell County, Texas, and everything fell into place. Remember back in Part I when I told the story of the first of the five brothers, Samuel, and how he was one of the first settlers in what became Bell County? I was about to find just the evidence I was looking for to prove that John Wheat of Russell County, Kentucky, was the fifth Wheat brother.

I searched for Valentine on the 1880 census and found him living in Bell County, Texas. I looked just below him on the actual census record and saw a Sam Wheat. I clicked back a page on the census and found more Wheats. Finally, I just searched the 1880 Bell County census for anybody named Wheat and found seven families. I had to make a chart--because what was really exciting is that I recognized some of these names, and they weren't all John's children; some of them were Samuel's grandchildren, and one of them was a grandson of Josiah! So the other Wheat families in Texas did know that John's grandchildren were in Texas; they were living next-door to them. And John Wheat of Russell County was the fifth Wheat brother!

Wheats on the 1880 Bell County, Texas census:

• Dwelling #62: Doctor, born 1841 in Kentucky, son of Samuel (Baker) Wheat, grandson of John Wheat
• Dwelling #109: Samuel DeWitt, born 1840 in Texas, son of Joseph Wheat, grandson of Samuel Wheat
• Dwelling #113: Joe, born 1855 in Texas, son of Joseph Wheat, grandson of Samuel Wheat
• Dwelling #121: William Jasper, born 1842 in Arkansas, son of Joseph Wheat, grandson of Samuel Wheat
• Dwelling #123: Valentine, born 1847 in Kentucky, son of Samuel (Baker) Wheat, grandson of John Wheat
• Dwelling #124: Sam, born 1851 in Kentucky, son of Samuel (Baker) Wheat, grandson of John Wheat
• Dwelling #407: Cordilleras, born 1852 in Texas, son of Brice M. Wheat, grandson of Josiah Wheat

1880 Bell County TX census, showing
Dwelling Nos. 121, 123, 124

Unlike their Confederate cousins, Doctor and Valentine fought for the Union in the Civil War. Both of the brothers enlisted in Co. B, 13th Kentucky Infantry. They both enlisted at Camp Hobson KY on 5 October 1861. According to records for Valentine, he mustered out on 12 January 1865, having served for most of the war. (The 13th KY Infantry was at Shiloh, among other battles and campaigns.) After being in the hospital in Indiana for six months for "chronic diarrhea with incipient tuberculosis," Doctor was discharged in November of 1862. It makes me wonder if there was any lingering animosity between the Kentucky cousins and the Texas cousins. I would love to think not.

Twins Doctor H. and Valentine C. Wheat
Contributed to Ancestry.com by Dora Coffey

 

At one point yesterday when I was working on this post, I thought I wouldn't be able to come to any kind of conclusion about the fifth brother, John. It just goes to show that sometimes you have to go forward to go back. If I hadn't worked the second generation of descendants for all of the brothers, I wouldn't have found the proof I was looking for in Bell County, Texas. It was not anything I expected at all. First, I thought that probably all of John's descendants had stayed in Kentucky. Second, I honestly didn't think any of Samuel's grandchildren were still in Bell County. Familiarizing myself with the first four brothers and their descendants helped me find the fifth one.

I also might mention here at the end that in looking at family trees for John of Russell County, I found some that named his parents as John Wheat and Susannah Gatton, the same parents that others gave for John of Green County. A very few named John's father as Zachariah Wheat. With so little information available, researchers have used what there is to come to many incorrect conclusions, in my opinion. However, when asked by the census taker where their parents were born, many of John's children said their father was born in Maryland. Maybe we will never be able to conclusively identify the father of the five brothers, but maybe we should expand our search to include names other than Zachariah and places other than Virginia.