The Wheat Brothers: Myths and Legends, Part II

See "The Wheat Brothers: Myths and Legends, Part I" for what is known (and unknown) about Zachariah Wheat of Virginia, usually shown as the father of the Wheat brothers, and for the biographical sketch of Samuel Wheat (1787-1866). This post will focus on brothers Benjamin and Josiah. William and John will be the subjects of Part III.

From the list of the Wheat brothers in Wheat Genealogy: A History of the Wheat Family in America (in Ancestry.com's database, North America, Family Histories, 1500-2000):

BENJAMIN--of Kentucky

Most trees give Benjamin's year of birth as 1790, which is a good average date for the birth of all the Wheat brothers. However, having looked a little more closely at the available data (which is not much, to tell the truth), I think he might have been born closer to 1780.

Wheat Genealogy places him in Kentucky, where he certainly may have gone after leaving Virginia, but I have found no documentation for that. He appears on the tax lists of 1811 and 1815 in Madison County, Alabama (Mississippi Territory) and on the 1816 Residents' List.

He was the first of the Wheat brothers to marry in Madison County on 17 August 1812. Every official source I have found for Benjamin's marriage says he married Mary (or sometimes May) Jolly or Jolley. I am sure the differences are due to different transcriptions of the original record.

Many trees show that Benjamin married Mary Gourley. I think the original source of this name is the Biographical Souvenir of the State of Texas, 1889. I have seen at least one tree that suggested that Mary's maiden name was Gourley and that she married a Jolly before marrying Benjamin, but I have seen no evidence for this. I have wondered if the difference is just due to different pronunciations or transcriptions of the names Gourley and Jolly. Some trees show Jeremiah Gurley as the father of Mary; according to the database, North America, Family Histories, 1500-2000 on Ancestry, Jeremiah Gurley of North Carolina had a daughter named Mary. Jeremiah was in Anson, North Carolina, in 1830 and in Madison County, Alabama, in 1840. He died and is buried in Gurley Cemetery in Madison Co. 

I have gone with Jolly in my tree, because that is what can be documented; it's helpful to remember that the authors of the Biographical Souvenir didn't have access to the original records that we have today. I'm trying to keep an open mind--in its favor, the Biographical Souvenir did have access to living people in 1889 who should have known what was true. In my opinion, it's unlikely that Mary was in Madison County by herself in 1812 when she married Benjamin. From the available records it appears that Jeremiah Gourley came to Madison County in the 1830's. So, for me, Jolly it is. 

I have to admit here that I have not seen an original marriage license for Benjamin and Mary, if one exists. I have done the Family Search merry-go-round, looking for original records. There are several lists on which Benjamin and Mary's marriage appears, and FamilySearch has the original images--sometimes original marriage licenses and sometimes transcribed lists of marriages. However, although images are digitized, they are not indexed. I finally figured out Family Search's system of Digital Folder numbers, but when I found that one of the marriage lists was available, and then found Benjamin and Mary on it, it said that the image was unavailable at this time. So frustrating! 

In its biographical sketch of William Wheat, one of the sons of Benjamin, the Biographical Souvenir says that William "is the third of the four children of Benjamin and Mary (Gourley) Wheat, the other three being named--James, John, and Mary. The father, Benjamin, was a native of Virginia, was a substantial farmer and a member of the Primitive Baptist church." With the addition of a note contributed by tali7311 on Ancestry, this is practically the extent of what is known about Benjamin; tali7311 found a reference to Benjamin in the History of Lamar County by A. W. Neville, stating that he served on a Grand Jury in April 1841.

If not for the Biographical Souvenir, I doubt that I would have ever found the names of Benjamin's children, since they were grown and he was deceased by 1850. They were:

• James, born 1814 in Alabama, married Rhoda Boren 26 Apr 1848 in Lamar County, TX. He appears on the 1846 Tax List for Lamar County and on the 1850 Lamar County and 1860 Ellis County censuses. I believe he is the James Wheet who enlisted in Co. F, 1st Regiment, 2nd Brigade, Texas State Troops in August 1863. He enlisted at Tehuacana, Texas, for 6 months. (The Texas State Troops were not part of the Confederate States Army but served under officers in the employ of the State of Texas for the purposes of frontier defense.) James's mother, Mary, age 74 (born 1776), is living with James and his family on the 1850 census. (This is one of the reasons that I believe Benjamin was born much earlier than 1790.) Both James and Rhoda had died by 28 September 1868 when the Bond of Administration for their estate was filed and Rhoda's father, Michael Boren, was named administrator. The probate record on Ancestry is over 100 pages, not because James and Rhoda had such a large estate, but because they left 5 minor children: James H., William Riley, Sarah Eliza, Texanna, and Joseph. It may be unjustified but I don't get a very good impression of Michael; in 1869 he wrote a letter to an Ellis County judge asking for money from the estate to support the children, and the 1870 census shows them farmed out to his neighbors. The names of James, Rhoda, and James H. appear on a memorial at the Boren Cemetery in Reagor Springs, Ellis County, as they are buried in unmarked graves.

James, Rhoda, and James H. listed upper right

• John first appears on the 1850 Lamar County TX census as a Laborer, living with the John Johnson family. In 1850, apparently later in the year, he married E. Turner. On the 1860 census he is head of household in Lamar County with wife Elizabeth, sons Stokeley, age 9, William Todd, age 7, and Travis F., age 5; plus Paschal Turner, age 20, and Matt Turner, age 15. When Travis Fannin Wheat died in 1931, his death certificate said that his parents were John Wheat and Elizabeth Johns(t)on (maiden name). Here's my guess: John was working for Elizabeth Johnson Turner's parents when Elizabeth came home a widow. The 1860 census shows their blended family of five sons, three of theirs and two of Elizabeth's. John enlisted in Co. G., Whitfield's Legion, Texas Cavalry, C.S.A., in Paris TX in March of 1862 for a period of 12 months. The 1880 census, which is the last document in which John appears, shows two grandchildren, Thomas and Sarah Click. Since all of John and Elizabeth's children were sons, I'm not sure to whom these children belong--perhaps one of the sons was widowed and these are children by the wife's previous marriage? 

• William is profiled in the Biographical Souvenir of the State of Texas, 1889. His biographical sketch states that he was born 18 January 1819 in Morgan County, Alabama, and that he came to Texas in 1837, where he lived in Lamar County. (On the 1850 census he is age 31, living with his cousin, William Whitley Wheat, in Grayson Co.) The Souvenir records that he married at age 32 to Adaline Turner, daughter of John Turner of Lamar County, and had ten children: Mary Ann, William Tolbert, Elizabeth, Joseph A., Idella Frances, Charles Carlton, Cora O., Erasmus B., Hester A., and John T., who had passed away in 1858. According to the Souvenir, the family moved to Delta County in 1856,

"in the organization of which he took an active part. There was not a house at that time in the town of Cooper, and deer, bear, and game of all kinds roamed at will over the site of that now populous and thriving county seat, in the laying out of which Mr. Wheat assisted materially. He also served under General Rusk in the campaign against the hostile Indians and aided in protecting the frontier. . . besides being otherwise instrumental in protecting and building up the county. At the outbreak of the late Civil War Mr. Wheat enlisted May 9, 1861, in the Texas State troops and served until the final surrender."

On the last census upon which he appeared, the 1880 census of Delta County, William Wheat was 81.

• Mary was born in 1823 in Alabama and married Israel Boren (no relation to Michael Boren, above, as far as I can tell). Their children were: Washington, Melinda Malvina, Harrison "Jack", Sara Frances, Cortez, Paralee, Josephine, and Robert. On the 1850 census the family is living in Lamar Co. TX. On the 1860 census Israel is a single father, living in Collin Co. TX; it is believed that Mary died in 1855 at the age of 32. Israel married twice more. In 1891 the 75-year-old Israel was living with his granddaughter Crissie, daughter of Sarah Frances; her husband, Noah Nance; and Noah's brother Syd. Apparently without provocation, one morning in April Israel killed Syd Nance with an axe. The only explanation he ever gave was that he thought Syd had made improper advances to Crissie. He pled insanity, was found guilty, sentenced to ten years, and imprisoned at Huntsville State Prison where he died in 1895. 

JOSIAH--of Tiler Co., Texas

Josiah was born 3 September 1779 in Virginia. I think he may be the origin of the belief that the Wheats came from Loudoun County, Virginia. On the 1810 census of the town of Hillsborough (now Hillsboro) in Loudoun County is a name that has been transcribed as Josiah White but could possibly be Josiah Wheat. However, in following up this clue I found an article about Hillsboro that mentioned a founding father of the town named Josiah White. With no Zachariah, Samuel, or Josiah Wheat having been documented as living in Loudoun County, I think we can dismiss that recurring myth of the origin of the Wheat brothers.

Josiah was the second of the brothers to marry in Madison County, Alabama, taking Martha Fletcher as his wife on 15 October 1812. He appears on the 1815 Tax List for Madison County. By 1835 he had sons, John, Brice M., James Edmond, Edmond P., Josiah, Jr., and daughters, Elouise or Elouisa (who is usually recorded as Eliza), Amanda, and Martha.  In 1835 the oldest, John, was 21, and the youngest, Josiah Jr. was 2. There being "quite a talk of Texas," Josiah Sr., age 55, sent his son John to "see what he thought of the new country." 

Those quotes are from a wonderful narrative, Early Texas ("In the year 1835") written by Josiah's grandson, L. M. (Levi Martin) Wheat (1858-1926), in 1922. I first found it attached to Josiah on the tree of Ancestry user rjohnson1672; I don't know if she was the person who first shared it. As you can tell from the dates, Levi was in his 60's when he wrote down the stories he remembered his father John telling him in his youth. I can just imagine him sitting enraptured at his father's knee while John told him about the exciting days in 1830's Texas. As you might expect, Levi as a young boy and as an old man, was much more interested in hunting exploits than in genealogy, but he does include important names, dates, and events.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Josiah lived in northern Alabama, close to "Molton" [Moulton] in Lawrence Co. when he sent John to "see what he thought" of Texas.

• Levi names John's brothers, Brice, James Edmond, and Josiah; Edmond is not listed, although his name is written in the margin of the document, and a couple of the stories feature "Uncle Ed"; James is "Uncle Jim."

• About March 1, 1835, John set out for Texas, accompanied by a neighbor, "old man" Sam Goode. It was possible to travel by rail from a location near to them in Alabama to New Orleans, but I couldn't tell if they actually took the train or just followed the tracks on foot to New Orleans. From New Orleans they took a steamboat north on the Mississippi until they reached "Natches" [Natchez], then they walked from Natchez to Texas, where they turned west at the Sabine River for the town of Jasper. They stayed in Jasper for 2 to 3 months until the middle of May/1st of June. John got a job as a chain carrier, helping survey the area. 

• When they came home in June, everybody in the community came over to hear what John thought of Texas. After making his crop, Josiah began selling everything in preparation for leaving Alabama for Texas. Josiah's family came to Town Bluff [between Jasper and Woodville in Tyler County] in the winter of 1835. Along with several other families, they came by ox wagon, crossing the Mississippi at Natchez. John told Levi that "in crossing the bottom they had a very difficult time, the bottom being wet and muddy. Some days they would cut new roads, prize out their wagons and work all day and when night came they were hardly out of sight of their camp where they had camped the previous night..."

• According to Levi, there were only about 3 white families living in Tyler County at the time, whose names might have been Burke, Nolen, and Hanks. [Wyatt Hanks, an early settler, operated a ferry at Town Bluff as early as 1833.]

• In 1836, as Levi writes, "Texas and Mexico got into a scrap." John joined Capt. Chesher's Co. in Jasper. Chesher took 125 men to Nacogdoches where Americans had taken possession of the fort. Expecting a battle, they were surprised when the Mexicans surrendered the next morning. Chesher was anxious to join Col. Sam Houston's army at San Jacinto, so he took off with a small company of men, John included, leaving a few to guard the fort at Nacogdoches; rain that had caused the flooding of creeks and rivers delayed them, and they reached San Jacinto the day after the battle. [The fort at Nacogdoches had been dismantled in 1902, which greatly annoyed Levi, writing in 1922. He would be pleased to know that the original stones have been used to reconstruct the fort on the grounds of Stephen F. Austin State University.]

This photograph of the original fort was taken in 1885.

• John related to Levi many stories that were told to him by the victorious Texans, including the capture of Santa Anna, but John himself was a participant in what came next. One of Santa Anna's generals, a man Levi calls "Wool" came to Houston's camp. Boasting that he could "give him a better fight than did Santa Anna," Wool left the camp to go back to his army of 3,000 men near where Dallas now stands. After at first letting him go, Houston thought better of it and sent out a posse to bring him back. John was one of those set to guard Wool; he recalled that the general was "very dignified and insulting, especially to a private," and "that all the soldiers hated him so badly that they wanted some excuse to kill him, but knew it would not do." [This was Adrian Woll, who was "dispatched. . .to the Texan camp as an emissary under the pretext of learning the terms of the armistice, but actually to gain information on the strength, armament, and resources of the enemy," according to the Handbook of Texas.]

• Meanwhile, back at home, Josiah was trying to get out of Texas "on account of Santa Anna coming through the State with his army"; as Levi writes, it was "the time everybody here called the 'runaway scrape.'" Having dug a boat out of a big cypress tree, Josiah, his family, and some neighbors made part of their escape by water and part by land; "...on their march from Jasper to Nacogdoches they would meet men, women and children, some horseback, some in wagons, some walking, barefooted and dear old women tired, worn out, hungry, and almost breathless would invariably ask them if they had any coffee..."

• The war being all over, Josiah and his family came back home, "just below the little Town of Town Bluff, Tyler County." In 1837 John went "land hunting" west of Town Bluff, naming Turkey Creek for the many wild turkeys he found there. They came to the area where Woodville is now. Later, his father would claim 2/3 of a league there and 1/3 on the Neches River; John claimed 1/3 of a league just south of his father's 2/3. Josiah "gave 200 acres of this to build the little town of Woodville." [According to "Brief History of Tyler County," submitted by the Woodville Chamber of Commerce in 1999, "In 1846, settlers in this area held an election to select a county seat and when Josiah Wheat offered 200 acres of his land in the forks of Turkey Creek for a townsite, his offer was accepted."]

• The Wheat families did not move immediately to the new land at Turkey Creek. At first, they cut a trail from Town Bluff to their field, planted corn and then pumpkins. John would make the trip by mule with provisions for one day, shell a "turn" of corn which he put in the corn crib they had built, tie his mule to the crib and sleep in it overnight, then bring two or three bushels back home with him. Along with the dangers of "bear, panther, catamounts. . .and wolves," John also once met a group of about fifty Indians with flintlock rifles on his way back; one unwrapped his rifle from a buckskin, took aim at John, and then inexplicably let him go. 

• In the years from 1837 to 1839 John, Brice, and Jim "hunted a great deal, especially in the winter months." They dug a boat from a cypress, "so large that they could carry everything for a bear hunt." Wearing buckskins and moccasins, the young men would be gone for a month or six weeks. They would hunt, floating the river all the way to Beaumont, where they would trade oil, meat, and skins for groceries--coffee, sugar, and ammunition. In a first mention of "Uncle Ed" [Edmond P.], Levi wrote that he was "too small" [9 or 10] to go with them on the big bear hunts. Much of the rest of Levi's narrative is taken up with hunting stories, the exploits of his uncles with bears, deer, panthers, and alligators. It is clear that Levi was fascinated with these stories and had heard them so many times that he could still tell them with detail over 50 years after he first heard them. 

Josiah Wheat served as a physician for his community in Tyler County. The 1850 census of Tyler County gives the 70-year-old Josiah's occupation as M.D. His wife Martha and 17-year-old son Josiah Jr. are members of his household. He died later that year on 4 June 1850. 

According to Handbook of Texas, Josiah spent his last years in the Dies community, seven miles northwest of Woodville in central Tyler County. The Handbook relates that "The area around Billums Creek and Colmesneil, where Dies is located, is surfaced by a band of blackland soil good for raising cotton. After 1835 Josiah Wheat, an early settler who donated land for the county seat at Woodville, cleared land south of Town Bluff for a farm but traded it soon afterward for land in Dies because he wanted to raise cotton there." 

Josiah and Martha are buried at Pilgrim Rest Cemetery in the Dies community. His marker credits him as "Donor of County Site of Tyler County 1846." 

Josiah and Martha Wheat headstone at Pilgrim Rest Cemetery
Photo contributed by rjohnson1672 to Ancestry.com

Contributed by Patricia Buckley to Findagrave.com

Josiah and Martha Wheat's children:

• John, whose grave is located in the Mount Pisgah Community Cemetery in Woodville. A Texas historical marker at the site reads: "John Wheat. (August 7, 1813 -- April 24, 1889) A native of Lawrence County, Ala. Migrating to Texas in 1835, Wheat located his headright and bounty lands here, and named many Tyler County creeks while hunting bear and other game. A soldier in Texas War for Independence, he guarded a Mexican officer prisoner after Battle of San Jacinto. He donated land for this cemetery, and served as county commissioner in 1852-1854. Married four times, he had several children, and left to descendants many legends of the early days." John's first wife, Mary Jane Durham, was the mother of Levi and others. He had three children with his last wife, Joanna Prescott.

Photo contributed by James Durham to Findagrave

• Elouise/Elouisa, often shown as Eliza in records, married William Rowlett Goode in Lawrence County, Alabama, in 1833. William was the son of Frances Rowlett and "old man" Sam Goode who accompanied John Wheat on his first trip to Texas.

• Brice M., born 8 May 1816, died 1 October 1894, married Frances Peyton Nowlin in 1849. He is buried in the Nowlin Cemetery in Polk County, Texas, where his military headstone reads: "Brice M. Wheat CPL. Bell's Texas Mtd. Vols Mex. War"

Photo contributed to Findagrave by Charla Clark

• James Edmond, born 3 April 1822, died 14 Sep 1898, is buried in the Egypt Cemetery, Colmesneil, Tyler County. He was married to Morrie Elizabeth Risinger, who had been previously married to John Clinton Durham. J. C. Durham didn't die until 1877, so Morrie Elizabeth could not be the Elizabeth that appears with James on the 1850 and 1870 censuses. This has caused me great difficulty in sorting out the documents for James Edmond and brother Edmond P. (see below).

Photo contributed by KLH to Findagrave

• Edmond P., born 14 April 1826, appears on the 1860 and 1870 censuses with wife Elizabeth. An Edmond P. Wheat married Elizabeth Dunham in 1860 in Navarro County, Texas. I got so confused trying to document the life of Edmond P., as he has been consistently confused with his brother, James Edmond (they are two different people), and his wife Elizabeth (possibly Dunham) consistently confused with James's wife, Morrie Elizabeth Risinger Durham. I'm still not sure I have them completely untangled, but I think I do. To make things even more complicated, both James Edmond and Edmond P. had daughters named Mary Jane. Edmond P.'s daughter M.J. appears with him and Elizabeth on the 1870 census, aged 14. 

• Mary Amanda Melvina (yes, she had all those names, although she is usually shown as Amanda), born 20 June 1828, died 23 August 1899 in Hardin County, TX, married Andrew Jackson Richardson. She is buried in the Richardson Cemetery in Warren, Tyler County.

• Martha A., born 29 January 1830, died 20 February 1910. She married Andrew George. She is buried in the Anderson Cemetery in Woodville.

• Josiah Jr., born 5 March 1833, married Nancy H. Snead in 1854 in Tyler County.