“Grand Arrival” – new items at the B. C. Thomas & Co. Store in West Plains, Missouri, June 23rd, 1876

My 2^nd great-grandmother, Dora KING, was the daughter of Tabitha HOUSE and Robert KING. Robert KING supposedly died in 1876 in either Oregon or Howell County, Missouri. While I was looking through Southern Missouri newspapers in 1876 for a death notice of Robert KING, I came across an advertisement for the B. C. THOMAS & Co “Grand Arrival” of new stock and goods (click on image to make larger):

Grand ArrivalOf new goods at B. C. THOMAS & Co’s.
Our new stock carefully selected with
reference to the needs of this community,
is now arriving. Our Prints, Domestics
and Ladies’ Dress Goods will be found
especially fine. Call and see us and see
how cheap we sell goods.
                                                B. C. THOMAS & Co.

I learned a few months ago that I have quite a long line of THOMAS’ in my family. Tabitha HOUSE, my 3^rd great-grandmother, was the daughter of Hollingsworth HOUSE and his first wife, Millie THOMAS. Millie THOMAS was the daughter of William THOMAS and Nancy HUDDLESTON. If you are from Southern Missouri, then you are sure to know the HUDDLESTON family! However, Oregon County, Missouri, where the THOMAS, HUDDLESTON, and HOUSE families are from, was said to have been founded by a THOMAS family. I am unsure if my William THOMAS was related to John and Matilda THOMAS who is said to have founded Oregon County, Missouri. If so, they were probably brothers. Learning more information about my THOMAS family is definitely on my to-do list.

Most of my THOMAS and HOUSE family stayed in Oregon County, but some crossed back and forth between Oregon and Howell Counties. Unfortunately I do not have a list of Millie THOMAS’ brothers and sisters, so I do not know for sure if this B. C. THOMAS was related to my THOMAS family or not. I did a little research on him and found the following on Ancestry.com:

His name was Blackman Coleman THOMAS, born about 1817 in Tennessee. According to the 1880 Howell County, Missouri census report, he was married to Hannah, he was a stock dealer and both his parents were from Virginia. This actually matches up very well for him to be my Millie THOMAS’ brother. Millie was born in 1818. Her father, Ephraim THOMAS, was born in Franklin County, Virginia. He moved to Smith County, Tennessee about 1815 and stayed with his wife’s TEAL family for a bit before removing to Missouri.

Unfortunately, most online family trees have Blackman as the son of William THOMAS and Harriett KEYS from Tennessee. And of course, I couldn’t find any trees (or census reports) pointing to a single source of evidence supporting this theory.

Either way, I just wanted to share this item from the newspaper that my ancestors would have been reading at the time they lived in West Plains or possibly even while living in Thomasville or Alton in neighboring Oregon County, Missouri. Did they visit the B. C. Thomas Store? Did they buy stock from him? I highly doubt the missus purchased dresses from his store as they were probably too poor for that. But they might have purchased fabric to make their children’s clothing out of.

Oh and still no mention of Robert KING’s death in 1876…so I will keep looking. I wonder what other interesting stories I will find in this paper? Oh and I wonder how long it will take for those 33 Ancestry.com online family tree owners to find this post and copy this newspaper article to their online family tree and NOT attribute it. Anyone want to place any bets? And how many do you think will even take the time to write a source citation giving the date and name of the newspaper. Ah hem, even though I have included a citation at the bottom of this post (and note, I did not include a mention of my blog as the secondary source from which the next person to copy this article from also should use.) Hey, it's a start, right? 

Source: West Plains Journal, (West Plains, Howell County, Missouri, USA), 23 June 1876, Page 2, newspaper clipping; The American Antiquarian Society, Massachusetts, USA. Column 1, "Grand Arrival".

Mention of Mr King in Missouri Newspaper, 1876

In the search for my ancestor, Robert King’s death notice in either Howell or Oregon County, Missouri (You can read about my ongoing process here), I came across a mention of a “Mr King” in the August 4^th 1876 edition of the Doniphan Prospect from neighboring Ripley County, Missouri. 

Robert’s spouse, Tabitha House King Watson’s obituary of 1937 says that her husband Robert King died in 1876. I have been unable to locate a death notice for him in 1876 in the Doniphan Prospect so far. However, if this “Mr. King” is my ancestor, Robert King, then at least I could speculate that he was still living in August of 1876.

Here is the transcript of the above newspaper clipping: 

Doniphan Prospect, Volume 3, Number 7, 04 August 1876

       Esq. S. D. Gatlin living near
the State line was awakened
from his slumbers on Saturday
night by some one knocking at
his door. He did not know
whether it was the K. K., or
something worse. Upon en-
quiring of the visitors what was
wanted, he was told it was a
wedding party, and that his of-
ficial services were needed. The
Esq. struck a light invited the
Party to come in, when William
Werden and Sarah Little, pres-
sented themselves, and were un-
ited in marriage. They had
traveled on foot from near Po-
cahontas, Arkansas. They
went to Mr. King’s near by, and
staid all night. King says he
slept no more that night,

Samuel Gatlin was a free mason master of the Pleasant Hill Lodge which met on the Saturday before the 4^th Sunday each month at Pylant’s school house. I was surprised to learn of the problems that the community had with the "K. K." From the articles I read throughout 1876, this group was pretty ruthless and engaged in breaking their brothers out of jail by holding the jail officers hostage while the breakouts occurred. 

Here’s a map of the counties in Missouri. Ripley County, in which the Doniphan Prospect is written, is just 10 miles to the East of Oregon County.

I also found a reference to 18 deaths that happened in Oregon County that was originally reported in the South Missourian, 23 Sept 1876. It is possible my ancestor, Robert King could have perished along with this group. The article does not say if the deaths were due to sickness or even if they all occurred at the same time or throughout the year. I did not find any more mention of these deaths. But the date might help me to narrow down a time period. It would be nice to know what happened to these 18 persons who died in Oregon County as reported in September of 1876.

Doniphan Prospect, Volume 3, Number 16, 06 October 1876

       The South Missourion of
Sept. 23d, reports 18 deaths in
Oregon county. We think that
pretty serious for a healthy coun
ty like Oregon.

I am definitely learning a lot by going through newspapers and looking for what repositories have what newspapers. Jenna from the Desperately Seeking Surnames blog suggested I check out the Midwest Genealogy Center to see what newspapers they have on microfilm. I looked through their list of newspapers found here and located several papers from the time period I am interested in (1870-1876); however, they were located in St. Joseph, St. Louis, and Kansas City, each almost 200 miles away. I am not sure the death of my ancestor, Robert King, or his marriage to Tabitha House would have warranted a notice in one of these big city newspapers. More than likely, it would have been mentioned in the more local Springfield newspaper. However, I also looked through the online archive of Springfield news [Missouri Digital Heritage site, Hall’s Index & Itemsof Genealogical Interest from the Springfield, Green County, MO Newspapers ] but did not find any mention of either the 1870 marriage or 1876 death. This index began in 1865. 

In case you are wondering, in addition to keeping all my readers apprised of my journey here on my blog, I am also using the new Research Manager feature in my genealogy software (Rootsmagic 5) to keep track of each source I search and what I find.

This is what it looks like so far (click on the image to make it bigger):

The research report looks just like this in my RootsMagic software. I then print the report and I saved it to an RTF file. I adjusted the widths of the columns in order for it to fit in my Word document program window and look nicer. But other than that, I did not make any changes. I will add to this report as newspapers are searched. 

John D. Lee is convicted for his Participation in the Meadow Mountains Massacre of 1857

From the Doniphan Prospect, October 13, 1876 (page 1). Mention of the conviction of John D. Lee for his participation in the Mountain Meadow Massacre in southern Utah in 1857. Lee was convicted on September 20, 1876, but the story was not picked up until October 13, 1876 in Doniphan. Doniphan was the neighboring town to where my ancestors, Robert King and Tabitha House resided in 1876. I found this article while I was looking for the death notice of Robert King who supposedly died in 1876.

Here is the transcript of the article:

Justice at Last.

SALT LAKE, Oct. 10. – At Bea-
ver, Utah, to-day, Judge Bore-
man passed sentence upon John
D. Lee for participation in the
Mountain Meadow massacre, 19
years ago. In doing so he call-
ed attention to the attrocities of
the crime and tae [sic] inability,
heretofore, of the authorities to
procure evidence, stating that
the conspiracy to murder was
widespread, that Lee was finally
offered up as a sacrafice to pop-
ular indigna ion, but that others,
equally as guilty, might here-
after expect punishment. The
prisoner, having the right under
the laws of the Territory, to
choose death by hanging, shoot-
ing or beheading, and having
chosen to be shot, was sentenced
to be shot to death January 26,
1877.

Wow, he had a choice to be shot, hanged or beheaded? And they think capital punishment is harsh today! Needless to say he chose to be shot. He was shot by a firing squad on March 23, 1877.

I included this article because my Dunlap family was one of the families that was killed during the Meadow Mountain Massacre. The Utahians believed the wagon convoy of familes from Arkansas had poisoned their people, farm animals, crops, and water supply so they retaliated by killing everyone in the convoy. Only a few children survived. You can read more about the massacre and find references on its Wikipedia page here. Lee was the only man convicted and as you can see, it took 19 years to do so. 

Here is a photo of John D. Lee from the Wikipedia page (original source is the Utah Historical Society) as it is in the public domain.

You can read John D Lee's memoir that he wrote in prison here.

More information about the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857

Searching for marriage and death notices in Missouri Newspapers

In my last post I published the marriage certificate of Robert KING and Tabitha HOUSE that I downloaded from Ancestry.com. Robert KING and Tabitha HOUSE were married on July 28, 1870 in Howell County, Missouri. They had two children, Dora and William Fletcher King, and then Robert King died in 1876 according to Tabitha’s obituary.

From watching Who Do You Think You Are? and from setting a new goal this year of going “outside the box,” I’m trying to learn how to find and use newspaper articles in my research. I would therefore like to find both a marriage notice for Robert King and Tabitha House and a death notice for Robert King from a Missouri newspaper. It’s just never as easy as it seems. The marriage notice might be the easiest to tackle because I have an exact day, month and year. The death notice, not so much.

I started off my search by getting a sense of what newspapers were local to the area during the time of these events.  

I went to the Chronicling America website at the Library of Congress and did a search in their US Newspaper Directory for Newspapers in Howell County, Missouri from 1870 to 1880 and it returned two newspapers: The South Missouri Journal (1870-18??) and the West Plains Journal (1870-1898). The South Missouri Journal is only available for the year 1873.

The West Plains Journal is available as the following:

1876 (6:23) – from American Antiquarian Society, Newspaper Project, Worcester, MA

1874 (10:1) – from the Boston Public Library, Boston, MA

1926 (2:25) – from the Kansas State Historical Society, Newspaper Project, Topeka, KS

1896-1898 (1:2 - 9:22) – from the State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia, MO

1896-1898 (1:2 - 9:22) – from the West Plains Public Library, West Plains, MO

I checked out the American Antiquarian Society’s website and they do have this journal, though no specific volume, year, or date information is provided on their website. I created a free account and I submitted an order for a PDF copy of the newspaper, I guess in whatever format it turns out to be in.

**Update 5/13/12: I waited a few days and didn't hear anything from them regarding my order, so I sent them an email. They processed my request the next day. I was sent JPG copies of the 4 page issue of the newspaper. It was the June 23, 1876 issue. I paid $15 via credit card to their site over the internet. The cost was quite steep for a paper that I did not even know contained any references to my ancestor, but sometimes that's the price we pay for information. 


It wasn't a bad first experience with the American Antiquarian Society. I did not find any references to my ancestor, Robert King, in this issue, but I did find, and write about the B. C. Thomas & Co Store which was in business in Howell Co during the time that my King ancestors were living there. I also posed the question of whether Mr. Blackman C. Thomas was related to Robert King's mother-in-law, Millie Thomas. 

Since there were no newspapers for the year 1870, when Robert and Tabitha were married, I changed my county search from Howell to Oregon. This resulted in the South Missourian (Alton, MO) and the South Missourian (Thomasville, MO), however they did not start until 1871 and 1873 respectively, so would not help me find a marriage notice, but might help me find a death notice for Robert KING.

The year 1876, in which Robert King died, is held by the following:

·         Chicago Historical Society Library in Chicago, IL (Vol 7, issue 22)

·         The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. (Vol 8, issue 5)

·         The State Historical Society of Missouri in Columbia, MO (Vol 7, issue 8).

It might be difficult to narrow down the exact date of death for Robert KING if these newspapers are not digitized and cannot be searched easily and quickly. I would probably have to hire a researcher to go through each issue at each repository to look for a notice of his death, unless these repositories offered a reasonable search fee.

As far as online historical databases go, I have checked the following:

·         America’s Historical Newspapers which includes Early American Newspapers, Series 1, 1690-1876 by Readex

·         Newsbank which my university subscribes to but which only goes back to

·         GenealogyBank, via their list of publications

I went on the Missouri Digital Newspaper Site and found the Doniphan Prospect newspaper that was put out weekly. Doniphan was in neighboring Ripley County and had some news associated with Oregon County as well. I scanned through the issues for the year 1876 which took me several hours. I found a mention of a Mr. King fromAugust 4, 1876. He was mentioned as a neighbor to a gentleman who was called upon in the middle of the night to marry a young couple who had come up from Arkansas. I did not, however, find a death notice for him in 1876 or in January 1877. I did find at least one death notice for a man from Oregon County, so I’m fairly confident that a death in Oregon County would have warranted notice in the Doniphan Prospect.

So either my Robert King did not die in 1876 like his wife’s obituary some 60 years later said, or he died in Howell County which was too far away to be mentioned in the Doniphan Prospect. (Howell County is only one county west of Oregon, which is only one county west of Ripley for which the Doniphan Prospect was written).

I’m not sure where to go from here. I need papers from South Missouri for the year 1870 and 1876. When I did a search on the Chronicling America website for all of Missouri, it came up with over 300 results. There really isn’t an option for “South Missouri” on that site.

I guess I will have to start asking around and inquiring with the local genealogy societies and libraries. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave in the comments below. 

Tulsan Slain At His Home (1956)

There are two great-grandfathers that I never met because they died before I was born. One in particular died fairly early in life at the age of 50 and as you can see from the title of this post, he did not die peacefully.  I’m not too surprised by this because Orville Godwin didn’t live too peacefully in life either.  He was a sign painter and a drunk, and unbeknownst to us until reading this article, he was evidently married to a woman, almost 20 years his senior, named Mrs. Mildred Godwin. 

Lawrence Orville Godwin Sr was born October 12, 1905 in Hardy, AR to Alvin and Lou Ella (Davis) Godwin. He married Nova Lee Peters, November 9, 1927 in West Plains, MO.  They had 3 daughters and a son (my grandfather). They were divorced around 1945 and Orville moved around a lot going from one job to another.

In 1956 Orville was living with his wife, Mildred, in a small apartment in Tulsa when he was gunned down by his neighbor, Mr. T. H. Hubbard. Although Mr. Hubbard confessed to shooting Orville, he did not say why, except that Orville had taken his gun earlier that day and was threatening to kill him with it.

On to the story….PS it took up 3 pages in the newspaper and contained 2 pictures, one of the killer and one of the grieving widow.

Picture of T. H. Hubbard being led away by police


From the “Tulsa Daily World,” 11 Sept 1956, Tulsa, OK

Tulsan Slain at His Home; Neighbor

Held, Confesses Shooting, Gives No

Reason

WIFE PLEADS WITH SLAYER TO BE SPARED

Argument Over Gun Apparently Figures in East Side Death

Lawrence Oliver Godwin, 54,  of 1305 E. 1^st St., was shot by a neighboring resident who admitted the shooting after his arrest.

T. H. Hubbard, 54, a concrete finisher, was arrested within 5 minutes after police were called at 5:14 p.m.  He was seized at the home of a son about a half-block from the shooting scene.

Detectives Woody Wilson and Jim Gott said they recovered the death weapon from the home of the son, Eddy Hubbard, 1329 ½ E. 1^st St.

The elder Hubbard, who made a signed statement to police within the hour, confessed firing shots at his neighbor but offered no sensible reason for shooting him.

Wife Knows No Motive

Mrs. Mildred Godwin, 69 year-old wife of the slain man who witnessed the shooting, also was unable to offer any motive for the slaying.

Mrs. Godwin said the gunman also pointed his weapon at her, after firing shots at her husband, but did not fire at her when she threw up her hands and pleaded:

“Don’t shoot me!  Please don’t shoot me!”  Mrs. Godwin said she had been lying on a bed resting when Hubbard came to the door.  She said she let him in and that he pulled a gun from his pocket and began firing.
Her only suggestion of a motive was that she had overheard her husband and Hubbard talking Sunday night on the Godwin’s front porch about a gun.

Gives Hazy Account

“I didn’t hear all they said, but I heard him (Hubbard) say he wanted his gun,” Mrs. Godwin said.  She denied any knowledge of a gun and said to her knowledge there had never been a gun in her home.

Hubbard, in his statement, gave a hazy account of Godwin’s coming to his sleeping room Monday afternoon a short while before the shooting and getting his (Hubbard’s) pistol.

The shooting suspect claimed Godwin picked up the pistol and hurriedly walked back to his own apartment with it.  Hubbard said he followed and walked into Godwin’s bedroom.

He said the pistol lay on the foot of Godwin’s bed and claimed Godwin told him he was going to kill him.  Hubbard said he then reached down, picked up his own pistol and began firing.

Neighbors Hear Shots

The shots were heard by  several neighboring residents and Mrs. Eva Livesy, who lives in another apartment at 23 S. Peoria Ave. said she saw Hubbard walk off the Godwins’  porch and stuff a pistol inside his shirt. 

Mrs. C. O. Freeman, 19 S. Peoria Ave., whose husband owns the houses in which both the victim and suspect lived, also saw Hubbard leave the house and walk northward toward an alley and toward his son’s home.

Neighbors said Hubbard and Mr. and Mrs. Godwin all drank heavily.  Dozens of empty whisky and vodka bottles were found in Hubbard’s sleeping room, located only a few yards from the Godwins’ porch.

Denies Knowing Victim

A baffling aspect was that Hubbard denied knowing Godwin and Mrs. Godwin claimed she did not know Hubbard.

“I had seen him around a few times but I didn’t know him,” Mrs. Godwin said.

Freeman, the landlord, said Hubbard had lived at 23 S. Peoria Ave. only a few weeks.  The Godwins had lived at their address about 4 months.

Hubbard listed his permanent address at Rt. 5, McAlester.  He said his wife lives there and that he has 10 children.  He is employed  by the Western Concrete Co.  Godwin was a sign painter for the Summers Sign Co., 408 E. 2^nd St.  His wife said they were married 10 years ago.  He is survived by a former wife and three daughters of Fort Smith, Ark., she said.

Differ on Number of Shots

Witnesses to the shooting reported hearing five shots fired and Mrs. Godwin thought there were four, but Detectives Wilson and Gott said six rounds had been fired from the revolver.

W. A. Lang, County Investigator, said a preliminary examination of the body at the scene disclosed two wounds.  Both struck in the left arm and ranged into the chest, Lang said.

J. Howard Edmondson, County Attorney, and Earl Beddoe, Assistant Police Chief, directed the interrogation of Hubbard and questioning of witnesses at police headquarters.

Arrangements for Godwin are pending with the Tulsa-Whisenhunt Funeral Home.

------------------------------

Godwin Rites Today

Graveside services for Lawrence Oliver Goodwin, 54, of 1305 ‘E. 1^st St., Tulsa sign painter, will be held at 3 p.m. Thursday in Rose Hill Cemetery under the direction of the Tulsa-Whisenhunt Funeral Home.  Godwin was shot to death Monday afternoon at his home.