A Crab Tree

Timothy Franklin Crabtree of Kentucky was the grandfather of Verne Cumi Crabtree, wife of John William Summers Sr., one of the Wittenberg, Missouri, Summers Family. Few records exist for the early Kentucky Crabtrees, but with a lot of sleuthing, we can construct Timothy’s probable family tree. That’s right, a Crabtree tree, or, to avoid redundancy, a Crab Tree.

Some Crabtree connections and probable connections (with lots of spouses left out).

If you want the excruciatingly mind-numbing investigatory details (omitted here to keep from boring readers), contact me or better yet get an electronic copy of a few pages on this subject from a draft of A Summers Saga, The Wittenberg Summers. To get a free electronic copy of those pages just click on the link below. You don’t need the Dropbox app. If you get a "Log in or Sign Up" message just ignore it. Press the "Download" button at the top left of the web page. You will then get a small popup window saying “Log in or sign up” Do neither. At the bottom of the small window there is a bar that says “Or continue with the download only”. Press that bar. Message me if you have problems.

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Someday (I hope) you will be able to get a copy of the entire book, and really be bored with excruciating details.

Mid, Part 1

If a man does not keep pace with his companions,

perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

                                     Henry David Thoreau, 1854

Going from Delaware through North Carolina, Tennessee, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas, we finally get this branch of the Summers family to Wittenberg, Missouri. It was in Wittenberg that John William and Verne Cumi (Crabtree) Summers raised five kids: Mildred ("Mid"), Dale ("Bob"), Marguerite ("Pugs"), John Jr. ("Pete"), and Michael ("Mike").

The three oldest, Mid, Marguerite, and Dale, in Wittenberg, c1919.

Mildred (“Mid,” “Missy”) was the oldest, the most fascinating, and likely the most cerebral of those kids. Flouting tradition, she was a composite of Isadora Duncan, Gertrude Stein, and Gloria Steinem, and a mixed blessing to her parents.

Born Mildred Katherine Summers on the first day of 1912 in Arkansas, probably in Boynton, where her folks were living at the time, Mid (whose nickname is said by some to have come from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) spent her childhood in Missouri along the Mississippi, first in Illmo (now part of Scott City), then in Malden, in Wittenberg, and finally in Cape Girardeau, where in 1924 she was residing at Southeast Missouri State Teachers College, probably as a pupil in the university-run grade school used to train teachers. Wittenberg had limited educational facilities and no high school at all. She eventually became a college student at Southeast Missouri, where she was a member of the 1934 junior class.

University of Tulsa Yearbook, 1936.

Mildred was attending Southeast Missouri when she married Woodrow Neubeck Estel on 14 Aug 1931 in Benton, Missouri. “Woody” was a renowned student athlete at Jacksonville High School in Jacksonville, Missouri. Rather young at the time, the two decided to live apart and keep the marriage secret until they finished school. Born 6 Mar 1913 in Altenburg, Missouri, just four miles from Wittenberg, Woodrow was still in high school and would not graduate until the following spring. In March 1934, Woodrow, who had by then moved to Oklahoma, where he continued his athletic achievements at the University of Tulsa, attempted to have the marriage annulled. He claimed that the couple were minors at the time of the marriage and had not obtained the consent of their parents. The annulment was refused, but may have been granted later. On 27 Mar 1938, Woodrow married Vera Arthuryne Trout in Holdenville, Oklahoma. 

At this point, however, another marriage was not on Mid’s mind. She had other ambitions.

Genesis: Puxico

Puxico, c1900.

In 1848 not a single mile of railroad track could be found in the entire state of Missouri. The following year saw the chartering of its first railway, the Pacific, which opened five miles of track from St. Louis to Cheltenham in 1852. Off to a promising start, Missouri railroad construction soon slowed down due to the panic of 1857 and was stopped completely by the Civil War.

During the war, the Missouri's Bootheel region, where the Andrews and John William Summers would one day settle, was the home of Confederate sympathizers and guerilla bands, which Union forces tried to dislodge. The ensuing battles, often occurring in muddy swamps and swollen streams, were neighbor against neighbor, and kin against kin, with atrocities committed by both sides. The Battle of Mingo Swamp, which occurred on 4 Feb 1863 just north of Puxico, was the bloodiest battle in Southeast Missouri. Family feuds between combatants continued for decades after the war.

1907 Timetable (St. Louis Mercantile Library).

Missouri railroad construction took off again in 1865, at war’s end, and became rampant in the Bootheel area, a region of productive timberlands used for railroad ties and barrel staves. In 1883, Louis Houck, a railroad entrepreneur, extended his Cape Girardeau Southwestern Railroad through the swamps from what is today the town of Advance to Puxico. The following year, Puxico was incorporated as a village. Its position in the center of the timber industry of T.J. Moss, a large tie contractor, made it an important railroad stop. By 1888, Moss, who had acquired 40,000 acres of Stoddard timberland, became the largest tie contractor in Missouri. In 1902 the Cape Girardeau Southwestern Railroad and other lines were sold to the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway Company (the “Frisco”). And then John William Summers arrived in Stoddard County with some Andrews half-siblings.

Frisco Station, Puxico, c1902.

By 1910, 20-year-old John Summers had a room in a Puxico boarding house, about five miles north of Asherville, where his half-brother Lewis Andrews was living. John had moved to Puxico after getting a job as a laborer with the Frisco Railroad.

Another person associated with the Frisco in 1910 was Cass B Crabtree, who was working as an express shipping manager, while living with his mother and father on a farm outside town. Not a Frisco employee, Cass used the railroad for his express deliveries. Born with the name “Cason Lee,” he took the name “Cass B,” for unknown reasons, and treated the “B” not an initial, but as his middle name. His signature was sometimes written with quotation marks around the “B” to show it was not an initial, and it was even entered on some official documents that way. According to family members, that caused no end of confusion to record keepers.

Signature on WW I draft registration.

John and Cass met, either due to their railroad connection or because Crabtree and Andrews family members were neighbors in the Asherville area. According to descendants, John was invited by Cass to have dinner with his family. And at that dinner, John Summers met Cass’s sister Verne Cumi Crabtree. You can guess what happened next.

Verne Cumi and John William Summers, 1911.

On 3 Feb 1911 Verne and John obtained a marriage license in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, and were married two days later in Asherville, which both had listed as their home. Verne’s brother, John Henry Crabtree, a farmer and Baptist minister, may have conducted the wedding. John Henry lived near the Andrews and officiated at many “Asherville” weddings, including those of his brothers Cass B on Crabtree 6 Aug 1911, the same year his sister Verne was married, Charles Dillard Crabtree, and George Franklin Crabtree. Actually John Henry’s home, a mile or two north of the tiny community, was used for at least some of his “Asherville” weddings.

John H. Crabtree lived near Asherville
and Lewis Andrews (Plat book, 1930).

Verne and John William lived only briefly as a married couple in Stoddard Co. By August of 1911 John was working as a Frisco station agent in Boynton, Arkansas. Quite a jump from laborer to agent. But that is a future chapter in our saga.

The Mysterious Tillman

The Wittenberg, Missouri, Summers are descended from James Jordan and Lucinda (Russell) Summers. But Lucinda had been married once before. On 23 Jan 1870 in White Co, Illinois, Lucinda had married Tillman Andrew. And Tillman left sufficient mysteries to keep a dozen Sherlock Holmeses busy.

The first mystery is Tillman’s origins. According to Illinois census data he was born c1844 in Maryland. The Illinois Roll of Honor, a secondary database maintained by the State of Illinois showing residents who served in the military, claims that Tillman “Andrews” served in the Maryland infantry during the Civil War; however, no reliable military records are found showing such service. Although the database is maintained by the State of Illinois, it was given the State by Fred Delap of Kansas, Illinois. The Civil War entries are said to have come from the Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Illinois. The name “Tillman Andrew” or a variant thereof, however, does not appear in any of the eight volumes of the adjutant general’s report. The creator of the database is now deceased.

Los Angeles death certificate for a different Tillman Andrews

And Tillman’s parentage is unknown. He is sometimes said to be Tilman (also, “Tilghman,” a known variant of the name) D. Andrew, born in Maryland c1845 to Richard and Rebecca Andrew as seen in 1850 and 1860 census records; however, Tilman D. is known to have moved to California, where he married in 1872, lived, and died in 1911. The death certificate shows his parents to be Richard and Rebecca..

The Illinois Tillman, who appears with the surname “Andrew” in earlier documents but as “Andrews” in later (mostly secondary) records, and Lucinda had six known children, all named “Andrews.” Then, around the time the last child was born, 1886, Tillman walked out the door and vanished.

Lucinda waited a couple of years or so and then, assuming that Tillman had died, she married again, with James Jordan Summers, on 30 Jan 1889 in Macedonia, Illinois. James was widowed, his wife Rosetta (“Rosie”) had died, leaving him with two young children, William and Mary Elizabeth.

James died young, around age 38, on 14 May 1890 according to Betty Jenkins Summers, the wife of James Jordan’s grandson Michael, though how she (or Michael) would know is unknown, and both are now deceased. James and Lucinda’s brief marriage produced a single child, John William Summers Sr, born 4 Sep 1889 in Macedonia.  When James died, he left a house full of children for Lucinda, two from James’s previous marriage, six from Lucinda’s first marriage, and newly-born John William Summers, who would not have remembered his father.

And then the unthinkable happened. Tillman returned! In Nov 1892, he walked in the door unannounced, claiming that two detectives were after him. And then, after a few days, on 21 Nov 1892, he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. The incident made newspapers across the country. Many with headlines mentioning “Enoch Arden.” (I leave it to the reader to figure out why.) Tillman is said to be buried in Macedonia Cemetery, though no marker is found.

Pension Index Card showing the alias

Following the loss of two husbands, Lucinda married a third, John H. Cozart, on 8 Sep 1894 in Franklin Co, Illinois. Lucinda’s last marriage was short and childless. She died around 1897. But before that, in 1895, John Cozart applied for a Civil War pension based on Tillman Andrew’s service to help support the many minor children John inherited when he married Tillman’s and James Jordan's widow. And this brings us to a final Tillman mystery. The National Archives Pension Index Card for John Cozart’s application states that Tillman Andrews served with the 3rd Regiment, Massachusetts Cavalry, not the Maryland infantry, which is shown in the Illinois Role of Honor. And much more mysterious is that the card states that Tillman had an alias — William W. Downes! There was a William Downes, of Delaware, who served in the 3rd Regiment of the Massachusetts Cavalry. And William's approximate year of birth, based on his enlistment age, was 1843, very near that of Tillman Andrew. Furthermore, Tillman’s children often listed Delaware, rather than Maryland, as their father's birthplace on their censuses, possibly having heard something from their mother. Lastly, it is interesting that Tillman’s first-born child was named “William” and none were named “Tillman.” But nothing else connects William Downes of Delaware and Tillman Andrew of Illinois. If only a descendant of Tillman by an all-male line would take a yDNA test, we might have an answer, or at least a clue. But that hasn’t happened yet.

Tillman leaves us with a passel of mysteries:

      

    WHO WAS TILLMAN? 

     WHY DID HE VANISH FOR SIX YEARS?

     WHO WAS WILLIAM DOWNES?

     DID AN ALIAS BRING ON THE DETECTIVES?

We may “soon" have some answers. The entire pension file for Tillman Andrews/William Downes has been ordered from National Archives. Look at this blog in a couple of months, for that is how long it takes for orders to be filled.