Steubenville: A Short Family History

 

Market Street, Steubenville, Ohio, ca. 1905. Credit below.

Sometime between 1887 and 1891, Sarah Flowers and her husband Harvey walked, or rode, into Steubenville, Ohio. So, too, did Sarah’s three children, John, Elizabeth (known often as Lizzie), and Flora, products of her earlier marriage to a man named Henry John (or possibly John Henry) Woods. Lizzie was the oldest, around 22 years old. John was close behind, perhaps 21 or a bit younger. Flora was the baby, maybe 15. They may have arrived together, or perhaps one forged a path and the others followed, trailing one another from Bellaire, in the neighboring county of Belmont, Ohio. This was a shorter journey than the one before, which had brought Sarah, Lizzie, and John all the way from Hampshire County, West Virginia (or just Virginia, when Sarah was born there in the 1840s) to Bellaire sometime between 1870 and 1880. These are my earliest Steubenville ancestors; Sarah was my 3x-great-grandmother, her daughter Flora my grandfather’s grandmother.

James Solomon Scott: A Timeline

James Solomon Scott is the younger brother of my 2x Great-Grandmother, Scoatney (Scott) Cooper. His name has showed up a number of times on the blog, but mostly as he relates to other people – either as I was trying to figure out “The Case of the Second Masonia” or as I was beginning to learn about his brother, Sydney Borden Scott. He’s never had his time to shine! Well, creating a timeline for his life to lift him out of the shadows has been on my list for a while. Now, I’m making it happen. As usual, continue to expect more posts about him in the future, which will be linked as relevant to various points on the timeline below.

Signature from his WWI Draft Registration Card. Credit below.

Sydney Borden Scott: A Timeline

Sydney Borden Scott, or Borden, as he seems to have preferred being called, was the younger half-brother of my maternal 2x Great-Grandmother, Scoatney (Scott) Cooper. Because he left so many records behind, he has been an absolute joy to research, and if you’ve been following my blog for a while, or have seen my Facebook feed, you know I’ve written more than a few posts about him, exploring his life as a student, doctor, and post office employee. As usual, those posts are linked in their appropriate places on the timeline below, and as additional ones are written, I’ll drop them in as well.

Image Credit Below

 

Lula (Scott) Crew: A Timeline

Lula (Scott) Crew is the half-sister of my 2x Great-Grandmother, Scoatney (Scott) Cooper. They share a father, Solomon Scott, from two different moments in his life; Lula is nearly 20 years younger than Scoatney. The defining theme of her life seems to be education: seeking it for herself, encouraging it for her children, and supporting it for her community.

This post will be updated as I find and/or write more about her life.

 

Spelman students ca. 1897. Could Lula - who attended from 1897-1902 - be in this photo? *Citation below.

Beuna Nell Crew: A Timeline

Beuna Nell Crew is my half first-cousin, three times removed. Her mother, Lula (Scott) Crew and my 2x-great-grandmother, Scoatney (Scott) Cooper, were half-sisters. Following in her mother's shoes, she devoted her life to education, teaching generations of Black students in Georgia's segregated schools between the 1930s and 1960s. Her legacy is well-remembered today, especially among her former students at Vocational Tech / Fairmont High School in Griffin, GA, where she spent the last 18 years of her teaching career.

Beuna Nell Crew, 1950-51 Fairmont H.S. Yearbook, Griffin, GA. Courtesy of Mike Kendall and the Griffin Spalding African American History Project.

 

A Treasure Trove of Family and Community History

Family, I‘ve been in genealogy heaven for a little over a month now, and I have to tell you why! (Or, at least those of you who haven’t already been cornered by me. Sorry/Thanks!)

 

ONE stack of funeral programs from the Willie Mae Davis Allen Genealogical Collection, generously shared by Cousin Barney Allen.

Back in February, I had to head down to DC for a work event. Now, I love visiting DC for so many reasons – the museums, the libraries and archives, the architecture, the history, and just strolling through some of the fun and funky neighborhoods. But one of the best things about visiting the city is that I have family there, and a lot of it. You see, my mom was born in DC, and through her mother, father, and step-mother, there are cousins upon cousins upon first- and second- and half- and step- and twice- and thrice-removed cousins there. So, when I head down, I’ll often make an effort to hang with family.

Working Wednesday: When Our Ancestors Show Up in Unexpected Ways

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy, Jr. was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. What does this have to do with the blog theme I’m posting under today, Working Wednesday? 

A memorial to President Kennedy in the 1963-64 Yearbook of Fairmont H.S., Griffin, Georgia. Courtesy of Mike Kendall and the Griffin-Spalding African American History Project.

Well, across the nation, millions of students sat in their school classes, oblivious to what had happened until someone broke the news to them. And in a classroom at Fairmont High School in Griffin, Spalding County, Georgia, the person who broke the news was my maternal 2x Great-Grandmother Scoatney (Scott) Cooper's niece, Beuna Nell Crew.

Beuna Nell Crew in the 1963-64 Yearbook of Fairmont H.S., Griffin Georgia. Courtesy of Mike Kendall and the Griffin-Spalding African American History Project

How do we know that? Because in 2017, the Griffin African American Oral History Project interviewed siblings Cheryl Head Rashied and Raymond Head III. A recording of this interview and its transcript were placed online as part of a larger set of Oral History Collections held by the University of Georgia University Libraries.

Here’s what Ms. Rashied recalled:

“I think everything was all well in my world until maybe 1963, and that was the year that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And I can remember my biology teacher making that announcement to the class. And she came into the biology lab and said, "The President has been shot," and I thought this is the most terrible thing, how could the president of the United States be shot? And she was quite disturbed by this fact. And so I can remember quite distinctly walking home that day thinking that if this can happen, anything can happen, anything terrible. My world seemed to be changed in a sense. And maybe right about that time in 1963, we started to have this upheaval all across the country in terms of civil rights. But up until that time, my mother and my father -- I would say we were maybe sheltered from most of the woes of the world, and we had a happy childhood” [Time markers 00:04:00-00:09:00].

When the interviewer asked who the biology teacher was that Ms. Rashied had mentioned, she replied, “Ms. Crew…. Ms. Beula[sic] Crew, C-R-E-W. Yeah, she was the biology teacher.”

 *     *     *

What a powerful - and terrible and moving - memory to have. And how amazing that it 1) is connected to our ancestor, 2) was recorded and transcribed, and 3) has been made accessible to the public? I feel incredibly lucky to have come across it.

Photo Friday: Miss Crew, Master of Her Domain

Beuna Nell Crew, 1964-65 Fairmont H.S. Yearbook, Griffin, GA. Courtesy of Mike Kendall and the Griffin Spalding African American History Project.

Earlier this week I posted about my maternal relative Beuna Nell Crew, who taught at Fairmont High School in Griffin, Georgia for almost twenty years. Thanks to the Griffin-Spalding African American History Project Facebook page, its founder Mike Kendall, and his work digitizing Fairmont’s yearbooks and other school material from 1948-49 through at least 1970, I have access to (and permission to use, within reason) a treasure trove of pictures illustrating Beuna’s time at the school.*

Working Wednesday: Beuna Nell Crew at Fairmont High School

(This looks like a long one, but there are lots of photos!)

Beuna Nell Crew was the daughter of my 2x Great-Grandmother Scoatney (Scott) Cooper’s younger sister, Lula (Scott) Crew. She was a graduate of Spelman College, with a degree in Biology, and, like her mother – also a Spelman grad – she’d taken her education and decided to pour in back into her local communities as a teacher.

1959-60 Yearbook of Fairmont H.S., Griffin, GA. Courtesy of Mike Kendall and the Griffin-Spalding African American History Project Facebook page. (See Note Below.)

A Trip to the Archives: Researching Boggs Academy

What do you do when you find out that the records of a Georgia school that several of your maternal cousins attended are actually located in a building just a few minutes from where you go to work every day in Philadelphia?

 

Working Wednesday: Beuna Nell Crew at Monroe Colored H.S., A Postscript

I love a good postscript to a story, and thanks to local historian Steve Brown of the Monroe Museum in Monroe, Georgia, I’ve got one to add to the story of Beuna Nell Crew.

Working Wednesday: Beuna Nell Crew Becomes a Teacher

In mid-July of 1938, Beuna Nell Crew had just graduated from Spelman College with a degree in Biology. She had also just lost her father to tuberculosis a couple of weeks ago. Her brother, Lamar, had been married for a year and a half, and, with his wife Annie, had a son who had recently passed his first birthday. 

Tuberculosis Takes Two: The Crew Family in the Late 1930s

If you’ve read my last couple of posts, you already know that 1936 was a difficult year for my distant cousin Beuna Nell Crew, niece of my 2x great-grandmother Scoatney (Scott) Cooper. Her mother, Lula (Scott) Crew, died suddenly of a heart attack just two weeks into the year. And it seems that Beuna then – in what was her junior year - temporarily dropped out of Spelman College, likely to go home to Lithonia, GA to assist with all that needed to be done.  

Funeral notice for Lula (Scott) Crew, Beuna Nell Crew's mother. Atlanta Constitution, 15 January 1936, p. 20. Accessed via Internet Archive (archive.org).

Schooling Sunday: Beuna Nell Crew, Second Gen Spelman Grad

On June 1^st, 1921, having recently recovered from a serious illness, my 2x great aunt Lula (Scott) Crew wrote in a letter to her alma mater, Spelman College, “I had no strength to speak of my little daughter of whom I have planned to enter Spelman as soon as she is old enough but my thots were of her.” 

Courtesy of Spelman College Archives.

Twelve years later, in 1933, her plans came to fruition. 

The Passing of Lula (Scott) Crew

In my last post, I mentioned that my 2x great-grandaunt, Lula (Scott) Crew - sister of my 2x-great grandmother Scoatney (Scott) Cooper - was an educator until her death in 1936. What I didn’t mention was that she actually died at work.

The Spelman Messenger, where I believe I first saw her death reported, gave no indication of how Lula had passed away. Instead, it focused on her contributions to not only their school community but also to the Georgia communities in which she had taught and served. “In the death of Mrs. Henry Crew (Lula Scott Crew),” they wrote, “at Lithonia, Georigia, on January 14, 1936, Spelman College has lost one of its most loyal and representative alumnae.” They continued:

Schooling Sunday: New Books on My Shelf!

I’ve added some books to my bookshelf, y’all!

 

My recent acquisitions.

Working Wednesday: James and Daniel Scott at the Farlinger Apartments and Café

From 1903 to 1906, my 2x great-granduncle Daniel Scott (younger brother of my 3x great-grandmother Scoatney (Scott) Cooper), appears in Atlanta city directories as a waiter at a place called The Farlinger, or the Farlinger Café. Just a few years later, Daniel’s brother James Solomon Scott also turns up at the Farlinger, appearing as a janitor in city directories for 1909, 1912, 1913, and 1915. The 1910 U.S. Census shows him living at the Farlinger and working as a building janitor. So, what is this place and what can we find out about it?

 

Solomon Scott: A Timeline

Solomon Scott is one of my 3x Great-Grandfathers. He is the father of Scoatney (Scott) Cooper, partner of Cherry (surname unknown) and then of Nellie Little. Put differently, he is the father of my mother’s mother’s father’s mom. And like others in this generation, he saw a seismic shift in American life: the Civil War and the transition from enslavement to freedom that it brought.

Solomon Scott → Scoatney Scott  →  Noah Cooper  →  Elnora Cooper  →  Mom  →  Me

Solomon Scott's "mark" in the 1867 Return of Qualified Voters and Reconstruction Oath Book for Hancock County, GA. (Ancestry.com)

 

A Wild Ride With the Scotts Through Atlanta City Directories!

The process of writing a blog post often forces me to go back through my research to double-check my research steps, assumptions, and conclusions. If I’m going to be wrong publicly, I’d at least like to be wrong earnestly! Sometimes a new idea will occur to me, and I’ll test it out, or I’ll try an unlikely path, just to be sure.  Often this all lands me right back where I was, but, sometimes, fascinating things pop up. And that’s what happened when I was preparing to write my post on the probable death of my 4x great-grandfather, Solomon Scott.

To Spelman, With Love: A Lula Scott Crew Update

Fam, I’ve been holding out on you. I got something really, really cool – actually, something pretty darn amazing – in my email over a year ago, and I am only just getting to write about it. But now that I’ve had some brain space to pick up my research and writing again – taking vacation days is so necessary if you can, y’all! – I am so excited to loop you in. 

The Writing Lesson, by Morris Shulman. Citation Below.