I love a good mystery. My g, g, g, g Uncle Martin L Lambert lived a short life of 19 years, but long enough
to leave a teenaged widow and infant daughter. His daughter migrated to Texas after she married and his descendants all have him listed in their family trees as the son of my direct ancestor, William "Buck" Lambert and his wife Talitha Herrin Lambert. He is, after just 3 yeasr younger than Jonah, the son listed above his in the list of Buck's children in the 1880 census. And he is listed as a son.
But maybe none of Martin's Texas progeny have accessed a copy of his Stanly County, North Carolina marriage license, wherein it lists his mother as "Julia Ann Eudy" and the spot for his father's name is empty.
So first, I wanted to make sure I had the right Martin L. Lambert before looking any further. There was one other Martin, a Martin Luther Lambert, who wasn't too far off in age, but he married someone else and lived a long life.
The Martin L. Lambert who is buried beside William Buck Lambert in the Lambert Cemetery #1, located in the Lambert Community of Stanly County (that's a whole lot of Lamberting, isn't it?) was born March 5, 1873. His age matches exactly to that of Martin on the marriage license. He died on November 18, 1892, a year to the day before his widow, Rose Etta Starnes Lambert, married Columbus Monroe Kiser on November 18, 1893. The math works.
This Martin also lived in the next house enumerated to the Starnes family in the 1880 census. They would have played together as children, and were only a year apart in age.
So who was Julia Ann Eudy?
These are the things I know about her.
1) Her name. There was a substantial Eudy clan originating in Western Stanly County.
2) She had to have lived within a reasonable area of the Lambert family, as travel was not as easy in those day. I could limit my search to Cabarrus and Stanly counties and be confidant she was not being overlooked.
3) She had to have been old enough to have had a child in 1873.
First to pop up was Julia Ann Eudy born in 1857, daughter of Jacob Wiley Eudy and Elmira Belinda Furr Eudy.
Second was Julia Ann Eudy, born in 1877, daughter of William Henry Harrison Eudy and Phoebe Huneycutt Eudy, who married a Lowder
Third was Julia Eudy, born in 1851, daughter of John and Rachel Eudy, who married Gooden Hatley in 1874.
Fourth was Julia Ann Eudy, born in 1879, daughter of Ranson Eudy and Eva Hatley Eudy, who married a Thompson.
There was also a Julia Ellen Eudy, born in 1867, daughter of William Monroe and Lucy Moore Eudy, who married a Sides.
Birth dates knock 3 out of the running, at the get-go. Julia Eudy Thompson and Julia Eudy Hatley, were not even born yet in 1873. Julia Eudy Sides was only 5.
That leaves Julia, daughter of Jacob and Elmira, who would have been about 16 at the time, and Julia, daughter of John and Rachel, who would've been about 22.
These ladies had a lot in common. Both were born near the line of Stanly and Cabarrus Counties, one on one side and one on the other. Both were born here in the 1850's and died in Texas in the 1930's.
Both were single in 1873, one married in Stanly County the very next year and the other in Arkansas at age 26.
It will take a close look at the timelines and families of both ladies to figure it out. While Julia Eudy Hatley was still in the Almond community in 1880, Julia Ann Eudy, who would become Kirksey, had migrated to Alabama with her family.
A few things in the censuses can give us a hint at when this happened.
Julia Ann's younger sister, Janice "Jennie" Rose Eudy was born on October 7, 1870 in North Carolina, so the family was still here in 1870. She died in Dover, Pope County, Arkansas on September 12, 1873, so the family was in Arkansas by that date.
Also, the next child, Minnie Lorena Eudy, was born 6 days after her sister died, on September 18, 1873.
Martin was born on March 5th of that year. It could have been possible that the child was handed over to Buck Lambert before the family migrated out of the state. His birth may have even been the impetus to migrate. Then again, not.
The 1900 census counted how many children a mother had given birth to, and also, how many were living.
For Julia Ann Eudy Hatley, she and husband Goodwin had brought their 3 children into the world by 1900, Ira Van Buren Hately, Irene Roseann Hatley and Ada Mae Hatley. The 1900 census recorded that she was the mother of 3 children with 3 living.
For Julia Ann Hatley Kirksey, she married a widower, Madison Kirksey, whose first wife Sarah had passed away. He had Sarah had 3 children already, Ophelia, Madison Jr, or "Matt" and Fanny. He had Julia had had 4 children together by 1900. The census recorded that she was the mother of 5 children with 4 living.
By 1910, another child, Annie Mae had arrived and it listed her as the mother of 7 children with 5 living. A daughter Arlene had been born and died between Addie Belle in 1893 and Annie Mae in 1900.
Does this suggest she was the mother of Martin L. Lambert and he her other deceased child? Or was it the Julia who married the year after his birth and remained in Almond for a few years after his birth?
In the 1880 census of Almonds Township, Stanly County, North Carolina the family of William "Buck" Lambert is enumerated next to the family of Allen (Allen Mack Daniel or A. M. D.) Starnes. Also close by are Herrins, relatives of Buck's wife Talitha (or sometimes called Matilda) Herrin Lambert and other Lamberts, relatives of Buck.
In Buck's home is 7 year old Martin, listed as his youngest son. In Mack (or Allen) Starnes's home is 6 year old Rosa.
These two children, Martin L. Lambert and Rose Etta (known alternately as Rosa or Etta or Etty or even Rosetta) Starnes grew up to marry. The wedding took place in Stanly County and the license recorded at the Stanly County Register of Deeds in Albemarle, North Carolina.
In the old Lambert Community of Stanly County, in the Almond's township is Lambert Cemetery #1, an old family cemetery. This is where William Buck Lambert b 10 May 1824 d 19 April 1897, was laid to rest. He was one of my 3rd Great-Grandfather's. His son Rufus A. Lambert had a son named Elias Marion Lambert who had a son named Burley Melvin Lambert, who was my paternal grandfather, or...my Dad's Dad.
Lying next to Buck is his youngest son Martin, born March 5 1873 and died November 18 1892.
Martin was only 4 months shy of his 20th birthday. He did however, leave descendants. He and Rose Etta married on January 18, 1891. Martin was 18 and Rose Etta 16. A year and a half later, on July 18, 1892, their daughter, Lotha Elizabeth Lambert was born. Martin saw his daughter. She had just turned 4 months old when he died. Of what the still teenaged Martin died from is unknown. But otherwise, cut and dried, sad story of a too short life.
But no, and herein lies the mystery. On the above marriage license, it lists Martin's mother as Julia Ann Eudy and no father.
Lambert researchers have all assumed that Martin's mother was Talitha Herrin Lambert, Buck's wife, as the boy is enumerated in their household and buried next to his father. Could the Martin who grew up next door to Rose Etta Starnes in Lambert be the wrong Martin?
There was another Martin Luther Lambert who lived in Stanly and Cabarrus Counties during the late 19th century. But he married someone else and lived a fairly long life. He was not the right Martin.
On November 18, 1893, exactly one year to the day that Martin Lambert died, his 20 year old widow, Rosetta Lambert, married Columbus Monroe Kiser.
By the 1910 census, Rose Etta and C. M. Kiser have had 7 children and are living in the Bethel Church area of Cabarrus County. Seventeen year old Lotha E. Lambert is living with them.
Rose Etta's sister Alice also marries a Kiser.
And so does her daughter Lotha Lambert. Eugene C. Kiser, the son of C. M's uncle Jonah, returns from Sylvester Texas to marry his step-cousin Lotha in 1910, and take her with him back to Texas where they raise a large family of their own. The marriage license erronously lists her father as "Dick" Lambert and her mother as C. M. Kiser. They may have meant "Mrs." C. M. Kiser, as C. M. was a male and her stepfather. Perhaps Martin Lambert was known as Dick, but his middle initial was L.
Lotha's death certificate was correct in listing her father as M. L. Lambert and her mother as Rose Etta Starnes.
Death Certificate of Lotha and E. C. Kiser's youngest daughter Dorothy Sue.
So now on to solve the Mystery of Martin L. Lambert. Who was Julia Ann Eudy? Did Buck Lambert have an illegitimate son and bring him into his household to raise? I am in search of answers.
Sylvester, Fisher County, Texas is today defined as a ghost town. However, it is a place that a family from the Cabarrus and Stanly county areas of North Carolina migrated to during the early years of the last century.
It all began with one document.
Most of the land records in Cabarrus County, North Carolina involving F. F. Starnes also involved family. In the beginning, there were his and his fathers' acquisitions, but as Finch's children grew up, he parted off land for them, and he also took care of the Measmer's, children of his sister Jincy, who passed away. But as he was preparing to move to Charlotte, he also sold some lots to other people, who I was curious to see if they were relatives, or not, and how connected.
Jonah and Sarah Jane Kiser were one of these families.
The Kisers were a family of German descendants. Jonah was the son of a Civil War vet, who in turn was the Great-grandson of a German immigrant, Peter Kizer, who had settled in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. In May of 1886, Jonah and his wife Sarah Jane, had paid off a mortgage to Frederick Fincher Starnes and now owned their property out-right.
Jonah was a young man of 26 in 1886. He had married his bride, Sarah Jane Howell, daughter of David Sides Howell and Margaret Gray Howell in 1880. Both were born in 1860. By 1886, the third of their 8 sons would be born.
In the 1880 census, the newlyweds are living in the Bethel Church section of southern Cabarrus County. Bethel is a very old church that still has the Arbor for tent services. Jacob Kiser is not a relative, but an employee.
Jonah K Kiser [Jonah Kiser]
Age:
40
Birth Date:
abt 1860
Birthplace:
North Carolina
Home in 1900:
Bethel Church, Cabarrus, North Carolina [Cabarrus]
By the 1900 census, the last of their 8 sons, Odis, was born.
Some time between 1900 and 1903, the Kiser family decided to pull up roots and move to the tiny town of Sylvester, Fisher County, Texas. I wondered why they would relocate from a fertile, growing and prosperous area, to a desolate, flat, dry place like Fisher County, Texas.
Young son Collie, must have died on the journey. He is buried near the town of Monticello, Texas. Monticello is 359 miles east of Sylvester, by way of Dallas. The family put up a monument for the teenager.
I wonder if he died of disease or in an accident. In August of 1904, when he passed away, he was 15 years old. Just after the turn of the century, the family could well have still been traveling west by wagon, and not by train. There were as yet no death certificates to solve this mystery. As the younger siblings made it, I don't think young Collie, who was nearly 16, died of disease. It seems someone else in the family, someone weaker, would have caught it as well. There must have been some hazard of the journey or accident that took the life of young Collie. Maybe he was bitten by a snake, or thrown from a horse, or drowned while trying to help get the wagon unstuck from a stream. I don't know if the answer is out there.
Monticello was not much of a place then, and is not much of a place now. Here is what the Texas State Historical Association has to say about Monticello.
MONTICELLO, TEXAS. Monticello is on Farm Road 127 just south of Lake Monticello eight miles southwest of Mount Pleasant in southwestern Titus County. It began in the 1850s and received a post office in 1857 with Cicero J. Corder as postmaster. A steam mill operated by Theodore Stewig was the largest business. The settlement remained small and in 1890 had an estimated population of thirty. By 1892 it had two stores, two mills, two gins, a brick factory, and a school. By 1896 only a store remained. From that point the population seems to have remained fairly constant until the late 1960s. It reached 149 by 1974, and the town was incorporated shortly thereafter. At the time of the 1980 census the population of Monticello was forty-three. It was forty-eight in 1990. In 2000 the population was twenty.
As the small town of Monticello, where Collie was buried, is very close to the very large lake of the same name, Collie's death may have very well had something to do with the lake, or trying to cross the water somewhere. Somehow, I feel his death was during the journey west, and 1904 was the year of travel.
Accounts say that Sylvester was a town promoted by its founders, the Compere Brothers, and by 1909, had it's largest population of 600 people.
Here is what Wikipedia had to say about Sylvester:
The Compere brothers of Abilene are credited with the founding of the community in 1903. They bought part of the AJ Ranch in anticipation of the arrival of the Kansas, Mexico and Orient Railway and named it in honor of W.W. Sylvester, the railroad's promotion manager.[2] The rails reached Sylvester in 1905 and businesses followed. By 1909, the community had an estimated population of 600. Sylvester incorporated in 1927 and the 1930 reported 382 residents.[1] That figure rose to 405 in 1940. Competition from nearby towns caused Sylvester to decline. It had reverted to unincorporated status by 1950 and by the 1980s, fewer than 100 people remained in the community.
Although Sylvester is unincorporated, it continues to have a post office in operation with the zip code of 79560.
Courtesy of Wikipedia
Naming a town for someone with the railroad was a sure way to get the railroad, businesses and population to your town. The prosperity did not last.
By 1910, one of the Kiser boys had married and had a child of his own.
Jonah is listed as a farmer and his sons helping him farm.
William Milton Kiser, known as Milton, married Mattie Parker, a girl from Mississippi and had became a father to his first child, daughter Sylvania. He was living in the household right next to his father.
Fisher County remains a sparsely populated area. As of 2010, the population of the entire county was still under 4000, or 5 people per square mile. An interesting fact was that in 1886, the town of Roby was declared the county seat over Fisher. It was later discovered that the deciding vote was cast by a Mr. Bill Purp. But Bill Purp turned out to be the dog of one of Roby's citizens.
Jonah Kiser had grown cotton in Cabarrus County. He may have moved to Fisher County, Texas to grow cotton there. Before the 1930's, when a boll weevil infestation destroyed most crops, cotton was a profitable crop in Fisher county.
"In 1900 Fisher County farmers produced 113,640 bushels of corn, 41,290 bushels of oats, 7,320 bushels of wheat, and 1,280 bales of cotton. After 1910 wheat and cotton increasingly took center stage, and by 1920 the county was among the state's leaders in wheat production. High prices for cotton, however, persuaded many farmers to dedicate ever-increasing acreage to cotton culture in the 1920s. "
"BIBLIOGRAPHY: R. C. Crane, "Early Days in Fisher County," West Texas Historical Association Year Book 6 (1930). Fisher County Historical Commission, History of Fisher County, Texas (Rotan, Texas: Shelton, 1983). E. L. Yeats and E. H. Shelton, History of Fisher County, (n.p.: Feather, 1971).
Hooper Shelton"
Abandoned church in Sylvester
By 1913, the Kiser's lost another teenaged son. The youngest, Odis, only 13, died on December 2 of this year. He is buried in the Sylvester community cemetery.
The Kiser's seemed to be one the main family in Sylvester after a while. The Kiser son's populated the community with children.
The Family of Jonah Keiler Kiser and his wife Sarah Jane Howell Kiser in total were 8 sons:
Lewis B Kiser 1882-1983
William Milton Kiser 1884 -1972
Eugene Cunningham Kiser 1886-1967
Collie Kiser 1888-1904
John Cletus Kiser 1891-1945
Odis Kiser 1892-1913
James Earnest Kiser 1896- 1977
Charles Gustavious Kiser 1899-2000
The third-born son Eugene Cunningham Kiser is missing from the 1910 census. This is because he had traveled back to Cabarrus County, North Carolina to get married. And this is the connection to my family tree in two directions. Lotha Mae Lambert was the daughter of Martin L Lambert and Rose Etta Starnes.
Martin L Lambert was the son of my 3rd great-grandfather, William "Buck" Lambert and half-brother to my Great, great-grandfather, Rufus A Lambert. Rose Etta or Rosetta or 'Etty' Starnes was the daughter of Allen Mack Daniel Starnes, a cousin of Frederick Fincher Starnes. AMD Starnes was the younger brother of Nathan Monroe Starnes and John C Starnes, whom F. F. Starnes was buried alongside. Their father, Nathan T Starnes and his father Frederick Starnes, Jr., were brothers, but the cousins were more like brothers in their transactions and associations.
Martin L Lambert died in 1892 and his widow remarried Columbus Monroe Kiser. C. M. Kiser was the son of Jonah K. Kiser's brother, Rufus Caldwell Kiser. Lotha was his step-daughter. There are several mysteries currently surrounding this family, but that is another post.
Eventually, Lotha's half-brother, Floyd Lindsay Kiser would also relocate to Texas, but at a later date. He is in Cabarrus County, NC in 1920, but in Fisher County, Texas by 1930. He married Neda Cornelius Gray White, who had a young son, Frederick A White.
Jonah and Sarah probably did not migrate alone, as in the 1910 cenus, the Cyrus Gray family is living next to them, and they also originated in the Bethel Church area of Cabarrus County. I don't know at this time if Neda is connected to them.
The Fourth son, John Cletus Kiser, would marry a Texas girl named Audy Mae. They would live in Comanche County, Texas and have 4 children.
The next to the youngest son, James Earnest Kiser, would also marry a Texas girl named Nova Ann and they would remain in Sylvester.
The youngest son, Charles Gustavious "Gus" Kiser, would marry a Texas girl named Buna Ethel and they would relocate eventually to Comanche County, Texas near J. Cletus Kiser.
The oldest son, Louis B Kiser, remained with his parents the longest, eventually moving to Parker, Texas and marrying Corrine Miller, from Texas, daughter of James T and Clara Miller. After Corrine's death in 1957, he would return to Fisher County, to the county seat of Roby.
Most of the ancestors who came to this little part of Carolina, came from the North, down the Great Wagon Road. A few others came up from the South, from the coastal towns of Charleston and Savannah and the Welsh Neck of South Carolina. Even fewer still were the Scotch-Irish that drifted in from the Sandhills in the East.
In the same way, a few of each large family would migrate South and West, some to Tennessee, others to Alabama and Georgia, but most to Arkansas and Texas. Some men even abandoned their families to never return.
There was an old diddy that went around these parts in the late nineteenth century, "Maw, Maw, where is Paw? He ran off to Arkansas."
