Family Tree Maker's Genealogy Site: Genealogy Report: Descendants of Martin William " Gobbler " Jones

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Descendants of Martin William " Gobbler " Jones

33. ELIZA JANE⁴ JONES (JESSE RIGGS³, MARTIN WILLIAM " GOBBLER "², MR.¹) was born 1838 in Jones Prairie, Polk Co., Texas, and died Aft. 1875 in Jones Prairie, Polk Co., Texas. She married PETER ENOCH CALVIN JONES 04 Jul 1856 in Jones Prairie, Polk Co., Texas, son of JOHN JONES and LUCINDA VANWINKLE. He was born 1833 in Royal Colony, White Co., Arkansas, and died 1879 in Burleson Co., Texas.

Notes for ELIZA JANE JONES:
1850 she was residing with her sister Rhoda and her husband Samuel Moore who is head of household in Polk Co., Texas.

Probate Index- Polk Co., Texas Probate Minute- Book B;
Jones, Jane-#118- Guardianship of p. 272-278-189-290.

Notes for PETER ENOCH CALVIN JONES:
Peter and Eliza were first cousins.
Peter and Jenny were married in Polk Co., Texas as stated;
Jones, Peter E. C. to Jinney Winn on September 1, 1864 Page-119
Peter and M.A. were married in Polk Co., Texas as stated;
Jones, P. E. C. to M. A. Winn (fe) on December 12, 1865 Page-174
On the 1860 Polk Co., Census, Jesse Riggs Jones and Mesaline Burks boys Enoch Calvin and Martin Calaway were residing with them and under their guardianship. They are listed as Enoch C. and Calaway. They are Eliza's brothers.
In 1880 Peter's children Lucy and James are residing with Martin Calaway and Marilla Jones in Burleson Co., Texas.
Name: Marilla JONES
Age: 38
Estimated birth year: <1842>
Birthplace: Texas
Occupation: Keeps House
Relation: Wife
Home in 1880: Precinct 5, Burleson, Texas
Marital status: Married
Race: White
Gender: Female
Head of household: Calvin JONES
Father's birthplace: ---
Mother's birthplace: ---
Cannot read/write:
Blind:
Deaf and dumb:
Otherwise disabled:
Idiotic or insane:
Image Source: Year: 1880; Census Place: Precinct 5, Burleson, Texas; Roll: T9_1293; Family History Film: 1255293; Page: 77D; Enumeration District: ; Image: .

1860 Polk Co., Texas;
P E C Jones 26 1833 Arkansas Precinct 6, Polk, Texas Male
Eliza Jane 22 1837 Texas Precinct 6, Polk, Texas Female
Fanny Jane 3 1856 Texas Precinct 6, Polk, Texas Female
Edwin Adams Jane 5.12 Texas Precinct 6, Polk, Texas Male
Enoch C Jones 14 1845 Texas Precinct 6, Polk, Texas Male (under guardianship)
John D Jones 2 1857 Texas Precinct 6, Polk, Texas Male
Calaway Jones 19 1840 Texas Precinct 6, Polk, Texas Male (under guardianship)
I Turner 2 1857 Texas Precinct 6, Polk, Texas Female

More About PETER JONES and ELIZA JONES:
Marriage: 04 Jul 1856, Jones Prairie, Polk Co., Texas

Children are listed above under (17) Peter Enoch Calvin Jones.

34. JOHN H.B.⁴ JONES (JESSE RIGGS³, MARTIN WILLIAM " GOBBLER "², MR.¹) was born Abt. 1840 in Jones Prairie, Polk Co., Texas, and died Jul 1862 in Jones Prairie, Polk Co., Texas. He married LENORA NOLA WOMACK 17 Nov 1859 in Livingston, Polk Co., Texas, daughter of WILLIAM WOMACK and CATHERINE ADAMS. She was born Abt. 1843 in Alabama, and died 1891 in Colmesniel, Tyler Co., Texas.

Notes for JOHN H.B. JONES:
John's middle initials have been reversed at times. John and Lenora had two girls one being Catherine and the other John C.
By Order Of The Probate Court Of Polk County, Texas, March Term, 1849:
John H. Jones and Enoch C. Jones were appointed guardians of the minors Rhoda Emeline, Eliza Jane, John and Calloway Jones. Rhoda Emeline married 21 July 1850, and Jane married 4 July 1856, and thus terminated the guardianship as to these.
On 29 Nov 1852, John H. Jones, Administrator of the Estates of John D. and Nancy Burks and Jesse R. Jones, filed a petition to consolidate these estates, and set out the following facts:
"John H. Jones, Administrator of the above styled and named estates, shows unto your honor that the heirs at law of the above estates are the children of Jesse R. Jones, deceased, and his wife, Messaline Jones, who was a daughter of John D. and Nancy Burks, deceased. That there are no heirs, distributees or persons entitled to any share or interest in the estates of John D. and Nancy Burks except the children of Jesse R. Jones. That the legal heirs of both the Burks' and Jones' estates are co-equal heirs."
The children of Jesse R. Jones and his wife, Messaline Burks, were the only heirs to certain lands owned by Joseph Morgan at his death.
1850 he was residing with his sister Rhoda and her husband Samuel Moore who is head of household in Polk Co., Texas.

Probate Index- Polk Co., Texas Probate Minute- Book B;
Jones, John H.B.-# ?- Guardianship of p. 307-309.

Probate Index- Polk Co., Texas Probate Minute- Book C;
Jones, Jno. H.B.-#162- Guardianship of p. 360 to 366 and 449.

Probate Index- Polk Co., Texas Probate Minute- Book F;
Jones, John B.H.-#162- Guardianship of, p. 141 to 146.

Jones, John B.N. & Lenorah Womack's marriage listed on pg. 39 in the Polk Co., Texas Marriages.

Notes for LENORA NOLA WOMACK:
Marriage records online show Lenora and John's marriage on pg. 39 of the Polk Co., Tx. records. It shows online as her given name being spelled Lenorah.

Nollene Marsh states the following;
"Leanora Nola "Nonie" Womack inherited substantially from her father, along with her two sisters. She was wealthy in her own right when she married John H. B. Jones who was also pretty well off at the time, he having inherited from the Jones-Morgan-Burks estates... After the Civil War, their combined net worth dropped due to the fact that they were no longer slave owners. Most wealth in those days was figured on land and slaves to produce cotton and corn."

The following clips from the paper were sent to me by Nollene Marsh:
"WOMACK GIRLS LEFT A GREAT LECACY OF PEOPLE"
Written by Don Hendrix for Polk County Enterprise, Seprt. 30, 1990
"CATHERINE MARR came to Texas and Polk County in the late 1850's and she brought with her three children of a previous marriage named Womack. But the family left no descendants by that name because they were all daughters. There are plenty of Womacks in Trinity County, but as far as can be found, they are not immediately related to the Polk County clan.
When Catherine immigrated to Polk County about 1859 to start a new life, she had been a Womack when she was widowed and before she remarried. She had the three Womack daughters, and another daughter by her second marriage. But she wasn't even settled in this new land when she became a widow for the second time.
Born about 1826 as Catherine Adams, she was married to William Green Womack in January 1840 in Butler County, Ala. In September that year, their first child was born, Martha Elizabeth Womack, who was destined to become a long-time resident of Moscow, Texas. They had two other daughters: Leah Nora Womack (or Leanora) born about 1842 and William Frances Womack about 1844.
(Yes, William was a girl, Not surprisingly, she went by the name Frances, but adopted a nickname. Sometimes it was Francie, but mostly she was known as Fannie.)
In 1845, however, the tranquility of their plantation was interrupted violently. William Womack was fatally shot by his body servant.
HUSBAND NUMBER TWO
Within a year, Cathering was planning her second marriage, She appears to have been a practical woman. When she and John M. Marr agreed to be married, she made sure she had control of what she was getting into. In 1846 in Macon County, Ala., the two of them signed a prenuptial agreement.
Their contract said in so many words that they planned to be married shortly and then it spelled out the ways and means of assuring (1) that she would continue to have a dependable means of support, and (2) that her property wouldn't fall into her husband's hands. In those days when a woman became married she stood a chance of losing it all if she didn't get a record of her separate property in writing.
The contract assigned her property under a trusteeship. Also included in that property was sort of a dowry from her new husband 160 acres of land and a 14-year old slave named Henderson. The conveyance of this property from him to her, said the contract, was compensation for her agreeing to marry him.
Under the agreement, the husband would exercise management of the property, but the trustee would have the authority to make sure it was managed correctly: that is, for the use and benefit of Catherine and her daughters. Another safeguard for Catherine was the appointment of her brother Edwin B. Adams as trustee. Edwin had the authority to sell the property and make investments from time to time, but only with the concurrence of Catherine and her husband.
Catherine and John's daughter, Sophronia Jane Marr, was born about 1852. Oldtimers in the county will remember her as Sophronia Tullos, wife of Willoughby James Tullos. She died in 1928.
By the late 1850's, Martha had reached marriageable age, and in early 1858 she was married to John Habdy Adams. He came from Talahasse, Fla., where his father had been a sheriff according to John Hobdy's grandson, Sidney Adams of Corrigan.
SHOT OFF A STUMP
Sidney tells this passed-down story about John Hobdy's father, Samuel Goodbrook Adams. Once when Sheriff Adams was making a political speech from a tree stump, somebody took offense to what he said and shot him with a Derringer. It knocked him off the stump, but when he checked for blood he found that he had been very fortunate. A collection of silver dollars that filled one pocket had stopped the bullet. Unhurt and undismayed, he climbed back onto the stump and finished his speech.
John Hobdy and Martha arrived at Smithfield, on the southwest tip of present Polk County, on Jan. 1, 1859 but about June they moved to the Moscow area. In August, for a couple of thousand of dollars borrowed from his father, he purchased property near Moscow from Catherine's uncle Mark, who had been granted the land by Mexico before the Texas Revolution. Mark Womack didn't stay in Texas. At this time, he was living in Mississippi.
In November 1858, Catherine's older brother, Edwin B. Adams, acting as legal guardian of her daughters, applied to the probate court of Macon County, Ala. for a settlement of the guardianship. The reason for the settlement, he told the court that the family planned to move to Texas. His request was approved on Jan. 1, 1859.
About the same time, Cahterine's husband died, but that occurred after they had arrived in Texas, since records state that he died in Polk County. In February 1859 Catherine's brother, who also had moved to Polk County, was named the administrator of John M. Marr's estate and legal guardian of Catherine's minor children. Catherine, now with three daughters at home, found herself a widow a second time.
MARRIAGE WAS IN THE AIR
The oldest girl, however, was already anxious to spread her wings. In no time, Leanora was casting her eyes about for a prospective husband. She fournd him in 19-year-old John B.H. Jones, a well-to-do heir to the Morgan-Burks-Jones estate.
Not that Leanora needed a wealthy provider. She was not exactly poor herself. She and her sister's inheritance from their father allowed them a comfortable lifestyle. While they were teens, both she and her sister had running accounts at almost every dry goods merchant in the county, as well as others in Galveston, where they spent a considerable amount of money on clothes, accessories and the best material goods. If they weren't stylish, it wasn't for lack of trying.
One of those accounts, at the mercantile store of Thornton & Lyle of Moscow, shows she spent $109 in October that year for makings of a wedding gown and other needs of a wedding. In November, in wedding garb complete with a long train and veil, 16-year-old Leanora exchanged I-do's with her chosen groom.
HUSBAND NUMBER THREE
Meanwhile, her mother Catherine, a widow for less than a year, had also spied matramonial material. Two weeks after Leanora and Joh B.H. Jones were married on December 1, Catherine Marr, at 33, became the wife of John Foster Poe. He was a man two years her junior who had lived in the county for about eight years. He too, had come from Alabama.
On the previous year's tax roll, Poe showed little taxable property, ( five horses, $200 cash and a watch), but in 1859 he spent over $1,000 for over a hundred acres of farm land. Within a couple of years, he was to be a wealthy planter and major slave holder (the latter of which in those days, was considered a proper status symbol. It was certainly a sign of affluence).
Martha and John H. Adams by this time had started their family. In april that year, Martha's first child, William Edwin Adams, was born. He would become a lawyer and move out of the county.
FAMILY IN THE CIVIL WAR
When the Civil War began for Texas in 1861, several of the family enlisted into the Confederate Army,. Edwin B. Adams Jr. was the first, joining up in August 1861. The following year Poe, at 33, enlisted but was discharged the next month. He later served with fellow Polk Countian Wm. H. Beazley's company at the boatyard in Magnolia in Anderson County.
In July 1862, John B.H. Jones died, leaving Leanora a widow at 18 with two daughters, Catherine M. and Johnnie C. Jones. (Or possibly at the time he died, she had one daughter and was expecting the second.)
In January 1863 Edwin B. Adams Sr. having been elected to the state legislature, gave up that seat to enlist in the army.
In September 1864, Catherine A. Poe died at the age of only 44. In addition to their first four children, she had given John Foster Poe three children, a boy and two girls.
When the "boys in gray" returned the following year to a dismally financially-depressed Texas, Leanora remarried. her groom was 23-year-old Thomas J. Burroughs, a six-foot, blue-eyed youth from Colita, who had been discharged from the army after losing a hand in an accident. Soon, Leanora had a third daughter, whom she named Leonard Buroughs. (Yes, another girl with a boy's name.)
YOUNGEST DAUGHTERS WED
In 1869, the youngest Womack daughter, Fannie Womack and her half-sister Sophronia J. Marr, both were married. Fannie's husband was W.T. Burroughs and Sophronia's was Samuel H. Donahoe.
According to Sophronia's grand-daughter, Lenita Rowe of Uvalde, Donahoe had come here from New Orleans to raise race horses, and for the first few months he busied himself with getting his ranch and home prepared. But inside of two years after their wedding, Donahoe was thrown from a horse and killed.
There were no children from this marriage. She later married Willoughby J. Tullos and lived at Moscow and Leggett. The Tulloses had nearly a dozen children.
In December 1872 Leanora was married a third time: her husband was James P. Straughn. For many years, they lived at Moscow where he may have operated the little town's trolly in the 1880's.
By 1870, John Hobdy and Martha had six children. And Edwin B. Adams Sr. had moved himself and family to Lovelady in Houston County, where he remained until his death in 1890.
Meanwhile, Edwin B. Adams Jr. now a married man, was making a name for himself. He and John C. McKinnon were thriving merchants at Moscow, operating under the name of Adams & McKinnon. Mckinnon provided input to the family via his daughter Maggie, a school teacher, who in November 1870 married John Foster Poe. Edwin B. Adams Jr. moved to Galveston about this time, but within a couple of years had put down his roots at Lovelady. He died there in 1885.
ENTER THE WATTS FAMILY
By 1877, Leanora's children were becoming of marriagable age, That year her daughter Catherine was married to Pliney M. Watts, who came from a very old family who had come to Texas in 1825, settling at Peach Tree Village. Pliney was about 22, and a native-born Texas.
In 1882, it was Johnnie's turn. She was married that year to Ben E. Moore, a lawyer (or a lawyer-to-be). They later moved to Tyler County, then to Jefferson County.
SUING THE RAILROAD
In 1881, the H.E.&W.T. Railroad began building its tracks into Polk County, and although the firm would be plagued with lawsuits fro several years, it was John Hobdy Adams and his wife Martha who had the dubious honor of being the first persons in the county to sue them. That was in August 1881. They had sold right-of-way land to ethe railroad with the idea that the firm intended to build a depot adjacent to their property. They could already tast the profits from a thriving next-door business, when, much to their surprise and chagrin, the company began building their depot about four miles away. That didn't set too well with the Adams couple, so they sued.
The litigation dragged on for six years, and included a couple of trips to the Texas Supreme Court resulting in a victory for the Moscow couple. (At that time the State Supreme Court was the appeals avenue for district courts.)
John Foster Poe died in 1906 at Moscow, and his wife Maggie lived the rest of her years with their daughter Mary Montgomery. Maggie died in 1911 at Conroe.
Martha Adams who was Catherine (Adams-Womack-Marr) Poe's eldest, died in 1912 at Moscow, having left the world two physicians, a lawyer, and a slough of other descendants.
Sophronia J. Tullos died in 1928 at Leggett. Her granddaughter Lenita Row of Uvalde remembers her as a highly educated woman who devoured books. She was petite and always thin and very agile, even in her declining years.
Catherine Adams was the ancestor of many living people spread throughout the country today, including many Polk and nearby counties. However, when decendants were found and interviewed, it was discovered that the family had scattered so quickly within three or four generations, that the descendants of her respective daughters were completely unaware of the other branches of the family."

More About JOHN JONES and LENORA WOMACK:
Marriage: 17 Nov 1859, Livingston, Polk Co., Texas

Children of JOHN JONES and LENORA WOMACK are:

JOHNNIE C.⁵ JONES, b. 1861, Polk Co., Texas; d. Unknown; m. BEN E. MOORE, 14 Sep 1882, Polk Co., Texas; d. Unknown.

Notes for JOHNNIE C. JONES:
John C. is stated in Polk County Records in regards to her parents Estate as being female and marrying Ben E. Moore.
In Polk Co., Texas Marriages they are listed as follows;
Jones, Johnnie C. to B. E. Moore on September 14, 1882 Page-183

More About BEN MOORE and JOHNNIE JONES:
Marriage: 14 Sep 1882, Polk Co., Texas

ii.

CATHERINE M. JONES, b. 24 Jun 1862, Moscow, Polk Co., Texas; d. 21 Aug 1946, Marlin, Falls Co., Texas; m. REV. P.M. PLINY WATTS, 30 Jan 1877, Polk Co., Texas; b. 20 Nov 1854, Moscow, Polk Co., Texas; d. 24 Oct 1932, Burford Watts Home- Marlin, Falls Co., Texas.

Notes for CATHERINE M. JONES:
Catherine married P.M. in Polk Co., Texas as stated;
Jones, Miss C. M. to P. M. Watts on January 30, 1877 Page-51

More About CATHERINE M. JONES:
Burial: Unknown, Oak Grove Memorial Cemetery, Irving, Dallas Co., Texas

Notes for REV. P.M. PLINY WATTS:
Nollene Marsh states the following;
"I think that Pliny Watts was a preacher. I have found a lot on the WATTS family and am kin to a lot of them on my MARSH side of the family. I put a lot of genealogy history on the Bold Springs Cemetery survey when I did it. It is online at the Polk County Connection website, but Pliny is not buried there. I'll do some further checking on him."

More About P.M. WATTS and CATHERINE JONES:
Marriage: 30 Jan 1877, Polk Co., Texas

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