JOHN ASBURY and EUDORAH ( WALLACE ) SIMMONS - South Carolina, Kentucky, Texas - 1800's and 1900's
ID 28 & 29
rin 22 & 23
BIRTHS: John A. was born February 14, 1860, York District, South Carolina.
Eudorah was born February 5, 1868, in Kentucky. (Diaries)
MARRIAGE: November 22, 1883 at Whitney, Hill Co., Texas. (Joe)
DEATHS: John died in September, 1939, at Burkburnett, Wichita Co., Texas. Eudorah died August 28, 1928, at the same place. (Diaries)
John was the fourth of eleven children of Hickman D. & Sarah E. Simmons. His middle name comes from his uncle, Asbury Simmons.
John appears on the following censuses as living with his parents: 1860 Spartanburg Dist., SC:
1870 Logan Co., KY (shown as a 10-year-old farm laborer)
1880 Hill Co., TX
Oct. 1900, John A. was in Bosque Co., TX, where and his boys cut down a bee tree and procured 65 pounds of honey. From the WHITNEY MESSENGER (Joe) I don't know when the family moved west. I haven't seen a 1900 census, but the article above would suggest that they moved after October, 1900.
Joe says that the youngest three children were born in Oklahoma Territory; but the 1910 census says only the youngest (age 7) was born in Oklahoma, and the others in Texas.
Historical Note: Greer County was organized as a Texas county in 1886;Greer County was declared to be part of the Oklahoma Territory in 1896: Greer County became part of the State of Oklahoma on November 16, 1907; Harmon County was organized from Greer and Jackson Counties in 1909.
By 1903 John and his family were in Greer Co., OK Terr., where they were growing cotton and kaffir corn on their 160-acre homestead. Their home was a dugout. (Joe's transcription of notes by Jeanettie P. Beard, born 1898)
The 1910 census for Martin Twp., Harmon Co., OK, lists John's age as 50 and his birthplace as South Carolina. Eudora is listed as D.D., age 42 and born in Kentucky. It says that John was a farmer who owned his land free of mortgage, that they had been married 25 years, and that they'd had 10 children (9 living). The four youngest children were living with John and D. D., and their oldest son, Hickman P., and his family were living nearby.
John was not named in his father's 1906 obituary, but his mother's 1912 obituary mentions John of Oklahoma.
John A. was in the area of Burkburnett, Wichita Co., TX, (near his daughter Maggie and her husband Ross Walkup) in 1925 when Nathan's mother died, and also in March, 1936, when his grandson Horace P. Simmons visited him. The four older sons of Hickman P. Simmons all went from Wenatchee, WA to visit their grandparents in Texas as soon as they were old enough to "ride the rails." (Nathan and Diaries)
John and Eudorah are buried at Clara, a small community about eight miles from Burkburnett, TX. His daughter Maggie and her husband Ross Walkup lived there, and apparently John lived the last few years of his live with them.
(Nathan to Joe 10 May 1994)
SOURCES:
Diaries of Venus (Simmons) Wagner, now in the possession of LaVere (Wagner) Peters, 456 Lowe St., Wenatchee, WA 98801-3180, (509) 662-2965
Nathan Simmons, P. O. Box 92, Mount Aukum, CA 95656 (209) 245-3670
Joe B. Ward, Jr., Rt. 2, Box 2316, Whitney, TX 76692 (817) 694-7777
Censuses
28 Feb 1996 Prepared by LaVere Peters