http://fedward.org/log/2000/05/16-00.html
2000-05-16   log file


references below to:

	Tulsa, Oklahoma
	Garfield, Arkansas

	Louis Milton Poe	Tulsa, OK		judge & mayor
	Louie Leonard Poe
	L. M. Poe's son John "Ned" Poe became a lawyer
	Andrew and Adam Poe who were in Kentucky and Tennessee

	John Alexander Poe b: 1854 workin' on the railroad with his brother James Edward.
They settled in 	Garfield, Arkansas

	Mary Elizabeth Mills - 2nd wife of ???? Poe
	     her children:  Edith, Lyda, Willis, Earnest, Albert, Charles, Jesse, and Louie



My dad has been rendered somewhat homebound recently because of a problem that cropped
up suddenly with his vision. He's okay (it seems), although I'm worried that he's
going to end up blind in one eye before too long. It's a problem with the vitreous
in one of his eyes, and could possibly lead to a retinal detachment. 

Anyway, while he's been stuck at home he's been working on putting together an album
of very old photographs of his family, sorting through the pictures and putting 
captions with them. Now, I've always been one of those glib Americans with no history,
and this has never particularly bothered me. I'd never been able to trace my ancestry
farther than my dad's birth in Garfield, Arkansas, and the name of his father - 
but not his father's father, or anybody beyond. Or any other relations. And this
wasn't an issue. 

A couple years ago, I was at a friend's apartment leafing through a book his mother
had bought him as a gift. It was the history of Boston Avenue Methodist Church, 
a landmark of Tulsa history, which also happened to be his family's church. The 
church was one of the first, if not the first, churches in Tulsa, and its history
is tied in closely with that of the city itself. So as I was leafing through the
book, I came across a picture with the name Louis Milton Poe in the caption. He 
was the first judge in Tulsa. He was the fifth mayor. He's also probably related
to me, and I'd lived in Tulsa all my life without knowing my family was involved
in founding it. 

I confirmed the probable link with my parents. The exact link is not known for sure,
but it is known that Louis Milton Poe gave my grandfather Louie Leonard Poe a job
at one point, that L. M. Poe's son John "Ned" Poe became a lawyer, and
that when my own father moved to Tulsa and started studying towards his own law 
career, he introduced himself to Ned Poe and was welcomed as a relation. They compared
folklore and both branches of the family claim a link to two Poes (Andrew and Adam)
who were in Kentucky and Tennessee with Daniel Boone. 

Anyway, dad has a cousin who is his maternal uncle's (John Virgil Banta) daughter
from his first marriage - the second marriage was to dad's aunt Edith (dad's father's
sister, or Virgil Banta's sister in law - before she became his wife, that is). 
That cousin has been researching her ancestry and sent some photographs to dad, 
which he has added, this weekend, to the album he's putting together. 

Included in them is a photograph from about 1902, of the family of John Alexander
Poe, my great grandfather. He was born in 1854, and left either Tennessee or Kentucky
(this is unclear to me, since it all runs together) some time after the Civil War
while, as the song goes, workin' on the railroad with his brother James Edward (after
whom my father is most likely named).   They settled in Garfield, Arkansas.   The
picture includes my great grandfather and his second wife (my great grandmother),
Mary Elizabeth Mills, along with their children Edith, Lyda, Willis, Earnest, Albert,
Charles, Jesse, and Louie - my grandfather. He's about six in the picture. Charles
is a year old. Also in the picture are two half-sisters, offspring of John's first
marriage, with their husbands and two daughters. 

I offered to help dad make some more permanent copies than mom could do on her color
inkjet copier, and set about scanning some of the old pictures today. The one of
the family from 1902 was washed out, obscuring several of the faces (including Mary
Elizabeth and her two daughters), so I opened up Photoshop and worked on the image
for about 15 minutes. I'm no Photoshop expert, but I was able to get some pretty
swift results after adjusting a few sliders, and I saved the edited copy and printed
one on some of mom's photo paper, and then took it to show to dad. I think he didn't
realize how pleased he was until he had about ten minutes to pore over the retouched
image. I think I made his week. :-) 

Anyway, I keep going back to that photo album, as well as a collection of old photos
of mom's family (there's one of her at about age two that looks shockingly like 
her granddaughter, my niece Darcy). After all these years of having essentially 
no history, it's weird to find not only a link, but what appears to be a thread 
woven through time and place linking my family's history to the places we've lived.