Sreaves Family Reunion 2025

 

by Pa Rock

Sreaves Descendant

I am at a motel in Bentonville, Arkansas, this morning.  Later today my sister, Abigail, and our visiting cousin, Joyce, we will all be attending a SREAVES family reunion that my sister has organized.  It will be held at the Swars Prairie Baptist Church in Newton County, Missouri, (near Seneca), where most of our Sreaves relatives are buried - even most of the ones who were Methodists.

Abigail lives in Rogers, Arkansas, a city which is connected to the south end of Bentonville and to the north end of Springdale.  Springdale, in turn, is connected to the north end of Fayetteville, home of the University of Arkansas.  Woo . . . Pig . . . Suey!  From Bentonville, home of Walmart, south through Fayetteville, it's all just one big, traffic-clogged city - urban sprawl across land that was cow pastures in my youth.

Abigail has three grown children and four grandchildren living close by.  Cousin Joyce resides in Tucson, Arizona, in the winter, and Sandpoint, Idaho, during the summertime.  I have visited her twice in Idaho over the past few years - Sandpoint is one of the most beautiful towns in America.  Abigail dropped in on Joyce in Tucson last year during the winter.    Our mother and Joyce's mother were two of the four Sreaves girls who grew up on a farm near Seneca, Missouri, and there were also three Sreaves boys in the same family.  Six of those seven Sreaves youngsters went on to produce 24 children of their own.  Of those 24-grandchildren of Dan and Nancy Jane "Siss" (Roark) Sreaves, ten have already passed on including three during the last year alone, and the remainder have been invited to attend the reunion.   We are hopeful that most will.  I guess we will see how many show up.

As an unofficial family historian, I prepared five handouts for the cousins who do make it to the reunion.  Those documents include:  

• a pair of 5-generation family trees for each of our grandparents, Dan and Siss.  The include 21 ancestors for Dan, and 18 for Siss.
• "Recollections of Fannie Matilda Sreaves."  Fannie Sreaves Ulmer was one of our grandfather's younger sisters.  She was born in Huntsville, Arkansas, in 1898, and filled a notebook of her memories of growing up more than eighty years later.  One of the highlights of Fannie's story is her recounting the four-day trip by covered wagon that the family endured when they moved to McDonad County, Missouri, very early in the twentieth century.  Typed, her notebook covers six full pages.
• "Made from Scratch" by Mary Sreaves Clotfelter, a niece to my grandfather.  Her article was a piece that was published in the Crowder College literary magazine, "The Quill," forty years ago.  In it Cousin Mary talked about visiting in her grandparent's (Alexander and Mary Jane Sreaves) and some of the wonderful special dishes that her grandmother made from scratch.
• "Sreaves Relationship to Benjamin Franklin" which I compiled listing all of the connecting relatives between the famous founding father and our remaining cousins.  Our group members are first cousins, ten times removed to Ben.
• "Alexander Sreaves" Something else which I compiled giving biographical information on the father of our grandfather, Daniel Alexander Sreaves.  Alex, our great-granfather, was a family mystery until recently with no known history prior to the time when he married Mary Jane Ellis in Madison County, Arkansas, in early 1888.  I have made two trips to the Family Search (Mormon) Library in Salt Lake City over the past few years and each time I learned more about this unique ancestor.  I have now identified his parents and grandparents - as well as a few individuals beyond even that.  The document that I compiled will introduce the cousins to their great-grandfather and provide some highlights about his origins.

If anyone reading his blog entry feels that you might have a connection to the Sreaves family of southwest Missouri (it was originally spelled "Shreeves" and came from West Virginia through Ohio to Arkansas and Missouri) please contact me through this blog.  I would be more than happy to answer questions and share what I have collected.

That's the day that I have planned.  I will be heading home to West Plains in the evening.

(One more note:  I stayed at a chain motel in Bentonville last night.  It was a nice room, and above my bed was a framed black and white photo (about five feet by six feet) of a river scene which I immediately recognized.  It was taken on Elk River just north a Noel, Missouri, where I grew up.  The scene is an empty canoe parked next to a small gravel beach across the river from a massive bluff.  The bluff has a sordid history.  The movie, "Jesse James" was filmed in and around Noel in 1939.  It starred Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda, and Nancy Kelly, all of whom stayed in private homes in Noel during the filming.  Several horses used in the movie were run off of that bluff while the movie was being made, and all, of course, died.    I told you the story was sordid.   The big framed photo brings back many memories of float trips down the Elk River, and most of those memories were of really good times.)