Ancestor Archives: Alexander Sreaves (1857-1927)

by Rocky Macy

(Note:  For the past four weeks I have profiled my four paternal great-grandparents in this space.  Beginning this week and for the next three weeks I will be profiling my maternal great-grandparents.  The subject of today’s piece is my mother’s paternal grandfather.  Comments and/or corrections are welcome and encouraged.  Enjoy!)
 
Alexander SREAVES was born on October 29, 1857, probably in the state of Ohio.  He passed away at his home in Buffalo Township of McDonald County, Missouri, on April 22, 1927.  (His death certificate lists the county of death as Newton - which is incorrect.  Alex and Mary SREAVES’ home place was acquired by the Missouri Conservation Department after their deaths and opened to the public as the “Buffalo Hills Natural Area,” and it is in McDonald County – but close to the Newton County line.)
 
The most remarkable thing about Alexander SREAVES’ early history is its mysterious nature.  It was widely accepted in family lore that Alex showed up in northwest Arkansas sometime in the 1880’s, but after the 1880 census was taken, as a man with an unknown past.  In fact his first definite entry into the public record was when Alex SREAVES, aged 29, of St. Paul, Madison County, Arkansas, and Mary J. ELLIS, aged 21, of St. Paul, Madison County, Arkansas, applied for a marriage license on January 12, 1888, and were married three days later on January 15, 1888 in the state of Arkansas.   Mary Jane ELLIS, the bride, was a native of Madison County, Arkansas, having been born in Huntsville in 1866.
 
Alex and Mary’s children grew up without any contact with grandparents on his side of the family.  When one of his daughters asked about his parentage, he reportedly replied that she should “leave it alone.”
 
When Alex passed away in 1927 his youngest son, Ira “Jackson” SREAVES, was the informant on his death certificate.  Jackson reported that Alex’s parents were Samuel SREAVES of Ohio and Rebecca BLANTON of Ohio.  Years later when family researchers began digging into Alex’s cloudy lineage, it was assumed that Jackson may have just come up with a couple of names in order to make his father seem more respectable.  When Fannie SREAVES ULMER wrote her family remembrance in the early 1980’s she used the names that her brother, Jackson, had provided on her father’s death certificate, names that were being widely bandied about by researchers at the time she was writing.  Another sibling of those two, Ethel, who was older that Fannie but younger than Jackson, professed no knowledge of their father’s antecedents.        
 
Another thing that complicates research into the ancestry of Alexander SREAVES is that surname has obviously been misspelled at some point in history.  It could have been SHREVE(S), SHREAVE(S), or SHREEVE(S), but there are almost no words or proper names in the English language that begin with the letters SR.  (The country Sri Lanka and the related adjective Sri Lankan and a few abbreviations are the only SR entries in most standard dictionaries.  My mother told me that teachers had told her and her siblings that the name was spelled wrong, and when they told their father, Daniel Alexander SREAVES (the oldest child of Alexander and Mary SREAVES), he said they would not be changing the spelling because that is the way his father had always spelled the family name.
 
Family researchers are currently pursuing several possibilities regarding Alex’s ancestry.  What follows is the line of inquiry that I am following.  It is speculative and based solely on three documents.  It could also be compatible with the names that Jackson SREAVES entered on his father’s death certificate, if the father had died when Alex was very young and the mother remarried.  My goal this year is to prove or disprove the following speculation:

 

1.  The 1860 US Census of Franklin, Miller County, Missouri, has a two-year-old male child by the name of Elijah A. SHREEVES who was born in Ohio living in the household of John BLACKSTONE (age 25).   Also in the household are Lucinda BLACKSTONE (age 28), Prudence A. BLACKSTONE (age3), and Thomas ROSS (age 24).

 

2.  The 1870 US Census of Franklin, Miller County, Missouri, has a twelve-year-old male by the name of Alexander SRIEVE who was born in Ohio living in the household of Josiah ELLIOTT (age 42).  Also in the household are Emily E. ELLIOTT (age 27), William JONES (no age given), and Nancy M. COMER (age 27).   Alexander SREIVE is listed as a “farm laborer.”

 

3.  And, on November 25, 1887, a “Notice of Contest” was posted in the Ivanhoe Times of Ivanhoe, Kansas, in which a man named David A. ARMSTRONG had gone to court seeking to vacate a homestead entry that had been filed in Garden City, Haskell County, Kansas, by an Alexander SREAVES on October 5, 1885.  Mr. ARMSTRONG stated that Mr. SREAVES had not put any improvements on the land, nor had he cultivated it, and he was essentially seeking to have the homestead entry voided so that he could claim the land himself.  All parties were summoned to appear on December 6, 1887, to furnish testimony regarding the alleged abandonment of the claim.

 

My conjecture is that the 2-year-old Elijah A. SHREEVES in the 1860 census was possibly Elijah Alexander SHREEVES, possibly the son of Lucinda BLACKSTONE from a previous marriage.  Ten years later this same boy was still residing in the same neighborhood but with a different family where he was earning his keep as a “farm laborer.” 
 
(One of the family legends regarding Alex is that his father died and his mother remarried.  When she died not long after,  Alex’s stepfather remarried and the boy could not get along with his new step-mother and either left on his own or was forced out of the home by the pair of step-parents.)
 
And regarding the abandoned homestead claim, Alexander SREAVES would have been around 26-years-old when he filed it.  He could have moved on due to a failed relationship or because he simply changed his mind about living in western Kansas.
 
The names, dates, and locations all fit nicely with the known facts regarding Alexander SREAVES, and all merit further study and evaluation.
 
But back to what IS known about Alexander SREAVES.  
 
Alex and Mary Jane (ELLIS) SREAVES were the parents of seven children:   Daniel Alexander (1888-1970) (my grandfather), William “Jess” (1890-1956), Ira “Jackson” (1892 - 1928), Ethel May (1895-1982), Fannie Matilda (1898-1990), Alice Christine (1902-1944), and Lula Elizabeth 1904-1983).
 
Daniel Alexander married (1) Nancy Jane ROARK (my grandmother, whom he outlived), and 2.  Martha Adeline THOMPSON ROARK;   William “Jess” married Lula Mae ANDERTON;  Ira “Jackson” was born with heart issues and never married;  Ethel May married Harry B. ANDERSON;  Fannie Matilda married Andrew “Joe” ULMER;  Alice Christine married Henning G. ANDERSON; and Lula Elizabeth married Wesley Robert “Wess” KELLEY.
 
In 1901, (before the birth of Alice and Lula),  Alex and Mary loaded up their five children and all of their worldly possessions that would fit into two covered wagons and headed north out from Huntsville, Arkansas, to McDonald County, Missouri.  Alex handled one of the wagons, and Mary Jane’s younger brother, Tommy ELLIS, drove the other.  Northwest Arkansas is hilly country and the trip would not have been easy, especially over dirt roads and wagon trails.  Daughter Fannie, in recollections that she wrote over eighty years later, said the family camped out three nights on the way to what ultimately became their new home in Missouri.
 
(Fannie’s recollections of the family’s early days in McDonald County were entered into this blog last Monday – February 1, 2021.)
 
Fannie’s notes did not tell why the family suddenly decided to move, and why they headed north to Missouri instead of southwest to Texas which was the more common migration route at that time.  Family lore says that the move was the result of an argument with a neighbor, and a more specific story relates that a neighbor’s hogs got into Alex’s crop fields, and when he approached the neighbor about the problem the man threatened to kill him – and apparently the man had a history of violence that made the threat believable.   That story says that they began the move that very day.
 
And why did they travel north instead of going with the immigration flow and heading for Texas?   There was no indication in Fannie’s notes that the family had any connections to McDonald County, nor are there any records of relatives living in the area.  If Alex had lived in Missouri as a boy, he might have had friends from his youth in McDonald County or at least knowledge of the area that would have drawn him northward.
 
But whatever their reasons were for settling in McDonald County, Alex and Mary Jane were destined to spend the rest of their lives there, and almost all of their children lived at least part of their married lives in McDonald County as well.  
 
I conducted a taped interview with my mother, Ruby “Florine” SREAVES MACY in December of 1982 shortly before she began losing her mental acuity due to brain tumors.  We talked mainly about family history, and, in particular, her parents and grandparents.   I transcribed approximately half of the tape, six typed pages, and then set it aside. Sadly, my copy of that tape disappeared before I got back to finishing the transcription.  In the portion that I did transcribe, my mother revealed the following about her Grandpa SREAVES:
 
My mother was five-years-old when her paternal grandfather, Alex SREAVES, passed away, and she had very few memories of him.  She did recall, perhaps through family stories as much or more than through actual memory, that he traveled around in what she described as a “little wagon.”  She also described him as being an extrovert in the same mode as his oldest daughter, Ethel.  Ethel became a school teacher and later, in retirement, a Vista Volunteer and a Democratic Party activist – and she was the type of person who would jump up at a program and take charge by telling stories or jokes.  My mother said that her Grandpa SREAVES was the same way.  He liked to tell stories and was “a real comedian.”
 
And (according to the written recollections of his daughter, Fannie) when he wasn’t traveling around the community in his little wagon and entertaining the neighbors with stories and jokes, Alex SREAVES was a true son of the earth who made a living for his large family through hardscrabble farming, selling mule colts, and manufacturing and selling the best sorghum in the area, a product so good that he bought labels and had his name proudly displayed on each jar!
 
Alex and Mary Jane raised a house full of very fine children who all went on to be successful in life.  Arkansas’s loss, for whatever reason, became Missouri’s gain!
 
The couple are at rest in the Swars Prairie Baptist Cemetery in Newton County, Missouri, a place where many of their descendants are also buried.