My search for Isabella Malissa Phelps, my greant-grandfather Terrell Phelps' half-sisters, began with a glimpse of her at 21 years of age in the Damascus church record of 1863. I discovered that none of our Phelps family had ever heard of her. Who could this mysterious girl be, and why had she disappeared from our traditional family history?
Members of our Historical Society furnished the first threads of tragedy that would through Isabella's life story. She was only two hours old when her mother died. At eight years old, her father died and she went to live with her maternal grandparents near Damascus Baptist Church. Her mother, Malissa Isabell Black Phelps was buried in an unmarked grave in a burial plot belonging to the McKellars, relatives of Isabella's grandmother, Mary Ann Pickens Black.
The census records of 1850 do not mention Isabella being in her grandfather Thomas Jefferson Black's home -- I can only conclude she was left off the record. her court-appointed guardian, Andrew M. Black, lived in Lowndes County in 1850, as an overseer. He was unmarried and enumerated in the Rocky Mount District in the home of Pleasant F. Webb. Isabella was shown with the Black family in the Butler census of 1860. Andrew Black's report to the court mentioned fund for clothing and schooling.
I know now that Isabella was well known to the Phelps family during her girlhood. Some of the Phelps daughters were near her own age. They attended church together, and possibly were baptized in Pigeon Creek by Preacher Matthew Bishop on the same day.
In the early 1860's, the David Williams family moved into the area. David and Elizabeth Williams had one known son, William J. Williams, and a number of daughters. By 1862 William J. Williams was a soldier in the Southern States Army. On November 16, 1865, he became Isabella's husband. She was 23 years old.
Isabella's new father-in-law did not live long after he moved his family to Butler County. He is buried in Damascus Cemetery. The Confederate War had also clained the lieves of three of his mother's brothers and two of her brother's sons. Isabella finally achieved a semblance of a normal life by the 1870 census. She was living in her own home with her husband and 3 year old son, John.
Life in the Reconstruction South was unbearable for many who had seen too much of war, destruction, death and sorrow. Laws enacted by the federal government designed to further punish Southerners drove many families to seek refuge in the West. In those days people usually set out for the West after the crops were gathered in the fall before winter set in. Damascus Church records indicate that on November 9, 1872, a group of members received letters of dismissal to move to Texas. The group consisted of Isabella's family and Kinchen Rhodes, with his second wife, Mary A. E. Williams Rhodes; and all of his children but two; Isabella's widowed mother-in-law, Elizabeth Williams, and her daughter, Abigail; her uncle's widow, Mary Hastings Black, sister of Mary Black; Martha H. Williams Courtney (her husband's sister) and Simeon Courtney; Albert Butler (son of Whitmill Butler) and his wife, Irene Cone Butler. Since there were many women and children, they must have gone by wagon train. I discovered from census records that Mary Black and family and Abigail Williams arrived in Hopkins County by 1880 and Whitmill Butler's estate records show Albert and his wife stopped off in Arkansas.
For a long time I could not discover what had become of Isabella and her family. I had given up hope of finding her again. She was lost somewhere in the piney woods of Texas. Then I chanced upon a copy of a January 11, 1877 obituary from The Greenville Advocate, mentioned by Mrs. Marilyn Davis Barefield in her book Butler County Obituaries. The news struck me like a bombshell: Isabella had returned to Alabama a widow with three small children. Her eldest son, John had been killed in an accident in a cotton house owned by Jacob Rhodes. The boy had gone with his parents to Hopkins County, Texas in 1872. Two of her children born in Texas had died after their return and were buried in Damascus cemetery. Now John had been laid to rest beside them. Isabella had become a widow grieving for all of her children. The 1880 census records Isabella living once again with her grandmother Black. Her grandfather had died in 1868.
I wondered how had Isabella managed to make the trip back from Texas with three small children? Damascus church records reveal that Kinchen Rhodes, her brother-in-law, visited Butler County once or twice to see his son, Jacob Rhodes, and his daughter Mrs. Frances Walton. Possibly he brought them back on one of these visits.
On Oct. 13, 1880 Isabella married again. The Butler County marriage records names her husband as T. J. Williams, age 33, making his birth date around 1847. Damascus Church records of 1871 name new members Thomas Williams and his wife Elizabeth G. Williams (the former Mrs. Summerford). Census records for 1870 (not always reliable) show there are both 40 years old. The 1880 census shows she is 49 and he is 42. They have a daughter by this time, Lillian, who is 9 years old. When Isabella and her new husband went to Texas, they took a child named Lillian Williams with them.
Isabella's grandmother Black died May 8, 1994. In that settlement of the Black estate (not settled when T. J. Black died in 1868), Isabella, wife of T. J. Williams of Wood Co., Texas, is named as an heir. The move to Texas came during the period 1880-1884. On a trip to the Mobile Genealogical Library, I checked the 1900 census records for Wood Co., Tx and found this family in Precinct 3, Dwelling No. 112-113:
Four children, two of whom survived. (This did not count the three deceased children buried at Damascus in Butler County.):
1910 Census of Wood Co., TX, Pct. 3, Dwelling No. 163-163:
And nearby in Dwelling No. 228-228:
Ella and Charles E. were children of Isabella M. Phelps Williams and Thomas J. Williams. The Averys were children of Lilliam Williams Avery and Charles William Avery, married in Wood Co.
In October of 1983, we recieved a letter from the Historical Society of Wood County, Texas, responding to my request for information on Isabella Phelps Williams. Mrs. Royce Avery of Quitman, Texas had furnished a great deal of information. Lillian Williams, child of Thomas J. Williams and his first wife, has married quite young to William Charles Avery on 8 June 1887 in Wood County. The Averys moved for a time to Durant, Oklahoma, after the four Avery children were born. Lillian died in Oklahoma. The Avery family returned to Wood Co., Texas, where Mr. Avery died in the early 1900's. The Avery children were taken in by their grandparents, Isabella and Thomas Williams.
Isabella Malissa Phelps Williams, monther of at least 7 children -- only two of whom lived to be adults -- died July 7, 1909. She was buried in the Sharpe Cemetery, near Yantis, Texas (northeast Texas). Her second husband, Thomas J. Williams, was born 1840 (on tombstone) and died February 1933, and was buried the Sharpe Cemetery. Her daughter Ella Williams married Ephraim Fouse 22 Dec 1910, died 5 Aug. 1932, and was buried in the Ebenezer Cemetery, Wood Co., no children. Her son, Charles E. Williams, born 1844, Texas, married Lena M. Harrin 21 Sept. 1902, died 6 Nov 1918, and was buried in Sharpe Cemetery. Charles & Lena had at least 7 children. My search for Isabella had been long, frustrating and sad. I had discovered that from her tragic birth in Alabama to her death in northeast Texas, she had survived two moves to Texas, two marriages to two men with the same last name, and the burial of five of her own children. It was no wonder that she was lost to our Phelps family for so many years. Having made contact with her surviving grandchildren, I am now at peace with Isabella, and can lay her to rest.
Kirby J. Phelps
109 Sunset Drive, Greenville, AL. 36037
(Edited by Yvonne Burt)
This article was published in the January, 1999 edition of The Butler County Historical & Genealogical Society Quarterly. It is reproduced here as originally printed with permission of Kirby J. Phelps, Greenville, AL.
A special thanks to Mr. Phelps, whom I have never met. Without his help as a member of the Butler County Historical & Genealogical Society from the beginning of my genealogical search in 1965 until the present, I may have never found some of the branches of my family tree. It is with much appreciation that I say Thank you, Mr. Phelps, for your dedication and devotion to this much time consuming endeavor.
© 1999-2002 Kerby Phelps