The Finneys of Washington, Walton
and
Escambia
County, Florida
Murrell Finney
circa 1790 -
circa 1835
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M |
urrell spent his early life in
Burke County, Georgia. He may have been
born there or in South Carolina. He participated
in a number of land lotteries in the early 1800s and won several. By 1818 he had migrated down into Laurens
County, Georgia. He left records all
over the place in Laurens County. In Aug
of 1836 he even sued Solomon Jones, the father of his son John’s wife, for
$10.40 and won. Murrell shows up in the
1830 census at the age of 40-50 with a wife and two sons and two
daughters. He is missing from the 1840
census and the last mention I find of him refers to land sold in 1845 that
formerly belonged to Murrell Finney.
Since his son, John, was still in Laurens County in 1840 with a member
of the household who is probably his sister, it seems likely that Murrell died
there between 1830 and 1840. I have
never discovered who his wife, our great-great-great-great-grandmother, was.
Mrs. Murrell Finney
(1780 to 1790) - after 1830
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A |
bout all we know about this
woman is that she married Murrell between 1796 and 1804 probably in Burke
County, Georgia. She had at least six
children - three boys and three girls between 1804 and 1820 that show up in the
census data of 1820 and 1830.
Solomon Jones
1790 - 1837
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S |
olomon enlisted in Jones County,
Georgia as a soldier in the company commanded by Captain Newnon
in the regiment commanded by General Floyd in the War with the Indian Hostiles
and Great Britain. He entered the
service in the year 1812. Later he
enlisted in the Cavalry under Captain Steele.
Having had enough military duty, Solomon married a 16 year old girl
named Elizabeth Woodson on 16 Sep 1816. She
bore him at least one child (in 1818) before she died. After the death of Elizabeth, Solomon
remarried to Sarah Davis on 29 Nov 1821. He became Constable of Laurens County
for a period of time. Solomon remained
married to Sarah until his death in Dublin, Laurens County, Georgia. Sarah never married again but on 20 Oct 1860,
undoubtedly at the urging of her son, William, whom she was living with at the
time and her step-daughter, Harriet B. Finney who lived nearby, she began
pursuing her entitlements to bounty land granted to certain widows and orphans
under the 3 Mar 1855 Federal Act on land grants. Harriet and her brother, William Bowie Jones
continued to pursue this bounty land long after Sarah’s death in Washington
County, Florida in Aug of 1868 (Sarah,
by the way, is buried in the Moss Hill Cemetery just outside of Vernon,
Florida). I don’t know what the final
outcome was. As for Solomon, he is
buried somewhere in Laurens County, Georgia - most likely in Dublin.
Elizabeth Woodson Jones
1800 - 1821
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E |
lizabeth died young after giving
birth to a child that would become a remarkable woman. She named this child Harriet. Other than that I know nothing else about
Elizabeth other than that she died in Georgia and had a brother named Jonathan
C. Woodson who married Margaret Barfield 3 Mar 1816 in Jones County, GA
Next Generation
John Finney
1815 - 1854
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J |
ohn was born in Laurens County,
Georgia near Dublin. He grew up enduring
Indian raids on his family’s farm and saw his father ride against the raiders
in the Georgia Militia. About 1840 he
married Harriet Jones - undoubtedly one of the most stalwart women of that
time. By 1850 John and Harriet had
followed Harriet’s brother to Washington County, Florida near the present town
of Vernon. They had four daughters and a
son, all of whom had been born in Georgia. John paid taxes there until 1854 and
owned a lot in town. He disappeared from
the records by 1855 and apparently left no will - at least I have never found
record of one. Nor have I found evidence
of his burial site in the Washington County area.
Harriet B. Jones Finney
1818 - 20 Jan 1892
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H |
arriet was born in Georgia the
same year John Jacob Astor opened the American Fur Company on Lake Michigan at
a point that would later become Milwaukee.
She married and began her family in Georgia but her brother, William B.
Jones, followed the family of his fiancée down to Washington County, Florida in
1847 and Harriet and John soon relocated there as well. By 1850 she and John had five children:
Irena, Sarah, Elizabeth, William and Rebecca (who was born in Florida the
previous year). They were also taking
care of Harriet’s stepmother, Sarah Jones, and another 15 year old girl also
named Sarah Jones - perhaps a half-sister.
When John died about 1854
Harriet, at 37, left with a bunch of kids to raise, remarried
to Ira Shine Williams in December 1855.
This marriage gave Harriet one more child, George Washington
Williams. The marriage was a rocky one. Harriet left Ira for a time then went back
for a while before leaving him for good about 1858. Ira moved to Texas, leaving George with
Harriet, and filed for divorce in 1860.
He died in 1862.
By the 1860 census Harriet was again using the name Finney and had two
additional kids listed - Virginia Finney and George Williams. Her stepmother had moved in with Harriet’s
brother William by this time. At this
point they began a lengthy effort to claim land lawfully granted to Harriet’s
and William’s father, Solomon, for his service in the War of 1812. Harriet signed several papers with William in
an application to the bureaucrats for the land. 1870 finds her in Walton County
under the name of Harriet B. Williams with four of her now grown daughters and
four children, two of whom were sisters - one of which was our
great-grandmother, Katie Merritt. Life
continued to slide downhill.
By 1880 Harriet is living in
Milton, Florida with Katie and Hattie.
The census that year lists these two girls as granddaughters. At 15, Katie had already finished school and
Hattie, at 9, was attending school. To
keep the family together, Harriet was working as a laundress. She was 62 and widowed for the second
time. Kate married early the following
year and Hattie married several years later.
Harriet died a few years after that and is buried in the Hart Cemetery
in Okaloosa County about three miles from the little town of Dorcas. Her
tombstone is broken into three pieces but is still readable. Without this woman’s heroic efforts our
great-grandmother may never have lived to meet Orrin Merritt and we would not
be reading this today.
Next Generation
Rebecca J. Finney
Feb 1850 - after 1870
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T |
his woman has been the mystery
woman among several ancestors who were exceedingly hard to trace. She was not even mentioned on her children's
death certificates, except for her youngest daughter’s and then only as
Josephine. Evidently few in the families
of her offspring knew her name. Little is known of her other than that she bore
at least two daughters, Catherine Florence and Hattie J. Finney. We wouldn’t know even this if it weren’t for
a most remarkable event that occurred in Pensacola.
I had set up a meeting with Paul
Merritt and Cynthia Dean who were helping me research this elusive connection
for Thursday night of 29 Oct 1996. I
arrived in Pensacola about noon and went out to the Pace Library at UWF to look up some source documents on Ward information I
had discovered in the South East Native American
publication.
The librarian remarked that it
had been years since anyone had asked to see those files. It took him a while to locate them but he
finally brought out about ten pounds of Ward documents. While I read over the
documents, a woman and a younger man entered the area and milled around until
the librarian asked them if he could help them.
They said they were looking for the Ward records. I looked up and the librarian was staring at
me in disbelief. I said it was a busy
day for the Wards and that I had the records they were looking for. I asked them what Ward line they came from. They didn’t understand the question for a
moment then said, “Oh, Asa Ward and Cornelius Ward.”
Several weeks earlier I would
have said that I wasn’t familiar with that line but Cynthia Dean had recently
researched the Ward lineage that married one of Hattie Finney Brown’s
daughters. I then asked if they were descendants of Hattie Brown. The women said that Hattie was her
great-grandmother. I talked with them
for about an hour and arranged to call the son that night from Cynthia’s where
Paul and I were to meet at 7:30.
I arrived at Cynthia’s at
7:30. At eight we called James
Hubbell. He arrived about thirty minutes
later and, after introductions, revealed that prior to meeting me at the Pace
Library he and his mother had stopped at Jerry’s Restaurant for lunch and as
they got out of the car heard a woman screaming on the other side of the
parking lot. He ran over there to find a
man lying on the pavement bleeding and losing consciousness. James had worked in an ER for several years
and gave the man CPR after determining he had stopped breathing and had lost
his pulse. The man regained
consciousness and shortly thereafter fire trucks arrived in response to the 911
call that had gone out a few minutes earlier.
Unfortunately he later died en route to the hospital.
Cynthia remarked that she had
been driving by at the time and had seen all the fire trucks and the ambulance
that arrived a few minutes later. She
had been dictating a message to Paul in her tape recorder as she drove past and
had wondered what was going on. I remarked
at the strangeness of the sequence of these events and Paul added that on top
of all of that the waitress working in Jerry’s Restaurant was a descendant of
Harriet and John Finney. This was a
discovery Cynthia had made about a month before.
After all the recounting of what
had actually happened that day James brought out his paperwork on the
Wards. In there was a letter written by
his grandfather, Thomas Brenton Ward. In part, it said, “There were (2) Finney
sisters who lived in Geneva Ala with mother. Kattie Finney who married Oran Merritt. Harriet Josephine Finney
who married Henry W. Brown.”
“Harriet and Katties
mothers sister Virginia married George Wright who was
Bob Wrights Daddy. Bobs
mother was Lucy Browns second cousin.”
In fact, Bob,
was Lucy’s second cousin once removed but this relationship is often incorrectly
interpreted as second cousin. Apparently
Thomas got the relations among Bob, his mother Virginia and Lucy Brown somewhat
confused – an easy thing to do.
The significance of this
discovery is that we now know that their mother was a daughter of Harriet and
John Finney because the Virginia who married George Wright was their
daughter. So we had narrowed the field
for Kate’s mother from 50 million women to three - Sarah, Elizabeth or Rebecca
Finney.
Unfortunately, James’ paperwork
did not contain the actual names of Kate’s and Hattie’s parents but this was,
nonetheless, the biggest find so far relating to those mysterious parents. The strangeness of the events leading to this
finding add to the mystery of this whole Finney
affair.
Armed with this new knowledge, I
was able to figure out which of the Finney daughters was Kate’s mother. Since the 1880 census lists both Kate’s and
her sister’s parents as being born in Florida, Rebecca Finney must be her
mother. Only two of Harriet’s daughters
were born in Florida, Rebecca and Virginia.
Because Virginia is mentioned as a sister of Kate’s mother, only Rebecca
remains as a candidate for the direct ancestor on our Finney side.
Some time later I found some of Rebecca’s descendants and got a
record of her children written by her last child, Curtis Lafayette Blair. Kate and Hattie were not on that list so
Rebecca appears not to be Kate’s mother.
That leaves only Sarah Finney about whom we know even less.
Next Generation
Catherine (Katie)
Florence Finney Merritt
26 Nov 1863 - 21 Sep 1922
Digitally Colorized Photo
of
Kate Finney Merritt
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I |
f there is such a thing as a
guardian angel this woman must be mine.
From the moment I found her name it seemed to mean something special to
me though I knew nothing else about her.
Then I discovered that she died 21 years before I was born - to the day.
Weeks later I discovered her birthday.
It was the same as my wife Jennie's.
The probability of this is 1 in 325.25 squared or one chance in
105,788. Of course there are numerous
coincidences when one goes through hundreds of dates and the probability of
finding dates with various meanings is high but this particular coincidence
strikes me because I had already become so interested in her once I discovered
she existed. And there are only two
really significant dates that define a person's life - the date they were born
and the date they died. Her two
significant dates match the only two significant dates that Jennie and I
currently have - our birth dates. And
one other detail. Kate had a daughter
named Jennie Merritt. My wife's name is
Jennie Merritt. The unusual spelling is
the same in both cases, though Jennie was short for Virginia in the case of
Kate’s daughter. Both Jennies had the
same birthday – the same as Kate’s.
Katie has been, throughout this
search, the most difficult to trace.
After five months I had found absolutely no trace or hint of her parents
with the sole exception of the entry on her death certificate of Geo. Finey
(sic) as her father. I have never
located a shred of evidence on this man to associate him with her paternal
grandmother's family nor have I ever found a trace of her mother. This, in spite of having good records on
Katie herself since she was six years old and on Kate’s sister, Hattie, since
she was five months old.
Kate seems to have been born in
either Santa Rosa or Walton County, Florida during the time Abraham Lincoln was
President. From at least age six on she
lived with her grandmother, Harriet B. Finney, who later remarried to a
Williams. Katie attended school in the
Euchee Anna Valley area of Washington County.
She and her little sister, Hattie, six years younger, stayed together
until Kate's marriage to Orrin. In 1880
they lived on Conecuh Street in Milton, Florida while their grandmother, an
educated woman for her time, earned a living as a laundress to keep the small
family together. I have driven down this
quiet side street. A small creek runs
across it about midway along its several-blocks length. Kate and Hattie must have played in this
creek on hot summer days.
Kate and Orrin were married on
the 11th of May 1881 at “Aunt” Edna Mashburn's house in Bay Minette,
Alabama. Dennis Mashburn put up the
$200.00 marriage bond. By 1885 she and
Orrin were settled into Muscogee, Florida and had two daughters, Minnie and Myrtle
Katie. Arthur would be born the
following year. Hattie, her little sister, had married a cooper named Henry
Brown shortly after Kate married Orrin and Hattie and Henry moved to Muscogee
as well.
By 1900 Kate had given birth to
eight children but had lost one, her second child, Myrtle Katie. On a fresh Spring day that year Myrtle Katie
drowned in the local creek. Myrtle Katie was just 16. Orrin and Katie buried her up on the hill
across the creek from their house in what is now the old Muscogee Cemetery.
Left to right are Charles Brooks, Virginia Clair,
Minnie Harriet, Arthur Oran and Paul Benjamin Merritt
circa 1899 Muscogee, Florida
Kate was raised by her
grandmother when times were tough and therefore knew the value of getting
things done by whatever means were at hand.
Orrin was often away when planting time came and, as they had no mule,
Kate would hitch Arthur to the plow and till up the garden plot to get the
planting done on time. Ola was upset
when she learned of this years later but it seems not to have harmed Arthur any
- he lived to be 92.
By 1910 Mable and Arthur had
left home but were replaced by Bill
Ostman, a friend of Orrin's from Sweden (see Herman’s story Fences) and by Eddie Petty whose
mother was a Mashburn. Eddie's parents
had died so Orrin and Kate took Eddie in to raise. Katie and Orrin must have been doing
well. They had numerous photos made of
their children during a time when a photo was a not so insignificant
expense. She also had nice furnishings
in her home though the house itself belonged to the sawmill.
Edie Bowman Avant remembers visiting
and sitting at the supper table in the Merritt house. Kate presided at the head of the table with
Bill Ostman at the opposite end. Orrin
sat next to Kate and the children and other assorted visitors and guests sat
along the length of the table.
Bill Ostman is a puzzle. He apparently lived with Kate and Orrin from 1901 until his death in 1916. I have never been able to find what his connection to the family was even though he was referred to as “Uncle” Bill. He served as a handy man, repairing fences and such until his death. He was a seaman, some say a sea captain, earlier in life. On one trip back to Sweden he brought all of Kate’s girls and granddaughters brooch watches. Edie Bowman Avant still had hers 90 years later.
William “Uncle Bill” Ostman
16 Nov 1839 Stockholm, Sweden
–
3 Aug 1916 Muscogee, FL
In 1922 she took a trip with
Orrin and her grandson, Herman, up to Alabama to visit her daughter
Minnie. Sixty years later Herman would
write a short story called Two Way
Trip about this journey.
Before the year was out Kate began experiencing stomach problems. In August she was diagnosed with stomach
cancer by Dr. V.R. Nobles in Pensacola.
Her daughter, Jennie, cared for her through her illness. She stayed in Pensacola with her sister
Hattie Brown at 405 North 6th Ave during the final days, however. There was no attempt to operate. Kate just grew weaker until she finally died
at 11 AM on the 21st of September. All
of the children and grandchildren gathered and kept a watch throughout the
night.
Kate in her Summer White
Circa 1920 Muscogee, FL
Since there were no funeral
homes in the Muscogee area, her funeral service was held entirely at the grave
side. Fuzzy and Edie remember how her
daughter, Jennie, was overcome with grief.
Jennie cried so hard and hugged her mother’s body for so long that when
the coffin lid was finally closed Kate was buried with her daughter’s tears
covering her face as though she had been out in the rain. That incident as much as anything attests to
the feelings her children had for her.
She was much loved and much missed by them after her death. She was buried up on the hill in Muscogee
next to her daughter Myrtle Katie who had been interred there 22 years
earlier. Another 22 years would pass
before Orrin joined them. Jennie died
several years later while changing her newborn daughter’s clothes and was
buried in St. Johns Cemetery in Pensacola.
Virginia “Jennie” Merritt
Circa 1915
Kate’s sister, Hattie Brown,
would live until the evening of the 9th of December, 1931. On that cold, dark night the dogs began
barking out in the back yard and Henry Brown, then in his seventies, grabbed
his 12 gauge automatic shotgun to go out and see what the ruckus was all about.
As he passed Hattie in the kitchen, the shotgun barrel brushed across her chest
and discharged. The blast slammed her
against the wall. Her heart blown out
through her left shoulder, Hattie stumbled across the kitchen and out into the
parlor where her son Hoyt stood watching in horror as she sank to the floor and
died.
Harriet “Hattie” Josephine Finney Brown
When the sheriff arrived they
discovered a 300 gallon still in the back yard and large quantities of
moonshine nearby. Henry must have
thought someone was messing with his whiskey that night. A jury was formed within the hour to observe
the body and begin drawing conclusions about what had happened. The next day Henry was found free of blame in
Hattie's death. And so the lives of
these two sisters who were orphaned, raised by their grandmother in the pine
barrens of the West Florida panhandle and who endured to become mothers and
wives and grandmothers came to a close. Hattie was buried in St. Johns
Cemetery. Henry was held over on charges
of booze possession. Henry was charged
with possession of liquor and served 60 days hard labor for it. Several years later he was lighting a gas
stove. It blew up burning Henry so badly
that he died a few days later, following Hattie on the 25th of April 1933. They are buried together in lot 35 section 44
of St. Johns Cemetery. Hoyt lived until
1992 in Marianna, Florida. I'm sure he
never forgot the cold winter night of December 9th, 1931.
