Separating Fact
from Fiction
An Impartial Look at Jackie Cochran’s Family
Ties
There is a great deal of misinformation
about Jackie out on the Internet. I’ll
try to stick to factual data from impartial sources here. The data may be wrong but at least we’ll
know where it came from, if not who entered it.
This first entry is from the records
of the LDS but this type of record often contains inaccuracies. For instance there is no Bearhead, Florida today. I am lucky, however, to have an eye witness
account of Bearhead, though, and clicking on the link above will take you to a
most interesting portrayal of Bearhead as well as more insight to Bessie
Pittman’s early life.
Unfortunately the LDS gives no source
information for this data. This is
clearly Jackie Cochran as Bessie Lee Pittman, though.
Bessie
Lee PITTMAN
Birth:
11 MAY 1906 Bearhead, , ,
Florida
Death: 09 AUG 1980
Parents:
Father: Ira PITTMAN
Family
Mother: Mollie GRANT
Another IGI entry is this one on
Bessie’s father. Again, no source info.
Ira
PITTMAN
Death: 29 MAY 1928
Marriages:
Spouse: Mollie GRANT Family
Marriage: About 1893
Of Gatewood, , Baldwin, Alabama
And there is this on Mollie Grant. Still no source information.
Mollie
GRANT
Birth: 11 NOV 1871 Of, De Funiak Springs, Walton, Florida
Death: 11 MAR 1948
Below is Jackie’s family in the 1910
census. They are in Pine Barren about
12 miles NNE of Muscogee. You will
notice that there is no Mamie in this census.
The census shows that Jackie’s mother had 5 kids and that all were still
alive so either Mamie is Myrtle or Mona or was missed by the census since the
1920 census shows only Bessie (Jackie) left with her parents. Since Mamie married Jessie Hydle, I looked
them up in 1920 DeFuniak Springs and noted that Mamie was 21. This would have made her about 11 in 1910
and only Mona, age 12, fits that profile.
Apparently changing names was a family characteristic. Of the five children, only Bessie was born
in Florida. The others were born in
Alabama.
By 1920 the Pittmans were living in
DeFuniak Springs in Walton County, Florida.
Below is their census information for 1920. Bessie is shown in this census as being married but this is
probably an entry error on the part of the enumerator.
I know from a family tragedy in my mother’s line that Jackie was in Millville, a part of Panama City, Florida, in 1918. This story is verified by a news account in the Panama City Pilot from the day after the incident and from Jackie’s book. Mary Nicey Brigman was the daughter of my mother’s grandfather, Postell Brigman.
Mary
Nicey Brigman, age 12, drowned in Watson Bayou about 3:00 PM on the first day of
June 1918 when she and her friend, Kathleen Martin, ran into her usual swimming
area and fell into an underwater hole that had been washed out the previous
night when a tug boat had run aground.
In trying to free itself, the tug had blown out a huge hole in the
bottom.
Another girl with them, Bessie Pittman (Jackie Cochran), wrote of the incident in her 1954 book, The Stars at Noon. Cochran was learning to dogpaddle with the girls when the two girls ran off into deep water and disappeared. She sat on the edge of the bayou all night waiting for divers to find the two little girls. They found their bodies the next day. Cochran went on to become a famous aviatrix but never forgot the incident.