My Dad's Parents
back to Ancestry
posted 2007 August 4, cbd
written 2007 May 26, cbd
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In the past I've done google searches on "A. Bailey Duncan" trying to
see what was there about dad. Since that was the name he used,
you hit a few church websites, CAP stuff, and so forth. The other
day it occurred to me to search on "Arthur B. Duncan" since that would
uncover any military or other government records.
In that search, the only hit on dad himself was the birth record from
Canyon. There are also a few other Arthur B. Duncan's in history,
one lived in Archer City, Tx, about 50 miles from Henrietta where my
sister Wilda was born. He has to be a relative of some sort, but
I don't know how.
But, there were several hits on dad's grandfather, Arthur B. Duncan,
County Judge of Floyd County and one of the first homesteading settlers
of the Floydada area. He and his wife came from the Sulfur
Springs area which is on the other side of Dallas. That's a long
drive today in a car with modern convenience stores every five miles.
Back then in a wagon with nothing and nobody out there it must have
been a fearsome undertaking!
Subsistence living, that's what that piece transcribed from Mrs.
Duncan's memoirs was all about.
It is amazing for me to think about what was going on in about 1890. It
was the "rooaring 90s" some places. Greats like Brahms and
Debussy were working somewhere in the world. Radio and airplanes
were about to be invented, and the automobile. People like
McKinley were President and Teddy Roosevelt was rising to power.
The great rocket pioneer Tsiokovsky was doing the first work on
interplanetary travel. And, our great grandparents were living in
a dugout out in forsaken West Texas, pulling themselves up by their
bootstraps.
It's no wonder I have so many conflicting passions in my blood!
Our great grandfather's father was a doctor from the east coast. Dad's
grandfather was born when the doctor was 62 years old. Dad's
father was born when his father was 38. That's two generations in
five generation's time!
A google search on dad's other grandfather, John Ellis Courtney,
reveals some other interesting stuff. In particular, Aunt Da was
born on Valentines Day 1907. Her father died the next year, 1908.
Our grandmother, Lethel, was only three herself. 1908 is a long
time ago. His wife Sappho "grandmother Courtney" died in
1940. I think her obituary is somewhere in dad's papers.
There was some stress in the family. Arthur B, or AB, our
grandfather was coming up in the family business, Guaranty Abstract and
Title in Floydada. One of Lethel's sisters (Cecil I think) worked
there. So, our grandfather, the namesake of the big founding
father of the county, married the sister of a hired hand, a poor farm
girl. Our dad used to say that this didn't set well with Mrs.
Duncan and that was among the reasons they moved to Canyon, something
like 100 miles away, and started up their own Guaranty Abstract and
Title Co there.
In-law tensions and moving far away to avoid most of it seems to be a
pattern in our family. Of course, it is also a universal constant.
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