|
|
|---|
Background on PhotographsIn 1847, Noah scarborough (c1808 – 1881) and his wife Samantha Fowler scarborough (1819 – 1905) moved their family from near Snow Hill, Wilcox County Alabama to eastern Union Parish Louisiana. They settled a short distance north of the Ward's Chapel Road, about eight miles east of Farmerville. They had a family of nine children, eight daughters and one son. With the exception of one daughter who moved to Texas with her family following the conclusion of the War Between the States, all the scarborough daughters married and lived their entire lives near Noah and Manthy in eastern Union Parish.Noah and Manthy's only son was Matthew Addison scarborough (4 June 1850 – 19 March 1931); he married Clarenda Jane Ham (25 Oct 1854 – 23 July 1902) on 16 June 1873 in Union Parish. Janie Ham scarborough was the granddaughter of the early Union Parish pioneer William Ham (c1801 – 1867) and his wife Clarenda Seale (c1811 – 1897). Matt and Janie had a total of twelve children, six of whom perished as infants or toddlers. Most of the other children who survived childhood suffered from poor health their entire lives. In fact, only one of their twelve children married.
Beginning sometime in the 1890s, Janie scarborough Ham contracted consumption or tuberculosis. By early 1902, she had become bedridden with this disease. On 1 April 1902, Matt & Janie's eighteen year-old daughter Mattie Jane scarborough was keeping biting insects off the family's cattle by fanning the flames of a fire to force smoke towards the livestock. Her dress caught fire, and her mother jumped out of her bed to rush help smother the flames. Both mother and daughter were severely burned. Mattie's injuries led to her death the next day. Janie Ham scarborough died several months later of both consumption and the burns.
Matthew and his surviving son and four daughters continued to live on their family farm east of Farmerville for anothertwenty years. Together with numerous relatives, they attended services at the Liberty Hill Primitive Baptist Church nearby. They remained especially close to the families of Matthew's sisters,including Betty scarborough Ward's children. Betty's two youngest daughters, Cynthia Jane Ward Brantley and Nancy Theodosia Ward Hudson, lived on farms very near Matthew's, and all of the cousins had close bonds.
Matthew's daughter Linnie scarborough (31 Jan 1887 – 7 July 1969) married Ambrous B. Cole (1 Feb 1883 – 16 Dec 1931) in 1905. However, none of the remaining scarborough children even married. After years of suffering poor health, in 1920 two of Matthew's surviving four daughters had severe cases of consumption (tuberculosis). Doctors told him the humid weather of north Louisiana had contributed to their suffering, and that dry desert air would offer improvement. Thus, in March 1921 he sent his daughters by train west to El Paso briefly, then on to Carlsbad, New Mexico to the St. Francis Hospital, where nuns cared for them. When it appeared that their conditions improved somewhat, Matthew and his daughter Linnie scarborough Cole sold their farms near Farmerville and moved their families to Eddy County New Mexico. They did not travel by wagon, but rather by train. Their farm animals, equipment, seeds, and furniture took eight railroad cars, and the family arrived in their new desert home on 21 December 1921. Despite their initial improvement, the desert climate did not relieve the health problems of Matthew scarborough's two daughters for long. Lillian (31 Mar 1889 – 25 Nov 1922) and Semantha Ethel (17 Feb 1885 – 3 Feb 1925) both died within a few years of moving to New Mexico (here are some scarborough family photographs).
Maintaining Family ConnectionsDespite the long distances, many family members from Farmerville kept in close touch with Matthew scarborough and his family. In fact, the families write and visited back and forth from soon after their departure from Farmerville in 1921 until the latter 1960s. Surviving photographs show that the scarboroughs took their visiting Farmerville relatives to Carlsbad Caverns in 1922, merely a few months after the family's arrival there. My great-aunts grew up with their scarborough cousins, and they frequently visited them in New Mexico, as did my great-grandmother and other relatives. My father recalls several visits from Matthew scarborough's two surviving daughters in the 1950s and 1960s.
In addition to visits and letters, the families exchanged photographs on a regular basis. I inherited a collection of photographs of Matthew scarborough and his family from my great-aunt, who undoubtedly obtained them from her mother, scarborough's niece. On the other hand, scarborough's descendents through his daughter Lillian Cole have a large collection of photographs of Union Parish people, apparently sent to the scarboroughs out in New Mexico by relatives left behind in Farmerville.
Tragically, the bulk of this collection of Union Parish photographs have no names written on the back or any other identification. In about 1990, Matthew scarborough's descendent Marilyn Fugate Gerloff gave me a large collection of unidentified photographs, a total of about 130 pictures. Through comparisons to my own photographs and people I personally knew, I was able to identify many of them as members of my own immediate family. However, the others remain unidentified.
She and I remain confident that all of these photographs are of Union Parish families who lived in the eastern portion of the parish, likely Cole, Ward, Hudson, Flowers, Miller, Albritton, Boatright, Roan, or scarborough families. Please contact me if you can identify any of the people in these photographs.
The PhotographsI cannot precisely date most of these photographs. The bulk of those I can identify date from about 1910 to 1930. However there are five tintype photographs, and these appear to date from the 1880s or 1890s.
The moral of this story: write the names of the people in your pictures on the backs of your pictures!!