Ida Burke Rankin Archives - Digging Up Dead Relatives:

Family Names and Stories

Every genealogist knows that names can be reliable pointers to ancestral lines. And that pursuing your family tree inevitably produces some good stories. I’m sharing some of both here.

Burke

Our first son’s name is William Burke Willis. William is downright generic, but Burke is a solid clue. In fact, my mother’s birth surname was Burke. Her father was William Logan Burke (“WLB”). Thus, our son was obviously named for my grandfather, known as W. L. or “Billy” Burke. That name persisted: Gramps was one of at least five William Logan Burkes in the family.

The first WLB was born in 1860 in Wilson County, Tennessee. He migrated to Waco, Texas, where he became an early Sheriff and U. S. Marshall of McLennan County. The Sheriff’s father was Esom Logan Burke — thus the “L” in those five middle names. I haven’t proved a Logan on the Burke tree, but I’ll wager there is one.

Here are two Burke stories.

My earliest proved Burke ancestor was John Burke of Jackson County, Tennessee. John owned a fair amount of land on White’s Bend of the Cumberland River. Beautiful county, that is. He had a ferry there, owned enslaved persons, and ultimately fathered sixteen children in two marriages. Some of the sons turned out to be what my grandmother would call “no account,” but Esom Logan was a solid citizen, a Wilson County farmer.

John was born in Virginia during 1780-1790. He has accounted for a fair share of my gray hair: I cannot prove his parents. An early family history undoubtedly contains a great deal of truth, but is likely wrong about John’s parents. Y-DNA has not yet helped.

Desperate, I consulted the Draper Manuscripts. This is a vast trove of historical records, including letters, genealogical and historical notes, land records, newspaper clippings, and interview notes, all collected by Lyman Copeland Draper, a Wisconsin historian. The collection focuses on the frontier history and settlement of the old Northwest and Southwest Territories of the US from the 1740s to 1830. Draper’s papers are assembled in 491 volumes. To describe the collection as labyrinthine would be a massive understatement.

When you are looking for info in Tennessee around 1800 or so and are in a masochistic mood, head for the microfilms of the Draper Manuscripts. First, though, consult a book titled Guide to the Draper Manuscripts or something along those lines.

Lo and behold, I found a John Burke in a Tennessee volume! Draper described him as a renowned teller of fabulous tall tales. The example recounted by Draper: a near neighbor, let’s call him Thomas, was riding home one day and saw John out in the field. Thomas called out to him.

John, said Thomas, how about if you tell me one of your famous tall tales?

John didn’t miss a beat. You don’t have time for such foolishness, he said. I just saw one of your cows loose in your cabbage patch having a fine meal.

The neighbor headed home at a brisk trot. There was no cow in the cabbage patch, of course.

I am not certain that the above John Burke was the same man as my ancestor John Burke of Jackson County. I have not been able to find that story again, hoping it might identify the county where John the storyteller lived. That probably says something about the accessibility of the Draper Manuscripts. However, I definitely know that my grandfather, the second WLB, was also a fabulous storyteller. My grandmother tore out a clipping from one of the Houston newspapers one day and mailed it to my mother, writing on it, “your daddy in print with a big one.” Here is a transcription of the clipping, a column by Bill Walker titled “The Outdoor Sportsman.”

“A roaring gas flame in the big brick fireplace in the Cinco Ranch clubhouse warmed the spacious room and the several members of the Gulf Coast Field Trial Club who gathered there for coffee Saturday morning before the first cast in the shooting dog stake.

“Usually when veteran field trial followers get together the conversation turns to great dogs of yesteryears and this group was no exception.

“W. L. “BILLY” BURKE related one about an all-time favorite of ours — Navasota Shoals Jake.

“Burke and the late W. V. Bowles, owner of Ten Brock’s Bennett and Navasota Shoals Jake, were hunting quail in the Valley on one of those rare hot and sultry winter mornings. Jake pointed a covey several hundred yards from the two men and out in the open.

“BOWLES suggested they take their time approaching the pointing dog, since he was known to be very trustworthy. When the two hunters did not immediately move to Jake, the dog broke his point, backed away to the cool shade of a nearby tree and again pointed the birds.

“THE COVEY was still hovering in a briar thicket when Bowles and Burke arrived. Navasota Shoals Jake was still on point.”

Lindsey

OK, moving on. Our second son is named Ryan Lindsey Willis. Yep, there are Lindseys on my tree — one of my favorite lines. My nearest Lindsey ancestor’s name was Amanda Adieanna Lindsey Rankin. I loved her as soon as I learned the name; I wish I had her picture. She answered a knock on the front door of her father’s Monticello, Arkansas house one night in 1863, and immediately fell in love (according to her recounting) with “the handsomest soldier you ever saw.”

That was John Allen Rankin, wearing an almost brand-new uniform. The last battle in which he had fought was Champion’s Hill, east of Vicksburg, where the Confederates were soundly beaten. They were out-generaled. The Confederate in charge, General Stephen Lee (no relation to Robert E.), marched his soldiers piecemeal into Grant’s entrenched position.[1] About 4,300 Confederate soldiers and 2,500 Union soldiers were casualties. It was considered a Union victory and a decisive battle in the Vicksburg campaign.

On 19 May 1863, whatever was left of John Allen’s division after Champion’s Hill arrived at Jackson, Mississippi. He was in the 1st Mississippi CSA Hospital in Jackson from May 31 to June 13, 1863. The diagnosis: “diarrhea, acute.” That was near the end of the second year of his one-year enlistment.

On September 1, 1863, now in Selma, Alabama, the army issued John Allen a new pair of pants, a jacket and a shirt, all valued on the voucher at $31.00. Good wool and cotton stuff, presumably. Probably the best suit of clothes John Allen ever owned. That was the last the Rebel army ever saw of him. He was shortly declared AWOL and placed under arrest in absentia.

The next thing you know, he was in Monticello, making Amanda Lindsey swoon.

My earliest conclusively proved Lindsey ancestor was a William who died in 1817 in Nash County, North Carolina.[2]He left a charming will instructing his eldest son John Wesley Lindsey to “see that thay [the younger children] mind thare Stepmother and thare larning bisness and are kept out of all dissepated cumpaney and also to have sum chance of schoolling at least to know how to read the word of God.”[3]

William’s youngest son, Edward Buxton Lindsey — my ancestor — is also a story. When he was sixteen, he attended an auction of a deceased brother’s estate. Undoubtedly under the watchful eye of his brother John Wesley, Edward acquired almost everything he needed to start adult life and continue his larning bisness: a bedstead and linens, a pocket knife, a man’s saddle, a razor, an arithmetic book, a cyphering book, and an ink stand.

Edward married four times, which was a serious disgrace in the eyes of his daughter Amanda. He wound up old and widowed in Claiborne Parish, Louisiana in 1880, raising a young son from his last marriage. I felt sorry for him and tried fruitlessly to find his grave, hoping to pay my respect. I don’t think he got much of that from anyone else, except for two of those four wives: two wives divorced him and two died, including Elizabeth Odom Lindsey, his first wife and Amanda’s mother. I wish I had a picture of him, too. He must have been a charmer.

Estes

Family names are usually a blessing (see Burke, above). Sometimes they create chaos. Case in point: my ancestor Lyddal Bacon Estes (“LBE”). My irreverent husband calls him Little Sizzler.

When I identified LBE as the father of Mary F. Estes who married Samuel Rankin (parents of John Allen, the Confederate deserter), I rubbed my hands in glee. With those three surnames, I reasoned, finding his parents would be a piece of cake. Hahahaha …

The genealogy gods apparently do not like cockiness.

Turned out there were three men named Lyddal Bacon Estes whose lifetimes overlapped (not counting my LBE’s namesake son). One of them probably did not have the middle name Bacon, or at least he left no record of either a name or middle initial, notwithstanding appearances in county records.

All three LBEs trace are from the same Estes line of Virginia. And those three surnames don’t lie: there are both Bacon and Lyddall ancestors on my tree. As it turned out, I had to sift through hundreds of Estes records in Lunenburg County, Virginia, searching for LBE’s parents. Conclusive proof nevertheless eluded me. I finally proved them to my satisfaction by the process of elimination: there was only one male Estes in the huge Lunenburg Estes family who could reasonably have been LBE’s father. And only one female, also an Estes, who could reasonably have been his mother.[4]

I like the Estes line, too. The original immigrant to the Colonies was an Abraham Estes, a fine given name for the first of the line to arrive here. The Estes family traces back nicely to Kent, England in the late 1400s. They lived on the east coast and were fisherman and linen weavers.

Broadnax

Also in Kent were my Broadnax family ancestors, a set of certifiable bluebloods. The original immigrant to the Colonies was John Broadnax, a Cavalier, who was undoubtedly fleeing from Cromwell’s. He left his family behind in England. He appeared in Virginia just long enough to have his inventory recorded in York County.

I don’t much care for the Broadnax line because (1) it has been so thoroughly researched it is not challenging (and is therefore no fun) and (2) my view of my father’s mother, Emma Leona Broadnax “Ma” Rankin is my most recent Broadnax ancestor. Ma was, uh, how shall I say this? Not exactly warm and fuzzy. She was an unsmiling, bigoted, tea-totaling Southern Baptist who kept her house in Gibsland, Bienville Parish, Louisiana, heated to about 90 degrees. No mechanical assistance was necessary to achieve that temperature in the summer, it being Louisiana and all. But the heating bills in winter must have been spectacular, especially considering the high ceilings in that old house.

Ma’s husband, John Marvin “Daddy Jack” Rankin, son of the Rebel deserter, was poor as a church mouse. I once asked my favorite Rankin cousin — Butch, we called him as a kid, so he is stuck with that moniker for life — what Daddy Jack did for a living. All of my Rankin cousins were or are considerably older than I, my father being the youngest of the four Rankin siblings and not becoming a father until the ripe old age of 39. So they all know more than I did about the Gibsland Rankins.

Butch’s succinct response: Anything he could, hon. Anything he could. He was a driver of a dray wagon in one census and a waiter in a restaurant in another. A certificate among my father’s records proves he was Bienville Parish sheriff for one term, another non-lucrative profession.

The cousins once showed me an old popcorn wagon stored under the rear of the Rankins’ Gibsland house, which was built on a steep slope. We all figure Daddy Jack sold popcorn from time to time, perhaps turning a profit when Bonnie and Clyde were killed and their corpses displayed in GIbsland. Ma Rankin took in mending to help make ends meet, although they often did not. The Rankin fortunes didn’t revive until their kids, or at least their three sons, escaped rural North Louisiana.

At the first Rankin Cousins reunion at Butch’s house in 1995-ish, my cousin Diane, a child psychiatrist, asked me why in hell Ma Rankin, from the still-wealthy Broadnax family despite a serious setback after the Civil War, married penniless Daddy Jack.

Are you kidding me, Diane? You remember her, uh, personality? She cannot possibly have had many prospects.

One of the cousins, Ellis Leigh Jordan, brought a movie camera to the reunion. He trained it on each of the seven cousins individually and made us tell something about Ma. The word “strict” was grotesquely overused. All four of Ma’s children turned out to be atheists, not surprising in light of Ma’s relentless proselytizing. Furthermore, a fondness for alcohol persisted in the family. Nobody knows where any genetic propensity came from. I think being raised by Ma would drive anyone to drink.

I never knew Daddy Jack, who died in 1932 at age 56. But I knew Ma well enough. Gibsland is sufficiently close to Shreveport, where I grew up, to allow for monthly Sunday visits. I hated those visits with a passion. To describe Ma as merely humorless would prove that either my imagination or my vocabulary is failing me. “Strict” isn’t adequate, either. She once stopped a desultory conversation dead in its tracks, a bullet through its brain, like so …

The setting was her hot-as-hades living room at a Thanksgiving get-together. At least three and perhaps all four of Ma’s children were in attendance. Grandchildren were there as well, restlessly squirming in our seats. At least I was squirming: this was 1957, and I was only eleven. My cousin Marvin, the next youngest, was 15 or 16; Butch and Diane were 18. Ma’s favorite conversational topic was usually other people’s gall bladders, her own still being intact. Thankfully, that topic died quickly for lack of subjects.

Uncle Louie, Diane’s father, finally tried to break one of the prolonged silences by commenting on Sputnik, the satellite launched by the USSR the previous May.

Pretty soon someone will put a man on the moon, Louie opined.

Ma, arms crossed over her chest, fired her conversation-ending bullet: If God had meant for man to be on the moon, he would’ve put him there.

My cousins and I fled to the yard, where we pelted each other with pecans. The frigid cold was a respite.

… And now I have gone on too long. It was fun writing this.

See you on down the road. I’m happy to say that another contribution from Spade is in the works.

Robin

* * * * * * * * * *

[1] General Stephen Lee used exactly the same awful strategy at the Battle of Ezra Church, west of Atlanta, and got Allen W. Estes, brother of Mary Estes Rankin, killed.

[2] Although I cannot conclusively prove his parents, William Lindsey’s grandfather — was a William of Brunswick Co., VA and Edgecombe Co., NC. William had three proved sons: William, Joseph, and John. Y-DNA establishes that one of them was my William’s father, but I can only prove that it wasn’t Joseph. I suspect it was the other William.

[3] North Carolina State Library and Archives, CR069.801.6, “Nash Co. Wills 1778 – 1922, Keith – Owen,” file folder for William Lindsey dated 1817, containing a handwritten will of William Lindsey dated 16 Feb 1817 and proved May 1817.

[4] LBE’s parents were first cousins: John Estes, son of Elisha Estes and Mary Henderson, and Mary Estes, daughter of Benjamin Estes and Frances Bacon. Elisha and Benjamin were sons of the Lunenburg Estes patriarch, Robert Estes Sr. Robert Sr. was a son of Abraham the immigrant. In yet another illustration of the value of names, LBE’s first son was named Benjamin Henderson Estes. His first daughter, my ancestress, was Mary Frances.

The Fastest Post Ever Written

The speed of this article will be a function of how fast I can type, since I’m not going to be encumbered by a time-consuming evidentiary trail. This is coming straight out of memory. Here’s why I’m writing it …

I exchanged a few texts with one of our sons a few days ago. He sent a picture of a statue from a city he is visiting. He said it reminded him of “James Rankin.”

– Did autocorrect change “Jim” to “James,” I asked?

No response. I continued.

– If you are thinking of your grandfather, his full legal name was Jim Leigh Rankin.

I gave it some more thought.

– “Leigh” is pronounced “LAY,” not “LEE.”

– “Right!” he responded.

This gave me a jolt: perhaps I have not kept my genealogical eye on the ball. I have written a ton of articles about Rankins. However, I have evidently failed to tell my sons much about their Rankins — to the point that one son didn’t know his Rankin grandfather’s actual name.

Perhaps I have not written about my father because it is so personal. I adored him, as will soon become obvious. Whatever. Here is his story, and I will strive not to libel too many of his relatives.

* * * * * *

Jim Leigh Rankin about 1955

If I just stick to the facts, his story will be short and sweet. He was born in rural north Louisiana, grew up poor, went to work, married, had one child, was successful, retired, and died.

Well, perhaps that is a bit spare, since it applies to a great many people. As I consider it, though, his life to me was a series of vignettes. A very quiet man, he said little. I can count on my digits the number of long-ish talks I had with him, and I wouldn’t be in any danger of running out of fingers. I learned about him mostly from observation and stories from other people.

Here’s a better outline. He was born in 1907 in Cotton Valley, Webster Parish, Louisiana. He grew up in Gibsland, Bienville Parish, which is famous only for being near the place where Bonnie and Clyde were shot. That part of North Louisiana probably hasn’t changed much since the Depression. It was still pretty grim the last time I drove through the area.

He was the youngest of four siblings. The family was poor as church mice. His father, John Marvin Rankin (“Daddy Jack,” my cousins said he was called) was not a successful provider. He was briefly the Sheriff of Webster Parish, a waiter, and the driver of a dray wagon. Their home was rented. His wife, Emma Leona Brodnax Rankin (“Ma Rankin,” or just “Ma”) took in mending to help supplement whatever he earned.

I once asked Butch, my favorite Rankin cousin, what Daddy Jack did for a living. Butch had a quick answer: “Anything he could, hon. Anything he could.” There was an old popcorn cart stored under the rear of their house, which was built on a fairly steep slope. Daddy Jack undoubtedly peddled popcorn at one time, perhaps turning a profit when all the tourists came to gawk at the corpses of Bonnie and Clyde, laid out in the coroner’s office in Gibsland.

Prior to my father’s generation, our branch of the Rankin family hadn’t had more than two nickels to scratch together since my great-great-great-great grandfather Samuel “Old One-Eyed Sam” Rankin, a wealthy owner of land and enslaved persons, died circa 1816 in Lincoln Co., NC. My line didn’t share any of the estate’s largesse. Sam’s son Richard, from whom we descend, died in serious debt before his father.

See, this is how I go off the rails about family history. Our sons go MEGO (“my eyes glaze over”) when I spout this stuff. I will try to stay on track.

Ma Rankin was a grim, tea-totaling, Southern Baptist, charitably described by my much older cousins as “strict.” I avoided her and her stultifying, overheated house to the extent I could get away with it. She once stopped a desultory conversation dead in its tracks, a bullet through its brain, with three of her four children and several grandchildren trapped in her living room. My Uncle Louie attempted to break yet another long silence:

– well, the Russians have launched a satellite. Next they will be sending a man to the moon.

– If God had intended for man to be on the moon, pronounced Ma, He would have put him there.

Her arms were crossed. She was dead serious. My cousins and I fled to the yard, where we pelted each other with pecans. Perhaps not surprisingly, Ma’s children all turned out to be nonbelievers.

Ma Rankin was born into a wealthy family which survived losses of impressive fortunes during what some Southerners just called “the War.” Her Brodnax ancestors in this country stretch back to a couple buried in the Travis Family burying ground on Jamestown Island. In England, her line goes back to landed gentry in Kent. The Bushes also descend from the Jamestown Brodnaxes.

One of Ma Rankin’s brothers, Uncle Joe Brodnax, had the sense to acquire a bunch of mineral rights in north Louisiana. The land was located over a prolific oil and gas play. He evidently left a nice legacy to his sister Emma “Ma” Rankin. Among other things, they finally owned a house.

Daddy’s three older siblings all had college degrees. He didn’t go to college because, he explained, “the money ran out.” Presumably, he was referring to Uncle Joe’s legacy. Instead, he started playing what he called “semi-pro ball” after he graduated from high school. I took that to mean what would now be minor league professional baseball. (I wasn’t adept at the art of cross-examination when I heard these stories.) A lefty himself, he was released after a game when a left-handed pitcher struck him out in four at-bats.

He then went to work in the gas fields as a “chart changer’s helper” for a natural gas transmission company. It didn’t take someone too long to notice he was smarter than everyone else and had a prodigious, and I mean remarkable, memory. Also a marked ability for math. In the wink of an eye, he ascended the field ranks to become the Monroe area gas dispatcher. That meant he went out to the field when and as needed, 24/7/365, to open or close valves on the company’s gas transmission system.

Soon thereafter, he was transferred to the company’s headquarters in Houston, where he became the national expert on gas proration. I won’t explain what that is, because it would cause serious MEGO. Instead, I will just say that a man who worked for him for a quarter-century told me Daddy “wrote the gas proration laws for Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi.” That was clearly an exaggeration, since he wasn’t a lawyer. But that statement contains a large element of truth. He was a regular witness testifying about gas proration before legislative committees and regulatory commissions in those states. His questioners must have been patient, because he spoke slowly and quietly, using as few words as possible.

He met my mother in Houston at the natural gas transmission company where they both worked. She was a typist/secretary in the stenography department. From time to time, she would go take dictation from him and type it up. He chewed tobacco. My mother, unaccountably, thought that was cute. They were relatively old when they married in 1936: 26 and 29. They were a decade older when they became parents for the first and only time.

Jim and Ida in Southside Place, Houston, circa 1937

His work brings a couple of vignettes to mind. I remember his frequent trips out of town. My mother and I would go see him off at the Shreveport airport — United Gas moved its headquarters there in 1940. This story is set in 1951. Eisenhower, still aglow with his WWII success, was running for President. He was making a stop in Shreveport for a campaign appearance, and the airport was packed by the time my parents and I arrived. Daddy was flying on a DC-3, a two-engine affair which had a folding door containing steps for boarding.

At the top of the boarding steps, Daddy turned to face the crowd, lifted his hat with his left hand, and flashed the “V” for “Victory” sign with his right. The crowd roared its approval.

Another vignette: after Texas passed its gas proration laws, producers had to calculate something called “allowables,” the amount of gas which they could legally produce. Daddy went to Austin frequently to testify in rate cases or whatever the current issue may have been. He stayed in the Driskill, still a lovely old hotel with a fabulous bar. Those oil and gas guys would head to the bar at the end of the day. Every evening, at least one producer would accost him with, “Hey, Jimmie, I’ll buy you a drink if you’ll calculate my allowables for me.” I seriously doubt that he ever paid for a drink.

Another vignette from before I was born, related by my mother. He returned home early one morning from a train trip to Baton Rouge. My mother found a metal door plaque identifying a men’s restroom under the bathroom mat. She accosted him with the evidence, with some asperity.

– Jimmie, what on earth is this doing here?

– I don’t know … we were having a pretty good time, and I didn’t know where else to put it when I got home.

Train car bars weren’t as classy as the Driskill, but the bourbon probably tasted the same. I wish she had saved the damn sign.

Here are a couple more vignettes, featuring the sense of humor he displayed as a pretend celebrity at the airport in 1951.

We were having our weekly dinner at Morrison’s Cafeteria in Shreveport. Daddy turned to me conspiratorially.

– There were a bunch of bees flying down a highway. They needed to stop. They passed by a Gulf station, a Texaco station, and a Shell station. They finally turned in to an Esso Station.

(That was Standard Oil of Ohio at one time. I think).

– Why do you think they passed up the first three stations for the Esso station, my father asked me, a perfect 14-year-old straight man.

– I don’t know, Daddy.

– Because they were SOBs, he chuckled.

– Jimmie! my mother said reprovingly, suppressing a grin.

Another family meal, but this time I was 18 or 19, home from school for a holiday. It was the three of us in a local Mexican restaurant, plus my maternal grandmother Ida Burke.

Granny examined me with a mildly disapproving look and pronounced her verdict.

– Robin looks just like her father.

I can understand some disappointment: my mother was a world-class beauty.

Without missing a beat, Daddy turned to me and patted me on the arm.

– Of course she does!!! That’s why she’s so pretty!!!

He did enjoy rattling a Burke cage from time to time. I dearly loved my Burke relatives, but they were outmatched.

In his family, he was always characterized as a man who was too kind to swat a fly. He was the family caretaker. Needed a will probated? He was your man. Taking care of his mother when she reached the age of frequent doctor’s visit? Selling her house after she died? Ditto. Helping with whatever? Just ask.

He was bitten with what he called “the genealogy bug” after he retired in the late 1960s. My husband Gary was in pilot training at Craig AFB, Selma, AL. He and I were too poor for long distance calls (and Daddy was too frugal, and naturally disinclined to talk). Instead, we wrote letters. His regular salutation was “Dear Robin Baby.” Or perhaps it was “Dearest Robin Baby,” my memory is unclear. He and his sister Louise, who lived in Heflin, Bienville Parish — the only one of the four Rankin siblings who didn’t have the sense to get the hell out of rural north Louisiana — drove all over the area visiting relatives, collecting family stories.

They found a good love story and a mystery about their Grandfather, John Allen Rankin. Turns out John Allen met his future wife Amanda Lindsey in 1863, when he knocked on the door of her father’s house in Monticello, Arkansas. He was reportedly looking for a sister who lived in the area. Amanda later said that she “opened the door to the handsomest soldier you ever saw and fell in love on the spot.” The mystery was why he was “already out of the War in 1863,” as Daddy put it. So he sent off for John Allen’s military records, writing to me that he would keep it a secret if there was “a skeleton in the attic.”

There was, but it’s not a secret because I’ve written about it on this blog. My Confederate great-grandfather, displaying what I consider imminent good sense after being in a losing battle near Vicksburg and approaching the second year of his 6-month enlistment, deserted. He had just been issued a new uniform and several months back pay in Selma, Alabama. He evidently walked to Monticello, where he made Amanda Lindsey swoon.

What else about Daddy? He was a sentimental sweetie who carefully saved every scrap that was important to him. I found among his keepsakes an envelope labeled “Burke’s baby tooth,” with one of our son’s teeth carefully wrapped in folded tissue paper. There was also every report card, piano recital program, dance recital program, and twice-yearly reports from the private school I attended through the third grade.

He taught me how to play baseball, of course. Better yet, he taught me how to keep score. He and I would occasionally go (just the two of us!) to a Shreveport Sports game. He encouraged me to join him in booing lustily when an umpire made a bad call, defined as most anything unfavorable to the home team. He told me that a batter would hit a foul ball 5 out of 7 times when facing a full count. One of these days I’m going to test that theory.

He had a table saw and other carpentry tools in the garage. He made a back yard high jump for me. It consisted of two upright 2″x 2″ boards on wooden stands, with nails in each upright marked at one-inch increments for height. A bamboo pole served as the horizontal piece.

He also made a fancy cage for one of my Burke grandfather’s fabulous gifts: a pair of quail. Gramps also brought me baby ducks, baby chicks, and other wildlife. Also a B-B gun and a small rod and reel.

– I swear he will bring her an elephant one of these days, said Daddy.

He was 5’7″ and 140 pounds soaking wet, but nevertheless a fine athlete. He excelled at pretty much anything he tried. As an adult, he was a good golfer and above-average bowler, as evidenced by a “250” coffee mug from Brunswick. In high school, he was on the tennis and baseball teams. He was voted “Most Handsome.” He was the editor of the high school yearbook. I suspect he took that job to make sure his name appeared therein as JIM, not JAMES. My son wasn’t the first person who made that mistake. The engraver who did my wedding invitations didn’t believe that my mother, who had been married to him for a mere 31 years in 1967, actually knew his first name was Jim. He appeared on those wedding invites as “James.”

One of my high school best friends died in Vietnam. At his 1970 Shreveport funeral, Daddy (who loved my friend) cried like a baby. He wrote to one of his genealogy correspondents — Mildred Ezell, the woman who published the definitive books on the Brodnax family — that he never wanted to hear “Taps” played again.

Roughly a quarter-century later, I exchanged emails with Mrs. Ezell. She had posted a query online asking for information about my Brodnax great-great- grandfather. I replied, identifying myself as Robin Rankin Willis. She asked me in the next email if I knew whatever had happened to Jim Rankin. He clearly made an impression.

I’m going to omit the part where he got cancer and died. I don’t think I can stand to write about it.

And that is all for now. See you on down the road.

Robin

William Logan Burke(s): their stories

My mother’s family has produced so many men named William Logan Burke that we had to create nicknames to keep them straight. The first William Logan Burke (1860-1899) was simply “the Sheriff.”

His son, who was inter alia a polo player, was “W. L.” or “Billy” Burke (1888-1961) — AKA “Gramps,” my grandfather.

The next son in line was also a polo player, nicknamed “the Kid” (1914-1975) — AKA “Uncle Bill.”

The Kid’s elder son — our collective imagination failed here — was “Little Bill” (1952 – ?).

The fifth and possibly last of the name is Little Bill’s nephew. He has several brothers, all of whom are grown and might yet produce a sixth William Logan Burke.

They all have stories, with a couple of family legends in the mix. There has been a recent trend toward tragedy. I’m rooting for the most recent of the Sheriff’s namesakes to turn the luck around. As usual, I won’t write about anyone who might still be living.

Here is the Sheriff:

He was born in Wilson County, Tennessee in 1860, the eldest son of Esom Logan Burke and his wife Harriet Munday. Not inclined to be a farmer, he left for Texas shortly before his father died. He wound up in Waco, McLennan County, where he was “an early sheriff” and a U. S. Marshall. He died of tuberculosis at age 39, leaving his widow Betty and their 11-year-old son, the second WLB.

Here is his wife, Elizabeth (“Betty”) Morgan Trice.

According to my grandmother Ida Hannefield Burke, Betty had red hair and “could hold her liquor like a man.” The Hannefields also lived in Waco. Granny told me she always “felt sorry for Mrs. Burke.”

“Why?” asked I.

“Because the Sheriff was gone so much,” said Granny.

“Why was that?”

“I don’t know,” Granny replied. “Out chasing criminals, I suppose.”

Betty Trice’s family also came to Waco from Wilson County, Tennessee. The Burke and Trice families undoubtedly knew each other there, since both owned land on a lovely tributary of the Cumberland River called Spring Creek. Betty’s father, Charles Foster Trice, died in a cave-in of the creek bank in 1881, when she was 18. His estate was insufficient to cover debts and his land was sold, probably providing the impetus for his family to head for Texas.

Before Foster died, though, he and his wife Mary Ann Powell Trice gave rise to a cool family legend. Wilson County is in Middle Tennessee, a part of the state that was not partial to either side in the Civil War. The Union Army had a headquarters nearby and sent a “recruiting” detail around from time to time, looking for “volunteers.” Hearing they were in the neighborhood, Mary Ann dressed Foster up in a woman’s dress and bonnet. She sat him down in front of the fire in a rocking chair, peeling potatoes. The Union soldiers departed empty-handed.

Mary Ann lived to be 95. She died in Waco when her great-granddaughter, Ida Burke, was 18 years old. Ida, my mother, told me she heard that story straight from Mary Ann’s mouth. So it is the gospel truth, in my view.

Berry and Sion Trice, two of Mary Ann’s brothers-in-law, also went to Texas. They walked all the way from Wilson County to Waco — about 900 miles — in 47 days, according to William Berry Trice’s obit. Berry was also famous for weighing 425 pounds when he died, as well as having been a director of the Waco National Bank. Berry and Sion were partners in a Waco brickmaking company. It supplied most of the nearly three million bricks used to build the bridge over the Brazos River in Waco. The bridge was completed in 1870 and was then the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi; it was part of the Chisholm Trail. Baylor has some fun photographs and postcards of the bridge at this site.

The Sheriff, his wife Betty Trice Burke, her mother Mary Ann Powell Trice, the Hannefields, and a whole host of other Trices are buried in the old Oakwood Cemetery in Waco. Not surprisingly, Sion and Berry have impressive monuments. Made of marble, not brick.

The Sheriff and Betty had only one surviving child, the second William Logan Burke: the polo player, Billy or W. L. Burke, AKA Gramps. He was an orphan by age 18, when his mother died. He went to live with one of his mother’s sisters, his Aunt Mattie Trice Harmon. Here is Gramps in his sixties as a referee in a polo match:

Gramps was the spitting image of his mother, IMO. Here he is as a young man:

Besides eventually becoming the oldest polo referee in Houston, Gramps was a Grade AAA, certifiable, lovable character. Whenever he came to Shreveport to visit his daughter Ida, he brought gifts for me. He started with an add-a-pearl necklace, undoubtedly Ida’s idea. He soon switched to various livestock: ducklings, baby chicks, and — my favorite — two quail. My father built an elaborate cage for the pair in the back yard. Unfortunately, the quail commenced their characteristic “bob-WHITE!” call just before the first light of dawn. They had extraordinary lungs. The neighbors complained. One night, the quail “escaped.” I don’t recall what happened to the cage.

My father was fond of saying that Gramps would probably bring an elephant one day.

Besides being a polo player, referee, and trainer of polo ponies, Gramps was a hunter and fisherman. He also raised bird dogs, including a prizewinner named April Showers. Gramps taught me how to shoot a BB gun at a moving target by hanging a coffee can lid from a tree limb by a string. The gun was another gift from Gramps, as was a small rod and reel. Never mind that my parents didn’t fish.

The Sheriff’s grandfather back in Tennessee was a John Burke whose first wife was Elizabeth Graves, daughter of Esom Graves and Ruth Parrot. John Burke was known as a teller of tall tales. If that is an inherited talent, Gramps most likely got it from his great-grandfather John. Granny once sent Ida a newspaper article she had torn out of one of the Houston papers, date unknown. Granny had written on the article in pencil, “Your father in print with a big one.” It was in a column titled “The Outdoor Sportsman” by Bill Walker. I have transcribed it on this blog before, but here it is again. Cinco Ranch is west of Houston.

“Usually when veteran field trial followers get together the conversations turns to great dogs of yesteryears and this group was no exception.

“W. L. “BILLY” BURKE related one about an all-time favorite of ours — Navasota Shoals Jake.

“Burke and the late W. V. Bowles, owner of Ten Broeck’s Bonnett and Navasota Shoals Jake, were hunting birds in the Valley on one of those rare hot and sultry winter mornings. Jake pointed a covey several hundred yards from the two men and out in the open.

“BOWLES suggested they take their time approaching the pointing dog, since he was known to be very trustworthy. When the two hunters did not immediately move to Jake, the dog broke his point, backed away to the cool shade of a nearby tree and again pointed the birds.

“THE COVEY was still hovering in a briar thicket when Bowles and Burke arrived. Navasota Shoals Jake was still on point.”

Gramps’s only son, the third William Logan Burke, was nicknamed “the Kid” by other polo players, presumably in recognition of his father and the family sport — but also for his wild and reckless polo style, according to his sister Ida. That was Uncle Bill.[1]

He was good. According to Ida, West Point recruited him to play polo, but West Point probably wasn’t the Kid’s style. Ida’s best friend Tillie Keidel once shared a rumble seat with him on a trip from Fredericksburg to the dance hall in Gruene. Exhausted from fighting him off, she told Ida it seemed like the Kid had four hands. She rode with someone else on the trip home.

Ida also said the Kid was a mathematical genius, which might be true notwithstanding her propensity for embellishing Burke virtues. All three of the Burke siblings were smart as the dickens. The Kid’s son believes he was valedictorian of his high school class and received a scholarship offer. Bettye, the youngest sibling, was a member of Mensa. She once created a professional set of blueprints for a home she and her husband were building on the shore of Clear Lake. Ida, the eldest sibling, skipped two grades in elementary school, was valedictorian of her high school graduating class in Fredericksburg, and received full-ride scholarship offers from every major university in Texas.

I always thought she was exaggerating about those scholarships. Not so. After she died, I found them, seven in all, among her papers: University of Texas, Texas Technological College, SMU, Southwest Texas State Teacher’s College, Baylor, and TCU. Rice was tuition free, but they had an offer for her, too, because that’s where she went for her Freshman year. Then she switched to the University, where she was a Littlefield Dorm “beauty.”

October 1929 arrived, and she had to quit school to help support her family during the Great Depression. Gramps was a car salesman in Fredericksburg, and you can imagine how many people bought cars in the early 1930s. The family lived on the old Polo Grounds in San Antone for a while, eating so much peanut butter that Aunt Bettye swore off the stuff for life.

I don’t know what the Kid did in the 1930s, but he didn’t go to college, so far as I know. They would not have been able to afford it, even with a scholarship. I assume he also helped support the family during the Depression, as he was only 16 in 1930. He joined the Marines in time for World War II, probably after Pearl Harbor, when everyone enlisted. His tombstone identifies him as a First Lieutenant.[2] I don’t think he was ever stationed overseas. Mostly, he started getting married and kept it up his entire life. I have a tiny photograph of him in his Marine mess dress uniform when he was still a buck Sergeant, probably on his first wedding day. All told, he married four times. Looking at old pictures and remembering him, I can see why: he was an attractive man, with the standard issue navy blue Trice eyes and a charming grin. I thought he resembled JFK, another man with charisma.

Here’s a picture of the Kid with his sister Ida and her only child, who never learned to sit a horse worth a plug nickel:

Spoiler alert: at this point, the William Logan Burke stories take a dark turn. If you want a happy ending, sign off right now with the picture of Ida, Uncle Bill, and the little girl on the unhappy horse.

The last military record for him on Fold3 identifies him as a First Lieutenant on a 1946 muster roll. For as long as I knew him — beginning in the early 1950s — the Kid worked a blue collar union job in the Dow Chemical plant in Brazoria County. It was one of several plants which manufactured Agent Orange. He died in 1975, only 60 years old, consumed by what Ida called “more kinds of cancer than I ever heard of.” I will refrain from a rant about Agent Orange and just put some information in the footnote at the end of this sentence.[3]

Well, that is a downer of a way to end a story, but you can’t say you weren’t warned. I will demur re: writing about Little Bill, who may still be alive and who has a beautiful daughter out there somewhere. Fortunately, there is definitely another William Logan Burke, the family’s fifth. He is one of the sons of Little Bill’s brother Frank and a grandson of the Kid.

So far as I can tell from our emails, Frank’s nice family is sane, sober, and happy. It is also sizeable, so I’m rooting for a sixth William Logan Burke. Maybe he’ll become a Sheriff, and we will have come full circle.

See you on down the road.

Robin

[1] For some reason, Uncle Bill went by William Logan Burke Jr., notwithstanding that he was the third of that name in the line. He first son went by William Logan Burke III.

[2] Here is an image of the Kid’s tombstone.

[3] As early as 1962, the Monsanto Chemical Company reported that a dioxin in Agent Orange (TCDD) could be toxic. The President’s Science Advisory Committee reported the same to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that same year. As you probably know, Agent Orange was used as a defoliant in Vietnam. Many vets who served there have been diagnosed with cancer, but could rarely prove that Agent Orange was the cause. In 1991, the federal Agent Orange Act created a presumption that the chemical caused the cancer of anyone who served in Vietnam. That includes bladder cancer, chronic B-cell leukemia, Hodgkin’s disease, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, prostate cancer, respiratory cancers including lung cancer, and some sarcomas.

Tennessee-Texas migrants, including some Trices and Burkes

When I first started writing this blog, another family history researcher told me that people would prefer stories to my academic, footnoted, law-review-style crapola. In all fairness, she didn’t expressly badmouth my articles. She didn’t need to. The statement that people would prefer to read stories instead of, uh, whatever the heck my stuff might be, is about as subtle as the neon lights in Times Square, except less flattering.

In any event, I’m edging toward stories. Gradually. This post is about some relatives and ancestors who left Tennessee for Texas: two Trice brothers, a young male Burke, and a Trice widow with eight children. They all wound up in Waco, McLennan County, Texas. My original plan was to figure out the reason(s) they chose to migrate and craft a story with motivation as the unifying theme. I couldn’t make it work due to lack of both imagination and descriptive skills. All of them apparently went to Texas looking for wide-open spaces and opportunities.

Now, see, that is exactly the sort of thing people say about Texas that makes everyone hate the place. Since I have already lit that fire, however, I’m going to fan the flames by carrying on about Texas for a bit before getting to the Trices and Burkes. Please stick with me, because there are a couple of anecdotes here that might count as stories. A cross-dressing Trice. A Burke with a pet wild turkey. Annoying quail. A bird dog named Navasota Shoals Jake. Also, some cool old photos.

At one time, it seemed like half of Tennessee was heading to Texas. In the period after Mexico became independent from Spain in 1821, more people migrated to Texas from Tennessee than from any other state. Cheap land was undoubtedly the big draw. I doubt anyone was enticed by the fact that every poisonous snake indigenous to North America has a home somewhere in Texas. All four types — rattlers, copperheads, water moccasins, and coral snakes — appear in Harrison County, the location of a summer camp I attended. Frankly, my mother was more difficult to cope with than the snakes, which have a live-and-let-live approach to coexistence. She was also a native Texan. I wonder if that is a non sequitur.

Some of the guys who died at the Alamo in 1836 were among the early wave of Tennessee migrants to Texas.[1] More than thirty Tennesseans fought there, including Davy Crockett.[2] He is the source of what may be the most fabulous sore loser quote in the entire history of American politics. Accepting his loss for a race for a congressional seat from Tennessee, he famously said, “You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.” Unfortunately, that didn’t work out well for him. John Wayne did OK.

The state has inspired other noteworthy quotes. Larry McMurtry (author of Lonesome Dove) said “Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas without eating a chicken fried steak.”[3] Someone else said that, back in the covered wagon days, you could leave Beaumont with a newborn son and he would be in the third grade by the time you reached El Paso, which qualifies as primo Texas braggadocio.[4] A travel writer for some major newspaper voted Texas “the most irritating state.” He didn’t explain why, but it has a whiny undertone, don’t you think? Traffic? Cedar pollen? Bless his heart.

In the same general spirit, two friends who live in California told me last week that they can’t imagine how I tolerate living in Texas. That is both an uncanny coincidence — two people with the same observation — and less-than-fortuitous timing, since the western third of their state is under two feet of water and the eastern third is blanketed by six feet of snow. The California weather competes daily with the war in Ukraine for the lead story in the New York Times and Washington Post. The continuing deluges have given rise to a brand-spanking new meteorological term: “atmospheric river.” And let’s not forget earthquakes that can collapse double-decker freeways. No, thankee, I’ll take the copperheads and humidity.

Back to Texas: the Alamo and the Battle of San Jacinto live on eternally in the hearts of some die-hard Texas natives, including Ida Burke Rankin, now deceased. Her only child had the misfortune to be born in northwest Louisiana, just twenty-seven miles from the border of the promised land. The kid lost count of how many times Ida reminded her to “REMEMBER THE ALAMO!!!! Approximately fifteen minutes after her husband’s Shreveport funeral, Ida packed up and moved back to Texas. Her grandfather Burke had married a Trice. Both are featured in this narrative, eventually.

Sam Houston was undoubtedly the most famous Tennessee migrant to Texas, having become governor of the state. His reputation was launched by a decisive victory at the Battle of Jan Jacinto, where he commanded the Texian forces.[5] Texans later marked the battlefield with a monumental obelisk and stationed the Battleship Texas nearby, just in case Mexico had notions of a rematch. The San Jacinto monument is ten or eleven feet taller than the Washington monument. That was surely no accident, and is yet another in the endless list of reasons why everyone hates Texas. Besides which, ours has a 220-ton star on top.[6]

The Trices and Burkes played in vastly different ballparks than General Houston, of course, being pretty much forgotten to history except perhaps in Waco. The ones featured in this article left Wilson County, Tennessee at different times, although they undoubtedly knew each other’s families. Both the Trices and Burkes owned land on Spring Creek, a lovely little arm of the Cumberland River nestled among gently rolling hills on the south side of the river.

The first two Trices to arrive in Texas, so far as I know, were the brothers William Berry Trice and Sion B. Trice. They arrived in 1853. Here is what a local history book says about Berry:[7]

He “was born in Wilson county, Tennessee, in the year 1834. His father was a substantial farmer, but never accumulated much property. He was deprived of the advantage of an early training, and never attended school a day in his life.”

“Substantial farmer,” what hooey! Berry undoubtedly contributed that fiction. Truth is, the Wilson County Trices were basically subsistence farmers, as were the Burkes. Neither family accumulated any property other than the land they farmed. Berry’s biography continues:

“In the year 1853 he was convinced beyond a doubt that a good future awaited him, and wanting more latitude for his operations, he concluded to go west. He left home with thirty-five dollars, and accomplished, in forty-seven days, what very few young men would have thought of undertaking — a journey on foot from Wilson county, Tennessee, to Waco, Texas. He walked the entire distance. Immediately after his arrival here, instead of seeking the shade and waiting for something to turn up, he hired himself to drive a wagon at $12.50 per month.”

The article doesn’t say so, but my family oral history is that Berry’s brother Sion accompanied Berry on the walk to Texas, a distance of more than 800 miles. Their parents, Edward and Lilly Smith Trice, were still alive when they left. I’m betting Berry and Sion weren’t waiting around for a substantial inheritance, which — as it turns out — wasn’t in the offing. Edward and Lilly had nine children, including Berry, Sion, and my great-great grandfather Charles Foster Trice.

Berry and Sion were involved in the construction of the famous Brazos River bridge in Waco – the first suspension bridge west of the Mississippi[8] (more Texas braggadocio). Trice Brothers Brick and J. W. Mann did the brick work for the bridge, furnishing two million, seven hundred thousand bricks.[9] Berry and Sion became rich as sin in the process, ensuring funding for some impressive Trice monuments in Waco’s old Oakwood Cemetery.

Before making a fortune in bricks, Berry drove a wagon, cut and split rails, and worked in a sawmill. He was elected constable in 1855 and Justice of the Peace eight years later. When he was elected constable, he couldn’t even write his name.[10] His second wife was the widow of a former sheriff named Alf Twaddle, possibly the worst surname on the planet.

In the 1860 and 1870 census, Berry described himself as a “brick maker.” By 1880, he was a “farmer and banker.” At Berry’s death, he was president of Waco National Bank; he was then, or had been, a director. He was, according to The Handbook of Waco, “one of the wealthiest men in our community.” He owned five farms, although I am confident there was no dirt under his fingernails. Nor did Berry miss any meals: he weighed over 400 pounds when he died.[11] The local history book describes him colorfully:

” … Not only is he of great weight in financial circles, but his ponderosity amounts to four hundred and twenty-five pounds, and, in physique, he possesses more latitude and longitude than any man in the county. He is … surrounded with all the conveniences and comforts of life.”

Ponderosity! I am embarrassed for whoever wrote that. With respect to the comforts of life, the inventory of Berry’s estate included, among many other things, a telescope, a piano, and a gold-headed cane. In the hundreds of estate inventories I’ve seen, that is the one and only telescope.

I’m not sure what Sion did before he and Berry founded the Trice Brothers Brick Yard, or how much he weighed. He is also buried in the Oakwood Cemetery along with more Trices and Trice in-laws than I can count. There is a telling slip of paper among Sion’s probate records describing expenses incurred on behalf of his two daughters: a receipt for “tuition in music to Misses Beaulah and Hattie Trice from Apr. 18 to Oct 1st 1879 … 5 months at $10 per month.”[12] Sion wasn’t nearly as famous as Berry, but he clearly didn’t want for anything, either.

Coincidentally — or not — the first Burke who appeared in Waco found a temporary home with Berry Trice. William “Burks” was listed in the 1880 census in Berry’s household. He was twenty at the time. Farmer was his stated occupation, although I suspect he left Tennessee at least in part to escape farming. His full name was William Logan Burke, the first of a fistful of men in my family with that name.[13] He was my great-grandfather and the eldest son of Logan (full name Esom Logan Burke) and Harriet Munday Burke. Logan and Harriett also owned land on Spring Creek in Wilson County. I’m not sure exactly when William Logan Burke left home, but I’m afraid he bailed out on his widowed mother and four underage siblings after their father died. When Logan died in 1877, his eldest son was still only seventeen. I would bet he was still at home, though I have no evidence. By 1880, he was in Waco.

The first William Logan Burke wasn’t a farmer for long. He became “one of the early Sheriffs” of McClennan County, then a U.S. Marshall or Assistant Marshall. Owing to the plethora of men sharing his name among my Burke relatives, we call the first WLB “the Sheriff.” I know virtually nothing about him except that he was often absent from home. His daughter-in-law (Ida Huenefeld/Hannefield Burke) explained his frequent absences like so: “he was out chasing outlaws.” Here is a formal portrait of him, the only good likeness I have. Too bad he wasn’t wearing a badge.

The Sheriff married a Trice, although not one of the rich ones. She belonged to the third set of my family’s Tennessee migrants to Waco: Elizabeth (Betty) Morgan Trice. Her parents, Charles Foster Trice and Mary Ann Powell, also lived on Spring Creek in Wilson County. Foster was a blacksmith. Mary Ann was a quick-thinking lady who once outfitted him in a woman’s dress and bonnet, sitting him in a rocking chair in front of the fireplace, peeling potatoes, just before Union Army “recruiters” came to call.

Spring Creek wasn’t kind to Foster. He died in 1881 in a cave-in of the creek bank. There was a coroner’s inquest into his death, which was ruled an accident.[14] His land had to be sold because his personal estate was inadequate to pay debts. Foster didn’t make it to Waco, but his widow Mary Ann and eight children moved there some time between 1881 and 1886.

Mary Ann is buried in Waco’s Oakwood Cemetery along with the other Trices, Betty and the Sheriff, and Ida Hannefield Burke’s parents Ella Adalia Maier and John Henry Hannefield. Mary Ann died in 1928, when her great-granddaughter Ida Burke was eighteen. Ida heard the potato-peeling-dress-wearing story directly from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

Mary Ann’s daughter Betty Morgan Trice Burke was a tiny redhead who could, according to my grandmother, “hold her liquor like a man.” Her only surviving child, the second William Logan Burke, was a dead ringer for his mother. Here she is, in a fabulous dress featuring elaborate ribbon trim, a brooch at her neck, and a fancy watch pinned to the dress.

The Sheriff died of tuberculosis in 1899, when the second William Logan Burke was eleven. The Sheriff’s widow, Betty Trice Burke, married a kind man named Sam Whaley in 1906, although she had been ill for a good while. She died just a few months after she married Sam, when her son was eighteen. Her obituary mentions both the Trice family’s elevated status in the community and the Sheriff. Her memorial in Oakwood Cemetery, a flat marker, is considerably more modest than Berry’s.

She had four children, but only one — her spitting image, my grandfather — survived her. Here he is as a young man:

“Gramps,” we cousins called him, was a genuine, Grade-A, certified Texas character, born in Waco in 1888. He went by W. L., or just “Billie.” I adored him, and vice versa. He taught me how to shoot a BB gun at a moving target by hanging the lid of a Folger’s can on a string from a tree branch. He gave me a fishing rod and reel, never used in my non-fishing family. Every time my grandparents came to Shreveport, he brought me some kind of critter. Baby chickens. Baby ducks. Goldfish. Once, he brought a pair of quail for which my father built a fabulous cage. Unfortunately, they launched into their “bob-WHITE!” calls each day at sunrise. They have surprisingly good lungs for such small birds. Neighbors registered complaints. One night, the quail mysteriously “escaped.” My father often said that he fully expected his father-in-law to bring me an elephant one day.

Sometime in the 1950s, Gramps had a pet wild turkey named Clyde. I am not making this up. When we were visiting my grandparents in Houston, we would all sit outside after dinner in those old uncomfortable slatted metal chairs when it was nice outside, meaning anything over 70 degrees. No air-conditioning in the 1950s. Clyde would sit on the arm of Gramps’s chair and apparently enjoy the conversation, looking at whomever was talking. Once, when we were driving back to Houston from Fredericksburg, Gramps abruptly pulled the car over to the side of the road beside a sorghum field, saying “I’m gonna get some of that good milo maize for my turkey.” Whereupon he climbed over the barbed-wire fence and grabbed a handful. My grandmother didn’t bat an eye, having known him since they were teenagers. I don’t know what became of Clyde, but I know he was spoiled rotten.

Gramps was a polo player and, after he was too old to play, a referee; a hunter who raised bird dogs, including a prizewinner named “April Showers;” a fisherman; and a spinner of tall tales. One of them made it into either the Houston Chronicle or the Post, I don’t know which. Granny cut it out and mailed it to my mother, with a penciled note saying “Your daddy in print with a big one.” It was in a column titled “The Outdoor Sportsman” by Bill Walker. Here is a transcription:

“Usually when veteran field trial followers get together the conversations turns to great dogs of yesteryears and this group was no exception.

“W. L. “BILLY” BURKE related one about an all-time favorite of ours — Navasota Shoals Jake.

“THE COVEY was still hovering in a briar thicket when Bowles and Burke arrived. Navasota Shoals Jake was still on point.

Here is Gramps in his 60s as a polo referee:

I should probably also include a picture or two of his daughter, Ida Burke Rankin, the die-hard Texan who admonished me to “Remember the Alamo!” They wouldn’t let women play polo in her day, of course, although I am confident she would have beat the heck out of everyone. Undoubtedly to show them, whoever “they” were, she used to ride her father’s polo ponies like a bat out of hell whenever she thought he wouldn’t find out. She once fell off on a blacktop road and said she couldn’t sit down for three days. She claims Gramps never knew, but I’ll bet he did. He was nobody’s fool.

And one more, when I was about three:

Next, I might have to write about Granny, a character in her own right.

See you on down the road.

Robin

[1] Here is a link to an article about the Battle of the Alamo by the reputable Texas State Historical Association, complete with images of Davy Crockett, William Barrett Travis, and James Bowie. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/alamo-battle-of-the

[2] There were either 31 or 32 or Tennesseans at the Alamo. An authoritative list has the same name twice, and it is unclear whether those names represent one or two men. See the list at this link: https://www.historicunioncounty.com/article/tennesseans-who-died-alamo

[3] For the record, 1,500 miles exaggerates both the length or width of Texas. It is 827 miles from Beaumont to El Paso on I-10, and about 850 from Texhoma, OK, on the OK-TX panhandle border, to McAllen on the Rio Grande. This is another reason people hate Texans: bragging about how big the state is.

[4] The math doesn’t audit on that bit of hyperbole, either. If mules or horses walk at 3 mph for 8-hour days, the journey would surely take less than six months even with interruptions.

[5] Here is a link to an article about the Battle of San Jacinto. It also has a fabulous picture of the San Jacinto monument. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/san-jacinto-battle-of

[6] See a closeup of the star and a photo of the monument here: https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/san-jacinto-monument-and-museum

[7] John Sleeper and J.C. Hutchins, The Handbook of Waco and McLennan County, Texas (Waco: Texian Press, 1972), article titled “William B. Trice.”

[8] Here is a photograph of the bridge, now a pedestrian walkway. https://www.loc.gov/resource/highsm.29747/?r=-0.163,-0.02,1.362,0.789,0

[9] Id., article titled “The Waco Suspension Bridge.”

[10] Id., Trice article.

[11] John M. Usry, early Waco Obituaries 1874 -1908 (Waco: Central Texas Genealogical Society, 1980), citing the July 16, 1884 issue of the Waco Daily Examiner at p. 2 col. 5, obituary of W. B. (Berry) Trice.

[12] Probate packet #671 at the courthouse in Waco, McLennan Co., TX.

[13] William Logan Burke, the escapee from Tennessee, was the first with that name. His only surviving child, my grandfather, was also William Logan Burke, who went by “W.L.” or just “Billie.” His only son was the third William Logan Burke, who was called Bill, or “the Kid” in his polo playing days. Bill’s elder son was known as “Little Bill.” He went by William Logan Burke III, although he was actually the fourth in the line. Little Bill’s brother Frank, who just goes by Burke, gave one of his sons that name. That makes five. My elder son’s name, by the way, is William Burke Willis, in honor of my wonderful grandfather.

[14] Tennessee State Library and Archives, Wilson Roll # B-1407, County Clerk (Loose Records Project) Box 59, Fld. 20 – Box 60, Fld 13. Vol: 1742-1962. This film contains Box 59, Folder 22, which contains an inquest into the death of C. F. Trice. I have a copy around here somewhere …