BEGATS AND BEQUEATHALS

h. Louisa Keesee was born 16 November 1841 in Saline County, Arkansas. On 5 October 1858 in Union County, Arkansas, Louisa married John T. Hussey, son of James S. Hussey and Sarah Gray.[1] Louisa died between 2 August 1861, when her daughter Sarah Louise Keesee was born, and 28 March 1866, when John married Claretta Jones in Union County.[2] Her mother’s will states in January 1880 that her daughter Louisa Hussey was deceased and left children. The 1860 federal census enumerates Louisa and husband John, a merchant, living with other relatives next door to Louisa’s parents at Hillsboro in Union County,

John T. Hussey, who was a 1^st lieutenant and acting surgeon in the same CSA military unit in which Louisa’s brothers Milton S. and Thomas J. Keesee served — Co. G of 1^st Arkansas Mounted Rifles — moved with his family to Ellis County, Texas, joining Louisa’s parents there, where he was a physician.[3] He died 30 December 1881 at Ferris in Ellis County with Louisa’s brother Milton acting as guardian of John T. Hussey’s children, two of whom, James Thomas and Sarah Louise Hussey, appear to have been children of Louisa.[4] John’s estate file is extensive, and contains interesting receipts from local stores showing the family’s many purchases, as well as a bill of sale of his estate detailing his medical textbooks and instruments. There’s a receipt for his coffin, and an estate account mentions the purchase of the coffin and also a suit for John’s burial, though I find no mention of the burial place in the estate file. A testimonial letter from a Masonic chapter at Pigeon Hill in Union County, Arkansas, to which John belonged before moving to Texas is in the estate file.

I have not found burial records for either Louisa Keesee or John T. Hussey. A brief biography of their daughter Sallie in John N. McCue’s The McCues of the Old Dominion states that Sallie L. Hussey, who married James William McCue on 25 May 1887, was born 2 August 1861, daughter of Dr. John T. Hussey of Union County, Arkansas, and moved with her father to Ellis County, Texas, in 1863.[5] Note that if this information is correct, then John returned to Union County, Arkansas, from Texas to marry Claretta Jones there in March 1866; his age on the marriage document matches the age of the John T. Hussey who married Louisa Keesee, and there is no other John T. Hussey in Union County in this time frame. If the biographical information about Sallie in McCues of the Old Dominion is correct, then it’s possible that John and Louisa moved with their daughter Sallie to Texas in 1863, along with Louisa’s parents, and Louisa died there prior to March 1866. Note that the biography states that Sallie went to Texas with her father, however, and makes no mention of her mother, which may indicate Louisa had died between the birth of her daughter Sarah in August 1861 and 1863, when her parents moved to Texas, apparently with John T. Hussey accompanying them.

The following brief biography of John T. Hussey from an unpublished database by F.T. Hambrecht entitled Biographical Register of Physicians Who Served the Confederacy in a Medical Capacity (2007) appears at the Ellis County GenWeb site:

HUSSEY, John Thomas

b. 01/08/1837 Chambers Co., AL

11/05/1859 – Married, Louisa Keesee in Union Co., AR

09/10/1861 – Enlisted as Private, 1st AR Mounted Rifles, Camp Jackson, MO,

Provisional Army of the Confederate States (PACS)

05/10/1862 – 2nd Lt., Co. G, 1st AR Mounted Rifles, PACS

09/30/1862 – 1st Lt, 1st AR Mounted Rifles, PACS

– Served as an Acting Assistant Surgeon, PACS

03/02/1863 – Assistant Surgeon, 1st AR Regt, [may be 1st AR Mounted Rifles]

05/09/1863 – Transferred to the Department of Mississippi, PACS

12/00/1864 – Assistant Surgeon, 9th AR Infantry, Gen D. H. Reynold’s Brigade,

Gen. E. C. Walthall’s Division, Lt. Gen. A.P. Stewart’s Corps,

Gen. J. B. Hood’s Army e, near Franklin, TN, PACS

– Served as an Acting Surgeon, PACS

03/28/1866 – Married, Henrietta Jones, Union Co., AR

1867 – M.D. – University of Louisiana Medical Department, New Orleans, LA

1880 – Practiced medicine, Ferris, Ellis Co., TX

12/00/1881 – Died, Ellis Co, TX

i. Eleanor Keesee was born 8 October 1843 in Saline County, Arkansas. On 20 January 1861 in Union County, Arkansas, Eleanor married Barnard Henry Tucker.[6] I have not been able to locate Barnard H. Tucker on any federal census, or to locate Eleanor on federal censuses after 1860, the year before she married Barnard H. Tucker. Billingsley states that “the only thing known thus far about her is that she died before 1892.”[7]

Eleanor was living when her mother Jane Caroline Green Keesee made her will on 17 January 1880 naming her daughter E.E. Tucker as one of Jane’s living children. She had died by 1892 when the biography of her brother Thomas in Memorial and Biographical History of Ellis County, Texas was published; it states that his sister Eleanor, the wife of B.H. Tucker, was now dead when the biography was written.[8] Digital images of this biography are at a previous posting.

Barnard Henry Tucker’s service packet for his Civil War service in Co. E (Captain Nolan’s) of the 3^rd Arkansas Infantry (CSA) contains very sparse biographical information.[9] It shows him enlisting as a second lieutenant of the unit at Champagnolle in Union County on 20 June 1861, aged 28. In February 1862, he was elected 2^nd lieutenant, and on 28 October 1862, he was elected captain of the company.  He was in the hospital at Lynchburg, Virginia, in October 1862 for reasons unspecified, then “assigned for treatment” in November 1862 and furloughed for the treatment. He was released from service on 20 January 1863. The service papers do not indicate where he was located at the point of his release from service, and I have found no record of him after this date.

It’s not clear to me whether Eleanor and her husband B.H. Tucker went with her parents from Union County to Ellis County, Texas, in 1863, or whether Barnard had died by that point and Eleanor accompanied her parents to Texas. I have no information about where or precisely when, between January 1880 and 1892, she died.

The record of the marriage of Barnard and Eleanor gives him the title Esq.

j. William Fortenberry Keesee was born 27 December 1845 at Hillsboro in Union County, Arkansas. In addition to being recorded in his parents’ bible, the date of birth is also inscribed on his tombstone in Knights of Pythias cemetery in San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas.[10]

Around 1865, William married Julia Josephine Suddath, daughter of John L. and Caroline Suddath. I have not found a record of the marriage. It likely occurred in Texas after the Keesee family moved in 1863 from Union County, Arkansas, to Robertson and then Ellis County, Texas. Julia Josephine’s family was living in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, in 1860. A notice of the formation of the Conservative Club of Natchitoches Parish published in the Natchitoches Spectator on 14 May 1868 shows John L. Suddath as one of the constituting members of the club.[11] I don’t find this family on the 1870 federal census in either Natchitoches Parish or in Texas.

Federal census records show William and Julia Josephine initially living with their children in Dallas, then in Austin and finally in San Antonio, Texas, where Julia Josephine died 27 April 1904. A death notice in the Austin American-Statesman on 29 April 1904 states that Rush McCulloch, an undertaker in Austin, had been apprised the day before of the death of his mother-in-law Mrs. William F. Keesee in San Antonio, someone well-known in Austin who left a husband, two sons, and six daughters.[12] Rush Duval McCulloch was the husband of Caroline Keesee, a daughter of William F. and Julia Josephine Keesee.

Julia Josephine is buried with husband William in the Knights of Pythias cemetery with her tombstone stating that she was born 17 September 1850. Her family lived in Lee County, Georgia, at that time, and this appears to be the place of her birth.

William continued living in San Antonio following Julia Josephine’s death and up to almost the end of his life, he was living in that city with his daughter Irene and her husband Sylvanus L. Chamberlain. I haven’t found information explaining why he was in Canyon Diablo in Coconino County, Arizona, at the time of his death on 17 June 1923.[13] I think it’s likely he had gone there in the final year or so of his life to live with or visit his daughter Ada Josephine and her husband Harry McCulloch Tassey, who seem to have been living in Canyon Diablo in 1923.

k. John Hill Keesee was born 22 January 1848 at Hillsboro, Union County, Arkansas. This is the date recorded in his parents’ bible.  His tombstone in Shiloh cemetery at Ovilla in Ellis County, Texas, gives the birthdate as 21 January 1848.

On 26 October 1882 in Ellis County, Texas, he married Evalina Dorman, daughter of William Bolivar Dorman and Margaret Catherine McCue.[14] As the previous posting indicates, in her January 1880 will in Ellis County, John’s mother Jane Caroline Green Keesee bequeathed almost all of her real and personal property to John and his brother George Sidney Keesee, her two youngest sons. John and wife Evalina and their children appear to have lived with Jane in the final years of her life; the biography of his brother Thomas J. Keesee, cited above, states that when this biography was published in 1892, Thomas’ brother John was living “at the old homestead” in Ellis County.[15]

As I noted above, when John’s brother Thomas J. Keesee filed for a pension in June 1907 in Ellis County for his Civil War service as a Confederate soldier in Arkansas, his brothers John and George gave affidavits on 17 July 1907 verifying Thomas’ claims about his service. Billingsley recounts a story told to her by John’s great-granddaughter Barbara Scott Wyche, which says that family lore maintains that John’s parents hid John, aged sixteen, to prevent his being conscripted into the Confederate army in Union County, Arkansas.[16]

Billingsley also notes that John was likely named for one of several John Hills who were part of the kinship network of the Keesee family in Tuscaloosa-Bibb Counties, Alabama, with some members of the Hill family moving along with the Calverts and Keesees from Alabama to Arkansas.[17] On the Hill family and its connection to the Calverts and Keesees, see this previous posting.

John Hill Keesee died 16 March 1926 at Midlothian, Ellis County, Texas, and, as stated above, is buried in Shiloh cemetery at Ovilla in Ellis County. The date of death is recorded on his tombstone. John’s wife Evalina Dorman Keesee was born 1 June 1854 at Princeton in Mercer County, Virginia (now West Virginia). She died 30 March 1930 at the home of her daughter Evaline Keesee Schmidt in Fort Worth, and is buried in Shiloh cemetery with her husband.[18]

l. Patience W. Keesee was born 14 March 1850 at Hillsboro, Union County, Arkansas, and died there on 14 June 1852. These dates of birth and death are written in her parents’ bible.

m. George Sidney Keesee was born 9 January 1853 at Hillsboro, Union County, Arkansas. This is the date of birth stated in his parents’ bible. However, George’s tombstone in Shiloh cemetery at Ovilla in Ellis County, Texas, gives the date of birth as 7 January 1853, and this date is stated on George’s death certificate, for which his wife Ida Clara Jenks Keesee was the informant.[19] George’s biography in Memorial and Biographical History of Ellis County, Texas has yet another date of birth: 7 January 1855.[20] 

On 27 November 1877 in Ellis County, George married Ida Clara Jenks, daughter of Joseph Sidney Jenks and Harriet Ann Hawkins.[21] George’s previously cited biography gives the year of marriage as 1876, but the record of the marriage in Ellis County marriage books shows it occurring in 1877.[22]

As I’ve just stated in my discussion of George’s brother John, his mother Jane Caroline Green Keesee’s January 1880 will in Ellis County left the bulk of her property to her two youngest sons, John and George. George’s biography in Memorial and Biographical History of Ellis County states that, in 1892, he was “one of the most extensive farmers in his section of the county,” and that he owned “half the old [Thomas Keesee] homestead, consisting of 320 acres, with 140 acres under cultivation.”[23] The biography notes that in addition to growing wheat, oats, corn, and cotton, George was “also the breeder of a high grade of horses,” and he also raised mules and Jersey and Durham cattle.[24]

As a previous posting notes, the 1880 federal census shows George’s mother Jane living with George and wife Ida (her name is given as Clarra on this census) in Ellis County in that year. George’s father Thomas Keesee had died in November 1879, and I think it’s likely that George and Ida were living on the old homestead by this point, following their marriage in 1877.

Between 1910-1920, George and wife Ida moved from Ellis County to Cedar Hill in Dallas County, Texas, where George Sidney Keesee had a ranch and died on 11 March 1931.[25] As I’ve noted, he’s buried with his parents and wife and other family members in Shiloh cemetery at Ovilla in Ellis County, with his tombstone stating the date of death. The tombstone also gives wife Ida Clara Jenks Keesee’s dates of birth and death — 2 January 1862 and 19 February 1956. These dates of birth and death are also recorded on Ida’s death certificate, which states that she was born in Marietta, Cobb County, Georgia, and gives her parents’ names.[26] Her daughter Ann Keesee Cox was the informant. An obituary of Ida published in the Duncanville, Texas, Weekly Chronicle on 23 February 1956 also notes that her family came to Texas from Marietta, Georgia, in 1868, and that at the time of her death, she was the oldest member of Shiloh Cumberland Presbyterian church at Ovilla.[27]

George Sidney Keesee was named for his mother’s brother George Sidney Green, who followed Thomas and Jane Caroline Green Keesee from Alabama to Saline County, Arkansas, and then to Union County, and who married a niece of Thomas Keesee, Mary Ann Clardy.

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[1] Union County, Arkansas, Marriage Record Bk. B, p. 200.

[2] Ibid., p. 349.

[3] A report about the meeting of the Texas Medical Society published in the Austin American-Statesman on 10 April 1875 (p. 3, col. 2-3) states that J.T. Hussey had been appointed to the Society’s committee on climatology and epidemics.

[4] Ellis County, Texas, estate file 417.

[5] John N. McCue, The McCues of the Old Dominion (Mexico, Missouri: Missouri Ptg. and Pub. Co., 1912), p. 74.

[6] Union County, Arkansas, Marriage Record Bk. B, p. 250.

[7] Carolyn Earle Billingsley, Communities of Kinship: Antebellum Families and the Settlement of the Cotton Frontier (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004), p. 139.

[8] Memorial and Biographical History of Ellis County, Texas (Chicago: Lewis, 1892), p. 477.

[9] NARA, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Arkansas, 1861-1865, RG 109, available digitally at Fold3.

[10] William F. Keesee’s death certificate in Coconino County, Arizona, where he died at Canyon Diablo on 17 June 1923, gives an incorrect date and place of birth for him — 27 December 1851, “Jonesburrough,” Arkansas: see Arizona Department of Health, Arizona Death Records, Coconino County, 1923, certificate 68. The document also states that William’s mother was Mary Green, not Jane Caroline Green. The informant was William’s daughter Ada, Mrs. H.C. Tassey of Canyon Diablo.

[11] “Conservative Meeting,” Natchitoches Spectator (14 May 1868), p. 2, col. 2.

[12] “Died in San Antonio,” Austin American-Statesman (29 April 1904), p. 2, col. 7.

[13] See supra, n. 10.

[14] Ellis County, Texas, Marriage Records Bk. D, p. 566.

[15] Memorial and Biographical History of Ellis County, Texas, p. 477.

[16] Billingsley, Communities of Kinship, p. 66.

[17] Ibid., p. 56.

[18] See her obituaries in Denton Record-Chronicle (1 April 1930), p. 8, col. 3, and Fort Worth Star-Telegram (21 March 1930), p. 15, col. 4. See also her death certificate, with information provided by her daughter Bessie Keesee Spain, giving her date and place of birth and her parents’ names: Texas Department of Health, Death Certificates, Tarrant County, 1930, January-March, number 15617. The death certificate gives her year of birth as 1853, while her tombstone gives the year as 1854.

[19] Texas Department of Health, Death Certificates, Ellis County, 1931, January-March, number 12258.

[20] Memorial and Biographical History of Ellis County, Texas, p. 477.

[21] Ellis County, Texas, Marriage Records Bk. C, p. 397.

[22] Memorial and Biographical History of Ellis County, Texas, p. 477.

[23] Ibid., pp. 477-8.

[24] Ibid., p. 478.

[25] See supra, n. 19.

[26] Texas Department of Health, Death Certificates, Dallas County, 1956, January-March, number 6877.

[27] A copy of the obituary is at Ida Clara Jenks Keesee’s Find a Grave memorial page. See also “Death Claims Aged Mother of Mrs. Cox,” Grand Prairie Daily News (21 February 1956), p. 4, col. 8.