I finally have a copy of a picture of my great great grandfather, Marshall Daniel Majors. He was born in 1845 in Marion County, Georgia and died in 1932 in Alabama and is buried in Ripley, Tennessee. This is a copy of the original picture that is in the possession of my father.
I am not quite through with my father’s line. Marshall Daniel Majors was born December 10, 1845 in Marion County, Georgia. His parents were Daniel Majors and Louiza Johnson. He passed away on March 23, 1932 near Mobile, Alabama.
There are a lot of questions about Marshall Daniel Majors’ ancestry. We assume that Louiza is Elizabeth Johnson who Daniel Majors is on record of marrying in 1824 in Wilkes County, Georgia. She is also known as Samantha. The bible record and census lists her as Louiza so that is what I will call her. I know nothing else about her family. Perhaps she is related to a Marshall. She also named one of her sons Albert Johnson Majors. Perhaps that is a clue. We don’t know much about Daniel either. He was born in South Carolina according to the census. His mother remarried a Castleberry. The Castleberry family is a German family that were associated with Quakers and lived in either Pennsylvania or Virginia, then to South Carolina, and finally into Georgia. Daniel’s father or grandfather might have been in the Revolutionary War and received some sort of land grant. If they were Quakers, then I don’t know how they came down, probably with other Quaker families that came to Georgia at the time. Marrying into the Landrum family, perhaps they followed a similar migration to them. We still have a lot of mysteries to solve in the Majors’ line.
Marshall Daniel Majors was raised on a farm in Georgia with his many brothers and sisters. By the time he was 15 years old, the family moved to Webster County, Georgia. He soon fought in the Civil War and surrendered in 1865 at the age of 20. My mother has a copy of his Civil War record. He came back to a war torn Georgia. I have copies of letters written by his grandmother, Elizabeth Castleberry, about the hard times the family suffered through during the war. Both Elizabeth Castleberry and Louiza Majors died soon after the war. As Marshall was now in his twenties, he needed a wife. I am not sure how he knew the Milners or the Landrums. The Landrums and Milners were prominent land owners in Georgia and conencted to the very famous Lumpkin family. He married the young 17 year old orphaned Matilda Pope Milner (she probably lived with her step mother Elizabeth Sims Milner) in 1868 around the same time that his father remarried Nancy Moye. Matilda had relatives that moved to a new town in West Tennessee along the Mississippi River that offered a lot of hope and promise. So in 1870, Marshall Majors and his young wife moved to Tennessee to start a new life. They lived in Fulton, Tennessee where he worked as a clerk for the A Lea & Company. Fulton, Tennessee never lived up to its promise and is currently under the Mississippi River, but at the time, it promised to be better than Memphis. Residents came from as far away as Maine (the Bacons) to settle in the new town. Marshall worked as a1873 they had a son who they named Lucien Leon. He lived nearby Mr. Lea, the Bacons and the Butlers. (The Butlers married into the Glass family whose head served as a Democrat Senator from Tennessee) The Landrums were the Majors’ neighbors and connected through Matilda’s (known as “Pope Milner”) sister Sara who married a Landrum. Sara’s father-in-law lived in nearby Fort Pillow. The were the respected relatives of the famous Rev. Landrum who risked his life serving the sick of the famous Memphis yellow fever epidemic. Sara Milner Landrum still lived in Oglethorpe County, Georgia. I am sure Matilda heard about her sister’s death in 1874 and worried about her orphaned nieces and nephews.
After 5 years of marriage, Marshall and “Pope Milner” had a son named Lucian Leon Majors. I have no idea where they got the name. Matilda Majors did not have children every two years like most at the time. Either MArshall Majors was out working a lot to support his family and saving up to buy his own farm, or Matilda had some sort of medical issue. Three years later in 1876, Pope Milner Majors was pregnant again but died in childbirth, the baby is presumed to have died soon after as well. Marshall had a young son to raise on his own. Perhaps the Landrums in LAuderdale county told Marshall about a young orphaned niece of Matilda Pope Milner’s the daughter of his sister-in-law Sara Milner Landrum. She was the young Ida May Landrum. He returned to Georgia to court the young lady named Ida May. Ida had to care for her younger brothers and sisters so when Marshall married Ida she brought two of her sisters and her younger brothers. They all lived in Fulton together. Soon the brothers and sisters married into the Lea, Butler, and Bacon families who were all neighbors of Marshall Daniel Majors.
Marshall and Ida had 11 children together but only Herbert, Dan, Ida, Jack, Tom, and Henry survived. During this time Marshall was able to have his own plantation where he had a dairy farm and he grew berries. By 1890, Ida began to grow ill, probably because of constant child birth and her sister, who was recently widowed, Minnie Landrum Bacon, came to help her sister. She came with her two young children, Milton and Myra. In 1895 while giving birth to her last child, Ida May Landrum passed away and the child, a daughter soon died as well. Ida’s sister Minnie Landrum Bacon took over the care of Ida’s children along with her own two children Milton and Myra. Marshall left his farm in 1898 to live with his son Herbert in Arkansas. I think he moved back and forth between Ripley and Arkansas. “Aunt Minnie” married Judge Joel Estes. Other members of the family stayed with Marshall from time to time including his daughter Ida Pope who married Joe Tucker. I heard that Marshall and Joe Tucker did not get along too well. In 1917, Herbert died, I am guessing from the flu that was going around. Marshall returned to Ripley, TN in 1917. It was then he met Ella Bacon who was a widow of William Alexander. Ella’s older sister was the sister of Marshall’s old boss, Albert Lea and the half sister of Minnie Landrum’s husband, Thomas Bacon. They spent the rest of their years in a resort in Citronelle, Alabama. He would come to Ripley to visit his family andI have pictures of a family reunion. He died on 23 March 1932 and is buried in Ripley, TN.
A good way to organize your research is through making an outline or a chronological chart of your ancestor. I guess it is sort of a resume. Here is an outine of Joseph Magruder Tucker based on a biography written by my grandmother, Frances Tucker Lee.
BORN- 14 June 1883 in Ripley, Lauderdale, Tennessee on Fain Springs Road
PARENTS- William Tucker who was 43 years old and from Virginia and Annie Elizabeth Watkins, 31, from Murfreesboro
SIBLINGS- He had two older brothers and two older sisters Will, Harry (Wat?), Daisy, and Annie.
MOVED- Tucker Hill in 1884
SIBLINGS- Two more brothers Russell Aubrey and John Randolph, mother became ill, maternal grandmother and uncles moved to home
SCHOOL- Elementary in Ripley then went to Webb School in Bell Buckle, Tennesse. Mother wanted him to be a minister and a gentleman so he was sent to Bethel College where he was a member of a Fraternity.
DATING- Courted several girls and began to court Ida Pope Majors who was a sheltered girl whose family came from Georgia. Her father asked when Joe was ever going to get married.
MARRIAGE- Ida Pope Majors who was 21, Joe was 23. They had 6 children, Joe Jr, Landrum, Marshall, John, Matthew, and Frances.
WORK- Mail Carrier Ripley, TN
Farming, Ashdown , Arkansas
Clerk Watkins Tucker Hardware Store
Owner- Lumber Business and a Car Lot
CHURCH- Deacon of Ripley Baptist Church
SERVICE- President, City Club
Executive Board, Hospital for Crippled Adults
Treasurer- Lauderdale County Red Cross
Mayor- Ripley, Tennessee 6 years
Alderman- Ripley, Tennessee 4 years
Chairman- War Fund Drive
AWARDS- “Silver Beaver” Boy Scouts of America
ILLNESS- heart disease
TRAITS- Brown eyes, dark hair, playful, gentle, sense of humor, prankster, servant of his community, loved card games
NOTES- Here you can put references to documents like the US Census and Newspaper Articles and what you have of his like pictures and other items. We have several pictures of him and some newpaper clippings. If you have furniture or heirlooms take pictures of them and say who has them. You collect of these items and put it in your genealogy notebook on “Tuckers of Ripley, TN” for example.
This is the family of William Tucker and Annie Elizabeth Watkins and their spouses.
She was born in October of 1852 in Rutherford County, Tennessee near Murfreesboro, TN. Her parents were Jospeh Magruder Watkins and Margaret Linster. Her father came from Montgomery County, Maryland and settled in Tennessee. He first married Lavinia Penn and had five children with her. She died and then he married Margaret Linster. Margaret had Annie, Harry, Lee, and another daughter.They were supposed to be a musical family and a cousin was known to speak several languages and sing opera. A distant relative sang opera in New York and the household was known to have a piano.
Annie was well educated and came from a very old southern family. She was described as tall and elegant. Unfortunately, there are no pictures of her that I know of. She went to a girl’s school in Murfreesboro and after graduation became a teacher. She got a job to teach in Ripley, TN along with another of her friends. THey lived in a boarding house where a young Virginian man named William Tucker lived. They ate at the same table together as boarders and began to talk and get to know each other. They fell in love and were married in 1873 when she was 20 years old. They lived on a friend’s property as her husband became more prosperous. He eventually bought and built Tucker Hill for his wife whom he loved dearly. She had seven children. Her brothers and her mother Margaret Linster, joined Annie in Ripley. After the last child, (John Randolph) she became ill. I do not know the nature of the illness. The only picture I have seen of her is from a distance where you cannot see her face and she is holding a cane. She was unable to care for her large family. Her daughters helped her care for the younger children. She was still in charge of her children. According to my grandmother, she wanted her sons to be gentlemen and wanted them to attend college. My great grandfather Joe Magruder Tucker was sent to college at Bethel. Her children were well educated and groomed to be leaders of their community. Her son Joe ended up being mayor of the town of Ripley. I believe that a lot of the success of the Tuckers is due to her. After meeting her, for example, her husband’s life improved greatly. After her daughters got married she lived with them. In her old age, she lived with Daisy Tucker in St. Louis, Missouri where she died in 1917. She was buried in Ripley, Tennessee.
I would have really loved to get to know her. She seems well read and interesting contrasting every stereotype of the stiff woman of the Victorian age who can’t even read newspapers. (I think Ida Majors might have been raised in this way as she was described as “sheltered”) I know she named her son Aubre after a character in a Romance novel! I would love to see a picture of her (she was described as being elegant and graceful) and would like to know what illness she has that kept her in bed for so long. After I have babies my pelvic bones split making it difficult to walk. I wonder if she had the same problem. The cane is a big clue. Right now I am focusing on her grandmother’s, Catherine Magruder, family.
This is the only picture of her that I know of. She is standing in front of her home, Tucker Hill.