Sardis and Sligo

I visited Sardis Cemetery in Fayette County, Tennessee a few weeks ago when we were driving to Virginia to see Jacob.  In it are about 50-70 graves, many of them relatives, that appear to be made up of a group of people and their descendants who moved from the Mecklenburg-Cabarrus County area of North Carolina to Fayette County, Tennessee near Memphis around 1830-1840.  All the names that I know of were Presbyterians of Scotch-Irish descent.  These people may have all known each other in North Carolina before moving to Tennessee.  There was another group of these same people about 25 miles south, in Marshall County in northern Mississippi.  I know of some of them who moved back and forth between these two areas. Our ancestors, the Crawfords and Alexanders, lived both around Holly Grove, Mississippi and also around Oakland, Tennessee, after moving from North Carolina.

My (our) great great great grandfather, Uriah Alexander, was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina in 1777, and moved to Fayette County, Tennessee in the 1830’s, then to Marshall County, Mississippi, 25 miles to the south.  He died in 1851 and was buried in the Philadelphia Presbyterian Cemetery in Victoria, Mississippi near Holly Springs.

This is my (our) great great grandfather, David Crawford (1804-1871).  His grave is in Sardis Cemetery, Fayette County, Tennessee. It appears that possibly the gravestone fell over or broke and someone planted it in the ground to help preserve it in its proper position.  He was born in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, moved to near Holly Grove, Mississippi, and then later near Fayette County, Tennessee.

Great grandfather Robert Winslow Irwin, who lived near Oakland, Tennessee, went to boarding school for a time before the Civil War in Holly Grove, Mississippi, and that may be where he met his future wife, Catherine Crawford, who lived near there.  The town of Holly Grove, Marshall County, Mississippi appears to have been something of a cultural center in the area until it was badly damaged during the Civil War.  Someone wrote that this group of Presbyterians from North Carolina around Holly Grove, Mississippi thought of themselves as cavaliers.  I would like to think of them as calvaliers defined as “courtly gentleman” rather than the other definition of calvaliers, “haughty and arrogant.”

Catherine Crawford and Robert Irwin in 1865.

It has been passed down by family stories that these families came from the Mecklenburg County area of North Carolina.  Mecklenburg split into two counties in 1792, and the northeastern part became Cabarrus County.  New information from church cemetery records has surfaced on where our ancestors are buried there.

My (our) grandfather, Percy Crawford Irwin, had 16 great great grandparents.  Of these eight couples, we now know the location of the graves of at least one person from each of these couples.  Surprisingly, all Percy’s great great grandparents were within 12 miles of the Poplar Tent Presbyterian Church in Concord, Cabarrus County, North Carolina.  They were all Presbyterians, and it is possible that they all knew each other.  These eight couples apparently belonged to just three churches.  Today, it would be almost inconceivable for all of a person’s great great grandparents to come from the same place.    

Where did the name for Sardis Cemetery come from?  Sardis is the name of a Greek city which is mentioned in the Bible.  It is located in present day Turkey.  There are only two churches in this country that I could find that use the name Sardis, and only one of them is Presbyterian.  It is also located 17 miles south of the Poplar Tent Church.  Its founding date was 1792, and it was (until 60 years ago) an Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.  This branch of the Presbyterian Church is one of the oldest, but also one of the smallest branches.  It only has 40,000 members today.  This is the same branch of the church that our relative, Uriah Irwin (born 1848), reported that he belonged to in an interview he gave when an article was written about him in 1887.  Uriah was a double cousin of our ancestor, Robert Winslow Irwin, and grew up on the farm next door to him.  My suspicion is that this is the branch of the Presbyterian Church that the family around Oakland, Tennessee, and possibly all the other people buried in Sardis Cemetery attended.  At the Sardis Presbyterian Church cemetery in Charlotte is buried a William Irwin, born in 1762.  This may be the uncle of our ancestor, William Irwin (born 1780).  We have this uncle listed as being born “about” 1764.

I want to point out that of the Irwin ancestors, we are only 100% sure about the ancestors back to when William Irwin (born about 1780) married Sarah Erwin (born about 1782).  This was passed down in the family, and we know this to be true.  The names of William’s brothers and sisters, parents, and grandparents were obtained by genealogy that has been pieced together by others.  This information was found by research on the ancestors of an extremely close genetic match to us, a person named Robert Christopher Irwin, who lives in Arizona.  In looking into his ancestors, William Irwin and Sarah Erwin’s names were found, and this is how we acquired information two more generations back.

Another hint about the family’s origins could be the name they gave the school that they started for their children, Sligo School.  It was a subscription school and was probably started about 1840-1845.  All of our ancestor Alexander Irwin’s children attended there, and a number of his grandchildren.  Alexander Irwin taught several terms there, his son, Harrison Irwin taught several terms there, and his grandson, Percy Irwin, taught at least one term there.

This is Sligo School as it looked in 1944.


Where did the name Sligo come from?  Sligo is a county in the northern part of Ireland and in that county is a city named Sligo.  Most of the Presbyterians who came to this country in the 1700’s were from the northern part of Ireland, where they had lived for around 50 years.  They had immigrated to Ireland from Scotland.  The question that we have not been able to answer is where in Ireland they lived prior to coming to America.  Particularly around 1727-1730, thousands of these Presbyterians left Sligo, after the rent on their land was increased greatly when their leases expired, and they were forced to tithe to the Church of England, even though they were not members of that church.    They were not allowed to marry in their own church, and so often whole congregations would move together to America.  1840-1845 would have been about 110 years after they left Ireland, so maybe there was still some memory of where they came from passed down in stories told by the family.

Another new fact that I have run across concerns our ancestor Alexander Irwin’s brother, William Irwin.  Our Alexander was born in 1807 and his brother was born in 1809.  They married sisters, Alexander married Margaret Alexander (born 1814) and William married Agnes Nancy Alexander (born 1816).  They came out from North Carolina to Tennessee and settled on adjacent farms, where both couples raised their children.  I had always assumed that both couples married before coming out west.  Our Alexander and Margaret married in 1833 in Mecklenburg County (not Cabarrus County), and came out west in 1837.  To my surprise, it turns out that their siblings William Irwin and Agnes Nancy Alexander, did not marry until 1841, and they got married in Tennessee.  Agnes Nancy Alexander moved to Fayette County, Tennessee from North Carolina with her parents and only later married William.

This is the gravestone of William Irwin, 1809-1851, in Sardis Cemetery.  He was the brother of our ancestor, Alexander Irwin, 1807-1878.


One other piece of information that I found about our ancestor Alexander Irwin is interesting.  He apparently liked to be called Alex, not Alexander.  Alexander outlived his wife by 27 years, so he would have arranged for her gravestone to be put up.  In studying the photograph that was taken in 1967 of his wife’s gravestone, the words “wife of Alex Irwin” could be seen.  When I went to Sardis Cemetery this year (2012), erosion had occurred on the gravestones, and I could not make out the names to identify which stones were Alexander and Margaret’s.  Perhaps this is from acid rain due to pollution from nearby Memphis.  However, I could make out the words from the photograph taken in 1967.

This picture was taken in 1967.  It shows the gravestones of Alexander Irwin on the left and Margaret Alexander Irwin on the right.  The picture was taken as a slide, copied to 8mm tape, then copied to VHS tape, played on the TV, and then a photograph was taken of the TV screen.  It cannot be seen on this degraded copy, but the stone on the right says, Margaret Irwin, wife of Alex Irwin.  This is his 15 year old great, great grandson, Robert Alexander Irwin in the photograph.

This is Sardis Cemetery 45 years later.  It is not a perpetual care cemetery, but to our surprise, it had been mowed.  Here I am, now age 60, in front of the gravestone of my great grandparents, Catherine Lucretia and Robert Winslow Irwin.  Catherine’s name was spelled at times with a “K” and at times with a “C”.  


Sardis Cemetery is divided into two parts.  The old section has about 50-70 graves, most of them ancestors and relatives.  The oldest gravestone that I saw was from 1851.  The most recent gravestone in the older section was from 1948 and was for Ernest Crawford, who was a double cousin of my grandfather, Percy Irwin, through both the Irwin and Crawford sides of the family.  The newer section, which is about 100 feet from the old section, contains about 15 graves.  The new section appears to be of poor families, with a few of the gravestones homemade out of cement shaped into gravestones with no names on them.  None of these appeared to be relatives of the Irwins.

I suspect that it is rare for visitors to come to this cemetery who know who the people in the older section were.  Seeing all these monuments to relatives from so long ago made it a magical place to visit.  

The Gosting Photograph Album – 1905 to 1910

This album starts right after Henry and Portia Gosting’s first child was born.  Brooks Gosting was just a few weeks old here with his father, Henry, in November 1905.

Brooks Gosting with his mother Portia, November 1905.

Although not labeled with her name, this looks like Emma Gosting, age 39, with her 12 week old nephrew, Brooks Gosting. This was taken in December 1905 in St Louis, Missouri.

Portia, age 34, and Brooks, less than 6 months old in early 1906.

It is suspected that this may be James Crawford, age 36, with his nephew, Brooks Gosting, in 1907 in St Louis, Missouri.  James was married to Henry Gosting’s sister, Beatrice.

This is felt to be Horace Applegate, age 41, with his nephew, Brooks Gosting, in 1907 in St Louis, Missouri.  Horace married Henry Gosting’s sister, Grace.  Grace and Horace had no children.

Portia Brooks Gosting, age 35, with her first born, Brooks Gosting, in 1907 in St Louis. She would go on to have three more children.

This is Beatrice Gosting Crawford, posing with her nephrew, Brooks Gosting, at the time of his christening in 1907.  Beatrix was also called Aunt Trix by the family.

Brooks, age 1 ½, at the time of his christening in 1907 in St Louis. The child with him looks like another picture we have of his cousin, Suzanne Nettleton.  Suzanne was the daughter of Henry Gosting’s sister, Lenore.  Suzanne and her family lived in Ohio.  

This unlabeled picture was taken in 1908 and may be Olive Gosting Austin, age 43.  We have only one labeled picture of Olive taken in 1890, and she looks like the Olive in the other picture.   Olive was Henry Gosting’s sister.  She married Frank Austin who had a son from a previous marriage, but she had no children of her own.

This picture was taken in 1908 at the home of Henry and Portia Gosting. It is unlabeled, but it too is believed to be Henry's sister, Olive Gosting, age 43.

This was the home of Henry and Portia Gosting from 1906-1908. This picture was taken from google.earth and shows a house that has seen better days.

Portia and Henry took boarders in their house and Portia would feed them their meals. My mother told the story that Portia did not like it when the boarders would spill food on the tablecloth, so she had a rule that if they got the tablecloth dirty, they had to cover the dirty places with coins.

Henry Gosting with his son, Brooks in August 1907 in their back yard. Henry is wearing a suit in most of the photographs that we have of him.  People dressed up in 1907 more than they do today.  It was the age when people believed that “clothes define who you are.”

Henry, Portia, and Brooks Gosting at home in 1907 in St Louis.

This is believed to be a picture of Lenny Gosting Nettleman, age 39, with her son John Benjamin, age 3 months.  Lenore was her given name but she was called Lenny in the family.  She was the sister of Henry Gosting.  Although not identified with her name, it looks similar to a picture of her taken in 1890. This picture was on the other side of the page from a picture of her daughter, Susanne, taken around the same time. This was taken in 1908 in late summer at Henry and Portia's house in St Louis.

In Henry Gosting’s family growing up, there were 8 brothers and sisters who made it to adulthood.  Although six of them got married, only three had children.  Our Henry had four children, Lenny had two, and Beatrice had one.

This picture was taken in late summer in 1908 and is also believed to be Lenore Gosting Nettleman, age 39, and her son, John Benjamin Nettleton, age about 3 months.

This photograph, taken from Google Earth, was the home of Maria Guerin Gosting and her extended family of nine living in one house from at least 1908 to1910 in St Louis. According to the 1910 census, in this rented three story house were living Maria (pronounced Mariah) age 71, five of her adult children, two sons-in-law, and one grandchild. Her children living there were Milton Gosting age 38 (a photographer who would not marry until the age of 50), Alfred Gosting age 32 (who was mentally retarded), Emma Gosting age 43 (who worked as a sales lady and never married), Grace Gosting Applegate age 30 and her husband Horace Applegate age 45, Beatrice Gosting Crawford age 28, Beatrice's husband James Crawford age 38, and Beatrice's son James age 3.

I would have liked to be sitting at the dinner table with all this family.

This is Grace Gosting Applegate, Maria Guerin Gosting (the matriarch), and Brooks Gosting in 1908 in the back yard of the house where nine members of the extended Gosting family were living. Fortunately, this was a three story house, but still, that was a lot of people in one house. They rented this house at 5203 Maple Avenue in St Louis in a rather affluent neighborhood, perhaps on the principle that one should have a good address, even if you have to put a lot of people in it to afford the rent.

Our cousin, Mary Crawford Mathews (born 1947), has been in touch and went by to look at this house recently in St Louis.  Mary is our second cousin.  She is the granddaughter of Henry Gosting’s sister, Beatrice, and the daughter of Beatrice’s son, James Crawford (Jimmy).  She reports that this house, like many of the houses from that time period in St Louis, is narrow across the front and close to the house next door, but it is long from back to front, so perhaps nine people in one house would not be all that crowded.

In the middle is Maria Gosting (who would be a great grandmother to my generation), on the left is her daughter Grace Gosting Applegate, and on the right is her grandson Brooks Gosting.   This was taken in 1908.

From 1907, this is three cousins on the Gosting side of the family: on the left is Henry Brooks Gosting, in the middle is James Crawford, and on the right is Suzanne Nettleton.
 

This is the same group in a different pose.  On the left is James Crawford (son of Beatrice Gosting Crawford), in the middle in Suzanne Nettleman (daughter of Lenny Gosting Nettleman), and on the right is Henry Brooks Gosting (Portia and Henry Gosting’s son). This was taken in the summer of 1907 in St Louis.

This was taken in the back yard of the three story house at 5203 Maple.  The church in the background is still there.

Maria Guerin Gosting, age 69, with James Crawford (not yet walking) and Brooks Gosting, age 1 1/2 in August 1907 in St Louis.

Another picture of the same three people taken on the same day in August 1907.

This is Portia Brooks Gosting with her son Brooks in 1907 in St Louis, Missouri. Portia made most of the clothes that she wore.

This is Portia with her son Brooks Gosting in 1907 in St Louis, Missouri.

The question is, how many birds did it take to make these hats?  These are Portia’s two sisters, Mabel in the middle, and Connie on the right.  On the left is their long time family friend from St Louis, Maime Skinner.  Written on the picture it says, “Gathering mountain holly in Los Angeles, Christmas 1907.”  I suspect that Connie or Mabel sent this picture and the next from California.

This is Portia’s mother, Samantha, age 58, with her chickens in the back yard of their house in Los Angeles. Apparently in 1908, it wasn't against city regulations to raise chickens in your yard.

Beatrice Gosting Crawford with her nephrew, Brooks Gosting, and her son, James Crawford in August 1907 in St Louis, Missouri.

This was taken in August 1907 of the cousins, James Crawford and Brooks Gosting.  Brooks was the first child of Portia and Henry Gosting.  After that came George, Connie, and Walter.

Brooks Gosting with his toys in 1908.  Brooks married but never had any children.  He died at the age of 46 in 1951 from tuberculosis, which would be easily cured today.

On April 4, 1908, George, the second child, was born.  This is Portia, age 36, in 1908 with Brooks, age 3 1/2, and George, still a baby, on the front porch of their house in St Louis.  They would soon be moving to a new house.

Brooks, Portia, and George Gosting in 1908 in St Louis.

George Gosting was only a few months old when this picture was taken in their house in 1908.  His father, Henry, was doing some creative photography with natural light in these three pictures.

George is happier having his brother Brooks sitting on the chair with him.

And now their mom has joined them too.

In October of 1908, the Henry Gosting family moved into this house in Webster Groves, Missouri, which is within St Louis County. They owned this house rather than renting. Henry's job title during that time was "Assistant chief telegraph operator" at the busy Western Union Telegraph Company in St Louis.  Would it be fair to say that he worked in a high tech company?
 

This is Portia with her two sons in Webster Groves, October 1908.

George and Brooks Gosting in the winter of 1908 in the yard of their new house.

Brooks is being a big brother to little George in 1909.

George and Brooks Gosting in 1909.

Brooks and George seem to be enjoying the snow.

Brooks Gosting with his cousin, Suzanne Nettleton (This was Henry’s sister Lenny’s daughter).

This is believed to be a picture of Virginia Crain with her father, Marquis Crain, in 1908.  Marquis was pronounced like “Marky.”  Marquis Crain was Henry Gosting’s cousin who was the same age.  They worked together at Western Union both in St Louis and in Kansas City and remained close all their lives. The picture of her father looks similar to other pictures that we have of him, and the child would be the right age when this picture was taken to be his daughter, Virginia.  Virginia was Marquis’ only child and was 10 months older than Brooks.  The Gosting children grew up knowing her well.

“En route from Los Angeles to New York”
Portia’s sisters were traveling across country by train and stopped in St Louis on the way and visited Portia and Henry.  In the back are Mabel Brooks Garland, Anna Constance Brooks, and Portia Brooks Gosting - the three Brooks sisters in 1910.  In the front, are Billy Garland, George Gosting, and Brooks Gosting. At this time, Mabel and Billy were living in New Jersey outside New York City.

The three Brooks sisters - Anna Constance Brooks on the left, Mabel Brooks Garland in the middle, and Portia Brooks Gosting on the right.

This is Anna Constance Brooks and Mabel Brooks Garland with Billy getting ready to go.  Grandfather Henry Gosting waited until just the right moment to snap the picture as the train was moving behind them.