Lemuel Adkins was from Boone County, WV and was married there on 18 May 1870 to Virginia Whittington. The couple were living with his parents in the 1870 Census. By 1880, we find in the census that the couple had 4 children in that ten year period: Florence (1872), John (1874), William (1876), and Carrie Ethel (1878). The next child born was Helen Daisy (1880) and, according to her death record, her birthplace was in Putnam County, WV. If the family was already in Putnam County by the end of 1880, it stands to reason then that the next two children were also born in Putnam County: Owen (1883) and Stella (1887). At this time, I suspect that the area in which they lived was likely Lanham, WV: That is the area in which my grandmother was born to Bertha Norris and Ira McClanahan. I’ll get to those suspicions momentarily.
Lemuel’s wife Virginia Whittington passed away around the turn of the century; my guess is about 1902 because Lemuel remarried to a woman named Adelia Barbara McClanahan White, a 28-year-old widow, on 18 Dec 1904. Adelia had married a man named F. E. White and apparently lived in Louisville, KY for a spell, where her first child, Francis Edward White, was born 26 April 1901. I suspect that F. E. White may have died and widowed Adelia and her infant son came home to her parents (Elisha Jarrett McClanahan and Mary Goff) in Putnam County.
In the 1910 Census, only one of Lemuel’s children by Virginia Whittington is living in the same household: Owen Adkins. The elder children (whom I have not traced) are likely married. Daughter Helen Daisy had married Elisha Wilkinson in 1898 and appears in the 1910 Putnam County Census with her own family. But what of Carrie Ethel and Stella Marie Adkins?
The two appear to be living in a boarding house in Charleston, Kanawha County. According to the 1900 Census of Kanawha, 21 year old Carrie (“Carry”) and 12 year old sister Stella (a student) are boarders in a house on Virginia Street, apparently at the intersection of Capital Street, according to the census. Enumerated in House #287, along with Carrie and Stella and others, is 26 year old Hamilton Weares, occupation: Steamboat Captain. The 1900 Census was taken on 21 June 1900. On 17 February 1901, Carrie Adkins and Hamilton Weares were joined in holy matrimony in Kanawha County.
It is likely then that 12 year old Stella went back to Putnam County to live, possibly with her father Lemuel and step-mother or possibly with her sister, Helen Daisy Wilkinson, because on 24 February 1907, Stella married Major Curtis Norris in Putnam County. I say this because you’ll notice that the families involved lived within what I call walking distance of one another and the town of Poca – the Lanham vicinity. The marriage record gives us much detail about the “whose” and the “wheres” involved in the marriage. (George) Frank Norris provided the names and ages of his son Major and future daughter-in-law, Stella Adkins, in the Clerk’s Certificate. The marriage took place at Elisha Wilkinson’s (Stella’s brother-in-law, husband of her sister Helen Daisy Adkins). The minister that joined the two in Holy Matrimony was R. L. Workman who may well have been “Ralph” Workman. Ralph Workman, if I understand correctly, lived at Poca and “evangelized” at the Church of God in Bancroft.
Major and Stella are shown together in the 1910 Census with a “Black Betsy” address. With them is their first-born, 2-year-old daughter Virginia Lee Norris. The Census was taken on 5 May 1910. This tells me two things, at least: (1) Virginia Lee Norris was born in Putnam County and (2) she was likely named after Stella’s deceased mother, Virginia Whittington. Before the year was out, Major and Stella had another daughter: Nina Louise Norris. What is confusing is that Nina Louise’s birth record is on file at WVCulture.org with her birthdate as 13 January 1910 but the birthplace as Olcott, Kanawha County. Olcott as a town no longer exists but there is an Olcott Community Church – that’s a few miles west of Marmet. As we all know, individuals cannot be in two places at one time: Black Betsy, Putnam County and Olcott, Kanawha County so this mystery may take me awhile to iron out. My suspicion is that Major and Stella moved to Olcott before having registered Nina’s birth at the Putnam County Court.
By 1918, all of Major and Stella’s children had been born:
- Virginia Lee (1907)
- Nina Louise (1910)
- Paul Dennis (1913)
- Lucille Kathleen (1915)
- Ralph Frank (1918)
I want to take a moment and point out that daughter Virginia Lee Norris named her children the same first names of her siblings with the exception of Lucille.
Note that Ralph Frank Norris, no doubt named “Frank” after Major’s father, is recorded as born on 11 March 1918 at Charleston. On 12 December of the same year, we find that Stella died from Pneumonia. The contributing factor: Influenza. Thus it is believed that Stella was a victim of the “Spanish” Flu epidemic. Hamilton Wears was the informant on Stella’s death record. She was buried 13 December 1918 – a good sign that the cause of death was Spanish Flu – in an unmarked grave in the Spring Hill Cemetery, Charleston, WV.
Remember, these were the days before labor unions and 9-5 working hours, social security, and government welfare. A single father, required to work daily to support his family could not, on a coal miner’s wages, afford to stay home with his children and work, too. In those days, coal miners – and I suspect many other laborers – worked 12 hour days. They went to work before the sun came up and returned home as the sun was going down. It was the “norm,” the common thing, for the children of the deceased female to be placed with a sister to raise. This is how it had been for Major and his sister Bertha when their mother died: Major and Bertha went to live with their mother’s sister, Fannie Smith, a spinster and a bonafide witch, who lived her father, Joshua Smith. Major and Stella’s children went to live with Hamilton Weares and his wife Carrie Adkins. The alternative, I suppose, would have been to place the children in an orphanage where any willing soul could choose a child, take them home, and put them to work in the house or on the farm.
I should point out that Carrie and Hamilton had no children of their own after 17 years of marriage. Suddenly they are the custodians of five children between the ages of eleven years old and nine months old. I hear that Hamilton was a kind and gentle man. Carrie apparently had no such inclinations. Putting myself in her shoes, I suspect that I, too, would have had a dour temperament; having gone from having one adult individual to look after to having one adult and five frightened children who missed their mother daily as well as their father. As I stated in a previous post, Major seemingly disappeared off the face of the planet about that time, at least according to my grandmother who told and retold the family history according to her parents, Bertha Norris and Ira McClanahan.
I have done a bit of research on the children born to Major Curtis Norris and his first wife, Stella Adkins. Having discovered a DNA Match to their eldest daughter, Virginia Lee Norris, I will make their five children a priority.
