Finding Fathers

Rebecca Sampley Coley (1845-1885) was one of the many members of the Sampley family in north Alabama during the 19th Century. While Rebecca never migrated to Texas, many of her relatives did. Historians tell us that migration to a new home with more opportunities for better wages and more comfortable lifestyles is common after major wars.

Most genealogists can trace their families back quite a few generations on the male line and struggle with the female line. Married women in the 19th century and earlier seldom ever used their own names; instead they were Mrs. So and So. And, they hardly ever mentioned their maiden names.

But my father’s line, the Coley families who suddenly appear in Georgia in 1850 are virtually impossible to find. I really think William Coley, the first Coley I have found, was either adopted, a criminal using an alias, or an alien from Mars. In fact, he listed his occupation as Gold-Digger after the gold rush in northern Georgia was over and California was the place to go for gold.

But his grandson who was my great-grandfather married a perfectly delightful young lady whose maiden name was Sampley. Her father was Edmond Browder Sampley, a Methodist minister, a schoolteacher, and a Sergeant in the Alabama-Tennessee Vidette Cavalry (USA). Yep, old E. B. was a Union supporter as were most of his brothers, cousins, uncles, and other male relatives.

Once the Civil War was over, the Sampley families had some pretty hard times in Alabama. Jobs were scarce, money was even scarcer, and men who supported the Union were not treated kindly. E. B. had a younger brother named Theodore Higgins. In 1872, Theodore Higgins (T. H.) picked up and moved to Texas, to Jack County, Texas, to be exact. Why T. H. settled there has always been a mystery. Because he was the youngest child, he only served in the Civil War one year; one year as a teamster for the Union Army in Tennessee, just across the state line.

I have always wondered if he chose a place with fellow Unionists around. Fort Richardson was established in 1867 as a frontier fort to protect white settlers. The 1870 census showed several families in Jack County from the same part of Alabama where the Sampley family lived. Most served in the Union Army.

But the topography of Jack County is not at all like Jackson and DeKalb Counties in Alabama where T. H. and his siblings were raised. That part of Alabama was in the hills, full of trees with cold winters and significant amount of rainfall. Jack County is usually dry, the pockets of Cross Timbers interspersed with flat grasslands. However, T. H. thought he had arrived in Heaven. He wrote to relatives about the cheap land, the open spaces, and the ability to own one’s own land.

Soon his siblings, cousins, in-laws, and others began to arrive. By 1900 there were numerous relatives in the southwest corner of Jack County. More arrived every year. Each family seemed to have acquired 160 acres of farmland. They were prosperous small farmers, raising a number of children who were all educated, and visited every day by T. H. He liked to check on all the family, probably because he felt responsible for their being in Texas. Whether he knew it or not, the extended family began to refer to him as Daily.

The ironic thing about all those people with the last name Sampley in Jack County between 1880 and 1945 is that after World War II most of the young people moved to Fort Worth or Dallas for better jobs. When you consider it, they followed an age-old pattern their parents and grandparents pursued.