Here's a picture of my great great grandparents, Frederick Harmon Brittain and Mary Jane Rooks, as well as a copy of their marriage certificate. They were married on September 14, 1879 in Lowery City, Missouri.
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| Mary Jane Rooks Brittain and Frederick Harmon Brittain |
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| Marriage Certificate - I love the decorative scroll work on it! |
Witnesses to the marriage were Frederick's father, Milton Price Brittain, and Mary Jane's father, Thomas J. Rooks.
Frederick and Mary Jane had 12 children, including my great grandfather, Andrew Lee Brittain. Sadly, three of those children didn't make it past the age of three. At some point after their wedding, and possibly around the time of the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889, the family moved from Missouri to Indian Territory (what is now Oklahoma). Frederick apparently ran into some trouble with the law around 1900 (he's in the US Jail at Muskogee in the 1900 US census, but I'm still working on the mystery of why he was there. Stay tuned!), and Mary Jane passed away in 1904. Frederick remarried, in 1906, to Sarah Frances Young, and they had three children together. They moved to Van Buren County, Arkansas, sometime after 1910, and he passed away there in 1921.
I don't know why, but reading about your genealogical quest has made me more interested in my own (not that I wasn't prior to this).
ReplyDeleteAww, thanks, Renee!!
ReplyDeleteSometimes jail time was simply because of financial difficulties and not necesarily connected to nefarious behavior. You never know though. I have someone on Dads side that supposedly ran off with payroll. The family denies it but he left while his wife and kids remained. It was said he left for work in another state. I love all the stories...good, bad, humorous...
ReplyDeleteI love reading your entries. I have a bunch of newspaper articles from the Tracy area, from back in the day of Hannah if you are interested.
Thanks, Vikki. Am VERY interested in the old newspapers from Tracy!! If you can scan and email them to me, that would be fantastic. Otherwise, I'd pay for any mailing costs for copies. At some point, I'm going to take a day off work and head over to Tracy just to spend some time at the museum there. I know that they have stuff on our Bruhns and Schlichtmann side.
ReplyDelete