52 Ancestors - Florence Lee (Hughes) Chamberlain

So many loose ends could be wrapped up with a day spent with my great-great grandmother Florence Hughes Chamberlain.  She was a woman who lived a subsistence life, described as a hillbilly who lived in a dirt-floor shack by her eldest granddaughter, reminiscing about a family trip taken to the hills of south central Missouri when she was about 12 years old.

Florence was born in the mid-1870’s in a farm-based community full of extended family on her father’s side but a fairly foreign territory for her mother, recently arrived with her father from Virginia.  Florence was likely her parents’ only child, and when she was small her paternal grandmother lived in the household.  It is unknown when her grandmother died.

Florence was rumored, even by her own son, to be an Indian woman, although this has been shown almost certainly false by DNA results of several descendants.  The Trail of Tears passed not far from her birthplace, but more than 30 years prior to her birth.  She was the daughter of a Union veteran, while her maternal grandfather, returned to Virginia before she was a teen, fought for the Confederacy.  She lived in an area peppered with sundown town, and a newspaper clipping featuring her great-aunt by marriage, who lived nearby, having been “assaulted by a negro” who was accused of stealing her market money. Certainly these experiences had more than a passing impact on her son’s racist views.

About 20 years old when she married, the young Chamberlains soon moved to Arkansas.  As far as I can tell, they sharecropped most of their working years, and their 3 oldest children, all sons, were born in the first decade of their marriage, followed by a daughter, Lillie.  There may have been another daughter, not recorded anywhere that I’ve found but remembered by Florence upon seeing her son’s only blonde daughter, about age 6, during the aforementioned visit. This family is missing from both the 1910 Census and the 1930 Census.  Combined with the loss of Census records in 1890, there are gaping holes in Florence’s life.

Things I’d like to discuss with my ancestor:  What can you tell me about your parents? They can’t both have disappeared into the ether, can they?  Did you have a much younger sister named Nancy, or was she YOUR illegitimate daughter raised by your parents.  Was your husband or Harry Coleson your true love, or both, or neither?  Yes, Harry is the biological father of your youngest son, the science is solid.  Was he Lillie’s father, too?

When Florence and her husband were both near 50, their elder son Herbert was in jail after an assault or fight (decades later, remembered as a murder by his surviving brother - I’ve found no evidence of this). Herbert and his cellmate got the bright idea to make a run for it, which according to the newspaper was the evening before their scheduled release. The cellmate was apprehended a very short while later, while Herbert was never seen or heard from again. I’d love to know if his mother mourned him, or if her poor life left her with little to think of but survival. She was a faithful religious woman according to her obituary, so certainly she prayed for her missing son.

Florence and her husband lived for as time in Barry County, Missouri (the only time they owned the land they lived on), prior to moving to Tennessee where they lived with Lillie and her children.  It was a full house. Did she get along with her daughter?  Lillie’s first daughter was named for her grandmother and called “Flossie.”