Great Great Grandparents!

It's difficult to package posts about our family ancestry. There is so much and so many to talk about. It's really tough to keep all the relationships straight, so I am going to try and simplify it. Two folks I know very little about are relatively close in time to me. My great grandparents on my Dad's side. 

Great Granddad died before I was born, but I was eight years old when my great Grandmother Wilbanks passed away in Holdenville Oklahoma. I never met her, or really heard anything about her until as an adult I started asking questions. I will use these two to introduce several other members of the Wilbanks family tree, and hopefully you can get some semblance of who they all were. 

My Great Granddad Wilbanks was named Luther, and his middle name was Alanson. He was known by all as "LA Wilbanks". His middle name came from his grandfather on his Mom's side who was named Alanson Forbes (Alanson Forbes' father William was an American soldier in the Revolutionary war, and the War of 1812). 

LA's father, Thomas "Tom" Mitchell Wilbanks,  fought with the Confederate States Armies (Company H, 29th Georgia Volunteer Regiment of the Army of Tennessee). After the war Tom returned home. On December 18, 1866 he married LA's future mother, my great great grandmother, Francis Maria Forbes (remember? Alanson Forbes' daughter!). LA was born on August 31, 1869 in Harmony Grove Georgia four years after the end of the civil war. 

Young Luther had six siblings. Four brothers: William (who was older), Tom, Robert, and the youngest Charlie; and two sisters: Kiziah, and Minnie. He grew up on his parents' farm, and worked there with his brothers. LA's Dad had a wooden peg-leg as a souvenir of the war, so he needed all the help he could get. The Wilbanks' had been farmers since Richard Wilbanks (Woolbanks) immigrated from Wales in the early 18th century. 

You can see Great Great Granddad Tom seated on the left. His daughter Istalena Kiziah, and wife  Francis Maria are seated to his left. Standing are Robert, Minnie celesta, and three brothers Wilbanks. Luther may be the tallest one of the three on the right. I don't know who the woman is, possibly a daughter in law. Charlie the baby is on the far right.

The family worked the farm in Harmony Grove until sometime in the late 1880's when they decided to pull up stakes and move west. This was during the reconstruction period, and life must have been difficult there.

LA's grandmother (my Great Great Great Grandmother Wilbanks), Sarah (Montgomery) passed away in 1885. His grandfather, Abijah Wilbanks, had died 10 years earlier. Perhaps Luther's father Tom decided that with both parents gone there was little left there in Jackson County Georgia for him or his family. Lured by the prospect of a new life and affordable land, they loaded wagons and struck out west for Choctaw Indian territory. 
They may have even participated in the first Oklahoma land rush of 1890. LA and his family eventually settled in a place called Poteau in what would later (1907) become part of the state of Oklahoma. 

Robert Donald Logan was also a civil war veteran. RD, as he was called, fought in the 26th Alabama Infantry Regiment under the famous Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, and was wounded at the battle of Gettysburg (his left thumb was shot off). After the war RD returned to Marion Alabama and soon married Melissa Young. The family farmed and began to raise a family.

The Logan Family L to R Front, Veston, Malissa, Robert Donald (notice the missing left thumb), Edna Mae, Emory. Upper L to R Cora Pearl, William Thomas, Jefferson Davis Burton, Mary Earlie Logan Burton, James Robert Logan. Don't know the dog's name.

A young Great Grandmother Pearl

Cora "Pearl" Logan, was born to RD and Melissa in Tupelo Mississippi on August 5th, 1876. She was called by her middle name, Pearl, and she had an older sister Mary, and two older brothers Veston and James. Two younger brothers,William, and Emory, would be born later. Around 1890, the Logans also loaded their wagon and struck out in search of a new life in the Indian Territory. They settled in Poteau not far from the Wilbanks clan.

The Logans and Wilbanks grew close over the following years. I am sure that RD and Thomas Mitchell spent quite a bit of time reminiscing together as veterans of the civil war. I am also very certain that they were more than a little bit pleased when their two families were bound together by the marriage of their children. Veston Green Logan married LA's sister Kissiah, in 1894. Three years later, in 1897, Luther and Pearl were married.

Veston Logan and his wife Kissiah
with their daughter Irene.

Then, on December 23rd, 1901 LA and Pearl received a baby boy as an  anniversary gift. They named him after both of their fathers: Thomas Donald Wilbanks. He was the first of three Thomas Donald Wilbankses, and he was of course my Granddad!

Granddad is the tall one in the
bow tie. His sister Nola Jean
 is seated, and he has his arm
 around his baby brother Moody.

Census records show that LA and Pearl were never able to purchase a home, but rather rented a house, while Luther worked as a farm laborer. Later, according to the 1930 census, LA moved the family to Bucklucksy Oklahoma, and got a job as a prison guard at the state penitentiary in McAlester.  Bucklucksy, was a small community just north of McAlester near a place called "Big Tussle". Today, most of it is under Eufala Lake. Bucklucksy is a Choctah word meaning Turtle creek. 

The records also indicate that neither of my Great Grandparents attended school, but that both of them could read and write. Dad once told me that "Grandma Pearl" was adamant that her eldest son Don (Grandad) would NOT be a "dirt farmer"! She and Luther worked hard to send young Don to college at the University of Oklahoma where he graduated at the top of his class in 1922.

Luther lived to be 75 years old. He died on March 22, 1946 and is buried in the Holdenville cemetery. Great Grandmother Pearl died at the age of 84 on May 25th, 1960. She is buried alongside LA in Holdenville.

That is about all I know of my Wilbanks great grandparents. Both born to fathers that served the confederacy during the civil war. Both raised in the south during reconstruction, and then during the rise of Jim Crow and segregation. I am thankful, proud and a little amazed at how the Wilbanks have evolved from slave owners (Thomas Mitchell's father Abijah owned several) to citizens of a different America that, while not perfect, is much closer to the aspirational hopes and words of our founding.

That's All!