Willis Green Montgomery (18??-1863)
and
Elizabeth M. (Carpenter)
Montgomery
(1824-1911)
Photo graciously provided by Lori Brown Deuerling and her cousin Sue Trimble Zinger, Dec 2002
As you can see, many of the names are followed by question marks because we're merely guessing!
If you can help confirm the identity of anyone pictured above, please send me an email at: mjmontgo2001@yahoo.com
Thank you!
Willis Green Montgomery and Elizabeth M. Carpenter
were
married
September 15 (or 16), 1844 in Lincoln County, KY
According to their son William's obituary, Willis died in August of 1863, just two months before William was born
in "Knoxwell", Tennessee. We don't know if the town's name is a typo, and they meant "Knoxville" instead....or if the state was wrong, but Tennessee records
show no evidence that there was EVER a town called "Knoxwell" within its borders. This is our BRICK WALL -- we still don't know how Willis died, where he died, or where
he is buried. More importantly, we have no information about his parents or siblings. All we know for sure is that he was born in Kentucky (according to census records),
and that he was married in 1844 in Lincoln County, Kentucky. We also have two census records for him - 1850 in Smith County, TN, and 1860 in Washington Township in MO.
I was contacted by a Dr. Jay Montgomery a few years ago, who feels strongly that Willis is the 6th child of Clayton Montgomery, the county
surveyor for Lincoln County, KY for many years. He bases that assumption on a survey map with Willis' name on it that he claims to have seen in Clayton's
estate papers. However, when my brother and his wife went to Stanford, KY (the county seat for Lincoln County) in 2005 to see the estate papers, they were nowhere to be
found. So as of Jan 2007, the names of Willis' parents and siblings are still a mystery.
Willis' wife, Elizabeth M. Carpenter came from a long line of Carpenters, originally from Switzerland, who were instrumental in settling Kentucky. According to John C.
Haley's account of the Carpenter family found in "The History of Smith County Tennessee", George and Sally Carpenter (Elizabeth's parents and Mr. Haley's
grandparents) moved from their home in Smith County, Tennessee, to Fannin County, Texas, in 1868 in an area not far from Gainesville. The account states that Elizabeth
and her children soon followed (presumably from Tennessee) and settled nearby. But it also says that Elizabeth later returned to Tennessee -- we have found no
confirmation of that. We know from north Texas census records that Elizabeth and her children were back in Texas by 1876, the same year that several of her children
married.
Photo scanned from page 404 of the book Prairie Fire
published by the
Western Oklahoma Historical Society of Elk City, OK
(date of publication unknown)
In 1892, at the age of 68, she and her youngest son, William, made the famous "run" into Oklahoma Indian Territory. There she staked out 160 acres on
Little Soldier Creek in west-central Oklahoma, near a small town called Foss, in what was to become Custer County. The picture above was taken outside the family's
farmhouse on that acreage somewhere around 1910 or 1911.
CHILDREN:
Jane (1846/47-????)
Mary (1847/48-????)
Lindsey Powell Carpenter ("LPC")
Montgomery (1853-1933),
Margaret Leana Francis Montgomery (1856-1933),
Lucy Elizabeth Carpenter Montgomery (1862 - abt 1878),
William Green Montgomery
(1863-1943)
POSSIBLE OTHER CHILDREN:
Nancy E. Montgomery
We found documentation concerning Jane, Mary, LPC, Margaret, and William early on in our research, but didn't know about Lucy Montgomery until about 2000, when my
sister-in-law found a marriage record and a census record that surprised us all! The marriage record showed that a Lucy E.C. Montgomery was married in 1876 to a
gentleman by the name of Mace Miller, SR. in Cooke County, Texas (the same year and county in which LPC married Sarah Lynn, and Margaret Montgomery married James F.
Hill).
Four years later, in 1880, census records showed Elizabeth, LPC, Sarah Lynn, and their children living with Mace Miller, JR. and his wife Mattie in Cooke County. That
was a strong indication to us that Lucy might be another child of Willis & Elizabeth's. It was confirmed for us when my brother & sister-in-law discovered a federal
census record showing Willis and Elizabeth (incorrectly identified as "Isabelle") living in Washington Township, Missouri in 1860. Lucy was clearly named as one of the
children. We have no proof, but are assuming her middle names are "Elizabeth Carpenter".
POSSIBLITY....another Montgomery girl - Nancy E. Montgomery - was also married in Cooke County in 1876, just one day before Margaret Montgomery was married. The record
shows that Nancy married a gentleman by the name of William Pierce. We have not had a chance to research Nancy further, but given the date and place of her marriage,
there may be a chance she is another child of Willis & Elizabeth.
We don't know for sure where Willis Green Montgomery is buried, but we believe it's somewhere in
Tennessee. Elizabeth died in Foss, Custer County, Oklahoma on July 26, 1911. She was buried in the Edwardsville
Cemetery in Custer County, but when that area was later flooded by the Foss Dam, her casket was re-interred
at the Canute Cemetery in Canute, Oklahoma.
Go to their childrens' pages:
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