WHO KNOWS J.J. WILLIAMS OF TEXAS?

I wish I knew.  But unless I get more facts about him, it is hard to give him the fullness of an Immortal Nobody.  I only have two letters….

What do I know about J. J. Williams?  I know that in late 1891 in Grosebeck, Texas, he wrote a letter to a young lady of 17, who lived in Kosse, Texas.  She was Maud McConnell, who many years later would become my grandmother.  In December of 1891, he writes that she was "the sweetest girl in Texas" and he called her "sweetheart." 

Apparently a misunderstanding followed, and his letter written from Hubbard, Texas dated February 14, 1892, ends with "Maud, now write me a long sweet letter and tell me that you love me as in the by gone days."   

~o~

On February 18, 1893, Maud's family received word that her sister Lillie's husband, (Ben McCammon) a train engineer, had been killed in a railroad accident in Colorado, and the McConnells, which included Mom, Dad, Maud and little brother Bert, left for Colorado City.  Lillie and her children lived in a big house at 18^th and Colorado Street, and that is where the family stayed to help Lillie through this terrible time.  In due time, the parents and Bert went back home to Texas, but Maud stayed with her sister to help with the children.  Once the kids were of school age, she got a job in town and in 1898 married Scott Dobbins, a rancher and musician from Las Animas, Colorado.

Here's the beauty of this story.  In 1984 when I went back to Colorado, I went to the still-standing old  house, which in the meantime had been turned into a commercial property.  When I introduced myself to the current owner of the property and told her of my Grandmother Maud's relationship to that house, she went to the company safe and returned with two letters for me.  "I've been waiting for you," she said.  "These are yours now."

She gave me Maud's letters from J. J. Williams.  I had no idea they existed until that time.  It is obvious that she did not marry J. J., but it is interesting and maybe significant that those letters came with her from Texas to Colorado.  Sadly, we will never know the details of this story.

I have always wished I could share these letters with descendants of J. J. Williams. For genealogical purposes, the lack of his first and middle names, while common in the South is a real problem for genealogists,  the commonness of his surname, and the lack of an 1890 Federal census has made all my research to find additional details turn up empty.  There are a couple of things in the letter that might be clues:  He had a friend named Webb Price; J. J. and Webb had dinner with Miss Jennie; he mentions his school is having a concert and he wants Maude to come and hopefully stay permanently; he hasn't been anywhere since Christmas except to Hubbard.  He confesses to a spell of the blues, to which Mrs. Wood said he needed some one to make a living for him.

This is all I know, which renders J. J. Williams as the most nobody of the IMMORTALNOBODIES that I know.  Lest he be completely left out, at least this much about him we'll know forever – or for as long as this blog stands.  

McCammon house at 18th and Colorado - taken in the 1960s

*If anyone has THIS J. J. Williams in their family tree, let me know at <laughingallegra@aol.com>

SUSAN MAUD McCONNELL

~ A DOBBINS RELATIVE ~


This is a picture of Miss Maud McConnell and her sister Lillie’s children posing on donkeys. The oldest, Hazel, is in the middle, and her brothers Floyd and John are on either side of her. It is true, the boy in front looks like a girl, but in those days boys stayed in dresses until they were out of diapers. I’ll make an educated guess that this photo is dated about 1894. Every photo tells a story. Today I’m going to tell you about this one.

Maud always went by her middle name. According to her family bible, she didn’t like her first name, Susan! Her parents, John B. McConnell and Frances Narcissa Wright McConnell, lived in Barren County, Kentucky and eight of their nine children were born there. About 1880, the McConnell family moved from Kentucky to Kossee, Texas, where they bought some farmland. The last child, Harrie Uberto McConnell, was born in Texas. Lillie shortly met and married a railroad engineer, Benjamin Franklin McCammon, and the McCammons moved to Colorado City, (now west Colorado Springs) where he worked for the Midland Railroad.

In 1893, Ben was killed in a railroad crash, leaving Lillie with three small tots. Lillie’s parents, along with Maud (now 17 years old) and little brother “Bert," came up from Texas to help her out. Maud chose to stay in Colorado to help her sister with the children. Her folks and Bert went back home.

Maud lived with Lillie and the kids until the little ones were in school. At that point, Maud, now 20, went to work at a bookstore in old Colorado City. In those days, almost every Sunday there was a band concert at the local park. It was a social event and once the concert ended the band members mingled with the audience.



It was at one of these band concerts at Stratton Park in Colorado Springs that Maud McConnell met a cornet player named Scott Dobbins, who in the summers played in the Midland Railroad Band. During the rest of the year, he lived on the Dobbins ranch in Las Animas, Colorado and played in the Las Animas band. Maud herself was an accomplished pianist and apparently she and Scott discovered they made sweet music together. On December 28, 1898, Maud and Scott married in Colorado Springs at Lillie's house. After the honeymoon they settled in at the Las Animas ranch. In 1904 Maud gave birth to their first child, a daughter Dorothy, and in 1908 they added Scott Jr. (my father) to their family. Shortly before Scott’s birth, they sold the ranch and moved into town.

Maud was widowed in 1917 and because it was necessary for her to go to work to support the two children, they relocated to Colorado Springs where jobs were available. After a few odd jobs, she found her place as a matron at Glockner's Sanitarium.

A few years before he died Dad and I were talking about what life was like in Las Animas. He said that his folks always had a piano in their house, and during the freezing winters all the neighbors would bring their musical instruments to the Dobbins house and spend the afternoon making music for their own enjoyment, my grandma Maud on the piano and grandpa Scott on the cornet. A neighbor taught my dad to play the banjo, and other neighbors and relatives filled in with guitars, trombones, and clarinets. Those who didn’t play an instrument became the “choir.”

I was born in California in 1935. Grandma Maud began making yearly trips to visit our family. Because I was so young when she came, I really didn’t know who she was and I referred to her as “that lady.” Eventually “Lady” became my name for this grandma. She died in 1940 and I don’t have any real recollection of her. But I do have this picture of me, my mom and Lady taken in 1938, and when I think of her, it is always this picture that always comes to mind.

For those of you who are my Dobbins siblings and cousins, my grandma Maud is also your grandma. To our children, she is their great-grandma, and to our grandchildren she is their great-great grandma. So when your grandkids hit fourth grade and are required to produce a genealogy of their family, you can at least show them this picture, tell them this story and then, if I am still living, I can fill you in on all the rest. This is, of course, the whole purpose of genealogy – passing the family history on down through the generations.