Journeys Through Jackson 2017 Vol.27 No.02

Journeys Through Jackson is the official journal of the Jackson County Genealogical Society, Inc. The journal began as a monthly publication in July 1991, was published bimonthly from 1994 to 2003, and continues today as a quarterly publication. The journal issues in this digital collection are presented as annual compilations.Journeys Through Jackson The Official Journal of the Jackson County Genealogical Society, Inc. Vol. XXVII, No. II Spring/ Summer 2017 JACKSON COUNTY GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY, INC. 2017 Officers Presiden ................................................................................................................... Lynn Hotaling Vice Presidents ............................................................... Norma Bryson Clayton, George Frizzell Secretary ................................................................................................................. Deborah Blazer Treasurer ..................................................................................................... Teresa Deitz Manring Librarian...................................................................................................................... Marie Clark Office Manager ......................................................................................................... Carol Bryson Web Master, Computer Technician .................................................................... Jason N. Gregory Chair, Publications (Editor) ........................................................................... Sanji Talley Watson Journeys Through Jackson is the official publication of the Jackson County Genealogical Society. Members and non-members are invited to submit genealogical materials for publication, with the understanding that the editor reserves the right to edit these materials for genealogical content, clarity, or taste. The Society assumes no responsibility for errors of fact that may be contained in submissions, and except where noted, the opinions expressed are not those of the editor or of the Jackson County Genealogical Society. The Society accepts no advertising for this publication except for notices from other non-profit groups. From the Editor Don’t forget that every second Thursday of the month, the Society offers great programs on a wide variety of topics. As always, they are open to the public and are free. Pass the word regarding our programs. Always remember that our Society is as good as its members. If you have any pictures, stories or tidbits of information that you would like to share with everyone, please feel free to send it to the Society for publication in Journeys. REMEMBER The Rebel Cruise – In Sunday October 1, 2017 1 – 4 pm Sav-Mor Parking Lot Sylva, NC T-Shirts – Music – Food Trucks – 50/50 Raffle Classic Cars, Muscle Cars & Rat Rods Journeys Through Jackson Spring/Summer 2017 49 Table of Contents Table of Contents .............................................................................................................49 JCGS Photo Album.................................................................................................... 50-54 Dr. John R. Brinkley ................................................................................................. 55-64 1880 Jackson County Census Records ..................................................................... 65-68 Descendants of William Solomon Parker, Sr .......................................................... 69-72 Jackson County Genealogical Society Scholarship Winners ................................. 73-76 Descendants of John Thomas Tatham ..................................................................... 77-80 1944 Jackson County Death Certificates ................................................................. 81-83 The Oldest House in Jackson County ............................................................................84 Outline Descendant Report for Frederick (Baumgarten) Bumgarner. ................ 85-88 Gunter-Gooch From Jackson County to Idaho and Utah ..................................... 89-90 Denton Higdon Photo Album .................................................................................... 91-94 Index ............................................................................................................................ 95-96 The address for JCGS is now: Jackson County Genealogical Society Post Office Box 480 Sylva, NC 28779 In the Fall 2016 Issue of JTJ, we made a mistake in the transcription of one of the articles. We are human and all articles are edited for clarity, legibility, proper formatting. Here is the corrected paragraph that should be on page 185 in the Fall 2016 issue. “We have known her all her life until the removal of herself and husband to Tennessee and that we firmly state that she is a woman of good character never having known of or heard of anything whatever derogatory to her character for virtue, charity, honesty, and sobriety and we further state that her father and family for a great many years were close neighbors only residing a short distance from us. Given under our hands this 19th day of August A. D. 1870.” Journeys Through Jackson Spring/Summer 2017 50 JCGS Photo Album The pictures shown here was given to the Society by JCGS member, Bonnie Barker. Above left is a picture of John Robert Mills, taken at the old home place on Moses Creek. Above is Mitchell Melton, Pernell Griggs, and John Robert Mills taken at the Melton home in Little Canada. The photograph on the left is of John Robert Mills and Finley Mills. Recent research on this family reminded us that we had these pictures in the Bonnie Barker Collection. Journeys Through Jackson Spring/Summer 2017 51 JCGS Photo Album The photo above is of John Robert and Flora Arrington Mills family; included in this photo is Zeb Mills, Findly Mills, Mariah Etta Mills, Nellie Ann Mills, Ferry Mills and Winnie Mills. The photo on the bottom is also John Robert and Flora Arrington Mills family. With them in this photo are Nina Arrington, Ferry Mills, Mariah Mills, Nell Mills. These two photos were also part of the Bonnie Barker Collection located in the JCGS Library. Journeys Through Jackson Spring/Summer 2017 52 JCGS Photo Album Recently, there was a discussion in the JCGS office as to if the gentlemen in these two pictures are the same man. The photo to the top is a known photo of William Hamilton Bryson, (11 Nov 1832 – 18 Sep 1875), he was the son of William Holmes Bryson and Magdalene Cunningham. If anyone can identify the gentleman to the left, please let the society know his identity. Journeys Through Jackson Spring/Summer 2017 53 JCGS Photo Album In the JSGC Library, we have been very fortunate to have been given numerous old photographs. On the next two pages are some of the photographs that are unidentified. If you happen to know who any of these people are, please contact the office and let us know their identity. Journeys Through Jackson Spring/Summer 2017 54 JCGS Photo Album Journeys Through Jackson Spring/Summer 2017 55 Dr. John Brinkley By Lynn Hotaling and George Frizzell. This article will continue in future editions of JTJ. Seventy-five years after his death, the man who is likely Jackson County’s most notorious native son is once again in the national spotlight. Dr. John R. Brinkley, born July 8, 1885, in Beta, was raised alongside the Tuckaseigee River by his aunt, Sally Mingus. He left Sylva penniless but found fame and fortune during the 1920s and 1930s after he hit upon the idea of treating male impotence by transplanting goat glands into humans, performing hundreds of surgeries in hospitals he founded in Milford, Kan., Del Rio, Texas, and Little Rock, Ark. After Kansas authorities stripped him of his medical license in 1930, he built a new hospital in Del Rio, where he also constructed the world’s most powerful radio station across the Rio Grande River in Mexico, out of reach of U.S. regulation. He hosted a program introduced country music luminaries like the Carter family and local talent like Samantha Biddix Bumgarner and Harry Cagle to a national audience. Brinkley ended his career in bankruptcy court and died a broken man in 1942, but along the way he revolutionized political campaigning by introducing radio advertising, sound trucks and airplane travel during his 1930 write-in attempt to win the Kansas governorship. Though not initially taken seriously as a candidate, Brinkley attracted such huge crowds traveling the state in his airplane that state officials – just three days before the election – changed the voting rules. The only ballots that would count, they said, were ones that read “J.R. Brinkley.” With no time to protest, Brinkley got on the radio and reminded Kansans non-stop that they needed to write “J period R period B-R-I-N-K-L-E-Y,” and that no other spelling would do. When votes were tallied, Brinkley had 183,278, not counting the estimated 30,000 to 50,000 ballots with “Doctor Brinkley” or other variations. His two opponents’ totals were 217,171 and 216,920, which means Brinkley likely would have won had the old standard of voter intent remained in force. That insight into the 1930 election can be found in a 2008 Brinkley biography, “Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam” by Pope Brock. Since Brock’s book was published, interest in Brinkley has steadily increased. A documentary titled “Nuts!” was screened at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, where it won a special jury award for editing. That film is currently available through iTunes, Vimeo and Amazon’s screening service. A podcast on Brinkley’s exploits, titled “Man of the People” and featuring “Nuts!” director Penny Lane and “Charlatan” author Brock, aired in January of this year, and a film expected to star Robert Downey Jr. is in the works. While Brock’s book doesn’t include much about Brinkley’s early life, or Jackson County, it does paint a detailed (and typically unflattering) picture of the goat-gland specialist’s activities after he left Western North Carolina. Brinkley himself, however, never forgot his roots and kept in touch with a few people he had known as a boy. Despite investigations into his questionable medical treatments, area newspapers treated Brinkley as a star, and his Jackson County comings and goings were often front-page news in local papers. That all changed after his fall from grace when he was revealed to be a fraud. Hardly a mention of Brinkley is to be found in local newspapers in the three decades after his death. The Sylva Herald’s landmark 1951 Jackson County Centennial section, filled with stories of local history and luminaries, makes no mention of Brinkley, despite his national prominence and notoriety less than two decades earlier. Once he came into wealth and power, Brinkley himself created his own markers here, erecting a monument to his beloved Aunt Sally in a sharp curve between East LaPorte and Tuckasegee and having his name spelled out on the rock walls at the entrance to the farm a few hundred yards south that he purchased in 1936 from Claude Wike. Brinkley hired Will Smith, father of the late Bill Smith (a longtime local educator who won election as a county commissioner and Sylva board member), to manage the property for him. Bill Smith owned a collection of letters Brinkley wrote to his father, sometimes on an almost daily basis, directing day-to-day operations at the farm. Ray Ashe of East Fork, whose grandmother Amanda Wike Jackson lived next door to Brinkley’s Aunt Sally, remembers visiting the farm as a boy. “We went there one Sunday,” Ray said. “I remember he was very cordial and showed us everything, including their inner-spring mattresses.” According to Ray, Brinkley was lonely as a child. He often ate meals at Amanda Jackson’s and turned to Ray’s mother, Annie; her sister, Maggie; and brothers, Walter and Albert; for companionship. He was close to Ray’s Journeys Through Jackson Spring/Summer 2017 56 grandmother, who he called “Aunt Amanda” or “Aunt Mandy,” and corresponded with her; Ray has saved some of the letters and postcards his grandmother received from Brinkley and his wife, Minnie, that were mostly written when Brinkley was at the height of his fame and fortune. The first, dated Nov. 8, 1936, is in response to a letter Walter had written to tell Brinkley that Aunt Mandy was having trouble with her eyes. Just as he famously did during his radio shows, Brinkley offered advice, telling Aunt Mandy what to purchase at the “drug store in Sylva” to relieve her symptoms. “2-ounces of a ten percent solution of Argyrol and a medicine dropper. Dropping 5 or 10 drops in both eyes, rolling the eyeballs around and letting the medicine under the lids. I have found this to be of great relief to myself and others. The medicine is harmless, it is very black and stings the lids but that is of little consequence. I usually have it put in my eyes three times a day when I have eye strain or eye pain.” That letter also describes recent weather in Texas (two early frosts) and mentions the banana tree outside Brinkley’s window at his Del Rio mansion. Brinkley spared no expense on his palatial estate, filling it with tropical plants and animals. In “Charlatan,” Brock writes: “It was the home he created there – a mission-style manor and grounds near the Rio Grande – that had Texas talking: 16 acres of naked self-regard, part Versailles, part Barnum & Bailey.” The bulk of the correspondence Ray has surrounds a trip to Europe Brinkley took with Minnie and their son, Johnnie Boy, in the summer of 1937. While traveling, Brinkley sent Aunt Mandy at least a dozen postcards as well as three brief notes. Journeys Through Jackson Spring/Summer 2017 57 (The letter on the right, dated April 21, 1937, was sent to Amanda Wike Jackson from Dr. John R. Brinkley. The note on the left \was written July 9, 1937, also by Dr. John R. Brinkley to Amanda Wike Jackson of East LaPorte. All these illustrations, including the postcard pictured above and sent before, are courtesy of Ray Ashe.) Before the family left the Del Rio estate for their summer-long trip, the Brinkleys threw a big party – one so memorable that Brock describes it in his book, saying that 1,400 guests strolled the grounds while a stunt pilot did barrel-rolls overhead. “It was the biggest party the doctor ever threw the biggest south Texas could recall. After short speeches and a big feed, the night was crowned by an apocalyptic fireworks display: dogs, cats, ducks, soldiers on horseback appeared in the heavens etched in flame, each greeted with gasps and applause. The last rocket spelled a message that shimmered and flared among the stars: ‘Bon voyage Dr., Mrs. Brinkley and Johnnie,’” Brock writes. Brinkley wrote to Aunt Mandy before the trip. In an April 21 letter typed on “Brinkley Hospital” letterhead stationery, he tells her how busy he is and that he hopes to leave Texas by May 1. “We (are) up to our neck in work,” Brinkley writes. “I am having to go here and there besides operating every day, 5 operations yesterday, 6 this afternoon, many more are coming in.” After assuring Aunt Mandy that he and his family will call on her while they are in Tuckasegee, Brinkley says he will give a letter Aunt Mandy wrote to him to “Mrs. Brinkley” and that he’s sure Minnie will write Aunt Mandy if “she has time.” The letter is signed, “With lots of love, faithfully yours, J.R. Brinkley, M.D.” In the promised April 23, 1937, letter to Aunt Mandy, Minnie tells her of their planned trip – they will be in Jackson County May 5 or 6 on their way to New York to catch the Queen Mary – and of the party mentioned above. “Dr. Brinkley is giving a big garden party to several hundred (near 1,500) Del Rioians on next Sunday as a gesture of ‘good will,’” she writes. “We will be gone from Del Rio four months if our plans carry, so we do not want to be forgotten or not remembered with appreciation for the citizens’ good will.” Brock’s book provides the reason for the European journey: Dr. Brinkley had been elected president of the Del Rio Rotary Club, and he was to represent the group at the international Rotary convention in Nice. After leaving Del Rio in their airplane, the Brinkleys visited Aunt Mandy, who gave them some of her home-churned butter. These details are revealed in an undated letter Brinkley sent from the Queen Mary. “Just to let you know we are all right and having a smooth sea,” Brinkley wrote. “We have the rooms used by former King Edward and his mother when they were on this ship.” Brinkley also told Aunt Mandy “Johnnie enjoyed Journeys Through Jackson Spring/Summer 2017 58 your butter in the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York.” The subject of Johnnie and Aunt Mandy’s butter came up again in a postcard bearing a picture of the Notre Dame Cathedral mailed in July from Paris. “Johnnie Boy says he is homesick for Aunt Amanda’s butter and claims yours is the best butter in the world,” Brinkley said. On a postcard from Venice, dated June 21, 1937, that also bears a July 3 East LaPorte postmark, Brinkley wrote: “The streets here are water. You travel by boat. Love, J.R. Brinkley.” He spent his birthday that year in Luxemburg, sending Aunt Mandy a postcard with the queen’s picture and reminding her “Today is my birthday, July 8, 1885.” Brinkley also wrote the next day on stationery from the “Hotel Kaiserhof und Augusta-Viktoria-Bad,” saying he thought she would like it as a souvenir, and adding “‘Bad’ means ‘bath’” and “Yesterday I was 52. Time flies.” All the letters and cards are addressed simply to Mrs. Amanda (or Mrs. Mandy) Jackson, East LaPorte, North Carolina. As mentioned above, Brinkley was a topic of interest to local newspapers all during the 1930s, and the following selection of stories reflects that fact. Reports on Brinkley’s activities were often front-page news. Dr. John R. Brinkley in the Jackson County Journal, 1930 – 1940 (Transcribed by George Frizzell) These are verbatim transcriptions of articles from the Jackson County Journal, a Sylva (N.C) newspaper, which often featured updates on Dr. John R. Brinkley’s life and exploits. In some cases, typesetting errors, such as in the form of repeated words or phrases, have noted at the end of the respective texts. SEEK TO REVOKE BRINKLEY LICENSE IN MILFORD, KAN. Jackson County Journal, May 1, 1930 Dr. John R. Brinkley, native of Jackson county, and famous goat gland specialist is under investigation out in Milford, Kansas, in an effort to revoke his license to practice medicine in the State of Kansas. The complaint charges Dr. Brinkley with gross immorality and unprofessional conduct for the alleged perpetration of a fraud in obtaining his Kansas certificate in 1916. It also charges that he has pleaded guilty to and been sentenced on three liquor law violations at Junction City, Kansas in 1920, and that he had been placed under a $1,00 [sic] peace bond in Milford after being charged with threatening to kill another person. The complaint charges him with fraud and deception in proclaiming the benefits of a so-called compound operation. It states that Dr. Brinkley claims to transplant animal or human glands to the patient in performing certain of the operations, and denies that they can be performed in the manner described by Dr. Brinkley. He is also charged with having guaranteed cures in violation of the American Medical Association’s code of ethics. His attorney announced that Dr. Brinkley will resist attempt to revoke his license, and will conduct his defense in an orderly and courageous way. Dr. Brinkley is well known in Jackson county, having been born and reared here, and having begun the practice of medicine in this county a number of years ago. He is said to have made a visit to Jackson county last summer. Dr. Brinkley, it is said, operates a hospital and radio station out in Kansas, and people here have frequently heard radio broadcasts from his station. (Note: R. Alton Lee’s book The Bizarre Careers of John R. Brinkley (2002), pages 40-41, notes that Brinkley’s second wife, Minnie, had been charged with a violation of Kansas prohibition laws. However, Brinkley assumed responsibility for the incident and received a sentence. The other events referenced include accusations of violent behavior or threats on Brinkley’s part, which resulted in one instance of a $1,000 peace bond.) Journeys Through Jackson Spring/Summer 2017 59 GO TO BRINKLEY TRIAL Jackson County Journal, July 17, 1930 V.V. Hooper, Julius Painter and Robert L. Madison are in Milford, Kansas, where they have been summoned to appear in behalf of Dr. John Brinkley, in the trial in progress there, in which it is sought to deprive him of his license to practice medicine, and to stop his radio broadcasting station. BRINKLEY GOT 185,258 VOTES Jackson County Journal, November 20, 1930 One of the most amazing election facts in recent years was that Dr. John H. [sic] Brinkley, native of Jackson county, entering the gubernatorial race in Kansas too late to have his name printed on the ballots, received 185,258 votes for governor, to 216,138 for the Democratic candidate and 215,468 for the Republican candidate. And every man and woman who voted for Brinkley wrote his name on the ballot. The papers of Kansas and the middle west have been busy ever since trying to figure out how Brinkley did it. He made his chief campaign over his radio station at Milford and it was the counties in that part of the State that voted for Brinkley. It has the politicians and the papers out that way worried. They can’t fathom it. Even William Allen White, the Emporia sage, has devoted columns of space explaining the Brinkley vote. Said the Kansas City Star, in beginning several columns o