52 Ancestors In 2022-February Week 8...COURTING

 Secret Second Wife

Their journey ended in a small West Texas community.  It looked as if they were the typical homesteading couple as they embarked from the covered wagon with a passel of children.  

Who they were, where they came from, why they chose this place to put down roots and what was the story behind a man named after the First President of America....not important in 1899.  

Also, not of great interest or importance to those living and dying through the years that stretched into decades and two centuries. 

Not until a granddaughter began 'Old School Research' in the 1960's-1980's did some of the 'Who, Where, What and Why' questions come to light. 

Then along came a great granddaughter's 21st Century Technology/Internet research and establishment of a Family Tree on Ancestry.  Not until then was the Second Wife Secret discovered.  A fact based timeline, 'Old School' notes, and my 'Factual Fiction' License put together George's Courting of Nancy Anne.

Like George, who was a widower with both grown and young children, Nancy Anne was a widow with children of much the same ages.  It is assumed...based on timeline facts...George and Nancy Anne met on the road, so to speak.  George and children traveling from Georgia to Texas and Nancy Anne and children living in Monroe, Tennessee.

In all likely hood, they met by chance or perhaps it was fate.  Monroe was a stopping over place for George.  Planning to stay long enough to make enough money and get supplied for the next leg of his trip.  Nancy Anne turned her home into a boarding house and her barn into a farm hand bunkhouse.  

We can just imagine their courtship as one of mutual survival that became more.  When it was time for George to move on...Nancy Anne and her brood moved on with him.  It's not known if it was all about just George and Nancy's courting days, but very likely that their respective oldest children had been courting as well. 

George and Nancy Anne were married in Texas on January 1, 1899.

John, Nancy's son, and Mattie, George's daughter, were married on March 11, 1901.

George's Granddaughter's 'Old School Research' never mentioned, much less documented the existence of a Second Wife.  However, the marriage of John and Mattie was well documented along with their history and life as early settlers in the same small West Texas community as their parents.

Nancy Anne, my Great Step Grandmother's life and death enriched our Family Tree in ways that my Old School Genealogist Aunt Irene would have loved knowing.  Especially Nancy Anne's life, death and burial in the same small West Texas community where she was born, raised and buried.

Fort Stockton Pioneer, August 23, 1918 (Microfiche Archives)

Mrs. G.W. Pittman, of Grandfalls, who only recently had come here for medical treatment, died very suddenly from organic heart trouble, at the Riggs Hotel, Saturday evening August 16th.  The remains were prepared for burial by Undertaker W.H. Bird, after which they were taken to Grandfalls, Sunday afternoon and interred in the cemetery at that place.  The funeral services were conducted by Reverand M.O. Williams, pastor of the Methodist Church, of which church the deceased was a devoted Member.  A husband and two children, who reside in Grandfalls, are left to mourn her loss.

PS...As you might guess, Nancy Anne's entry in our Family Tree opened a 'Whole-nother Can of Worms' including my Great Grandfather's THIRD SECRET WIFE....a story for a future 'Prompt'.