I’d like to meet my 2nd great-grandmother — Caroline Roberts Thomas Taylor Watkins — for a number of reasons.
As you can see by the sequence of surnames above, she married three times. Her first husband, George Thomas, is one of my most challenging brick walls. They married in Illinois in 1852, but I can’t find any record of George beyond this. I’d like to ask her about him. He apparently died in 1859 (or at least they were not living together), after the birth of their second and third child, twins that included my great-grandmother Mary Elizabeth Thomas. The 1860 census shows her living with her father, Wiley Roberts, and her three children.
I’d like to ask her about her other two husbands. She married Eliftet Taylor in Illinois in 1861, and it appears that they had one child together (Minnie, 1864). But something happened to Eliftet as well; Caroline married her third husband, John F. Watkins, in 1869. The 1870 census shows them living together in Illinois with Caroline’s father, her two children from her marriage to George Thomas, and her one child from her marriage to Eliftet Taylor. In the 1880 census, however, John Watkins identified himself as a widower and was living in some sort of boarding house in Seward, Nebraska, where he worked as a farm laborer. In the same census, Caroline identified as “single” and was living with her four children (including her 9-year son, Wiley, who was John’s son) about 30 miles away in York, Nebraska. One family story I came across said that John had deserted Caroline and forced her to raise the children alone. I’d like to know all about this situation. Caroline had come to Nebraska with her sister Martha and Martha’s husband, John Butler Workman, in the 1870s, along with John Workman’s distant cousin Thomas C. Workman (who married Caroline’s daughter, Mary Elizabeth Thomas, in Nebraska in 1887).
I’d like to ask her about the marriage of her daughter, Mary Elizabeth Thomas, to Thomas C. Workman, Sr., in Hastings, Nebraska (about 28 miles from York and 90 miles from Seward) in 1887. Mary took care of the children Tom had with his first wife, Etta, while Etta was sick and dying, and then married Tom a few months later. I’d like to know how all that happened.
Caroline’s life spanned a good portion of the 19th century. Her father was a veteran of the American Revolution, and they all lived long enough to take the train to Nebraska in the 1870s and later. She was born in Tennessee, relocated to Illinois by the 1850s, and then relocated again to Nebraska in the 1870s. I think she must have lived a very interesting (and challenging) life.
Karen, your writing reminds me, once again, of the questions I would ask and record of the family and friends I once knew and loved. Here’s to second chances with questions for the ones who are alive and whom I love and who carry with them many of the answers I seek. 😎