Family Stories
As Long As We Remember Them
Work in Progress.....
Every family has them...souls who have passed, sometimes a hundred or more years ago, and whose leaves have fallen from our family trees and blown away without anyone even knowing they once were there...
This is the story of such souls, the existence of which would have gone forever unknown if not for a conversation between two relatives - myself and Joe Martinez, 2nd cousins once removed, who had never met in person and were brought together by a chance Google search that landed on this website.
Joe shared with me two documents dictated to his mother, Mabel Belsha Oliphant, by her mother, Virginia Belle Johnson Belsha, upon the death of her husband, James Lawrence Belsha on January 1st, 1930. The first was an account Virginia and James' married life (and it was truly a difficult one). James Lawrence Belsha was the half-brother of our grandmother, Mary Eleanora Belsha Gibbar. He was the son of John Logan Belsha (our great grandfather) and his second of four wives, Mary Susannah Tucker. James married Virginia "Belle" Johnson and they spent part of their married life living near James' parents in the Crane's Island area of Bois Brule township in Perry County, Missouri.
John Logan Belsha
The second account, also dictated to Mabel Belsha Oliphant, focused on John Logan Belsha (Belle's father-in-law, Mabel's grandfather and our great grandfather) and his family. In this account, there was a great deal of information about the Belsha family, much of which I had not seen in any documentation that I was able to obtain online. Although I didn't have information to verify several things in her account, many of the things that she mentioned did match with information that I knew was correct, leading me to believe that those items that were unknown to me were likely to be true as well.
"John Logan Belsha was born October 21, 1844 (I think), I suppose in Missouri. In his early manhood he married a woman by the name of Bailey, don't know her age or given name nor any of her relatives. She died in a short time, perhaps two years more or less, leaving a baby girl who also died soon after."
This refers, I believe, to Nancy Elizabeth Baley (Bailey) who was born around 1845 and died around 1866. She was possibly the daughter of Hays Baley from Kentucky and his wife Micah Baley. They married on January 1, 1865. The child to whom she is referring is, I believe, a child named Sarah who was appears in the 1870 census with John Logan and his new wife, Felicita Melton. At the time, Sarah was four years old and would have been born in 1866, the child of Nancy Elizabeth Baley. Sarah (presumably named after John Logan's sister, Sarah Caroline Belsha) does not appear in the 1880 census so, although we don't know her specific age at death, it would seem to agree with Belle's recollection that she died young.
Two additional references intrigued me as I had seen no reference to them anywhere in my research:
"Some time around the year 1876 he married Felicita Melton, also of Perry County. To them were born five children, Thomas, Edward, William, Twins whose names I don't know, and Mary (Mame)."
Through research, I was aware of only three children from the union of John Logan and Felicita - Thomas, Edward and Mary (Mame). The other three children were unknown to me and, unfortunately, I didn't have any way of verifying the information.
That is, until the Missouri State Historical Society digitized several of the old newspapers from Perry County, including the Weekly Perryville Union and the Perry County Republican. A random search for the surname Belsha unearthed the following news clipping from the Weekly Perryville Union dated October 28, 1881:
Now, not only do we know that Belle's memory was accurate, we know that the twins in question were little girls.