Tag: GrimesCoTX

Cora (Walling) Baker Walling, The Conclusion (for now)

In a previous post, I shared pictures of the Baker family that our great grandmother, Cora (Walling) Baker Walling, kept for the rest of her life – even though her marriage to Jesse W. Baker ended with his death within three years. There’s another…

In a previous post, I shared pictures of the Baker family that our great grandmother, Cora (Walling) Baker Walling, kept for the rest of her life – even though her marriage to Jesse W. Baker ended with his death within three years.

There’s another piece of physical evidence — an ivory diary typical of the period. Among many early mistakes I made in family history endeavors was not keeping track of provenance, which is just a fancy way of recording who-in-the-heck-gave-me-this.  But my sense was always that that the diary and the Baker family pictures were a package. Unfortunately, there’s no one left now to verify that. [Let that be a lesson to you all.]   There are several pictures of the diary below – one closed and one open.  There is also a picture of young Cora – about the time her courtship began. Continue reading “Cora (Walling) Baker Walling, The Conclusion (for now)”

A Tale of Two Farmers — and then there’s Texas….

In a previous post, I compared the relative 1860 fortunes of two ancestral farmers in Indiana County, Pennsylvania – Edward Haney Ruffner and Robert Garrett Stephens. Their offspring, James and Hulda, respectively, married in 1870. On Thursday, I …

In a previous post, I compared the relative 1860 fortunes of two ancestral farmers in Indiana County, Pennsylvania – Edward Haney Ruffner and Robert Garrett Stephens.  Their offspring, James and Hulda, respectively, married in 1870.  On Thursday, I took a look at the 1870 agricultural schedules and the values were relatively unchanged. Ruffner still owned more property but Stephens valued his at a higher dollar figure. Stephens had more livestock and grew more wheat but Ruffner grew more oats, produced more butter and more wool. (1)

But a dramatic contrast is revealed when the lens moves south.  On the Texas side of the family, our great grandmother, Cora Walling married into the Baker family in the early 1870s but was widowed within just a few years.  Jack, and his older brother, Jesse, Cora’s future husband, were living in the same household in 1870, both farming land owned by Jack. (2) But the Bakers were more than just farmers.  Isaac Baker, born in Alabama and the father of both Jack and Jesse, was one of the earliest settlers of what was later to be named Plantersville in Grimes County, Texas.  He began building a 2,840 acre plantation named Cedars in 1843 and opened the first general store with his sons in the 1850s. (3)  I decided to return to 1860 and gather data for the Bakers.  Continue reading “A Tale of Two Farmers — and then there’s Texas….”

Cora (Walling) Baker Walling, Part I

We always knew that our grandmother’s mother, Cora Walling, married young to a “much older man” named Baker and was widowed before she married her cousin, James A. Walling. Cora and James had a family of four girls, the youngest of whom was our gr…

We always knew that our grandmother’s mother, Cora Walling, married young to a “much older man” named Baker and was widowed before she married her cousin, James A. Walling.  Cora and James had a family of four girls, the youngest of whom was our grandmother Amy.  The family group photograph is wonderful (see below.)   Cora died in 1912 – when Amy was only 14 – and James later remarried. (1) 

For some reason, I thought of the marriage to Mr. Baker as an unpleasant period of Cora’s life, and her later marriage to James as her happily- ever-after life.  However, the physical evidence suggests a more complicated interpretation. Continue reading “Cora (Walling) Baker Walling, Part I”