My great grandmother was Ella Gorham and grew up on a Indian Reservation and believe she may be from DeKalb, Tennessee. There was some discussion it may have been Texas. She was born in 1870 and died in 1944. She was buried in Sowers Cemetery in Irving, Texas. Her brothers were Johnny and Dave Gorham. She was half Cherokee, her mother and she on a reservation. She married James Isaiah Hawkins (This information was from a Funeral Services Book) They may possibly be from Coffee County. Their marriage records were burned in Tennessee in the court house (1870) so we do not know for sure if they were married in Tennessee or Texas. James and Ella had Susie born 6/16/1887, Jerry, Dave, Belle, Pearl, Bill, John D.11/11/1911, and Maggie 1915 or 1916. My dad remembers visiting cousins on a reservation with long pigtails that could not speak English. He says they visited Oklahoma, as he recalls. He is now 96 and looks as if he could be part Cherokee. (Thanks very much, by the way)
Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
jsmith says
Her marriage certificate (to James Isaac Hawkins) is actually still extant, dated April 14, 1889, And yes, that was in Coffee County, TN.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_County,_Tennessee
By 1900, the couple could be found living in Dallas, Texas.
There is strong indication that Ella Gorham may have been a Martha Emeline Gorham…and was going by her middle name. Emeline to “Ella.”
While there is not clear paper trail to make this definitive connection (yet), consider the following.
The name Gorham is not that common, so we can do a bit of data mining. For example, “Gorham” only brings back about 100+ results from the 1800s in Tennessee using the main genealogy databases. From there we might be able to find a family cluster that synchs up with some of the details you mentioned. An “Ella” born about 1870, brothers David and Johnny, from Tennessee…and perhaps in the general vicinity of Coffee County, they then moved to Texas in the late 1800s..
So, from there, we can indeed find a family headed by John King Gorham and Sarah Jane Cantrell. They can be found living in DeKalb County, TN in the late 1800s. That is not too far from Coffee. Interestingly, this family cluster all moved to Texas, particularly around the north east region. John and Sarah Gorham had a daughter named Martha Emeline. She was born in 1870. She also had brother David and John. It appears the children were living around with relatives at various enumerations, so the family unit is not always clearly delineated. The John Gorham Jr. from this family cluster lived in Grayson County, Texas, right next to Indian Territory/Oklahoma.
This is a very good lead to check out!
Perhaps “Ella” was a nickname for Emeline?
By the way, for a little historical context, there was no Cherokee reservation in Tennessee from 1839 onward. The Cherokee Nation (east) basically ceased to exist after Removal (AKA Trail of Tears). Only a small handful of Cherokee full bloods remained in the eastern Tennessee counties in that state after 1839. Most of these individuals either moved to Indian Territory or Qualla Boundary communities in North Carolina in subsequent decades.