Frazier ~ Cox ~ Stapleton
I just today found a load of papers written by my grandmother's aunt that date from the early 1950s through till the early 1970s. If anyone recognizes these families please let me know. Rob
Father: George Washington Frazier, born in Gate City, Scott County, Va., February 16, 1860. Died in Huntington, W.Va., March 19, 1938.
Mother: Nancy Elizabeth Cox, born in Johnson County, Ky., October 18, 1861. Died in Farmers, Rowan County, Ky., October 16, 1939. Buried on her birthday.
Married in Johnson County, Ky., to which my father had moved, in 1878.
My father came from Scott County, Virginia to Johnson County, Kentucky, when he was 12 years old. His mother's brother, Ned Stapleton, went from Kentucky to move them, and Mother's father, Isaac Cox, who was already living in Kentucky, went back to his old home with Ned Stapleton and returned to Kentucky with them. They came in a covered wagon and were on the road eight days (?).
When my father was sixteen, he ran off from home and walked back to Virginia with Abe Stapleton. It was in the Fall of the year. They were on the road five days, and he stayed in Virginia five months, and returned with Zach Fugate, who was moving to Morgan County, Kentucky. They traveled in a covered wagon and were on the road eight days. While my father was in Virginia two of his brothers, James and Edward, died from typhoid fever.
The first mention of my great grandfather, James H. Frazier, and his brother, George, is in 1825, when they purchased a tract of land from Solomon Frazier. We do not know who this Solomon Frazier is but one, John Carter, married a sister of his and came from Fauquier County, Virginia. James H. Frazier had a son, Solomon, who went to Kansas, also a nephew, Solomon.
I had found the graves of my great grandparents, James H. Frazier and Hester Hogge, marked in Gate City, Va., where my great grandfather was buried in 1865. And I know those graves were authentic as to location because my father led us to the cemetery himself which definite site is listed by me, through him, as Big Moccasin Creek, east of Gate City, Scott County, Virginia.
I was very distressed over the conditions that I found there, however, since the fence was dilapidated and had fallen away, and the cattle had taken possession of the shady area on the low hill to have their siestas, and many of the gravestones had been knocked down and broken up because of it.
There were many old stones in a cemetery which had, evidently, been long abandoned, and with the name of Fugate appearing on many of them, and which is one reason I knew from whence they had come to Morehead, via Morgan County, besides the fact that my father had returned to Kentucky after his visit to Virginia at the age of 12 with Zach Fugate, who was moving to Morgan County, and who was married to his Aunt Mary, sister of his father, John Kelly Frazier.
Zach Fugate's would have had three children of which I know, and too which I knew personally, since Jim, the father of Clint, Grace, Russell and Nina, had probably died quite young, and his widow had made her home for many years at the home of Jim's sister, Zona Fugate Cornett (Mrs. Bert), who had lived on a farm between Owingsville and Salt Lick until the family moved to Ashland after the children had become grown--which farm had a very nice, white, frame house, and which had been the family home of the Cornett family, I believe.
Grandfather: John Kelly Frazier, born March 15, 1837 in Gate City, Scott County, Va. Died in Johnson County, Ky. about 1913 from a stroke.
Grandmother: Sallie Stapleton Frazier, born January 22, 1838, in Washington County, Va.
Children:
1. James born December 23, 1858. Died at about 14 or 15 from typhoid fever.
2. George, my father.
3. Martha, who was born November 21, 1863, and who, I believe, married a Salyers and who died from tuberculosis. They had a son, Benny, who visited us at Hitchins when I was a little girl.
4. John, born October 13, 1864, in Virginia, and who died on Feb. 20, 1939. Both he and his wife, Winnie Sturgill, and three of their sons and a grandson are buried in the Williams Cemetery at Ashland where my parents are buried. [This is the East Ashland Memorial Gardens]
5. Mary L., born January 20, 1866, who married Hade Cantrell, and whose daughter, Goldie Estep, I visited in Allen, Ky. on my trip in 1968.
6. Edward, born March 24, 1868, and who also died from typhoid fever while my father was in Virginia.
7. Louis Franklin, born June 15, 1870, in Virginia, and who, I presume, would have been the baby when they moved to Kentucky, and who died in Lexington, Ky. on October 24, 1926.
8. Nancy, born October 20, 1872, and I realize I don't know a thing about Nancy but she would have been dead of course. I believe she would have died after she was grown because I have heard my father speak of her.
9. Steven, born August 26, 1876. Died as a baby from Diptheria.
10. Hettie, born November 27, 1877. Died, her daughter, Mary, told me, on April 29, 1959. Husband B. McKenzie.
11. Nathaniel, who was known as "Peter", and who was born July 16, 1881. He died about 1900 from typhoid fever.
Great Grandfather: James H. Frazier, born April 8, 1803. Died in Gate City, Scott County, Va., Sept. 5, 1865. I copied the dates from their gravestones. Great Grandmother: Hester Hogge Frazier, born June 10, 1806. Died in Gate City, Scott County, Va., November 11, 1872.
Children:
1. Solomon Frazier, who went to Kansas about the same time my grandmother's brothers went to Missouri (about 1876), but I never heard the exact location.
2. Peggy, who married Loch Fugate
3. Henry, who married Lou Salyers
4. Jim, who married Dolly Matney
5. George, who was called "Lute", who also went to Kansas
6. John Kelly, my grandfather, who was born March 15, 1837, and died in 1913, I think it would have been because it was soon after we moved to Grahn in 1912. His death was sudden from a stroke of paralysis, and I would have been 6 years old but I do not remember having ever seen him. We did not live near them of course. He died and is buried in Johnson County with my grandmother, whose graves I was invited to go visit with Aunt Hettie's daughter, Mary, in Prestonsburg, saying there are good roads up there everywhere now, but I haven't been able to take her up on it.
7. Silas
8. Mary, who married Zach Fugate, and who moved to Morgan County, Ky. about the same time her brothers went to Kansas and which family came on to Morehead where she is buried in a cemetery whose use was discontinued because the town grew up around it. I visited it on a trip up there in 1968 and these are the dates I copied from her gravestone: Born, June 4, 1845, Died, May 23, 1892. She had two daughters whose families I got to know quite well, and a son who had died and left a widow with four children, whom I knew also. The daughters also had four children each. Mabel Amburgey Alfrey is her granddaughter, with whose family I boarded in Morehead one year when I was in school up there, and who has taught in the county all her life.
9. Martha, who married John Baker
10. Steve (?)
11. Dale
One of my father's first cousins, Daniel Frazier, came to her funeral from Paintsville, but I do not know whose son he would have been.
Great Grandfather: Jim Stapleton
Great Grandmother: Nancy Salyers
Children:
1. Salle Stapleton Frazier, my grandmother
2. Hile, who went to Lexington, Missouri about 1876
3. George
4. John, who also went to Lexington, Missouri
5. Bill ("Rebel Bill"), who married a Palmer
6. Ned, who used to live in Paintsville, but whom I never saw.
7. Pats, who was the widow of Tom Burchitt, and whom we saw the last time either my father or I ever saw his mother just before she died in 1932, I think it would have been--I do not know the exact date of her death, but who was born on January 22, 1838, the year of the settlement of Atlanta, Ga., in Washington County, Va. I think Uncle Louis would have been the baby when they moved from Virginia to Johnson County, Ky. about 1872, because he was born June 15, 1870 and died October 24, 1926, in Lexington, Ky. [see previous post]
8. Abe, who also went to Missouri, and whose second wife was the first cousin of John Frazier's wife, Winnie Sturgill, who died in Detroit, Mich. while I was in Milledgeville in 1963, whose mother was a Kimler.
9. Marion, also went to Missouri, and I wrote to them for my grandmother when she visited us before I went to High School at Morehead. I went with my father one time to visit his mother at his sister, Hettie's, whose daughter I saw in Prestonsburg on my recent trip in 1968.
10. Henry, whose first wife was a Salyers.
MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE
This is to certify, that on the 21st day of Sept. 1878 the RITES OF MATRIMONY were legally solemnized by me between Geo. Frazier and Nancy E. Cox at Isaac Cox's in the County of Johnson in the presence of N.M. Williams and Sylvester Cox.
Signed, D. H. Hamilton.
This was sent to me by my cousin, William H. Cox, Town Marshall of Paintsville, Ky., County Seat of Johnson County, about the year, 1932.
Maternal Grandfather: Isaac Cox; wife, Lydia Fairchild, neither of whom I ever saw. Mother said she never went back home after she was married. Her father was hump-backed and her mother was bedfast 10 years before she died. The only members of her family I ever knew were Uncle Henry and his family and William Cox, of Paintsville, whose father, I think, was Mose Cox. Mother also had a sister by the name of Margaret and a brother by the name of Asbury, but I'll list the ones of whom I have heard.
[Children:]
1. Nancy Elizabeth, my mother, married George Washington Frazier
2. Henry; wife, Sarah Jane. Children: Druzilla, Bertha, Arnold; others
3. Father of William Cox, of Paintsville, whose father was probably Moses.
4. Margaret
5. Asbury; others, I'm sure.
The letters end here, pretty much. They are repeated, for the most part, in different letters and just restated the same way. Aunt Hattie was the youngest child of George and Nancy (Cox) Frazier and died in 1990.
I just recently discovered this part of the letter. She is speaking of her mother, Nancy Elizabeth Cox Frazier, whose father was Isaac Cox and whose mother was Lydia Fairchild:
...Isaac Cox, who was already living in Kentucky, had made the trip to Virginia with Ned [Stapleton] to visit his old home, which he had left in 1858, before my mother's birth, so the Coxes had been in Kentucky all of 14 years before my father [George Washington Frazier] had left his native state.
And I don't know what in the world would have happened to all the members of my mother's family, which consisted of ten children, because the only ones I ever saw were Uncle Henry and Uncle Moses, and I never heard what might have happened to the youngest child, Melvina Amanda, although I have heard my mother speak of her many times, concerning the time when they were both at home together, as well as the other members, and which would have included all of them--some of which she referred to by their full name, and others by one name only, i. e.:
1. David Harmon
2. William Asbury
3. Aaron Sylvester
4. Sarah Margaret
5. Rebecca Jane
6. Nancy Elizabeth, my mother
7. Andrew Jackson
8. Henry Anderson
9. Moses Franklin
10. Melvina Amanda
But Mother was more likely to speak of the various members of her family by their full two names rather than just one, and that would have applied to practically all of them, as I remember it, and I remember a remark that she made about the time when they were all at home, which would have been so very long ago, since she had married in 1878, and she said the only place that they ever went was to church, which being in the country, would have been the only place available.
If anyone has information on these families, please let me know.
Thanks!