In my previous post, I expressed my appreciation for a newfound cousin in Ancestry who made me aware that I my late Aunt Mazie in Foreman, Arkansas had written  a book called So Now, We Wear the Green. 
I now have something to offer in exchange to my new correspondent, JB, and to others who might come along with interest in the families who took over lands in the southwest corner of Arkansas, including but not limited to Little River and Sevier counties. 

Finding The Pulpit and The Pew
In recent months, I have tried to consolidate the  artifacts that family members, primarily my mother, have handed down to me. More than 25 years ago, my father made a photocopy of a self-published text called The Pulpit and The Pew. My father died in 1993 so I cannot ask him to confirm this. The pages that I found in among my mother's artifacts, were looseleaf photocopies bound by two holes at the top with a shoelace. This is how my father typically archived things that were important to him. 

Inscribed to Malinda Cannon
I only met my great aunt Mary Zerelda one time when I was too young and shy to build much rapport with her. However, my older cousin Malinda grew up a short distance from my grandfather George Edward and she enjoyed traveling with him to see his relatives in Foreman. It appears that my father borrowed Malinda's copy of this book given and inscribed to her by our aunt Mazie.  I hope to discover that one of my cousins has a copy of the larger text So Now, We Wear the Green.

I'm surely the one to blame that I hadn't known more until now. I only met my Aunt Mazie once at the age of about eleven when I was too young and shy to really build a lasting rapport.  And like my grandparents, my parents, my siblings, and my aunts and uncles, I moved away from my hometown as a young adult.  Now that my opportunity to know my aunt is long gone, I'm starting to ask my near cousins about the book that JB has introduced me to recently. It's called "So Now We Wear the Green" with more than 200 pages of stories, documented connections, and speculations to connect individuals. I'm in my early retirement years and I've recently lost the last near relative of my father's generation. So it is truly bittersweet to realize in equal measure that I am sad to arrive so late to my family's stories and that I am so happy to connect with related and generous researchers like JB.

My Lemons tree is blooming at the start of summer 2019. Thank you JB for the leads, I'm delighted by the number of names and documents that now extend my research diversion and that remind me of my tenacious aunt. Look for my documents in the next blog entry. 

The image below shows the four Rainwater families in Spartanburg County, South Carolina in the 1820 US Census. Celia and Gabriel Rainwater would have been in one of those families. 

I have only Mazie's Family Tree (drawn by Rosemary) to show that Elizabeth Cannon was a daughter of Ellis Cannon and Barbara Huffman (or Elizabeth Coleman). I cannot be sure that she was born in 1770 in Overwharton Parish as I do not yet  find any source for that information from another researcher.

• Levi Rainwater — marked in green -- appears to be a father of three boys and six girls with a wife who is between 26 and 45 years old. They have no slaves. There are two of them working in manufatures, not in farming.To fit here, Elizabeth would have been born after 1775 and before 1794.
• John Rainwater — marked in red --  has no children. He and his implied wife are both over 50 years old. He works in agriculture and has 5 slaves. If Elizabeth Cannon was born in 1770 and married a Rainwater, then this is likely her household. It is very unlikely to be where Celia and Gabriel were born.
• Burrel Rainwater — marked in yellow -- appears to be a young father of four daughters and one son. He appears to be between 26 and 45 years old and his likely wife is less than 26 years old. If he married Elizabeth Cannon, then she would have been born after 1792. Ellis would have been older than 46 when she was born. He works in agriculture and owns no slaves. 
• William Rainwater — marked in blue -- Also appears to be a young father of 2 sons and a daughter, all under the age of 10. He and his wife are both between 26 and 45 years old. He works in agriculture and owns no slaves. To fit here, Elizabeth would have been born after 1775 and before 1794.

I have not found birth records for all of Ellis Cannon's children yet. So I will continue to look for Virginia church records in Stafford and Culpepper counties and in Spartanburg South Carolina. In addition, I will look for ways to eliminate each of these Rainwater households and to locate other family members for Celia and Gabriel Rainwater, along with their birthdates for comparison in these columns.

Based on all three US Census records for 1850 to 1870, Celia was born in 1799 or 1800 and would have been 20 or 21 on the 1820 US Census, if she was recorded correctly. She could be in either Levi's household with a younger brother aged 15 and a sister close to her age and one older female who is likely to be Levi's wife. She is less likely to be the oldest female in Burrel Rainwater's household, because that looks to be his young wife and Celia marries Elijah Cannon ( a fact that is proven by sufficient documentation).

Updated with new text and images on 2019 Feb 24.

In the next instance, Celia Rainwater is the wife of Elijah Cannon, who is a son of Nancy Wyatt and a grandson of Ellis. In this branch, Celia is the mother of Charity, Elhannah, Enoch, and Ellis. In both instances, Celia Rainwater is in the same generation at two branches removed from Ellis Cannon at the trunk. Is there any documentation that connects these two instances as either related individuals or as the same person?

If it turns out that there is only one Celia Rainwater in this tree, then she and her husband Elijah had the same grandparent, Ellis Cannon. That would make them first cousins of course and this was not uncommon in their time. I suspect it is true but I will need a lot more evidence before I can make a reasoned argument. As a soft conjecture I see that Elijah and Celia started their family in South Carolina close to the time that Mazie's great grandfather Nahum traveled to Tennessee to marry his first cousin, Cynthia Wyatt. Their children grew up far apart in South Carolina and Arkansas, yet Mazie's father Ed Cannon was already 14 years old when his great uncle, Elijah died. If he did not know them personally, he likely had a few stories from his South Carolina cousins, perhaps enough to have known that his great aunt and uncle were also first cousins. Again it is wildly speculative until there are some records to connect Elijah's wife Celia to Gabriel and to common parents. 

I do not have a full name for the spouse of Elizabeth Cannon Rainwater. ​We have only their father's surname and not his first name.  Next I will be continuing to reach out to my Ancestry contact who also has Celia and Gabriel Rainwater. Together I hope we can find the documentation that proves that our Celia and Gabriel Rainwater match up neatly.

In my prior post, I introduced an incomplete scan of a hand-drawn family tree. The detailed representation was penned by Rosemary and was based on confident recollections passed on by Mary Zerelda Cannon her father's sister, known as Aunt Mazie. This post digs into one section of the larger tree to illustrate the combination of various imperfections and helpful opportunities this tree offers to my research on my father's Cannon side.

As shown by a check mark in the image above, records have been found for William and Phoeby. From the pension application we know that Phoeby was severely afflicted and living at home with her widowed mother. She had no known children. Other than common variations in the spelling of her name, there is really nothing to add or alter about her small branch.

With the breadth of records that are now readily accessible in digital formats, this tree begs to be expanded by many new branches. As noted already, John Cannon would replace Louis in Mazie's tree. His wife Martha Moore and their six children were not known well enough to be part of this tree. William is shown correctly above but without his wife, Lucy Ward, and their nine additions to the grandchildren of Ellis and Elizabeth.  His sister Susanna also married a Ward and they added seven more grandchildren. Winnifred is also among these missing siblings; she and her husband John Vandiver would add nine more branches. The most valuable among the added branches would show Elijah Cannon (b. 1782) who married Darcus (Dorcas) Bowen and had eleven children. Adding their branch would help distinguish his records from those of his nephew, Elijah Cannon (b. 1796) born only 15 years later to Elijah's older brother Lewis Cannon (b. 1775).

Ellis Cannon is the starting point for a very helpful tree of his descendants. At each generation of descendants of Reverend Ellis Cannon, there continue to be both accurate, inaccurate, and omitted names. As with any family history that has been passed on from oral retellings, it remains an extraordinary inheritance especially with its imperfections.

This hand-drawn tree is a family research treasure map. I've already mined it repeatedly to initiate record searches that confirm and expand on the many household nodes it suggests. It has led the way to primary source documents such as US Census records. Recently I've returned to the tree for a closer look. This time, it promises to offer far more than confirmation of existing records. It may help me bridge from a dead end  in our Rainwater branch to a dead end another researcher's Rainwater branch to help reunite names from the original household. More about that in the next post, Leaping into the Rainwaters.

Updated with new text and images on 24 Feb 2019

​The image below comes from two generations of reproduction. Although I have now photographed the most complete version of the tree that I have, I do not have the original. The copy that I photographed below was created from the original by my father using a Xerox machine in letter-size sections and carefully taped together. It was then folded up and stored in a file folder for many years.

I have been told that the original poster was created by my father's sister, Rosemary Cannon  for a school project. This was likely done when she was in high school in the mid- to late-1950s. She was living in New Mexico and probably consulted by phone with Aunt Mazie (Mary Zerelda Cannon) in Arkansas.

My father and his sister Rosemary have died. Only their brother, my Uncle Jim and their first cousin, Sarah Cannon, are still living and  may be able to offer more details about the poster. I'm hoping to see Sarah and find that she has the original poster from Rosemary for me to photograph.

The one certainty I have is that Aunt Mazie was always certain of her facts, even the ones that were incorrect.  A close transcription of the text in the tree is organized in nested lists below. I've tried to capture the exact lettering without any corrections. I'll save corrections for later posts.