Tombstone Tuesday - William Ezra Ford

William Ezra Ford was the son of Arthur Elisha Ford and Ethel Wickliffe Ford. He was born June 11, 1922 in Quinlan, Hunt County, Texas. He moved with his family to South Texas after his younger brother, Clayton Richard Ford died in 1941. 

William enlisted in the service on 09 Nov 1942. He was living in George West, Texas at the time. After only a few months, he became ill and was honorably discharged on 30 Oct 1943. He later became a truck driver. He was driving a rig through the Valley in South Texas, when his rig jackknifed and killed him instantly. His brother-in-law, Jimmy Elmer Green had been driving a rig behind him and witnessed the accident.  Although William never married, he was loved by all who met him. 

The military erroneously inscribed Exra instead of Ezra on the headstone and refused to fix the problem. He is buried in George West, Texas.

Census Sunday: Arthur Elisha Ford, 1930 Hunt County, Texas

It's Census Sunday - time to look in my digital image files to see what treasures I can find for my family history and genealogy musings.

The census today is the 1930 U.S. Census for my grandparents, Arthur Elisha Ford and Ethel (Wickliffe) Ford, in Quinlan, Hunt County, Texas:

Figure 1: The 1930 U.S. Census page for Hunt County, Texas featuring Elisa [Elisha] Ford and family.

The Arthur Elisha Ford family entry is:

Figure 2: Close-up snippet of the Elisha Ford family census entry on lines 32-35.

The extracted information for this census is:

• Elisa Ford: Head, 33, married (age 24 at first marriage), can read/write, farmer renting farm, born in Arkansas.
• Ethel Ford: Wife, 28, married (age 19 at first marriage), can read/write, keeping house, born in Arkansas, parents born in Missouri.
• Ezra W. Ford: Son, 7, single, in school, born in Texas, parents born in Arkansas.
• Daisy R. Ford: Daughter, 5, single, at home, born in Texas, parents born in Arkansas.

The citation for this census is:

1930 United States Census, Hunt County, Texas, population schedule, Justice Precinct #7, enumeration district (ED) 116-38, sheet 7A, line 32, dwelling 137, family #137, Elisa [Elisha] Ford household; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com: accessed 08 Aug 2012); citing National Archives Microfilm Publication T626, roll 2360.

(Not so) Wordless Wednesday - Visit With Dad, 2010

I'm posting old family photographs from my collection on Wednesdays, but they won't be wordless posts like others do. 

Here is one of my favorite images from my collection:

This photo is so very special to me. It is one of the last ones with my dad. This picture is of my sister, Lisa, my dad, and me. It was taken in June 2010 at a Chinese restaurant in Corpus Christi, Texas, just two months after discovering he had pancreatic cancer. He passed away that August. I am deeply grateful for the time I had to visit with him and say good-bye. We are not always so fortunate to have that time with our loved ones before they pass away.

Census Sunday: Arthur Elisha Ford, 1940 Hunt County, Texas

It's Census Sunday - time to look in my digital image files to see what treasures I can find for my family history and genealogy musings.

The census today is the 1940 U.S. Census for my grandparents, Arthur Elisha Ford and Ethel (Wickliffe) Ford, in Quinlan, Hunt County, Texas:

Figure 1: The 1940 U.S. Census page for Quinlan, Hunt County, Texas, featuring the Arthur Elisha Ford household.

The Arthur Elisha Ford family entry:

Figure 2: Close-up snippet of the Arthur Elisha Ford family census entry on lines 18–24.

The extracted information from this census record is:

• Line 18: Renting for $4/month, not a farm.
• A. Elisha Ford: Head, 43, married, 4 years education, laborer, PW farm work.
• Ethel Ford: Wife, 36, seamstress for the WPA.
• Ezra Ford: Son, 16, 4 years education, new worker seeking employment.
• Dasie R. Ford: Daughter, 14, 5 years education, keeping house.
• Clay Ford (twin): Son, 5, born in Texas.
• Claton Ford (twin): Son, 5, born in Texas.

It appears that Arthur Elisha Ford gave the information for the census. I have found several errors in the census. Ethel left school in third grade to pick cotton in the fields. This information came from Ethel in an interview in 1985. Elisha and Ethel were both born in Arkansas, not Texas. This evidence comes from other census records found in Arkansas and from the interview with Ethel.

The citation for this census is:

1940 United States Census, Hunt County, Texas, population schedule, Quinlan, Justice Precinct #7, enumeration district (ED) 116-36, sheet 5A, dwelling 98, family #98, A, Eligh [Elisha] Ford household; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com: accessed 07 Apr 2013); citing National Archives Microfilm Publication T627, Roll 4072.

My Ancestors

             Back row (left to right): Lola Wickliffe, William Ezra Ford, Daisy Ruth Ford

  Front row (left to right): Ethel Wickliffe Ford, Clay Franklin Ford, Arthur Elisha Ford

Arthur Elisha Ford (my grandfather) was born in 1896, the 5th of 6 children. His father, William Preston Ford, died in Arkansas when he was 12 years old. He moved to Quinlan, Texas with his mother, Sarah Elizabeth (Dodd) Ford and younger sister, Mary, when he was about 17 years old. There he met, and fell in love with, Ethel Wickliffe. They married on 14 Mar 1920 in Quinlan, Hunt County, Texas.

Ethel Wickliffe, born in 1903 in Mountain View, Arkansas, was the oldest child of Richard Franklin Wickliffe and Estelle Lynn.  She had 4 younger sisters and a young brother who died when he was about four years old.

Ethel and Elisha had four children. William Ezra (1922-1950), Daisy Ruth (1925-2012), and identical twin boys Clay Franklin (1934-2010) and Clayton Richard (1934-1941). After Clayton died in 1941, Ethel struggled to overcome the depression. She would sit at the cemetery every day and cry. In order to help his wife, Elisha decided to move his family to south Texas to his sisters' ranch. They eventually settled in Corpus Christi, Texas.

As part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Elisha dug ditches for the government, and Ethel worked in a sewing room. They became members of the Pentecostal Church of God, 501 Cheyenne Street,  in Corpus Christi, Texas. The pastor was C.C. Hurst. Elisha started having numbness in his feet and eventually was paralyzed from the waist down. Ethel would put him in his wheelchair before she left for work, and he would wheel about the house, cooking, sweeping, and cleaning. Many different doctors checked him out, but couldn't come up with a medical diagnosis for him. He died two years later on 19 Oct 1946.

They are all gone now. I miss them all so much. I never knew my grandfather or my uncle, as they died before I was born. My grandmother’s stories about them and her life are what got me interested in doing genealogy.