Stone Gardens: The daughter if a Mississippi man who fathered 20 offspring lies in a rural Montgomery County plot
William Franklin Adams Sr. was born March 26, 1847, in Jackson County, Mississippi, the son of L. W. Adams and Elizabeth C. Adams. Family accounts give little more on those parents, and published trees have not firmly identified L. W. beyond the initials preserved on his son’s memorial.
William grew up in Mississippi during the years that led into the Civil War. He was fourteen when the fighting began and eighteen when it ended. No compiled service record has been found that places him in Confederate or Union ranks, which is consistent with a youth who came of military age only as the armies were dissolving.
It's rare when writing these stories that the wife's lineage and ancestry is easier to trace than the husband's, because working with maiden names doesn't always allow for a wealth of information. In this case, the exact opposite is true, and this adventure takes us back to a Mississippi family with deep ties to the Civil War.
On February 26, 1871, in Leake County, Mississippi, William e married Louisa Jane Myres (the surname also appears as Myers and Meyers). She was born September 6, 1852. Find a Grave places her birth in Jackson County. Other compiled records place it in Leake County, which fits the fact that her parents were already living and marrying there in 1851.
The couple began their family in Mississippi. Children associated with them include William Franklin Adams Jr. (about 1870 or 1872 to 1917), D. W. Adams (1873 to 1876), Marlena Caroline Adams Wright (1875 to 1945), J. Q. Adams (1876 to 1877), Martha Evlin “Mattie” Adams Vaughn (1879 to 1931), Joseph Clinton Adams (1880 to 1918), Lou Ada Jane Adams Adcock (1883 to 1943), Virgie Lavenia Adams Short (1885 to 1955), Alice Myrtle Adams Short (1887 to 1962), and Henry Thomas Adams (1888 to 1926). Two of the earliest sons died in early childhood.
By 1880 the family was in Mazarn Township, (Montgomery County), a thinly settled hill country neighborhood whose post office opened that same year. William farmed there. He died May 23, 1888, at age forty-one, leaving Louisa with a house full of children and an infant or newborn son.
He was the first person buried in what became Adams-Woodall Cemetery, a private family ground on a knoll in a green pasture under an old oak. Family tradition holds that Louisa chose the place because it was beautiful and quiet.
Louisa remained in Montgomery County after his death. She raised the surviving children through the 1890s and the first decade of the new century and died February 2, 1911, at fifty-eight. She was buried beside William in Adams-Woodall Cemetery. Their shared stone records both names and dates.
Louisa Jane was the daughter of Joseph William “Joe” Myers and Elizabeth Caroline Blocker. Joseph William Myers was born August 31, 1832, in Mississippi (some later trees allow Alabama as a possibility). He was the son of Francis Joel Myres (also Meyers or Myers) and Emily Weeks.
Family history compiled by descendants states that Francis Joel came from Saxony in the German states to Alabama about 1827, married Emily Weeks about 1831, and settled in Neshoba County, Mississippi. He is reported to have died about 1870 in Neshoba County.
Emily lived until 1895. Their children included Joseph William and a number of brothers and sisters whose lines later spread through Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.
Joseph married Elizabeth Caroline Blocker on September 1, 1851, in Leake County. They had thirteen children. Joseph farmed, operated a cotton gin, and served for a time as postmaster at Yorka, a small Leake County community that no longer appears on modern postal lists.
During the Civil War he enlisted December 20, 1863, in Leake County and served as a private in Company A of Perrin’s Mississippi Cavalry, later designated the 11th Mississippi Cavalry. A published company roster lists him as Joseph W. Myres. The command began as state troops raised in 1863 in east-central Mississippi, was reorganized into Confederate service, and served in Ferguson’s Brigade in the Atlanta campaign and related Georgia fighting, including Rocky Face Ridge, New Hope Church, Peachtree Creek, Atlanta, Jonesborough, and Lovejoy’s Station, then in the Savannah and Carolinas campaigns.
Family notes say he surrendered in 1865 in Washington County, Georgia. Unit histories place the regiment’s final dissolution in May 1865 after service that also took it into Alabama and back into Mississippi.
Elizabeth Caroline Blocker was born June 4, 1830. Compiled records give Copiah County, Mississippi, as the likely place. Her tombstone at Bethel Cemetery reads “Miss E. C., daughter of Mike Blocker and wife of J. W. Myers, born June 4, 1830 died Jan 25, 1886.”
She was a daughter of Michael L. Blocker and Rebecca Hendry. Michael was born December 18, 1787, in Sampson County, North Carolina, and died October 18, 1860, at Thomastown in Leake County. He married Rebecca Hendry on September 16, 1812, in Amite County, Mississippi. Rebecca was born October 27, 1794, and died about 1832 in Copiah County, around the time her youngest children, including Elizabeth Caroline and George Washington Blocker, were born.
After Rebecca’s death Michael married Martha Ritter Gillespie. The Blocker household moved with the general settlement of the pine hills and prairie edges of central Mississippi as new counties opened after the Choctaw cessions. Michael is buried at Blocker Memorial Cemetery near Thomastown.
Elizabeth Caroline died January 25, 1886, at fifty-five and was buried at Bethel Cemetery in Marydell, Leake County. Joseph did not remain a widower. He married Georgia M. Stevens on December 19, 1886, and had two children by her. He married Elizabeth Adams on December 27, 1893. That marriage produced no children. He later married Emma Kelly and had five more children.
Family accounts credit him with twenty children in all and note that he was seventy-two when his last child was born in 1904.
In June 1906, at seventy-three, he was ruptured when a plow kicked back while he was working. He died June 7, 1906, in Leake County and was buried June 9 beside Elizabeth Caroline at Bethel Cemetery.
The two generations thus rest in two family landscapes. Joseph and Caroline lie among the Leake County kin in Mississippi. Their daughter Louisa and her husband William lie on the knoll they opened in Montgomery County, the first graves in a pasture cemetery that later took in Woodall and other neighboring names.
