Discovering my Great-Grandmother, Elvira Davis Turner
by Dr. Terry M. Turner
A Juneteenth Memory
Could the woman in this picture be Elvira Davis?
Elvira Davis was born in 1851 in Lincoln, Tennessee, to the parentage of an unknown father and her 33-year-old mother Hanna. Elvira, my great-grandmother, was enslaved to W.W. Parks in Lincoln, Tennessee, and Waxahachie, Ellis County, Texas, from birth. Parks relocated her to Ellis County in 1853 with his family. She received her freedom at 14 years of age. I recently discovered Elvira, her mother and siblings in the Dec. 8th, 1863, estate inventory for William Woodroff Parks in Ellis County.1
On February 6, 1869, (age 18) Elvira married Warren Turner in Ellis County, Texas. They were married four years after celebrating their freedom on the first Juneteenth. Their six children were born in Ellis County over a span of 17 years. Elvira died around September 1931, in Seward, Oklahoma, at the age of 79.
Genealogical research has given me a connection to the life and times of my paternal great-grandmother. She was an amazing woman who lived through multiple levels of discrimination – slavery, the Jim Crow era and the fight for women’s rights. She experienced the hardships of slavery and the joys of a freedman’s life, without the advantages of the civil rights that African Americans experience today.
The legal prohibitions under which enslaved people lived made it difficult, in several ways, to find Elvira. Perhaps the greatest hindrance for African American researchers is finding ancestors before the 1870 census. Nevertheless, when they are found before emancipation, enslaved fathers are almost never mentioned in connection with partners and children, because there were no legal marriages for enslaved people. Complete family structures were not recognized. In addition, legislation that kept enslaved people from learning to read and write now hinders genealogical research because, in freedom, these individuals could not report their own vital statistics and census enumerations. They could not ascertain that government records were accurate, and their legal signature was made with an X in the middle of a name written by someone else.2
Guardian probate documents, stored away in an old record building in the Logan County (OK) Courthouse revealed Elvira lived as a widow in the home with her son Levi. She helped him raise six of her grandchildren from birth to adulthood. When their mother Ida (age 33) died in 1924, she left behind my father, Roosevelt (age 14), Levi (age 12), Serilla (age 11), Etherlee (age 6), Wilber (age 4), Freddie Lee (age 2), and Hazel (a few days old).3
Since my father’s family never talked about their childhood or immediate family, their Grandmother Elvira was a mystery—unheard and unknown to our present family. Her death occurred a few years before my parents were married, at least six years before my oldest sibling was born, and 26 years before my birth. Nevertheless, she was not forgotten, and held a place in the heart and home of my Aunt Serilla.
The picture below has no name on it, and no one in this generation can identify the person pictured. After my Aunt Serilla passed in June, 1994, in Houston, Harris County, Texas, this aged, rusted, and uniquely-framed picture was found in her home,4 along with a picture of her mother Ida. Although Aunt Serilla never told anyone about the woman in the picture, we knew she was someone special.
In my search to find out if this could be Elvira, I contacted Marigold A. Lamb of Lamb Appraisals. Ms. Lamb’s certifications include MS, Life Certified Member, ISA CAPP.5 This is a recap of her finding:
“Based on the style of the hat and the shape of the dress I discerned that it dates to the early part of the 20th century, most probably between 1903-1907. Large hats of the form of the one in the photograph were popular at that time and the bodice of the dresses tended to be wide at the shoulder and sometimes coming to a point at the waist above a full skirt. I verified the style of the hat and dress, to the dates stated above, in the book, Costume in Detail 1730-1930 by Nancy Bradfield A.R.C.A.”6
If the 1903-1907 for her clothing is right, Elvira would have been between the age of 52 and 57. Her children were grown, and she was an empty nester around the time they purchased land. Since this picture was taken at least five years before the birth of Aunt Serilla in 1912, it leads me to assume the lady in the picture was her grandmother and very special—the woman who raised her. Why else would she have held onto this old, disfigured picture and frame for over 63 years? Aunt Serilla would have been 21 years old in 1931 when her Grandmother Elvira passed. For at least ten years, Aunt Serilla was the only girl in the household with five brothers; she and Grandmother Elvira must have had a close relationship.
According to Marigold Lamb, the picture frame is older than the clothing in the picture and dates to the late 1800s: “The photograph frame appears to have been made by a home craftsman or hobbyist and is not of a form that was generally commercially manufactured. I believe that the frame is also from the early part of the 20th century but stylistically there is nothing to date it firmly. The metal fittings are possibly brass or copper and were probably manufactured in the late 19th to early 20th century.”7 All of these clues place the picture during the time frame of Elvira Davis Turner; therefore, in my mind and heart, she is my paternal great-grandmother.
Congratulations and honor to the late Elvira Davis Turner for experiencing the first Juneteenth, and thank you for being family caretaker for my dad and his siblings, with love,
Your great-grandson, Terry!
Sources
1 Texas Probate Records, 1800-1990,” Estate Inventory William Woodroff Williams Inventory Record Book A. P. 201.20images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-99QS-HNPF?cc=2016287&wc=M4F7-QPD%3A337781401%2C341731501 : 22 May 2014), Ellis > Inventories 1851-1883 vol A > image 104 of 293; county courthouses, Texas.
2 Warren Turner Estate, Probate Records, Estate Record 1807, Book D, Logan County Courthouse, Guthrie, Logan Oklahoma. Page 141.
3 Roosevelt Turner, Probate Records, Estate Record 2815, Book G, Logan County Courthouse, Guthrie, Logan Oklahoma. Page 65.
4 Memorial Picture for Elvira Davis Turner, Mounted in the Home of Terry M. Turner.
5 International Society of Appraisers Certified Member Credential
6 Marigold A. Lamb, Lamb Appraisals. Rockwall, Rockwall County, Texas.
7 Marigold A. Lamb, Lamb Appraisals.
