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Here are some of the details as I have them on the children of William Waters Deatherage and Martha Eastham Deatherage and their children.
Both WWD and MED died in 1864.
Lucy May Deatherage
b. 18 SEP 1849 in Flint Hill, Rappahannock, VA
m. 8 DEC 1868 in Dandridge, TN to Arthur Henry Webster
Supposedly they met when he as a Union soldier stole her saddle. He was judge and merchant and was from New York.
d. ABT 1919 Presumed to be in the St. Petersburg, FL area, where she had gone to live with her daughter, Nelle, after Arthur Henry Webster died.
George Mann Deatherage
b. Either 1850 or 1851
Robert Byrd Deatherage
b. 1851
d. 1923
John William Deatherage
b. 1856
Margaret Elizabeth Deatherage
b. 1858
Annie Sue Deatherage
b. 1859
m. Charles Newton Buck
d. 1895
Francis Catherine (Fannie Kate) Deatherage
b. 24 OCT 1862 in Flint Hill, Rappahannock, VA
d. 18 MAY 1938 in Broken Bow, Nebraska
Mark Lee Deatherage
b. BTW 1863 and 1864
Children of Arthur Henry and Lucy Deatherage Webster were:
Maude Webster
b. 27 NOV 1870
William Lemuel Webster
b. 24 JUN 1873
m. 22 SEP 1893
Anna Orrille Webster
b. 29 SEP 1875
Mamie Kate Webster
b. 28 OCT 1877
George Mann Arthur Webster
b. 22 JAN 1881
Robert Bird Webster
b. 16 APR 1883
m. Elizabeth Roberts
d. 24 DEC 1967
Roy Fant Webster
b. 17 AUG 1885
Vaudeville and Broadway actor
Nellie Virginia Webster
b. 25 NOV 1888
Cora Elizabeth Webster
b. 25 NOV 1893
Here is a story about Uncle Byrd (Robert Byrd Deatherage) which includes other family members:
UNCLE BYRD
By M. Russell Richardson
[Son of Fannie Kate Deatherage and Presstman Johnson Richardson]
I first remember Uncle [Robert] Byrd Deatherage when I was a very small boy way back in the early Nineties [1890’s]. He was always so jolly and so fond of little kids that he made a lasting impression on me. He was a little man with a very pleasant expression and a long mustache that stuck out from the sides of his happy face like a cat’s whiskers and curled slightly at the ends. He was very proud of his mustache, and I have seen him many times stand before a mirror and twist the ends to make them curl just the way he wanted them.
Uncle Byrd was born and raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Old Virginia. He was my mother’s brother, ten years her senior; and with another sister [Annie] and her husband [Charlie Buck], the four of them came West in April of 1884. As I remember their account of the trip, they traveled by train to Kearney, Nebraska. There they bought teams and wagons and journeyed on north across a vast expanse of sparsely settled prairie to Broken Bow, and off-the-railroad post office at that time, a distance of more than a hundred miles. They brought several pieces of furniture, some bedding and cooking utensils with them from Virginia. The furniture probably was old at that time, but it was of exceptionally fine quality. There were large dressers with marble tops, beautiful beveled mirrors and ornate hand carved drawer pulls. I remember, too, the cabinet water stand with its marble top and a big bowl and pitcher, and the bedsteads with rope slats. An antique collector would certainly enjoy browsing among such items today.
Mama was just old enough to file on a homestead, so she and Uncle Byrd took up adjoining claims. Their sister and brother-in-law, Annie and Charlie Buck, filed on land nearby. At that time, homesteads were acquired under the Timber Act of 1874, which provided that the claimant would get a patent to 160 acres of land in five years if he could prove that he had planted and, at that time, had forty trees growing on his land. Someone said the settlers called it the “Tree Claim Act” because when they came to prove up on the land, they claimed they had trees when they didn’t.
There was good reason for the homesteaders not having trees on their claims when they proved up. Nebraska suffered one of the worst droughts in the state’s history during the early nineties. If they had planted trees none could have survived such long dry spells unless they were watered from wells. The first settlers dug wells to a vein of water near the surface. This water was not as pure and cold as that which was later found in a deep gravel vein. The old windmill with Nebraska’s abundance of air in motion was faithful servant to the settlers, so they seldom were without drinking water for themselves and their livestock.
Aunt Annie and Uncle Charlie patented their claim several years before she passed away, and it was a blessing they had done so as it gave Uncle Charlie a little nest egg in his hour of grief.
Aunt Annie’s death in 1895 following childbirth was a shock and sadness to the whole community for many miles around, but to Uncle Byrd and Mama it was almost unbearable. I well remember the morning she passed away. Mama and Uncle Byrd were at her bedside. Then Uncle Byrd came to bring us the sad news. I can see him walking up the winding canyon road wiping the tears from his eyes as he trudged along. I knew then what had happened. For a father to be left with four little children to provide for and be a mother to is sad under any conditions, but in this instance it was especially so. Uncle Charlie was a good, kind father and willing to do all he was physically able to feed and care for his little ones, but he was a disabled Confederate veteran, having lost almost the entire use of one foot in the service.
Regardless of the darkness of the time, there was a bright ray of light that shown through the dark clouds. Aunt Annie left a darling little girl, Annie Deatherage Buck, named in memory of her dear mother. Fortunately, there was an elderly couple, Mr. and Mrs. Moses Montgomery, in the neighborhood who took little Annie and cared for her until Uncle Charlie could make arrangements to take the family back to Virginia where his sister, Cousin Nannie Brown, and family could help him with the children, George 10, Urquhart 8, Katie 6, and little Annie. Several months passed before the family left for Virginia, and little Annie had, in the meantime, so endeared herself to the kindly old couple that they hated to give her up, but they were understanding friends so little Annie took off of Virginia with the rest of her family.
My father was a Virginian also, but at that time he was living in Southeastern Nebraska and came to Broken Bow with his Uncle Joe Chrisman and family. He and Mama met and were married sometime after she filed on her homestead, so they lived on her claim until she proved up, and for many years thereafter. Dad liked livestock and handled it quite successfully; and over a period of years, he and Mama bought enough adjoining land to make two full sections. It was while the family owned this little ranch that my five sisters, two brothers, and I were born. We older children were born in the old original sod house with a sod-over-tarpaper roof and a joint of stovepipe sticking out of the top. The rest of the children were born in the new sod house with a single roof and two brick chimneys.
Sod was a very substantial and inexpensive building material so almost every homesteader had a sod house and a sod barn. A Belgian by the name of Haumont built himself a two-story residence of sod, and Uncle Joe Chrisman had a long sod shed for his livestock. The old sod houses were cool in summer, and they were warm in winter if the settlers could get enough fuel. Everyone burned corncobs when they were fortunate enough to raise any corn. Otherwise, they burned cowchips which they picked up on the range. When my sister, Eleanor, and I were old enough, that was our job; so with our cousins, George and Urquhart Buck, who were about our age, we kept both families in fuel for much of the time. Uncle Byrd made us an old cart for hauling the chips by mounting a big wooden box between a pair of cultivator wheels. When we kids started out on our new venture, he told us never to pick up a cowchip until the old cow got out of sight. At first we didn’t get his joke, but we soon found out what he meant.
The drought lasted for several years, and to further test the homesteader’s stamina, the financial panic of 1893 struck with all its fury. Nobody had any money. The homesteaders mortgaged their workhorses, milk cows, wagons, and implements, anything which they could borrow a little money to buy a few groceries and necessities. Uncle Byrd quoted a neighbor, old Jack Burke, as saying, “A pound of coffee don’t cost much, a sack of flour don’t cost much, and five pounds of sugar don’t cost much, but by the time you get a little of everything you need, you haven’t got enough money to pay for it.”
Speaking of Jack Burke, Uncle Byrd and Jess Ash, another neighbor, were walking along the old board sidewalk in Broken Bow one day, and they met Jack Burke. Jack owed Jess thirty cents, which was a lot of money in those days. They stopped to talk with Jack, and Jess asked him for the money, and he became quite insistent that Jack pay up. Jack had no money, but he promised Jess, as he done several times before, “I’m going to pay you, Jess.” In a high, squeaky voice, Jess whined, “But when-n-n, when-n-n?” As pathetic as the incident was, it amused Uncle Byrd, and he laughed and told the joke and mimicked Jess for years after both parties had passed away.
My parents and Uncle Byrd told me many interesting stories about pioneering in the rolling hills of Central Nebraska. Native vegetation was more luxuriant when they came to the state than later, as the heavy grass held the rain and snow water back so that more of it soaked into the rich black soil. Mama said when she rode horseback, on a sidesaddle in those days, through the valleys, the grass was so tall that the bluestem brushed across her lap. She also told me [about] the long cold winters and how the sheets would rattle like waxed paper when they went to bed. Dad often spoke of the many fleas that were common in a new country. He was prize game for fleas and almost allergic to their bite. Mama said that many times he would stand on a chair and brush them off his legs, and then step over to the bed. Uncle Byrd did not like the cold winters either, but as a young man he was better able to weather them. However, during the last years of his life when the cold north winds began to howl in the fall, he would begin talking about getting a “Rubba woman and filing it with hot wata to keep mysef wam.”
During the drought, it seems there was just enough moisture in the winter to tempt the settlers into planting crops again the following spring, only to have them seared to a crisp by the hot winds. Cousin Ab Chrisman said Uncle Byrd was the most optimistic man he ever knew. He laughed and told me this little incident: corn had just reached the tassel stage, and the outlook was very promising for a good crop if they could just get a little rain. But instead, along came a blistering hot day and by night the fields were as brown as wrapping paper. He said Uncle Byrd remarked, “Well, anyway, we got the ground all plowed for next summa.”
Uncle Byrd and Mama never lost their Southern accent. Dad had a few colloquial expressions that he brought with him from his native state, but no accent. I have to laugh at the one a friend of mine from Dixie got off. He said, “I was up Noth fo’ years befo’ I lost my Sothen accent.”
Uncle Byrd had a great sense of humor and could see something funny regardless of the seriousness of the situation. During the drought he had a German fellow farming part of his land and batching with him. One scorching hot day after a long dry spell, he and Nick came in from plowing corn, for dinner. Nick arrived first and watered and fed his team, then sat down in the shade of the old soddie. When Uncle Byrd reached the house, Nick was sitting there with his head bowed. It was the understanding that the first one in from the field would start preparing dinner. But Uncle Byrd got dinner that day, and when it was ready he called Nick. Nick didn’t have a word to say but just sat down and began eating. While they were eating, a sudden thunder shower came up, and it began to rain. Nick raised his eyes and said, “Ah, Beart, ven you come from the field, I vas prayin’, I vas prayin’ hard for rain. Now, see vat a nice rain ve gettin’?” Just then, it began to hail and Uncle Byrd said it sounded like the Battle of Gettysburg on the tin roof of a little lean-to over the back door. Nick glanced up again and said, “Tut, tut, I forgets to pray for it not to hail.”
It was my good fortune to accompany Uncle Byrd back to Old Virginia in 1912 to visit our relatives and his boyhood friends. We were stopping with Uncle Mack Richardson in Front Royal. He suggested that we take his “team” and top-buggy to make the rounds of the relatives and friends up in Rappahannock County. We had visited all the relatives and friends up there and were returning to Front Royal when we noticed some men working on a fence near the road ahead of us.
An old Negro was shading his eyes from the morning sun as he tried to recognize the two white men in a top-buggy coming up the dim wagon road across the pasture. Turning to his helpers, he said, “You boys put in a good post where this one is rotted off while I go back down along the fence and open the gate for those gentlemen.” As little Molly pulled the buggy through the gate the old graying, stoop-shouldered colored man nodded cordially, and Uncle Byrd returned his greeting and thanked him for opening the gate. Then, almost in the same breath, Uncle Byrd said, “Stop,” and he called out to the old Negro who had closed the gate and was putting the wire loop on the gatepost over the gate-stick, “Is that you, Rollie?” “Yes, suh,” Rollie replied and came to the buggy.
The two old men shook hands sincerely, and the old Negro looked into Uncle Byrd’s soft blueish-grey eyes in wonderment. Uncle made himself known and both faces lighted up in a flash; then, he introduced Rollie to me, and we shook hands. “Where you livin’ now?” asked Rollie. “Way out in Nebraska,” Uncle told him. “And there’s people livin’ beyond you yet?” asked Rollie. Uncle Byrd laughed at his question and then assured him that Nebraska was no longer the edge of civilization. “Somebody told me you went West in Eighties when so many were going out tha’. I’ve never been very far from home so this old world sounds like a whappa’ to me,” remarked Rollie.
Uncle Byrd laughed heartily at Rollie’s comments, and as he did he noticed a white cloud hovering around a peak in the Blue Ridge Mountains. “It will be raining here in an hour so we must roll the road under these wheels before that rain catches us. We want to reach Front Royal before night,” Uncle told Rollie. So the two old men squeezed hands in a fond farewell. No doubt both were thinking of their beyond days before the Civil War when they played together so often. Lots of time had elapsed since they were boys, and as they said good-bye, their eyes filled with tears.
Uncle Byrd had a unique way of saying things in the fewest words. Some such expressions come to my mind. While in the East in 1912, he and I were sitting in Grand Central Station in New York City waiting for our train. He watched the crowds going “Tow and fro” as he called it, and then he turned to me and said, “It just looks like everybody is in the wrong place.” Another time when he saw an automobile a mile away coming down the road toward us and in minute we met it, he remarked, “You don’t meet a ca wha’ you use to a hoss and buggy.” He didn’t like to wear a new hat because, he said, “I always have to get acquainted with mysef.” And he never liked a house that was heated by a hot-air furnace. He said, “I neva’ know which way to set mysef.”
He was having dinner with the Haze Williams family, and when all the children were seated around the long dining room table, he turned to Haze and asked, “How many kids you got, Haze, anyway?” “Eleven,” replied Haze. Uncle Byrd looked around again into their bright young faces and remarked, “And there ain’t an idiot among them?” The teasing inflection in his voice amused the whole family, and one of the older boys told me the joke several years later.
Charlie Heaps, a local livestock buyer, was on a freight train waiting to pull out for Omaha with a shipment of livestock when another freight train ran into the rear of his train. He was telling Uncle Byrd about the wreck and his narrow escape, and Uncle Byrd asked him if he were scared. “No, sir.” he replied, “I was as cool as a cucumber.” Uncle then asked him how he ever got out of that old smashed-up caboose alive. Charlie said, “Well, sir, I don’t know whether I went out the door or a window.”
Uncle Byrd liked a good joke anytime, and he laughed and told about old John Beausenior coming home from town with all he could stand up under. He wife said, “John, you got too much.” “This much is yust right,” old John replied.
I liked the one he told about a fellow in Virginia who courted two sisters. The one he wanted to marry turned him down, so he married the other one, and then consoled himself by saying, “If I can’t get pie, I’ll take puddin’.”
In the fall during grain threshing, the farmers would exchange help so there would always be a full crew for the job. Uncle Byrd was helping a neighbor, and they were eating dinner. Someone passed the cornbread to Albert Springstupe, and he passed it along to Uncle Byrd, “Naw, I don’t want any of that kind of bread.” Where Uncle Byrd was raised cornbread was tops, so he said, “Now, Albut, that’s just what’s the matta with you. Your stomach is so contracted from eating old, cold lightbread that you can’t enjoy a good meal fo’ hot cornbread.” He was so serious, the crew just roared with laughter.
In 1923, Irma [Marcus Russell Richardson’s wife] and I moved on to a little farm that Uncle Byrd had bought a few years previous. Marilyn [MRR’s daughter] was just a baby, and when Irma told him the baby’s name, he understood it [to be] “Maryland,” and wanted to know why she didn’t name her “North Dakota” or “the District of Columbia.” He became very fond of Marilyn that summer, and the fondness was mutual. He called her his “Little Gal.”
That fall he suffered a heart attack, and for several days he laid in a coma. When he regained consciousness, a neighbor stopped in and visited with him for a few minutes. Uncle Byrd felt so well at the time that the neighbor kidded him about pretending he was sick. Uncle said, “I’m just staying in bed to accommodate the docta.” In less than an hour he was dead.
Some men spend their lives quoting a script writer’s jokes for a fee to get laughs from the audience, but Uncle Byrd spent his and got his reward as he went along by getting off some of his wit and humor to his friends and neighbors. He was a typical Southerner: He liked to visit and spin yarns. He liked people and they liked him, and as long as there is anyone living who knew him well, a fond memory of his joviality will linger on.
Note: (July 10, 1995) This story was written by Mr. Russell Richardson prior to October, 1970, and was sent to some of the nieces and nephews of Uncle Robert Byrd Deatherage. It has been re-typed by James L. Webster, 606 Signal Mtn. Blvd., Signal Mtn., TN 37377 (423-886-1782), whose great grandmother was Lucy May Deatherage. Lucy Deatherage was from the Flint Hill, Virginia area and was born on Sept. 18, 1849. Her father was William Waters Deatherage and her mother was Martha Elizabeth Eastham. She was Uncle Byrd’s oldest sister.
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