52 Ancestors #12: John Young Houston (Jr)

Roxie Jane Lindsey Houston,
date unknown

This will be kind of a continuation of the week before last week's post, mainly because this week, I managed to locate the marriage record of my father's maternal great grandparents, John Young Houston (Jr) & Roxie Jane Lindsey. Finding that has left me with a question. My paternal great uncle Hubert Houston's basic research on the Houston line has been the basis of my understanding & research of this line. His research stated that John Young Houston was born on 9 May 1849 in AL (I figured out he was the son of John Young Houston (Sr) & Ann Bailey Tegner by finding him on the 1850 census & calling the Milam County, Texas county clerk & nicely asking her who is parents were shown as on his death certificate. Usually, doing that doesn't work because you can get some crabby people out there, but when I explained I was calling long distance, she was nice enough & kind enough to give me this information over the phone) & died on 28 Oct 1918 in Buck-holtz, Milam Co., TX, USA. Uncle Hubert recorded that he married Roxie Jane Lindsey on 15 May 1877 in Rockford, Coosa County, AL, which is where a question now comes up.

This week, I was on familysearch.org looking through their databases of image files for family marriages in AL. I knew that the Houstons had lived in Shelby County, AL for a long time. FamilySearch has been making more & more images of the actual documents available for awhile now & I have just finally clued in on the best way to locate the actual images of supporting documentation by looking for the folder number in the index & then going to the county database of images & looking for that particular folder number & then the image number, etc that references that particular document. FamilySearch had my great great grandparents John Y. Houston (Jr) & R. J. Lindsey listed as married in Shelby Co., AL on the date that Uncle Hubert had recorded which leads me to the question of where did they actually get married. In Coosa Co., AL where Roxie's family lived as Uncle Hubert claimed (he used to claim we were related to General Sam Houston but never provided any evidence to support it, nor have I ever found any, although (at least to me any way), I see a bit of resemblance between photos of him & my great uncle Sam B. Houston) or did they get married in Shelby Co., AL where John's family lived?

Shelby Co., AL marriage record of John Y. Houston & R. J. Lindsey

In the Great State of Texas where I was born & raised, the law states that you can apply for a marriage license in any one of Texas' 254 counties as long as the two parties on the license get married anywhere within the time period specified (90 days) that the license is valid. An example of this is: my parents picked up their marriage license in Bell Co., Texas where my paternal grandmother lived because my father was considered under age (under 21 years of age) at the time my parents got married (although he was somehow considered more than old enough to fight for his country) & he had to have her sign in consent for him (there's a family story that goes along with this). My parents lived up in Dallas, Texas which is in Dallas County four or five hours from Temple, Texas where Dad's mother lived. They had their wedding in Dallas, not Temple. This leaves me wondering if Alabama marriage law is not unlike Texas' marriage laws in this regard or if Uncle Hubert made a mistake when he recorded their having been married in Coosa County, AL. I've heard it said that sometimes a couple got married in the bride's county rather than the groom's, although I'm not sure of the reason for this (maybe it has to do with her family being the ones who are supposed to pay for the wedding back then).

In the Lindsey Book of Remembrance Vol 1, it is recorded that Roxy & John lived near her parents for awhile after they were married in Coosa Co., AL; however, the 1880 census shows them as Shelby Co., AL residents. I think the reason for this is that John's mother & sisters lived nearby. They left AL in the early 1880's for Texas. I think John's mother had probably passed away by then as I cannot see him leaving AL with her still living there. John & Roxie farmed & raised nine children together: Will, Della, James, Walton, Minnie, my great grandfather Luther aka "Duke", Viola aka "Ola", Sam & Charley. They were known to be good upstanding God fearing people & good neighbors. Although the official cause listed on his death certificate was leakage of heart, John died in the Great Influenza Epidemic of 1918 that took three other members of his family & so many others around the country with it. He is buried along side his wife Roxie (who died twelve years later) in the North Elm Cemetery in Cameron, Milam County, Texas. I was fortunate to recently find his obituary on page 12 in the Halloween 1918 edition of The Cameron Herald. There's still more to come on this family!

Obituary of John Young Houston (Jr).

Sources:
"Texas, Deaths, 1890-1976," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/K3ZB-XZC : accessed 29 Mar 2014), J L Houston, 28 Oct 1918; citing certificate number 43862, State Registrar Office, Austin; FHL microfilm 2073349.
"Alabama, Marriages, 1816-1957," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/FQ65-69N : accessed 29 Mar 2014), John Y. Houston and R. G. Lindsey, 15 Mar 1877; citing reference ; FHL microfilm 1571845.

"United States Census, 1880," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/M4V6-VSZ : accessed 29 Mar 2014), John Houston, Tylers, Helena And Elliottsville, Shelby, Alabama, United States; citing sheet 245D, NARA microfilm publication T9.