Nettie Mae Smith Blackford Trammel Gooding Prairie – Facts, Observations, Guesses, Myths and Mystery

Orientation: Nettie was the first wife of Nathan Blackford and the mother of Jesse Smith Blackford.

It’s difficult to know where to begin with Nettie’s story because there are so many twists, turns and questions. In writing this addition to the Family Matters blog, it has become apparent to me that it is getting too long for you to read in one sitting without getting cross-eyed. Therefore, I’m going to break it into two or more parts so you’ll have a little time to absorb one before you delve into the other. This is one of those instances of “Be careful what you wish for. You may get it”. I wanted to know more about Nettie. Now I know more, but the search has opened a hundred questions we may never be able to answer.

The family stories always include that she was blonde and very beautiful, but they always seem to include a thread of leaving her. In all fairness, though, there’s also a good deal of her leaving as well. Our cousin, Jeanette, and I have been looking for documents regarding Nettie quite a bit recently. I must say the tips Jeanette has given me for finding records on Nettie have been largely responsible for much of what I’ve been able to piece together. She’s an excellent researcher! So, having said that, I’ll outline the facts we’ve uncovered and sprinkle it with stories, observations and educated guesses. Much about her, though, is and will probably remain a mystery. My intuition is that might just suit Nettie fine!

Facts: She was born in October, 1873. In some census records her birthplace is reported as Arkansas and in others, Georgia.

Her early life-
There are three 1880 US Federal Census records we’ve found that have the possibility of showing our Nettie. In 1880 her age would have shown as six or seven, depending on the month the census was taken. The first census is from Tazewell, Marion County, Georgia. A Nettie Smith is listed as the fifth of seven children. The father’s name is William and the mother’s, Elizabeth. Nettie is listed as four (which would be somewhat off the birth year). The supporting facts regarding this site being authentic are that it’s in Georgia(which is where Nettie reports her birthplace to be in later censuses) and there is a brother closest to her in age named Jesse (the name Nettie gave her first son).

A second 1880 census record is from Johnson, in Clay County, Arkansas. In that record is a Nettie L. Smith, age 4, shown as an “orphan” living with Jesse Fielden as the head of the household. Again, the birth year is off, but there’s that name “Jesse” again. I recently asked my Aunt Vera if she thought Nettie could have been an orphan and she told me she thought not. She said Nettie’s mother went by the last name West. Also, Nettie’s middle name, Mae, did not start with “L” and Clay County, Arkansas is up in the northeast corner of Arkansas, not near where she married (Pope County) nor near Sebastian County where Jessie, her first son, was born.

A third 1880 census record is the one Jeanette and I think most likely belongs to our Nettie. It is from Ft. Smith, Sebastian County, Arkansas. In it Nettie Smith is 6. This is the exact birth year because she was born in October 1863 and this census was taken in June. She is living with her mother, Amanda, age 33 (thus born in 1847), who is listed as the head of the household with the occupation of washerwoman, born in “Indian Territory”, whose father was born in New York and whose mother was born in Illinois. In 1847 a good amount of our current USA was “Indian Territory”, but we do know that Arkansas sits right next to Oklahoma which was for sure “Indian Territory” at that time. That may mean that Amanda was born close to Ft. Smith, but that’s a guess. What we do know is that Ft. Smith was a “wide open”, boisterous frontier town at that time. Earlier in this blog I used the following quote and it bears repeating. “Fort Smith was the point of departure for pioneers, peacekeepers and outlaws by horse, steamboat and rail.” ( From http://www.fortsmithmuseum.com/). There would have been a lot of come and go among the people. If you were a washerwoman, you would have met a wide variety of persons. Amanda was listed on the 1880 census as “married”, not widowed or divorced. Where her husband was and who he was are but two of the many unsolved mysteries about Amanda, but they set the stage for the patterns we will see her daughter, Nettie, develop.

Living in the household are two boys listed as sons. One is George, 19, occupation “working on a farm”, born in Arkansas whose father was born in Mississippi. His mother was born in “Indian Territory” which I take to mean his mother was Amanda. If she was his mother, he was born when she was 14. The other son, Charles, 14 was also “working on a farm”. He was born in Kansas, his father in Texas and, again, his mother in “Indian Territory”.

Nettie is shown as having been born in Arkansas (not Georgia), her father born in Texas and her mother born in “Indian Territory”.

It’s strange how all this geneology detective business works! As I was just studying the 1880 census from which I took the above information about Nettie, I may have made another discovery. Looking at the household listed above Nettie’s family in the census opened up another Pandora’s box of questions. That household is headed by another woman (listed as married but no husband around) named Maria Baurhyte, age 68 with a son named John. Maria was born in Illinois, her father in Scotland, and her mother in Germany. What makes this so interesting is that her son John, a 25 year old teamster, born in Arkansas, shows his parents being born in the same places as Amanda’s, that is, New York and Illinois. I think there is a good chance that John is Amanda’s brother and that Maria, born in Illinois, living next door, doing the same work as Amanda, is Amanda’s mother! So many in the family have spoken of our having Scotch lineage. It may well be that this is at least one Scotch link!

Well, as you can see, here we are revisiting a major theme of this research on Nettie. That is, that it raises about as many questions as it answers. The next known fact about Nettie is that she married Nathaniel Thomas Blackford on September 21, 1891, shortly before she turned 18, in Pope County, Arkansas. Pope County is a couple of counties East of Sebastian County where we think she lived as a little girl. Both areas are on the Arkansas River which would have enabled relatively easy access between them. Pope County is next to the county where Nathan had lived as a boy. They must not have lived there long if at all because within a little over nine months from the day they married, on July 5, 1892, Jessie Smith Blackford was born in Ft. Smith, Sebastian County, Arkansas. It seems that marriage did not last long nor end well. The family story has it that probably no more than a year or two after Jesse was born Nathan began to suspect Nettie was seeing another man. He left for work one day, but came back undetected and hid under the house. His suspicions turned out to be correct and that was the end of that marriage. As we know from Nathan Blackford’s story, Nathan later returned and took Jessie to live with him.

The next fact we have associated with Nettie is that she had a second son in Salado, Independence County, Arkansas on September 26, 1895, named Booth Jones. Salado is 216 miles East/Northeast from Ft. Smith where she had lived with Nathan. Both Aunt Opal and Aunt Vera have told me that the family believed that Booth Jones’ father was Nathan Blackford because he looked so much like Jessie Blackford. It raises a very good question, however, I wonder if the likeness could be because they (Jessie and Booth) had the same mother. I’ve never heard who the guy was Nathan heard while listening under the house, but in the 1900 census, Nettie listed Booth’s father as having been born in France (of all places!). Go figure.