Nathaniel LIGON
ADDITIONAL SOURCES FOR 809TH INFANTRY & WORLD WAR I
Born September 2, 1886
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
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| Nathaniel W. LIGON |
If you are a family researcher like me, many of your ancestors died years before you were born and much of what you know about them is based on oral history. The other source for telling the story of your family is the trails of documents left that provide some insight into who they were and how they lived.
That oral history may or may not be rooted in fact but it becomes the basis that you rely on to search for those ancestors and try to tell the story of your family. The documentation can provide some of the meat on the bones we need to see our ancestors as full, living, breathing humans that left their mark on this world, no matter how large or small. My grandfather’s brother Nathaniel is the subject of this article and his story, like so many of my ancestors is a complex and incomplete portrait but one that has many trails to follow.
Nathaniel LIGON was the oldest brother of my grandfather Mitchell and though he died years before I became interested in the family genealogy there are trails of information he left directly and indirectly that allow me to put some meat on his bones and attempt to tell his story.
Nathaniel was an original Choctaw Freedmen on the Dawes Roll as a sixteen year old. His Dawes Roll number was #2606 and because the Choctaw Freedmen were adopted as citizens in the Choctaw Nation he had a tribal enrollment number of 189.
That information alone doesn’t begin to tell his story or provide us with something that provides a fuller picture of the man and his life from the time of his birth to his death on November 21, 1935. Immediately for me that day of November 21st is significant in many ways when I look at the LIGON family and recognize it was November 21st that one of my sisters was born and it was also the day Nathaniel’s mother Betty died. I’m not sure what that means if anything but it is something that is noticeable as I continue to research my family’s history.
We are fortunate to have a photo of Nathaniel that was taken during a family portrait sitting but because he had to register for the military as the United States prepared to enter World War I there is a physical description that provides another dimension to him.
His registration card was issued on June 5, 1917 and it has his date of birth on September 2, 1886; which is also the same day my nephew Ronald D. LIGON Jr. was born almost one hundred years later. The registration card goes on to describe Nathaniel as a tall and slender man. He was considered to be “lame on the account of rheumatism.”
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| Military Registration Card June 5, 1917 Nathaniel W. LIGON |
Nathaniel worked as a porter at the Chickasha Hospital in Chickasha, Oklahoma. There is some other information on the card that may be some of the most important information on him that I could find; Nathaniel was married and had a child. With this information I searched for a marriage license and perhaps a document that would provide the name of the child mentioned on the registration card?
I now have two foundation documents that may provide enough clues to develop a fuller picture of an ancestor I did not know anything about but now see the intersection of family history and genealogy may tell more of a story than I could have ever imagine?
When I began looking for a marriage license in Carter County, Oklahoma connected to Nathaniel two records were located that indicated he was married. The first application for marriage occurred in 1908 when Nathaniel was to marry a woman by the name of Alberta GUNN/GUNNS. Again we have a document that provides more information about Nathaniel and the people who were formerly enslaved by Chickasaw and Choctaw Indians; as well as the descendants of those enslaved people.[i]
I couldn’t tell you right now if the couple married based on the romantic notion of Valentine’s Day but the official date of their marriage was February 13, 1908. Nathaniel was twenty-one years of age at the time of the marriage living in Newport, Oklahoma and his bride was nineteen living in Lone Grove, Oklahoma. Their marriage could be considered among some of the first in the new state of Oklahoma which received statehood in November of 1907, a short three months earlier.
When looking at the marriage license I could not avoid looking up the names of the witnesses. As a researcher of Indian Territory Freedmen in general I’m always trying to view the story of the freedmen and their descendants holistically and for me that means looking at the people in the community and their possible relationship to each other.
Who was Alberta GUNN/GUNNS was she the mother of the child mentioned on the military registration card? Was Alberta a Chickasaw or Choctaw Freedwoman? The fact that the two witnesses on the Certificate of Marriage had the surname of GAINES and also lived in Lone Grove required me to take the time to see if they were also freedmen?
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| Certificate of Marriage Nat LIGON & Alberta GUNN |
This record was generated in 1908 it comes two years before the 1910 United States Census for the new state of Oklahoma. It is there that more research should be directed for answers to the question of who the child was mentioned on the military registration card.
First it is important to identify the family of Alberta GUNN/GUNNS and if they are enrolled freedmen? I found a GUNN family on Chickasaw Freedman card #364 living in Pickens County, in an area known as Elk, Indian Territory.
On card# 364 Mary and “Bert” GUNN are listed as sisters
and I’m inclined to consider “Bert” is a nickname for Alberta. Of course I
would like some corroborative document to prove this is Alberta and there is a
notation on the card that pretty much does it for me!
On Chickasaw Freedman Card #364 is a typical notation when
someone on the card has a child that was not enumerated initially and was born
after the year 1902 when the Dawes Roll was “considered” closed and children
could not be added for a land allotment. The notation indicates Mary GUNN had a
child that was enumerated on the “Minor Chickasaw Freedman Card #141.”
The big reveal on Minor Chickasaw Freedmen card #141 is the parents of Ana Bertha GAINES were Wesley and Mary GAINES and you will recall these were the two witnesses listed on the Certificate of Marriage of Nathaniel LIGON and Alberta GUNN. The card also provides the Chickasaw enrollment card for Wesley as #623 and the number for his wife Mary is #364.
The GAINES family lived in generally the same area known as Akers Township where Nathaniel and the LIGON family resided. It has not been uncommon for me to see the people of this area develop relationships from one generation to the other because of their shared history and experience as former slaves of Chickasaw Indians. Despite many people migrating to this area of Indian Territory following the War of the Rebellion there was a lot of intermarriage between freedmen and the children of freedmen with other freedmen descendants; and the marriage between Nathaniel and Alberta was just another example of those inter-connected and complex relationships.
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| 1910 US Census Akers Township, Carter County, Oklahoma ED 35 p14B |
Somewhere between 1908 and 1910 the couple divorced and Nathaniel was listed as a hired hand for the ABRAMS family. I have not been able to locate Alberta in the 1910 census records and she was not enumerated with her family in Lone Grove. There is no indication that any children were born from this marriage and the only record I have of Alberta following her marriage to Nathaniel is a headstone brought to my attention by my cousin Clayton BENJAMIN.
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| Marriage License N.W. LIGON & Martha HARRIS |
We next see Nathaniel again seeking a marriage license and certificate of marriage on August 8, 1914
to Martha HARRIS of Hennepin, Oklahoma. The license was again applied for in Carter County and Nathaniel list his age as twenty-eight, while the bride gave twenty-five as her age.
Martha it appears is going to be elusive as far as getting to know her and her family. I haven’t been able to determine with any certainty the identity of Martha. Was she on the freedmen rolls or for that matter was she a native woman?
This is the only document available on the relationship of Martha HARRIS and Nathaniel LIGON but another significant document may add another layer to this marriage that has to be researched.
The year on the Certificate of Marriage of 1914 is significant because it comes just three years before the United States involvement in World War I which meant that despite his age, Nathaniel LIGON was required to register for service.
I mentioned the military registration card earlier in this article and how it provided information on a marriage to a woman who Nathaniel considered his wife and a child. I may be wrong but I wrong but I have no clear reason to suspect this child is from Nathaniel’s previous marriage to Alberta GUNN because her headstone indicates she died in 1912, two years before the marriage to Martha HARRIS.
Unfortunately there is no name given for the child which means further research into this relationship is required to establish if the child was actually Nathaniel’s or if the child was from a previous relationship of Martha’s? Looking through the 1920 census has not been successful in locating Nathaniel or a wife and child. But one thing has emerged from the military registration record; Nathaniel LIGON did serve in the army which is noted on the application for his headstone and that headstone that sits today over his gravesite in the Hickory Colored Cemetery in Carter County, Oklahoma.
It is great to have another document that corroborates certain information that allows me to make certain conclusions on the documents and information that contain. First and foremost the spelling and middle initial of Nathaniel’s name is on this application for his military headstone.
- Information about his service is revealed that will allow for research into his military record as a Sargent in Company G of the 809th Pioneer, Infantry.
- The date of Nathaniel’s enlistment was given as July 18, 1918
- His Honorable discharge date was August 4, 1919
- His sister Gladys is named as the person to whom the headstone was shipped
- The date of his death is indicated as November 21, 1935
- The name of the cemetery at the time was given as Murray in Woodford, Oklahoma.
- Gladys was still living in Newport, Oklahoma as of March 27, 1936 when she made the request for the headstone and she had married someone with the surname of ANDERSON.
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| Application for Headstone |
It is clear more question arise with each new bit of information discovered and as the family historian I am obligated to make good faith efforts to uncover as much documentation as possible to lay the foundation for those researchers who will inevitably follow up on my work.
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| List of Passengers USS Sierra |
One of the quirks I’ve noticed when researching the freedmen of Chickasaw and my family in particular is the amount of people from that region that were enlisted in the 809th Pioneer Infantry. At some point I hope to look at that connection in depth but I did come across two items that other researchers who share this connection may find revealing.
First thing the fact that Nathaniel achieved the rank of Sargent says something about him if no more than the fact he could read and write. The two things that I stumbled across had to do with Nathaniel’s time in the military. The first one was a list of passengers aboard a military transport ship named the USS Sierra.
The USS Sierra was coming out of St. Nazaire, France on the 13th of July 1919; it was headed for Camp Mills in state of New York about month before Nathaniel would be honorably discharged. I suspect if someone else had an ancestor that served in the 809th, they will be able to locate that ancestor on the list.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES FOR 809TH INFANTRY & WORLD WAR I
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| USS Sierra Transport Ship circa 1918-1919 |
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| 1930 Census Oklahoma Carter County, Ardmore ED 09 |
From everything I’ve been able to research there are no records for Nathaniel and Martha LIGON in the 1920 census and there is no information on the identity of the child that was mentioned in Nathaniel’s military registration document. Additional research will have to be conducted if I am going to be able to find out what happened to both Martha and the child.
Evidently Nathaniel and Martha parted ways sometime between his leaving for the war in Europe and by the time the 1930 census was published Nat was listed as a divorcee and working as a servant in the private home of the SAYRE family in Ardmore, Oklahoma.
When I discover Nat in a document it is another marriage license in 1935 between him a woman named Mrs. Maud DICKSON of Ardmore, Oklahoma. They were married on February 12, 1935 and both of their ages were listed as forty-nine years. Again it is hard to determine just who this woman was but there is some very interesting oral history about Nathaniel and Maud.
Nathaniel’s date of death was November 21st 1935
as I’ve probably stated before, what I didn’t say is he was purported to have
been murdered. There are two competing stories on the cause of his death. The
first story dealt with three individuals who allegedly murdered him over
gambling, which may have occurred at the home of a Gloria AINSWORTH.
There were three men allegedly involved in the murder and they brutally beat him to death with a 2X4 with nails in it. The story continues that his body was taken about two blocks away from the AINSWORTH house to a “branch” and left to die. The men named in the murder were known as Zeke PERVEY, Bow Wow Red and Earl HUNTER.
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| Nathaniel W. LIGON Hickory Colored Cemetery, Carter County, Oklahoma |
The other story about how Nat was murdered had to do with apparently “Nathaniel was known for being in the company of white women.” It is said he was coming from Dunbar near F Street by the Holiness Church near the branch were they found his body. I have nothing to corroborate either story but two things bother me about the latter story. I couldn’t find any woman named Mrs. Maud DICKSON in the 1930 census records for Ardmore that wasn’t white and married?
The second matter that struck me was where Nathaniel was enumerated in the 1930 census. He was the “house servant” for the SAYRE family who lived on F Street S.W. I’m not familiar with Ardmore enough to say if the address where he worked for the white family was anywhere near where his body was found but it adds a little mystery to the story for sure. On the other hand the home of Gloria AINSWORTH was in a different census tract but it was also located on F Street but that was F Street N.W.? I imagine where the body was located might be the determinant factor on where Nathaniel LIGON was allegedly murdered and who murdered him?
With a little luck we may discover there are some descendants of Nathaniel LIGON alive and we can reunite to exchange our shared family history. In the meantime there is a great deal more to discover about Nathaniel, his military service and what his life was like to go from a Sargent in the 809th Pioneer Infantry in World War I to a house servant and possibly murdered at such an early age. There is a recurring theme for the men in this generation of dying in bodies of water, Nathaniel had two brothers who met similar fate and each of them died before the age of fifty. I hope to bring you their stories as well.
SURNAMES APPEARING IN THIS ARTICLE
ABRAMS
AINSWORTH
ANDERSON
BENJAMIN
DAVIS
DICKSON
GAINES
GUNN(S)
HARRIS
HUNTER
LIGON
PERVEY
SAYRE
PLACE NAMES APPEARING IN THIS ARTICLE
Ardmore, Oklahoma
Camp Mills, New York
Carter County, Oklahoma
Chickasaw Nation
Chickasha, Oklahoma
Hennepin, Oklahoma
Hickory Colored Cemetery
Lone Grove, Oklahoma
Murray Cemetery
Murray County
Newport, Indian Territory
St. Nazaire, France
Woodford, Oklahoma
[i] Ancestry.com. Oklahoma, County Marriage Records, 1890-1995 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.
I was not expecting the tragic ending to your uncle's life. He was a good looking man. Hope you find some descendants able to give you the rest of the story. A newspaper article would be good too, if you could find one.
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