Martha Jane Porter Paulk, Part One

Paulk family, about 1905. Back, left-to-right: James (about 13), John (my grandfather, about 15), Charles (18), Mary (10). Front, Selden (61), Ted (2), Grace (2), Martha Jane Porter Paulk (44), and Clara (7). Their oldest daughter, Almeda “Meedie” (25) was already married at this time.

In 1974, this photo captured the imagination of my entire family. Taken about 1905 in rural Arkansas, it shows the family of my great-grandparents, Selden and Martha Jane (Porter) Paulk. In 1974, My parents took us on a trip to Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas to visit my Paulk grandparents and my grandfather’s siblings Uncle Jim, Uncle Charley, and Aunt Meedie. When Uncle Jim showed us this photo, my sister and I were particularly taken with our great-grandmother, Martha Jane (especially because my sister shares her name). It seemed her story was written in the lines of her face, so time-worn at age 44.

This is what Aunt Meedie Paulk Ross told us about her mother: Some time after Martha Jane’s birth in Texas in 1861, she and her three brothers and sister were orphaned in Conway County, Arkansas. After their mother died, their father, John Porter, remarried. Their father later became ill and elicited a promise from his second wife to care for his children after his death. Instead, she deserted them at the cemetery! A young man, an unmarried cousin of theirs named McMahan, took in the five children and later married a woman with a son and daughter of her own, and together they raised all those children. Meedie told us her mother lost track of her sister, Sally, and all three of the boys died. Meedie remembered going to the funeral of one of the brothers, Jim. Meedie didn’t know anything about her grandfather John Porter except his name, and didn’t even know that about her grandmother.

The rest of Martha Jane Porter’s story we were already familiar with: A week before her fifteenth birthday, in February of 1876, she married my great-grandfather Selden Paulk, who was a 31-year-old widower with two daughters, aged eight and three. Martha Jane went on to bear Selden twelve children, only eight of whom lived beyond infancy. They moved around a lot in the next 30 years, from Conway County, Arkansas; to Johnson County, Arkansas; El Reno, Indian Territory (Oklahoma); Ingalls, Indian Territory, Vian, Indian Territory; and back to Arkansas, to the farm on the Newton/Madison County line where this photo was taken.

Can you see why this woman’s life so fascinated us? We knew nothing more of her background, though; even Uncle Jim Paulk, who managed to trace the Paulk line back to 1665 in this country, had found nothing on his grandmother’s family, the Porters. But in 2012, we have the Internet! And here’s what I found at familysearch.org in the Arkansas Marriage Record book for 1876:

And there’s my great-great grandfather’s name, John J. Porter! –attested for by James D. McMahan, “authorized guardian” for Martha Jane Porter, and giving permission for her to marry in Conway County, Arkansas! Bonus: the guardian’s apparent wife’s name, Emily E. McMahan!

Further searches turned up the fact that there were a lot of John Porters in this country in the mid-1800s, and I’ve had no luck identifying which of them might be Martha Jane’s father, much less a marriage document for him that would list Martha Jane’s mother’s name. But now, at least I had a full name for her guardian, and since McMahan is a less common name than Porter, I thought I’d see what I could find for James D. McMahan.

I started searching census records and – bingo! On page four of the 1870 census for Higgins Township, Perry County, Arkansas: James McMahan, with five Porter children: James, John C., William, Martha, and Sarah. So there’s a Martha of the right age and birthplace, with a sister Sally (Sally being at that time a diminutive for Sarah), a brother Jim, and two more brothers, all living with a McMahan. This has to be them! I still don’t know who 22-year-old Sarah McMahan was, but I did later learn that the county borders changed in 1873, moving Higgins Township from Perry County to Conway County, so they’re in exactly the right place!

But it gets even better, as I’ll explain in my next post.