Memories of, and Research on The Owen Carp Woolever Family

As recorded in 1998
by R. G. "Jack" Woolever,
A Grandson of Owen Carp Woolever

Genealogy Pox is a very contagious disease, especially to adults. The symptoms are a continual complaint as to the needs for names, dates and places. The patient has a blank expression, sometimes deaf to spouse and children. He has no taste for work of any kind, except feverishly looking through records at libraries and courthouses, and has a compulsion to write letters, swears at the mailman when he leaves no mail. Frequents strange places such as cemetery ruins and remote desolate country areas; makes secret nighttime phone calls and hides the phone bill from his spouse, mumbles to himself and has a strange faraway look in his eyes.
There is no known cure for the above, treatment for the above is useless, but the disease is not fatal, but gets progressively worse. Patient should attend workshops, subscribe to genealogical magazines and be given a quiet corner of the house where he can be alone. (Remarks: Unusual disease in that the sicker the patient gets the more he enjoys it.)

Author unknown, but very true.
For some strange reason, one or two of my many cousins have asked me to make a narrative account of what I can remember, what I have heard, and what I believe about the OWEN CARP WOOLEVER Family, quite possible because I am the oldest living grandchild of OWEN CARP and ANNIE WILSON WOOLEVER. Please be kind in your judgement as I am sure I will be wrong a great many times during the writing; maybe due to loss of memory or other reasons.

Originated in Germany

First let us go back some centuries in time to get a little history, for which we can thank our Yankee cousins. This information comes from them. While preaching in Pennsylvania and New York, my son Ron found that there were dozens of Woolevers in New York and Pennsylvania. All of them did not spell it the same every time.
Quite a few of them had visited in Germany and found that English Spelling of the name Woolever in Germany is WOHLEBEN and the name was not only a name, but also had a meaning as well. The meaning is "well liver" (one who lives well), so it is quite possible that many people named Welliver may also be our relatives as well. However, we are only interested in the English spelling Woolever and so will confine my remarks to it.
The Woolevers came from a section of Germany known as Bacharach on the Rhine, a section very near the Swiss and French borders. Several dozen of them migrated to the United States after being promised land grants which turned out to be just that: Promises. They scattered, some moving to Pennsylvania, some to Wisconsin, some to Canada, some to New York State, and a number of them went west when gold was struck in California. (I have the addresses of two of DEKALB'S
granddaughters [JOHN WILEY number two's daughters] in California.)
At least two of them arrived by boat in New York and crossed the river and moved south. We think that one of them probably established the southern branch of the family. One of them was named JOSEPH, who married a NANCY POOL and fathered JOHN, DAVID, HENRY, JOSEPH, JACOB, ANNA B., HANNAH, RACHEL, ESTER and quite possibly others we know nothing about. We think that this JOHN WOOLEVER was the father of GEORGE ABRAHAM WOOLEVER who we know is the head of our klan.

We are descendants of George Abraham Woolever.

Sometime during the year 1840, GEORGE ABRAHAM married a woman whose name we think was FANNIE FRANCIS and began having children. The first of them were born in Tennessee and he then moved to Arkansas. The 1850 Census shows his children as ELIZABETH, age 18; JOHN, age 16; GEORGE, age 14; CANZADY, age 11, JACKSON, age 10, and HOWARD, age 8, who were all shown to have been born in Tennessee.
We then find FANNIE, age 4, and FRANCIS M. age 3 months. The 1860 Census shows that three more had been born in Arkansas, these were DEKALB, MELISSA, and OWEN CARP, the 12th child, and head or our Texas bunch.
I now have the names and addresses of cousins from all of the GEORGE ABRAHAM WOOLEVER family except FRANCIS and MELISSA, and it may be possible they had all girls, so may have lost them to name changes through marriage. The one exception is Fannie, who simply seemed to disappear after the 1860 Census. Again, she may have married or died between 1860 and 1870.

Could we be part Indian?

One final thought, before leaving history behind. Great grandfather GEORGE is rumored to have brought back an Indian squaw while helping take the Indians to Oklahoma territory. Which gives thought to part of the children may be part Indian. Well, so much for history, so will go forward with our own immediate family and my memories.
I didn't find myself at all interested in our family in my youth and actually showed no interest until I began to ask questions during my years in college. I asked Dad about his father and found he knew next to nothing. Simply that Granddad had come from Missouri and he said he left brothers there. I then began to ask a few questions of Granny when she came to visit and found the same answers there. I suddenly realized that Granny had been married to and living with a man she knew absolutely nothing about.

My Granny Woolever

As all of you realize, Granny lived out of a suitcase most of her last years. She moved from one child to another and stayed until the work was all caught up, then moved to another, and she was always welcome. She was the type of Grandmother everyone would love to have, always welcome. Granny dearly loved the taste of alcohol and that galled most of her children, but Dad always managed to get her a one-half pint and smuggled it to her when we visited her.
At one time we had a giant grape arbor made or mustang grapes. They were too tart to eat, but I found that they made a very excellent wine. At one time I had eight gallons of wine working in mother's pantry when Granny came to visit, and Granny found the wine while cleaning the pantry. Every day after that, Granny had to clean out the pantry. After a while I realized Granny was sucking out the wine from my jugs and refilling them with water every day. That was one visit Granny thoroughly enjoyed with us, as I never let her know that I knew what she was doing. Granny was always real busy and looking for more patching and etc. to do.
One of my cousins, PATSY WOOLEVER SITTON, made a concentrated effort to trace our ancestors back and did a real good job on Granny's side with the Murphy's. (Grandmother's mother's name was Murphy.) She traced them all the way back to Ireland on that side, but she hit a brickwall on the Woolever side.
I pretty well lost interest in our family except I looked in every phone book I could find for Woolevers. I found one in Pampa but could not tie them to us.
After Dad and Granny both had died I found that MICKEY and JOANNE STERLING had taken up the search and had located the GEORGE ABRAHAM family in Arkansas. They were good enough to share their findings with me, JOANNE gave me many documents pertaining to them and got me started once again. We found that they had indeed come from Missouri, but had all been born and raised in Arkansas, in Franklin County.

Owen Carp Woolever

Granddad's father (here, penciled in -George Abraham) died in 1875 and we know absolutely nothing about the whereabouts of OWEN CARP until the Texas Census of 1880, when we found him again living with a family in Denton, Texas. An interesting sidelight to this is that another boarder in the same household was named GRANT and eventually they married sisters, and he became our great uncle by marriage. He married AUNT MATT, Granny's sister, and fathered the GRANT BOYS, who were Dad's cousins.
OWEN CARP met GRANNY (CHRISTI ANNE WILSON) and began courting her. They were married on February 18, 1881, in Denton County. Very soon they moved to Stephene County, which is located near Breckenridge, Texas, and began farming, which I believe was his trade the remainder of his life.
DAISY MAE WOOLEVER, their first child, was born on December 4th, and died the same day. She was followed by FANNIE and she died the same day, December 22nd. EARNEST HOMER WOOLEVER was their first son and he survived. He was born on October 1, 1885. EDDIE VIRGIL was also born on October 1, 1887. He was followed by EARL ALEX on October 24ths, as on number three. ONICE WOOLEVER was born number four on December 14th, 1891, but lived only about four months. He passed away on April 12, 1892.
The first of their girls was MATTIE MAE, who was born September 10th, 1893. LIZZIE E. WOOLEVER arrived on April 8, 1895 as daughter number two. MAUDE E. WOOLEVER arrived December 19th, 1896, as number three. AUDREY L. WOOLEVER arrived on the 22nd of May as daughter number four. PEARL EMMA WOOLEVER arrived on May 22nd 1900 as daughter number five.
Sometime between 1900 and 1902 they moved from Stephens County to Borden County near Snyder, Texas. MABLE EDITH WOOLEVER, daughter number six, arrived on February 26th, 1902, WINNIE FAYE WOOLEVER was daughter number seven and last, arriving on August 28th, 1904.
This completes the family of OWEN CARP and ANNIE WILSON, and all of them lived to maturity and produced families of their own.

My father, Eddie Virgil (Bud) Woolever

On January 16th, 1907, my father EDDIE VIRGIL (BUD) was married to NELLIE ELORA AINSWORTH in Snyder, Texas, by a minister named Tate. EDDIE left the farm and took a job driving a freight wagon from the big city of Dunn to Fluvana through Snyder and slept in the wagon and returned the next day. After a few months of this he had a chance to go to Post, Texas and take a job minding and repairing water wells for the Post Water System. There on December 26th, VIRGIL LONZO WOOLEVER arrived at a strapping 11 pounds. Two years later on December 13th, CHARLES GERALD arrived middle weight at only 10 pounds. And some two years and three months later (March 27th, 1912) RONALD GLENN (Jack) Woolever (me!)
arrives as the runt of the family at only nine pounds. We stayed there until 1915.
In 1907 UNCLE ERNEST married HATTIE M. DAVIS and there were three children born to this union.
On November 13th, 1910, UNCLE EARL married HATTIE TUMLINSON and from that union there were born eight children.
On the 18th day of May, 1910, AUNT LIZZIE married OWEN MILLER and from that union only one child was born and she lived only seven years. I believe she died of scarlet fever, but I am not sure; I can remember we received a telegram of her death and drove nearly all day in the rain trying to get there and arrived just as her funeral service was over.
AUDREY L. WOOLEVER married ALBERT MILLER (a brother of OWEN) on September 15, 1915, and from that union there were born three children.
MAUDE WOOLEVER married T. J. STERLING in Portales, New Mexico on April 2nd, 1919, and from that union there were seven children born.
PEARL E. WOOLEVER married T. H. STERLING in Portales, New Mexico on April 2nd, 1919, and from that union there were seven children born.
MABLE E. WOOLEVER married CLAUDE BISHOP, a brother of MARVIN BISHOP. From that union there were eight children born. They were married in Scurry County on December 16th, 1916.
On August 20, 1920, MATTIE WOOLEVER was married to JESSE DIXON, in Scurry County and there were five children born of that union.
WINNIE FAYE WOOLEVER was married to MARVIN EUGENE BISHOP in Scurry County on December 3rd, 1921, and there were four children born of that union.
This completes the marriages of OWEN CARP WOOLEVER and CHRISTA ANNE WOOLEVER'S ten adult children. Unless I have miscounted, there were 45 grandchildren born of the 10 children, and I believe 19 of them have passed away. There was one other child named RAYMOND MANGUM who was raised by AUNT LIZZIE and UNCLE OWEN, but I do not know whether or not he was ever adopted by them. Perhaps one of the other grandchildren knows the answer to the above.
That closes out the record for the previous generation, so will come back again to our immediate family and see what I can piece together. One thing should be kept in mind, however: since we had a total of six brothers and sisters to marry a total of six brothers and sisters in other families, we have three sets of so-called double cousins in the family. CLAUDE and MARVIN BISHOP, HATTIE(ERNEST'S wife), and PAUL DAVIS WERE BROTHERS AND SISTERS: and OWEN and ALBERT MILLER were brothers.

Grandad dies of pellagra, leaving Granny to raise five girls.

GRANDFATHER OWEN CARP contracted a disease called pellagra which is described as a rash of sores and eruptions all over the body and at that time, no cure was known. He passed away on October 18, 1914, leaving GRANNY with a house full of girls to raise.
Things were pretty bad for awhile as everyone had to pitch in and help GRANNY with her family. However, several of the girls worked our on various jobs to help out.

Homesteading in New Mexico

Then in 1916 they received word that New Mexico land had been opened to homesteading. After a conference among the members of the family, they decided they would move to New Mexico. Some members chose not to go, and among them was OWEN MILLER, and AUNT LIZZIE, and ALBERT MILLER and AUNT AUDREY.
They all had wagons and teams plus some livestock, so they set out with GRANNY and her girls, all of them in covered wagons. The way the Homestead Law worked was that each whole family (man and wife) could settle on 640 acres on land called a section, but any half families, man or woman, could settle on only 320 acres or one-half section if they were 21 years old. AUNT MATTIE was the only girl over 21, so she took 320 acres. You had to stay on the land and improve it each year for three years.
UNCLE PAUL DAVIS followed them out and he and AUNT MAUDE went back to Plains, Texas and obtained a license and married there, so they joined the rest. ERNEST, EDDIE VIRGIL, EARL, and PAUL DAVIS all homesteaded 640 acres, GRANNY, AUNT MATT and OLD GRANDMA DAVIS all homesteaded 640 acres, so the Woolever klan had control of more than 3,000 acres of prairie land there. And of course the first thing was shelter, so all set in and built a two-room shanty for GRANNY and UNCLE EARL first, then Dad, followed by all the rest, before winter set in. You were required to do so much improvements on your place each year, and of course the shanties filled that requirement for the first year.
We all managed to stick it out except AUNT MATT, she gave up and moved to Amarillo and started doing housework. I think she never did prove up on her place as she didn't stay the three years. She later moved back to Snyder and married JESS DIXON.
UNCLE TOMMY STERLING made a trip out there and he and AUNT PEARL went to Portales, N.M. and got married and went back to Ira to live.
UNCLE CLAUDE BISHOP also made a trip in, I believe he had a Model T Ford, and he took AUNT MABLE back to Snyder and they married there, which left GRANNY with only AUNT WINNIE.

Windmills brought us water.

Somewhere, I am not at all sure where, they found an old walking beam drilling rig and bought rope in Portales. They wound strands of it three ropes at a time tied to a wagon wheel, then raised the wheel and spin it to wind the three ropes together to make one rope strong enough to work on the rig and started drilling for water, as all water was being hauled from the Anderson Ranch for living purposes and the livestock as well. You drilled awhile, then changed to a slush bucket to clean out the water and mud you had loosened. Then back to drilling again.
As I remember we found pretty good water at about 80 feet and they went to Portales and bought a windmill and lumber for a tower. (I can very distinctly remember getting into Dad's chewing tobacco while they were drilling, and to this day I will cannot chew tobacco without getting deathly sick.) Everyone started hauling water from Dad's place until they could drill wells on each place.

Mom (Nellie Woolever) was very resourceful.

You were required to do so much improvement on your land each year, and of course the shanties took care of the first year, but Dad grubbed out mesquite on 40 acres of flat land and planted beans there, so you can imagine what our diet consisted of mostly. However, Mom was a pretty resourceful woman and was pretty good shot with a .22 rifle, so when we went to GRANNY's about one quarter of a mile away, she generally managed to get a prairie chicken, rabbit or something to eat. I can well remember also that she tried eating the blooms on the yucca plants and since it didn't kill her, we then used it for a substitute cabbage. Wasn't too bad, at that.
Mother wasted nothing at all, even the old socks we wore out she would make us balls out of them as we had nothing. We played sock ball continually and I can remember one Christmas we each received a popcorn ball only. You had to be resourceful to survive.

Dr. Mom

Mom had to be a doctor and everything else, as it was 17 miles to Lovington to a doctor, and we had to pick up our mail at Jenkins Post Office and a little store was about 12 miles away. I can well remember being hit on the head with an axe while playing, and mother taking a handful of flour and held it over the cut until it stopped bleeding.
On another rather unforgettable day AUNT MATTIE (EARNEST'S wife) sent CLAUDE to our house and asked Mom to come help her. When we got there PETE had a bad case of piles (we called them that then; now they are know as hemorrhoids). They just greased them with lard and shoved them back in, and I don't think PETE ever had any trouble with them after that.
Another of my very favorite memories was that I had croup very badly, and the only known cure was a teaspoon of kerosene filled with sugar. Believe me, It worked, and I was glad to take it when the breathing got real hard.

Typhoid fever strikes the family.


We once received a telegram via Jenkins Post Office that Mother's baby sister AUNT BOB had typhoid fever and wasn't expected to live. Somehow Dad arranged for someone on the Anderson Ranch to take Mom and I to Clovis in a Model T Ford to catch a train. We made it to Post, Texas, and I remember having to sleep out on the front porch to try to keep me away from AUNT BOB as the fever was very contagious. Sure enough, AUNT BOB died the first day, but I did catch the fever and it was a good while before we could return to New Mexico. Then I was supposed to live on only the whites of eggs beaten up and mixed with sugar. I managed fairly well with GERALD and VIRGIL both slipping down in the half dugout with pieces of watermelon and cantaloupe while mother wasn't watching.

Dad works at the Anderson Ranch.

Dad was lucky enough to get part-time work over at the Anderson Ranch and seemed to be gone a lot. I suspect that was the only money coming in to the whole klan most years because those beans didn't sell very well.
Our second year Dad built a dugout which was a room one-half underground and one-half out. He dug four feet down and used boards eight feet long to make the walls so we three boys slept there after that.

Lightning strikes.

One Particular night we had a terrible rain storm and UNCLE EARL's bunch was there also, when lightning struck the house. There were 16 of us in one room, and it knocked out the coal oil lamp and we were in complete darkness and with all the screaming and yelling going on it was bedlam. Dad finally got the lamp relighted and VIRGIL was knocked out on the floor, but a little water brought him around pretty quick. No one else was even scratched or injured in any way.
Before winter set in everyone cleared 40 acres of land and we all planted red beans in it so our diets were somewhat limited.
Dad's place was half flat land and half sand hills, so VIRGIL, GERALD, CLAUDE, PETE and I, (R. G.) generally headed for the sand to play while it was cool, generally in the raw as there certainly wouldn't be any unexpected company show up. There was a pretty good supply of antelope there and UNCLE EARL spent a lot of time hunting them, although there was no open season on them. And I suspect that an unbranded calf wandered onto our places once in a while so expect we had a little beef once in a while also.
UNCLE MARVIN BISHOP made a trip out there and asked to marry AUNT WINNIE, but after a family conference they refused as she was only 13 years old at the time. They later married when the klan moved back to Ira.

Memories of homesteading in New Mexico

During our three-year stay in New Mexico many little things stuck to my mind, although I was only four when we moved there, and only seven when we lift. I will try to write down a few of them and hope all are right.
During the three years we were there we children had only a few weeks of schooling. There was a homesteaders shanty about three miles from us and a young lady from the Anderson Ranch tried to help us along. I can remember learning the alphebet and how to count and possibly a little arithmetic but very little. We walked that three miles every day to and from school when we had the chance.
Of the many things that stuck, above all else I can remember the rattlesnakes and scorpions. Dad's place was half flat land and half sandhills and I have never seen anything like the rattle snakes and vinagrones (we call them scorpions now). They were so thick you had to be careful where you stepped as we were always barefoot. I can remember stepping on a rattler in the early spring while playing sock ball and for some reason he didn't strike.
I can also remember Dad traded for a donkey for VIRGIL to ride. An itinerant peddler came by the house and had a crippled horse and a mare with a colt, and he traded the colt to Dad for the donkey. We named him Rowdy, but didn't find out until much later that he had gotten into loco weed (a poisonous weed that made animals crazy). sometimes he behaved good, then he would go crazy and run away and buck like crazy.

Mother and Rowdy's wild ride.


Well once our stock got out and Dad was away working and Mom decided she could get them back as Rowdy was in the lot. She mounted him with a hackamore for a bridle and her sitting sidesaddle on him, and started out. Rowdy behaved for about three hundred yards, then turned around and ran for the house. There was a barbed wire corner just at the house and Mom started yelling for us to head him off before he got to the fence. We tried, but Mom dismounted when he got close to that corner, and I am sure she rolled close to 30 feet when he threw on the brakes. Fortunately she didn't hit the fence.

Uncle Earl's canine surgery.

Quite often Dad would let me go with him while working on the place and they were putting in a corner post and UNCLE EARL was helping him. We stopped to rest a few minutes and UNCLE EARL sharpened his knife on a rock and called his old dog to come to him and twisted a piece of barbed wire around his snout so he couldn't bite, and castrated him right there to see if the knife was sharp. That was one time I wanted to be be big enough to return the favor and to this day I can still hear the poor dog crying and whining. It was several days before the dog came back to the house.

The puppy who came for dinner.

From somewhere we had gotten ahold of a small puppy and our cook stove had a large fire box on one end and the oven and stove came out the other end. It was winter and the puppy found that after breakfast when the fire burned down that the warmest place in the house was that oven. One day we were going to visit neighbors about ten miles away and mother closed the oven and put the three boys in the wagon and we spent the day with our nearest neighbors. That was also the day I got hit in the head with the axe, but anyway, when we returned home in the evening, we couldn't find the puppy. To make a long story shorter, Mom found him when she started to prepare supper. He was pretty well baked being in there all day.

The conclusion of our homesteading.

In 1919 our time was up and everybody proved up on their places except AUNT MATT. UNCLE EARL immediately moved his family and GRANNY and AUNT WINNIE back to snyder. I have never heard for sure, but I think that he traded his section of land for a down payment on a small farm out of Snyder and GRANNY said she let him trade her half section for a mule and tools to farm the land. UNCLE ERNEST and AUNT HATTIE, EDITH, CLAUDE AND PETE chose to remain there and did so a couple of more years. I never knew what went on with his section. Dad lost his to a plumbing and supply house in Lubbock during the Depression (1932)

Looking for a better life in Eastland, Texas

As soon as our place was proved up on and there was a clear title, Dad loaded us all into the covered wagon again and we headed for Eastland, Texas, as we had heard they had struck oil there. He traded his wagon and team for a pair of Perchon Horses, who were suited to the heavy work around the oil field, and went to work. We lived in a twenty by twenty army tent for a good many months and still had not started to school. Mom was teaching us best she could at home, so we made some progress.

Looking for a better life in Post, Texas.

After a few months there dad traded his team for a Model T. Ford and we moved to Post, Texas, as we had heard they had a huge cotton crop there. At Post we went to work for one JEFF CUSTER who later became my father-in-law. The five of us could pick enough cotton each day to make around fifty dollars a day, which was real money back in those days.

Looking for a better life in Slaton, Texas

Once the crop was picked Dad went to work for a plumber named Samson learning the trade. At this point in time we three boys were finally enrolled in school for the first time. We went to the first and second grades there, then Dad decided to strike out on his own and we moved to Slaton, 25 miles from Post. At that time Slaton looked like a sea of windmills as everyone had to have one for his water, so the windmilling business was far batter than plumbing at first. It wasn't long before I could pull the sucker rods, put on new leathers as well as any of Dad's hands.
However, in 1922 they started to pave the streets and put in a sewer system, and the plumbing business began to pick up fast. The windmills began to come down as the water and sewer system were completed.

Owen Carp Woolever left some mysteries behing.

To sum up this whole mess, I have learned the following things: GRANDDAD OWEN CARP severed all ties to his family when he left Missouri after his dad's death. We have no record of his wife's death or where either of them were buried. He never corresponded with any of them after he met GRANNY. He never mentioned the fact that three of his brothers had died in the Civil War fighting for the Union Army, and further stated that he left six brothers in Missouri when actually there were seven brothers altogether, and at no time did he ever mention that he had a total of four sisters also.
In other words, this story is filled with inconsistencies from beginning to end. Never was a reason given to abandon his family, and I am sure that at his age he had no feelings with regard to his brothers joining the North, as they did not have slaves, and I am sure he had not formed any opinion with regard to state rights. Quite possibly the fact that they joined the Union Army, and that two of his sisters had married Mormons, may have been a part of the cause of them moving out of Arkansas into Missouri, as even to this day there are a lot of hard feelings in and around Fort Smith with regard to the Civil War. The Arkansas people who joined the union are still referred to as "damned Yankees," as we found in a book in the library in Little Rock while we were there.
At this point in time, MICKEY, JOANNE, OPAL and I and the two JOHNSON (grandchildren of CANSADA) have found at least one cousin from all the families except FRANCIS, FANNIE AND MELISSA, and as far as we know all of FRANCIS' children and MELISSA'S were all girls, so the names would have changed with marriage.
Fannie simply disappeared from the census between 1860 and 1870, so she may have died or married and moved away from arkansas.
FRANCIS we know was still having children in 1900 as we found the record of a birth of a baby daughter in the 1900 census. Have heard he was registered in a county in Oklahoma after that, but have been unable to verify this.
MELISSA we know had three girls prior to the 1870 census but have failed to locate anyone or any record since that time.
Since starting this I have located several other cousins (distant), namely BILL WOOLEVER and his brother at Midwest City, Oklahoma, and have not met them, but am in correspondence with some of DEKALB'S grandchildren named COLLINS and ESMINGER who live in Hugo, Oklahoma. Hope to go over and meet them sometime soon.
GERALDINE WOOLEVER PECK, a granddaughter of JOHN WILEY, II has accumulated so much information that she is putting it in book form (loose-leaf) and plans on selling them at cost to all Woolever relatives interested.
Opal and I had hoped to make one more trip to Oklahoma for more information, but since we are now in our eighties, we may not make it, so can only hope some living cousin may take up the search where mine is ending.
I sincerely hope that some of my many cousins will enjoy my efforts and get something out of reading this missive.
Much love and God bless all.

Ronald glenn (Jack) and Opal Woolever