Euna Ellerfair Posey

1888-1961

Euna Ellerfair Posey was born on 2 July 1888 in Rural Shade, a farming community twenty miles southeast of Corsicana in southeastern Navarro County, Texas. Her parents were Lonnie and Margaret Frances Elizabeth Martin.

Lonnie and Fannie Posey on their wedding day.

Euna’s birth certificate indicated that Lonnie Posey was born in Alabama around 1866 and was a farmer. No more information could be found on him, but according to the book, Navarro County Texas Marriages 1846-1888, Vol I, a G. J. Posey married a M. F. Martin on 13 Apr 1887. If M. F. Martin is Margaret Frances Martin, then ‘Lonnie’ Posey’s real name was G. J. Posey. The timing of the wedding fits Euna’s birth date in 1888. Lonnie and Fannie had another child, a son, William J. Posey, born in 1890. It’s interesting that Lonnie and Fannie named their son William. That was the first name of the father of a Posey family originally from Indian Creek, Alabama that moved to Navarro County, Texas in 1883. If Lonnie was indeed a member of that family, then he was most probably George Posey, the son of William and Sarah Hutto Posey. George was the youngest of ten children. William Posey Sr. moved with several of his children and their families to Navarro County, Texas in 1883, eventually settling in Rural Shade. Lonnie farmed in Rural Shade, died from pneumonia in 1890 and is presumed to be buried in Rural Shade though his grave site has never been found.

Euna’s mother, Margaret Frances Elizabeth Martin, known as Fannie, was born in 1872 in Tennessee. Her parents were James Nathaniel and Sarah ‘Sallie’ Westbrook Martin. According to research done by Lily Martin, James Nathaniel Martin was born in 1836 in NC, left Rockingham County, NC around 1864, went to SC, then to Lexington, TN as of 1867, then to Navarro Co., TX as of 1878, and remained there until his death in December 1910. Sallie Westbrook was born in NC. According to the 1880 US census, she could neither read nor write and had had 10 children, 6 of whom survived. She died in February 1927 in Kerens, Navarro County.

Fannie married Lonnie when he was 22 and she was 16. After Lonnie died in 1890, Fannie married Wilton O. McDonald and they had a daughter, Mattie McDonald (Justice), born in 1894. Fannie Posey McDonald died in Wichita Falls on 12 Oct 1919 at age 47 and is buried in the Oakwood Cemetery in Corsicana, Navarro County.

Euna’s brother, William J. Posey had a short and tragic life. He was born on 12 Jan 1890 and worked in the oil fields. He was a partner in the oil business with Euna’s brother-in-law, Dave Carl. William was murdered on 6 Apr 1921 in an oil field incident, south of Somerset, Atascosa County at the age of 31. He had an argument with one of his oil well drilling crew, hit him with a hoe and the man came back days later and shot him. He is buried in the same plot as his mother, Fannie Posey McDonald, and his sister Euna in Lot #2, Block 23, 5th addition, Oakwood Cemetery in the north part of Corsicana, Texas. I had always assumed William never married, but in the 1910 US census for Corsicana, Fannie, Wilton and Mattie McDonald were living with his parents, William and Martha McDonald. Also in the household was a Willie Posey, 20 and his wife, Cleo Posey, only 16! They were listed as borders and he was listed as being married for 0 which must have meant under one year meaning they probably married in 1910. In the 1920 US census for Navarro County, Texas, there is a James W Posey, born ca 1890. It appears Willie switched the order of his name, originally William J Posey, and that the J stood for James. In the 1910 census, he was married to a Cleo who was 4 years younger. In the 1920 census, the James W Posey was married to a Frances C. Posey who was 4 years younger. I discovered eventually that the C in Frances C. did stand for Cleo. Her last name was either McLeod or McCloud. Documents list it both ways. After his death his body was sent to Euna, his sister, instead of his wife. His funeral was held out of Euna's home. Cleo might have been living in Somerset when Willie died so didn't have a home in Corsicana where the funeral and burial were held.
 William J Posey was James William Posey as an adult but my father always called him Willie which was how he was listed in the notices about his death and his tombstone says W. J. Posey. According to the census, James worked as an oil driller, which is what Willie did. They were clearly the same person. Ed Carl never talked about his uncle being married, or having children who would have been his first cousins, but after Euna and Ed Sr. divorced in 1919, Ed Jr. probably had little contact with his Posey relatives. After Willie Posey's death there was a listing in the 1930 census for Electra, Wichita, TX of a Cleo F. Tate living with her husband, Otis M Tate, her daughter Elizabeth Posey and son William C Posey. Cleo changed the order of her name just like Willie did.

Left, Euna’s children, Ed and Minnie Carl with their cousin, Elizabeth Posey on the left. Right, me at 1 holding my hands the same way Minnie is.

According to the 1920 US census, James W and Frances C Posey had a daughter Mary E, 9 2/12 so she was born ca 1910. We have a photograph that shows Euna’s children, Ed and Minnie as toddlers standing on their porch with another toddler identified on the back as their cousin, Elizabeth Posey. This may be the Mary E., the cousin Elizabeth in the photo and in the census. The Texas Birth Index lists a Mary Elizabeth Posey as being born on 31 Dec 1910, the same month Minnie Elizabeth Carl was born. That would fit how close in age Minnie and her cousin Elizabeth looked in the snapshot. (An interesting similarity, notice the way Minnie is holding her hands, then look at the way I’m holding my hands in a photo taken when I was one year old. Are hand gestures genetic?) In the 1930 census Elizabeth Posey was living in Electra, Wichita, TX with her mother, Cleo F. Tate, stepfather Otis M Tate and brother William C Posey. She was 19 and a telephone operator. Her first marriage produced a child, Wesley Earl Smith, Jr. so her first husband was probably Wesley Earl Smith, Sr. Her obituary in the Sedalia Democrat reported her second married name as Mrs. W Brown Witcher and said she’d died on Aug 1, 1947. Her tombstone says she’d been born on Dec 1, 1910 and died on Aug 3, 1947, dates that don't fit other documents. She’s buried in the Oakwood Cemetery in Corsicana, the same place her aunt, Euna Posey Carl, her father, William J Posey and her grandmother, Margaret Frances Elizabeth ‘Fannie’ Martin Posey McDonald are buried.

Willie and Cleo's son, William C. Posey, was listed in the 1920 census as 7 11/12  so would have been born around 1912.  He was listed in an ancestry.com family tree as William Carl Posey, 19 Feb 1912-30 May 1987 with descendants. I was surprised to see the Carl name. I guess there was more of a connection between the Poseys and the Carls than I'd realized. William Carl Posey also worked in the oil business and lived most of his life in Oklahoma. I thought it was interesting that Lonnie and Willie had died so young, one 23 the other 31. And I found articles from 1954 about a fight that William Carl Posey got into after a poker game that injured him seriously. Unlike his father, he survived his attack and didn't die.

Euna Ellerfair Posey, photo taken in Corsicana, Texas ca. 1894 when she was four years old.

In a letter Euna wrote her children on 24 Dec 1948, she mentioned she had brown eyes and blonde hair at birth, but that in later years her hair turned a dark auburn. She also said several members of her Posey family had red or dark auburn hair. According to family lore, Euna was the most beautiful woman in the area. One of Ed's nephews claimed that not only was she beautiful, but she dressed well, smelled good, laughed and smiled all the time and had a wonderful personality. Euna met Edward Miller Carl when he was working in the oil fields with her brother and his brother.

Euna and Ed Carl on their wedding day, 13 April 1906 and their marriage license

Euna and Ed went by train to Houston and were married there on 13 April 1906. They then traveled by train to the Beaumont area, where Ed secured employment on an oil drilling rig. This was during the early boom days of the nearby Spindletop Oil Field. Ed Sr. told his son that he eventually left this employment because of his fear of the effect of the sulphuric gas produced by the wells in the Spindletop Oil Field. He and Euna apparently returned to Corsicana, where Ed took charge of pumping and gauging the oil wells, on his brother Tom’s Farm. In a job application Ed Carl filled out years later, he indicated that he had graduated from high school and from June 1903 to 3 September 1909 he had done oil field work for Dr. S. W. Johnson, then from 1909 until 1913 he was the owner of a grocery store in Corsicana. On 15 May 1909, their first child, Edward Miller Carl, Jr., was born.

Left, Edward Miller Carl, Jr. at six weeks old, June 1909; Middle, the house in Corsicana where Minnie was born. (Photo taken in 1964) Right, Minnie an Ed in 1911

A daughter, Minnie Elizabeth Carl was born on 7 Dec 1910. In his memoirs, Ed Jr. said his parents had moved into town after his father had taken a new job with the Johnson and Akins plant that fabricated oil field equipment. In the 1910 US census Ed, Euna (listed as Enna E Carl) and Ed Jr were living in Justice Precinct 1, Navarro County, Texas. He was listed as an engineer at a pumping plant. Ed Jr. said, “I have no recollection of the events during the 1st year of my life. However in later years I learned that my mother thought that Dr. Shell, who delivered me and my sister, Minnie, was a fine doctor. I remember being weighed in a diaper with hand-scales over a double bed when I was 18 months old. I do not remember the year that my father and mother moved from 1st Street to another place in the south part of Corsicana but I do vividly remember that my father had opened a grocery store in the new location and that my mother was in charge of the store while my father was employed in a new job. I also vividly remember that, while we lived in this location, my father and mother had a well-fed and beautiful white horse, named Jessie, and that he was used to pull a fancy buggy, which had a white parasol with yellow fringe on it.” He also remembered “the daily delivery of fresh meat for our store. It was delivered by a man who stood on the rear step of a single-horse-drawn two-wheeled cart. The meat was carried in a full-width cargo box, in front of the driver. There was no ice used to keep meat fresh.”

Ed, Minnie and Euna circa 1914. Ed Jr. remembered her being a excellent seamstress and loving pretty, expensive clothes

In 1913 Ed Sr. got a job in the post office and worked there while Euna ran the grocery store. Ed Sr. had a crippled leg. Ed Jr. said, “with the evident approach of World War I, and the anticipated involvement of America in it, the Draft began to deplete the number of younger employees in the Corsicana Post Office and, sometime prior to our involvement in that War, my father became a Post Office employee since he was a cripple and therefore not acceptable for military duty. Either before, or soon after, this employment, my father and mother left their home and store in South Corsicana, and moved into a rented house on Collins Street, which was situated about 3 or 4 blocks from the local post office, in downtown Corsicana.”

Ed Sr., Minnie, Ed Jr., and Euna. The photo was made at The Elliotts studio in Austin and had to have been taken before 1919. They had probably been visiting Ed’s parents, John H. and Mary Carl, who lived in Austin. John, a former Confederate soldier, was a guard at the capitol.

In April 1919 everything changed. There are two versions of the story. According to Ed's family, he came home early from work and found Euna with another man. He immediately took the children and went to live with his brother. However, she was the one who filed for divorce and described a very unhappy marriage. She claimed in her application that he had been “guilty of the grossest cruelty and neglect, that he scarcely ever would take her anywhere with him but would go to places of amusement alone, refusing to take her; that he had an extreme dislike and contempt for [her] relatives and humiliated and hurt [her] feelings by abusing her people and refusing to eat at the same table with them, and also forbade them to come to his house; that for several years prior to the [April] separation, [she] had to sew to earn a livelihood, he failing and refusing to provide sufficient means for her support and maintenance. That he was also extremely jealous and accused her of various acts of infidelity which were untrue, and in fact imputed to her a lack of chastity in the presence of herself and of others, there being absolutely no foundation for such unjust and slanderous charges, and that his conduct on the whole was of such a nature as to render their further living together insupportable.” She was granted the divorce but Ed was given custody of the children, both were unusual events in those days. Perhaps it was because she would have had a hard time raising the children on her own.

On 28 April 1919, less than a month before his 10th birthday on 15 May. Ed Jr., known as Eddie, wrote a poignant letter to his mother. Euna had gone to visit her ill mother, but it was also the month Ed Jr. later said his father and mother separated. The visit might have also been the beginning of the separation. Euna’s mother died that year, possibly after this illness. It was only recently that I discovered Fannie Posey McDonald had died in Wichita Falls, not Corsicana. In the letter Eddie says in his childish spelling and lack of punctuation:"Dear Mother, I will write you a few lines to let you know that I am all right and hope you will be home in a few days because I am getting lonesome and I don't know what I would do if I didn't have a Father and mother. We got your letter today and I was surprised when I found out you didn't say when you would be home. Have you been over to get my things that Uncle Roy brought me from France. I am anxious to have them. Just how is grandma getting along. Has she got any better since you have been there. Did she ask you how we were getting along and why we didn't come this time. Did you tell her that we so sorry that I couldn't come but would have come if school hadn't been going on when she got sick." He didn’t seem to know about question marks! ‘Uncle Roy’ was Roy Justice, the husband of Euna's half sister, Mattie McDonald Justice. He must have gone to France in WWI. The sad truth was that Euna didn’t come home and Eddie suffered his entire life from the lack of a loving mother.

In the 1920 US census for Corsicana, Euna was listed as a widowed head of household. She was not a widow, but probably called herself that to avoid the stigma of being divorced. She owned her own home at 190 West Collin St. and sewed for a living. In the 1930 census, she was incorrectly listed as Erma, 42. She was divorced and living at 501 W 2nd Avenue with two lodgers, one of whom was William Mondell, single, 42. He was a carpenter building houses and was from Maryland. In his WWI draft registration, he said he was of medium height, blue eyes and brown hair. Sometime after 1930 Euna married Mr. Mondell who died in 1943. She then married Charles 'Buck' Peters who worked in a barber shop. After her divorce in 1919, Euna had lost contact with her children until her son contacted her before he married in 1940. She was pleased to become part of his life again and to play the role of grandmother, bringing silver dollars for her grandchildren when she came to visit.

Left, Euna and her two children in 1949; Euna Peters in 1950

Left, 'Grandma and Grandpa Peters' visit Austin in 1952; Right, Buck and Euna at their hotel in Deming, NM.

She described herself as a very hard worker. Late in her life she ran a motel in Deming, NM with Buck. She attended the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. From the bad spelling and grammar in her letters, she probably didn't receive much formal education but that would have been common for a woman of her time. Euna Posey Carl Mondell Peters died on 15 Sept 1961 in Nevada, Missouri at the age of 73. She was buried in the Oakwood Cemetery in Corsicana with her mother and brother. Even though she was married to Buck Peters when she died, she is buried under the name Euna Mondell. Her grave marker indicates she was in Eastern Star. She had a hard life, but she was clearly a survivor and from the happy tones of her letters, she kept her cheerful personality to the end.