JOSEPH
CLIFT
1828
– 1865
AL -
AR
Joseph Clift IV (WILLIAM W.4, JOSEPH3, JOSEPH2, JOSEPH1) was born on January 10, 1828 in Morgan County,
Alabama, the first child of William and Mary Ann Clift.
He was about ten years of age when the family moved to Hot Spring
County, Arkansas. He attended school in
what was then northeastern Hot Spring County and later (1873) became Saline
County, and worked on his family’s farm.
On February 7, 1850, Joseph and Sarah Collie were
married in Hot Spring County by George C. Miller, Justice of the Peace. Joseph was 22 and Sarah was 20 the week after they married.
Sarah was born February 24, 1830, the daughter of
Charles and Margaret Clack
Collie. She was born in Tennessee and
moved to Mississippi with her family at the age of eleven and then to Hot
Spring County in 1845. Her father was a
blacksmith and a farmer.
Joseph and Sarah Clift were the
parents of five daughters. Their first
child, Mary Margaret was born on March 20, 1851, the second Eliza
E. was born on
June 3, 1854; the third Darius Ann was born
October 11, 1856; the fourth Sarah Tenecia (Nish)[1]
was born January 7, 1860; and the youngest, Martha Jane (Matt) was
born May 20, 1862.
In August 1860 when the census taker
came to their house, Joseph and Sarah were living in Saline Township of Hot
Spring County, Arkansas – the same township as the Chandlers, Camps, Ebbs, Coopers, many of the Clifts, and Brumbelows. Joseph was
32 years old, a farmer with real estate valued at $500 and personal property of
$450. Sarah was a 30-year old
housekeeper – the girls were Mary M. age 9, Eliza E. age 6, Darius A. age 4,
and Sarah C. age 8 months.
By 1862, the first year that
personal property tax records have been found, Joseph Clift owned 160 acres of
land in section 21 of township 3S, range 16 west. Their farm was three miles south and a half-mile west of the
original Chandler home place where Joel Chandler who
would become their son-in-law was reared.
The Civil War began in 1861, but it
became very serious in Arkansas in early 1862, when the Confederates were
soundly defeated at Pea Ridge in northern Arkansas. Joseph Clift enlisted in the Confederate Army on June 9, 1862 at
Rockport, Arkansas. Rockport was a
village that became the western part of Malvern and was a few miles southwest
of where the Clift family lived at that time.
Troops were so badly needed for the
Confederate army that the Confederate States passed a conscription law in April
1862. It provided for drafting of men
into the Confederate Army. It is not
known if Joseph Clift enlisted because of the new conscription law or if it was
the advance of the northern army into Arkansas that prompted his
enlistment. He enlisted for three years
or the duration of the war.
Joseph’s military records are
incomplete, but he did serve at least through July of 1863 when he was captured
at the Battle of Helena. There are
later records that put him still serving at least until the spring of 1864,
when he was “absent sick at Hot Spring, Cty,” and would have put him back home.
Family history passed down was that
Joseph served in the
Confederate Army through the summer of 1864, when he was captured by the
Yankee’s and taken to Little Rock where they were holding him until he could be
shipped to a prisoner of war camp up north.
While a prisoner he became ill with pneumonia. Word of his illness reached his family, and Sarah rode a mule
taking Martha Jane (Aunt Matt) and went to the camp in Little Rock. She took Mattie because the baby was still
nursing and could not be left at home.[2] The Yankees let her visit Joseph. He died a few days later on August 22,1864
at the Union Army hospital in Little Rock.
If this story is true, then Joseph’s
body was probably brought back to Hot Spring County and buried in the Francios
Cemetery next to the church.
After Joseph’s death, Sarah stayed
on their farm and somehow made a living for her five daughters. In 1868, she paid taxes on the 160-acre
farm, two horses valued at $130, seven cattle valued at $20, seven sheep valued
at $14, and six hogs valued at $15. She
had been a widow for four years and certainly seemed to be doing better
financially than a lot of her neighbors including the James Washington Chandler family that paid taxes on 80
acres, one mule, three cattle, eight sheep, and twenty hogs.
In 1870, Sarah was still farming and
doing well financially according to the census values of her real estate and
personal property. Mary who was now
nineteen was staying at home, and the other girls were all attending
school. If the census was correct,
probably less than half the children in their neighborhood that were of school
age were attending school. Sarah Collie
Clift who could read but not write, believed in educating her daughters.
In 1868, the Republicans had control
of the government in Arkansas, and they passed legislation to create a public
school system, set-up a university, and for state support for railroads to be
built. At the outbreak of the war in
1861, Arkansas had only sixty-six miles of railroads, and few miles had been
built during the war. The state’s roads
were so bad, that rains would often hold-up the mail for a week or longer at a
time.
The changes voted by the Republicans
required money, and taxes were significantly increased on an agricultural
population already in debt and one that had not had but one decent cotton crop
in several years. Cotton was the crop
that provided cash for most farmers to be able to pay their taxes.
By 1874, the Democrats had retaken the government,
and the schools, railroads, and other items needed for Arkansas were put on
hold. So if Sarah Clift was
successfully farming her 160 acres and was able to send her girls to school,
probably paying hard to find cash for their education, she was doing much
better than many of her neighbors that had a man as head of the family.
On January 15, 1871, the oldest
child of Joseph and Sarah Clift, Mary Margaret, was married to Joel Chandler. Joel gave his age as 21 and Mary’s as 20, although they were each
a few months younger. They were married
in Hot Spring County by C. J. Moore, a minister of the gospel of the Baptist persuasion.
There are no records as to where the
newly weds lived the first years of their married life. One wonders if Joel moved in with the Clift
women and took over farming the 160-acre farm, but there is nothing to indicate
that this happened.
Joel and Mary’s first two children, Joannna born in 1871
and John Benjamin born in 1873, each said they were born in
Saline County, Arkansas which would have meant they were living at least three
or four miles north of Sarah’s farm in Hot Spring County. By 1873, the county lines had changed such
that Joel’s parent’s farm was located in Saline County instead of Hot Spring
County.
A few months after Mary Margaret married Joel
Chandler, her sister Eliza E. was married
to Jasper R. Simms. They were married in Hot Spring County on
November 26, 1871.
When Joel and Mary moved their family to Howard
County in the late 1870s, Mary’s mother, Sarah, and her three unmarried sisters moved with the
Chandlers. Sarah Collie Clift lived
until October 23, 1893.[3] Darius Ann died March 6,
1898, and Sarah Tenecia (Nish)[4]
died on February 22, 1898. They both
died a few months after Vaughn came home
from the Indian Territory with typhoid, and some believe it was typhoid that
killed them and others that they died from swamp fever
Martha Jane (Mattie) continued to live with her
sister’s family. Mary Margaret Clift
Chandler died in March 1902, and her sister, Martha Jane married Joel Chandler on
November 1, 1903. Joel and Martha Jane
were the parents of a baby girl that was stillborn ca. 1904, and a son, Kelsey
Billmont, born January
9, 1906. Kelsey was the age of many of
Joel’s grandchildren, and they all dearly loved him. He died at the age of seventeen on April 11, 1923 at Gasoline, Texas. He
was buried next to his father Joel Chandler at the cemetery in Flomont, Floyd
County, Texas.
After Kelsey died Martha Jane –
known to all the family by then as Aunt Matt – went to
live with her niece Joanna Chandler. Joanna had never
married but had always looked after the rest of the family. In 1927, with the help of her brothers,
Joanna purchased a two-room house on ten acres about two miles east of
Quitaque, and she and Aunt Matt lived there until Joanna married Mr. Busby in 1933. Aunt Matt then went to live with her niece,
Daisy Bedwell, in
Gasoline and made her home there until her death in 1946. She was buried between Joel and Kelsey at Flomont,
Texas.
Source: Our Chandler Family 1600-2000, June Chandler Everheart, Winona, Texas (2003).
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