The following story of "Fannie York Stevenson" written by Peggy Wellbern as told to her by her Mother-in-law, Crissie Wellbern, who was the granddaughter of Fannie York Stevenson Coomer.  

Betsie Green married Reubin Wheeler around 1750. She was an Irish girl with red hair, Reubin Wheeler had black hair, was Dutch and came from Norway or Sweeden. They had a son that was given his father's name, Reubin Wheeler.

When the father died Betsie Green Wheeler married again. This man's name was Reubin Gibson. Reubin Gibson adopted Reubin Wheeler Jr. and changed his name to Reubin Gibson. This family line continued with the name of Gibson by adoption but Wheeler by blood.

The boy, Reubin, married a girl named Araetta, her last name is not known.  Areatta had red hair and was English. It is said Araetta was born before her parents got in a house. These complete circumstances are not known.

We know of one child, a daughter, born to Reubin and Araetta. Her name was Nancy Gibson and she was born in 1809. She died at age 64, May 24, 1872.

 

Nancy Gibson married Hiram Stephenson. Hiram was the son of John Stephenson and his mother's last name was Stover. Hiram filed a claim on fifty acres of land on the Waters of Yellow Creek. Yellow Creek runs near the Cumberland Gap in Kentucky. They had two children, a son, Marion and a daughter Fannie York, born March 11, 1833 in Bell County, Kentucky on Yellow Creek (died at age 92, March 31, 1925).

 Hiram and Nancy separated. The two children stayed with Hiram and he married again to Emiline Henderson in Tennessee. Nancy later married Sammie Benington (he was great uncle of Doc Benington) in Laurel County, Kentucky.

 Marion and Fannie were unhappy with their stepmother and felt she was mean to them. They decided to run away from home when Fannie was eleven years old and Marion was nine years old. The two children walked across a mountain to a neighbor's house. He put them in a canoe and sent them out on the Cumberland River. They floated on the river all night until late the next afternoon. Fannie remembered to her children that it was fall of the year and she was cold. Marion took his coat off and put it around her.

A man saw the canoe in the near sundown with the two children in it. The canoe was then only one and one-half miles from the Cumberland Falls. The canoe would have reached the falls that night.  He swam out and rescued them. They were then sent to some of their relatives in Tennessee. They never again saw their father.

Fannie York Stephenson married Joseph Newton Coomer in 1864. Joseph Newton was born June 17, 1844 (died at age 81, June 26, 1925) (both are buried in Metcalfe County, Kentucky). Joseph Newton's father was William (Bill) Coomer and his mother was Maria Ashbrook. Maria was born July 12, 1814 (died December 1882). Her mother's last name was Fry. Joseph Newton Coomer was raised in Casey County, Kentucky near Mill Springs. He had a brother named James (Jim).

As soon as Fannie was old enough she hired out doing general housework, weaving cloth, etc.

Joseph and Fannie rented for 18 years, living in any kind of a cabin, before they had a home of their own. They settled finally in Edmonton, Kentucky.

They raised sheep, cotton and flax, geese and chickens and mot of their food. Fannie made thread and wove cloth from wool, cotton and flax. She then made the clothing and household linens from these, stitching them by hand.  Fannie and Joseph (they were known as Mama Coomer and Pa Joe to their grandchildren) had four daughters. A son was born between each girl but they died in infancy.

Fannie dug ginsang for most of what she bought in stores. She was considered a good midwife and gave a lot of time to this. Fannie worked in the field, did all the housework, until her girls were old enough to help. Fannie pieced quilts, made feather beds and pillows. Almost all their clothes were made by hand. She was an accomplished weaver, making different weaves such as seersucker, birdseye, honeycomb and many other kinds. Fannie knitted cotton socks for summer and woolen ones for winter. Her days startedlong before daylight and lasted until long after dark.

 She lived until age 92, continuing to work until her death. Her back was bent with age and hurt all the time, but she would not sit idle for any length of time.

 It is said in the family that she took a bath one night, outside, in cold weather and took pneumonia. Fannie died from this, preceding Pa Joe by three months.

 Fannie and Joseph Coomer's children were:

 

1. Nancy Myriah married Jim Acree  Children: Hershel, Sherman, Bruce, Bettie, Loren, Jasper, Mary Helen and Paul.

2. Araetta (Rettie) - (Named for Fannie Coomer's grandmother) married William Haskell Garmon. (Part of the information about Araetta's family has been added by Lillie Rackley, Araetta's granddaughter) They had two children, Clifton and William Robert (Robbie). Clifton married Minnie Phelps, just 3 months before he was killed when a board went through him while working at a sawmill, in 1911.  Araetta's husband died Feb. 27, 1905. The cause of his death is not now known.  Her second marriage was to Doc Stephenson. She & Doc never had any children.  William Robert was a barber. In his early life, he was a rural mail carrier, and delivered mail on horseback. He met his first wife, Esta Hubbard, by delivering her families's mail, and she would come to meet him to get the mail. He & Esta had two daughters, Dorothy Marie & Beaulah Mae. Robbie & Esta divorced.

Robbie later married Christine Hubbard (a niece to Esta). They had two children, a boy and a girl, Lillie Mae & William Earnest (Bill). Lillie Mae married William Newton Rackley; they have a son and a daughter, Sammy Joe and Donna DeLynn. Bill married Paula Kay Fowler and they have one son, Brian.

3. Mary Katherine (Mollie) (12-6-1877---10-16-1951) married FinisBenton Williams (6-23-1882---4-24-1954). Their four children were: 

Inus Golon  8-30-1906---12-27-1926 (had three boys); Lizzie Mae 3-17-1906;

Mary Lee 12-4- 1908; John K. 4-3-1911 (John K. was living in Breeding,Ky in 1993).

 4. Sarah Delina (Sallie) married Daniel Lawson Coomer - their children were George, Lawrence, Cecil, Ercy, Crissie, Fannie, Joseph, Eva, Dexia.

Crissie Coomer married Arthur Randolph Wellbern on January 1, 1918. Crissie died Dec. 25, 1986. They had one son: Fredrick Arthur. He married Peggy McDougle and they had four sons: Stephen, Michael, Gary and Warren.

 Submitted by: Lillie Rackley

email: lrackley@unicomp.net

 

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 28 November 1809 -- James Parks, Henrico Co., Va., to Job Crabtree, Lee Co., Va., - $600, 1000 acres on Mulberry Creek, beg--- corner to land of Reuben Wheeler's -- Wit John Crabtree, Randolph Noe, Nimrod Chrisman.  Book 2 page 277

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Branch, James. grantee.  DATE  8 April 1800. NOTE  Location: Lee County.  

NOTE  Description: 1000 acres on the head of Mulberry Creek. adjoining Reuben Wheeler.  

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William Carmack, born February 24, 1784 in Washington County, Virginia; died April 21, 1861; married Rosannah Wheeler 1808 in Hawkins County, Tennessee; born January 01, 1790; died July 18, 1849.

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 This may be Reuben Gibson, father of Reuben Wheeler Gibson, Reuben Gibson is found in Orange County, North Carolina tax with Thomas Gibson.   

 

 

 

Melungeons Indians _Goins

 

THE TENNESSEEAN

24 May 1891

ABORIGINAL RELICS

A Melungeon Tribe on the Ohio River 

In Illinois

The interest aroused by Miss Will Allen Dromgoole's sketches of the Melungeons of East Tennessee, has been widespread.  It has inspired study of local peculiarities in many Southern districts, and the following letter, from Illinois, is of interest, especially to show how common these wandering relics of the savage tribes are.  

The name given to these people by Miss Bondeau recalls the Goan tribe of Southern and Middle Tennessee, which has many of the Melungeon attributes.  The religious tendencies of the Illinois people are distinctive.

Dear Miss Dromgoole:

I fear you will think I-a stranger-am taking a great liberty in writing to you, but I have read with much interest your articles on the "Melungeons" in the March and May numbers of the Arena, and I want to tell you about a people here who, I think, must belong to that race.

For many years, just how many I cannot tell, but certainly since the early sixties, a set of people known as the Goinses, or Goins tribe, have lived here in Pope County, Ill., and just across the Ohio River in Livingston County, Ky.

The came, they say, from Tennessee. They claim to be of Cherokee descent, and many of them show traces of this in their tall, spare frames, high cheek bones, straight black hair and keen eyes, while others have the kinky hair, flat noses and thick lips of the negro.  All have reddish brown skins.  Some are darker than others, but it is the same color and differs from any shade of the negro.

They hold themselves utterly distinct and apart from their white and black neighbors, marrying each other.

There are exceptions, but this is the rule, and one girl, now living with the negroes in this town was cut off by her family on this account.

The greater number of these people are named Goins, and they are always spoken of collectively as the Goinses or the Goins tribe but there are other family names among them.  Of these the principal on is HELTON. Then there is BOULDEN or BOLDEN, a STILL and a FIELDS. 

Some years ago there was a Goins settlement in Pope County and one in Livingston County, besides families living on the farms lying along the river.  Here they rented from the owners or worked, the men as farm hands, the women about the house.

I passed through Kentucky settlement about eighteen years ago. It was a row of dilapidated log cabins set down any way on either side of the road which lay along the top of a ridge about a mile from the river.  Some of the homes had little vegetable gardens [truck patches, they were called] around them, but it looked a poverty stricken place and people. There was also a log cabin church, for they are for the most part quiet, peaceable and deeply religious.  My home, until three years ago, was on an island in the Ohio River, between these two counties, and often on summer nights we listened to their singing at their church in Illinois. Very sweet and mournful, too, it sounded across the water. 

On Sundays they came in crowds to the river bank to baptize the converts, or when their were none of these, to visit back and forth across the river.  They delighted in visiting.

One girl coming fresh from Tennessee where she had been left when her people came, lived for a while with us.  She told my mother she never heard of the "Good Man" til she came here and knew no difference between Sunday and other days.  She said one day when told to close the shutters, "I done shot the blinders."  The we children thought was very funny, as many of her expressions were.

One Jim Goins with his family lived some months on our island. The wife went barefooted and clad in the thinnest of cotton dresses until they left near Christmas.  My mother ordered her clothes which she declined, declaring she was not cold.

GEORGE HILTON, the head of the Hilton family was considered by the white people the most intelligent of the lot.  He worked for us more than a year and my father taught him to read and write a little.  He looked like an Indian, tall, with straight black hair and black eyes.  He was very superstitious, a strong believer in signs and omens, and a great weather prophet.  He was afraid of the dark.  I never heard that he feared anything else but go outside the house after dark without a light he would not.  When twitted with cowardice, he would say;  "You kid call it what you please.  I jus' aint a-gwine."

From the first their sole aim and desire seemed to be to "get out to the Nation" as they expressed it. 

A few years ago the greater part of them went - and the Nation refused to receive them. After this they scattered. Only a few of them drifted back here where still a few were left. 

It was at this place, Golconda, Ill., that [in 1839 I think] the Southern Indian tribes crossed the Ohio River when they were taken out to the reservations, and I have thought this perhaps why the Goinses came here.  At least, no one seems to know anything about it, and I can think of no other reason for it.

They claim relationship with the Cherokees.  They came here not many years after the crossing of the tribes. They settled on either side of the river not farther away than six or eight miles from the Indian crossing place, and afterwards went in to join them. 

I have always been interested in this strange people, but never could learn anything more about them than what I have told you. Since your article appeared I truly think my Goinses must have come from your Melungeons, and this is why I have written all this to you.

Isabell J. Bordeau

Golconda, Polk County, Ill.