Gough Family Genealogy

After writing the profile about John Brewster and Rebecca Farr, I sent a copy to my second cousin, Wilma Gibson, who has done an enormous amount of research over the years on our shared Brewster and Cochran ancestors. Here are things that she passed on to me to help give more context and family history to the story:

• The modern-day Brewstertown church was built in the late 1940s, long after “Preacher John” Brewster had passed on.
• There used to be an old church across the road from where her great-uncle Jesse Brewster lived (one of the sons of James Thomas Brewster, John & Rebecca’s oldest surviving son). The building was used as a combination school, church, and voting place. Wilma remembers this church from her childhood. Her mom, Lola Brewster Crabtree, went to school there. One day, Lola’s twin sister Nola was corrected for something and both of the twins went running home (they were 6 years old at the time, so this was about 1922).
• James Thomas Brewster, Wilma’s great-grandfather, was married to Mary Chriswell after his first wife died. According to Wilma’s mom, Lola, Mary made Thomas live on one side of the house and wouldn’t cook for him. Thomas took a load of straw to a woman he liked in nearby Rugby, but Mary found out and burned the straw and the wagon. On the other hand, however, Mary had a nice horse and buggy and would take Lola and Nola over to visit her nephew in Rugby. Lola loved her dearly, Wilma wrote, calling her “the only grandma I ever had.” Mary Chriswell Brewster’s grave is in Allardt at the Fellowship Church.
• John Brewster’s brother Jesse (b. 1822 – d. 1856) married Celia Massengale and adopted her son, John Massengale. (Celia’s first husband had died about 1849.) All Jesse’s other children were girls, except for one son, William, who was killed with his father during a lightning storm in 1856. John became known as “Missouri John Massengale” and moved to Missouri in the 1860s, where he became a cattle rancher. (I looked him up in newspapers.com — he was a fascinating guy!)
• John and Rebecca were married in Clinton County, Kentucky, at a small town called Seminary, according to Wilma’s great-uncle, Andy Marion Brewster.
• Several members of the family were missed in the 1850 census, possibly because Scott County had recently been created from (in part) Morgan County. This may have caused a mix-up in the instructions for census enumerators.
• According to family information, John Brewster’s second wife was Elizabeth Trail, the widow of Thomas Crabtree. They were likely married in Fentress County; she is buried at Old Barger Baptist Church in Jamestown, TN.

(Source: Wilma Crabtree Gibson, personal email to Donna Rowland Gough, 13 Oct 2022.)

Just posted a family profile of my 2xgreat-grandparents, John Brewster and his first wife, Rebecca Farr. As usual, this was challenging to research and write, mostly because it becomes very clear in trying to write a profile just how many research gaps I’d left unfilled. That’s because I’m trying to following the Genealogical Proof Standard, which calls for doing a “reasonably exhaustive search” and accounting for discrepancies and conflicts in what the sources say, among other elements.

But again, as usual, I found myself being so awed by my ancestors, no matter what their financial or social status was, because they all overcame such hardships, including things that would crush many people in modern-day America. John and Rebecca had nine children in all, but five of those children died young and a sixth died as a young man, before he had a chance to marry and have children of his own. There were no paved roads in their area in eastern Tennessee, and the vast majority of the roads that did exist were only about eight feet wide, little more than wide paths carved out of the woods.

Here’s an image of a typical country road in Scott County, which is just a mile or so away from John and Rebecca lived — and this is in 1915, long after they were both gone. (This is from the Tennessee State Library & Archives website.) Think about this road for a moment and imagine trying to make your way along it in the rain or sleet or in the dark, with or without a horse or wagon.

Just in the interest of sharing, here’s a spreadsheet I used to chart out their family members and their birth and death dates. It is very helpful to prepare a spreadsheet listing every census and every vital record detail to make sure each one has been covered. I still haven’t found Jasper Newton Brewster’s death date, nor do I know for sure how I know that his middle name was Newton (it was just passed down from others, but he was probably named for his uncle, Jasper Newton Farr).

Hope you find something that resonates with you in this profile!

All the children of James Abraham Lincoln Cochran and his first wife, Lucinda Daugherty, in the 1900 census could be accounted for except one: Bennie, born about 1988/9 and missing after that year. And one child, Amanda Cochran Brewster, was identified as their daughter but never appeared in any census with them. I wrote this genealogical proof argument after researching the family and concluding that Amanda was misidentified as Bennie in the census and that she is the daughter of Lincoln and Lucinda. Here’s my paper:

Please let me know what you think!