Volume 2, Number 1 - Fall 1964
The Thomas Family
by Mrs. Frank W. Martin
My grandfather, John R. Thomas, was in Company I, 10th Missouri Cavalry, and fought in the Wilson Creek battle. He was born August 1, 1829, and died at Springfield, Missouri, March 11, 1894. He is buried at Pea Ridge Roach Cemetery near Rolla, Missouri, where Fort Wyman is still standing.
His wife Elizabeth (my grandmother) lived four miles out of Rolla. During the war, she would make clothes and cook food and would get it to as many as she could. Newton Brown, her son by a former marriage, was shot off his horse while in Tennessee near the place the family had come from. Both Elizabeth and John R. Thomas were born in Tennessee. They came to Missouri in 1859 and spent their first winter in Taney County and settled in Phelps County.
My grandmother had a saying when things were going wrong: she would say, "Well, Polley Duley!" and then go sit down in her old rocking chair by the side of the fireplace, and work it all out for the best. This remembrance of her has stayed with me all through the years.
Elizabeth and John R. Thomas had nine children. My father, Thomas Jefferson Thomas, was next to the oldest and was just two years old when they left Tennessee coming to Missouri. He was born January 28, 1857, in Middle Tennessee.
In 1883 he married Laura Etta Ann Warner, and to this union seven children were born: Iva, Lula (Smith), John, Walter, Susie (Martin), Claude, and Lee.
In early life he united with the Mt. Olive Baptist Church, later transferring his membership to the Newburg Baptist Church where he was very active until his health failed.
At the time of his death on October 21, 1943, he had lived in Phelps County for 84 years, and had seen Newburg grow up from a cornfield into nice little city.
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