Elvira Shoopman

From Find A Grave Memorial# 105427611

Elvira Lawson is the fourteenth child in a family of fifteeen children born to Thomas Lawson and Nancy Jeffers. She was married to Joshua Shoopman on April 12, 1869 in Albany, Clinton Co., Kentucky. They had eleven children: William Thomas, Nancy Elizabeth "Lizzie", Elisha Jackson, Elmira, Sarah Alzada, Andrew Jackson, Lucinda, John A. Myrtle B. "Mertie", Lewis and Edgar Joshua.

According to Doyle Christie, Elvira Lawson Shoopman's grandson, she never had a tooth in her head. She was quite a small woman. He said that when they were moving from Texas to Oklahoma, Elvira didn't want to go. She said she wanted to stay and be buried next to her father in Huckabay. So under protest, Elvira's husband loaded her into one of their two wagons and started for the Red River. When they got there, the thought of crossing the river the next day must have been on her mind. They made camp and spent the night by the river. When Josh got up the next morning and went to the other wagon where Elvira had slept, he found she wasn't there. So he and Jeremiah Lawson started back the way they had come with one wagon and overtook her as she traveled by foot, trying to carry her featherbed. (She was in her mid 50's when this happened.) Both men struggled with her to get her back into the wagon and go back to the Red River. After they brought her back to camp, they had to post a guard to keep her from leaving again. They put her in Andrew Shoopman's wagon because Joshua's wagon was not covered. Andrew and Lewis, her sons, rode with her between them. They had to keep a constant watch on her for the rest of the trip, and she was unhappy the whole time.

Elvira had a hard life as her husband was disabled in the Civil War. She had 11 children (one died young), but she raised 10 of them. When Joshua died she still had two teenage boys.

She had blackout spells which lasted quite awhile. When they buried her, people wondered if she was just having another long blackout spell. There were others who can remember her spells.

• Residence: 1860 - Clinton, Kentucky, United States
• Residence: 1870 - Kentucky, United States
• Residence: 1880 - Albany, Clinton, Kentucky, United States
• Residence: 1900 - ED 64 Justice Precinct 1 (all northwest of r.r. excl. Stephenville city), Erath, Texas, United States
• Residence: 1910 - Jackson, Oklahoma, United States
  • Reference: FamilySearch Family Tree - SmartCopy: Jul 12 2016, 4:46:57 UTC

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• Reference: FamilySearch Genealogy - SmartCopy: Dec 17 2016, 6:20:14 UTC
• http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=lesliesc&...