James Tyre "J.T." Mackey

I am looking for information concerning the Stovall wagon train. My g-g-grandfather, J. T. Mackey, who married Martha E. Stovall, was most likely involved in the endeavor. Census records indicate that the war he and his brother-in-law, Thomas Pinkney Stovall (Uncle Pink) were farming together in Wayne County, Tennessee. They ceased farming at about the same tine (1962) each of them joined the CS Army, Uncle "Pink" as a Cavalry Officer, JT as an infantry soldier. At the end of the war, before the end of the 1866, we see them both living and farming in Kaufman County. Understand wagon train was led by James Richard Stovall, son of Thomas Pinkney Stovall. James R. Stovall donated the land/money for Rose Hill Cemetery in Terrell.

David Joseph Stovall JR (b 1803) was married to Susan Barnett (b. 1806) and around 1824 and together they had something like 11 kids, though some family historians think there was a wife prior to Susan who was the father of Thomas Pinkney Stovall and Richard Lewis Stovall. After helping her husband far a the soil of Itawamba County, Mississippi for many years. Susan died in 1857 leaving David with at least three small children that still needed a mothers care.

IN the midst of recent widowing, David found companionship and a step-mother for his younger children in a neighbor and sort-or-relation, "Mary Elizabeth Thipgen Mackey. Mary Elizabeth's husband, William Carroll Thigpen has also just died that year and leaving her with three girls, (Zilphy, Sarah and Mary) who still needed a father's protection and earning power.

Mary Elizabeth was quite bit younger than David, in fact she was twenty-five years his junior. It's a fact that folks with kids didn't stay widowed long back then and on November 20, 1957 he same year their first spouses had died, David and Mary Elizabeth got married.

Mary Elizabeth had not just been David's neighbor, for in around-about they were sort-of-relatives is that David's only daughter by Susan, Martha had married Mary Elizabeth's only brother James Tyree (JT) Mackey, in 1851. This made J. T. Mackey's father-in-law and also brother-in-law, It also meant that Martha's sister-in-law, Mary Elizabeth was no her step-mother. Such was the complexity of relationships in a small rural communities of the 1830's where the courtship pool was generally limited to those of the opposite sex in the neighborhood, the extended family and the church.

Soon the following their marriage (David and Mary Elizabeth moved with at least her two younger daughters to Wayne County, TN where Davis next to the oldest son, Thomas Pinkney Stovall and his only daughter Martha Elizabeth Stovall and their families had moved to a farm.

(David and Mary are not found in the Census that year). Reason unknown. However, her oldest Daughter Zilphy, is found in the census living with her Aunt Tibitha Mackey Lindsey, and family in Itawamba County, MS. It is Tibith's and Mary Elizabeth's brother JT, who married Martha, David's daugther.