Penelope Catherine Ward Norris

Penelope Catherine Taylor was born on August 26, 1822, in North Carolina. Although her parentage has yet to be proven, the family rumor has it that she was a cousin of Robert Love Taylor and his brother Alfred A. Taylor, both who had served as Governor of Tennessee . It is also believed that her family had lived in Tennessee before moving into Alabama. Her known siblings were Jesse; Sarah (Mrs. David Freeman); Mary A. (Mrs. John M. Culbertson); Charles P.; Martha Ellen (Mrs. Wilson H. Cobb). She remained very close to her siblings well into old age.

While living in Alabama, she met and married Thomas H. Ward, son of William Thomas and Sarah Love Ward in the early 1840's. Their first four children were born in Fayette County, Alabama. Between 1848 and 1850, they moved their young family to the Talibonella area of Pontotoc County, Mississippi, where the remainder of their nine children were born. They had the following children: 1) Charles Thomas; 2) William Daniel; 3) Mary Elizabeth; 4) Phillip Floyd ("Dick"); 5) Sarah Jane; 6) Benjamin F.; 7) Minerva Catherine ("Callie"); 8) Jesse James; and 9) John Lee. Her husband, Thomas, died about 1862 and while it is believed he served in the Confederate Army, it has been stated in the writings of a family member that he died on a hill there in Pontotoc County. Family also recalled that she always worried about the safety of her family, especially her sons who were Confederate soldiers. Her son Charles Thomas died in 1863 at the age of 18 in a CSA Atlanta field hospital. He had been ill at home on leave when soldiers came and took him back to the battlefield, while Penelope cried and pleaded with them to let him stay. It was told that he died of fever within a week of his return.

During the 1860's she moved to Oxford, Lafayette County, Mississippi, where she was living with her four youngest sons during the 1870 census. It was about this same time that the Ward family, along with other family members and friends, decided to head to the wild state of Texas. Her son, Phillip F. Ward, later wrote that he was a green, inexperienced boy at the time and their move took eight weeks on the road with ox wagons. He said his only possessions were some good jeans that his dear mother and sisters had spun and wove on the spinning wheel.

They first settled in Marysville, Cooke County, Texas. From there they crossed the Red River and farmed up and down the river before finally settling in the Loco, Stephens County, area. Penelope lived in a little house in the Mountain Grove Community near Loco, Stephens County, Oklahoma. This home became known as "The Old Ward Place" and it was a short distance from the Mountain Grove Missionary Baptist Church of which her family were founding members. A relative visited the home place in the 1970's and only found the ruins of this primitive little house - the chimney rocks, old storm cellar, and a grape vineyard. He said it was located approximately one mile from any public road and had to be reached by foot. It was in the middle of a clearing in a wooded area on a hillside overlooking a fertile valley on the North. Penelope's nieces & nephews fondly called her "Aunt Nap" and remembered that she kept a salt lick near that house where she could sit and watch the deer.

On September 25, 1881, Penelope married Joseph A. Norris in Cooke County, Texas. Joseph had recently lost his wife Polly, and I believe that Penelope had been a family friend and neighbor for many years. Both Ward and Norris families had lived in the same areas of Alabama, Mississippi and then both had moved to Texas at the same time. Joseph was 78 at the time of the marriage and Penelope only 58. He died a short two years later in Dallas, Arkansas, according to his family's records.

Penelope continued to live in her Mountain Grove home until shortly before her death when she went to stay with her daughter, Callie Ward Roberts in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma. She died there on August 25, 1900, at 78 years of age and was brought home to be buried in Mountain Grove Cemetery near Loco, Stephens County, Oklahoma.

SOURCE: Find A Grave.com