|
| |
 |  |
Birth: 1868
Tallapoosa County
Alabama, USA
Death: Apr. 24, 1897
Marietta
Love County
Oklahoma, USA
+++
Martha Ann "Mattie" (Golden) Fullingim was my great grandmother. She was the first of ten children born to James Marion and Frances Catherine (Hornsby) Golden in 1869 in Tallapoosa Co., Alabama. Like many pioneer families, her parents migrated westward and ended up in Decatur, Wise Co., Texas, long enough at least for their oldest daughter to meet and marry Isaac Foster (I. F.) Fullingim in 1886. As her husband was fifteen years her senior, they began having children very soon, a son, John Wade Fullingim (15 Jun 1887), and within eleven years of marriage, Mattie had given birth to eight children. In June 1893 she and her husband experienced a serious tragedy when they lost their three-year old son, Horris Lee, who died from burns and smoke inhalation when his night clothes accidentally caught on fire. The Monitor newspaper had previously reported the birth of "a bouncing baby boy at I. M. [sic] Fullingim's on the Greene farm" (The Marietta Monitor, I.T., Thursday, 22 April 1897, Vol.2, No. 32), probably born on the 18th or 19th of April 1897, but before even a week had gone by, this young mother died on Saturday, April 24, 1897, leaving her husband behind with seven children from age nine down to one-week old! Mattie was buried next to one of her younger brothers, Henry H. Golden, who himself had died at age 15. No permanent marker was erected at that time for Mattie, however. Over fifty years later, my grandfather, John Wade Fullingim, who was only nine years old when his mother died, was anxious to identify and memorialize his mother's grave. It was in the early 1950s that Wade convinced one of his sons-in-law, E.L. "Cotton" Leatherwood to take him to the then long abandoned Arnoldville Cemetery. On locating the site, he and my Uncle Cotton mixed cement and poured a small block, and then inscribed the date that my grandfather had remembered on which his mother had died, April 26, 1897—apparently, his memory had settled on a very near date. However, based on the newspaper notice cited above, Mattie had indeed died on Saturday, April 24th. SEQUEL:
This small, flat cement marker became completely covered by undergrowth and fallen debris during the next forty plus years. It was my Uncle Cotton who informed me of this grave site, and his one attempt to help me locate the site in the Summer of 1992 was unsuccessful. In May 1993 my second cousin, Jesse M. Fullingim, and I, J. Michael Fullingim, located her small marker under several inches of organic material. We cleaned the site around the marker and took photos of the grave marker. Eighteen years later a more permanent granite monument was made and set in place on Wednesday, 20 July 2011—114 years after her death. The sixty-year old, small cement marker has been preserved as well on site by placing it underneath a flat, native stone at the top of the new headstone. (Bio by a great grandson, J.Michael Fullingim, Ph.D.) Family Info:
Parents:
James Marion Golden (1846 - 1936)
Frances Catherine Hornsby Golden (1851 - 1924)
Spouse:
Isaac Foster Fullingim (1854 - 1920)
Children:
John Wade Fullingim (1887 - 1956)
Horris Lee Fullingim (1889 - 1893)
Edgar J. Fullingim (1891 - 1971)
Joe Ernest Fullingim (1893 - 1986)
Henry P. Fullingim (1895 - 1982)
Lou Ada Fullingim Carr (1896 - 1969)
This site may be freely linked, but not duplicated in any way without consent.
All rights reserved! Commercial use of material within this site is prohibited!
© 2000-2024 Oklahoma CemeteriesThe information on this site is provided free for the purpose of researching your genealogy. This material may be freely used by non-commercial entities, for your own research, as long as this message remains on all copied material. The information contained in this site may not be copied to any other site without written "snail-mail" permission. If you wish to have a copy of a donor's material, you must have their permission. All information found on these pages is under copyright of Oklahoma Cemeteries. This is to protect any and all information donated. The original submitter or source of the information will retain their copyright. Unless otherwise stated, any donated material is given to Oklahoma Cemeteries to make it available online. This material will always be available at no cost, it will always remain free to the researcher.