The family of Anson Andrew Green

Anson Andrew Green, in about 1850

Anson Andrew Green, in about 1850

I believe I have found Anson's family in Vermont. Andrew Anson Green (born 1835) was from Vermont, probably the son of Philip Green and the grandson of Asa Green, both of Shaftsbury, Bennington Co, Vermont. I have laid out the sources and reasoning that led me to this conclusion. And while I have not yet seriously researched further than Asa in the Green family of Vermont, I have collected some links.

Anson married Margaret "Mag" Davis around 1855, and moved westward to Newbury, Geauga Co, Ohio 218 sometime before 1860. Mag was probably born in upstate New York to a Welsh-speaking family. According to his enlistment papers Anson had black hair and eyes, a dark complexion and stood 5 feet 11 and a quarter inches tall. 223 However, from his pictures and family tradition we actually believe he had light-colored eyes (probably blue like his son and grandson).

Anson Green and Mag Davis, in about 1855

Anson Green and Margaret Davis, ca. 1855

Anson served in the 171st Ohio Infantry223, which was part of the National Guard during the Civil War, and fought in one battle at Kellar's Bridge, KY. The whole regiment was captured by Confederate forces there on June 11th, and then paroled. Before and after this battle, the regiment was on fatigue and guard duty at Johnson's Island, a Union camp for Confederate prisoners of war.

After the war Anson and Mag took the family to Caldwell County, Missouri (near Cameron) where many of their children were born. He owned 80 acres there on the banks of Shoal Creek. A possibly apocryphal story tells of Anson working as a peddler around this time, and one dark night almost feeding his horse shoe pegs instead of oats because the tin buckets they were kept in were so similar.

During the 1870s they moved again, to the town of Vinita, part of the Cherokee Nation, Indian territory. (Vinita would later become the county seat of Craig County, Oklahoma.) Because only people of Cherokee blood could own land there he farmed land for a man named Allen whose wife held a headright. Probably around 1880 he was struck and killed by lightning when his youngest child was just a few months old. They say Mag died of grief about six weeks later, but she had been having a hard time since the birth of Hattie, so it might have been that which killed her. They were both buried in a pauper's cemetery (called Potter's Field) just over the state line in Chetopa, Labette Co, Kansas.

Anson and Mag had several children:

  1. Nettie or Nellie b. 1857, died young?218
  2. Asa b. 1859, died young?218
  3. Fred Frank b. April 23, 1861 in Geauga Co, Ohio208 d. 2 March 1945212
  4. Willie b. 1862 Ohio d. Kansas City, MO
  5. Ella b. 1866218, married a man named Fisher
  6. Weston F. b. 12 February 1869, Caldwell Co, Mo 224, died 27 December 1949, Maud, Pottawatamie Co, OK buried Crescent, Guthrie Co, OK225
  7. Annie b. Caldwell Co, Mo married a man named Harness, a brother to Hattie's husband
  8. Amy b. Caldwell Co, Mo died at 6 or 7 in Vinita, OK
  9. Hattie b. 1879220 Vinita, OK married William F. Harness, died February 1969, Ottumwa, Iowa220

 

Fred Green, ca. 1900

Fred Frank Green

Their parents' deaths left Fred and Ella (still both teenagers) to raise the younger children, except for Amy. Amy suffered from Bright's Disease (an inflammatory disease of the kidneys) and died at around six or seven after being given to the local doctor to raise. She was musically gifted and played the piano. Supposedly, the doctor wanted to send her to Europe to study music, but she only lived for another year.

Fred and Ella eventually took the family to Kansas City, MO where Fred worked first in a roundhouse, and then ran a restaurant in the red light district. He was said to have been something of a gambler and a "wild 'un". He deserted his first wife and children, and ran off with a young girl named Kate, who he supposedly stole out of a convent. Kate may have been blind at the time and was probably only about 13 while Fred was in his late twenties.

On 22 April 1889 Fred made the land run into Oklahoma with his gambling buddy Black Jack Adams. His homestead was in the northeast corner of section 6 of Woodland Township in Logan County, OK in what became the town of Crescent. According to his homestead application he had improved the land by erecting "2 frame houses, 1 room each; well, shed, stable, henhouse and grainary combined" and that he had "about 50 fruit trees, about 100 acres under post & wire fence, about 60 acres ploughed land". His application also states that he "established residence in a tent about 23rd April 1889, and that he built the houses April 1890.215

His brother Weston joined him there around May of 1890. Fred seems to have been a fairly wealthy man. He had oil leases all over Oklahoma. While in his seventies, he had two more children with his mistress Cleo Draper. (One of them was my father Al Green). Shortly before his death in 1945 oil was discovered on one of his farms, but he didn't live to enjoy it.212

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