The Osborne Family Reunion, Washington State, Part 1

by Glenn N. Holliman

The same weekend in July 2014,  the Wilson-Greer-Osborne and associated families were gathering in Boone, North Carolina for a family historical forum, Osborne cousins met for an annual event in Skagit County, Washington.  These cousins are descendants of William I. Osborne who was born at Sutherland, Ashe County, North Carolina in 1869.  He was the oldest child of Richard Franklin 'Frank' (1846-1897) and Nancy Emmaline 'Emma' Wilson Osborne (1850-1919).   

Cousin Jeanie Bond, Osborne descendant, and I have been exchanging copy and photographs the past few weeks.  This is a two part series - first a bit of history of the family and then scenes from the 2014 reunion.  Some of the following pictures are courtesy of Shirley Sorrell, Clinton Getzinger and Dale Wilson, fellow genealogists whom we are fortunate to have to capture family stories. -GNH

Some History of an Osborne Branch in the Pacific Northwest by Jeanie Bond, great, great grand daughter of Isaac and Carolina Greer Wilson

William I. Osborne's mother, Emma, was the oldest child of Isaac and Nancy Greer Wilson.  Frank and Emma, who met when Frank and G.W. Osborne took refuge in the Wilson home during the Civil War, raised their family on the Green Valley side of the hill where Isaac Wilson's Cemetery is located in Ashe County, North Carolina.  They attended the Sutherland Methodist Church, and what they did not grow, they bought in Trade, Tennessee.  William I. Osborne was the oldest of Frank and Emma's children, and many of his grand nieces and nephews still live in the NC/TN area.

My immediate family believes that William was the first of many who migrated out of the North Carolina mountains to the great Northwest.  Ashe and surrounding counties were  not economically productive enough to support the many offspring of the clans that had pioneered the ridges and valleys in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

   

William traveled to Washington State first by himself, but became so homesick that his employer put him on train and sent him home.  Then, just a few years later, he went west again, in the company of his sister Martha Jane (Jenny) Osborne Thomas and her young family. This time, he settled permanently in the Skagit Valley where his seven acres of flat land abutting a partially wooded hill pasture must have reminded him of Mountain City, TN, as it did me and my mother when we traveled east in 1991.  Later, Roby Frank Hardy Osborne joined his brother William I. Osborne in Sedro-Woolley, Washington. 

Below, an advertisement in the Watauga-Democrat of Boone, North Carolina.

With glowing reports of work and available land, it was not long before there were hundreds of “Tar Heel” families logging the hills, farming the flats and producing children. The phone directory for the “Upper Skagit” and Darrington areas read very much the same as one you might find for Trade, or Boone, or Creston, NC. Stout, Forrester, Riddle, Thomas, Wilson, Dunn, Main and, of course Osborne, can be easily be found in either location.

 Below William Isaac Osborne (1869-1953) and his father, Richard Franklin "Frank" Osborn (1846-1897).  The photographer is Hodges of Bristol, Tennessee and the photo MAY have been taken on the occasion of William's first trip to the Pacific Northwest about 1888.  He looks much younger than 19 and may have gone to the Pacific Northwest at a much younger age.  This is the earliest photo of William, and the only known photo of Frank.    

"One sad failing...." The February 4, 1897 Watauga-Democrat ran this article on the death of Richard Frank Osborne, the father of William I. Osborne and many others. Clipping courtesy of Clinton Getzinger, a direct descendant of Frank Osborne.

                   Below are Frank's wife, Emma, their daughter Effie Marilla Osborne

                  Miller with her children Florence Miller and Victor (Dusty) Osborne

                   and on the far right is Frank and Emma’s youngest son, Robert Bruce T.

                  Osborne. They are posed next to Frank and Emma’s home on Brushy Fork

                   Road, Sutherland, NC ca. 1903.

Below right are William I. Osborne (1869-1953) and his wife, Waneta T. Drever Osborne and their children Harry William,  Robert Frank, Hattie Blanche and, the child in christening dress is my Uncle Chester Clarence.  The photo was taken in Sedro Woolley, Washington by Mrs. Pilcher who purchased the studios of Darius Kinsey.  

A later photograph below, the family of William and Waneta Osborne at the home of Waneta's parents, 1917 in Washington State.  Standing in the back are Chester (1907-1986) and Hattie (1903-1923.) Middle row: Lawrence (1909-1988), Waneta (1879-1923) and William (1869-1953).  In front: Helen (1912-1914), Juanita (1917-2009) on her mother's lap, Derward (1916-2014) on his father's lap and Verner (1915-1957).  Not pictured are two older boys, Harry (1899-1986) and R. Frank (1901-1986) who were away working and, the only child surviving today, Cecil Mark was not born until 1919.

Below, this is a photo of the siblings in 1980, the first one that we specifically took photos by generation.  They are, left to right, Cecil Mark, Juanita, Derward, Helen, Lawrence, Chester, R. Frank and Harry. Missing are: Hattie who died in child birth in 1923; Charles who died as an infant, cause unknown, and Verner who died by misadventure in 1957. - Jeanie Bond

Next posting, photographs from the 2014 Osborne Reunion in Washington State....

All are invited to join in building the family tree at Wilson-Greer-Osborne-Forrester-Donnelly and Associated Families of Western NC at Ancestry.com.  Just write to glennhistory@gmail.com for an invitation.  Please let me know of any errors, omissions or additions to the above story.

                                     

 

Discovered - Lost Photographs of The Rev. William A. Wilson



by Glenn N. Holliman

October 29, 2013 I visited my sister, Rebecca Louise Holliman Payne in Tennessee who was in the process of sorting her family pictures.  One box she had stored in her attic years ago was an inheritance of memorabilia from our late Aunt Louise Stansbery Sherwood (1915-2006).  Louise was the daughter of Mayme T. Osborne (1896-1953) and Charles S. Stansbery (1893-1957). Below Mayme and Louise in 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where the family had moved during World War II.

Louise's maternal grandparents were G.W. Osborne (1844-1927) and Frances Wilson Osborne (1851-1940), both originally from Ashe County, North Carolina.  They had met in 1865 when G.W. and a cousin, Richard Franklin Osborne, took refuge in the home of Caroline Greer Wilson (1828-1911), the recent widow of Isaac Wilson (1822-1864) ambushed on his farm during the Civil War.

In the attic box were photos from the Stansberys and three intriguing ones of Louise's great uncle and a brother of Frances Wilson Osborne, The Rev. William A. Wilson (1861-1950).  The pictures are in excellent condition and may have been professionally made.  They were taken in Japan where Will served as a Southern Methodist missionary from 1890 to 1930.

I emailed these photos to Michael Ignelzi, a direct descendant of William Wilson, but he had not seem them in the family.  So I am sharing them now with the larger family, asking if others have copies of these picture or know when they were taken of our fascinating  ancestor who moved in his life from the lush, but isolated mountains of western North Carolina, to a Japan awakening from centuries of  self-imposed isolation from the West. 

 

Educated at the University of North Carolina, Class of 1889 at Chapel Hill, Will was ordained a Southern Methodist Church pastor at his own Sutherland Methodist Church in Ashe County.  (My own great grandfather, G. W. Washington, was ordained a lay pastor in the same denomination in the 1870s in the same church.)  It is from Will's memoirs that we know so much of Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilson and the travail of the Civil War in the family.

I would like to think in the picture below, evidently taken in Will's home, that one can see the likeness of his mother, Caroline Greer Wilson, in the middle photograph on the shelf above Will's head.  Unfortunately who the women are with Will are not identified, but one assumes they are connected to his church or school work in Japan.

 

The above picture is labeled in English as having been processed by K. Mimura in Okayama, Japan.  These pictures may have been taken as publicity for the Southern Methodist Church and its missionary work in Asia.  My belief is my great grandmother, Frankie Wilson Osborne, obtained them from her brother to share with her Anderson Street Methodist Church missionary society in Bristol, Tennessee in the 1920s.

 

When World War II began, Okayama housed a Japanese Army camp. On June 29, 1945, the city was attacked with fire bombs. Almost all the city was burned, and more than 1700 people were killed. Okayama suffered terrible damage in the war, losing more than 12,000 households.  In near by Hiroshima, another site of Will's work, the U.S. Army Air Corp also dropped the first atomic bomb on August 6, 1945 killing over 80,000 immediately.   Below the ruins of Okayama and Will's work after the incendiary raid. (Wikipedia)

 

 

At that time in 1945, Will Wilson had been in retirement in his Durham, North Carolina home for almost 15 years.  Whatever must have been his emotions that horrid summer during the War when his life's work and many of his Japanese friends were destroyed?  One can scarce imagine his conflicted feelings.

 

  

For more information or to ask for an invitation, please contact Glenn N. Holliman at glennhistory@gmail.com.  Likewise at the Holliman-Long Ancestry.com site.  Or visit www.bholliman.com, a virtual archive.