My Mother's Branch:The Lineage and Life of Carrie Viola Reeves and Her Family

Book excerpt: Doyle Williams has written a family history focusing on his mother, Carrie Viola Reeves, her siblings, Emma, Annie, and Charlie, and her parents, James Morgan Reeves and Sarah Frances Spencer. In this story he describes the turmoil that enveloped James Morgan as a small child in Arkansas during the Civil War and how it took his father's life and the lives of five of his siblings. He follows James Morgan as he moves to Texas with his mother, leaving home at age ten to find his own way, and returning to Arkansas to grow up and marry. When his wife, Elizabeth Wolf, dies leaving him with a large family to rear, he returns to Texas, where he finds a new wife in Sarah Frances Spencer. James Morgan and Sarah move to Oklahoma Territory in the early 1890s, make their lives there and rear their own family. The author follows the children of James Morgan and Sarah as they grow up, marry, and eventually care for their aging parents. This is the story of an American pioneering family.