Sumner Garnes (1866-1946), a Wayne County native who lived in Leoti, Kansas, at the time, sent this post card postmarked Dec. 30, 1911, to his first-cousin, my grandmother, Jessie (Brown) Miller. So this greeting --- as 2022 comes to an end --- is recycled.
And here's more, probably, that you either care or need to know about this extended family.
Sumner's mother was my aunt --- a generation or two removed --- Frances Susan Boswell, third child of Peachy Gilmer and Caroline (McDaniel) Boswell, born 5 October 1838 near Point Pleasant, Mason County, (West) Virginia.
In 1850, according to information contained in the obituary of her older sister and my great-grandmother, Chloe (Boswell) Prentiss-Brown, Peachy and Caroline moved their family from (West) Virginia to Van Buren County, Iowa, where they were enumerated as residents of Village Township in the 1850 census, taken 22 October. Frances would have been 11 or 12 at the time of the move. Her age as recorded by the census-taker was 12.
Probably about 1854, she accompanied her parents, brothers and sisters west to Wayne County, Iowa, where they settled on a farm on Wildcat Creek, just north of Corydon. Peachy purchased 120 acries of land in Section 7 of Corydon Township from William and Emily Miles on the 7th of January, 1856.
On the 19th day of April, 1861, Frances Susan was married to Robert Clark Sydebothm Garnes, a son of Joseph Edward and Mary (Clark) Garnes, in Wayne County by W. W. Thomas, a justice of the peace. Robert, according to information contained in a declaration for Civil War pension, was born 11 September 1836 in Clark County, Ohio. He came to Corydon Township, Wayne County, with his parents in the fall of 1856.
While living in Wayne County, Frances and Robert Garnes became the parents of four children whose names and dates of birth are substantiated by information contained in Robert's declaration for pension. The children were: Hattie Olivia Garnes, 21 June 1861; Joseph Clark Garnes, 22 February 1863; Robert Sumner Garnes, 27 May 1866; and Mary A. Garnes, 3 May 1878.
Robert Jr. went by his middle name, Sumner, as a child and young man to differentiate himself from his father, Robert Sr.
According to the pension file, Robert Sr. enlisted as a private in Company E, 34th Iowa Volunteer Infantry, on the 15th of August, 1862, and was discharged a corporal on the 15th of August, 1865, at Houston, Texas.
Robert Sr, and Frances continued to live in Corydon Township, Wayne County, until April of 1887, when they moved to Leoti, the county seat of Wichita County in western Kansas. Robert was 50 at the time and Frances, 49. The Garnes family is enumerated in the 1870 and 1880 census reports of Wayne County. The date of their move to Kansas is contained in the previously cited pension file.
Of the four children, Hattie and Joseph, both of whom were married with families of their own, remained in Wayne County when their parents moved to Kansas. Robert and Mary accompanied them.
Robert died 29 September 1915, at Leoti, age 79, where he is buried. Frances died on the 24th day of July 1918, also age 79, also at Leoti, leaving three surviving children, Hattie, Robert Sumner and Mary.
Sumner lived in Leoti his entire life, but didn't get around to marrying Emma Sanderson until 1919, when he was 53. Although it hardly seems worthwhile, he trimmed four years off his actual age at the time. He and Emma had one child, a daughter, Ruth (Garnes) Betlack --- with whom I corresponded quite a few times prior to her death at 89 in 2010.
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