While the photograph is poor quality, it is possible to tell that she looks like a Willis, as one might say. I have not heard of other family members with polydactyly, but I find it interesting. If you look closely at Artamissa’s hands, you’ll see she has six fingers on one. My grandmother was born in Oklahoma, but her family did have some connections to Texas on her father’s side, which is possibly how her family wound up living in Texas in the 1940’s and early 1950’s when my grandparents met and married. The Willises lived mainly in Oklahoma after Grover Cleveland Willis, my great-great grandfather migrated there from Alabama, while the Jennings family migrated to Texas. To my knowledge, the families had not been in contact. How coincidental that their descendants would marry less than 100 years later in Texas. I have strong gut feeling that they must have at least known of each other if not known each other well. Artamissa Sparks is an ancestor of my grandmother Doris Thurman Cunningham, and I have often found it interesting that the Jennings family, ancestors of my grandfather, Udell Cunningham, were living in the same county at the same time as the Willises. She is reported in the 1850, 1860, and 1870 censuses as living in Franklin County, Alabama. I am not saying that folks don’t have those connections, but not as many folks as claim to.Īrtamissa Sparks’s name is often also given Artamissra and Artamissia. It’s been my experience that many sloppy family historians try to make three connections: 1) Pocahontas, 2) a Mayflower pilgrim, 3) nobility and royalty. Being a Mayflower pilgrim, his life is more carefully documented than many others of his time. Over zealous people (I hesitate to use the word genealogist for something so sloppy) have linked Bethia to Stephen Hopkins in order to provide a Mayflower passenger for their family trees, but any cursory study of Stephen Hopkins’s life reveals he had no such daughter. In any case, William Kelsey’s wife is not proven, as Wager stated. Stephen Hopkins had two daughters named Elizabeth (one died before the other), but both died before marrying and could not be Bethia. There is no reliable record of William Kelsey’s wife. This confusion was further compounded by attempts by zealous genealogists to link this “Bethia Hopkins” to the pilgrim Stephen Hopkins. The long tradition that assumes that William Kelsey’s wife’s name was “Bethia Hopkins” is based on Hinman’s misreading the 1663 record regarding William Kelsey’s daughter Bethia and her husband David Phillips. According to fellow genealogist Gregg Wager: There is one major problem: Bethia Hopkins is not the daughter of Stephen Hopkins. Many researchers in her line mistakenly believe she is a descendant of Mayflower passenger Stephen Hopkins. (my great-great-great grandfather), Samuel, James Joseph, and Daniel. They would have eleven children together: David, Newton Allen, Catherine J., Nathaniel A., Milton, Mary, Andrew Jackson, John L. She married my great-great-great-great grandfather Andrew Jackson Willis about 1834. She was born on 15 January 1816 in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. Artamissa Sparks Willis is my great-great-great-great grandmother.
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