The End of the Thames name, or the beginning

The name Thames first appears in the ancestors in the 1880 census, where we find a J.T.L. Thames, age 49, and his wife Sarah A. Thames, and their 11 children, ranging from Preston B. Thames, 23, to an unnamed 4-month-old baby girl. Preston is the right age and has the right name to be the man who married Inez Clark. So we'll call him Great Grandpop.

The roster of men who served with WJ Clark includes one corporal, a J.W.Thames. I thought he and WJ might have started up a friendship that led to the son of one marrying the daughter of the other. But Thames was a very common surname then--five more Thames' served in the company. The USC on-line archives lists a legal action between a J.T.L Thames of Sumter county and someone whose name I don't recall but shows up when Googling, but without going to SC I can't find out anything else. J.T.L. is a carpenter and architect, Preston is a farmer, and Sarah is "Keeping House," according to the census.

According to the census J.T.L. Thames' parents were both born in S.C.; Sarah's mother was born in S.C., but her father came from Scotland.

Their named children after Preston were Jacolin, Mary, Maxey G. (Maxey Gregg was a noted Confederate general), John, James Q., Peter P., Sirell D., Fanne S., and Dottie V.

Letter from Sullivan's Island

Camp of the 23rd S.C. R. Sullivan's Island, S.C. Nov. 27 1863
Mr. L. M. Jones
My Dear Friend:
Pardon me for troubling you with this. This leaves me quite well at present though I have been suffering sometime from diarrhea, it is due to the water we have to drink on this Island. George is quite well, they and he with the rest are having very hard duty to do now. Guard picket and fatague duty that is gives them very little rest time.

Hope this may find you in good health. News is rather dull about here the enemy keep up a steady fire upon Fort Sumter, and occasionally they give Fort Moultrie and the city a touching up. Rather discouraging news from Braggs army. Grant has driven him back to Chickamauga and report is also that Longstreet has captured Brunside and seven thousand men.

Well what about my election can you give me any idea how I will run in your company. I want to soon send a short address to each company in service, get the commanding officer to read it to each company when our company drill. I have some very encouraging reports from some parts, and of course I hear some things that are just the contrary--that of course I must expect. I want you to stir up matters not only in your company but at home.

Capt. Lesesne will be with us on next Sunday or Monday, we are all anxiously looking for him, it has been some time since he has been with us.

Well as my time is short you must excuse this. Give by best responcts to Capt. McKnight and to all my friends and acquaintances--and accept the best regards for youself. From you friend,
Lovingly and Sincerely,
Wm. J. Clark, Co. I 23rd, S.C.R. Evans Brigade, Charleston, S.C.

Cold Water and the other Army

As a young teen growing up in Sumter, S.C., William James Clark was caught up in a religious revival sweeping the nation in the 1840s. That revival fired up two reform movements, one for the abolition of slavery and the other for the abolition of drink. The antislavery forces didn't get much traction among white Southerners (the Grimke sisters excepted) but the anti-drink folk set in motion laws and attitudes that still reverberate in South Carolina (and Massachusetts).

Young WJ Clark was at the forefront. In 1849 he was elected president of the Order of Temperance, also known as the Cold Water Army. Here is its theme song, to the tune of Yankee Doodle:

"Cold water is the drink for me,
Of all the drinks, the best sir;
Your grog, of whate’er name it be
I dare not for to taste, sir.

Give me dame nature’s only drink,
And I can make it do, sir;
Then what care I what other think,—
The best that ever grew, sir."

WJ was born in Charleston in 1835 to a grocer also named William James Clark and his wife Anne LaComb Perdreau, a great great great granddaughter of the Remberts who fled France. In 1838, when the little boy was 3, a great fire swept through Charleston, destroying the Clarks' property. They picked up and moved to Sumter.

In 1854 the younger WJ moved to Manning and married Margeret Ann Stukes, then 16. They lived on a farm, part of Stukes family lands, on what became known as Clark's Hill, just west of Clark's Branch, which flowed through the western part of the town.

WJ enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1853, two weeks after his son Sam was born, joining Company I, 23rd regiment, under the command of Colonel Henry L. Benbow.

Who is Maggie?

"August 5, 1967
W. Palm Beach

"My Dear Gladys: If he were living my precious Archie would be 61 today. The first time in 60 years I can’t say 'Happy Birthday Son.' It hurts just as much now as when he left us six months ago—I must do something to pass the time.
"Last fall, while I was madly working to finish the UDC 'Real Daughter’s' record which I had been working on for six years, the newspapers here heard about it, and that a special place (a handsome case) was being prepared to house them for safe keeping in our Headquarters Building and museum in Richmond, so they sent a reporter and photographer over to get a picture of me and the books.(I sent you one, didn’t I?) Just before that I had a letter from Chovine and Lola Clark. They were interested in researching into the Clark Ancestry and wanted anything I had that might help."

--photocopied letter that goes on for several pages about people I don't know and ends with several pages of begats, including the Clarks that also appear in the Remberts of South Carolina book published by Allsobrooks McCall and Sallie Rembert. Letter is signed "Maggie." Who is Maggie, who is Archie? Who the heck is Chovine?

Who was Archie?

Obviously Archie was her son, who died six months earlier at age 60. Maggie must have been in her 80s, poor dear, and her grief at outliving her son was poignant and fresh. In another letter later that August to "My Dear Gladys" she wrote, "I have had a long hot, and very sad summer. I miss my precious Archie more, not less, as time passes, tho I try hard to be reconciled. Just can't have enthusiasm for anything anymore."

But who was Archie to me? Who was Maggie to me? Gladys was Great Aunt Gladys, sister to Pop Thames. Daddy referred to her as Aunt Happy-Tail, much to the delight of us children and the irritation of Mamoo. The letters to Gladys were in an envelop addressed to John and Sylvia Thames from Mel Ingram, son of Aunt Gladys.

I searched the Rembert book for a Margaret Clark and found one. But this was a daughter of William Clark, the ancester who fought for the Confederacy, which would explain her "Real Daughters" activity. But she was writing in 1967. How could a daughter of the Confederacy still be alive in 1967? The Rembert book didn't carry forward to list the offspring so that I could confirm the Margaret Clark was Maggie by seeing a son named Archie.

The busy busy wives of WJ Clark

Maggie in 1967 was just a little older than my grandparents; my grandfather Pres would have been 71 then. He was a grandchild of William J. Clark, CSA. So I went off on a wild goose chase looking for a grandchild named Margaret or Maggie, someone who would be first cousin to Pres (Pop), Gladys (Happy-tail), and Helen (Boobie's wife). WJ had 11 children, so looking was a quite a headache, especially since the Rembert book seemed to give out of steam listing all those progeny. Only after spinning wheels for a while, studying Maggie's handwritten geneology and scratching my head, I realized Maggie was the daughter of the old CSAer himself.
William James Clark was born in 1835. In 1854, at the age of 19, he married Margaret Ann Stukes, who was only 16. Their first child, William J., was born in 1855. Their second, Martha, in 1857, and their third in 1859. When Margaret Stukes turned 21 she was minding three babies under the age of 3. She had a fourth, Samuel, in 1864, when she was 24. Then the war came, WJ joined the cause, and Margaret caught a break, maybe. Who was around to help her with the little ones? We don't know.

WJ managed to survive the war, otherwise I wouldn't be here to write this. Great-grandmother Leila Inez Clark, the wife of one Preston Thames, the mother of another, and the grandmother of yet another, was born in 1867. Henry came along in 1869, and Margaret Stukes had no more pregnancies for 14 years. We can guess little Inez and Henry got much more attention than their older siblings had had. It ain't over till it's over, though, and in 1881 WJ and Margaret had their last baby , a boy they named Plummer. Two years later, at 45, Margaret died.

WJ married the next year, to 31-year-old Mary Capers McKagen. She became stepmother to seven children between the ages of 2 and 29, but probably other than baby Plummer only the post-war kids, Inez and Henry, 17 and 15, were still at home.

Why was Mary unmarried at 31? Had she been a spinster school teacher? Taking care of a widowed father? Had she been married before, as her double last name suggests? Whatever her circumstances, she was soon pregnant, and gave birth to Margaret in 1885. I like to think she was a sweet generous woman to name her first daughter after her husband's first wife. Sarah followed in 1887, then Walter in 1888.

Then in February of 1890, at the age of 55, WJ died. From the Manning Times: "After the grave was filled there was a sad and beautiful sight as two little girls named Margaret, one his daughter, the other his granddaughter, came forward and laid the kind and lovely floral offerings on the tomb."

One of the little girls would have been Maggie, who was 5 when her father died. Two of WJ's first batch of children had given the name Margaret to their daughters. I can't find birth dates for them, but I believe it was likely the granddaughter Margaret was close in age to her 5-year-old Aunt Maggie.

September after burying her husband Mary gave birth to a fourth child, Elvira.

How did Mary manage, a widow with four tiny children and 9-year-old Plummer? Did she move in with a stepchild--the oldest should have been well settled then at 35. Did WJ leave her enough property to provide for herself and the children? We don't know how Mary managed. We do know she outlived Elvira, who lived only to the age of 12.We do know that Mary managed well enough to live to the age of 87. And she seemed to have had a loving relationship with WJ and to have endeavored to bring him to life in the eyes of their children. In her letter to Gladys, Maggie wrote this about "Papa":
"I always knew he was of French Huguenot ancestry on his mother’s side. Mama said when she praised his beautiful skin, he would laugh and say, 'that’s my French blood, Mary'."

The Huguenots

In 1685 Louis XIV instituted the death penalty for the crime of being a protestant and unleashed a long grim period of bloody sectarian violence. Two young Huguenots, Andre Rembert and Anne Bressan, then living in the little town of Pont-en-Royan (photo) fled for their lives to the New World.

In 1686 the first daughter of Andre and Anne was born in "Carolina," in a Huguenot refuge colony on the swampy banks of the Santee River, just north of Charleston. Around 1700, they had a daughter named Margarite who grew up to marry another Frenchman, Peter Guerry. The Guerry's daughter Anne in 1754 married Alexander DuPont, and their daughter Anne DuPont married John Perdreau in 1772. So nearly a hundred years after they left France, these immigrants were still pretty much keeping to themselves for the purposes of marrying.

John and Anne had a son, Peter Perdreau, who in 1800 married Martha Graves. Their child, Ann Lacomb Perdreau, became the wife of the first William James Clark in 1830. Their child was WJ Clark of the beautiful French skin, the father of Maggie and the father of Inez Clark Thames, my great-grandmother.

The information on the Remberts comes from the book researched and published by Sallie Henrietta Rembert and Allsobrook McCall, who married a Rembert descendent, Carolyn Elizabeth Heriot. The McCalls lived in a huge old house surrounded by ancient trees dripping Spanish moss. The house had not been painted in a hundred years. I remember a handsome good-natured man nicknamed Brooks, but Daddy called him Mack. I also remember Betsy as a pretty, sweet woman, and have vague memories of Ann Richards, their daughter my age, and the two younger ones. Brooks died a few years ago, and we ran across his grave at Mt Hope a while back. A large slab of marble lays across it like a blanket and is engraved with the full names of his wife and all his children and their children. In his death Brooks McCall tried to make life easy for genealogists. Bless his heart.

Time capsule: beer beer beer:

Cleaning out the attic found a bunch of letters including this postcard from "JOT & Curt" mit luftpost to me circa 1974. How many times can one mention the word "beer" in one postcard?

Cindy,
Sittin' at a bar in Weirzburg, Germany, drinking semi-cool bier. Besides thank you, all else I can say in German is "one beer." I do know lots of sign language tho.. The last place we tried to hitch, we stayed there for 24 hrs. It wasn't as bad as it sounds, as we took to the woods to camp after about two hours of hitching in the same place, drank beer that night & got up at 11 A.M. next day and started hitching again. The daily rain came so we decided to catch the 6:00 P.M. bus to here. Killed the rest of the time waiting for the bus drinking beer and warming up in a beer joint. Reading back it makes little sense so I'll explain when I get back.