03/17/04   

Summer 2002 - Big Hole Montana

The "Hiram Anthony Whitener" Page!

by Glen Whitener

Born the week before Lincoln became President, on 26 February 1861, near Booneville, Arkansas, Hiram Anthony Whitener was the fifth child of nine children of Wesley Jones Whitener and wife, Nancy Caroline Rogers Whitener.  Also, he was the first born after the family had migrated from North Carolina in 1858.  He had four brothers and four sisters; Mary, Catherine, Sarah, and John were older while Jesse, Perry, Martha, and Robert William were younger.

Francis Ida Tate was born on 26 February 1865 in Cass County, Texas.  She eventually met and married Hiram Anthony Whitener on 17 August 1884 in Booneville, Arkansas.

For the next 10 years this new family lived on a small 40 acre farm near his father's.  During this time, four children were born. First, Charles Arthur, then Hiram Wesley, Dona Elizabeth, and Ruth Estelle, the last of this family's Arkansas offspring.  About 1894 the family, under circumstances no longer known, left their farm in Arkansas to go to Texas.  While there is little record of this family's life during the next 13 years, we do know that another five children were born.  Preston, Ina Mae, Lonnie, Winnie, and Edna Fay were all born near Graham, Texas.  We can reasonably guess that their life was rural, that they were engaged in making a living on a farm.  But exactly where and under what conditions we cannot be sure.  We also know that several "Rogers" uncles and cousins lived in Graham.

In 1907 Hiram Anthony Whitener, wife and nine children pioneered a new homestead in the unbroken prairie in eastern Wheeler County, Texas.  The original 320 acres, or 1/2 section consisted of a rectangular plot of ground 1/2 mile east to west and 1 mile north to south.  Its current location can be found 1.5 miles east of Kelton, Texas.  Kelton is now a crossroad intersection some 9 miles east and 3 miles south of Wheeler, Texas, the county seat.

Today, there is an abandoned country store including a couple of old fashioned gas pumps, an elementary school with a couple of teachers, and the Kelton Baptist Church at this place called Kelton.  In 1907 there was nothing in this place but raw, unbroken, untrodden land.  The Kelton Baptist Church was organized in 1908 with only six members, four of whom were Whiteners.  The small school house,  20 x 20, was built shortly afterward, and initially had 8 students, half Whitener children.

Now, buried side by side in the Kelton Cemetery, Just one mile east of the Kelton crossroads, are Hiram Anthony Whitener and Francis Ida Tate Whitener.  On 20 June 1995, Novella Whitener Vanpool gave Dona and me a grand tour of the Kelton area including this final resting place of our dear Great-Grandparents.  It was a most sobering experience to be in the presence of such brave forebears that helped much of our present life possible.

A simple tombstone tells us that Hiram Anthony Whitener died on 19 June 1934.  The tombstone for Francis Ida Whitener reads 5 December 1955.  These markers indicate only the beginning and end points for their life.  What you remember and share with others about their life in between those two points gives substance and meaning to these names.

Other memorable aspects of the tour included the original family homestead and homesite.  The homesite was nearly two miles east of Kelton.  The farm for the Hiram Wesley Whitener family was 160 acres (1/4 section) located one mile east, and 1.5 miles south of Kelton.  That point would be the northeast corner of a 1/2 mile square farm.  I believe, the Charles Arthur Whitener farm would be a 1/4 section whose southwest corner intersected with his brother's farm.

Updated as of:  03/17/04                                                                                                                                      Copyright © 2004 - RY2K Media