Willie Jo (Jody) Martin Veal
Posted on December 25, 2007
Filed Under Martin, Mystery, Veal | | 1 Comment
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Death: AFT 1973 in Prob. California
Willie Jo was the daughter of Cornelius Trammel Martin and Sarah Ada Littleton.
Willie Jo is a mysterious figure. There are many rumors about her and what might have happened to her when my father was a boy. She is said to have had some type of mental illness — either that, or her husband had her “put away” so he could divorce her and marry another woman. In any case, when my father was around 4 or 5, she was absent for a time, during which my father and his sister were in a foster home. After they came back home, their father (Houston) had a new wife, Nellie, and they didn’t see much of their mother after that.
Nannie/Nancy Slaughter Veal
Posted on December 25, 2007
Filed Under Cherokee, Mystery, Slaughter, Veal | | 2 Comments
Death: ABT 1885 in TX prob. Limestone Co.
Nannie’s family believe her to be a full-blooded Cherokee Indian, and they said she was adopted by a white family named Slaughter. Her birth date and place have not been proven. In the family story entitled “The Fertile Branch” she was named as the 2nd wife of Asa L.W. Veal, but that story incorrectly stated that she had only one child. On A.E. Veal’s birth certificate, her age was given as 25 making her born about 1857. Beulah Zuspann Veal gave her name as “Nancy” in a letter written in 1967, and her great-grandchildren called her “Nanna.” She gave birth to 4 children, with her last being born in 1884 (source: Birth certificate of Asa Edwin Veal). Since her husband remarried in 1886, it’s possible she died in childbirth. Was she born in Navarro Co. TX? The Slaughter and Veal families had many financial transactions in Texas, so it’s probable that she was of that Slaughter family. One anonymous internet source gives her birthplace as Groesbeck, Limestone Co, TX.