Love Letters from Eugenia

A few years ago, I was contacted by Frank Wight's  grandson and I added the
information to my family tree.  Then I had a computer crash and lost all I had
added.  I do believe that Frank was the son of Lemuel Owen Standridge Jr. and
Eugenia.  (Since writing this part of Eugenia's story in 2013, I know Frank was a Standridge as his Grandson participated in the Ancestry DNA project and his father is proven).  The story told to me was she wanted to leave and Owen told her she could not take his two sons.   She left and Owen did not know she took one son, Frank!   Were Eugenia's father and brother was in the Dakota's and she went to her family?  Her marriage license in August 1881 said she was seventeen.  She decided to leave Lemuel Owen Standridge in 1885, but she had to go without Oscar Love and Buchanan "Buck" Standridge.  She said in a letter to her son Oscar that she left in October 1885 and  in April of 1886 she had a son named Franklin Standridge.  He went by the name Wight because Eugenia Arnold Standridge married John Fitch Wight and moved to South Dakota.

Eugenia told Frank's brother, John Wight, that he was born at the train station in Dover,AR...but there was not one there. She may have meant Russellville.  Frank's half brother John Fitch Wight was born December 13, 1889. Census data says he was born in Arkansas.  Maybe someday the mystery of where Frank and John were born will be solved. We do know that Eugenia met John Fitch Wight and went to South Dakota with him or shewent there and met him.  The Wight family thinks she left Frank Standridge Wight in AR. and returned for him later and when she returned to pick him up is when his brother was born in AR at a train station.  Eugenia had a brother James that lived near Russellville, AR
at that time and she had Scott and perhaps Arnold relatives here as well.

Perhaps her father, brother, and the Wight family all went together or Eugenia's father and brother may have already moved to South Dakota.  B. F. Arnold is still alive in South Dakota in 1890.   He is listed as a veteran of the Civil War on a list there. 

Eugenia brother was Elijah Henderson Arnold born in 1872.  Elijah and his wife return to Searcy County for a while.  They lived near Witts Spring.  So I think the Arnolds had family still in Arkansas.   Eugenia listed her mother  as Katherine
Scott. Eugenia left a written record that Catherine was her mother.   Catherine Scott can be found on the Wayne County, Tennessee 1850 census.  She is a sister to Busby Scott who moved to Arkansas.  I believe that Eugenia's mother died shortly after Elijah Henderson was born or they could even have different mothers.

Eugenia never saw Oscar or Buck after she left in October of 1885.  Many may wonder how she could leave and not take the two sons.  Owen Standridge was surrounded by family at Ben Hur, AR.  There is no way she could have made it out of there with those two boys.  Old Lem and Peggy were still alive and Howard was a young man.  Angeline Horn lived there.  James Standridge was next door.  Standridges lived along the road in all directions 20 miles around Ben Hur.  What made Eugenia want to escape?  I am sure she had good reasons.  In 1911, she started corresponding with her son Oscar in Oklahoma. 

These letters are filled with sadness for never seeing Buck and Oscar again.  She begged for Nina and Oscar to try and have a photo taken and send it to her.  They did this and she saw her children again if only in photographs.

 

Eugenia

More letters and photos in another post!