Charles P Simons (abt. 1844 - abt. 1896)

Born about Apr 1844 in Oktibbeha County, Mississippi, USA

Husband of Martha Elizabeth (Snow) Simons — married 23 Feb 1866 in Marion County, Kansas, USA

Descendants

Died about 1896 at about age 51 in Terrell, Kaufman County, Texas, USA

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Shari S [send private message]

Biography

Notes about Charles from http://enchantedwikiroom.com/Charles_P._Simonds, adapted here by the original author Shari S:

I'm using the "Simons" spelling because Charles seemed to prefer it. However, It looks like "Simonds" or "Symonds" was the usual spelling of Charles' presumed first cousins, descendants of Henry Simons of 1850 Chickasaw County, Mississippi, who later moved to Saline County, Arkansas. Note also that one of the cross-reference index cards I've attached uses "Symonds" and Charles is also "Simonds" in the related record. In checking out leads of various Simons/etc. families over the years, I've found that it's very common to DROP the /d/, but almost if not totally unheard of to add the /d/.

Charles must have preferred the spelling without the /d/ because the other nine children all used "Simons." Charles is primarily "Symons" in his Confederate military record but "Simons" in his Union military record, marriage record, and on the census.

Charles P. Simons was born c April 1844 in Okitebbeha County, Mississippi. (Note: an estimated birthday of the 4th or 5th of April 1844 comes from triangulating through age given on at least six different documents.)

His parents were both born in North Carolina; although we don't know when they were married, they started raising their family in Alabama by 1837, perhaps after a short stint in Tennessee, leaving Alabama with their three children sometime after 1840, joining a relative - Henry Simons (brother?) - in Okitebbeha. Charles was their first (known) child born in Mississippi.

By 1847 the two Simons households had moved a little further north to Chickasaw County, Mississippi, having purchased some former Indian lands, and by 1850 our family had three more children after Charles, for a total of seven kids. (Since Charles' father was 15 years older than his mother, there may be half-siblings that were already grown, married, and elsewhere by the time the records started showing names of children.)

Something bad happened to Charles' family between this time and 1860. The family story is that they were all wiped out by illness, perhaps smallpox. They may or may not have moved to the Midwest before this event, possibly Ohio or Illinois, or that may be where Charles ended up afterward (or not at all).

What we now know is that the other Simons family - probably Charles' uncle's family - with their married children and aging in-laws, moved to Saline County, Arkansas between 1855-1858. Davis Township, where they settled, is about 200 miles due west of their old home in Mississippi.

By 1860, Charles' brother (William) Henry Simons was living in Davis Twp in the household of what seems to be one of his married cousins. Charles' whereabouts, though, are unknown. He would only have been about 16 or so at the time. Perhaps the census simply failed to enumerate him as a boarder with another family, or perhaps he is mis-labeled with his host family's last name. Or maybe he just went off the grid.

Mysteriously, on one document, someone (unrelated) says that Charles was from Ashtabula, Mississippi. I've looked at historical gazetteers (only back to 1895) and can't find any record of this place. Perhaps it was a wide spot in the road, but in those days it was customary to give the name of the county on a legal document. There is an Ashtabula county in Ohio, which would ring with the family story that Charles ended up "somewhere in the Midwest," but I haven't yet found any records of Charles in Ohio.

Although there is no record of Charles with his brother in Saline County, Arkansas, Charles joined his brother and other men from Davis Township to form Company K of the 2nd Arkansas Infantry. They joined the Confederate cause on June 18, 1861, near Memphis, Tennessee. (This was at Camp Pillow, today known as Fort Pillow State Park.) Charles gave his age as 18, which seems to be a slight lie on his part. (The minimum age to join the Confederate Army was 18 at this time, which they may have still been picky about as the real fighting hadn't started. Secessions were still uncertain with the border states, and First Bull Run was over a month away.) Charles, like his brother William Henry (apparently known as Henry, like his probable uncle), enlisted for the duration of the war.

Almost a year later, Charles is listed as one of the men who went AWOL during the march from Corinth to Baldwyn (Mississippi). I haven't been able to find out much about it, other than it seems that many men went missing at this time. It may have taken place right after the Siege of Corinth.

The next month in June 1862, Charles was absent from muster as he was in the hospital with illness, presumably something minor as it is not described. (Muster seemed to be done on a quarterly system.)

On December 31, 1862, Charles' brother Henry Simons is severely wounded in the shoulder during the Battle of Murfreesboro (Tennessee). He is hospitalized but never recovers. He dies two and a half months later - March 15, 1863 - at Fair Ground Hospital No. 2 in Atlanta, Georgia. Note that this was a "tent" hospital that served 2500 soldiers. The official cause of death for Henry was "chronic diarrhea." His forty-three dollars was turned over to the quartermaster in one report; in another report, it states that he had no money at his death. Another report says that his personal effects were a blanket, valued at $2.50; the next report says that he had nothing.

Charles remains present on every muster slip until December 1863, a year after the Battle of Murfreesboro, when he is absent but there is a note that he is participating in extra duty, specifically "Pioneer Company." It was an honor to be selected to be part of a pioneer company. It meant that you had engineering/logistical skills. It seems that at this point in the war, creating special engineering units was too much of a luxury. However, pioneer companies of men with these talents were created as needed and with less paperwork. (Alas, these men still had to be foot soldiers as part of their regular duty.) Charles was with the pioneer company for the November battle at Missionary Ridge, Tennessee, outside Chattanooga, where the Confederates lost and had to fall back to Georgia.

In January 1864, Charles was with the pioneer company in Tunnel Hill, Georgia, which saw several engagements. By the next month, though, the muster slip for February 1864 marks Charles as absent and describes him as "in arrest or confinement." No explanation is given, and he is back on the next muster slip, still working extra duty in the pioneer company. By April and through May, Charles was in Dalton, Georgia, where another battle took place. (A Confederate win, but the Union army was able to gather intelligence from it that led to problems down the road.)

Charles stayed on the rolls with the pioneer company until November 30, 1864, when he was captured by Union forces in Franklin, Tennessee, processed in Nashville, and sent to military prison in Louisville, Kentucky.

He was discharged from Louisville four days later (December 3) and sent to Camp Douglas. Camp Douglas was in Chicago and by this time was used strictly as a prisoner of war camp. Wikipedia says that the death rate was 17-23%. This was overall, however. By the end of 1864, conditions there were more dire. A description of the day before Charles arrived: "On December 5, 1864, prisoners from Confederate General Hood's army began to arrive at Camp Douglas. These "weak and destitute" prisoners were made to undress and stand outside for a long period of time in ice and snow while guards robbed them of any valuables."

After a couple of months at Camp Douglas, in February 1865 Charles applied to take the oath of allegiance to the Union. He stated that he had always been loyal and had been conscripted into the Confederate army. He says he was captured and now wishes to take the oath and become a loyal U.S. citizen. Note that at this time Sherman was marching from Georgia to the Carolinas, destroying everything, and Jefferson Davis had just approved a plan to arm slaves in order to create more forces for the Confederates (which didn't happen).

On April 6, 1965, Charles was mustered into Company G of the 5th U.S. Voluntary Infantry. He enlisted for three years. Three days later, Lee surrendered at Appomattox.

At this time, Charles is described as having hazel eyes, fair complexion, and auburn hair. (A later record calls his hair "dark.") He is 5' 8" tall and 21 years old, although another slip from two days earlier says he is 20. (Perhaps he had an April birthday - this seems to work out when I put all of his ages from credible sources together.)

In June 1865, Charles is sent to Fort Riley, Kansas, probably to help defend the area against local tribes during railroad construction.

On August 23, 1865, the record states that Charles deserted Fort Riley at Lyans Creek. (Probably the same as Lyons Creek, one county over.) According to a slip dated a few days later, he apparently left with one ordinary gun sling (34 cents), one cap pinch (56 cents), one shelter tent ($4.90), turnpin (2 cents), wipes (20 cents), one screen drum (23 cents), one knapsack ($3.10), one canteen (85 cents), one haversack (95 cents), and two G.C. (???) (12.5 cents).

A January 1866 list of deserters says he is 5' 7", 20 years old, has brown hair, was born in Ashtabula, Mississippi (see comments above), and that he deserted at Cottonwood (which seems to be one county over but in a different direction). Sounds like this information was provided in error by someone who knew Charles but not very well as it is inconsistent with records taken when Charles was actually around (as described above). (The final muster-out roll - dated October 11, 1866, in Fort Kearney, NJ - states that Charles is 21, deserted in August as described above, and has "pay due from enlistment.")

No date of apprehension is given. According to the U.S. government, Charles Simons disappeared on August 23, 1865, and was never seen again.

What we know, though, is that six months to the day after he disappeared, and only one county south of where he was last seen, he married Martha Elizabeth Snow. They stayed in Kansas for almost a decade before taking their two daughters to Texas around 1873. (Martha's parents and sister's family followed.) Over the next twenty years, they had nine more children, and they moved at least a few times, starting in central Texas and working up to what would eventually become the DFW metroplex.

After four years of war, about which we now know so much, how did Charles spend the remaining thirty years of his life? The census just says "farmer." Popo said that Charles was extremely religious, and that the reason Henry Clay ran away from home was because of the severity of the beating he received after Charles overheard Henry curse while doing farm work. When Charles died in Terrell, "around 1896," five of his children were under still the age of 10. He died too soon for death certificates and funeral records, and the 1890 census, which may have had more information about him and his family, was destroyed. When Helen Porterfield Hunt reunited his descendants in the early 1970s, no one had any stories about Charles, other than the vague notions about smallpox wiping out his family and perhaps him having lived in the midwest. Everyone remembered his wife and even her parents, but today nobody even knows where Charles is buried.

Note: Like other researchers, I've wondered about the marriage between Charles Simmons and Martha Hokett in Limestone County, Alabama, in 1833. [...] Right now it's just a lead. Perhaps DNA testing will eventually bear this theory out, but until then, it's best not to perpetuate information that will be copied-and-pasted by too many researchers as fact. </blockquote>

Sources

• United States Federal Census. 1850. Mississippi. Chickasaw County. Pages 389b and 390a. Charles Simons household. Image of original document at Ancestry.com: http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=1850usfedcenancestry&h=3364107&indiv=try

• United States Federal Census. 1870. Kansas. Marion County. Page 4. Charles Simons household. Image of original document at Ancestry.com: http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=1870usfedcen&h=18003912&indiv=try

• Selected U.S. Federal Census Non-Population Schedules, 1850-1880. Charles Simons. Center Township, Marion County, Kansas. 2 June 1870. Image of original document at Ancestry.com: http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=nonpopcensus&h=2698098&ti=0&indiv=try&gss=pt

• United States Federal Census. 1880. Texas. Burnet County. Pages 164d and 165a. Charles Simons household. Image of original document at Ancestry.com: http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=1880usfedcen&indiv=try&h=10334473

• Selected U.S. Federal Census Non-Population Schedules, 1850-1880. Charles Simons. 22 June 1880. Enumeration District 37, Burnet County, Texas. Image of original document at Ancestry.com: http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=nonpopcensus&h=266874&ti=0&indiv=try&gss=pt

• Marriage Record: Charles SImons and Martha Snow. 23 February 1866. Marion County, Kansas. Photocopy acquired from the county clerk by great-grandson George Porterfield, who shared a scan of the photocopy with other descendants.

• Granddaughter Helen Porterfield Hurt ran the Simons reunions and made a point of gathering what information she could from surviving grandchildren. In the notes for the 1974 reunion, she states that Charles died in Terrell around 1896.

• The Birth Index for Burnet County, Texas, page 164, lists Charles as the father of son William Earl. (Microfilm viewed by Shari S.)

• Texas Deaths, 1890-1976. "Henry Clay Simonds". Parents listed as Chas Simonds and Martha Snow. Image of original death certificate: https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K7D6-Z6F