FHB Charles M Watson

Family History Book: Charles M Watson (1838-1889)

According to the inscription on his wife's tombstone (his stone either is lost or never existed), Charles M was born on 24 March 1838. In the census records where he appears that show places of birth, he or his representative told the census taker he was born in Georgia. As I mentioned in the intro, we do not know his father's given name for certain, but he may have been related to Thomas Watson who won the Georgia land lottery in 1837, and who was possibly a postmaster in Coweta County, Georgia. Remember that location (Coweta County); you'll see it again. But, Charles' father was probably not Thomas (who doesn't have a son named Charles in any records I've found), but yet a 3rd Watson brother (in addition to Abijah B Watson, of whom more later), so far anonymous. Even as I write this, new information has appeared to show that the Postmaster Thomas Watson had a son named Elisha Amos Watson, whose great-grandson's DNA nevertheless does match J Brooks Watson, John Edward Watson, Jr. and Craig V. Lester – the latter most convincingly with 9.2 cMs. The matches with Brooks and John Edward are really below the accepted threshold in spite of the potential of a paper trail, but the fact that even a slight match exists is suggestive. If other descendants of Thomas can be found and they also match, that would strengthen the argument that our Watson families are related to one another.

So far I have not found any documentation from Charles M's birth up until he married Martha Ann “Mattie” Smith in Alabama, except for a couple of census records that are tantalizingly obscure. In 1840, Charles' mother, Lucinda (or Lucieny, or Luny, or any number of other spellings) Monk Holman, is head of her household with three boys, one aged under 5 (Charles M), one between 5 and 9 (Elias S), and one 10 to 14 (Richard W), while she said her age was between 20 and 29.    Presumably, her husband had died before 1840.    Unfortunately, the names of the children are not stated in that year's census, but I found Watson men of the correct ages in later records, and with enough other circumstantial evidence (mostly what they named their children, including daughters named "Winnie" or some other variation of Winifred, which was Lucinda's mother's name, and the places they lived) to put names to them to my satisfaction.

So, back to Charles. He married rather late in life for that time (unless he had another family previously we don't know about). He was 27 when he married Mattie Smith in Calhoun County, Alabama in 1865. She was 19. Of course, there had been a war in those parts for the preceding five years, which might explain the delay, but we just don't know the reason why they married when they did, or why they delayed having children for another five or six years, unless there were some who are not recorded. More about that when we get to Mattie's story. There is no indication that Charles fought in the Civil War that I've found so far, although he might well have done so since he was the right age, and there's the late marriage that suggests it.  They had six children between 1871 and 1885.  Each of these will be discussed in turn.

The only other bit of information I know about Charles besides his dates of birth and death is that he was a carpenter (from census records), and he died in Alabama on 11 Feb 1889, as shown on Mattie's tombstone. A year or two after his death, Mattie and her minor children left for Texas. Their stories are in the following pages, under each of the children's names:

Descendants

• Irene Frances Watson
• Carrie Estille Watson
• Harvey Emmett Watson
• Thomas Alexander Watson, Sr.
• Bertha May Watson
• Charles Lee Watson

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