Robert Jackson Connell

Robert Jackson Connell was born 5 years before the Civil War broke out. He moved his family from Lancaster, SC to Camden, SC. He also lived through the turn of the century, WWI, and passed on shortly before World War II.

Parents: Stephen Jackson Connell, Mary Jane Graham Stevens
Birth: April 1856 in Lancaster, SC.
Marriages:

1. Around 1882? in Lancaster, SC to Matilda Bowers, my great-great grandmother. Robert was about 26 and Mathilda was about 23. They had 5 children: Docia, Broadus Robert, Luther Wilburn, Charlie Lee and Cora Lee. Charlie and Cora were twins.
2. Around 1900 to Laura Rowe. Robert was about 44 years old at the time, and Laura was about 27. I haven't seen any record of children that the two of them had, but Laura helped raise the children that were still at home from Robert's previous marriage.
3. Around 1927 to Maggie Dabney. Robert had adopted Ralph Leon Connell who was left on his doorstep when Ralph was just a baby and married Maggie when Ralph was about 5 years old. Robert was 71 and Maggie was only 25 when they married.

Death: August 3, 1934. Robert was about 78 years old.

I didn't find as many records for Robert as I did for Broadus and my other great-grandparents; I think it's because any records of Robert are older and thus less likely to be extant than records of Broadus. This is what I did find:

1870 Census:

Click to enlarge

Robert's family was living in Flat Creek, Lancaster County, South Carolina when this census was taken. You can see that Robert is the oldest child in his family. He was 13 years old and helped on the farm. He had not attended school in the last year, even though two of his siblings had. I'm sure it was because his father needed help on the farm. You can also see that his mother went by Mary Jane. The two numbers in the middle on the same line as his father are the value of the real estate they lived on and the value of Stephen's personal estate. I think that Stephen owned his land--there are other people who didn't have a value in the box for the value of their real estate, so I think those other people must have been renting. Anyway, the next highest value for real estate on this page was $514. His personal estate was not valued as highly as some of the others on the page, though.

1880 Census:

Click to enlarge

This one's interesting. Robert is working as a farm laborer with the Belk family. His name is on the bottom line. There's no irrefutable proof that this is the Robert Connell that's related to us, but he's about the same age and still in Lancaster County, SC. This is a different town than he grew up in--Gills Creek--but I think that the chances of this being a different Robert Connell are very low, especially considering that I didn't find any other Robert Connells living in Lancaster County at the time. I'm guessing that the person the census taker was speaking to didn't know Robert's exact age because this lists him as being 21 here when he was 24 according to the birth date on his death record and 23 according to the last census. Other details fit, though, because Robert didn't marry until about 1882 or later, and this 1880 census lists him as single.

1920 Census:

Click to enlarge

30 years passed between the last census I found Robet in and this one. As you can see, Robert is in his 60's (according to the birth date I have, he's 64, but this census lists him as 62). He married, had children, and then remarried. He owns his own farm near DeKalb township (DeKalb is north of Camden, on the way to Lancaster but in Kershaw County, but I think this is probably near Canada Dr. on the east side of Camden because Broadus is settled nearby), but it has a mortgage on it. All of his children have grown up and moved out except his two youngest sons, who help him on the farm.

1930 Census:

Click to enlarge

In this census we see that Robert has married again. According to our records, he's around 72 or 74 by this time, but he told the census taker he was only 67. I think it was probably more that he lost track of his age than that he was ashamed of it. He also has a very young child, Ralph. I couldn't find any other information on Ralph, so I asked Granddad J.C. for information about him, and I wrote a post about him.

There's a column on this census that lists the age at first marriage that I forgot to label. It lists Robert as being 21 when he first married (probably another memory lapse. It HAD been a very long time since then) and Maggie as 25. Since Maggie was only 28 when this census was taken, I assumed that her first marriage was to Robert. I wish I had more records because this is such a mystery! I wonder if Laura (Robert's second wife) was alive when they adopted Ralph and if Robert married Maggie because he needed help with Ralph. If Laura wasn't still alive when the boy was adopted, I have no idea how Robert thought he was going to be able to take care of a little boy. It is a puzzle.

We also see from this that Robert still worked as a farmer. Since he lived so close to his children--Broadus's family was on the census just a few lines up from Robert and Robert's son Charlie's family is listed on the very next line after Robert's family--I'm guessing that they all worked together on their farms. On this census, I included Great-Great-Uncle Charlie Connell just so you could see a little about him. The census says that he worked as a bus driver for the public schools and was a veteran of WWI (it just says WW here because WWII hadn't happened yet). Even though he worked as a bus driver, he's listed as living on a farm, so I'm sure he did both.