With information supplied by Billie Ann Poteet McDougle, Linda and Ken Bell, and Lucy Bozarth Offutt
Josephine “Fenie” Poteet was born in 1888 on a rugged family farm located on what is now Houchin’s Ferry Road within Mammoth Cave National Park in Edmonson County. The daughter of William Haywood Poteet and Melissa Ann Elmore Poteet, she was their third child. Her older sister Letha, my grandmother, was 3. Little is known about the family’s life at that time except for oral history about life in “the forks” and the location of the homeplace on the Brownsville side of Green River. The river ferry that carried residents and visitors to Mammoth Cave for several decades is now closed. The area in the “Y” formed by the Nolin and Green rivers was labeled “the forks” by locals. All private homes were removed from the park in the 1940s, when the national park was developed.
When Fenie’s father died in 1907, seven additional siblings had been born—Belle, Henry, William Lawrence, Annie, Melvage, a brother who died soon after birth, and Floyd. William Lawrence also had died by then at age 12. The remaining siblings all lived to adulthood, married, and reared families of their own. The Poteet family worshiped at Temple Hill Baptist Church a mile or so down the road. Only the cornerstones of the church remain, but the cemetery is still maintained by the National Park Service. Many of our ancestors are buried there.
Family oral history suggests that life on the Poteet farm was difficult in the years following William Haywood Poteet’s death. Letha had married a young preacher, C.W. “Charlie” Ray, and had moved to another section of Edmonson County two years before the father’s death, leaving Melissa and 14-year-old Henry to maintain the family farm. Fenie, Annie and Belle helped with household and garden chores. Melvage and Floyd were only 8 and 7 respectively, but males of that age were expected to do farm chores in those days.
Another bit of oral history suggests that managing the girls was difficult for Melissa after her husband died. “She sorta lost control of them,” one neighbor said to family researcher Billie Ann Poteet McDougle. In her teen years, according to family stories, Fenie socialized with various men who promised to marry her and take her away from her miserable existence. None did.
At age 22, Fenie gave birth to a son, George. She was not married, and this event was frowned upon by the congregation of Temple Hill Baptist Church. Two years later, daughter Lois was born. After another year had passed, Melissa died of a cerebral hemorrhage, leaving Fenie, Annie, Henry, Melvage and Floyd on the family farm. Belle had married Ben Harrison and moved to another part of the county by then. In March of that year (1914), Fenie’s third child, Lizzie, was born. According to family stories, the three children were fathered by three different men. Fenie’s sisters, Letha and Belle, and their husbands agreed to take Fenie’s minor siblings, but there was no formal adoption process. Floyd and Melvage went to live with Letha and Charlie Ray across the river in Sweeden. Annie and Henry went to live with Belle and Ben Harrison on their Bee Spring farm.
Charlie and Ben, who had been appointed administrators of Melissa’s estate, sold the homeplace and its contents and divided the money among the surviving adult children. Henry married that year and moved into a tenant house on Belle and Ben Harrison’s farm. Fenie had nowhere to go. Her lifestyle and circumstances had earned the scorn of the family, the community and the church.
In a 1997 account of the struggles of families who were forced to move to make way for Mammoth Cave National Park, Norman Warnell describes the practice of “churching” parishioners whose behavior they considered unacceptable and the reaction of Fenie to her churching experience.
In their concern for spiritual matters, members of the Temple Hill Church did not neglect the responsibility of monitoring the behavior and lifestyle of “weaker members.” Immorality was duly noted by the congregation, and the backslider was given an opportunity to publicly apologize to the church, confess his or her failure, and promise to reform. The threat not only of religious but also social ostracism by the church was a powerful weapon in controlling the behavior of the congregation. Particularly in matters of personal morality—adultery or fornication—the consensus was potent and compelling, because if a case of such nature came before the congregation’s attention, it usually already was widely known in the community, and the chances of denying the charge or covering it up were minimal. The Temple Hill Church book reveals that many church trials took place.
One who didn’t reform after being “churched” was Josephine Poteet. She bore three children, allegedly by three different men, out of wedlock. She was ostracized by the community at large and finally left Kentucky.
Fenie’s brother-in-law, Charlie, was my grandfather. Because he was a revered Baptist minister, he probably felt an obligation to accept the decisions of the church. When he and Uncle Ben, as administrators of the estate, sold the farm, the family home, and all its contents, Fenie and each of her siblings received small monetary sums, each less than $50. Of course, Charlie and Ben would have received the portions for the minor children living with them.
Fenie left Edmonson County in 1914 with her three children, the youngest no more than a few months old. There is no record of her means of transportation. There were no railroads or paved highways in the county at that time. Again, oral history has it that she left with a man named Williams. We don’t know her connection to him; no record of a marriage to him has been found. We know that, later that year, Williams returned to Edmonson County and that he joined community people who were shopping at the Ollie General Store, then owned by Fonce Gipson, in the Forks area of the county. When someone asked him what had happened to Fenie, he responded, “The last time I saw her, she was sitting on the banks of a river in Missouri.”
Except for a few letters to her sisters Letha and Belle, little was known about Fenie’s fate for almost a century. Belle’s daughter, Chlorene Harrison Lane, and her husband, John Lane—both Edmonson County educators—traveled to Missouri in the 1960s to search for information about her. They found nothing. Billie Ann Poteet McDougle, a prominent county genealogist, spent years searching census reports, court documents and other documents attempting to learn of what had happened to Fenie. Again, no results.
The next record of Fenie’s whereabouts is a Nov. 21, 1914, letter that she wrote to her sister, Letha, announcing her marriage of five weeks. That letter and a second letter are in the possession of Letha’s granddaughter, Lucy Bozarth Offutt, who lives in Louisville. The first letter discussed her marriage to Finous Shadrick and their plans to homestead property in Arkansas in the near future. By the time the second letter (some pages of the long letter are missing) arrived in early 1915, Finous was out of the picture. Fenie discussed the fact that the “Holy Rollers” had attempted to help him.
Fenie also sent letters to her sister, Belle, during the same time period. Apparently, she asked for money in one of them and indicated that if she didn’t get the money, they would never hear from her again. Belle saved her egg money and sent a check, which was never cashed.
As far as the Edmonson County family was concerned, Fenie had vanished. Little was known about her after those letters. Fast forward 100 years to 2015.
Mystery Solved
With the help of online records, additional information was revealed. From Missouri Marriage Records 1805-2002: On Oct. 14, 1914, Fenie married Finous Shadrick in Steele, Pemiscot County, Missouri. Her name is recorded as “Thena Williams.” We believe that she did not want to appear unmarried, so she used the surname of the man who had taken her to Missouri. However, this is pure speculation.
A DNA analysis identified a match between a Texas woman and Charles Ray, Letha Poteet Ray’s grandson. Email correspondence and Ancestry.com messages revealed that person to be Linda Wells Bell. Communication with her revealed that she was Fenie’s granddaughter, the daughter of son George—one of the three children Fenie had taken with her to Missouri. In the summer of 2015, Linda and her husband, Ken, traveled to Kentucky for a meeting with her never-before-discovered cousins Billie Ann Poteet McDougle, Lucy Bozarth Offutt and Charles Ray. They shared stories, photographs, and memories and traveled to what had been the Poteet homeplace and the Temple Hill Baptist Church Cemetery in Mammoth Cave National Park.
Following are the results of that collaboration. Among the facts revealed by the documents and stories shared at this meeting:
1. Fenie died on June 6, 1915, of tuberculosis at a poor farm in Kennett, Missouri. Nothing is known about what happened to Finous. The Bells had Fenie’s death certificate that daughter Lois had finally tracked down before she died. It contained errors, but there was enough correct information to establish that the certificate actually was Fenie’s. One oral history account suggests that she and the children had walked—possibly from nearby Arkansas—to the poor farm. Fenie was buried in the poor farm cemetery—a part of the current Gregory Cemetery, Kennett, Dunklin County, Missouri. All pauper graves are unmarked. Linda and Ken Bell recorded an interview with Fenie’s daughter, Lois, in 1994. Lois, who spent most of her life as a missionary in Africa, indicated that she was told that her mother’s husband walked away from her and the children and that she never saw him again. Lois died in 2004 before learning these facts about her mother.
2. Fenie’s children were put up for adoption and separated. We know that Lizzie died in infancy, but we don’t know whether that was before or after Fenie’s death. We assume that she was adopted. There was no formal, government-sanctioned adoption for the children; they just went to live with the new families.
3. George was adopted by the Wells family, who had 10 or 12 daughters. They wanted a boy to work on the farm.
4. Lois was adopted by the Davis family. In spite of their difficult beginnings, Fenie’s surviving children became remarkable citizens. Their stories follow.
George (Poteet) Wells
George experienced a difficult life after being taken in by the Wells family at age 5. He was required to do farm labor at a young age and eventually left home to work for the United States Army Corps of Engineers on a dam for flood control in north Texas. He married Christine Dycus in 1933 at age 22. That marriage ended in divorce. In 1941, he married Johnnie Sue Asbury. Linda Wells Bell is their daughter.
George’s work with the Corps of Engineers was interrupted by a tour of duty in the U.S. Army during World War II. After the war, he returned to the Corps of Engineers in Texas, where he worked until his death from lymphoma in 1973.
George and his sister, Lois, were reunited first when they were young children, but they didn’t keep in touch. They remained separated for many years, probably because Lois was in Africa serving as a missionary for her church. Eventually, they again were reunited.
Lois (Poteet) Davis McCulley
Most of the information about Lois comes from a 1994 video recording of the Bells’ interview with Lois and her husband, David McCulley, in Arlington, Virginia. On the video, Lois and David discussed some of their life experiences and their attempt to identify Lois’ biological mother.
When Lois was offered for adoption, the Davises, a childless couple, came to the poor farm intending to take George, because they wanted a boy. When they saw Lois, the wife called her husband aside and said, “That little girl needs a mother.” So they changed their minds and took Lois. They were told that she had been born in May 1912, but they did not know the day. Since the Davis father’s birthday was May 12, they assigned that as Lois’ birthday, too, so the two of them could celebrate together. Although childless when they adopted Lois, the Davises eventually had seven additional children. The Davis family lived in Arkansas at the time of Lois’ adoption and later moved to Missouri.
Lois remembered happy childhood and teenage years; she felt totally accepted by her adoptive family.
Lois married David Wilbur McCulley, an Assemblies of God minister, in Oklahoma. Both had aspirations for becoming Christian missionaries in Africa—aspirations that were fulfilled. During their missionary years, they had three children: Janet, Robert and Thomas. Although the children all were born in the U.S., they grew up in Africa. Robert became a minister and still serves as a missionary in Africa.
Having lost touch with her brother, George, Lois began searching for him again in 1950 before their first departure for Africa. Traveling through Missouri that year, she found someone who remembered George and eventually gave her an address for him. By the time George received Lois’ letter, she was in Africa, but they corresponded and were reunited when Lois and David returned to the U.S. for a visit.
Lois and David had numerous missionary assignments in Africa. In 1950, their first assignment was in Cape Palmas, Liberia. They served as house parents on the staff of Hillcrest School in Jos, Northern Nigeria, where David was the school chaplain. Hillcrest was a boarding school for West African missionary children, grades 1 through high school. David served in various capacities at missionary posts, including administrative manager, evangelist and missionary advisor. Lois was at his side in all of these endeavors. Upon retirement from missionary work, the McCulleys moved to a home in Arlington, Virginia. David died in 1998; Lois passed away in 2004. Both are buried in Mount Comfort Cemetery in Arlington.
Lois died without ever learning the identity of her biological mother, although she was comforted by the fact that she had a name—Toni Keeth Shadrick—that she believed was her mother’s name. We still do not know the name of her father or the fathers of George and Lizzie. Edmonson County residents have speculated, but there are no records to confirm anything other than Lizzie’s birth. Kentucky began keeping birth records in 1910, but the birth of neither George nor Lois is recorded. Lizzie’s mother is listed as “Phenig Poteet”—probably an incorrect transcription of Phenie. Kentucky birth records recorded only the mother’s maiden name at that time.
Charles M. Ray, Black Mountain, North Carolina
raycharlesm@gmail.com, 828.712.4985