By Staff
A couple of months ago I attended a reburial of Magilbry Findley in Red Level and then told you all about it. Some people might think this an odd way to spend a Saturday afternoon, but if it was odd for me, I was not alone. The event was attended by several hundred people and covered by newspapers and television.
I have had an email announcing another grave removal which will possibly be taking place within the next few months.
Jesse Howard was born in 1826, the son of Hinson Howard. He later became a school teacher and was the first appointed probate judge of Escambia County. He died in about 1887 or 1889 and was buried in an unnamed cemetery off Hwy. 29 near Brewton. "Headstones and Heritages" states that although there was once evidence of there being several graves in the cemetery, Howard's is the only one identified. In 1968 a group of Eagle Scouts cleaned it off and placed a white picket fence around the grave. In the intervening years the brush has once again taken over the site and some of the descendants of Jesse Howard believe he deserves a more prominent burial place located in Fort Crawford. Two of those descendants, Pauline McGowin and Calvin Howard, live in the Brewton area and are heading up the efforts for the removal.
Jesse Howard was married twice, first to Nancy Jane Brown (1830-1870), daughter of Joel Makiah Brown. The couple had seven daughters, Elizabeth Howard (1851), Catherine Howard (1855), Celia Ann Howard (1857), who married Tom Bridges, Nancy J. Howard (1860), Sarah Howard (1862), Mary Howard (1867) and Frances Howard (1870). After her death Jesse married about 1871 to Mary Jane Dees Hammac (1836-1920). Mary Jane had been married first to Jesse Hammac who died in the Civil War and was the mother of his four children, one of whom was James Rance Hammac.
Jesse Howard and Mary Jane became the parents of two children, Jessie Howard (1872), a daughter who married Travis Hoomes, and a son, William Hinson Howard (1875) who married Mollie Browder (1875-1918), daughter of Sam and Lizzie Kate Browder.
William Hinson Howard and Mollie Browder had nine children before her death in 1918 during the flu epidemic. The children were Samuel Jesse Howard (1901-1966) who married Cleatie Johnson; Bessie Howard (1905-1974) who married James Wilbur Gibson; Elizabeth Howard (1908) who married first, Ellis Butler and second, William Boswell; Mark Dees Howard (1909-1961) who married first, Ada Belle Lambert, second, Farrus Christine Alford, and third, Ola Fuqua; Malachi Howard (1911-1984), who married first, Rosie Luker, and second, Allyne Burnham Jackson; Mollie Mae Howard (1913-1980) who married Shirley Ruel Fuqua; Randolph Henderson Howard (1916-1972), who married first, Margaret, and second, Florence Shipp McCrory; and Dezzie Audell Howard (1918) who married first, Lee Bush, and second Hudie Stokes.
Pauline McGowin and Calvin Howard are both the children of Samuel Jesse Howard and Cleatie Johnson.
I will keep you informed as to if and when the reburial takes place.