9th, Ernie & Vern Hunley & I picked up apples in the morning. Picked up apples at the Williams Place in the afternoon. The boys are working on “70” plowing for rye. Al Johnson & Abe Frazier have been plowing on “70” also.
Abraham Smith Frazier is Mary Frazier’s uncle, younger brother to her father Joshua Newton Frazier. He was born in Livingston County on October 26, 1852 and shows up in the 1860 census as the youngest son of John Frazier and Susanna Gann. The family shows up in Virgil, Vernon, Missouri in the 1870 census, and then in 1880 he is one of the three generations living together in Roscoe, St. Clair, Missouri. He is listed as a 25 year-old widower. Abe married three times and had babies by each wife. In this time period, when the wife died, the children often went to live with grandparents or uncles and aunts rather than stay with the father. Two of his kids show as living with their maternal grandparents in Sampsel, Livingston County, in 1900, but Abe cannot be found in 1900. He cannot be too far off though, since he’s plowing rye on the Bench farm, and next year he marries his third wife, the widow Deborah Haddock who is raising her kids in Chillicothe during the 1900 census. Abe shows up as living with Deborah in Mooresville in 1910, and dies in 1918.
Jesse’s mention of an Al Johnson might be the first time he’s named one of the Johnson family members renting land on the Bench farm. No nearby tenants named Johnson can be found in the 1900 census however. There is a black family living next to the Schmid family, and those Johnsons have a son named Elie. El could could be the Al Johnson Jesse mentions, but he wouldn’t be the Johnson tenant because his parents own their house.
