2626 - 33 Multiples: 134 DNA Matches, Two Robert McCorkles, and a Lot of IFs

 

Robert McCorkle and Robert W. McCorkle, My Maternal 4th Great Grandfathers

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 33

Prompt: Multiples

When I saw this week's prompt, “Multiples,” I thought I had found an easy way to interpret it.

Ancestry's ThruLines showed that I have 134 DNA matches to people whose family trees descend from my fifth-great-grandfather, Henry Holstine.

One hundred thirty-four DNA matches. That certainly qualified as “multiples.”

There was just one little problem.

I decided to make sure I could prove that Henry Holstine really was my fifth-great-grandfather.

That innocent decision cost me the better part of a weekend.

Cozy genealogy weekend as depicted by ChatGPT. 

What I Know

Henry Holstine died in Botetourt County, Virginia, in 1805. His will names his wife, Mersey, and eight children. One of those children was his daughter Mercy, or Mersey, Holstine.

Mercy married Robert McCorkle in Botetourt County in 1789. Henry's estate records provide additional evidence of the relationship. An 1807 deed involving Henry's heirs identifies Robert McCorkle and his wife Mercy and places them in Roane County, Tennessee.

So far, so good.

Henry Holstine → Mercy Holstine → Robert McCorkle is well supported by documentary evidence.

The trouble begins with the next generation.

My tree shows Robert and Mercy as the parents of Stephen McCorkle, whom I have as the father of my second-great-grandfather Daniel McCorkle.

I also have Rachel McCorkle, who married James Bowman in Roane County in 1811, as a daughter of Robert and Mercy.

But when I started looking closely at my sources, I discovered something uncomfortable.

I don't have proof that either Stephen or Rachel was their child.

Apparently, sometime during my earlier DNA research, I worked my way down through Henry Holstine's descendants, found Mercy's marriage to a McCorkle, saw all the McCorkle and Holstine DNA connections, and reconstructed what seemed to be the most likely path to my known McCorkle family.

Unfortunately, I didn't leave myself enough notes explaining how I reached those conclusions.

That becomes a problem when Future Me comes along and asks Past Me, “How do you know that?”

Past Me has been remarkably unhelpful.

Enter Robert McCorkle Number Two

As if one uncertain Robert McCorkle weren't enough, there is another one.

To make matters even more confusing, these weren't two unrelated men who happened to share a name. The older Robert McCorkle was Robert W. McCorkle's uncle. They belonged to the same extended McCorkle family, lived in the same general part of Tennessee, and their lives overlapped. No wonder records attributed to one Robert could so easily end up attached to the other.

My tree shows Robert W. McCorkle, husband of Priscilla Cluck, as the father of Martha McCorkle, whom I believe was Daniel McCorkle's mother.

If my tree is correct, Daniel's parents were both McCorkles.

And if that is correct, both Robert McCorkles are my fourth-great-grandfathers.

One Robert may have been Daniel's paternal grandfather and the other his maternal grandfather.

Notice how many times I have used the word if.

It was time to sort out the Roberts.

Click on image for a larger view. 

A Clue from Rachel

While researching Rachel McCorkle Bowman, another small detail caught my attention.

Her Find a Grave memorial says she was born in Overton County, Tennessee.

Find a Grave is not proof of a birthplace, especially when no underlying source is given. But the words Overton County rang a bell.

I remembered that I had an 1830 Overton County census attached to Robert W. McCorkle.

What if I had attached it to the wrong Robert?

When I looked at the census again, the Robert McCorkle heading the household was age 60 to 69. That was a poor fit for the generally reported age of Robert W., but an excellent fit for the older Robert McCorkle, husband of Mercy Holstine, who was supposedly born about 1764.

That still wasn't enough to move the census from one Robert to the other.

Then FamilySearch's Full-Text Search gave me something much better.

A Tennessee land grant issued in 1835 was based on a survey made ten years earlier. The 1825 survey described the land as including the place “where Robert McCorkle lived at the date of the survey.”

So a Robert McCorkle was living in Overton County in 1825.

Then I found a deed dated September 1, 1834. In it, Robert McCorkle and Joshua Wright, “of Overton County,” sold fifty acres to Riley Miller. Robert personally appeared before the clerk that same day to acknowledge the deed.

Now I had a Robert McCorkle living in Overton County in 1825, an age-appropriate Robert household there in 1830, and a Robert explicitly described as a resident of Overton County in 1834.

Suddenly Rachel Bowman's reported Overton County birthplace didn't seem like such an insignificant clue.

Is this Robert the husband of Mercy?

I think he may be.

Can I prove it?

Not yet.

Following Robert Across Tennessee

The documentary trail for Robert, husband of Mercy, begins much earlier in eastern Tennessee.

In 1807, Robert and Mercy were identified as residents of Roane County.

Robert McCorkle appears repeatedly in Roane County records during the following years. One record was particularly interesting because it connected him with another person already in my tree.

In 1811, James Bowman married Rachel McCorkle in Roane County.

Five years later, in 1816, James Bowman and Robert McCorkle appear together on the same land survey.

Does that prove Rachel was Robert's daughter?

No.

But it establishes a direct association between Robert McCorkle and the man who had married Rachel McCorkle five years earlier. That is exactly the sort of evidence genealogists look for when building a case from friends, associates and neighbors.

Robert later appears in records in the area that became Morgan County. By 1835, one land description referred to the place “where Robert McCorkle lived,” suggesting that he no longer lived at that particular location.

By then, however, we now know that a Robert McCorkle had been living in Overton County for several years.

And then things get even more interesting.

In 1836, a Robert McCorkle entered twenty-five acres in Warren County, Tennessee. His land began on “Stephen McCorkle's old line.”

Robert and Stephen. Side by side.

If this is the older Robert from Roane, Morgan and Overton Counties, and if this Stephen is the man I believe was his son, that is a tantalizing piece of evidence.

There are those ifs again.

Meanwhile, the Other Robert

Sorting the records for Robert W. McCorkle produced its own surprises.

An 1840 Warren County census appears to fit the family of Robert W. and Priscilla reasonably well when compared with the known ages of their children.

By 1850, Priscilla was enumerated in Warren County with their two youngest daughters, Mary and Louisa. Robert was not in the household.

An agricultural census that year listed a fifty-acre farm under the name Robert McCorkle: twenty improved acres and thirty unimproved.

Then I looked more carefully at two Mexican War service cards I had attached to Robert W.

Private Robert McCorkle served in the 1st Tennessee Mounted Volunteers. One of the cards contains a notation I had apparently never noticed:

“Died at Camp Placido near Lavaca Texas the 6 Oct 1846.”

Could that be Robert W., Priscilla's husband?

Possibly.

His absence from Priscilla's 1850 household certainly doesn't rule it out. But so far I have found no pension, bounty-land record, probate record, or other document connecting the soldier who died in Texas with Priscilla McCorkle in Warren County.

So the military records remain in the possible pile.

Genealogy has a lot of piles.

A Very Precise Date With No Source

My tree says that the older Robert McCorkle, husband of Mercy Holstine, died December 2, 1840, in Warren County, Tennessee.

That's wonderfully specific.

Unfortunately, I have no idea where it came from.

The same exact date appears in numerous online family trees. FamilySearch has it too. FamilySearch even showed four sources attached to Robert.

Great!

Except all four sources were for his marriage.

Not one supported his death.

I searched for the origin of the December 2, 1840, date and came up empty. Finally, I sent a message to the FamilySearch contributor who entered it and asked if they knew the source.

Maybe I'll get an answer.

Until then, December 2, 1840, belongs in the category of “often repeated but not proved.”

And What About Those 134 DNA Matches?

After all this, I went back to where I started.

Those 134 DNA matches haven't disappeared.

ThruLines shows DNA connections through descendants of multiple children of Henry Holstine. That is compelling evidence that I belong somewhere in this extended Holstine family.

But 134 DNA matches are not the same thing as 134 independent pieces of documentary proof. ThruLines combines DNA results with family trees, and family trees can copy mistakes just as easily as they copy correct information.

The DNA may be pointing me toward exactly the right family while the precise route from that family to me is still wrong—or simply unproved.

At the moment, I can document Henry Holstine as the father of Mercy Holstine and Mercy as the wife of Robert McCorkle.

I have good evidence that Daniel McCorkle, Samuel McCorkle and Rachel McCorkle were siblings.

What I still need to prove are the generations in between.

Was Stephen McCorkle really the son of Robert and Mercy?

Was Stephen really the father of Daniel and his siblings?

Was Martha McCorkle really Daniel's mother and the daughter of Robert W. and Priscilla?

If those relationships are correct, both of my Robert McCorkles really are my fourth-great-grandfathers.

That's a lot of ifs for two men with the same name.

Sometimes Tree Cleanup Is Progress

I started this week's “Multiples” prompt thinking I would write about 134 DNA matches.

Instead, I spent several days sorting multiple Robert McCorkles, questioning old record attachments, discovering a death in Texas that I had somehow overlooked, finding new evidence for an Overton County residence, and realizing that some relationships I had treated as facts were actually hypotheses.

I didn't solve the mystery.

In fact, in some ways I know less than I thought I knew when I started.

But my tree is cleaner. My evidence is better organized. I know which relationships are proved, which are probable, and which still have big question marks beside them.

And I have a much better idea of what I need to find next.

Sometimes successful genealogy doesn't add another generation to the family tree.

Sometimes it just removes a few exclamation points and replaces them with question marks.

And 134 DNA matches still don't equal proof.

2026 - 32 Growing Up in Bartlesville, Oklahoma 1956 - 1968

 The Bartlesville Neighborhood

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 32

Prompt: Neighbors and Community

On July 26 of this year, I received this text message from my oldest brother, Dave:

Today is the 70th anniversary of when our family moved from Tulsa to Bartlesville. You were two years old and would not remember the move but I do. Everything was new, even smelled new. And now you have come full circle back to Tulsa.

I certainly don't remember the move, but I remember the neighborhood.

In 1956, when I was 2½, we moved from 417 S. 47th W. Ave. in Tulsa to a brand-new house at 4785 Dartmouth Drive in Pennington Hills, a new subdivision on the east side of Bartlesville. Our house sat on the corner of Dartmouth and Frank Phillips Boulevard and was then the eastern edge of the development.

Our new home at 4785 Dartmouth Drive under construction, June 1956. Mom, Dave, Storm and I wave from what would become the living-room picture window.

Our father was the district representative for Tulsa Paper Company, with a sales territory covering northeastern Oklahoma. Dave remembers that Dad spent a great deal of time on the road, including Monday through Thursday nights once a month in both Bartlesville and Stillwater. According to Dave, the family decided to move to one of those two cities, and Bartlesville “got the nod.”

Dave was old enough to remember the move. He doesn't remember feeling particularly happy or sad beforehand, but once the family arrived, he remembers that everything seemed new and exciting and that he liked it.

My parents built the house with a VA loan. The original plans had the driveway opening onto Frank Phillips Boulevard, a major east-west thoroughfare, but my parents changed it to Dartmouth Drive. The front of the house, however, still faced Frank Phillips Boulevard.

I've been told that on the day we moved in, I was sitting on the curb along Frank Phillips Boulevard when Sue Perry walked across the street to meet me. Sue would be my babysitter until my brothers were old enough to be home alone. She had two older brothers, Mike and Pat.

Me at about 2½ in our front yard at 4785 Dartmouth Drive. The Dunning's house on the southeast corner of Dartmouth and Frank Phillips Boulevard is across the street behind me. I've been told that shortly after we moved in, I was sitting along this curb when Sue Perry came across the street to meet her new little neighbor.

Dinner at the Perry house with Sue, (Mike and Dave behind her arm) Storm, Pat, and little Libby. 

I just loved their parents, Dan and Beulah. They were like another set of grandparents. I would go over and knock on their door at 5108 SE Frank Phillips Blvd. and then not know what to say because the usual, “Can _____ come out and play?” didn't work. So I would just stand there until they invited me in.

Once my dad came looking for me. I was sitting in Dan's lap, and the back of the chair was toward the door so Daddy couldn't see me. When Daddy asked if I was there, Dan replied, “No, she's not here,” and the search continued. Boy, was I in trouble when they found out I had been there all afternoon.

With Beulah and Dan Perry in 1992, thirty-six years after Sue Perry first crossed the street to meet her new little neighbor. Dan and Beulah were like another set of grandparents to me.

Next door to the Perrys and directly across the street from us, at 5104 SE Frank Phillips Blvd., were Dick and Mary Margaret Roderick and their four boys, Richard, Jon, Charles and Robert. Their ages ranged from about my brothers' ages down to Robert, who was my age.

Richard won a science fair by spinning mice in a centrifuge, like they were doing to astronauts at the time. This was back in the days before much thought was given to the ethics of experiments on live animals.

The boys went to Catholic school, so I never saw Robert at school, but we played together a lot. I made him pretend to be my husband, and my Cathy Doll was our baby. Once I followed him into their house, and as we walked down the hall to his room, he stopped, dipped his finger into the holy water and made the sign of the cross. I did the same, not knowing that his mother, Mary Margaret, was watching us. Of course, she had to call my mother and tell her, and they had a good laugh at my expense. But I always wondered what made that water holy.

Robert Roderick and me having a tea party on our front porch, August 1959. Robert and I were frequent playmates even though he attended Catholic school and I didn't see him at school.

Next to them, at 5100 SE Frank Phillips Blvd., were Bill and Peggy Crowe and their daughter, Kathy. My brother Storm always had a crush on Kathy Crowe. Peggy, Beulah Perry and my mom were the best of friends.

Kathy Crowe and Nancy Pickell in our front yard with the Perry house in the background.

One year Mom hosted an elaborate Halloween party. We were told that a fortune teller would be coming and to watch for her. We looked through the big picture window and finally spotted a strangely dressed woman walking up and down the street, apparently trying to find our house. It was Peggy Crowe in costume, but we didn't know that.

Once inside, Peggy read our palms. She had secretly learned things about each of us in advance, so we were amazed by what the fortune teller knew.

That was only the beginning. Mike Perry was laid out on our kitchen table like Frankenstein while the “doctor,” my mother, performed an operation and pulled links of sausage from his belly. We children peered through the shutters in the bar between the kitchen and den to watch. Then, one at a time, we were led into the garage, where Dan Perry and Bill Crowe rattled tire chains and ran a vacuum cleaner in reverse while my dad threw us down onto a mattress. Finally, we were led outside to the iris garden, which had been transformed into a cemetery—with grave markers bearing our own names.

Our kitchen table and the shuttered bar between the kitchen and den—the setting for Mom's memorable Halloween “operation.”

Next down the street, at 5020 SE Frank Phillips Blvd., were Lyle and Evelyn Johnson and their children, DeAnn and Van. They were a little younger than I was, but I played dolls with DeAnn.

On the southeast corner of Frank Phillips Boulevard and Dartmouth Drive were Neal and Ginny Dunning and their daughter, Diane, who was a little younger than I was. They moved before we did. When the moving van was parked in front of their house, I stood on the corner pulling my arm down as if I were blowing the truck's horn. It was something my brothers did when we were traveling to get truck drivers to blow their horns.

But this time there wasn't a driver in the cab. My brothers laughed at me—until the driver saw me, came out to the truck and blew that horn!

Neighborhood entertainment didn't require much equipment. Storm, Dave, me and Diane Dunning playing dress-up.

Up the street at 4780 Dartmouth were Earl and Josephine Retterath and their family, sons Bill, Robert, Ray and daughter Marylou. Their furniture store was one of the first businesses to open in Pennington Hills Plaza, about a mile from our neighborhood.

I came home from school one day to discover that Jo Retterath had completely redecorated our living room: a fancy sofa with a curved section, two chairs, end tables, a coffee table, lamps and pictures on the walls. I spent many nights sleeping in the curve of that sofa when my grandparents were visiting.

Christmas morning on the curved sofa Jo Retterath selected for our living room. When my grandparents visited, the sofa became my bed.

The Retteraths eventually moved to Sandy Springs, Georgia, and we visited them on a vacation.

Adjoining our property to the south were Curtis and Marlys Baker and their daughters, Susie and Kim, who were a year or two younger than I was. They also had Happy the beagle, who would run the fence with our duck Louie, whom I wrote about in a previous blog.

Then, to the east of us on Frank Phillips Boulevard, were Marion and Grace Pickell and their children, John, Nancy and Frank. Frank, Robert Roderick and I were best buddies. We built Flintstone-type houses at a place we called “down the hill,” and once we built a tree house in the Pickells' tree.

Frank Pickell and me playing bride and groom, February 1961. Frank was one of my best neighborhood buddies—and we're still friends today.

It was a neighborhood full of baby boomers. The oldest kids were around my brothers' ages, and the youngest were a little younger than I was. We had free range of the neighborhood and spent most of our time outside—riding bikes, playing hide-and-seek, tag, kick the can and Red Rover. Sometimes we played inside at a neighbor's house. Even today, I think I could draw the layout of each of those homes from memory.

January 1962. Showing off the bicycle I had received for Christmas, with Dave and one of the Roderick boys. The Rodericks' house is across Frank Phillips Boulevard in the background.

Dave remembers the neighborhood while it was still being built. He and the other boys would lay out baseball fields on the vacant lots, only to have to move their sandlots when another new house went up.

One vacant field beyond the Pickells' house somehow escaped development and is still vacant today. Frank, Robert, and I once accidentally set that field on fire while playing with firecrackers. We had developed a three-person system: one of us held the firecracker, one lit it, and the third threw it. Apparently the system had a flaw. I don't remember much about what happened next, except that the fire truck came. I'm pretty sure our parents found out.

Probably my cousins Julie and Steve with me in our backyard wading pool. Beyond the Pickell house is the vacant field that Frank Pickell, Robert Roderick and I later accidentally set on fire while playing with firecrackers. The field is still vacant today.

Dave remembers riding his bicycle everywhere—and remembers the hills. He and Storm walked to Will Rogers Elementary School, a distance that seemed much farther to him then than the half mile or so it actually was.

Dave and Storm, my brothers, their first year at Will Rogers Elementary School in Bartlesville. And yes, it was about a half mile from 4785 Dartmouth Drive. 

Looking back on those years, Dave summed it up simply: “I thought it was a good place to grow up. We were lucky.”

Not everything we did was particularly smart. One dangerous game the older boys played was to run across Frank Phillips Boulevard in front of an approaching car and then mime pulling a rope across the street, trying to make the driver think there was actually a rope there and stop.

By 1968, our neighborhood—and Bartlesville itself—was changing. The city's two major employers, Cities Service and Phillips Petroleum, were making changes that affected families all over town. Cities Service moved operations out of Bartlesville, while Phillips was transferring employees to Texas.

One by one, our neighbors began to leave. The Rodericks moved to Colorado. The Perrys and Crowes moved to newer subdivisions. The Retteraths moved to Sandy Springs, Georgia. When Mr. Baker received a promotion at National Zinc, the Bakers moved to a larger home in Woodland Park.

Then it was our turn. My father decided to make a career change and become a Realtor in Bella Vista, Arkansas, and our family moved to Bentonville.

The neighborhood was breaking up, but the friendships weren't.

I recently found a photograph that proves it. It was taken at our last house in Bentonville, where we moved in the summer of 1972. Since the occasion appears to have been Mom's March birthday, the photograph could not have been taken earlier than 1973—at least five years after we left Bartlesville. There in our Arkansas kitchen are Mom, Peggy Crowe and Beulah Perry, still together years after they stopped being neighbors. The women who had once helped create that elaborate Halloween party on Dartmouth Drive were still celebrating birthdays together in Bentonville.

Peggy Crowe, Peggy Wallis, and Beulah Perry celebrating Mom's birthday in Bentonville.

And some of those neighborhood friendships have lasted much longer. Frank Pickell, one of my childhood buddies from “down the hill,” is still my friend today. In fact, he helped me remember some of the people and places as I wrote this story.

I drive through Bartlesville fairly often, and when I do, I almost always drive by 4785 Dartmouth Drive. Once I stopped and rang the doorbell.

I told the older woman who answered that I had grown up in the house and asked if she would mind if I walked around the yard and took some pictures. Instead, she invited me inside to look around.

A four-seasons porch had been added just outside the back door. The bar separating the eat-in kitchen from the den was gone. Oh my! How could you possibly watch a Halloween operating room without that divider and its shutters?

The rooms all seemed so much smaller than I remembered them.

The iris garden—the one that had served as our Halloween graveyard—was gone. Fortunately, my mother had transplanted some of those irises to Arkansas. I later transplanted them to my home in Overland Park, and today descendants of those same irises grow at my home in Tulsa.

The neighborhood changed. The houses changed. Most of us scattered to other cities and other states. But some of the friendships traveled with us, and so did a few of the irises.

And, just as Dave reminded me, after seventy years I have come full circle back to Tulsa.

2026 - 31 The Day the Circus Came to Town

Parmenas James (P. J.) Nolen, My Great Grandfather

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
Week 31
Prompt: A Day In the Life

P. J. Nolen woke early on the morning of September 21, 1916, and ate the breakfast provided by Mrs. Hardy, wife of J. A. Hardy, proprietor of the Arlington Hotel, where P. J. had boarded for years. Hot, strong coffee was not the only thing brewing in the dining room. Excitement was too! It was the day the Al G. Barnes Circus was coming to town.

Actual ad for the circus from Batesville Guardian newspaper.

P. J.'s son Luther was still asleep upstairs. P. J. let him sleep. He had a feeling they were going to need another pair of hands before the day was over.

P. J. walked across the street to 458 Main Street and opened P. J. Nolen’s Harness and Saddle Shop. Isaac Ross, the shoe repairman; Wash Sherrill, his right-hand man; and Katherine Smythe, his bookkeeper, were waiting outside when he unlocked the doors, full of expectation for a busy day.

They wouldn't be going to the circus. P. J. was more interested in whether hundreds of extra horses meant somebody was going to need a strap repaired than in Samson the Aviation Lion or the trapeze-performing baboons.

P. J. knew that when a big show came to Batesville, it brought people from miles around into town, and he intended to be ready for them. Back in January, he had bought out all of Mr. Moon's supply of saddles. Ott Moon was based in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and represented the Hermann-Sanford Saddlery Company in Springfield, Missouri. P. J. was well stocked and ready for business.

Two weeks earlier, The Batesville Guard had described the approaching circus as "The giddiest, gayest, glitteringest, grandest galaxy in the land." The show had been almost entirely rebuilt that year—its program, railroad cars, cages and even its wardrobe.

And what a show it promised to be! Five hundred and six people traveling on two special trains. A thousand trained animals. Thirty lions performing in a single act. Elephants, camels, zebras, bears, leopards, sea lions and monkeys. There were high-diving and jumping dogs, sixteen champion dancing horses and, altogether, an astonishing 550 horses and ponies.

The circus would attract not only the citizens of Batesville but also P. J.'s customers from six surrounding counties—and hopefully some new ones.

P. J. had made sure everyone knew about his business and services in advance of the big show. He had a thousand handbills printed for $1.50 and posted them all over town. He even mailed a few to his son Leonard in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, suggesting that he paper his walls with them.

The handbill boasted that P. J. would be open from 4:00 a.m. until 9:30 p.m.

"So don't fail to come in and see Old Reliable when you come to the city."

Actual handbill advertising P J Nolen's Harness and Saddle Shop

The first customer through the door was the head groom for the circus horses. He and P. J. talked for a while about the champion dancing horses before the groom gathered up what he needed to make their tack shine: harness oil, harness polish and metal polish.

He had barely left before a farmer came through the door. He had brought his family into Batesville for the circus, but as long as he was in town, he had business to take care of. P. J. knew him; he had been coming to the shop for years. Today he needed a new set of lines and a repair made to a piece of harness he'd brought along in the wagon.

"Wash, see what you can do with this."

Wash carried the harness to the back of the shop while P. J. waited on another customer. Katherine sat at her desk keeping track of the morning's sales as money changed hands faster than it did on most Thursday mornings.

Then the door opened again.

This time a circus teamster hurried in carrying a broken trace. One of the teams hauling the heavy circus wagons had broken it that morning, and the wagon would have to be ready to move again when the show packed up that night.

"How soon can you fix it?"

P. J. looked at Wash.

Wash looked at the growing pile of work.

They would find a way.

The smells of leather and harness oil filled the shop while outside Main Street grew noisier by the hour. Wagons rattled along the street. Horses clopped past the open door. Children darted by, too excited to walk. Farm families who seldom had reason to spend an entire day in Batesville had come to see the circus, and many of them stopped at P. J. Nolen's while they were in town.

Some came for saddles and harness. Others needed collars, bridles, lines, straps, buckles or a quick repair. A few came in simply because they had seen one of P. J.'s handbills and wanted to see what "Old Reliable" had to offer.

Not every customer came to see P. J.

A circus rider appeared in the doorway holding a boot with a loose heel. She needed it before the afternoon performance.

"Isaac!"

That one belonged to Isaac Ross.

At 10:30, the mile-long circus parade began.

They heard it long before they saw it. The circus had promised six concert and military bands, and the music came rolling down the street ahead of the parade—brass horns, pounding drums and cymbals competing with the shouting of children, the clatter of wagons and the hoofbeats of horses.

For once, even P. J. stopped working.

Isaac came out from his shoe-repair area. Wash put down the harness he was repairing. Katherine abandoned her books. The four of them crowded into the doorway with everyone else along the street.

Then came the circus.

Horses and ponies, elaborate wagons, costumed performers and animals most people in Batesville had only seen in pictures passed before them. Somewhere in that mile-long procession were elephants and camels, while the bands took turns filling the street with music.

P. J. watched the horses.

Of course he watched the horses.

Five hundred and fifty horses and ponies.

That was a lot of leather.

When the last of the mile-long parade disappeared down the street, P. J. turned back toward the shop.

"All right. Show's over. Back to work."

At least for them.

The first circus performance wouldn't begin until 2:00, but the doors opened at 1:00, and gradually the crowds began moving away from Main Street toward the circus grounds.

By noon, Katherine had barely had time to look up from her books. Wash had repairs waiting. Isaac had shoes and boots to mend. P. J. had moved from customer to customer all morning, talking, selling and keeping an eye on everything.

Mrs. Hardy appeared in the doorway carrying lunch from the Arlington. There certainly hadn't been time for P. J. to cross the street and sit down at her table today.

"Thank you, Mrs. Hardy," he said as he took the food. Then he remembered the young man he'd deliberately left sleeping that morning.

"When you go back, tell Luther he's slept long enough. Send him over. We're going to need him."

P. J. had judged that correctly.

It wasn't long before Luther appeared at the shop, rested and ready to work. His father put him to work wherever he was needed. Luther was a good stitcher, and on an ordinary day there was plenty in a harness and saddle shop to keep a good stitcher occupied.

But this wasn't an ordinary day.

At 2:00, the afternoon performance began. Main Street quieted. For the first time all day, P. J. and his crew had a chance to catch up.

Then a woman from the circus hurried through the door carrying a bundle in her arms.

She was one of the dressers responsible for the performers' elaborate new wardrobe. The show's wardrobe had been almost entirely rebuilt that year, but weeks on the road were already taking their toll. Several costumes needed repairs before the evening performance.

Someone had told her there was a stitching machine at Nolen's.

She laid her bundle on the counter and opened it.

Bright fabric, braid and glittering trim spilled across a counter normally covered with leather, buckles and harness fittings.

P. J. looked at the costumes.

Then he looked at Luther.

"Luther, I believe this one's yours."

Soon Luther was guiding a glittering circus costume through a stitching machine in his father's harness shop.

By late afternoon, the circus crowds were pouring back into town after the first performance, and Old Reliable was busy again.

Then another circus man appeared at the door. This one carried something considerably smaller than a horse collar.

A dog collar.

One of the performing dogs had broken it during the afternoon show, and the trainer needed it repaired before the evening performance.

P. J. examined the torn leather. The buckle was still good, but the strap had given way.

"We can fix that."

Compared with the heavy harness Wash had been wrestling with all morning, the little collar hardly looked like work. He cut away the damaged leather, fitted a new piece around the old buckle, punched the holes and stitched it securely into place.

The trainer gave it a hard tug.

"That'll hold."

"It had better," P. J. said. "I've got my reputation to think about."

The trainer tucked the collar away. He had a 7:00 opening to prepare for and an 8:00 performance to put on.

As evening approached, the streets began to empty once again. Families headed back toward the circus grounds for the second show. Somewhere under those acres of tents, the dancing horses would perform, dogs would dive and jump, thirty lions would enter a ring together, and Samson the Aviation Lion would cause his advertised "thrills of amazement."

P. J. Nolen wouldn't see any of it.

Neither would Wash, Isaac, Katherine or Luther.

P. J.'s handbill had made a promise.

Old Reliable would be open until 9:30.

The evening performance was well underway when the last few customers straggled into the shop. One needed a strap. Another had spotted something in the window that morning and stopped on his way home to buy it. P. J. wasn't about to turn away a customer just because it had been a long day.

Finally, 9:30 came.

Wash put away his tools. Isaac gathered up his shoe-repair work. Luther stretched after spending much of the afternoon bent over the stitching machine.

Katherine remained at her desk, adding columns of figures.

P. J. came over and looked at the day's receipts.

It had been a good day.

A very good day.

Tomorrow there would be merchandise to reorder, repairs still waiting to be finished and another ordinary day of business at P. J. Nolen's Harness and Saddle Shop.

Someone remarked that at least circus day was over.

P. J. smiled.

"Don't get too comfortable. Santley's circus is coming next month."

Very likely P J Nolen's shop. It was with the correspondence I inherited from my grandfather and says "picture of shop" on the back. The two men are very likely Ott Moon and Wash Sherrill. UPDATE 8/25/26: Wash Sherrill's great granddaughter, Rebecca Ann Ivy Gorrell has confirmed that the man on the left IS Wash Sherrill.

A Note About This Day

Did September 21, 1916, happen exactly this way?

Almost certainly not.

But much of the world surrounding this imaginary day was very real.

P. J. Nolen really operated a harness and saddle business in Batesville. Isaac Ross repaired shoes. Wash Sherrill worked alongside P. J., doing repair work and helping sell the goods. Katherine Smythe kept his books. Luther was a good stitcher. P. J. boarded at the Arlington Hotel, corresponded regularly with his son Leonard in Sand Springs, and advertised his business with handbills.

And the Al G. Barnes Circus really did come to Batesville on September 21, 1916, promising a mile-long morning parade, six concert and military bands, two performances and hundreds upon hundreds of animals.

What I don't know is whether a circus groom bought harness polish from P. J., whether a rider handed Isaac a broken boot, whether Luther stitched a glittering costume, or whether a performing dog needed its collar repaired.

Those parts I imagined.

I have spent years collecting names, dates and records for my ancestors. But P. J. left me something more. Through his letters to my grandfather Leonard, he left little glimpses of his business, his employees, his customers, his worries, his successes and everyday life in Batesville.

So for this week's prompt, instead of telling you about P. J. Nolen, I decided to spend a day with him.

I hope you enjoyed the circus.