Young and Love: A Journey Through American History

By John Young

Where did we come from?  It's a question asked by many Americans, whose families originated all over the world.  With a master's in history and a lifetime of experience as a journalist, investigator, and analyst, I spent years researching the lineage of the Young and Love families.

I discovered some remarkable ancestors who helped build America.

From the mid-1600s, my Young and Love ancestors moved from Europe to America, then west in search of land, opportunity, and freedom. Most were farmers who struggled to survive in a sometimes hostile wilderness.

My research took me on a journey through American history, with lessons from which Americans can learn as we move into the future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Young
• Release date: Feb 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781637958735

John Young

After graduating high school in Clovis, New Mexico, John Young joined the U.S. Army Security Agency in 1968 and served one tour in Vietnam. Following his discharge in 1972, he attended the University of Arizona, where he majored in journalism and worked as a reporter for the Arizona Daily Star, during and after college. In the 1980s, he was a writer for the U.S. Information Agency and a reporter for the Voice of America in Washington, D.C.  Later, he became a police officer and private investigator in New Mexico.  After the 9/11 attacks, he joined the FBI as a counter-terrorism analyst and worked at the National Counter Terrorism Center.  He subsequently moved over to the Defense Intelligence Agency and was trained in operations as a human intelligence collector. He served two tours in Iraq with the Joint Special Operations Command, working missions targeting Al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.  After Iraq, John was an instructor for U.S. Army Intelligence at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona until he retired. His first novel, Indian Country, won an award in the Arizona Literary contest and was subsequently published by Ingram & Elliott. John has published two other novels about terrorism and crime: The Nexus and Princess of Poland.

Book preview

By

John Timothy Young

Copyright  ©  2021 John T. Young

Published by John T. Young

––––––––

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any other means, electronic mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the permission of the  publisher.

Library of Congress Control Number: TXu 2-206-941

ISBN:  978-1-63732203-1

––––––––

Subjects: U.S. History. Biography. Genealogy.

Iris Love and John E. Young, 1940

Dedication

To my uncles, Jack and Dan Love, who gave their lives during World War II while defending America against Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan.

Introduction

While growing up in rural New Mexico in the 1950s, I often wondered about my origins. Was I English, German, Scots-Irish? All three? My grandfathers were already dead before I was born, and my grandmothers and parents offered only scant information. I was told that the Youngs came from Texas and the Loves were from Mississippi.

After years of research, I can now offer some insight into the past of many generations of the Young and Love families of New Mexico and their origins in America and Europe.

I endeavored to verify facts about my ancestors through records located in libraries and databases throughout the country and in Europe. All of my genealogical information is sourced. By reading numerous books and scouring internet sites containing property deeds, wills, census, immigration, birth, marriage, and death records, I managed to go back centuries in time to early America and Europe.

I strived for accuracy in writing this history, but I do not claim perfection. Whenever I had doubts about the veracity of information, I offered my own analysis to clarify it. I also provided extensive historical context to events occurring during the lives of my ancestors. 

I have a M.A. in history from the University of New Mexico, and I have completed  numerous courses with the National Genealogical Society. Throughout my careers in journalism, law enforcement and intelligence, I conducted extensive research and analyzed information from a variety of sources. I also recorded interviews with my parents, John and Iris Young, in 1993.

Based on my research and a DNA test, I learned that my ancestors come from Scotland, England, Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Italy, and France. Most of them arrived in America in the 17th and the 18th  centuries.

This incredible lineage of people worked, loved, fought and died while moving from Europe to America and across the country. Most were farmers who struggled to survive in a sometimes hostile wilderness. One was an indentured Scottish prisoner of war sold by the British after he was captured in battle.

Many of my ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War and in most wars since; some of them died in combat. Most of the women gave birth to numerous children, and some of those mothers died in childbirth. Through my research, I have come to view my ancestors as real people, not just names and dates on genealogy charts. 

By learning their stories, I acquired a keener appreciation for the sacrifices made by all those generations of people who have helped make this country great. My ancestors endured many hardships as they moved westward in search of land and freedom, and their courage has left a legacy that should inspire future generations.

I have focused on the Young and Love families, but I have also included details on the many other families that are intertwined with them: Stockard, Sprinkle, Rogers, Owens, Payne, Olinger, Parsons, and Stewart, to name just a few. Those of us alive today are the sum of many different lines of families.

My challenge was winnowing out which individuals not to include in this narrative. I located more than 10,000 people to whom I am related. After years of research, I finally decided that I would never be able to complete this project unless I made some hard decisions.  I decided to start in the West and work eastward.

The story begins in New Mexico.

1

YOUNGS IN NEW MEXICO

My grandfather, John Arthur Young, left Denton, Texas in 1907 and arrived in New Mexico territory on a wagon. He applied for a homestead grant on 160 acres about half a mile from where Harvey and Martha Sprinkle arrived with their daughter, Etta Julia Sprinkle in early 1909 from Pennington Gap, Virginia. John married Etta in 1914.

John Arthur Young

Birth 21 October 1878 ● Denton County, Texas

Death 23 September 1948 ● McAlister, New Mexico

Etta Julia Sprinkle

Birth 7 October 1881 ● Jonesville, Lee County, Virginia

Death 17 December 1967 ● McAlister, Quay County, New Mexico

In McAlister during the 1950s, I watched my grandmother Etta Sprinkle Young churn butter, make lye soap and wash her clothes by hand on a washboard. My parents had a washing machine in our house across the road, but Etta did not want to impose on my mother. Etta was independent and set in her ways.

Up by 5:00 a.m. most days, Etta sat behind the counter in our family general store until her death in 1967. She never took a vacation nor owned a TV or car. She was, for me, a living bridge back to the 19th century.  Etta was born before automobiles, airplanes or the radio were invented.

During her early decades in McAlister, Etta taught school at the McAlister Baptist church, which burned down in the 1940s. She read the Bible almost every night. She also kept a bottle of Old Crow whiskey hidden in her bedroom closet. Etta tried to keep her whiskey a secret, but I sometimes saw my father buying it for her behind the closed curtain of the liquor department of the Sands-Dorsey drug store in Tucumcari.  Of course, I never asked her about it, and she never told me. 

When I was four or five, Etta read to me from Grimm’s Fairy Tales. She would sometimes make me a peanut butter, banana and honey sandwich.

Etta told me she had come out West on a train with her siblings and her parents, Harvey and Martha Sprinkle, from Pennington Gap, Virginia. The train stopped in Farwell, Texas, where they loaded their goods onto a wagon and headed northwest across the border into New Mexico territory to their homestead plot, near McAlister. 

Etta J Sprinkle

Etta Julia Sprinkle, age 2

Barely a village with a new post office and a handful of residents in 1909, McAlister was a farming and ranching community located about 60 miles from Farwell, Texas in an area known as the Llano Estacado, also called the Staked Plains. The elevation ranges up to 5,000 feet, and the area received just enough rainfall for farmers and ranchers to scrape out a living raising wheat and cattle.

The Llano Estacado lies south of the Canadian River in northwest Texas and northeast New Mexico. The Pecos River marks the western boundary, which skirts Ft. Sumner, where Billy the Kid was shot to death by Sheriff Pat Garrett in 1881.

Llano Estacado

McAlister lies about 25 miles above the O in New Mexico on the map above. The area is notable for its long, hot summers and cold winters. Just east across the Texas border, south of Amarillo is Palo Duro Canyon, where Commanche war chief Quanah Parker held out against the U.S. cavalry until 1876. Before their defeat, the Comanches roamed throughout northeastern New Mexico, including the McAlister area.

When Spanish conquistador Francisco Coronado traversed the region in 1541 he wrote, I reached some plains so vast, that I did not find their limit anywhere I went, although I traveled over them for more than 300 leagues.[1] A league is the distance a person could walk in an hour.

In 1852, U.S. Army General Randolph Marcy led an expedition through the Staked Plains. He wrote that it was a land where no man, either savage or civilized permanently abodes...a treeless plain, desolate waste of uninhabitable solitude, which always has been, and must continue uninhabited forever.[2]

Americans hungry for land believed otherwise.

New Mexico territory offered free land under the 1862 Homestead Act, which granted 160 acres to anyone willing to live on the land for five years. Among those settlers were Harvey and Martha Sprinkle, who were accompanied by their daughter, Etta, my grandmother. At age 28 on their arrival in late 1908 or early 1909, Etta was an adult, entitled to her own homestead of 160 acres.  Anyone over the age of 21 was eligible.

Her older brother, Emmett, 35, arrived with his wife, Mary Louella and two sons and filed on a nearby homestead for his 160 acres. Etta’s sisters, Anna May, 13, Bertie, 15,  also accompanied  the family to New Mexico. A married sister, Dora Sprinkle Dodson, 25, arrived with her husband, Mitchell Dodson, who was awarded 160 acres on 14 October 1915.

Plains-Mesa grass now covers most of the ground. Walking around the Sprinkle homestead site, one can detect the stubs of ancient cedar posts used for corrals and a few strands of rusted barbed wire. The remnants of an old windmill are still visible. Coyotes roam the pastures at night, and a prairie dog town now covers some of the area. My grandparents initially lived in dugouts, which have filled with soil over the years.

My father, John Elmer Young, recalled spending a night in the Sprinkle dugout with his grandparents when he was a young boy. He said the dugout was one large room with a dining table, a coal-burning stove, and a bed. The outhouse was nearby, above ground. Kerosene lamps provided the only light, and thick sheets of paper covered the walls. A large, wooden, sloping door guarded the entrance. He said everyone was concerned that rattlesnakes would try to slip into the dugout.

The ruins of Emmett B. Sprinkle’s homestead lie about half a mile to the east of Harvey and Martha’s old dugout. In the 1960s, an old granary, a water cistern, and a rusted-out car were all that remained; they have since disappeared.

In 1898, Emmett served as a private in the 3rd Virginia Infantry Regiment during the Spanish American War.[3] The regiment did not fight overseas. Emmett died on 9 Apr 1932, at age 57.

In 1930, his son Harvey Paul Sprinkle, age 21, died in a fire while attending a business college in Abilene, Texas. According to his death certificate, Harvey was trapped in a burning building and suffocated.[4]  Harvey was born on 26 March 1909, in McAlister, shortly after his parents arrived in New Mexico. One of six children, Harvey was buried in nearby Melrose.  He was the first Sprinkle of my lineage known to have attended college.

The Sprinkles already had experienced family tragedy. In Virginia between 1877 and 1894, four of Etta and Emmett’s siblings died, ages 4, 5, 9, and 13. The causes of their deaths are unknown, but they likely died from various childhood illnesses.

On 27 March 1914, Harvey Sprinkle was awarded 320 acres on Sections Three and Four, Range 30.[5]  Since his daughter, Etta, as a storeowner was considered a head of household, the Sprinkles were awarded two sites of 160 acres each. The Sprinkle application for an enlarged homestead was filed on 19 Feb 1909. In addition, Emmet Sprinkle was awarded homestead land near McAlister on 4 Apr 1914.

In the 1910 U.S. Census, Etta was listed as a head of household, joined by her sister, Anna May, 13.  Etta listed her occupation as merchant.[6] The 1910 U.S. Census shows John Arthur Young as a single man living in Quay County, New Mexico, and the 1920 Census lists him as married to Etta.[7][8] John and Etta were married in on 14 May 1914 in Farwell, Texas.[9]

I never met my paternal grandfather, John, who died two years before I was born. He lived in a dugout about a mile south of the village of McAlister. When the Sprinkles arrived two years later, they created a dugout about half a mile away from his. They lived in dugouts because there were no trees to cut down for wood and no lumber could be bought locally.

On March 15, 1912, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management awarded John A. Young 160 acres on Section Ten, Range 30, near McAlister.[10]  It is likely, therefore, that John A. Young arrived in New Mexico in early 1907, based on the five-year waiting time required to own the land.

I’ve tried to imagine how difficult it would have been for my grandfather to venture out alone in a wagon into the New Mexico territory, especially during late winter.  At age 29, he apparently didn’t know anyone in the area, and he had to dig a hole in the ground to survive. His only companions would have been his horses.

When Etta and her parents arrived in McAlister in 1909, they found a general store in McAlister owned by Alton McAlister, who named the village after himself. The store had a hitching post out front, because automobiles were new contraptions that were not often found in New Mexico territory. The dirt roads that intersected in McAlister were mainly wagon tracks and would have been difficult terrain for the Ford Model A, which began production in 1903.

Etta bought the McAlister general store from Alton McAlister. I recall seeing an old letter regarding a loan Etta obtained from a bank in Dallas for purchase of the store, but I don’t remember the amount.  I believe that Etta and her parents stopped in Dallas to visit the bank during their journey to New Mexico. I don’t know if she had already contacted Alton McAlister about buying his store.

Original McAlister store, approximately 1909

McAlister and his wife, Mary moved on to Arizona, and later, California. According to my parents, Harvey and Martha Sprinkle continued to live in their dugout, while Etta lived in family quarters in back of the store.

Alton McAlister was awarded 160 acres of land in Quay County under the Homestead Act on 01 Oct 1908, according to U.S. General Land Office Records.[11]  Given the five-year waiting period for the Homestead Act, he likely arrived in New Mexico in 1903, the year that Quay County was founded. The county seat, Tucumcari, is 36 miles north of McAlister.

Mary McAlister, Alton’s wife,  became the village’s first postmaster on 02 Aug 1907.[12] At age 54, McAlister and his wife, Mary, were living on Imperial Blvd. in San Diego, California, according to the 1920 U.S. Census.[13]

After the McAlisters moved on in 1909, Etta assumed the position of postmaster. Her appointment document, signed by F.H. Hitchcock, Postmaster General, is made out to Etta J. Sprinkle, in Quay County, State of, Territory of New Mexico, on 9 June 1909. The State of was crossed out.[14]

The ambiguity in the printing likely reflected the political debates of the time, because New Mexico was applying for statehood, which was granted in 1912. The territory was divided in half, with the western side becoming the state of Arizona.

After the McAlisters left, Etta and her parents tore down the old store, located on the south side of the road. They built another, larger store on the north side of the road, which later became State Highway 312. 

Second McAlister Store, 1930s

In front of the new store, Etta and John installed gas pumps to service the cars and trucks that slowly began to filter into the area. The first cars traveled over dirt roads, because paved roads were not built through McAlister until the mid-1930s, and there was no electricity until 1937.

Etta would live and work in that store until 1950, when she built a new one back across the road, on the site of the original McAlister store. She retired as postmaster in 1951, but the tiny cubicle of a post office still exists in the store, which ceased operation in 1977, ten years after she died.

A stuffed owl, which still perches on a stick just over the entrance to the pine-walled post office, had flown into the windshield of my father’s truck in the late 1940s. A rotary telephone rested on the wall of the post office and was available for use by anyone, at a time when phones were still uncommon in the area. We were on a party line, so if you picked up the phone you could sometimes hear an ongoing conversation from a neighbor.

Etta Sprinkle Young died from pneumonia in 1967 at age 86 after breaking her hip during a fall. She was buried next to her husband in the