Changing Clothes: A Journey of Discovery: The Life and Times of Thomas Benton Kelly

By Ben Kelly

David Franklin Stark was born in Highland County, Ohio in 1851. His father moved the family to a farm near Lexington, Illinois in 1857. A long economic depression began in 1873 with a banking collapse and thousands of men became unemployed, lost farms, and generally became indigent. David left home looking for work and ended up in Nashville, Tennessee where, out of desperation, he joins the army in March 1875.

However, family history has him as a cowboy on the Great Western Cattle Trail for some of that time. To get him from 1875 to 1887, the author has created people, conversations, letters, and places to move him from Nashville to Ozark County. All persons and events that cannot be documented are referenced in the end notes. Additional facts may come to light that suggest a different scenario than the one purposed by the author.

He deserted on August 14,1875 from Nashville, Tennessee. He was never captured nor court martialed. He is never again to appear in official records as David Franklin Stark. In 1887, David Franklin Stark appears in Ozark County Records as Thomas Benton Kelly when he marries Missouri Jane Sheppard Smith. It is not known what he did between 1875 and 1887.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667817743

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Changing Clothes

A Journey of Discovery: The Life and Times of Thomas Benton Kelly

© 2021, Ben Kelly.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Print ISBN: 978-1-66781-7-736

eBook ISBN: 978-1-66781-7-743

Contents

DEDICATION

PROLOGUE

Chapter 1

August 12, 1875, Nashville, Tennessee

DAVID FRANKLIN STARK: The Lost Son

Chapter 2

January 1875, Lexington, McLean County, Illinois

David Franklin Stark Leaves Home

Chapter 3

August 15, 1875, Ozark County, Missouri

Missouri Jane Sheppard

Chapter 4

May 1875, somewhere in Alabama

Innocence Lost

Chapter 5

August 10, 1875, Lexington, McLean County, Illinois

A Mother’s Heart

Chapter 6

August 13-14, 1875, Nashville, Tennessee

David Deserts

Chapter 7

September 25, 1875, Lexington, McLean County, Illinois

News of David’s Desertion Reaches Lexington

Chapter 8

Late August 1875, From Memphis, Tennessee to Cape Girardeau, Missouri

David Franklin Stark Becomes Thomas Benton Kelly

Chapter 9

September 25, 1875, Lexington, McLean County, Illinois

William Stark Confronts Fidelia Ann

Chapter 10

Late August 1875 Saint Louis, Missouri

Thomas Benton Kelly Is Employed by the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad

Chapter 11

September 26, 1875, Lexington, McLean County, Illinois

Unconditional Love

Chapter 12

Late August through November 1875, Franklin, Missouri

Thomas Benton Kelly Connects with Jeremiah Trout

Chapter 13

Late fall of 1875 and the winter of 1876

On the King Ranch outside Corpus Christi, Texas

Chapter 14

Spring 1877, Texas to Kansas

Riding Ramrod

Chapter 15

Summer 1878, Ozark County, Missouri

Missouri Jane Seduces John Dell

Chapter 16

October 1879, Rockbridge, Ozark County, Missouri

Jane’s Teacher Lobbies Her Father for Jane to Continue Her Education

Chapter 17

Spring 1880, Ozark County, Missouri

Missouri Jane Experiences Loss

Chapter 18

Spring 1882, Ozark County, Missouri

Missouri Jane Meets Matthew Smith

Chapter 19

1885, West Plains, Missouri

Thomas Benton Kelly Reconnects with Jeremiah Trout

Chapter 20

1885, West Plains, Missouri

Thomas Benton Kelly Meets Missouri Jane Smith

Chapter 21

1885, Springfield, Missouri

Thomas Benton Kelly and Paul Spenser Reconnect

Chapter 22

1885, Ozark County, Missouri

Matthew and Missouri Jane Smith Split Permanently

Chapter 23

March 1886, Ozark County, Missouri

Thomas Benton Kelly Proposes to Missouri Jane Smith

Chapter 24

Spring 1887, West Plains, Missouri to Cameron, Indian Territory

Thomas Benton Kelly Settles the Family in Cameron, Indian Territory

Chapter 25

1892, Oklahoma, Territory

The Cheyenne/Arapaho Land Opening

Chapter 26

Spring 1894, Custer County, Oklahoma

Thomas Benton Kelly Enters Land

Chapter 27

1903, Custer County, Oklahoma Territory

Thomas Benton and Missouri Jane Sell the Farm

Chapter 28

December 1912, Fellsmere, Florida

The New Frontier is East and South

Chapter 29

Spring 1915, Fellsmere, Florida

Grandfather Thomas Benton

Chapter 30

April 29, 1916, Fellsmere, Florida

Thomas Benton Kelly Dies

Chapter 31

Early Spring 1918, Prague, Oklahoma

Kern Riley and Family Return To Oklahoma

EPILOGUE

End Notes

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the descendants of Thomas Benton Kelly (1851–1916) and of Missouri Jane Sheppard Smith Kelly (1865–1924). Thomas Benton and Missouri Jane were imperfect people living in imperfect times. Their adult lives spanned a period from the eighteen seventies until the early part of the nineteen hundreds, a time of great change in America.

For those readers who are not descendants of Thomas Benton and Missouri Jane Kelly, this story provides a look into the lives of ordinary people during one of the most extraordinary times in our history, the last half of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth century.

It is people like Thomas Benton and Missouri Jane who make up the great majority of the people today: ordinary people who do not gain fame or notoriety, but who fall in love, who marry and raise families, and who work and pay taxes. These are the people who insure the future of our country. My hope is that our descendants, our children and grandchildren, better know, understand and appreciate Thomas Benton and Missouri Jane Kelly, their lives and times.

For Thomas Benton Kelly, there are twelve years between 1875 and 1887 where there are no public records of him. Somewhere in that time he changed his name from David Franklin Stark to Thomas Benton Kelly. The only historical hints of him from that time are family stories. I have attempted to create a narrative to get him from 1875 to 1887 following possible time lines from the family stories and events on either side of those twelve years.

My story is only one possible scenario. Please do not take the scenario that I have created as hard fact. Facts may come to light in the future that create a different scenario altogether or may follow my scenario with much more accurate detail.

This publication is neither strictly a non-fiction history nor a fictional account. It includes both actual history and some fictional letters, conversations, people and events.

This fact places a burden on the reader to distinguish between fact and fiction. As you read on, you accept this responsibility. My hope is that you enjoy the story and internalize the facts.

Ben Kelly

Saint Peterburg, Florida

November 16, 2021

PROLOGUE

My name is Ben Riley Kelly. My father is Keith Kimble Kelly. Keith Kimble Kelly’s father is Kern Riley Kelly. Kern Riley Kelly’s father is Thomas Benton Kelly.

Thomas Benton Kelly is my great grandfather, yet no one knows anything about him. It is as if he suddenly appeared as an adult out of nowhere, with no birth family, no history and no connections. I began a search hoping to fill in these blanks.

My purpose in relating the life and times of Thomas Benton Kelly, as I discovered them is twofold:

I wish to flesh-out him, his wife and his children; to make them real flesh and blood people living in a specific time and place.

To adhere, as closely as possible, to known facts and events, and to speculate within the limits of those facts and events only. All characters invented to move the story along are identified as fictional in the end notes. All correspondence and conversations are imagined.

In August 2005, my wife gave me a birthday present; participation in a National Geographic YDNA project. I swabbed my cheek and sent the sample in to the project. In November 2005, I received the results, tracing my genetic ancestors to the British Isles from Northern Europe, to Northern Europe from the Middle East, and to the Middle East from Africa about 60,000 years ago. In December 2008, I upgraded my Family Tree Maker program and began adding to my research on family history. I was particularly interested in finding more about my great grandfather Thomas Benton Kelly.

About the same time that I participated in the National Geographic DNA Project, I joined Ancestory.com and was invited to submit my YDNA results to its data base. My results turned up various surnames but no Kelly’s. I had joined the Kelly YDNA Family group and found only one match from Ireland. We determined that, if we were related, our common ancestor would have been in the period prior to surnames, probably more than twenty generations before us.

The surname that appeared most often in my 12 loci YDNA results was Stark. I authorized an analysis identifying 37 Loci. All the closest matches were named Stark, and all descended from Aaron Stark (1608-1685) from Connecticut. In addition to the Kelly YDNA Family group, I also joined the Stark YDNA Family Group and there found many descendants of Aaron Stark who were related to me within eight to ten generations.¹ I authorized and paid for a 66 Loci YDNA analysis with the expectation that I might receive more specific YDNA data. All 66 Loci data revealed descendants of Aaron Stark.

I was not totally surprised to be genetically related to the Stark family. In a letter to me dated June 21, 1983, from my Aunt Leola Kelly Swearengin, my father’s youngest sister, she stated:

We found some information that you might be interested in. When we were at Wally’s 2 or 3 years ago, I copied this out of an old Bible that Aunt Effie had given to Wally. [Wally is the daughter of Mary Effie Kelly Beard, Thomas Benton Kelly’s daughter.] Missouri Jane Sheppard, born January 8, 1865. Died November 22, 1924. I [Leola] was two years old in 1924. Jonathan F. (Franklin?) Stark was born Jan 5, 1851, died April 17, 1916. I [Leola] wasn’t here yet. [He] changed his name to Thomas Benton Kelly. Verified by Effie Mae Beard.

Also, in 1983 I spent some time with my father, Keith Kimble Kelly. He lived in Bradenton, Florida at the time. Independently of Leola’s information from Aunt Effie’s Bible, he told a story that his grandfather, Thomas Benton Kelly, was really a Stark from Illinois.

With my YDNA results confirming that I was a descendant of Aaron Stark, I proceeded to trace all his male relatives.

After eliminating all the other male descendants of Aaron Stark for age, location, spouses, etc., I found only one, the family of William A. Stark was left as a possible candidate. William’s first son Jonathon Lloyd Stark was born in Ohio in June 1848. He was not really a candidate to be Thomas Benton Kelly because of the year of his birth, but his brother David Franklin Stark was born in 1851, the same year as Thomas Benton Kelly. I was able to eliminate all others known male descendants of Aaron Stark who were possible candidates to be Thomas Benton Kelly.

I have been able to connect David Franklin Stark through direct line of descent to Aaron Stark.

David Franklin Stark was found in the 1860 and 1870 Census of the United States as a nine-year-old and a nineteen-year-old living with his family in McLean County, Illinois. Could this be Thomas Benton Kelly? Was this his birth family? Was there any record of him after 1870? If David Franklin Stark became Thomas Benton Kelly, why would he change his name?

In 2010, an Ancestory.com record search led me to military records for David Franklin Stark. He joined the United States Army on March 11, 1875, in Nashville, Tennessee and signed for a five-year tour of duty. Five months later, on August 14, 1875, twenty-four-year-old David Franklin Stark deserted from Company G, 16th Infantry Regiment of the United States Army. Several questions arose: What was he doing in Nashville? Why did he join the Army? What was life like in the army? Why did he desert? David Franklin Stark disappears from all official records after August 14, 1875.

I read books on the economy of that period and the reconstruction army in order to understand the circumstances in which David Franklin Stark found himself. The economy of the time created desperate circumstances for David Franklin, his family and the country as a whole. In the year 1873, the banking system collapsed, and the economy sank into a deep depression that lasted for several years. Businesses, including railroads, failed. Farmers lost their farms. The country experienced new levels of poverty, homelessness and broken families.

These events affected the Stark family. In the 1870 United States Federal Census, David Franklin’s father, William A. Stark, was living on his farm and was one of the wealthier men in McLean County, Illinois. In the 1880 United States Federal Census, William A. Stark was living in the Village of Lexington working as a harness maker. As a young man in Highland County, Ohio in the 1850 United States Federal Census, William A. Stark listed his occupation as harness maker. Had William lost the farm in the crash of 1873? Had David left a crowded home and travelled to Highland, Clermont and Brown Counties in Ohio where his mother’s and father’s families lived in hopes of finding work? When no work materialized there, had he, and perhaps his young male relatives and friends as well, traveled to Nashville in search of work? Upon not finding steady work in Nashville and discouraged at their prospects, had some of them, including David Franklin, taken the only job available, enlistment in the United States Army? Most enlistment at the time was with a particular unit stationed in a particular place. The Army unit stationed in Nashville at that time was Company G, 16th Infantry Regiment of the United States Army.

From books on the reconstruction army, I came to understand the circumstances that David Franklin faced as an enlisted man in 1875. Desertion was a huge problem for the reconstruction army. One reason was low pay—an enlistment for five years earned the soldier $2.00 per month. The army fed, clothed, armed and sheltered the soldier, but charged him for his ammunition, his sundry items and his tobacco. When David deserted, he had not been paid consistently his two dollars a month for his service since his enlistment five months earlier. The records show that on August 14, 1875, David owed the army $3.96 for ordinance and the quartermaster, he owed $2.29 for supplies for a total of $6.25, and that David was due $6.50 that was deposited for him, presumably for back pay.

Other reasons for desertion were poor quality food, harsh discipline, and the fact that the reconstruction army was an unpopular police force in the defeated south.

Nashville and the State of Tennessee were not under martial law at the time of David’s enlistment. However, his unit was often called to reinforce United States Army Units maintaining martial law in portions of the Third and Fourth Military Districts composed of the States of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia.

Reconstruction actually began before the Civil War ended. On January 4, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) and Fifteenth Amendment (1870) soon followed. The Fourteenth Amendment gave citizenship to everyone born in the United States and gave equal protection under the law to everyone. The Fifteenth Amendment prohibited the denial or abridgement of the rights of any citizen based on race, color or previous servitude.

After the Civil War drew to a close and President Lincoln had been assassinated, Vice-President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee assumed the office of President. A leading Unionist during the Civil War, Johnson, after assuming the presidency, reversed himself and favored the former Confederate States. Johnson, along with Democrats, promoted allowing the returning states of the south to decide the rights and fates of the former slaves in the south. Thus, began the contentious Reconstruction period which lasted from 1865 to 1877.

With radical Republicans in control of Congress, the Reconstruction Acts were passed on July 19, 1867. The first Reconstruction Act placed ten of the eleven former Confederate States, all but Tennessee, under military control.

Ulysses S. Grant succeeded Andrew Johnson as President in 1868 and served two terms, until 1876. Under his presidency, he put military pressure on the Southern States. The Freedman Bureau was organized, and the influence of former slaves grew as many were elected to state legislatures and to Congress. Grant refused to run for a third term.

The presidential race to succeed President Grant between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel T. Tilden resulted in a contested election. The electoral commission, made up of eight Republicans and seven Democrats, voted to accept Rutherford B. Hayes as President-elect in the election of 1876 by 185 to 184 electoral votes. To win Democratic Party support for this decision, the Republicans promised to withdraw the last of federal troops from the south. By deserting Tilden, the Democrats gained political rule of the south. Republicans had quietly, and shamefully, given up their fight for racial equality and blacks’ rights in the south. Reconstruction ended in 1877 and Jim Crow began in earnest. The Ku Klux Klan, which had been driven underground in 1872, was resurrected in public life, and again intimidated and murdered blacks with impunity.

White supremacy reigned and still does. With the Republican party’s southern strategy, Republican party candidates Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, changed the Democratic Jim Crow south into the Conservative Republican Party Jim Crow south. As evidenced in the aftermath of the 2020 election, the Republican Jim Crow south is alive and well as southern states rushed to enact voting restrictions that affect people of color adversely.

Many soldiers of the Reconstruction Era army who deserted headed west and re-enlisted in a different unit under another name. After his desertion, David could not return to Ohio, where he had lived before coming to Nashville, nor could he go to his family home in Illinois, for fear of being caught. Messages would have been sent to law enforcement in those locales by telegraph. Any deserter returning home would be found and prosecuted.

Where David went is a mystery. David Franklin Stark disappears from all official records after August 14, 1875. The only mention of him in any writing occurs in 1909 when he is mentioned in his mother’s obituary as one of her four living children—David of Oklahoma. Thomas Benton Kelly’s birth family knew him as David. There is no evidence that they knew his new name of Thomas Benton Kelly. Even if they knew he had changed his name to Thomas Benton Kelly, it would have been natural for them to refer to him as David.

What happened to David Franklin Stark between August 14, 1875, and 1909? Where did he go? When did he change his name? When did he go to Missouri and why? How did he meet Missouri Jane? For hints to the answers for these questions we have public records, family stories and a newspaper article from the Fellsmere Farmer published in 1912.

Thomas Benton Kelly, my great grandfather, does not exist in any record, official or otherwise, before he marries Missouri Jane Sheppard Smith in Ozark County, Missouri in 1887—no birth certificate, no census, no family records, no court documents, no immigration record. Others appearing in official records with the name Thomas Benton Kelly existed in relatively the same time frame; however, they were all present in later records that eliminated them as matches to our Thomas Benton Kelly.

After his marriage to Missouri Jane Sheppard Smith, Thomas Benton Kelly began regularly appearing in official records. In 1888, Earl Whitney Kelly was born to Missouri Jane and Thomas Benton Kelly in West Plains, Howell County, Missouri. In 1890, Kern Riley Kelly was born to Missouri Jane and Thomas Benton Kelly in Cameron, La Flore County in Indian Territory. On May 14, 1896, Thomas Benton Kelly filed on a homestead in Custer County, Oklahoma Territory. Thomas Benton Kelly is listed in the 1900 Census and in the 1910 Census in Oklahoma. In 1904, Thomas Benton and Missouri Jane Kelly sold their homestead and moved first to Butler and then to Elk City, Oklahoma. The transfer deed is recorded in Custer County, Oklahoma.

In December 1911, Thomas Benton Kelly moved his family, consisting of twelve-year-old Grace, ten-year-old Mary Effie, and six-year-old Nellie, to a twenty-acre citrus farm in Fellsmere, Florida. The deed to the farm is recorded in St. Lucie County, Florida. They travelled to Florida from Oklahoma by train. Accompanying Thomas Benton and his family were then twenty-two-year-old son Kern Riley Kelly, Kern’s seventeen-year-old wife Mary Victoria Pevehouse Kelly and their six-month-old son, my father, Keith Kimble Kelly. Thomas Benton Kelly’s death certificate states that he died April 29, 1916 and is buried in Fellsmere Cemetery.

After his death, what happen to his family? His daughters, Grace and Nellie are found in the 1920 Census living together in Kansas City, Missouri. His daughter, Mary Effie married Charles Jouett Beard and is found in Louisiana with her husband and son in the 1920 United States Federal Census. Missouri Jane Kelly is found in Joplin, Missouri living with her sister, Nettie, Nettie’s husband, Billie McBride, and her brother, William A. Sheppard. Missouri Jane married Ira McIntosh, her third husband, after 1920 and lived in rural Oklahoma outside of Miami, Ottawa County, Oklahoma until she moved in with her daughter Mary Effie Beard in Lexa, Phillips County, Arkansas, where she died on November 25, 1924. Thomas Benton Kelly’s son, Kern Riley, and his family returned to Prague, Oklahoma and eventually settled on a farm near Prague in 1918. There are many official records pertaining to Thomas Benton Kelly and his family from 1887 on.

On his Florida death certificate, Missouri Jane listed Thomas Benton’s father as William Kelly and his mother as Ann Campbell. David Franklin Stark’s father was William Stark. His mother was Fidelia Ann Kimble, her last name being the same as my father’s middle name. There is no likely candidate to be Thomas Benton’s father who is named in any record as William Kelly.

After David Franklin deserted in August 1875, he had to assume another name. How did he choose one? He had an older cousin by marriage who lived west of Chicago who was a hero in the Civil War. His name was Thomas Benton Kelly. After the war, Cousin Thomas Benton Kelly moved back to his ancestral home in New England. Could this be where David Franklin came up with the name Thomas Benton Kelly? With Cousin Thomas Benton back east, it is doubtful the two men would have crossed paths after the war, a distinct advantage for David Franklin.

David Franklin Stark (Thomas Benton Kelly) was listed as a blacksmith’s apprentice in the 1870 Census. In the army records he is listed as hostler. A hostler could have been one employed in stabling horses, or one that serviced engines for the railroad. It is likely that David Franklin Stark worked as a hostler for the railroad in the Lexington area before he left home to find work. After his desertion, it is likely that David Franklin (Thomas Benton) worked for the railroad in Missouri. Some railroads were expanding and some of the few jobs available were in railroad construction.

Later, he worked as a cowboy herding cattle from Texas to Dodge City, Kansas from 1876 through 1883, perhaps 1886, before heading back to Missouri. In his travels he met Missouri Jane who was estranged from her husband, Matthew P. Smith. Missouri Jane had two sons by her first husband, Matthew P. Smith, Albert and James Smith. Thomas Benton and Missouri Jane were married in 1887 and Albert and James Smith were raised by Thomas Benton. While in Cameron, Indian Territory, Thomas Benton Kelly most certainly worked for the railroad.

My father told me that Matthew P. and his brothers drove Thomas and Missouri Jane to leave Missouri and that is why they landed in Cameron. Instead, I believe that he was employed by the Frisco Railroad in Cameron. From newspaper articles in Gainesville, Missouri at the time, it is obvious that there was bad blood between Missouri Jane’s father, Harvey Sheppard, and her former husband, Matthew P. Smith. I imagine that Thomas Benton Kelly’s move to Indian Territory was in part to get away from the Smith family.

What came between Matthew P. Smith and Missouri Jane? We know some detail from the newspaper articles and from Albert Smith’s daughter, Faye Smith. How Thomas Benton and Missouri Jane met and courted is conjecture. The characters of Paul Spenser and Jeremiah Trout from Atlantic and Pacific, the Kansas City, Fort Scott and Gulf, and the Frisco Railroads have no basis in fact but were invented to move the story along and fill in some detail about a period in the life of Thomas Benton for which we have little more than stories. The cattleman Richard King founded the King Ranch outside Corpus Christi, Texas, in the area to the west of Corpus Christi which is now the city of Kingsville, Texas, and is a very real historic character. There is no basis in fact that Thomas Benton Kelly knew him or worked for him. King provides, however, a vehicle for a very real experience in the life of Thomas Benton Kelly. Thomas Benton was a cowboy along the Great Western Cattle trail.

Thomas Benton’s near-death at the hand of a band of Native Americans on a cattle drive is based on a story told by Thomas Benton to his grandson, Keith Kimble Kelly, my father. My father also confirmed that his grandfather reported having participated in cattle drives along the Great Western Trail.

In a newspaper story in the Fellsmere Farmer in 1912, Thomas Benton told of the following experiences:

He was a Confederate gunner on the Monitor in the Civil War. I do not believe this. He would have been 10 years old at the outbreak of the war and 15 years old when it ended. He was a farm boy from Illinois who would have little opportunity to join the navy, much less the Confederate Navy. In addition, the Monitor was a Union Ironclad.

He was a wet horse trader. This is one who bought horses in Mexico cheaply, herded them north to the United States and sold them