What's Josie's Story?

If you've read my former post about Willie Mae running away with J.W. ("Black Sheep in the Family Tree"), you've seen the photo of James Walter Stewart. He was a pretty good-lookin' young man.

Let me tell you a little about his mother, who also had some deep dark secrets. Her name was Marzee Josephine Box, and she is my favorite ancestor. I probably wonder about her more than any of my other ancestors.

Josie was a young teenager in Texas just after the Civil War when she and her family were attacked by Kiowa Indians, her father was scalped, her baby sister Laura was killed, and she and her other sister and Mother were taken prisoner by the Kiowas and held captive for about six months.

They were beaten, even by the squaws, and treated as slaves. Josie was separated from her mother and sister, and tried to run away to get to them, and was caught and her feet burned so she wouldn't run away again.

Anyway, to make a very long story short, the army was finally able to free them. (I have a photo-copy of the women's testimony to the army, telling about their treatment.) They went on with their lives, and later Josie had a son, James Walter Stewart, and died in childbirth.

J.W. was raised by Josie's sister and her husband. J.W.'s aunt and uncle told him that his father was named John Stewart, and that John was killed in a saloon in Silverton, Texas before J.W. was born. My mother loves genealogy, so she researched it and went to that area, and found out there wasn't a town or a saloon there that early. So the relatives made that story up. Apparently, J.W. was illigitimate, but never knew it.

Now that we think Josie wasn't married, I desperately want to know her side of the story. Who was the dad? What was her life like, after going through that horrible experience with the Kiowa Indians? What troubles did she have in life, in the 1870's, being pregnant out of wedlock? And what was she planning to do if she had lived, being single with a baby? Those are all questions I want to ask when I meet her in the spirit world after I die.

Also, an interesting note: If Josie wasn't really married to a man named John Stewart, then our last name was totally made up. I wonder what my last name really should have been?