Mary Jane's Mother While the Chews and Ropers came from England, there are some other relatives who came from Ireland. You may recall Mary Jane Hawkins who married Atison Roper to produce all those Roper relatives. Well, Mary Jane's parent's were Benjamin Hawkins and Anna Eliza Findley from South Carolina. Anna Eliza's father was Elisha Findley and it appears that perhaps Elisha's grandfather (Moses Findley Sr.) was from Ireland.

Aunt Jessie describes her mother Mary Jane Hawkins Roper as follows:

"My Mother was Irish descent and a beautiful woman. She was alert, a good business woman and was friendly and kind and had a wonderful disposition." (Click the photo to the right for a larger view of Mary Jane Hawkins Roper.)

The Findley line also liked to confuse things with their spellings: Fendley, Findley, Finley, Finlay, and various other ways. Click the Findley Link for a rather confusing description of where the Findley/Fendley name might have come from in Ireland.

Finding the Findleys While we can't track the Findley roots all the way back to Ireland, we do have Moses Findley, born around 1765 or 1768 in Jamestown, Virginia. His father is listed as Moses Findley Sr. and that is all we know. But we suspect he came from Ireland. For an interesting look at the world in the 17th and early 18th century, click the old map to the right. It was printed in 1650 so you will see very little development in America, mostly just along the east coast.

It appears that Moses Jr., along with his father, migrated to Pendleton County, South Carolina sometime before 1789. In South Carolina Moses Jr. met his wife, Margaret (Peggy) Robertson. They married about 1789 and had eight children who mostly stayed in the South Carolina area, although three sons moved on to Georgia.

One of Moses' five sons was our relative Elisha Findley, born around 1790 or 1795 in Edgefield, SC and he is one of the ones who stayed there. Around 1815 Elisha married Elizabeth Whitmire, also from that area. Some of Elizabeth Whitmire's grand parents, however, had come from Stuttgart, Germany, probably around the 1750s.

Elisha and Elizabeth Findley had ten children, seven daughters and three sons. One of the daughters, Anna Eliza (or Elizabeth) was our ancestor, born in 1821. If you click here you can see the pedigree chart for our ancestor Anna Findley from the Latter Day Saints website FamilySeacrc.org. The second link will show you all of Anna Findley's siblings.

Anna Findley married Benjamin Hawkins sometime before 1840 and started her family. Between 1840 and 1860 they had seven children while farming in South Carolina. The fifth child, Mary Jane Hawkins is our great grandmother, born in 1852.

On to Arkansas While still in South Carolina, Mary Jane married Atison Roper (see Roper history) and started a family. Then, after the death of Mary Jane's father Benjamin in 1868, Mary Jane and husband Atison, along with her widowed mother Anna, moved to Arkansas, near to where Mary Jane's oldest sister had already moved. Two of Mary Jane's brothers, Pleasant and William, also made the move.

We don't know when Anna Findley Hawkins died, but we are working on it. Aunt Jessie, who was born in 1894, had no memory of her as she was growing up in Arkansas, according to her written history.

A small, close community The Hawkins-Finley group quickly became a major presence in the small Arkansas community, producing 30 children in the next two decades. Mary Jane's sister Sarah had four children, her brother Pleasant had six, Mary Jane and Atison Roper had 11, her brother William had three, and younger sister Clarinda had six. Jessie Roper Frantz remembers Mary Jane's brother Pleasant in her memoir as 'Uncle Pled' and Clarinda as 'Aunt Rendie.'

The population of the Cedar Glades and Buckville area where the Hawkins, Chews and Ropers all lived also had a number of Findleys, perhaps from the earlier migration from South Carolina. In one land record for Garland County Arkansas for the late 1890s you can see all four family names: Chew, Findley, Hawkins and Roper listed on the same page. Click the Land Record link to the right if you want to see the record.

And Then On to Oklahoma The four Hawkins-Findley siblings who came from South Carolina stayed in Arkansas but Mary Jane Hawkins Roper's daughter, Ida, and her husband Robert Chew decided to move our family story on to Oklahoma. To find that story use the link below or the 'Histories' button at the top of the page.

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