Atison Roper (1850-1899) Our great grandfather Atison -- sometimes spelled Addison, Attison, maybe even Mattison, and occassionally with a middle initial 'C'' -- was also called 'Bud.' That does not make searching easy. We decided to use Atison in this document because a grandson born in the next generation seems to have been named for him and that is how the grandson's name is spelled in the family Bible.

Atison was the first born in 1849 in Pickens, SC to Markus and Susan Roper who were farmers. Then there were Acker, Sidia, John, Elizabeth, Lucien, Madison, Letitia, Green and Jason. Jessie Roper Frantz had remembered the names Acker, Lucien and Sidia in her family memoir and, voila, the connection was made. Here is the 1860 Census information from Pickens, SC, with some of the children listed:

1860 Census for Pickens, SC

ROPER Markus 27 M

ROPER Susan 36 F

ROPER Mattison 10 M (This is probably Atison, born 1850)

ROPER Acker 8 M

ROPER Siddy 3 F

ROPER John B. 1 M

As you can see Atison seems to be listed as 'Mattison' and several of the other children had not yet been born. We don't know if Atison changed his name or if this is just a mistake in the record. (We've seen a lot of those!) In the 1860 census the 'personal value' for Marcus Roper is $2,300 and his 'real estate' value is $200.

If you want to know about farm life in the late 1800s, you can click the letter to the right. It is a letter between two Ropers, one in Missouri in 1887. While it is not one of our direct family documents, it is interesting reading.

Below is information from the 1880 census for the Markus Roper household. By this time our great grandfather Atison was already out of the house, starting a family of his own. His brother Acker (28) and sister Siddy (22) are also out of the house by now. But in their place are a set of Roper twins, Lucien and Lizzie, and two more sons, one of whom is named 'Madison,' just to ensure confusion.

1880 Census -- Still in Pickens, SC

Marcus ROPER 50 Farmer SC SC

Susan ROPER 56 Keeping House SC SC

John B. ROPER 20 Works On Farm SC SC

Lucien ROPER 18 Works On Farm SC SC

Lizzie ROPER 18 At Home SC SC

Madison ROPER 15 Works On Farm SC SC

Green ROPER 12 Works On Farm SC SC

Click the map if you want to see the area of SC where the Ropers (also Hawkins and Findley families) were from. It is the NW corner of the state, mostly Pickens and Greenville, SC.

Other Ropers We also found some old church records of the area that mention the Ropers. It looks like an uncle of Addison, Tyre L. Roper (1809-1877) was a preacher at the Baptist Church in Pickens. Here is an excerpt about him and the church:

Rev. Tyre L. Roper, the longest-serving minister here, preached at Oolenoy from 1840 until his death in 1876. The first sanctuary, a log building, was replaced about 1830 by a frame church, later enlarged in 1876 and 1899. This church, named for the Cherokee chief, Woolenoy (the spelling was changed to Oolenoy in 1827) was organized in 1795.

The headstone to the right is in a Roper cemetary in Pickens. You can click it for a larger view of several old Roper headstones.

Time to Move On. . . Again Atison married Mary Jane Hawkins from the Greenville, SC area around 1873. They had one child, James Lafayette, in South Carolina and then moved with Mary Jane's widowed mother and two of her brothers to Arkansas around 1876. Apparently Mary Jane's sister Sarah had already moved to Arkansas several years before. Here is how Jessie Roper Frantz says her mother described the move from SC to Arkansas:

"My Mother never talked very much about the arduous trip but she did tell about crossing the Mississippi River - they had to walk a poorly constructed bridge where the muddy water lapped up to their feet. They came in a covered wagon."

The small family settled about three miles west of McFadden Springs near Cedar Glades but the family grew quickly when the first twins, Ida and Ada, were born that same year. In 1890 the population of Cedar Glades was 250 and in nearby Buckville it was about 100 and the Ropers were doing their best to grow the that population. Two more sets of twins were born to Atison and Mary Jane: Eugene and Irene and Jessie and Julia, along with non-twin siblings John Butler, Minnie Lee, Orlean and Eula. When the youngest of nine, twins Jessie and Julia, were only five, Atison died of pneumonia. Here are Aunt Jessie's words again:

"My father expired on April 4, 1899-left her with homestead of a 160 acres of land-mostly hills. However, several acres were cleared and in good shape for farming. He also left a brand new wagon and two beautiful horses and new harness he had just purchased a few days before he expired."

The family lived mostly off the land and Mary Jane hired a man to help on the farm since the oldest son, James, had died of smallpox in 1895. There are some wonderful descriptions by Jessie of growing up on the farm in Arkansas, about the foods they grew, the games they played and the hardships they endured. You can read Aunt Jessie's document by clicking the photo of children on an old fashioned seesaw.

Ropers and Chews Join Ida, the oldest with twin Ada, went to work to help the family instead of going to college as she had planned. Two years after she went to work in Hot Springs, Ida married a close neighbor, Robert Chew, in Cedar Glades, Arkansas, on 30 March 1902. Click the 'Neighbors' link to the right to see the land registration records for the families of Robert Chew and Ida Roper.

They lived in Cedar Glades for ten years after they were married and had six children before deciding it was time for them to move to Oklahoma Territory. Two of the children did not live long, but four (Alton, Hal, Evelyn and Eloise) made the move to Oklahoma where Olene and Helen would be born. You can click the map to the right to see the route of the Ropers from Virginia to Oklahoma from 1660 to 1912.

Some stayed Put Most of the rest of the Roper clan decided to stay put in Arkansas. The sisters Irene, Eula, Orlean, Ada, Julia and Jessie, and brother Butler all married and raised their families in the Hot Springs area. Click the 'Ida's Siblings' Link to see who the siblings married and how their families developed.

While these families may have stayed put in Arkansas, most of the land around Buckville and Cedar Glades -- where they lived, farmed and died -- disappeared in the early 1950s when the Ouachita River was dammed and the area flooded to create Lake Ouachita. Several cemeteries and the old Buckville Church were moved to higher ground, but the rest of their history is now underwater. Each year in June there is a Buckville reunion and several of our family have attended. Click the old Buckville Church to the right for a larger view.

In 1990 Wendy Bradley Richter, the granddaughter of Ada Roper, Ida's twin, wrote a good history of the area and collected family histories in They Can't Go Home. This served as a valuable source of information about our Roper, Chew and Hawkins families as we built this website. The information compiled by John L. Roper on his website www.roperld.com was also essential to tracking our Roper roots. You can find pages from his site on the 'Links' page.

A new resource for information on another branch of Ropers who went to Oklahoma is the book Son of a Sharecropper, Growing up in Oklahoma 1913-1940, recently written by David H. Roper, probably a relative. Click the book cover for a larger view.

For Future Generations The key learning form all this is that family records should be kept current for future generations. (And parents chould give their children a unique first or middle name so it will be easy to find everyone.) If it had not been for Jessie Roper Frantz writing down her family memories and names of Atison Roper's siblings, none of the early Roper information could have been found.

Be sure to read the Findley and Hawkins family histories to get the rest of the Roper story. You can click the 'Histories' button at the top of the page or the link below to find those histories or move on to other pages.

Buckville Church

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