Foster Care

 My grandmother, Vennie Watson Wicker, grew up in foster care.  The Cates family who had employed her mother as a housekeeper, took her under their wing when her mother (Mattie) was taken to a mental institution.  The photo is my grandmother and Dollie Cates taken about 1916 when Grandma was only about 12 years old. At some point Vennie also went to live with the Williams family which is where she was living when she married my grandfather.

Oddly when she and Grandpa married, she had a court appointed guardian whom my mother had never heard of. Grandma was the only surviving child and had to depend on neighbors and "church 'folks" to take her in since there was no family around.

But she's not the only one of my ancestors in foster care.  My great-great grandfather Milton Long also was taken in my another family.

Milton's father Thomas Long died in 1837 leaving Susannah Long with many children to care for.  One or two of her daughters had married:  Susannah to Charles Mothershead (1832) and Eavline to Whitaker Mothershead (1834).  That left James, Samuel, Elizabeth, Milton, and Sarah.  I imagine life was not easy for a widow in the 1830s who had a farm to manage but also had children to "manage".

In 1839, James (16) had John Murrell as a guardian (with his brother-in-law Whitaker Mothershead) followed by his brother Samuel (14) in April of 1840 who had Whitaker for a guardian along with John Murrell.  I'm guessing their mother Susannah Baker Long was not well since she died in 1840.

Upon her death, the other children were put in foster care July 1840.  Sarah (7), Milton (11) and Elzabeth (13) to James Pounds (with James Evans and Whitaker Mothershead)

But, there were many more children left as orphans taken in by these same men (and families) with the Bakers (Orson and Milton) in the early 1840s.  Among them were Susannah Long and Charles Mothershead's children in 1840-41:  John (9), Thomas (11), Charles (4) and Willis (6).  And then 4 years later they were all assigned new guardians. And then in 1848, they had all new guardians again.  I don't know the reason for the constantly changing guarianships but I can just imagine what the instability was like for those children.

Frontier life was not for the faint of heart.