This isn’t a story about unraveling a mystery, but a dive into history that began with a casual conversation about Evergreen Cemetery. It’s also a story about how a Civil War era woman from Illinois is related to a Jacksonville family with a long history in banks.
After Jacksonville History Center volunteer Amy Roberts shared with her former UNF professor information about the JHC’s tours of Evergreen Cemetery, Dr. Lynne Stephenson Raiser felt compelled to visit the cemetery in search of two family plots. Raiser had a hard time locating the graves of her great-grandmother Annie Stephenson (d. 1934) and her grandfather, William Stephenson (d. 1955), but eventually found them hidden behind the roots of a large oak tree. She also found two other (empty) family plots.
Rather, this story is about Raiser’s other great-grandmother, Jennie Elizabeth Hicks Wharton, whose gravesite is also at Evergreen Cemetery.
Jennie Hicks was born in Dixon, Illinois, on August 5, 1854. She married Benjamin Orlando Wharton on July 8, 1872, a month before her 18th or 19th birthday. “My aunt said B.O. Wharton was a music teacher, and Jennie was a former student,” Raiser said.
Wharton was a musician in the Civil War on the Union side. He was also the superintendent of schools in Emporia, Kansas. After he contracted tuberculosis doctors advised him to go to Florida where it was warm. At that time, he was working as a bookkeeper. The Whartons, with their five children, got on the train and landed in Palatka sometime between 1895 and 1900, when the census said they lived in Palatka.
“My aunt said Jennie was furious when they got to Florida and found out that her husband had ‘traded perfectly good land in Emporia, Kansas for a sticker patch in Florida.’ She told him to get back on that train and go back to Kansas,” said Raiser. It’s unknown when Wharton returned to Kansas, to the Old Soldiers Home in Leavenworth where he died in 1906.
“Jennie and Hattie, the youngest child, lived at 242 Tallyrand, in a neighborhood called Fairfield, in 1908; I can’t document any sooner,” Raiser said. “She was a teacher at LaVilla Grammar School, located on Stuart Street between W. Church and W. Duval streets.”
On January 17, 1910, Jennie died, probably as a result of a gasoline fire several months before. Her death certificate has incorrect information on it, including date of birth, place of birth, and cause of death. “It says she was 50 but she was 56 to 57. It said she was born in Florida, as was her mother, and that she had lived in Jacksonville all her life. The cause of death was listed as acute nephritis abscess of the throat,” Raiser said. “Her mother was still alive in Americus, Kansas, when Jennie died so they didn’t tell the mother.”
Soon after Jennie died, daughter Hattie married William Vincent Stephenson (known as W.V.), a bookkeeper who lived on Market Street. Their first house was at the corner of East Adams and Parker Street in the Fairfield neighborhood. Their son William was born in 1912, and Theodore (Ted) was born on the kitchen table in 1914. Ted is the father of Dr. Raiser and her late sister Dottie.
The connection to Jacksonville banking? Lynne Stephenson Raiser’s sister, Dorothy Stephenson Fant, was the wife of Julian “Hickory” Fant, whose father helped establish Riverside Bank in 1947. That bank became First Guaranty in the 1960s.
Stories like this one are why the Jacksonville History Center offers opportunities to learn more about the many stories in this one, great big city. What’s yours?
Kate Hallock, Chief of Staff | Communications Director