Secret Destined for the Grave Was Detoured

This is the grave of my first cousin, once removed, Lois Hunter Carraway (1895-1998).  She lived 102 years.  She is buried at Bascomb Methodist Cemetery, near Woodstock.  
 

 She had ill feelings towards me the last 25 years of her life.

Lois was one year old when her father William Jason Hunter (1875 - 1896) died.   Her mother,  Fanny Medley had another daughter and no means of support.   William Jason's parents, William A. and Emaline Hunter had them move in with them and they supported the young family.  Lois and her sister Jacie never knew their real father, their father figure was William A. Hunter, their grandfather.

Then I came along.  I was on a quest.  I knew from my grandfather Frank Hunter (also William A.'s son)  that William A.'s last name was not Hunter, he was adopted young.

It is a long story that took several years  of research to track it down, but this is essentially the summary of what I found:

In 1842, the year William was born, his mother,  Rebecca Trammell sued Jason Henderson Hunter, the local constable of Franklin, North Carolina, for bastardy.   The court found him guilty and ordered that he pay $100 a year child support.  William grew up using the last name of Trammell, married with the name Trammell, and enlisted in the CSA with the name Trammell.

He was shot in the knee during the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain and recuperated in a little community called Andersonville, just north of Woodstock a mile or two.

After the war, and returned to Franklin, his uncle Van Trammell killed a man named Lambert over a heated argument about the Civil War.  All evidence pointed towards Van, real name Jacob Vanburen Trammell.  William stepped forward and he said Van couldn't have killed him because Van was with him all day.  The sheriff proved William was lying, and put out an arrest warrant for both of them, Van and William - Van for murder and William for Accessory to Murder.  They both fled the state.  Van went to Arkansas, near the Texas border, where he spent the rest of his life, and William and his young family first went to Texas, and then back to the Woodstock, Georgia, where he had friends.... by the time they got to Woodstock in 1879 the family's last name was Hunter... as in Jason  Henderson Hunter.

During this time of research I visited Lois several times and copied pictures she had, drank iced tea with her, and ate white grapes from a vine by the garage/barn that William A. Hunter, had planted.  I remember the wasps or yellow jackets were enjoying the grapes also.

When I got it all compiled I printed it off and mailed it to each of my Hunter relatives that I thought would be interested, which included Lois Hunter Carraway.

Lois called me up raging mad and said she knew William was born a bastard and involved in the murder and it was her secrets she wanted to carry to the grave with her and I messed everything up.

Whoops!