A 100+ year old Postcard, a DAR Application,
and a Headstone
Some of the things I learned about Opal Alyce Chesney
A research project I did in March 2021, in preparation for a virtual presentation to the Muskogee County Genealogical Society (Muskogee, OK), was sparked by the re-discovery of my mother's 100+ postcard collection. She had given me the collection some years ago for reasons I won't go into here.
In this collection I found a 1914 Easter card from Opal. My research uncovered that this Opal is Opal Alyce Chesney, daughter of Frank Evans Chesney. Frank is one of my mother's (Ruth Mary Chesney) maternal uncles, making Opal and Ruth first cousins. This is the card (along with another in 1915) that set off a chain of research and discoveries for me that led to making better sense of a lot of information and family history I’ve been accumulating for more than 40 years.
This card is what I call my SERENDIPITOUS FIND! You see, I’ve had a copy of Opal’s 1945 DAR application for quite a while! It was my first DAR discovery a few years ago when I learned about searching the DAR online databases. I had been told that my mother’s sister, Isabelle, was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) and I was searching for HER application. Instead, I found another name I recognized – Opal Chesney – I remembered Mother occasionally referred to a cousin Opal. So, I ordered Opal Chesney’s file and it provided me with a lot of clues about the Chesney family connections to a patriot ancestor, William Chesney, who signed the Oath of Allegiance in Cecil County, Maryland in 1778.
I went back to that application as part of the presentation I was preparing and realized Opal’s mother died when Opal was two yrs. old. Her mother’s name – Grace Judd Chesney, “rang a bell” and I remembered a photo I took in 2004 of a Grace Judd Chesney’s headstone in Bazaar Cemetery, Chase County, Kansas – it was one of only two Chesney headstones there.
I visited the cemetery because three of my ancestor families had lived in Chase County from at least 1883 to early 1900s. My mother's three oldest siblings were born in that county. At the time I took the photo, I did not know who Grace was or how she was related to me, and this has been a mystery to me until Opal’s 1914 Easter card led to more research. I “mulled and pondered” about this card, Opal’s DAR application, and the headstone photo and saw I needed to do more research! Up to this point I had learned who Opal was. But why is 10 yr old Opal writing to my four year old mother from Lecompton, Kansas?
More research led me to Grace’s probate documents in which Opal’s father, Frank Evans Chesney, had applied for guardianship of Opal after her mother's death and to get the Probate Court's permission to
sell Opal's ½ interest in the property in Chase County.
A receipt for $95 in the probate file, shows the proceeds of the sale were used to pay Opal’s grandmother to care for Opal (Opal’s grandmother is my gr-grandmother, Ruth Ann Evans Chesney, from whom my mother got her first name – Ruth).
This verifies that Opal was my mother’s first cousin. I now have the
evidence that Opal was placed, after her mother’s death, into the care of her
father’s parents – my mother’s maternal grandparents. Census records also bear
this out.
Please note Ruth Ann Evans
Chesney’s original signature on these two documents in the probate records! Original signatures of ancestors are a rare find!
Another sweet Easter card comes a year later (1915) and is also postmarked from Lecompton, Kansas. Opal is definitely living with her Chesney grandparents who had moved from Chase County to Lecompton, Douglas County (year and reason for this move is unknown at this time).
Opal and and Curtis Beedle were divorced, May 10, 1949.
3) 9 days later - May 19, 1949 - she married Daniel Lee Bower, M.D., in Indianapolis, Indiana. They had one son, Daniel Jr.. Dr. Bower died at their home in Williamsburg, Kentucky, July 18, 1961. He is buried (with a military headstone) in the Riverview Cemetery, Seymour, Jackson County, Indiana.
Opal's DAR application and supplements were filed using both Beedle, and Bower as her last name which indicates she researched her lineage during both of those marriages.
Opal died in Hayesville, Clay County, North Carolina, July 19, 1983 (age 79), where she was living with her son, Daniel Jr.. She was cremated and her cremains are buried in the Shepherd Crematory Cemetery, Hendersonville, North Carolina.
To date I have found very little information about Opal's two sons.
NOTE:
Curtis Joseph Beedle IV died Feb 1956, in Los Angeles, California. He is buried with his first wife in the Wythe Congregational Church Cemetery, Hancock County, Illinois.
Walter Powell Capps died October 16, 1957, in Dallas, Texas. He is buried with his father and at least one son in a family plot in Laurel Land Memorial Park, Dallas.
