One of the benefits of dabbling in genealogy is the interesting stories that emerge from the past. And because the branches (or roots) expand as we journey back in time, so does the cast of characters.

While I have ancestors who fought for American independence in the Revolutionary War — William Tuell died fighting in the Battle of Germantown — I also had an interesting ancestor who remained loyal to King George in that conflict.

Jonas Bedford, a loyalist during the American Revolution, was my sixth great grandfather through the Norvill branch of my family. The following is an excerpt about Bedford from “A Wiseman’s Family” by Thomas C. Chapman:

Jonas Bedford’s family had their roots in North Ireland. Mercy Raymond (Bedford) was a 6th generation descendent, on her father’s side, from Peter Brown(e), who was a passenger on the Mayflower in 1620 and a signer of the Mayflower Compact.

The first home of Jonas and Mercy Bedford after they were married was in New Jersey, but they moved from there to Jack’s Narrows in Pennsylvania. Indian trouble drove them out of that region, but Jonas raised a group of 250 men and joined other companies in fighting the Indians. Following this the Bedfords moved to the Carolina frontier and settled 60 miles west of the Catawba River on Matthew Floyd’s Creek, which is in present Rutherford County. Between 1764 and 1780 Jonas received land patents to 18 tracts of land and purchased 17 other tracts in Mecklenburg, Tryon, and Rutherford Counties. It is very likely that (his daughter) Lydia was born in Rutherford County. 

In 1768 Jonas Bedford, Captain in the Provincial Militia of North Carolina, with his troops assisted Governor Tryon against the Regulators. The Regulators were a group of colonists from the western reaches of North Carolina (Wiseman country) who rebelled in 1768 against heavy taxes and lack of representation. They were defeated at the battle of Alamance Creek in 1771. As a result of his participation, Jonas Bedford was given a permanent commission in the militia and appointed magistrate in Tryon County, and in 1772 took the oath of justice of the peace for Tryon County. These activities didn’t exactly endear him to the people of Western Carolina. He continued to hold public offices up to the time of the American Revolution.

From 1776 to 1778 the Bedfords lived fairly routine lives and Jonas had little difficulty maintaining his political loyalty to “mother” England. Things began to change after the British took Charleston, South Carolina, and Georgia in December of 1778, and in 1780 Jonas and Mercy received warning that raiders planned to hang Jonas. Jonas rallied numbers of his old militia company to serve in defense of their homes and families. When the British under Patrick Ferguson arrived in Tryon, Jonas volunteered his services and those of his men as loyal subjects of the king, and he was made Captain of the militia. This group fought against the Americans at Bedford Hill (northeast McDowell County) and at King’s Mountain. Both battles were a loss to the British, and Jonas Bedford was one of the few to escape to Georgia, where he rejoined the British. He was later captured at Fort Gaupin on the Savannah River. He was sentenced to hang, but again he managed to escape. He walked through rough country for nine days without food and made it to Savannah. He later joined the loyalist Militia in Charleston.

In the summer of 1781 Mercy Bedford and her children were forced out of their home by the American patriots of the region, and they joined Jonas Bedford in Charleston. The family stayed together until December of 1782; then Jonas left with the British, served their cause in east Florida and then went to New York. In March of 1784 he left for London, England.

Mercy and her children were literally left to “shift” for themselves. Her intention was to return to Rutherford County to try and pick up the pieces of her life, but this did not come about immediately. In January of 1783, the Rutherford County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions ordered that all of Jonas Bedford’s property “be adjudged and forfeited” and Mercy began an unsuccessful campaign to retain Bedford lands. 

During this trying period, Mercy and one of her sons were commended for assisting the men who were fighting for American independence; thus, it would appear that Mercy herself did not share the political views of her husband. In the DAR Index, Mercy Bedford is listed as rendering patriotic service to the new nation.

Eventually friends and neighbors came to the aid of the Bedford family and a petition for Mercy’s relief was introduced in the General Assembly of North Carolina on 29 Dec 1785, and the “landed estate” of Jonas Bedford was returned to Mercy. By 1787, Jonas himself returned to Rutherford County. He must have had a very winning personality and persuasive wits because all seems to have been forgiven him by family, friends, and neighbors — so much so, that he was appointed magistrate and during the 1790s he was elected to three terms in the state legislature. By 1802 at the age of 67, he returned to his land. As Carolyn Backstrom states in her account of the Bedfords, Jonas was probably the only loyalist who was never made to suffer for his activities.

Jonas eventually was laid to rest in 1823 at the age of 88, having outlasted five of his nine children. He is buried somewhere in Logan Township, Rutherford County, North Carolina.

So, even in the polarized political environment of the American Revolution, people eventually were able to put their differences behind them. Hope springs eternal.

My grandfather, Henry Offord Tuell, almost survived the Spanish flu epidemic that swept the globe in 1918.

It was mid-October in Lindsay, Oklahoma, an agricultural community known for its broomcorn crop. Henry arose from his sick bed, got dressed and headed downtown to the barbershop for a long-overdue bath, shave and a haircut. But he ventured out in the crisp fall air a little too soon, according to my late father, Henry Offord Tuell II.

Like many who contracted that virus — not unlike the novel coronavirus that now assails us — the damage caused to his lungs led to pneumonia.  In Henry’s case, it was the later that proved to be fatal.

He died on a Monday morning, Oct. 21, 1918. He was 27 years old.

“It is with genuine sorrow we chronicle the death of H.O. Tuell, one of Lindsay’s most energetic and worthy young businessmen,” read the obituary in the Lindsay News.

He was buried the following afternoon in nearby Erin Springs Cemetery in the burial plot of his wife’s family. The Rev. J.E. Couch conducted a graveside service.

“The floral offerings were profuse and beautiful,” read the Lindsay News.

Mazie, Henry’s wife and my paternal grandmother, also fell ill with the influenza. My great-grandmother, Virginia Frost, nursed Mazie through the flu as family friends cared for my father, who was not quite two years old. Mazie soon recovered from the flu. Recovery from her husband’s death would have taken much longer.

Henry and Mazie had married just two and a half years earlier, on March 12, 1916. She had worked at the phone company and he managed the men’s department at Perry Brothers Department Store. When they returned from their honeymoon in Oklahoma City, they were met at the train station by a crowd of friends and paraded down Main Street. Based on the hundreds of photos that remain from their short marriage, they were madly in love. Their photos reflect that playfulness of young lovers — they staged pictures standing on a nearly submerged rock in the Washita River, sitting in an old wagon costumed in western outfits, perched in upper branches of trees.

These photos are a symphony of love, of youthful silliness, of exuberant joy — music that was silenced by a flu pandemic in 1918.

Three generations of my relatives are buried near Henry in Erin Springs Cemetery and in the town cemetery of nearby Bradley, Oklahoma. Both were frontier communities in Indian Territory where my ancestors settled. Wandering among the headstones, some dating back nearly two centuries, Kathy and I have noticed so many that list date of death as 1918.

Because of my grandfather’s death, I was aware of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic long before now. But today, with a death toll still rising from the COVID-19 pandemic, the photos he left behind have greater emotional dimension. The story is more vivid.

And those headstones listing 1918 deaths — husband, wife, mother, child — tell stories of loss and sorrow, of fractured families and communities.

My grandmother Mazie survived and went on to live a long and happy life. She eventually remarried to a wonderful man, Archibald High, who taught me how to stalk birds and to make rubber-band pistols and crossbows. She prepared countless holiday dinners, hosted the summer visits of grandchildren, and more often than not a trip to the grocery store would take half a day because she would stop to visit with everyone she saw. She died in Lindsay in 1971, a couple miles from the spot where her father had settled the family in the 1890s. She was 78 years old.

Life went on. It will again.

Not many people think of Oklahoma as a destination. The name conjures John Steinbeck imagery of the Dust Bowl and weary souls taking flight for greener landscapes and better lives.

In the Seventies, as a restless young man who could not bring his future into focus, I could hardly wait to flee this land. My ancestors had settled here before statehood when south-central Oklahoma was merely the Chickasaw Nation. But it was the American Siberia as far as I was concerned.

A lot can change in four decades.

In August 2013, it was time to come home. My wife Kathy, granddaughter Mae and I packed up the contents of our Florida Keys home. We crammed what we could in a behemouth rental truck, strapped the Prius to an auto trailer and headed to the Great Plains. It was one of the best decisions of our lives.

Two of my three siblings, sisters Carol and Vicki, live in the small town where my parents retired more than 30 years ago. They had helped Mom care for my father, whose health had been slipping in recent years. It was nice to gather around the dinner table with my mother, my sisters and brother Hank, who was making frequent trips from his home in Montana. Mae would become enveloped in an extended family and begin learning what that means.

About a month after we arrived, my father died at age 96. My mother’s health deteriorated quickly after his death, and she died in January 2015 at age 98. After 74 years of marriage, they essentially had become one being, and she missed him more than she could bear. We are grateful that we got to be with them both in their final days, and we miss them terribly.

They had dearly loved their home on two and a half wooded acres on the outskirts of Duncan, Okla. Dad loved tinkering for hours in his huge workshop, and Mom spent most every waking hour planting flowers, pruning shrubs and pulling weeds. They maintained the yard like a state park, and hundreds of daffodils, tulips and irises that Mom lovingly planted still burst into bloom each spring. Dad fenced in a large vegetable garden to keep the deer and rabbits out, and for years they supplied family and neighbors with tomatoes and okra. Mom especially loved the birds, so Dad built and maintained bird houses and feeders throughout the property. It was their paradise.

Now it is our paradise — and responsibility.

We’ve created this space to document this new chapter in our lives, and our efforts to preserve and improve the legacy left us by Henry and Eunice Tuell.