The No-Nonsense Look of Elizabeth Rhoda Craven

 

                                                           Elizabeth Rhoda Craven Jobe

Those of you who are related to the Jobe family will remember seeing this old photograph which frightened many of her very youngest descendants. Her granddaughter Maye told us that this was her father’s mother, Elizabeth Rhoda Craven. She only lived to be 57, but (except for her hair color) she looked older than that in this photo.

Because she was a poor woman in a poor part of the United States, there are not enough records to answer some basic questions. And since her son, Maye’s father William, ran away from home, his children grew up without knowing her family. But they did hear the story that when she fixed that gaze on him, he knew he was in trouble!

Luckily, DNA matches from one of William’s descendants match those of 23 other people whose family history research shows they descend from some of Elizabeth’s brothers and sisters.[1] That eventually revealed that Elizabeth’s father was Andrew R. Craven from North Carolina. In 1850 he lived in Hardeman County, Tennessee, which is just across the state line from Tippah County, Mississippi, the state where his seven youngest children were born, including Elizabeth, six months old at the time.[2] It is unclear who her mother was.

Almost all of her family moved to Greene County, Arkansas, about 170 miles northwest, sometime in the 1850s. However, when the family was counted for the 1860 census, Elizabeth was not with them, although she was only about 9 or 10 years old.[3] She did have married sisters who stayed in Hardeman County; perhaps she lived with one of them. Elizabeth probably never saw her father, brothers, and sisters again. She certainly did not live in Arkansas when she met her husband Presley Jobe. He lived in Hardeman County and had also lived in Mississippi, like the Cravens.

Presley was fifteen years old when Elizabeth was born. Before he married her, he had a wife and child.[4] His first wife died before he married Elizabeth on 23 June 1865 in Murphysboro, Jackson County, Illinois.[5] This is another mystery: why was she in Illinois? I couldn’t find evidence of any family member living in that area, which was far from Hardeman and Tippah Counties.

Rhoda and Presley moved to Tippah County, Mississippi by 1870, and by 1880 they were back in Hardeman County, Tennessee. I have been able to find nine children of hers: James Edward, Ella E., Viney C., Mollie, Thomas, Mattie, William Biggs, Effie Anna, and John Samuel, born between 1866 and 1888.

By 1900 she had lost five of them.  Infant mortality was so bad that the government asked all women in 1900 how many children they had borne and lost. By then, they were living in Tipton County, Tennessee, next door to Presley’s brother Robert Sr.[6]

The only record I have found after that for her was in 1914, after her husband died, from his doctor’s affidavit, that she had died on January 15, 1908. The doctor said Presley was buried in Townsend Cemetery, so she probably was too, although no markers have been found for them.[7]


[1] DNA matches as viewed on Ancestry’s ThruLines page as of 29 June 2023.

[2] For brothers and sisters, 1850 United States Federal Census, Hardeman County, Tennessee, population schedule, p. 140 (stamped), dwelling 1014, family 1014, Elizabeth Craivin [sic] in the household of Andrew R. Craivin; from NARA microfilm publication M432, roll 881.

[3] 1860 United States Federal Census, Greene County, Arkansas, population schedule, St. Francis, p. 526, dwelling 82, family 81, A. R. Cravens; from NARA microfilm publication M653, roll 42.

[4] 1860 United States Federal Census, Hardeman County, Tennessee, population schedule, District 17, p. 275 (stamped), dwelling 1907, family 1766, Pressly Jobe; from NARA microfilm publication M653, roll 1253.

[5] Jackson County, Illinois, Marriage bond/license, B-1:447, Presley D. Jobe – Elizabeth R. Craven, 23 June 1865; “Illinois, County Marriages, 1810-1840,”

database and images, FamilySearch (familysearch.org: accessed 30 June 2023) > Marriages, 1843-1915 > Marriage record and register, v. B-D 1857-1895 > image 269 of 802. Mary Parks Jobe's death was noted in Presley’s Civil War pension affidavit in file 995489.

[6] 1900 United States Federal Census, Tipton County, Tennessee, population schedule, District 1, p. 13, dwelling 208, family 213, Elizabeth Jobe in the household of Presley Jobe; from NARA microfilm publication T623, roll 1602.

[7] Elizabeth McCraven [sic] Jobe's death was noted in Presley’s Civil War pension affidavit in file 995489.

 

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