Genealogy Report: Ancestors of Hattie Mitchell
Ancestors of Hattie Mitchell
1.Hattie Mitchell, born 17 February 1884 in Gainesville, Hall County, GA; died 20 September 1976 in the hospital, Union Point, Green Co., GA1.She was the daughter of 2. Mayor Robert David Mitchell and 3. Nancy Ann Prater.She married (1) Colonel Patrick Martin Stevens, Jr.2 02 January 1908 in the Mitchell's Green Street home, Gainesville, Hall Co.,GA.He was born 17 April 1874 in Oak Hill, Bairdstown, Oglethorpe Co., GA3,4, and died 05 September 1966 in the hospital, Union Point, Greene Co., GA5.He was the son of Captain Patrick Martin Stevens and Martha Louise Isabella Brookes.
Notes for Hattie Mitchell:
Hattie was the only daughter in her family, and the last of the three children. She was comfortably raised,her father a successful businessman in north Georgia, and a three time mayor of Gainesville. She had a fine upright piano when she was eight, and she played it all her life. She was well educated and studied music at Brenau College in Gainesville where she graduated in 1903. After college, she taught music in Gainesville, and traveled a bit, one trip in 1906 to visit the Federal City and stay with her US Representative and his family in what is called the Capitol Hill area of DC.In 1908 she married Pat, an Army Infantry lieutenant, and almost immediately left for the Philippine Islands. Her parents must have been despondent .
In late 1908 she learned she was pregnant and sought immediate shipment home from Zamboanga. She sailed on a freighter from the Islands to Indonesia, and there transhipped to a German passenger ship, the RPD Prinz Eitel Friedrich,for a passage through the new Suez Canal to Europe. "Pat, it's just a palace.I have a lovely cabin. Just feel too good for words," the young pregnant mother writes to Zamboanga on a post card picturing the vessel. In Europe, she again changed ships for the trip back to America. Her diary of this trip exists; I have it and intend to publish it. Home in Gainesville by August 1909, she delivered the first of two sons, Pat, named for his father. Robert followed in 1912 at Fort Logan, Colorado, and the small family moved frequently until WWI, when they returned to Gainesville while then Lt. Colonel Stevens was in Europe. After the war they lived in Florida, Georgia and West Virginia until Pat retired to Oak Hill in 1935.
He died in 1966 at 92, and she followed ten years later at the same age. She lieswith her husband Pat, son Robert and brother Arthur in the Stevens cemetery at Oak Hill.
More About Hattie Mitchell:
Burial: the Stevens Cemetery at Oak Hill, Oglethorpe Co., GA
Notes for Colonel Patrick Martin Stevens, Jr.:
Called Patrick by his mother at his birth, and named for his father, he later dropped the use of the full Patrick, and by the time his son was born in 1909 named him Pat M Stevens III. (This practice of the shorter "Pat" continued until Patrick Martin Stevens Vth arrived in 1980)
Pat was raised on the farm at Oak Hill, as the youngest of many older sisters and brothers. He often talked of "all those girls."By the time he reached college age, his parents were quite old with his Dad 51 years his senior, and much reduced in wealth after the war. Pat went first to Georgia Tech, where he entered the Class of 1896, one of the first classes.He studied mechanical drawing and engineering, but stayed for only the first year, returning home "with only a few cents left" in the spring of 1893. He worked as a "printer's devil" for his brother in law (William A. Shackelford, Nell's husband) in Lexington at the Oglethorpe Echo, but returned to Tech to complete the 1896 academic year.Again he went back to Lexington and the Echo.At the beginning of the War with Spain in 1898 heenlisted in the 46th US Volunteers, taking the train to South Framingham, Massachusetts to do so, and left with them for the Philippines. (A perhaps apochryphal story notes that the NCO receiving the new recruits asked Pat his name and he replied with the full name: Patrick Martin Stevens, Jr. The sergeant said 'I'm entering your name as Pat M Stevens,' and that is the way the Army carried him his whole long career.)After a colorful stint in the Islands, he was discharged as a Sergeant in 1900 at the Presidio of San Francisco and returned home to await the results of an examination he had taken to be commissioned an officer.For a time he worked, again at a newspaper, in Dublin, Ga.In 1901 the Secretary of the Army sent him a telegram saying he was to be a new second lieutenant, but it was lost for he was no longer in Dublin. His friend, a young woman there, found it and sent it to Oak Hill where he learned he was to be commissioned. He became a second lieutenant on 2 February 1901 (the same day as George C. Marshall) and spent several years in the 23d Infantry both in the Philippines and in various small Army garrisons around the US.After marrying Hattie in 1908, they returned to the Pacific, where his first son Pat III was conceived, causingHattie to take ship back home through the Suez Canal in early 1909 for Pat III's arrival in August. The baby was nine months old before his Dad saw him for the first time.
Pat served in WWI in, among other units, the 91st (Pine Tree) Division in combat. He was awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre and the Purple Heart. In the post-war years, he was the senior advisor to the West Virginia and, later, the Georgia,Army National Guard. They lived in Huntington and Atlanta during those years. He went on to retire as a Colonel in 1933, and he and Hattie settled at Oak Hill in the early part of 1936, where they remained until their deaths. He volunteered to return to service in WWII, but was refused because of his age, 68 in April 1942. His recommendations for the award of theSilver Star for actions in both the Philippines and Europe, which had been declined at the time, were later reconsidered but rejected.
On the 24th August, 1966, he was burned accidentally while burning leaves behind his home at Oak Hill. After several days in the hospital in Greensboro, Greene Co., GA, he died at 12.30 AM on the 5th September 1966, in his 93d year.
He was the last of his sisters and brotherswhen he died. He and Hattie are buried in the family cemetery at Oak Hill, with his father and mother and most of his brothers and sisters, as well as his son, Robert Mitchell Stevens. He lived to see me graduate from the Military Academy at West Point in 1963. I loved him a lot. He is the inspiration for all these family notes.
His direct line of descent includes a number of Revolutionary and earlier French and IndianWar participants who are documented by the DAR: Colonel John Floyd (Va/Ky), Captain John Stewart, b 1760 (Va), 2d Lieutenant John Martin (Va), Captain Christopher Irvin (Va), William Floyd (Va) (served as a drummer;he was in his fifties when he enlisted. He had served as Captain in the French and Indian Wars), Daniel Burford (Va) (Public Service, contributed to war effort), John Stewart b 1734 (Va) (DAR has him as a Captain, but this is debatable), Private Joseph Henderson (SC), Private Lawrence Bankston (NC), Private Jonathan Brooks (NC), Reverend Iverson Lewis (Va), Matthew Tucker (Va) (Public Service), and Major Joseph Stevens in Caroline Co., VA, who served as an Engineer until 1758.
Each of these is recorded in these pages.
More About Colonel Patrick Martin Stevens, Jr.:
Burial: the Stevens Cemetery at Oak Hill, Oglethorpe Co., GA
Marriage Notes for Hattie Mitchell and Patrick Stevens:
They were married in the evening of the 2d January 1908 at her parents' home on Green Street.