HUGH NELSON

Son of Daniel Peter Nelson and Fannie Martha Jackson Nelson

Submitted by Grandson Ken Compton, email [email protected]

 

What information I have regarding my maternal grandfather, Hugh Nelson comes to me by a series of by a series of seemingly impossible events.

 

My grandmother, Rebecca Magee lived in Delaware Co. Oklahoma and worked in an egg packing plant. On a lark, her and a friend wrote their names and addresses on some eggs that were destined for somewhere in Texas.  My grandmother's egg fell into the hands of a recently divorced Hugh Nelson, father of two daughters living somewhere near Kerrville, Texas.

 

Hugh and Rebecca corresponded and finally got together. They were married in 1921 in Oklahoma and moved to San Antonio.  In November of 1922, my mother was born but unfortunately Hugh Nelson had died two months earlier at or near Trinidad, Texas of malaria.  Rebecca moved back to Oklahoma with their new daughter Helen Nelson.

 

A few years later, my mother was given to Arkel Magee (my grandmother's brother) and his wife by my grandmother to raise as their own as they couldn't have children.  My grandmother had remarried a man with five children of his own, so my mother was sent to Iowa to live.

 

My mother told me stories of receiving clothing as young girl from someone named Lois.  At the time, she had no idea who this person was (Lois was the second daughter of Hugh Nelson's from his first marriage).

 

Jumping forward to 1978 or so, my mother was contacted by an attorney from Houston, Texas who was involved in the research and recovery of natural gas well royalties. He advised my mother that she had in fact two half sisters, one of which was alive and well in New York, this was Lois, the second daughter of Hugh Nelson and his first wife.  My mother contacted her half sister and they communicated regularly until Lois' death.  Prior to her death, she sent my mother a genealogy, which was done in 1950 entitled "William George Nelson".  This information was compiled by one Hulen M. Greenwood, then of 4914 Ventura Lane, Houston Texas.

 

I posted a query in the old Texas Genweb format (1999) for information regarding Hugh, and after a long while, I received a message from a person who turned out to be a cousin doing Nelson Genealogy. She couldn't believe she actually found offspring of Helen Nelson Compton.  She was further surprised that myself, along with my brother and sisters, were grandchildren of Hugh's.  It is my recollection that she would be a great great granddaughter of Hugh, her father being the son of Hugh's first daughter, Thelma.  She supplied me with some family page information.

 

Hugh is a pretty enigmatic person, not much is known about him. My grandmother called him "Mr. Nelson", never referring to him by his first name. She also told me that he traveled back and forth into Mexico, but she didn't know what he did there.

 His death certificate lists him as a carpenter.  My cousin said he was a meat cutter among other things.  No one seems to have any photographs of him, although we do have a very small one in a locket my grandmother sent with my mother to Iowa.