September 15, 2025
Introduction: In this article, James Pylant writes about the extraordinary life and adventures of a relative on his family tree, Harry Wham. James is an editor at GenealogyMagazine.com and author for JacobusBooks.com, is an award-winning historical true-crime writer, and authorized celebrity biographer.
Editor’s Note: In researching his family tree, James Pylant has uncovered many interesting ancestors and relatives – perhaps none more so than Harry Wham, who had so many adventures that one family member commented his life “reads like fiction – but all so true.” James has written a three-part article to tell the tale of Harry’s life. In today’s Part 1 article, James provides context by filling in details of the family background. In tomorrow’s Part 2 article, James focuses directly on Harry and his many adventures, with a Part 3 conclusion to follow next week.
In late summer 1855, a wagon train from Pope County, Arkansas, arrived in north-central Texas and settled in what would soon become Erath County. Among these settlers were siblings Chesley Turnbow and Nancy (Turnbow) Gilbreath with their spouses and children. (1)
There were several other Turnbow siblings, but “no contacts were maintained between them and those remaining in Arkansas,” said family historian J. H. Hurley. According to Hurley, one of the brothers, Joe Turnbow, was “murdered by a nephew after they had moved to Pope County.” No other details are known about Joe’s demise – only that it happened in November 1854.
Family lore says their widowed mother, Gracy Coffee Turnbow, came to Texas from Arkansas to reunite with her children and grandchildren and persuade them to “return to a more civilized area.” (2) If that story is true, she failed in her mission. Kidney disease claimed Gracy’s life in Erath County, Texas, on 13 January 1860.
“By blood or marriage, the Turnbows gave Erath four sheriffs and three deputies,” I wrote in Sins of the Pioneers: Crimes & Scandals in a Small Texas Town. “But then there were members of this large family who stood on the other side of the law,” with arrests for vigilantism, train robbery, and horse theft. One relative, Andy Turnbow, was the accused chieftain of “The Mob,” an organization mentioned only in whispers. What began as citizens uniting to patrol a wild, lawless frontier morphed into a corrupt, much-feared band that punished its critics.
Generations would pass before descendants of the Arkansas and Texas branches of the Turnbow family reconnected.
One of Gracy Coffee Turnbow’s daughters, Feliciana Turnbow (as her name appears in family records), was born about 1820 in Tennessee. (3) There, she married Henry J. Johnson, a cabinetmaker. Feliciana is also how her name was reported in the 1850 federal census; however, an 1846 deed referred to “Henry J. Johnson and Phelicia Emeline Johnson his wife, formerly Phelicia Emeline Turnbow.”
Their son, Henry Clay Johnson, married his cousin, Mary Jane Johnston, granddaughter of James Turnbow and Felicia (Coffee) Turnbow, on 18 July 1869 in Lamar County, Texas.
Family lore says Mary Jane was a triplet; the other two were stillborn and described as having a “stone-like” appearance. The attending physician asked the parents if he could keep the remains and consult with other doctors to determine the cause of their unusual appearance. (4)
Henry Clay and Mary Jane moved southwest to Wise County, Texas, where he farmed. There, in Aurora, a trading community for county farmers, Mary Jane gave birth to Georgia Ann (known as Annie), on 4 April 1878.
Annie married John Wiley Woolever in 1897. The couple farmed in Jefferson County, Oklahoma, and they had five children. Annie was widowed in her 35th year. She survived daughter Lena, who died at 41 after a long illness. Annie moved to Torrance, where she died nine years later at 70 of a cerebral hemorrhage on 6 May 1948.
Annie was known as a straight shooter, whether spitting out an opinion or a chaw of snuff. (5) “To say she was stern was putting it mildly,” said granddaughter Pat Bennett. Annie was not too keen on daughter Minnie’s marrying Marion Huffman. “Oh, how she despised ‘them damned-blamed Huffmans,’” Pat said. (6)
Another Woolever daughter, Mary Iva, was born on 6 February 1902. At 16, she married 20-year-old William P. Wham on 20 August 1918 in Pontotoc County, Oklahoma, with the bride’s mother giving consent. (7) The couple moved to Wilson, in Carter County, where William worked as an oilwell driller, and lived next door to Iva’s sister and brother-in-law, Minnie and Marion Huffman. The Whams had two children, Harry and Louise.
In 1924, William sued for divorce and the children’s custody. He alleged that since the beginning of their marriage, his wife had a habit of leaving home “without any cause or provocation” and staying away for “various lengths of time.” Iva would “fail to attend her household duties” and drop off their children with other people without informing her husband of their whereabouts. Will complained that Iva’s nightlife involved shows, carnivals, dances, and questionable characters, over her husband’s objections. Will claimed that Iva verbally and physically abused him, describing incidents in which she fired a pistol in his direction, jabbed him with a pocketknife, and threw objects at him – once with a knife and another time with a gun that broke his rib.
Iva remarried 24-year-old Herbert Simpson in Carter County, Oklahoma, on 12 April 1925. She filed for divorce fifteen months later. Iva’s whereabouts following her second divorce are unknown, but her children were placed in the care of her mother, Annie, from at least 1926 to 1930. “She never talked about those years,” said Iva’s granddaughter. (8)
Iva had reunited with her children by 1935 and lived in Orange County, California. In 1940, her 20-year-old son Harry was an orchestra director. He would continue his musical career while also fearlessly chasing new frontiers – experiences few dared approach.
“He led one of the most exciting lives I have ever witnessed,” said his first cousin, Pat Bennett. “It reads like fiction – but all so true.” (9)
Tomorrow’s Part 2 article will describe some of Harry’s many adventures including a near-death experience.
Note: The accounts in this article are drawn from archival materials and family testimony. Just as genealogists research extraordinary stories like Harry Wham’s adventures, others trace famous historical events through records like those documenting Titanic survivors and their families.
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Note on the header image: covered wagon. Credit: Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives; Wikimedia Commons.
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(1) Delma Turnbow Freeman, Our Kin: Past and Present (Austin, Texas: the author, 1979), pp. 1-2.
(2) Delma Turnbow Freeman, “A Brief Sketch of the Chesley Turnbow Family,” in Raymond Hancock, Purves, Erath County, Texas (Dublin, Texas: the author, 1975), p. 192.
(3) Freeman, Our Kin: Past and Present, p. 140.
(4) Pat Bennett, Anaheim, Calif., to the writer, 14 September 1984.
(5) Pat Bennett to the writer, 7 June 1984.
(6) Pat Bennett to the writer, December 1986.
(7) William P. Wham/Miss Iva Woolever license (1918), “Oklahoma, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1890-1995,” online database with images, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com: 18 June 2025).
(8) Donna Lynn Wham to the writer, Ancestry.com message, 19 June 2025.
(9) Pat Bennett to the writer, 4 May 1984.