The Wheat's Where Our Neighbors

Antoinette Harrell researching at the
Louisiana State Archives

Growing up in Amite, Louisiana at Rte Box 306, the Wheat's lived at Rte Box 303. Henry Wheat married my great uncle's Palmer Harrell's daughter Doris Harrell. Henry Wheat was a farmer, I remember him mostly in the field planting vegetables or picking and pulling them. He was a very quite man and enjoyed working on his farm. He was very kind and nice to our family. I remember him sharing vegetables from his garden with my family. Sometimes he would let the cows out in the pasture for grazing. I guess you can say we had a live lawn mower.

Henry was one of many children born to Saul and his wife Corrine;  Booker, Rosa, Beatrice, Melisa, Bernice, Mytrle, Bertha, Monore, Hattie, Mattie, Roy and Bertha. Saul was born in 1875 and died on Sept 5, 1954,  his wife Corrine was born in 1880 and died in on Sept 19, 1944. My mother use to say that cousin Henry was a good neighbor to have. He lived next door to his brother Roy Wheat and his son Bobby Ray Wheat and his family.

 My brothers and I spent long hot summer days playing with his youngest son Bruce. One of my childhood memories playing with Bruce is the time he, my brother and I busted watermelons in the field to see which one were the sweeties. When cousin Henry came out to the field and saw what we had done. He never raised his voice nor did we get a good whipping. I can't say my mother didn't want to give us a good whipping. Cousin Henry told her not to whip us because we were just being children. Not only having the Wheat's as neighbors but they were kind relatives as well.

His sister Melissa Wheat married my maternal grandmother's brother Alexander Richardson. My great uncle Theodore Harrell married Carrie Wheat. If you wasn't related directly, "perhaps one of your family members married into the many families in Amite." The Wheat still live in the same community up until this day. One of my cousin Ernest Wheat, Sr., still plant and grow food just like his father Henry Wheat and grandfather Palmer Harrell.

His wife Doris Harrell Wheat passed away before him. Henry was born on June 9, 1919 and died in April of 1992 in Tangipahoa Parish at the age of seventy-three.

Registration Card
Saul Wheat

Note: Saul Wheat couldn't read and he made his mark

The Genealogy of Ernest and Mary McKay Boykin of Fluker, Louisiana

Antoinette Harrell and her father
Walter Boykin

I woke up this morning thinking about my paternal ancestry and called my dad to get some information from him about his side of the family. Talking to my dad is like talking to a living history book. My dad can recall events that took place when he was just a child. Most of my genealogy research has focused on my mother side of the family.

The time has come for me to focus on my dad side of the family. In my last blog I said that I didn't know much about my paternal grandmother Mary McKay Boykins. My dad changed all that this morning in our conversation. He told me that his mother was born in Mississippi.

Jake and Martha Boykin

I went to the census on Family Search and found my grandmother Mary and her parents Charlie and Florence McKay. Charlie was born in 1884 and he was a mulatto, his birthplace was Mississippi. Florence was born in 1884. After Florence and Charlie were divorced, Florence moved to Tangipahoa Parish and later married a man named John Allen. According to the U. S. 1940 Census, John and Florence had two children living in the household at the time--a daughter named Jessie May who was twenty-year old and a son named Lonnie who was eighteen years old at the time this census of taken. In 1910 they lived in Beat 5, in Pike County, Mississippi, I have yet to trace the migration between 1910 and 1940.

My great grandmother Florence was born April 29, 1884 and passed away on June 1966 at age of eighty-two years old  in Tangipahoa, Louisiana.  My paternal grandparents Ernest and Mary Boykins had six children; Ernest, Jr., Florence, Francis, Walter, Lonnie, Jerry, and Ellis Boykins.  Grandmother Mary was born in 1913 in Pike County, Mississippi and she passed away in 1996.

I'm grateful to my dad for sharing our family genealogy with me. He's a true treasure besides being funny and most importantly motivating me to keep moving forward. I know he had so much more to share with all the Boykins offsprings.

The Registration Card
of Ernest Boykins, Sr.

Click on the link to hear the oral history of my father Walter Boykins http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f4evPVINl8