Written By John Midwood Rosemount, Qld 4560 Australia Phone: 617 5441 6412 Mobile: 614 1477 2031 Joyce Wallace, a native of
Virginia, has roots going back to Middlesboro, and nearby Tazewell in
Claiborne County, Tennessee where her father was born. To the left is perhaps the only known
photograph of Sarah Stanifer, Joyce’s great grandmother. Joyce believes it was probably taken at
the Cumberland Hotel around 1910 where Sarah worked as a chambermaid at the
time. Joyce1812VA@aol.com,
THE
SEARCH FOR SARAH STANIFER
Stanifer/Standifer Page
For those of you who may not know, the Cumberland
Hotel stood on the corner of Cumberland Street and North 18th Street
in Middlesboro, and faced the Louisville and Nashville Railway Station. Sarah does not show up on the 1920 US
Census, or if so neither Joyce nor myself have been able to find her. Since she worked at the Cumberland Hotel, or
Hotel Cumberland as I have seen it referred to in the Middlesboro Daily News of
the day, we are hoping to find out what happened to the old personnel records
for the hotel. Those records might
yield a forwarding address for Sarah when she ended her employment there.
My name
is John Midwood, and I am not from the local area. Like Daniel Boone who was reportedly the first white man to
travel through the Cumberland Gap, I am from North Carolina. I met Joyce about six months ago when I
wandered into the Genealogy Chat Room on AOL.
When it comes to genealogy, Joyce Wallace is an angel, and the Genealogy
Chat Room on AOL is Joyce’s ministry.
Out of the goodness of her heart, Joyce helps people find their
ancestors through online resources like Ancestry.com, and Rootsweb just to name
two.
Joyce’s
search for her own ancestors began with a single question to her mom and dad
when she was a little girl. “Where does
my red hair come from”? She wanted to know.
“I knew there were family secrets…not spoken…yet I kept clinging and
praying….” Joyce told me recently.
While much of Joyce’s support comes from Internet friends like myself,
as well as from her sister, Joyce believes her true support comes from
God. “There was one quote I always kept
going back to”, Joyce explained. From
the book of John, Chapter 8, Verse 32, “You shall know the truth, and the truth
shall set you free”.
From
her family, Joyce learned of her grandmother, Flora, who was born around the
turn of the 20th Century. At
this point Joyce does not know for certain where Sarah was when she gave birth
to Flora. Around the time of Flora’s
birth, Sarah worked as a servant in the home of Carrick Cloud and his mother
Mahula E Cloud in Claiborne County, Tennessee.
Joyce was able to learn of this through the 1900 US Census. In the
1900 census, Sarah is actually listed as Standifer. It was not until the 1910 US Census, when Sarah was enumerated at
the Cumberland Hotel, that she was known as Sarah Stanifer. Joyce tells me that her father, Ralph
Stanifer, changed his own name from Standifer to Stanifer in the 1930 Census. A even further variation exists if you go
back to the 1880 Census just before Sarah’s birth when her father, John and
mother, Mary’s surname appears as Staniford. Sarah
came from a large Claiborne County family.
My record of the children of John Staniford and Mary Leonard Staniford
are as follows: Elisabeth, born 1872 Martha J, born 1874 Margret, born 1876 Pearly, born 1878 Robert, born 1880 Sarah, born 1881 Minnie F, born 1888 Samuel M, born 1891 I mention all of these brothers and sisters in the
hopes that as they would have married and had children, and grandchildren of
their own, someone reading this might know some of these other people, and they
in turn might have kept up with their sister, Sarah. If
Joyce has one fear in this search it is, “that anyone who knows anything about
Sarah is long since dead”. Which is
where I come in. I suggested that Joyce
let me write an article about her search, in the hopes that someone reading
this might know what became of Sarah Stanifer.
Even if you do not know anything personally, would you be willing to
help Joyce in a way that I personally cannot help her? What we
need is someone in Middlesboro, Kentucky or in nearby Claiborne County,
Tennessee who can look for Sarah in places that Joyce and I do not have
access. Remember I told you Joyce lives
in Virginia, and I live much further away, having left my native North Carolina
behind to marry an Australian and now I am a dual citizen of both my beloved
United States, as well as my new country, Australia. As
a former enumerator and crew leader myself on the 2000 US Census, I know where
to look for information. You see,
because of privacy laws, US Census documents can not be seen by the general
public for 70 years after they have been enumerated, so in other words, the
most recent census forms that the public is allowed to look at is 1930. Other
than census records, we all leave a paper trail behind. One source of information is the phonebook,
provided of course that someone’s number is not unlisted. If that is the case, the phone book is of
more use to you to prop your child up at the table. Perhaps an even better source of information is a city
directory. Many people are listed in
city directories even when they are not listed in the phone book, simply
because all but the unfortunate homeless have an address, even if for one reason
or another they do not have a published phone number. Another
valuable source of information are local newspapers, such as the Middlesboro
Daily News. Much of what has appeared
in the paper is available on the Internet, but certainly not all of it. Then too, a computer screen is not nearly as
efficient means of reading a newspaper as a dedicated microfilm reader. Then too, when it come to the Internet, much
of the information is only available if you have a credit card, which
personally I do not have one. Even if I did have a credit card, unfortunately I
am not so rich that I can afford to pay for every bit of information I may want
to check out. Cost
aside, while a great deal of information is available on line, a great deal of
it is not. For instance, many members
of my family are from Rockland County, New York, and none of Rockland’s Federal
Census records are on the Internet at this time. If you
have ever done any type of records search, then you yourself will know that
many local and state government records are just not available at all unless
you go to the courthouse and physically search the records there. Many courthouses will allow anyone access to
the materials if you do the work yourself. Please,
if you can be of any assistance, if you can provide a clue to what became of
Sarah Stanifer after 1910 and her time at the Cumberland Hotel, I urge you to
share whatever you know with Joyce Wallace.
Joyce can be reached via email at Joyce1812VA@aol.com,
or by snail mail as our US Post Office is affectionately known in this modern
age at, Joyce Wallace, 1812 Chuckatuck Avenue, Petersburg, VA 23805. Back to Joe Payne’s Claiborne County Page
Back to Stanifer/Sandifer
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