Research recap and where I’m headed part 2

At first in my research of the Hardeman County tax records, I thought that I could just view a small portion of them and get the information I wanted.  I found that this wasn’t possible because of the fact that it appeared that John Washington Womble never left Hardeman County because some version of his name always seemed to appear in the tax lists.

As I mentioned earlier, I looked at Hardeman County tax records from 1865-1880 that I ordered on microfilm from the Family History Library.  I made copies of the records that seemed pertinent to my research and then transferred that information into Excel spreadsheets.

Hardeman County Tax Records

According to the 1869 tax record book, the taxes collected were recorded on 30 May 1869.  The only explanation I can give for why John Washington Womble is not listed in the 1869 tax records is because he may not have owned land when the taxes were collected or perhaps he lacked sufficient income and so was considered to be exempt from paying taxes that year. 

 His oldest daughter, Ellen married Isham Bowling in that same county on 4 August 1869, so it seems likely that John Washington Womble and his family moved to Hardeman County probably in 1867 or even as late as winter 1868.

The J W Wamble listed in the 1870 tax list must be John Washington Womble.  The reason being is that the only item he’s taxed on is 83 acres of land. This property correlates to the 83 acres that is sold to P J Tranum in 1873.  I did find the record where John Washington Womble purchased 83 acres from Chalkley Grantham and his wife, Abby in a deed registered March 1872.  No other deeds were found for John W Womble in Hardeman  County before the deed recorded in 1872.

John W. Womble is listed in the 1870 U.S. census as living in Hardeman County, TN in the 12^th Civil District. 

•  A person with the same name appears in the 1871 tax list in District 12.

•  A J H Womble is listed in District 12 in the 1872 tax list.  The letter H is probably just a misspelling on the tax collector’s part.

•   J W Womble is listed in District 12 in the 1873 tax list.

John W Womble appears in the Nashville City Directory from 1874 to 1875.  The 1880 census does list a John Wash. Wamble the 11^th Civil District and the 1880 Agriculture census indicates that he is renting the land he’s farming.  This evidence suggests to me that John W. Womble left Hardman and when he moved back, moved to a different civil district. 

What I also found in looking at the census records, both population and agriculture schedules, was another Womble family living in Hardeman County.  This family is headed by a J J Womble who I believe to be John Jobes Womble.

John Jobes Womble

A J W Womble or an individual with similar name or initials appear in subsequent tax records after 1870 up until 1878 when I found a John Wamble listed living in district 11.

It’s my belief that John Jobes Womble is the son of John Washington Womble’s brother, Warren.  This belief is based on previous research that I’ve done on the Womble family line.  According to census records, John Jobes Womble had a son named John W Womble.  I haven’t been able to figure out if his middle name was also Washington; however, the name similarity creates the illusion that my ancestor never left Hardeman County, Tennessee.

                     

The only Womble/Wamble I found listed in the tax records from 1865 to 1869 was John Jobes Womble.  In 1870, there are three people with the Wamble surname, J J Wamble, A W Wamble, and J W Wamble.  The person named J W Wamble is paying tax on 83 acres of land.  Neither of the other two Wombles paid taxes on any land and all three are listed in District No. 12 just like the 1870 census.

According to the 1870 Tennessee constitution, Article II, section 28 that’s posted at http://www.tngenweb.org/law, all males between the age of 21 and 50 were taxed.  Because of this law, I believe that the J W Wamble listed on the tax lists after 1873 is John W. Womble, John Jobes Womble’s son.  In the 1870 census the John W listed in John Jobes’ household is said to be 16; therefore, by 1874, the son would have been about 21, so he must be the J W Wamble listed on the 1874 tax list and also those subsequent years.  John Jobes Womble is not listed in the tax records after 1878 so he must’ve aged out.  He’s is also listed in the 1880 U. S. census living in the 11^th Civil District and in the Agriculture census renting his farm.

Conclusion

It would seem that because tax records were found for people of the same name or similar variation of the name J W Womble between the years 1870 to 1881 that even though my ancestor sold land in 1873 that he somehow eked out an existence in Hardeman County during a period in this country’s economic history that prior to the Great Depression of the 1930’s was considered the greatest economic crisis that the United States had ever faced.

However, it’s doubtful that John Washington Womble stayed on in Hardeman County after selling his land to P J Tranum.  He was skilled as a tailor and likely believed that he could fall back on this by obtaining work in Nashville where he lived from 1874-1875.  This scheme of course didn’t work out and he must’ve sorely underestimated the economic impact of the financial crisis’ impact on his ability to hold onto a job.

At this date, it’s still unclear whether or not he received the remainder of the money owed Tranum owed him.  Nevertheless, he returned to Hardeman where his son, Adolphes, his daughter, Ellen and her husband, and his nephew John Jobes Womble were living and likely returned to farming, by renting land on which to farm.  Possibly, when he moved away he was unsure of the likelihood of his ability to stay employed, so saved part of the money obtained from the land sale to Tranum and used this to rent land.

Miniature PI office

I one of my other lives I worked in a toy store that also sold dollhouse supplies.  In an issue of Dollhouse Miniatures magazine there was an article where someone had made a PI office.  When I saw it, I immediately wanted to make it, but for some reason I didn’t.  However, the idea of making it never left the back of my mind.

Years later, I obtained a copy of the article through interlibrary loan.  The instructions called for making the office out of ½” thick foam core board.  I searched around where I live and could never find any, so I knew that I’d have to find an alternative. 

While working at the toy store, I had participated in a class where we were to make a garden inside a room box.  All of our supplies were provided for us to create the garden; however, I never finished mine and instead it sat on a shelf in a closet for about a decade waiting for me to do something with it.

 Contents of room box

 When I finally got around to working on my PI office project, I decided to use the room box from my garden project.  I pulled the box out of the closet and examined it to see what needed to be done before turning it into a detective office.

The box still had everything in it from the garden class.  I found that the brick walls had been glued to the walls and that there was a “grass” covered thick piece of Styrofoam.  I was able to remove everything except for the brick walls.  These I tried at first to remove by sticking an X-acto knife or something similar behind it and wedging it from the walls of the box.  This didn’t work, but I found that heating the brick walls with a hair drier heated up the glue that was holding in place enough for me to get a butter knife behind the walls and slowly peel them off. 

In the process of removing the brick walls

After this arduous process, I found there were still remains of the glue on the walls.  This I sanded off so that it wouldn’t interfere with my painting and papering of the walls.  My next step was to make a wood floor for the office, which I did by using individual floor boards that had come from a pack that I’d obtained from my days working at the toy store. 

The boards were a wonderful walnut color and I wasn’t sure if they would mesh well with my project.  Because my idea had been that I would stain the floor to co-ordinate with the walls of the office.  After cutting and gluing the boards to a piece of cardboard cut to fit the inside of the room box, I sanded it after the glue had dried.  Then I searched through my stain samples to see what stain would work best.  I chose Special Walnut as the color for the floor.  I stained the floor very lightly so that the floor wouldn’t be too overly dark.  After about 5-10 minutes I rubbed off the excess stain with a rag and then let it dry thoroughly overnight.  The next day, I sanded the floor and tried to create worn spots on the floor by excessively sanding patches.  I decided not to gloss the floor so as to maintain the impression of a very worn floor and was concerned that applying gloss would ruin this illusion.

I tested the fit of the floor in the box, and held off on gluing it in place because I wanted to add electricity.  My plan for electrifying the room was to have a light in the bathroom area, a desk lamp, table lamp in the left corner, and a light in the hall that would be behind the back wall.

My plan with the electricity also involved figuring out how to arrange it so that the lights could be controlled independently.  I tried to come up with different ways to do this, but nothing seemed to work mainly because I wanted to use tape wire.  The only way that I came up with how to control the lights was to install a switch for each light or as I eventually decided every couple of lights.  The bathroom and hall lights would be controlled by one switch each and then the desk and table lamps would be controlled with one switch.

Tape Wiring

Once the tape wire was installed along with the switches, I painted over any of the wiring that might show by painting over it with gesso.  Incidentally, I left out the wiring for the bathroom light on purpose.  It would be put in place later, after the back wall was installed. 

After painting the Raw Sienna Acrylic on the lower part of the walls

After the gesso had dried, I painted the lower 3 ¾” of the walls with a faux wood finish using a coat raw sienna acrylic.  This I let dry completely and then added another coat of a mixture of burnt umber acrylic paint and a gel staining medium.  By applying the stain in the same direction as the paint it created a faux wood look.  This staining method I duplicated on the back wall that was made out of mat board.

Next after the paint was dry I wallpapered the walls with miniature ceiling paper that had a stuccoed texture.  This wallpaper was to have a smoky, well used appearance.  To achieve this according to the article’s instructions, it needed to be covered with a light coat of raw sienna and gel medium mixture by brushing it on and then wiping it off.  This technique turned out to be more difficult than it was described.  I found it difficult to get the paint and gel medium mixture to spread evenly.  Wiping the mixture off seemed to really mean scrub off even though that wasn’t what the instructions stated.  However, the end product seemed to turn out well enough.  The walls looked a bit darker than I remember, but since I didn’t have a color picture of the finished project, and was only going by my memory of what the office walls looked like I feel as though perhaps it’s my memory that’s faulty and not my painting of the walls.

I glued the floor to the inside of the room box once the paint on the wallpaper had dried.  Then I began cutting and painting the wood strip that would be baseboards and trim for the windows, walls, and door.  This trim was then glued to the back wall around the windows, door, and along the bottom to form a baseboard.

After the trim on the back wall was installed, I began trying to make faux hinges, door knob, and mail slot.  At first, I wasn’t sure how I would accomplish making these things.  My idea at first had been to just buy the needed items, but as it turned out I didn’t want to spend the money, so I decided to try and create them myself from scratch.  I measured the hinges on my front door and scaled down the measurements to 1/12^th scale.  Then I measured a miniature doorknob that I had on one of my other miniature structures.  The mail slot was a little trickier because I didn’t have ready access to one.  I have one on my door at work, but had no interest in making a trip over to my office just to measure the mail slot.  Instead I just winged it and came up with measurements that I thought would be to scale with the room and door. 

Round toothpicks turned out to be the perfect diameter to use as hinges and were cut to the needed length.  The mail slot was cut out of a piece of cardboard as was the door plate for the door knob.  A small key hole or impression of a key hole was poked into the cardboard.  The end of a dowel was sanded into a rounded shape and then cut to the depth needed for a door knob.  Another narrower dowel was added so that the door knob wouldn’t be flush against the door plate.  All of the pieces for the doorknob including the doorplate were glued together and then the hinges, mail slot, and door knob were painted with gold metallic acrylic paint.  Once the paint was dried the door hardware was installed on the office door.

The instructions called for adhering a piece of glass to the back side of the inner wall and after adhering the letters on the door’s window applying several coats of frosted window paint to create a frosted appearance.  My idea was to instead adhere a piece of frosted acrylic plastic that I’d purchased for another project to the back of the inner wall and the lettering would be printed on a clear laser label which would be put over the door’s window opening.

This however didn’t work out.  The label wasn’t large enough to cover the entire window and so I wound up copying the lettering onto tracing paper that I glued to the area around the door’s window.  I glued an unlettered piece of tracing paper over the other windows so everything would match.  The only hitch was that the door lettering was exposed and could be smudged.  To prevent this, I glued another piece of acrylic over the tracing papered covered openings.

 

After the glue dried, I glued the wall in place along the long side of the floor about 2 inches from the back of the room box.  Once this was dried, I glued the partition wall in place to the right of the door.

I mitered the ends of the 1/2” square strip wood that would trim the top interior walls of the room box and then painted the pieces to match the other wood in the room.  I used clear tacky glue to glue each piece in place.  Then cut and painted the baseboard and wainscoting trim to match.  This was also glued in place using clear tacky glue.

I cut another piece of 1/2” square strip wood to fit under the top molding on the right side wall down to the floor and painted it as well.  This I glued in place to the right wall to be in line with the partition wall.  This would define the area where the bathroom sink and medicine cabinet will be.  The plan is for this area to be a washroom for the office.

The semi-finished office

Next on my to do list is to fill in any gaps in the top molding using a dark brown polymer clay, to add the third light switch to the back of the room box for the washroom light. Lastly, I’ll work on making furniture and accessories for the detective office.