The challenge of surnames spelled in a variety of confusing and often inconsistent ways can be mind boggling. One line is Van Scyoc and there are 27 different ways to spell that name!!!! People would sound out the name and then spell it (or try to spell it) phonetically, others just made wild guesses, and some, I think, had to be drunk when they filled in the forms! Often people did not write their own names, sometimes they could no do so and had to make a mark and have someone else enter the name as they pronounced it (add another wrinkle here because people mumble, people do not hear well and are reluctant to ask for repeated pronunciations, etc.)/ Ennis can be Innis or Enis or Ennes and all refer to the same family group. Hudson can be Hutson, Hodson, etc. So, you can see the issues at work.
The family of one REED daughter, Elizabeth "Betsey" REED who married one William GUTHRIE/GUTTERY/GUTRY/GUTHERIE....is a prime example. It makes searching through census records, marriage records, etc. difficult and time-consuming.
The tale of Elizabeth and William is a stark and heartbreaking one demonstrating the suffering caused when the country split into factions and fought each other. Regardless of the nobility of cause - war is at its heart hell. On those who fight and those, the this family, caught in the whirlpool of conflict.
Like so many of the area of northern Arkansas and southern Missouri the family was uprooted as thousands of troops poised to strike from two directions. Some sons joined up to fight and others went to Kansas to escape the conflict and fighting. Even when war was over the problems lingered on as outlaws - some with a political agenda and most just out for what they could get - called "bushwhackers" and "renegades".
CharleneGuthery55William Guthery: William Guthery was killed by bush whackers after the Civil War. He was in bed , sick when they came in demanding money. They thought he had it hidden. When he told them he didn't
have any money, they sat him up on the side of the bed and shot him. Probably about 1865.
According to a letter in The Terry Family Letters, vol. 1, pg. 234 Elizabeth Reed Guttery wrote to John and Lucinda Reed Terry from Benton County, Arkansas June 16, 1867. As written in the original.
"Dear brother and sister, i received your kind letter of March the 31 and was glad to hear from you once more now sister you said you had heard that William was dead he was murdered on the 17th of September last at home by his bed side sick by three strangers there was no one present to witness the horrible scene but myself
I cannot with pen and ink tell you half the trouble I have seen during the war
I have but one child a living that is Daniel and the rebles had a rope around his neck to hang him
my children all died at home but Samuel and Joseph they both died at Fayetteville they was both in the federal army but never was marked with a bullet myself but Danial is all the family that is alive w are living at home we are verry lonesome"
This would indicate William had died September 1866...Daniel Guthrie (Guttery, Gutthery, etc.) survived and married - still in northwest Arkansas. One has to wonder at the trauma and lasting impact that whole event must have had on the young man. To watch a loved father murdered, a mother terrorized and himself nearly hung to death... One account indicates he might have been shot as well as being stung up to die...
Samuel and Joseph both died in April of 1863 at the Battle of Fayetteville.
Finding graves for William, Elizabeth, and Daniel is challenging due to the variations of spelling the last name. If not for the letters shared between sisters preserved in the Terry Family Letters collections this heartrending story would be lost...and we would be less for never learning its lessons.
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