Thomas Jefferson Martin; A Life (Part 1)

 Introduction

   I have been interested in family history as long as I can remember. I was more fortunate than most in that I was close to all of my grandparents, all of my aunts, and many of my cousins. I recall being doted on and getting away with mischief. “Close” was also physical in most cases; all four grandparents and most aunts lived within a two or three hour drive at most. I had no “blood” uncles - only the husbands of my aunts. My father was the oldest (and only) son with four younger sisters, and my mother was the youngest of five girls.

   My mother’s father Stephen Albert Martin was the first of my grandparents to die. I remember clearly when my mother received the phone call that her father had died of a heart attack; I was five years old. I recall sitting on his lap and allowing me to search through his coat pockets for a nickel, which I would be allowed to keep. Even today my impression of him is gentle and loving. However he lived on the edge of poverty and barely supported his family with low paying jobs as different as picking cotton and making costume jewelry.

   What kind of childhood had molded my grandfather? What kind of father had been my great-grandfather Thomas Jefferson Martin? About twenty years ago I knew only from family stories that Tom Martin had disappeared from his home in Texas in about 1886, and was never again heard from. One of the few facts I knew concerning him was that he had fought in the Civil War on the side of the Union. It took only a little amateur sleuthing to discover that the National Archives had a file of correspondence concerning his soldier’s pension; for the cost of $37.00 I received a stack of papers almost an inch thick with copies of applications, rejections, corrections, etc, from 1896 - 1924. With this information I wrote a short biographical sketch of Tom Martin which I shared with my family.

   About five years ago my brother Bruce Martin Bradberry produced a wonderfully written family history book concentrating on our parents (Winsel and Eleanor Bradberry: The story of the Bradberry-Winn and Anderson-Martin families). Bruce was able to augment the sketch I had written and place it in the proper context. And now, with the relative ease of accessing more and more historical documents on the internet I have been able to flesh out the story of Tom Martin. But be aware that for every mystery solved there appears to be yet another!