52 Ancestors - Week 20

BEARDED

Benjamin Franklin Tisdale 1823-1876

In all the family photos there are many with moustaches and sideburns but very few with beards. This Carte de Visite photo is of Great Great Grandfather Benjamin Franklin Tisdale and was taken about 1870. It's hard to tell how much of the beard is hair and how much is a stain on the photo.

B. F. Tisdale, which is how he is most often referred to, was born 19 March 1823 in New Bern, North Carolina to Nathan Tisdale and his second wife Mary "Polly" Wade.  He was the last of their nine children. His family moved to Alabama in 1830.  A letter from Mrs. Nancy Lee Tisdale Lawson says, "In 1830 Nathan Tisdale purchased a small plantation on the Tombigbee River in Alabama to which he travelled by caravan with a lot of other families." The deed was recorded in Marengo County Deed Book B-344 on 25 January 1832 and it appears the property was bought by his mother-in-law, Charlotte Wade, for her daughter, Mary Wade.

In 1833 the family is living in Mobile, Alabama. On 25 August 1846 B. F. married Maria M. Pike in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She died in September 1849.  On July 29 1851 B. F. married Eliza Helen Pratt, also in Baton Rouge. Their first child, Mary Bernice, was born in Baton Rouge in 1853. By 1855 they were living in New Orleans where their second child, Arabella Maria, was born. B. F. is listed as an Accountant in the New Orleans City Directory, living at 26 Old Levee Street from 1855 to 1857. In 1859 they were living at 2 Bienville Street. Eight more children were born in New Orleans between 1857 and 1874: Florence Helen, born in 1857 and died in 1858, Benjamin Franklin Jr. and a deceased twin born in 1860, William Pratt Tisdale in 1861, Olivia South Carolina in 1864, Robert Rafael in 1866, Marion Eugene in 1871, and Charles Harry in 1874.

B. F.'s oldest brother, Joseph Wade Tisdale, had been living in New Orleans since 1842 and brother Nathan O. J. Tisdale had lived there since 1850.

The Civil War and occupation of New Orleans disrupted the life of the family.  B. F. Tisdale's service record says he enlisted as a PRivate in Company B of the Confederate Guards Regiment, Louisiana Militia, on March 8, 1862. His brother-in-law, Marion Pratt, joined the same regiment and they were among those "transferred by Gov. Thomas O. Moore to Major General Mansfield Lovell, C.S.A., for local defense of the City of New Orleans." (Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Louisiana, NARA M320, 586957, Record Group 109, Roll 0376, familysearch.org, accessed 9/13/2014)     

The story has come down in the family that B. F. Tisdale had a drinking problem which caused Eliza to take the children and move to her parents' home in Baton Rouge. Many of the letters that my great grandmother Belle Tisdale Booksh saved are from that period. In 1876 he was living in Kushla, Alabama, just north of Mobile, with his sister Mary Eliza and her husband, Jacob Magee. B. F. Tisdale  died there 16 June 1876 at the home of his physician, Dr. James Grace.  

For more detailed information on B. F. Tisdale see my  blog Belle's Letters at belletisdale.blogspot.com