52 Ancestors - Week 4: Education

Amy Johnson Crow's email last week about "Goals Are Out, Questions Are In" inspired me to make this week's blog post a question ... 

Education?  Where did my Grandmother Emma Collins Francis and my Great Aunt Arabella "Vera" Booksh go to school?

New Orleans School Class Photo, circa 1905

We have this large group photo that was taken about 1905. Great Aunt Vera is fourth from the right in the back row and Grandma Emma is second from the right in the third row. 

Arabella Guinevere Booksh
1889 - 1977

Emma Collins Francis
(1888- 1925)

My Great Aunt, known to us as Noo had several nicknames. She was called Belle, Vera and Roonie. She and her family moved to New Orleans from East Baton Rouge Parish in 1893 when she was about 4 years old. (Estimated from Great Grandpa Samuel Booksh's 1930 obituary "...resident of this city for the past 37 years.") 

They were living at 1311 St. Mary Street in 1910 according to the U. S. Census. The family included Samuel W. Booksh and wife Belle M. Booksh and their four children, Sam Jr., Charles L., Wilton T. and Vera B.  The house is still there and Cousin Janet drove by and took photos of it.

My Grandma Emma Collins Francis's family had lived in New Orleans for several generations. On the 1910 U. S. Census they were living at 1220 Second Street, about four blocks from the Booksh family. The family consisted of Charles Alfred Francis, wife Anna Belle and their four children, Emma, Maude, Ernestine, and John. 

The family story was that Vera and Emma were good frinds and went to school together and that was how Emma and Wilton met. They married in 1912 and in September 1913 my father, Wilton Tisdale Booksh Jr., was born.

I have spent all week trying to find out what school might have been in the neighborhood without any luck, but I plan to continue looking. So for now the question stands ... Where did my Grandma Emma Collins Francis and my Great Aunt Arabella Vera Booksh go to school?

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, Week 1 and 2

2023 Week 1  I'd Like to Meet

          Week 2  Favorite Photo

I am running late with Week 1 so I have decided to combine Week 1 with Week 2.

      I would like to meet my paternal Grandmother, Emma Collins Francis Booksh. She is the only one of my grandparents that I mever met. I know a lot about her, but I'd like to have known her personally.

     One of my favorite photos of her is this one of Grandma Emma with her first born, my father Wilton Tisdale Booksh Jr., and her mother, Anna Belle Collins Francis, and grandmother, Emma Louise Chalfant Collins, taken by my grandfather, Wilton Tisdale Booksh Sr., on the day of my father's baptism on 21 October 1913 in New Orleans.

     Emma was born on 11 August 1888 at China Grove Plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. She was the oldest daughter of Charles Alfred Francis and Anna Belle Collins. Emma and her two sisters and her brother were all born at China Grove Plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish. One of the questions I'd like to ask her is why her mother traveled up river from their home in New Orleans to give birth in Pointe Coupee.

     Her mother, Anna Belle Collins, was born on 10 March 1866 in Collin County, Texas, but on the 1870 census she is listed at age 4 living with her father and mother, Foster Collins and Emma Collins, and two siblings in the household of her uncle Charles Chalfant in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. Great Grandmother Anna Belle's mother, Great Great Grandmother Emma Louise Chalfant, was born in Pointe Coupee Parish circa 1846. In the 1880 census she is listed at age 30 in Pointe Coupee with her husband J. F. Collins. Emma Louise's father, Nathaniel Chalfant, is listed as a Planter in Pointe Coupee Parish in 1860 and her mother, Drucilla Burrows Chalfant, died in Pointe Coupee. These are the only connections I have been able to find in the family to Pointe Coupee.

     I am assuming the China Grove Plantation in Pointe Coupee was the home of Emma Louise's parents, Nathaniel Chalfant (1795-1869) and Drucilla Caroline Burrows (1813-1865). That's what I'm assuming, but if I could meet Grandma Emma I could ask her.

     And I would also like to ask her if these two unidentified Daguerreotypes from my Great Grandma Belle Tisdale's photo collection are of Nathaniel Chalfant and Drucilla Burrows.