This story has been the only story told to me by every relative on my mother's side of the family, and while it just seems too weird to be true, I have nothing else to go on so offer it here and ask for your help.

Probably circa 1880 - 1890 my great grandfather Jefferson (possibly Davis as a middle name) Burkett was married and had at least two sons, possibly more. They lived in Arkansas and he was at least part or all Cherokee, depending upon who was telling the story. He had a temper and was a jealous man. One day he came home to find another man sitting on his front porch. Filled with jealous rage, Jeff killed the man. His mother (here the story I'm sure is embellished, but still it's the story I have been told all my life) threw him a gun and told him to get on his horse and run, which he did.

He headed to Louisiana where he met my great grandmother, Jessie Shipley, whose parents may have immigrated from Ireland. They married under the name of Smith in Louisiana, and had eight children starting about 1895. Jeff worked for the railroad at that point in time and the family lived in a refurbished box car that was moved along from siding to siding as the track was laid heading westward. At some point he may have been going under the name of Jones, as well. Some of his daughters used to refer to themselves as "the Jones girls" when they were teenagers.

They eventually settled in Houston, Texas and Jeff changed jobs to be a trolly car conductor or engineer or driver. One evening there was a knock at the door and there on the front steps were two or three young men probably in their late teens or early twenties looking for their father. The shock of finding out that Jeff had not only been married previously, but had never bothered to divorce his first wife was pretty devastating for the entire Irish Catholic Jessie Shipley Smith and her eight children.

The entire clan then had to go legally change their names to Burkett and Jessie had her marriage to Jeff ended one way or another. The family then took on the nick name of "The Battling Burketts" among themselves. Jeff continued to live in Houston and went on to marry a third wife and have twin girls with her in Houston before he died there. He died in the mid-to-late 1940's in Houston.

Because Jeff fled, hid, changed his name, and was able to remain out of sight for nearly 20 years, there may not be a lot of official records that can be traced to him. I don't know. All I know is that I would love to find out if any of the relations through his first family back in Arkansas and/or Tennessee are alive and know any other parts to the story including who he was and where he was from -- what was the family line from him up through his parents? Was he full-blooded Cherokee or part, or was that entirely fabricated? He definitely LOOKED Indian, but that doesn't really confirm anything.

If anyone knows where I might find any newspaper articles about the murder he committed that would give me a place/date/any other names, that might be a big help. I wish I knew more, but he died within a couple of years after I was born and he was so hated by the majority of my great aunts and uncles that they just wouldn't talk about him except to relate that he was a terrible person who would some times drink and hit Jessie, and one of my great aunts threatened him with a knife if he ever bit their mother again. That great aunt is also reported to have slept with the butcher knife under her pillow when he was there.

That's all I know. I'd love to know more and find any living relations. Most of Jessie's eight children either moved away or died and I only knew three of them. Of those three, only one had any children -- my grandmother who had my mother.