Alice Bains Fancher born April 27, 1874

Alice Bains Fancher

       It's the last day of the month and there are a few bits and pieces that I need to finish up before beginning a new month.  One is to mention Lanny's great-grandmother Alice Bains Fancher's bithday.  This information is taken from Nola Starr's writings:

       According to the Fancher family Bible, Alice Bains Fancher was born April 27, 1874 in Berryville, Carroll County, Arkansas, a daughter of James Polk Fancher and Susan Crump.  Alice was small of build, being only about five feet tall, and very beautiful.  One person with whom I corresponded to get information described her as "disgustingly beautiful."  She came from a very prominent Arkansas family who was well thought of and looked up to in the community.  Her father was a judge and held many important positions.  Her mother seems to have had very poor health.  Only three of her seven children lived to maturity.  They were Alice, Joseph and Mary.
       When Alice was not quite ten years old her mother died.  From then on it must have been a hard road for a little girl who needed her mother and the love and help she could give her.  Her father was a public figure, always being in a public office.  He never married again.  Shortly after the mother's death he put the two girls in a Catholic mission run by nuns.  How lonely the little girl must have been away from home and friends.  Following is a letter she wrote to her father on Christmas Day from the mission.  A nephew, J. K. Spaulding found it among the father's belongings after his death and later sent it to us.

St. Anna Academy
Osage Mission, Kansas
Dec. 25, 1887

(Alice would be 13 years old)

Dear Father,
     Permit me on this joyful occassion to present heartfelt wishes for a merry Christmas and thrice a Happy New Year.  Though today I am far from you, still in thought I shall be with you, and I can picture to my mind your loving face, and hear your kind and familiar voice invoking blessings upon your absent child.
     Dear Papa long may you be spared to your child.  May heaven's choicest blessings rest upon you is the warmest prayers of

Your devoted daughter                                        

Alice Fancher

       The handwriting was beautiful and the father must have cherished the letter to keep it so long.

       As she grew up she got on the wrong path and caused her family much distress.  In trying to find information about her I located and wrote to her sister, Mary Fancher Spaulding, in Texas.  She was now an old lady in her nineties and blind, so her daughter, Louise Burdine, wrote her return letter for her.  She said, "since her sister Alice caused her and the rest of her family much grief, she has always been reluctant to speak of her.  When your letter came inquiring about Alice she was quite upset and said 'skeletons just won't stay in chosets.' "
        Louise Burdine continues:  "after his wife died, Grandfather Fancher took Alice and Mary with him to Topeka, Kansas.  He was United States Indian agent for that territory.  He placed the two girls in Osage Mission which was run by Catholic nuns.  The Fanchers were not Catholic but Alice became a Catholic.  Mother (Mary) did not become a Catholic, but has always had the highest regard for the nuns, for they were kind to a motherless child.
       Grandfather then sent Alice to Arkansas Industrial University in Fayetteville, Arkansas.  There she met John Arnett and they eloped shortly before Alice's sixteenth birthday.  They ran away to Tahlequah, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) April 16, 1891 and were married by a Judge Wilson.
       Mother said Grandfather went after them but the Judge convinced him to let the marriage stand.  Alice and John went to live on the farm of John's folks located near Fayetteville. (Sulphur City).  Alice wasn't content living on the farm and after Sue was born went back home to Grandfather.  The marriage was rocky and they lived together off and on until two more children were born.  Alice refused to live with John any more and Grandfather got a divorce for her.
      (Sue, second child of Alice says her mother got the divorce shortly after the fifth child, Lomand, was born.)
     Alice and John's children were:

Henry Luke Starr,
 Lanny's grandfather

           Luke Polk Arnett, born Feb. 1, 1892  a/k/a Henry Luke Starr
           Sue Elizabeth Arnett, born April 19, 1893
           Gip Taylor Arnett, born June 30, 1895
           Mary Fancher Arnett, born June 1, 1897
           Clifton Loman Arnett, born Jan. 18, 1904

Sue Elizabeth and Luke Arnett

Laura Parks Spalding, Mary Fancher Spalding, Aunt Matt Rowan 1912

front row: Lois Starr, HENRY LUKE STARR, Loriette Archibald Starr
back row:  sons Carl, Don and John Starr