Bryan-Denham Families

Editor's Note:  The following information was written by Beatrice "Bea" Bryan Denham in 1977 to be included in Our Island Heritage, Vol. 3, 1978, compiled by Sophie Haley and Mickie Smith.  Photographs have been added by the Editor.

The Bryan Family

Joseph Henry Bryan (1865-1960) was the eldest son of William M. Bryan (1830-1896) and Lucy Anne Duke (1838-1921).  

Matthews Cemetery, Franklin Parish

William was born in Harrisonburg and married Mary Desha in 1857; they had two children, one of whom died in infancy.  Mary died at the birth of the second child, Laura.  The Holstein family with whom Mary had been living while William was in the Confederate Army, took the baby with them when they moved to Texas during the War, and reared her.  Her descendants live around Texarkana and Fort Worth.  

William married secondly Lucy Anne Duke, whose father and mother were Thomas Duke (1809-1841) and Emeline Carter (1812-1859).  William was a farmer and teacher, and his family was reared in Richland Parish and Beouf Prairie in Franklin Parish.  

His grandchildren live today in Franklin Parish; one grandson has been President of the Winnsboro State Bank for many years.  Most of the granddaughters have been in the Louisiana School System from the time it was made up of one-room schools to the present day.

"Mr. Joe" in his young days cut and rafted timber to New Orleans.  Some years before "Mr. Joe" married "Miss Mamie" Bennett, he worked for Mr. Copeland, who had a plantation store at "Copeland," later Foules.  When he was courting my mother "Mamie" he walked from Copeland to Florence, later Sicily Island, on Saturday nights after he closed the store and spent the night at Dick Kiper's whose wife was Sallie Carter Kiper, a cousin of his.  Sallie and Dick were the parents of Ernest, Lawrence, Theodore, Edith, Courtney, and Leonard, and they lived in what is now the Claude Enright house.

Joe Bryan and Mamie Bennett were married in what is now the Spencer house, but was then the two-room church and school house.  After the ceremony, Tom Perrin and Clay Fairbanks were bringing chairs for the bride and groom to use when they signed the marriage certificate.  The two had been enemies, and had been known to shoot at each other.  When they collided in the aisle while bringing the chairs, all the congregation promptly vacated the building.  Rev. W. H. Hatfield performed the ceremony and Thomas W. Perrin, Dr. C. J. Gordon, and John H. Knight were witnesses.

Four daughters were born to this couple: Beatrice "Bea", who married M. Earl Denham; Clara Myrtle, who died at one year of age; Minnie Lea, who married Bruce Glasgow, they lived in Akron, Ohio until after Bruce's death, then Minnie Lea and her son Carl and his family moved to New Johnsonville, Tennessee, and the daughter with her family have recently moved to Colorado; Mamie "Kidd" married S. Edward Trichel of Harrisonburg.  All three daughters have been teachers.  "Miss Mamie" was loved and respected by everyone with whom she came in contact, and many were the townspeople to whom she gave love, advice, sympathy and encouragement in times of trouble and stress.

"Mr. Joe" was a carpenter for many years, and many of the houses he built or assisted others in building were the Hobgood house, later known as the Knotts House; he was permanently employed for many years by the Hobgood Brothers until they sold their extensive holdings in the early twenties.  He also built the "new" part of the Dewitt house; the old Methodist parsonage; the newer part of the Chambers House; the Kempe house in town; the Peniston house which was later torn down; the Meyers, Knight and Whitlock houses; the first Denham Brothers Garage; the Buck Smith store where the Library now is; the Will Kiper house which was later the Saltzman house and later than that the A. B. Hall house, now burned. He assisted in building the Yancey  house and Yancey Store, the McNair and Coney houses.  To build a house in those days was not simple.  Materials had to be shipped in by rail.  Joe would dictate to Mamie the grade, the size of every piece of lumber to be used, then he would take the bill to Monroe, to select the grades he wanted, and it would be shipped.  He would check it out as it was unloaded, and have it hauled to the building site.  These houses all had something of Joe Bryan's character, honest, four-square, built to last.  One of the greatest tributes to his life came after his death when many of the grandchildren of the friends of his youth attended his funeral.

In 1921, they took an orphan girl, Eula Mae Brashears, to rear and many years later, after "Miss Mamie's" death, she brought her family back and cared for "Mr. Joe" the last three years of his life.

Old Pine Hill Cemetery, Sicily Island

Old Pine Hill Cemetery, Sicily Island

The Denham Family:

From Our Island Heritage, Vol. 3, 1978, compiled by Sophie Haley and Mickie Smith:

The Denhams moved to Sicily Island in 1920.  Earl's father, Cecil "Pop" Denham was a sugar maker and a farmer.  Cecil's great grandfather, Reubin, bought lands on the Homochitto River in Mississippi in 1787.  His family had come to Virginia in 1618 with Edward Bennett's colonists who settled in Isle of Wight County.  By 1783, after the Revolutionary War ended, he had bought land in North Carolina which he later sold and moved to Mississippi.  Twenty years later he moved into the St. Helena Land District, on Bayou Barbary.  One son, Hugh, married Margaret Ogden, from a wealthy family of Wilkinson County.  They later moved to East Baton Rouge Parish.  One of their young sons, Benjamin F. H. Denham, became the father of Cecil. 

After Cecil and his brother Fuqua Ogden Denham reached maturity, Cecil bought out the old home place from Fuqua, who moved to the Island with his young and growing family.  About the time the two families were grown, Fuqua moved back to Baton Rouge and Cecil moved to Sicily Island.  

Cecil's wife, Annie Louisa Edmonston had died and two of their sons, Rowland and Earl, had gone to Sweeney's Automobile School in Kansas City.  When they returned, they went to Sicily Island and built Denham Brothers Garage.  Two years later, Earl bought Rowland's share of the business and served the Island people for twenty-one years, during the more prosperous times of the 1920s and through the desperate years of the depression.  

Cecil married a second time to Julia Davis.  

In 1924, Earl and Bea Denham were married.  They lived in Sicily Island until World War II.  They had one daughter, Jo Anne, who married Edsel G. Thurman.

Record of birth for Jo Anne Denham:

Old Pine Hill Cemetery, Sicily Island

Old Pine Hill Cemetery, Sicily Island

 

Because of their love for the old Bennett-Bryan house they began restoring it in 1973.  Earl died before it was finished, but with the help of Kidd and Edward Trichel, who came up and worked with Bea while the house was being rebuilt, the Bryan family now comes back often to meet old friends and re-live old memories.

Bennett-Bryan-Denham House, 2011

Bennett-Bryan-Denham House, 2011