So a few years ago I was contacted by a descendant of Ora Alice May. She was confused that my James Sherman Smith and her James Sherman Smith seemed to be the same. The problem was, her James Sherman Smith was “killed by a train” in 1885.
Ora Alice May was the daughter of John May and Minerva Justice. John May died in 1878 and Minerva remarried to JJ Cooley who opened a saloon in Dodge City, Kansas. When Ora Alice May, or Alice as she was called at the time, was a teen, she became a dancing girl in her step-father’s saloon.
Apparently, in 1884, Alice met a young cowboy who came to Dodge City on a cattle drive, and this cowboy, James Sherman Smith, married Alice and took her to live on his father’s ranch in Jackson County, Kansas. We aren’t sure exactly what happened, but in 1885, while on a return trip to Dodge City, James was struck by a train, widowing the 18 yr old mother-to-be, Ora Alice Smith.
Or so their family thought, until her great-granddaughter contacted me.
Ora Alice May gave birth to twins, but the baby boy would not live long. She raised Nora Smith by herself until she remarried in 1888. There are no records we can find of what James Smith was up to after his “death”, but he resurfaces in 1890 when he marries my father’s great-grandmother, musician Rose Etta Morris.
According to Ora May’s descendants, she had several more children and lived a big life. Ironically, James Sherman Smith does die in Dodge City in 1928, though I haven’t been able to determine if he was hit by another train.
