My Descending from Gov. - D. A. Sharpe

Register Report for William Bradford
Notes for Mattie de Noailles Simons:
General Notes:
Generation 7
Mattie de Noailles Simons, my grandmother, was born August 20, 1876, our nation's
centennial year. Novelist Jack London was born that year. The National Baseball League
was founded. Mattie was born the year that Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for
the telephone on March 7, 1876. One month following Mattie's birth, on September
20,1876, Robert Ingersoll (R-IL), a former state attorney general, told a veterans
organization: "Every man that loved slavery more than liberty was a Democrat ... I am a
Republican, because it is the only free party that ever existed."
Sources: http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96mar/bell.html
http://www.grandoldpartisan.typepad.com/
"The Timetables of History" 3rd Revised Edition, Bernard Grun, Simon &Schuster, New York
1991, pages 436-437
Mattie had that beautiful French middle name of de Noailles. It apparently came from her
grandmother, Anastasia de Noailles Lafayette Hewlett. Also that lovely French name was
passed on to her granddaughter, Martha de Noailles Sharpe, who was my sister. Indeed,
Mattie's brother, Verner, named a daughter, de Noailles Anastasia Simons. The source of
that name in this non-French family is a mystery. However, oral tradition has it that the
name was taken from a friend of the family. If such is true, that friend probably was a friend
to Lemuel Green Hewlett or Rebecca J. Harvey, the parents living in Hopkins County,
Kentucky at the time of the birth of Anastasia de Noailles Lafayette Hewlett (Fannie) and all
of her siblings.
Mattie lost her Mother when she was only two months old. Her young Mother was only age
20. We do not know the cause of this premature death. Mattie's Father remarried about
five years later, but we do not know who, if anybody else, took up the maternal duties for
Mattie and older brother, Verner, till the remarriage. It may have been a single-parent task
by Jim Simons to care for his son and daughter. However, I suspect he solicited outside
help.
After Jim remarried Martha Townes, they bore five sons and a daughter, which were halfsiblings
for Mattie and her brother, Verner. Jim, Martha and the family moved to Fort Worth
in 1908, but that was eighty ears after Mattie had married Harry Seth Sharpe. Mattie and
her family (my father and his brother) continued to live in Georgetown, Williamson County,
Texas the rest of her life.
Mattie was a strong wife, mother and was industrious around the house. During the 1930's,
when the nation was in the throws of a national economic depression, we are told of two
businesses she operated out of their home.
First, she cooked and packaged potato chips for sale. They had a little out building behind
their home that was called the Potato House. The potato chip inventor was a cook named
George Crum, allegedly in August 1853. From many brief tellings, that is all I could find out
about the man. But other sources mention his racial background, e.g. "Crum was part
Indian, part black, a former guide in the Adirondack s (New York state), and in his own way
a rather colorful figure in this area" (Gribb 1975). Other times, only his Indian heritage is
mentioned (Snack Food Association 1987; Barrett 1941). He is occasionally mentioned in
histories of significant African-American figures, but not as often in collections dealing with
native Americans. There appears little doubt that he actually existed, was a cook at Moon's
Lake House on Saratoga Lake, New York and later, he purchased his own restaurant on
the lake.
Source: http://www.geography.ccsu.edu/harmonj/atlas/potchips.htm
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