The Real Truth

In August, 2015, I wrote about DNA testing which had raised some doubts about our family name.  As Paul Harvey used to say on the radio, here is "The Rest of the Story".

My adoptive father, Tommy Alexander, was born on February 7, 1911, ostensibly to Milton Walker Alexander and Mary May Stephens Alexander.

Milton Walker, or “Cap” as he was called, was the foreman of a ranch in Mannford, Oklahoma. He had come there in 1901 or 1902 with a herd of cattle which had been brought from Archer City, Texas. The owner of the ranch was Luke F. Wilson from Kansas City, Missouri. Cap was in charge of the ranch in Mannford and had several cowboys working for him. Tommy was named after two of the cowboys, Herman Weir and Thomas Perry “Tom” Porter, as well as for his father.

(L to R): M.W. "Cap" Alexander, Bob Powell, Tom Porter, Katie Porter

Mary May Stephens was born in Arkansas in 1881 and had spent most of her young life in Missouri before coming to Mannford around 1900. Cap, her husband, had been born in Tennessee in 1857 so he was 24 years older than his wife. Their first child, Beulah, was born in Mannford in 1907. Sometime after her birth but before 1911, the ranch house burned. Cap and May moved to another house on the ranch, near Kellyville, Oklahoma, while a new ranch house was being built in Mannford. Tommy was born in the house near Kellyville.

Cap Alexander died in 1935 in Mannford and is buried there. May, his wife, died in 1967 and she is also buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Mannford.

Cap and May's marriage was tumultuous to say the least. Eventually they divorced and she remarried, living in several places before her death. In all, May was married four times.

Tommy Alexander, after a first marriage that lasted 13 years, met Annie Sue Nash and married her. Sue had two young boys from a previous marriage, Roy Edward (this writer) and Gary Wade. Tommy adopted these two boys and he and Sue had two children of their own, Mary Sue and Thomas Milton. Tommy died in 2004 at the age of 92 and Sue died in 2012 at 86 years of age.

In 2014, Roy Edward, “Edd”, who had been involved with genealogy for several years, became interested in DNA. He had his own DNA tested, along with those of his wife, Mary Louise “Louise” and Thomas Milton “Milt”. He noticed that, although Milt had a lot of cousins turn up on his paternal grandmother's side, there were no Alexanders who showed up.

Finally, in mid-2015, a match showed up on Ancestry DNA which showed a second cousin relationship between Milt and a person who lived in California. After exchanging several emails, it was discovered that one of this man's great uncles was Thomas Perry Porter, the cowboy who had worked for Cap Alexander on the ranch in Mannford. Since then, several Porter relatives have been discovered through DNA testing.

Apparently May Alexander, who was 24 years younger than her husband, had had a relationship or “dalliance” with Thomas Perry Porter! At the time Tommy was born, Thomas Porter was 23 years old and single. He later married and had two additional children. Interestingly, Tommy Alexander was named after his biological father.

May Alexander probably knew who Tommy Alexander's biological father was, since she named him. What will always remain a mystery is whether Tommy knew who his father was. Although he was much more fond of Cap Alexander than of his mother, May, he did have several pictures of Tom Porter which he kept throughout his life.

Without a doubt, May went to her grave thinking that no one would ever know about her dalliance with Tom Porter. However, 50 years later, through DNA testing, the truth came out!