Roots
4 Roots LET ME START with some context. Although everybody knows me as Ike, my full name is Isaac Newton Skelton IV, and yes, I’ve heard about every falling -apple joke there is. The Skeltons can track the family back to 1750, to a John Skelton in what is modern Page County, Virginia. We can’t go back further than that yet—our family genealogist, my cousin Dr. Earl Skelton, notes there is a Skelton, England, but he cannot prove a connection. We also believe there is a family connection to Bathurst Skelton, a classmate of Thomas Jefferson at the College of William and Mary, who successfully competed in romance against Mr. Jefferson, winning the hand in marriage of the mutual object of their affection, Martha Wayles. After Bathurst’s death, his widow and Thomas Jefferson did marry, and she was said to be the great love of the future president, who was terribly bereaved for a long time after her death. John Skelton had six sons. Everyone knows the wonderful comedian Red Skelton, who has passed on after a career as a television pioneer. He was from the Indiana branch of the Skeltons, and though we are unsure of any relation, Indiana is where some of John Skelton’s sons settled. When I was a new congressman , Red Skelton paid a visit to Capitol Hill, and I took my sons out of school to meet him. He was very courteous, and it was a treat for the boys. John Skelton’s youngest son was Isaac, who was the first of our line with that name. Isaac had a son named Washington Mason Skelton, a Confederate soldier who fought in Virginia, in what is now West Virginia. Washington Mason Skelton came to Missouri to be with his sister, and by 1869 they lived in Waverly, Missouri, just east of Lexington. Evidently, Washington Mason Skelton liked to drink a bit, but he reformed and became a deacon in the Baptist Church at Waverly. He had served as a private in Ashby’s Brigade of Stonewall Jackson’s army, and he fought in the battle of Romney, Virginia. Washington Mason Skelton outlived three wives and died in 1920 while residing at the old Confederate Veterans Home in Higginsville, Missouri, at the age of ninety-six years, six months, and six days. His son, Isaac Newton Skelton II, was my grandfather. I never knew him because he was struck by a train and killed in 1908, when my father was seven R o o t s 5 years old. My father worked from that time on, and he considered Washington Mason Skelton to be his father figure. My great-grandfather imbued my father with his love of history in general and the Confederacy’s history in specific, and my father instilled this love of history in me at a very young age. It was not difficult, since he was a great natural storyteller. Although my maternal grandfather didn’t carry the name Skelton, he had an enormous positive influence over me. He was John T. Boone, known to all as “Brother Boone,” a minister in the Disciples of Christ. A native of Tennessee, he came to Missouri and pastored churches in Joplin, Jefferson City, and St. Louis. It was during his time in St. Louis that he married the church organist, a pretty native of Foristell, Missouri, named Elizabeth Blattner. They moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where for the next forty-five years he led congregations of two churches, was active in Masonic bodies, and was beloved by local residents. Brother Boone was known as the “Marrying Parson,” because couples wanting to tie the knot flocked to his parlor for a very special ceremony he wrote, in which he emphasized faith and fidelity.* As a small boy, I got to watch in wonderment as my grandfather performed the weddings—and Brother Boone was always the first to kiss the bride and wish the newlyweds Godspeed. There were other neat advantages in being Brother Boone’s grandson. For example, he preached funerals and allowed me to ride with him in the hearse. Now that was an experience a nine-year-old boy won’t forget. He was a very warm person, but he was also very much a disciplinarian, which didn’t hurt me at all. That school year, I attended the third grade in Jacksonville because my mother, Carolyn Boone Skelton, was there on her annual visit to her parents. At the time...
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