I have written a lot about Chester's life from a standpoint of his marriages. Perhaps I felt it important to start there since it was after all his third unofficial marriage that produced my grandfather. What I can say about him so far is this. He was a ladies man. How could a man with three wives over the course of his life and apparently only one of those marriages produce children not be seen as a bit of a ladies man. At 43 years old he landed a woman in her 20's to be the mother of his children after all.
But what do we know of Chester in the childhood of his life? My research has found census records of Chester and his family during the younger years of his life in Kentucky. The first record is from June 1, 1900 taken from Spencer County, Kentucky in the Mt. Eden area. A 14 year old Chester is listed as the eldest son of a man named Napoleon Spragens. Note the "s" at the end of the name. At this time, Chester and his family were still going under the name Spragens. The head of the household is Napoleon. He is 43 years old, a farmer who can read and write, renting a farm that per the census he and his three sons are running. It is important to note that he is listed as a widow. With this information, a lightning bolt seems to strike! This explains why on Chester's marriage record to Esther it lists his mother's name, but states her currently residence is Dead.
I suddenly have a new respect for these Spragens men. One man at 43 is raising three sons on a rented piece of land that they are undoubtedly are slaving to maintain. Chester is listed as the eldest son at 14 years old. The second in the family is Ralpha who is only 10, but is also listed as a farm laborer along with Chester. The youngest, John A.W. is only 4 years old. Could it be that Mahala died in childbirth? Did she die of some disease or illness? Whatever the cause, she left a family of men and boys behind to fend for themselves.
I can only imagine how Napoleon leaned on Chester to help him support and maintain their family during this time. He must have grown up feeling a lot of responsibility to his family. Whether this drove him to do well is unknown. Only digging deeper will tell.
As I continue to dig, I find that Ralpha seems to have lived a fairly unexciting life. At 20 he is listed on a census boarding in the same county he was raised and still working as a farmer. Later, he will marry and have three children. He will live out his days in Kentucky. But we will dig more into Ralpha later.
John A.W., the baby of the family, remains something more of a mystery. A census from 1920 shows him boarding in Shelby County, Kentucky, close to where he was born and raised. He is still farming, but is unable to read or write. My opinion is that John never had the chance to attend school. With a farm to be run and only a family of men to do it, he probably was expected to start working as soon as he was able. The only other piece of information I have at the moment is a WWI Draft card that shows John's nearest relative is his father, Pole Spragens, living in Shelbyville, KY.
I can imagine growing up the eldest of three children with no mother and a father who is renting a farm that required he and his sons to work it instead of attending school must have been hard on Chester. I'm sure he learned trade skills in hard labor and relied on these things to get him through in life. His brothers seem to have led fairly uneventful lived in Kentucky. While we will talk a bit more about them later, lets explore Chester's adult years and the life of his father, Napoleon.
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