harkey1

Our Harkey family connection is a double one. Reuben Harkey and Margaret Boger were married in North Carolina and had nine children. Their fourth child, Margaret Christina, married Adam Mowery and is our direct descendent. Their youngest child was William Albert, and he married Elizabeth Ann Butler who was the sister of Luvina Catherine Butler (grandmother of Alice Lee McDonald-Gardner). There may be a third connection between the Harkeys and Mowerys, but there aren't any definite records to substantiate the belief that Adam Mowery's mother, Christina Boger and Margaret Harkey's mother, Margaret Boger, were related. We do know that Christina Boger's father was Daniel Boger, and there were several other Bogers in the same area.
Reuben and Margaret were both born in North Carolina, but the date of their marriage is unknown. Sometime after 1842, they moved with their first three children from the Panther Creek area in Rowan County, North Carolina, to Weakley County, Tennessee. Reuben was Justice of the Peace for Weakley County, however, there are no dates listing when or for how long he served. In 1855, Reuben died, and the 1860 Weakley County census lists Margaret at age 42, and her son, Julius, age 21, still farming. Living with Margaret and the rest of her children was the oldest daughter, Malinda Nooner, and granddaughter, Sarah Nooner. This was due to Malinda's husband serving in the Confederate Army and away from home. In the book by Desmond Walls Allen, "Confederate Soldier of Arkansas," William S. Nuner (Nooner) was listed as killed on August 6, 1862, in Cross Keys, Virginia. Later in the 1880 Weakley County census, District 8, there were five of the Harkey siblings living within a "stones throw" from each other. William and Elizabeth Harkey were living in household #141; Adam and Christina Mowery were in #309; James A. and Dora Harkey were in #311; John F. and Mary C. Harkey were in #317; and Daniel and Mosowin Harkey were in household #359.

In the Dresden Enterprise on Friday August 21, 1903, William Albert was listed as a juror for a case involving arson. It states, "The case of the state vs. Joe Carter, charged with burning the jail here this spring, was given to the jury last Saturday morning and just before the noon hour returned a verdict of guilty and assessed his punishment at five years in the penitentiary. Carter took the verdict of the jury hard and at one time it looked as if there would be a scene in the courtroom. Mrs. Carter attended the trial throughout, and when the verdict was rendered, she broke down and wept bitterly. Friday night before the verdict, while taking him to jail in Union City, when at Paducah juntion, Carter made a mad dash for liberty down the railroad, but fleet-footed Deputy Sheriff John Vowell overtook him, handcuffed him and landed him safely in the Union City jail. Att'y-Gen. Caldwell says he will wager that John Vowell, on a straight run, can overtake a rabbit…."