Family locates site of children's Jal grave site

Hidden among the prairie grass and mesquite bushes a few miles east of Jal, an old barbed-wire fence and wooden cross were the only evidence four nameless children lost their lives at that spot more than a century ago. On Oct. 25, 103 years after the children were laid to rest, the names and faces almost lost to history have been returned to Violet, William, Newton and Earl Sparks. For their nephews, Jack and Frank Sparks, the story began on March 16, 1957. According to the Sparks family's oral histories and research by local historian David Minton, that was the day the four children's mother, Effie Sparks, broke down crying and told a niece she had four children buried somewhere in New Mexico or Texas but had no idea where. The revelation set Effie's grandchildren, Frank and Jack, on a quest that would take them more than 50 years. As the story goes, and as Minton writes it, it was 1907 and all six of the Sparks children — Cecil, Violet, William, Newton, Earl and infant Eva Mae — became ill with either diphtheria or scarlet fever. The family loaded them into a wagon and started for Midland, Texas, the closest and best medical help at the time. A rider was sent ahead to get medicine and meet the family on the trail, but along the way four of the children died. They were buried, and the wagon, bedding and items taken for the trip were burned to prevent the spread of the disease. James and Effie Sparks returned to Nadine with their surviving children, Cecil and Eva Mae, where they lived until about 1915, when the family returned to Coke County, Texas, along with two new children, Relia and Vera, who had been born in Nadine. Minton, with the help of Jal area ranchers who still remembered the story passed down from their fathers, found the family grave...more