Friday, January 4, 2019

Some after thoughts on Frances

For a variety of reasons, I've been looking a lot at Frances Garner Roberts Carr, mentioned in the last two posts.  Her life was unconventional in some respects - she did not marry young and have a lot of children - but conventional in others as the Aunt/sister/stepmother who filled others' places and kept things going.

There are very few records on Frances other than the censuses and her marriages.  She did join Union Baptist Church in 1859 along with her sister Minerva.  This was the same church her parents and grandparents attended and where she is buried.  Her cousin Wiley Garner joined at the same time.  

She was 20 or 21 when her mother died.  Her father never remarried and she did not marry for another 19 years, so it would have fallen to her to take care of the household and help raise the younger children.  At the time of her mother's death, there were ten younger children at home.  Some of them (Lawson, then 20, and A.J., age 18) were nearly grown themselves certainly by the standards of the time.  In fact Lawson enlisted in the Confederate army in 1861, followed by brother A.J. a few months later.   William C. and James T. supposedly served as well but I have not found their records yet and for James it would have been near the end of the war since he was 17/18 when it ended.

Of the other children, the Twins would have been 11, Louvenia 9, Washington 7, Linton 5 and Lizzie 3.   While there is no record of course of her decisions or reactions, it might be of note that she did not marry until after both Louvenia and Lizzie had married and left home, Washington was grown and working on the farm and Linton had finished school and become an MD.  

She then married a much older widower in 1880, when she was 41.  He had no children at home but was of an age that he might have required care himself.  It is of course possible that she married him for love, but the fact that he omitted her from his will would tend to indicate that was not it.   He died five years after they married.  She does not seem to have asked for support so it is possible that she moved back home or in with one of her siblings then. While a widow could live alone, there is nothing to indicate she would have had the means to do so.

Her sister Lizzie died in May of 1889 leaving 5 children.  Frances then married her brother-in-law, who was 8 years younger than she was.  They were married until her death in 1911.  It is possibly of note that her stepson named his oldest daughter Frances. 


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