Eighth Generation

3329. Jesse Milton LEONARD¹⁸⁶⁹ was born in 1826 in Bibb Co., AL. He died on 27 December 1863 at the age of 37. In the 1850 Census, Jesse is listed as a farmhand, 22, working for another family. He was a private in the Confederate Army, 36th Alabama Regiment, Alabama Volunteers Company D.

There is a marriage record for Milton Leonard with Sarah Ann Parsons 16 Feb 1852 in Perry County, AL, but this marriage produced no children and Sarah Ann apparently died.

In the 1860 Census, Jesse and his family were living next door to Lucinda's parents, Hilliard Sellars and his wife Rachel in Favors, Tuscaloosa Co., AL. Jesse was a farmer.

Lucinda SELLARS was born in 1833 in Tuscaloosa Co., AL. She died on 12 March 1888 at the age of 55. She remarried after her second husband died and was alone again by the 1880 Census, when she was living with sons Killis and George in Favors, Tuscaloosa Co., AL. Name is listed as Lucinda Sullivan. Here's the story:

Lucinda raised one of her grandchildren as a child of her own when her daughter Fanny (who was 13 years old at the time), the mother of the child, ran off with the father of the child (none other than John Sullivan, her husband) in 1874, leaving the baby at home with Lucinda. The child's name was Zachariah Steven (Clip) Sullivan.

Lucinda died 12 March 1888 in an accident at the grist mill where she worked when she was about 54. In a note from Ann Englebert's research, her death is described as follows: "She worked a farm with the help of the children, and she also worked at the local grist mill. This is where she died. She worked in long dresses and her dress got caught in the wheel; it pulled her in and scalped her. Her grandson, Clip, found her, 12 March 1888, when he took her lunch." Clip would have been about 15 at the time.

Around 1900, when Clip was a grown man, Fanny came to see him, but he rejected her and she left. "You're not my mother," he is reported to have said. "My mother was Lucinda, who raised me and loved me."

We never knew much about what happened to Fanny, whether she had any other children, whether she and Jack stayed together. The story is that she and Jack wound up in Texas, but we have not been able to locate them. It is possible that her trip back to Tuscaloosa County was because Jack had died. Like it was a trip she had thought about for a long time.

This is just another way the Civil War tore families apart. Fanny was four years old when her father died as a result of his wounds and likely yearned for a father figure. Jack Sullivan was a true scoundrel, as his wife was pregnant with one of his children when he was seducing her daughter Fanny. It's not often that such stories are preserved, as these are the kinds of things families tend to hide, so I'm lucky to have this tale of ordinary life from the period.

Per e-mail from Ola Hutchinson, 3 April 2008.

Jesse Milton LEONARD and Lucinda SELLARS had the following children: