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Person Sheet
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| Comments Notes for Phoebe Jane RICHARDSON | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Comment: Elwood and Phebe suffered a great deal of loss with their children. Son Charles Mangrum died at age 22 as a result of a sawmilling accident. They lost twins Milton and Isaac the same day they were born in 1882. Nine-year-old daughter Annie Lois died of a ruptured appendix despite frantic efforts to save her. Their son Artemas tragically lost his foot on the first day of his job on the railroad, a job which Elwood and Phebe had moved the family to Randolph County to faciliate. Daughter Ethel Rose died in her thirties of Tuberculosis. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Overview | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Phoebe Jane Richardson was only eight years old when her father died. The next-to-youngest of the surviving Richardson children, Phoebe Jane remained at home with her widowed mother, although four-year-old brother Amos was sent to live with grandparents Amos and Frankie Richardson. At the age of nineteen, Phoebe Jane married second cousin (on her mother's side), Elwood Lindley Henderson. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Comments Notes for Elwood Lindley (Spouse 1) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Comment: Elwood and Phebe's mothers were first cousins. (Elwood and Phebe were second cousins.)3 Comment: Elwood and Phebe were Democrats of Randolph County, NC.3 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Overview | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Elwood and Phoebe Jane, whose mothers Eliza and Phebe were first cousins, married in the spring of 1871. In a newly impoverished South devastated by Civil War times were unusally hard. The year before, nineteen-year-old Elwood and his mother and brother had re-purchased a tract of land neighboring that of Amos and Phebe Lindley Richardson, parents of Phoebe Jane. The land had originally been sold to Eliza and Isaac Henderson in 1848 by Eliza's father, John Lindley. In 1856 Isaac and Eliza sold the land back to John Lindley at a slight profit. By the time the Hendersons re-purchased the tract (plus 86 additional acres) in 1870, it had passed to Thomas and Rachel Perry. Elwood's son Artemas remembered him as being unwilling to indulge Eliza's demands and complaints. Artemas also remembers Eliza as being stingy, at least later in life. The loss of his father at a vulnerable age during one of the most frightening and difficult periods of conflict the country has known, and an overbearing, parsimonious mother may have contributed to an indiscretion before his marriage. Elwood was a farmer who raised tobacco, cotton and corn. Over the course of their marriage, Elwood and Phoebe had ten children, but they suffered much loss and disappointment. Twin sons Milton and Isaac died the day they were born. Daughter Annie Lois died at the age of eight, of a ruptured appendix (despite the efforts of five different physicians). Son Charles Mangrum died several months after being injured in a saw milling accident in his early twenties. Daughter Ethel Rose died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-six. Son Artemas would lose a foot soon after starting a much-anticipated job with the railroad. Elwood believed in the education of girls as well as boys, and made sure his daughters got the best education he could secure for them. One daughter, Manie, attended school until she was twenty years old. Daughters Manie and Ada remember being driven about the countryside on Saturdays and Sundays in a fringed surry (by a black servant of the family). This was considered very "classy" at the time. When Elwood and Phoebe's eldest son, Artemas, was about fourteen, recruiters for the railroad came through Chatham County to advertise job opportunities in the Julian, NC area. The Henderson Family decided to make the move to Randolph County in 1887 and son Artemas secured a life-long career with the A&Y Railroad. As Elwood aged, he was very vain about his hair and would black his sideburns with soot from the chimney. (He had been an extraordinarily handsome youth with wide eyes and wavy hair.) Despite this streak of vanity, he was very good-hearted and was known for his generosity. Elwood's health began to decline in 1931 and he died in May. Phoebe lived on for nine more years. She appeared in a newspaper article on her 87th birthday in 1940, at which time she had 31 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren. She died in October of that year at home in Julian. According to Thelma Henderson Schoolfield, Phoebe, a widow living alone, stepped in a hole while walking from an outbuilding to the house and broke her hip. She lay for hours in the chilly Fall weather waiting for someone to discover her. As a result she contracted pneumonia and died after about a week. Elwood and Phoebe are buried at Shiloh United Methodist Church in Julian, NC. In 2006 great-great-granddaughter Elizabeth Henderson was given two items of Phoebe's, an egg basket and a hatpin embossed with a silver Egyptian motif. 7,3 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Last Modified 23 Jul 2006 | Created 8 Feb 2007 Laura K. Henderson |
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