Sibling Saturday

Jordan Thomas Lee

Jordan Thomas is the second known child of Benjamin Lee and his wife Drucilla. Elizabeth his oldest sibling apparently died after the 1850 census at a young age. She isn’t on any records except the 1850 Tallapoosa County census with her parents and siblings. She would have been about twelve years old in 1850.

Drucilla and Benjamin migrated from South Carolina to Alabama between 1830 and 1840. Alabama is a land with beautiful and powerful rivers. The navigable streams of Alabama were ways for pioneers to travel as they head out for a better life. The rivers aided the pioneers economically and aided their transportation. The Lee family and their related families came to Alabama looking for better land and opportunities. Once settled there Benjamin and Drucilla married and started their family. Little did Drucilla know that Benjamin would not live to see his children grown. He died leaving her a widow in 1859.  

Jourdan Thomas Lee was born Alabama, September 3, 1839 to Benjamin and Drucilla Lee.  Elizabeth’s sibling, Jordan Thomas Lee was a veteran of the Confederate War. He was a young man when he mustered into Company G, 14^th Alabama Regiment, and enlisted in 1860 at Stores Ferry in Tallapoosa County, Alabama. Thomas was discharged April 1865 in Williamsburg, Virginia. He was wounded in the Battle of Williamsburg, Virginia. Per an affidavit Thomas was unable to make a living by manual labor because the wound in the hand disabling him to do manual labor. He also a problem with one of his eyes. Benjamin and Drusilla had four sons and the three older sons served in the Confederate War. He was at the Appomattox Courthouse at the time of the surrender.  

Thomas waited until after the War to marry though. The first time he married Mary Holdridge the oldest of the December 9, 1865, and she died in 1867 in childbirth of her first and only child. per family stories.  Then, Thomas married Mary’s sister Martha Ann December 13, 1867 in Tallapoosa. There are seven known children of Thomas Jordan Lee, and most likely more but I don’t know their names. Mary and Martha’s parents were John H. and Eadie Coly Holdridge. Their brothers also served in the same Unit as Thomas. Thomas and the men of the War served and were a part of making the country what it is today.

The one element that I have learned in researching the Lee family is the Lees were regular. They were farmers, and they labored, They seemed to stay together, and when one group moved others moved. Thomas had six other siblings and each of them have a story.

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Sources

Year: 1850; Census Place: Township 24, Tallapoosa, Alabama; Roll: M432_15; Page: 129B; Image: 722

Year: 1860; Census Place: Western Division, Tallapoosa, Alabama; Roll: M653_25; Page: 395; Image: 397; Family History Library Film: 803025

Year: 1870; Census Place: Township 3 Range 2 Subdivision 53, Madison, Alabama; Roll: M593_27; Page: 101B; Image: 262212; Family History Library Film: 545526

Year: 1880; Census Place: Chinabee, Talladega, Alabama; Roll: 32; Family History Film: 1254032; Page: 36D; Enumeration District: 131; Image: 0475

Year: 1900; Census Place: Wilsonville, Shelby, Alabama; Roll: 39; Page: 15A; Enumeration District: 0129; FHL microfilm: 1240039

Year: 1910; Census Place: Spearman, Shelby, Alabama; Roll: T624_33; Page: 16B; Enumeration District: 0116; FHL microfilm: 1374046

Ancestry.com. Alabama, Death Index, 1908-1959 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2000.

National Cemetery Administration. U.S. Veterans Gravesites, ca.1775-2006 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006.

Texas, Confederate Pension Applications, 1899-1975. Vol. 1–646 & 1–283. Austin, Texas: Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Confederate Pension Rolls, Veterans and Widows. Richmond, Virginia: Library of Virginia

Confederate Pension Applications, 1880-1940. Montgomery, Alabama: Alabama Department of Archives and History.

Alabama Department of Archives and History; Montgomery, Alabama; Alabama Confederate Pensioner Records (Auditor Files), 1881-1943; Collection Number: SG007414; Folder Number: 1

FamilySearch.org:  Alabama County Marriages, 1809-1950, database with images, (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:29FB-L7W: 16 July 2015), Thomas J Lee and Martha Ann Holdridge, 1867.

Source Information

United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.