Sunday’s Sentiments

Daisy Ann Lee First Cousin Twice Removed

It is interesting to track an ancestor or collateral relative through the censuses. Sometimes it is easy to track them other times it is challenging. If they stay in one place over time, then it easier to track them. This was the case with Daisy Ann Lee daughter of great grand uncle Benjamin William Henry Lee and his wife Sarah Ann Black Lee.  She stayed in one county from 1900through 1940. Sarah Ann reared her daughter alone in Childersburg in Talladega County, Alabama. Her husband was killed in a tragic accident seven months after Daisy Ann was born.

Daisy Ann was blind. While tracking Sarah Ann after her husband Benjamin died Daisy Anny continued to live at home. My curiosity was piqued as to why she remained at home and no occupation. Carefully gleaning all the information from the censuses bingo, on the 1910 census it stated that twenty-seven-year-old Daisy Ann was blind, she could read and write, single, occupation none, and living at home with her mother Sarah Ann and Missouri Raifield a servant age fifty-five. Sarah Ann was sixty-nine years old.

Daisy Ann and Sarah Ann were living with Minnie C. Coleman sister, and daughter of Sarah Ann. John M. Coleman son-in-law of Sarah was the head of the household and was forty-one years old. They had three children. Daisy Ann is single and was born June 1881 in Alabama.

In 1920 seventy-eight year, old Sarah Ann Lee and thirty-seven-year-old Daisy Lee is single and they are living alone in the same county they have lived in for years. Daisy Ann wasn’t working and didn’t have an occupation. By 1930 circumstances have changed for Sarah Ann and Daisy Ann and they are living with another of Sarah Ann’s daughters fifty-year-old Lilly Lightery a widow. By this time eighty-nine years old. Living with them is a boarder and widow Ada Watson.

Life for fifty-eight-year-old Daisy and her sixty-one-year-old sister have changed drastically in 1940. They are living alone. Their mother Sarah Ann died 12 March 1932 at the age of ninety-one. Lillie and Daisy lived Fourteenth Avenue in Childersburg. Daisy still isn’t working and has no income; however, she has income from other sources. The census shows that Sarah Ann had four years of college. Lillie owned her home on Fourteenth Avenue. About 1965 in Alabama Daisy Ann applied for Social Security. She would have been eighty-four years old when she applied. The 1940 is the last available public census; therefore that is the last census that she is on until the 1950 census is made available.  

Daisy Ann Lee lived a long life even though she was handicapped with blindness. She died 8 November 1973 in Sylacauga, Talladega County, Alabama. She is buried in the Childersburg Cemetery where several other family members are buried.

Photo from Lee Collection on Ancestry.com