Ancestor: Sarah Jane McMillon Decker
Descendant: Janice M.
George Washington Decker and Sarah Jane McMillon were married November 12, 1854 in McMinn County, Tennessee. By 1856 they were living in Lawrence County, Arkansas when their first child Nancy was born. They had another girl Elizabeth Tennessee and a boy James, who was born by 1860, when they first appeared on a census. George was listed as a laborer with $50 in personal property.
On March 13, 1862 George enlisted as a private in Company G, 30th Arkansas Infantry. He was reported dead on February 27, 1863 at just 30 years old. Sarah Jane must have been about two months pregnant when he enlisted since she had their fourth and last child, a boy and my great-grandfather George Jr., on September 7, 1862.
Five months after George Jr.'s birth, Sarah Jane was a twenty-nine-year-old widow with four children under ten years old. She was listed on the 1870 census with only Nancy and George Jr. The other children lived with neighbors and poor Sarah Jane had become blind. In 1880 she and sons George Jr. and James were living with her daughter Elizabeth Tennessee and son-in-law Hansel Williams. Nancy had also married. She died in May of 1890 and is buried in Williams Cemetery, a family cemetery on Hansel Williams property.
The Soldiers Families of Confederate Soldiers from Lawrence County, Arkansas: In 1861 the head of the household from many Lawrence County homes left their families and went to war for the Confederate States of America. Many of the families were left destitute. Lawrence County provided subsistence payments to families considered to be truly in need. On Monday, 1 December 1862 the governor of Arkansas, Harris Flanagin, signed an act passed by the Arkansas legislature appropriating state money to augment the money available for relief purposes in most of the counties in the state. This amounted to about $5 a month. The records are all in Book F in the Circuit Court Records maintained at the Lawrence County Courthouse in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas.
Sadly Sarah is on that list of the destitute families. What a sad ending.