| Notes |
- 1860 Census, Franklin County AL, Western Division, Frankfort--Fanny Curry 17 born 1842 AL and Elisa Curry 15 born 1844 AL, live in the Charles Womble household. Womble and his wife Mary M., both born in TN, headed a household of 8 Womble children, all born AL. Charles Womble was a merchant with $1400 real estate and $1500 personal estate. They comprised Dwelling #10.
Dwelling #20 was the household of S.C. [could this be L.C.?] Curry 25 born 1834 AL, a grocery keeper with $350 real estate value; Elisa 20 born 1839 AL. At Dwelling #21 lived John Curry 30, a rockmason born 1830 AL. [Roll M653-10, page 669]
NAME: On the 1870 Census, Fannie is enumerated as Francis Jennings.
Sometime in 1875, the Russellville Masonic Lodge No. 371 presented to Lucinda F. Jennings a Certification that her husband, John B. Jennings, deceased, was a member of their lodge. The certificate recommended that John's widow and children be given "kind consideration and a helping hand;" Fannie's name and her children's names were written around the edge of the certificate. [original
certificate in the possession of Bobby and Helen Jennings, Lorenzo TX]
From the Memorandum page in the John B. Jennings & Lucinda Fannie Curry Jennings' family Bible:
"The earliest record of the Jennings started with them in Virginia and Georgia. The John B. Jennings family lived at Russellville, Alabama. John was murdered over an election argument. Mrs. J.B. Jennings and children moved to Honey Grove, Texas in 1880. The family came to Swisher County Texas December 1890."
Fannie Curry Jennings and her four children remained in Franklin County Alabama through June of 1880, because they are on the census there.
Later that summer, Fannie loaded a wagon of their possessions and took her three sons to Honey Grove, Fannin County, Texas where her brother Lewis had settled.
On the Memorandum page in the John B. Jennings and Lucinda Fannie Curry Jennings’ Bible: “Lucinda F. Curry Jennings had a brother to settle in Titus County just after the Civil War.”
To provide money for themselves, Fannie sold town lots 8, 9, and 10 that her husband purchased in 1873.
"Veto Jennings was only six years old in 1875 when his father was killed in a political argument back in Alabama. His mother, Lucinda Fannie Jennings, wanted to be close to her brother in Texas so she brought her sons Veto, Otto, and Worth and came to Fannin County Texas. Little is known about the trip except that it was the summer of 1880." ["Veto Jennings," Windmilling: 101 Years of Swisher County Texas History 1876-1977 (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Co., 1978), 377.]
1880 Census, Franklin County AL, Twp 6, Range 11, enumerated 19 June 1880
Lucinda F. Jennings, age 39, born 1841 AL; widowed; keeping house; mother born TN; father’s birthplace unknown
Dasie Z. Jennings, age 12 born 1868, attended school
Veto C. Jennings, age 10 born 1870, attended school
Richard O. Jennings, age 8 born 1872; mother born AL; father born TN; attended school
Worth A. Jennings, age 6; attended school
In December 1890, Fannie moved from east Texas to the high plains. In 1890 only 100 people were enumerated on the Swisher County, Texas Census. Just ten years earlier, in 1880, there were only three Anglos in the census district that included Randall and Swisher Counties combined. Swisher County was organized in July 1890, just a few months before Fannie and her children arrived. One hundred and fifty names were required on a petition to organize the county, but with only 100 people there it seems clear that children and cowboys helped round out the count. The county's first newspaper, "Staked Plains Messenger," was published in Tulia in June 1890.
Based on reports about other Tulia pioneers, the Jennings would have made the trip from Fannin County to Swisher County in a covered wagon pulled by oxen or horses. They would have burned cow chips at night for fuel. There were no fenced off roads; wagons followed ruts across the plains. Many Swisher pioneers described seeing huge piles of buffalo bones, evidence of hunters who had killed and skinned large numbers and left the rest to rot. The county was a "raw land" of tall grasses, antelope, deer, turkeys and native trees. "As the wagons gained the summit of the Caprock, the rolling plains lay before them covered with green grass that could be seen for miles and miles in every direction." Upon arrival, the first thing was to build fences, break sod, farm and tend cattle before a house above ground was built. [Windmilling: 101 Years of Swisher County Texas History, 1876-1977 (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Co., 1978), 321.]
Almost all of the settlers arriving about 1890 lived in dugouts or half dug-outs. In 1891 Fannie's son Veto and his family moved from Fannin County TX; they lived in a half-dug out until around 1908 when Veto built a two-story house. Several of their children were born in the dug-out. [Ethel Bell, "Veto Jennings," Windmilling: 101 Years of Swisher County Texas History 1876-1977 (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Co., 1978), 377.] A half dug-out was two rooms on the ground floor. "Most lived in these temporary quarters until the turn of the 20th century or later." W.T. Bagley's dugout, for example, was 20' x 50' x 6' deep with the top portion containing half windows. As soon as possible the Jennings would have dug a well for water and put up a windmill as soon as they could afford it. To claim the land in Swisher County, Fannie and her sons were required to pay $2 an acre, plow up 20 acres of sod, and put rocks at the corners for section boundaries. Freight and lumber was hauled by wagon from Canyon, the nearest point on the railroad. [Windmilling: 101 Years of Swisher County Texas History, 1876-1977 (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Co., 1978), 145, 159, 216, 498, 512, 514, 537, 563, 568.]
In 1893, Swisher County had a grasshopper plague and in 1898, a blizzard. One Swisher County pioneer stated that the grasshoppers ate all the bark off fence posts and when they left it was three days before the sun was visible. [Windmilling: 101 Years of Swisher County Texas History, 1876-1977 (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Co., 1978), 288].
Where did Fannie and her sons live when they arrived in December (winter) of 1890? Had Veto already constructed the half-dugout in 1889 as his biography suggests? When Veto moved his wife and daughter from Fannin to Swisher County, his wife's parents came with them. Were all these people in the same dugout? Veto did not have enough money to build a two-story house until 1908. In 1900 Fannie and her son Otto are living in Veto's household. (Lucinda F. Jennings, mother, widow, age 56 born Nov 1843 AL, parents born SC, gave birth to 5 children, 3 children living) [1900 Census, Swisher County TX, Justice Precinct 4, hh 128]
Mrs. Jennings is noted as a pioneer member of the First Baptist Church in Tulia, joining in 1891: "A few courageous men and women met in the early summer of 1891 in the home of Mrs. S.E. Butts to organize a Baptist Church." [Mrs. Ethel Christian Hooten, "Tulia First Baptist Church," Windmilling: 101 Years of Swisher County Texas History, 1876-1977 (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Co., 1978), 89.] The first year that the Jennings were in Swisher, the Baptists held two summer revivals.
Like most women of her time, Fannie's life probably revolved around her family, her farm and her church, but tragedy did not escape her in TX. Fannie's daughter, Daisie Z. Jennings married Wilbern Hargett in 1885 (location unknown), but she died at age twenty-eight. According to one account, Fannie returned to Alabama after Daisie's death to help her husband and children. She may have stayed "several years." [letter to Jan Jennings in Tulsa OK from Mrs. H. (Annie) Cunningham in Lockney, TX (c1976)] Fannie's youngest son Worth Alston married in February 1897 but his wife commited suicide by poisoning in November. Veto's wife also died early, in 1910; if Fannie was not already in his household by then, she probably moved in to help him with his six children.
Fannie was a witness when her son Worth remarried on 4 December 1901 in Canyon City, Randall County TX. The other witness was J.M. Vansant, father of Worth's bride, Eddie Johnson Vansant. [original certificate in the possession of Bobby and Helen Jennings; she signed her name as "Fannie Jennings".]
Annie Jennings Cunningham remembered her grandmother as a small quiet woman with blonde hair and blue eyes. "She always wore a shawl around her shoulders. I have a picture (tintype) of Grandma taken when she was a young woman. She had a shawl around her even then . . . Grandma was of Irish ancestry . . . my Grandma was always busy doing something making quilts and making soap for other people." [Letter to Jan Jennings in Tulsa OK from Mrs. H. (Annie) Cunningham in Lockney TX (c1976)]
It is an extraordinary fact that fifty-year old Fannie struck out on her own to a sparsely populated land to farm, but, she had grown sons, eighteen, twenty and twenty-two years old, to help her. Nevertheless, it is obvious that Fannie Lucinda Curry Jennings was an independent woman. She never applied to either Alabama or Texas for a widow's pension for John B. Jennings' Confederate service.
At the time of Fannie's death on September 18, 1912, she lived with her son Veto Curry Jennings and his family. She died alone, probably of heart failure, in the late afternoon; her granddaughters discovered her body when they returned home from school. "Grandma always had indigestion (she called it colic). On the day she died we found part of a watermelon that she had eaten. So they thought that was what made her sick and caused her to die." [[Letter to Jan Jennings in Tulsa OK from Mrs. H. (Annie) Cunningham in Lockney TX (c1976)]
Fannie Lucinda Curry Jennings is buried at Rosehill Cemetery, Tulia, Texas, alongside her oldest son Veto Curry Jennings (1869-1934). Her son, Richard Otto Jennings (1871-1941) is also buried at Rosehill. Youngest son, Worth Alston Jennings (1873-1949), is buried at Dreamland Cemetery in Canyon, Randall County, Texas. The burial site of the Jennings' only surviving daughter, Daisie Z. Jennings Hargett (1867-1895), is not known.
|
1840 - 1912 (71 years)
[2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9]