| Notes |
- Member of the Masonic Order, Russellville, Franklin County, Alabama.
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."
From the Births page in the John B. Jennings & Lucinda Fannie Curry Jennings' family Bible: "J.B. Jennings brothers were: Dick Jennings, Jim Jennings, George Jennings" Next to the 3 names, it is noted that Jim and George were half- brothers.
TIME LINE
1850 Census, Franklin County AL--there is a Joseph Jennings as head of household, born VA; he has a son John, age 14, born VA, making John's birth year 1835 1859 Land Patents, Franklin County AL--John B. Jennings makes two purchases: #29665 Township 07-S, Range 13-W, Section 26 SWNE and #29665 Township 07-S, Range 13-W, Section 26 NWSE [Bureau of Land Management]
John B. Jennings: total acres: 80.25; Dec 1, 1859; land office: Huntsville; acres: 80.25; act or treaty: April 24, 1820; sale-cash entries; 1SWNE Huntsville No 7S 13 W 26; 2 NWSE Huntsville No 7S 13W26.
1860 Census, Frankfort, Franklin County AL, Western Division, dwelling 26
John B. Jennings, 23 years old, born VA 1836, occupation: "gent of service".
Living two dwellings from John (#28) was the family of R.J. Jennings, 33 born 1828 VA, minister of the Gospel, $1000 real estate, $200 personal estate; M.J. 26 born 1833 AL; Theadoria, 4 born 1855 AL [Roll M653-10, page 671].
1862, June 13--John B. Jennings enlisted at Tupelo, Mississippi for Alabama Confederate service, Co. E, 16th Regiment, infantry for 3 years, private [Military Records from the National Archives. NOTE: This is may or not be our John B. Jennings; the 16th Regiment companies were raised in Franklin and Lawrence Counties. The record gives little information, does not mention where the company fought, and, evidently, he was not wounded.] John's granddaughter "heard that he was in the Civil War." [Letter to Jan Jennings in Tulsa OK from Mrs. H. (Annie) Cunningham in Lockney TX (c1976)] In the possession of Bobby Joe Jennings, Lorenzo TX, is a small framed photograph; on the back is written--
John Jennings, Florence AL, United Confederate Veteran, 19th Reunion, Albert Sidney Johnston. [information from Worth Alston Jennings III]
1865, May 7--married Fannie Lucinda Curry in Frankfort, Franklin County AL by Rev. Joseph White, Molton, AL
1866, June 2--daughter Alpha born; dies 20 days later
1867, September 29--daughter Daisie Z. born AL
1869, September 17--son Veto Curry born, AL
1870 Census, Colbert County AL, Cherokee post office, township 3, range 14, page 105b, #8: John Jennings, 33 years, dry goods & grocery merchant, $1500 personal real estate, born VA Francis Jennings, 29 years, keeping house, born AL
Daisey Jennings, 2 years, born AL
Veto Jennings, born Oct., AL
James Jennings, 16 years, works on farm, born AL [could this be John's half- brother Jim?]
1871, July 15--Transferred from the Masonic Order, Cherokee Lodge, to the Russellville Lodge; his name was in the minutes of meetings until the time of his death.
1871, October 14--son Richard Otto born, Birmingham, Jefferson County AL
1873, April 26--Franklin County AL Deed, town of Russellville. John B. Jennings paid $309 for lots 8, 9, 10 in the town of Russellville. [Originally recorded in the Franklin County AL Deed Book V, page 120, but a courthouse fire destroyed this public record; however, Lucinda Curry Jennings kept her copy of the deed in family records; the deed is in the possession of Arthur H. Jennings, grandson of John B. Jennings.]
1873, December 6--son Worth Alston born in Russellville, Franklin County AL
1875, June 26--John B. Jennings shot and killed, Russellville, Franklin County AL The first record of John B. Jennings in Franklin County, Alabama occurred in January 1859 when he made a cash entry purchase of 80.25 acres. In the few years before his death, John B. Jennings moved his family from Cherokee, Colbert County, Alabama where he was a dry goods merchant to the newly established town of Birmingham. Although son Richard Otto Jennings was born there, they may have stayed only during the year 1871. In July 1871, John transferred his Masonic membership from the Cherokee Lodge, to the Russellville Lodge where his name remained in the minutes of meetings
until the time of his death. In April 1873, John B. Jennings purchased three town lots for $309 in Russellville.
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"THE QUIET OF OUR LITTLE TOWN WAS DISTURBED . . . A MAN IS KILLED"
[On 1 July 1875, John B. Jennings' death in Franklin County AL was reported in the North Alabamian newspaper published in Tuscumbia, Alabama; parts of the following were published by Jan Jennings in "The Source: Historical and Adventure," 7, no. 2: 21-25.]
The Reconstruction Period in northern Alabama lasted longer than elsewhere in the state, due in part to the region's geographic isolation from the seat of government, its sometimes vehement disagreement
with southern Alabama politics, and a close identity with Tennessee. The North Alabamian newspaper, published in Tuscumbia, reported throughout 1875 about volatile politics, burglaries, and farms being burned out. On June 24, 1875, 93 degree heat and a drought contributed to frayed tempers; two men shot at each other with pistols on the street of Tuscumbia. Two days later, in nearby Russellville, G.C. Allman shot and killed John B. Jennings. The North Alabamian reported that "Jennings was struck with four large buckshot and expired in half an hour after receiving his fatal wounds. The sad affair grew out of an old grudge, a newspaper article that appeared in the Alabamian during the canvass last summer." Allman surrendered himself promptly to the sheriff. His trial began just two days following the shooting on June 28 and 29 and resulted in acquittal, holding that Allman acted in self-defense.
This true story illustrates on a local level, and at a personal scale, Franklin County's continuing difficulties and political upheavals following the Civil War. Although the North Alabamian reported the story, no Russellville paper remains extant, and public records of the trial burned in a courthouse fire.
In the late 1930s, Dr. Shaw, formerly of Russellville, a friend of John B. Jennings, gave an oral history account of the killing to Jennings' grandson, Veto Curry Jennings in Tulia, Texas: " . . . they were having a political rally. John went and made a speech for the candidate he was interested in. But it did not suit the opponent who was there. As John was walking home this fellow waylaid him and was going to give him a whipping because of the things he had said in his speech. Instead of giving John a whipping, he had to take one. John was a blacksmith and was a strong and active young man. It seems as if he went on home. The next morning the man went into a hotel just across the street from John's shop and asked if they had a gun, and told them there was a mad dog out
in the street. Someone got a gun for him and he walked over to the door and shot across the street killing John."
The account in the Tuscumbia paper, posted by an anonymous reporter (a "Russel Villian") found fault with both men, Jennings for insulting Allman and Allman for acting with southern chivalrous behavior. Unfortunately, Russel Villian failed to state the nature or substance of the disagreement that ended in
Jennings' death. [Evidently both were southerners; Allman was born in Alabama, Jennings in Tennessee or Alabama.]
This was not necessarily a quarrel stemming from Reconstruction, but it had something to do with the general unease and outright lawlessness that defined the period in northern Alabama. In 1877 the Moulton Advertiser reported that "blood continues to flow in old Franklin County, and there seems to be a mania among the people to kill and cut each other to pieces. Only one moon has passed since a man was shot down in his field near Russelville and last week S.F. Williams shot and seriously wounded a Mr. Normere without the least cause." In 1888, the newspaper reported seven men killed in Franklin County the previous year, and a local pundit dubbed it "Bloody Franklin." (Moulton Advertiser 12 Jan 1888) [http://www.lawrencecounty.ala.nu/FranklinCoF.htm]
When Veto questioned Dr. Shaw about the trial, he said that "he didn't suppose that they had one because "the country was so badly torn up just after the Civil War that anyone could get by with any crime if they could get out of the country without getting caught." [oral history interview Veto Curry Jennings and Dr. Shaw (date unknown)].
Who was this Dr. Shaw? Veto Jennings stated that Shaw was an elderly man when he moved to Tulia in the late 1920s or early 1930s and had known John Jennings when he was a young man. Shaw told Veto that he had visited in John's home many times before John was married. Dr. Shaw may be Dr. Marshall J. Shaw who was on the 1925 Tax Roll in Swisher County TX and on the 1930 Census in Tulia as a 77 year old man. Shaw would have been twelve years old when John Jennings married so his account is from his memory, or what he heard, as a boy. His young age may account for his not knowing about the trial.
On June 26, 1875, Jennings' wife, Lucinda Fannie Curry Jennings, was probably at home with her children when she learned that her husband had been shot. We don't know if Fannie was able to see John in the thirty minutes he lived after the shooting. Fannie became a widow at age thirty-five and from that fateful moment when her husband was shot, her life was turned upside down. In the ensuing days, with children aged two, four, six and eight, she turned her thoughts from housekeeping to settling their affairs. We don't know if she had any help from her family or John's in arranging his funeral and burial. As a young man of thirty-eight, John probably had not made a will or bought a cemetery lot. There is no tombstone for John B. Jennings in Franklin County. Fannie appeared in Franklin County's Probate Court (probably in 1875) to take guardianship of their children: Daisie Z., Veto Curry, Richard Otto, and Worth Alston Jennings. Living in town, Fannie was probably well aware of the speedy trial of her husband's killer and his acquittal. [Fannie retained her copy of the Guardianship papers; the Courthouse fire destroyed the public record.]
We will never know what John and Allman quarreled about, but Allman prospered. [variant spellings--Allman, Almon] George C. Allman would have been twenty-five years old when he murdered John Jennings. In 1880, five years after the shooting, Allman was practicing law in Russellville; he, his wife and three-month old daughter boarded in the household of James E. Wilson. Their presence in Russellville may have been doubly bitter for Fannie, as was his growing popularity. [See 1880 Census, Franklin Co AL for Allman].
"At the age of twenty years George C. Almon entered the law department of the
University of Mississippi, at Oxford, having been thoroughly prepared for the
University under private tutors in his native county. He graduated from the law
department mentioned, in. 1873, and at once entered upon the practice of law at
Franklin, Franklin county, where he was meeting with a promising patronage. A
year later, however, the seat of justice was removed to Russellville, and his
business being with the courts, he of course followed the court house, this
event occurring in 1875, success following him as he had followed the court
house. In 1879 the court house was again removed, this time to Bel Green, the
present county seat. Having, in the meantime, been appointed probate judge, Mr. Almon also removed to Bel Green, where he remained till 1887, when he returned to Russellville to resume his private practice, and Russellville has been his home ever since. In 1886 he was elected to the state senate from the twelfth
senatorial district, his popularity as a citizen equalling his reputation as a
lawyer. The marriage of the judge took place in 1876, to Miss Modena Burgess,
daughter of William Burgess of Alabama, and there has been born to them one
child, Susie B. The judge and family are members of the Methodist Episcopal
church, south, and he is a K. of P. In politics the judge is a stanch democrat,
and takes great interest in the party, especially in its election of candidates
who are fully qualified to fill the positions for which they may be nominated."
["Memorial Record of Alabama," Vol. I, (Madison, Wisc.: Brant & Fuller, 1883), 1027-1028.] George C. Almon and his wife Modena are buried in the Knights of Pythias Cemetery in Franklin County, Alabama.
Dr. Shaw's account of John's death gave his occupation as blacksmith, although Fannie told some of her children that John was a lawyer. Although these occupations seem incongruous today, in the nineteenth century it was not uncommon for a laborer to also "read law." John B. Jennings' granddaughter thought that he was a District Attorney . . . One of my sisters said she also thought that Grandpa was a D.A. but was running for Sheriff at the time he was killed." [Letter to Jan Jennings in Tulsa OK from Mrs. H. (Annie) Cunningham in Lockney TX (c1976)].
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1837 - 1875 (38 years)
[5, 6, 7, 8]