Marriage Bond

 

Ancestry. Metcalfe County, KY. 

Continuing from the previous post, above and below are captures from the marriage bond of Pleasant Morgan and third wife Sarah Josephine Poynter. The bond was signed on 7 December 1892, with the marriage occuring on 8 December 1892. Pleasant's second wife, my 3rd-great-grandmother Nancy Jane Flatt, seems to have been still alive in the Barren-Metcalfe County area at this time.

Sarah Josephine (#1) was born on 19 April 1876 in Metcalfe County, so she was 16 years old at marriage. Pleasant was 47. Nancy Jane would have been 37 then, taking care of five or six children at the time.

From a thorough review of Pleasant's Civil War pension file, he was deaf in his right ear and dealing with debilitating pain, while managing a farm. Most of the eight children listed in the 1880 US Census who were children of his first wife Mary Elizabeth were married in the 1890s, and out of the house when Pleasant started his second family with Nancy Jane, and third family with young Sarah Josephine.

Ancestry. Metcalfe County marriages.

This record is important because it lists his parents as James Morgan and Elizabeth Flatt, and his place of birth in Jackson County, Tennessee. I will have more on this in another post, but Elizabeth ties back into the family of Pleasant Flatt.

On the marriage bond, Sarah Josephine is shown as 17 years old, but she was 16. They were married at the home of her father, Pascal Achilles Poynter, who was seven years younger than Pleasant. Sarah Josephine was only two years older than my 2nd-great-grandmother Mary Alice Cain. Pleasant later signed on Mary Alice's marriage bond on 14 February 1895.

The confusing part is that it looks like Nancy Jane was still alive, and caring for young children when Pleasant married Sarah Josephine in 1892. It is not entirely clear whose child was whose, and given Josie's age in 1892 or even 1890 when Pleasant's daughter Eva was born, there may be some troubling truths to confront. Anna seems to have been a daughter of Sarah Josephine, born before the marriage in December 1892.

Ancestry. 1880 US Census. Metcalfe County, KY.

Ancestry. 1900 US Census. Barren Co., KY.

Back in 2015, a fellow researcher sent me the text from two Barren County news clippings dated October 1894. The first one appeared in the Glasgow Weekly Times for 3 October 1894. "Mrs. Pleas Morgan died at her home near Frank's old mill some three miles from Hiseville last Sunday of heart trouble. She was buried the following Monday evening in the James Nunn burying ground."

The second one appeared in the Glasgow Republican issue for 5 October 1894. "Mrs. Pleasant Morgan died at the residence of her husband near town last Saturday of heart failure."