DUTTON-ZACHARIAH-L Archives

From: <>
Subject: Susan W. Irwin
Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 23:06:29 EDT

Dear Irwin Cousins,
After a discussion among the Dutton group about the many burnings of the
Walker County AL courthouse, in which any adoption records, if any every
existed, for my grandmother Mahala Ellen Moreland would have been lost,
Joseph Richardson of the Dutton group went to his index of Morgan Co. AL
marriages to check the Morelands as he remembered there were some in that
county. He found there a marriage for my P. A. Moreland, whom I had been
told married S. W. Lollar and who were my grandmother's birth parents. He
actually married Susan W. Irwin, the daughter of William Irwin, Jr. who was
born after William's death (and the deaths of William Sr. and three of Wm.
Jr.'s children on that fateful trip to Texas in which cholera claimed nine
lives in Clark Co. AR):

>From MARRIAGES OF MORGAN COUNTY, ALA. 1818-1879, Compiled by Elbert J.
Minter, from original marriage records {my brackets}:
Mooreland, Pankney A. {no doubt "Pinkney"} to Susan W. Irvin {Irwin}, 22 Feb.
1867 by W. W. Wilhite, MG {B00k C1, Page 145}
My grandmother died when her oldest child was eighteen and my father was
only four years old. My father told me that his mother was an orphan who was
reared by an aunt, the same info that was conveyed by his siblings to their
children. Earlier this year, a picture that had been handed down to me by
my father and others in the family that was identified as my grandmother's
parents, was identified by Dan Chandler as actually a picture of James A. and
Martha Irwin Lollar. The children of Ellen apparently confused this picture,
which may well have been the aunt that reared her, with her birth parents.
Early on in this e-mail conversation between Dan and Cliff and myself, Cliff
had speculated that S. W. might have been Susan W. Irwin and not Lollar, but
confused by the family as Lollar because that was her sister Martha's name.
Apparently that is just what happened! My cousins and myself have been
trying to find some trace of this P. A. Moreland and S. W. Lollar for about
four years. I had searched many Lollar records, but of course found nothing
there. M. Ellen Moreland and my grandfather, Samuel B. Dutton, were married
in the home of James and Martha Lollar.
We still have not found this Moreland in any of the censuses and still do
not know what happened to Susan W. or her husband, that made M. Ellen an
orphan. It appears that this family that had suffered so much tragedy
already must have suffered another. At least we know now who these parents
were and where they were when they married. It appears, since Susan Ann
Herring Irwin did not die until 1894 (And Ellen had by then been married 4
years) that she, (Susan A.) had to endure the loss of still another child.
It is very difficult to fathom the depths of pain this woman suffered during
her life.....losing three children and a husband in one week, having earlier
lost her oldest daughter, and at last some years later losing the daughter
born after the death of her husband. Only one daughter, Martha, survived
until after Susan A.'s death.
It struck me as I was falling asleep last night that, of course, my uncle
Frank, Ellen and Sam's second son was named Franklin HERRING DUTTON for Susan
Ann HERRING IRWIN's birth family, Ellen's maternal grandparents. They named
their oldest son William IRWIN DUTTON. One of their daughters was named
Lillie Martha (no doubt after Martha J. IRWIN LOLLAR. I had been wondering
if Ellen had been aware of her own parentage, but realizing that the middle
name of HERRING was given to her second son and IRWIN to her firstborn son
must be pretty strong proof that she knew her roots quite well and, no doubt,
had had some contact with the HERRING family as well.
So it appears that I have direct line heritage through both William
Irwin, Sr. as the father of Samuel B. Dutton's mother and through William
Irwin, Jr. as the father of Ellen Moreland Dutton's mother. As Joseph put
it, I am also "related to myself" as some kind of cousin, maybe once removed.
I get confused on this without my chart which I have misplaced for the
moment.
Anyway, that was a discovery of momentous porportions for me as we had
puzzled over that one for several years. As Joseph said to me recently,
there are really no dead ends in this genealogy......it just seems that way
sometimes.
All of this to say that we can add one more marriage and a whole raft of
Irwin descendants by knowing of M. Ellen Moreland Dutton's parentage!
Eula

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