Sarah Elizabeth White Falvey

Sarah Elizabeth White Falvey

 


Sarah Elizabeth White was born September 19, 1845 in Chesterfield, South Carolina.   She married Daniel Falvey in 1863, and is burried at New Hope Methodist Church, north of Brookhaven, Mississippi.   She died on March 3, 1926.

The following is a newspaper article written about her during her 85th year. The newspaper source is unknown:

Mrs. S. E. Falvey, nearly eighty-five years of age, living in the Red Star neighborhood of Lincoln County, has thirty-nine grandchildren and sixty-six great grandchildren. The latest great grandchild is Roy Nelson Barlow, son of Mr. and Mrs. Boyce Barlow, who reside with Mrs. Falvey and her daughter.  The one great-great-grand-child of Mrs. Falvey is Gordon Norton, son of Judd Norton, World War veteran, of Boston.

Mrs. Falvey was born within three miles of Chesterfield Court House, South Carolina, and at the age of eleven years, came with relatives to live near Carthage, Leake County, Mississippi.

At the age of seventeen, in the second year of the Civil War, she married an Irishman named Falvey, a soldier in the Confederate Army.   Mr. Falvey was later taken prisoner and never saw the first baby in the family, who was born and died before he was able to return home.  Food was scarce and clothing had to be spun, woven and made at home during the war years and the hard ones which followed.  Thirteen children were born to the Falveys, and ten of them lived to maturity.   Mr. Falvey died forty years ago.

Eighty-five year old Mrs. Falvey's ideas on marriage are much the same as those of the modern matron.  She is opposed to marriage at an early age. "Wait to marry until you get a start in the world," she says.  "It takes a lot of hard work to get a start."  "I don't believe in large families unless people can support  them and give them good training. I believe it's a sin to have children and sent them to an orphans' home. Any man that's a man or any woman that's a woman can take care of at least one child if the other parent dies."

The Falvey creed for bringing up children is not in harmony with the practice of today, however.  "Children should be brought up to honor and fear their parents and to serve the Lord,"  Mrs. Falvey says. "I believe in switching and making them mannerly. Children now are not like they used to be.  With a flash ofhumor, she added, "there ain't any children now-they're all grown. I believe in children being in children's places.

"Young people are not as steady as they used to be and need religion," she says. "They ought to join the church while the heart is young and tender, for when they're older, it gets hard. Ijoined the Methodist church when I was seventeen.

When asked who she had preserved the health which enabled her to endure a bad case of flu-pneumonia last winter, and recent trying dental work, she said, " I haven't any health rules.  Working is all I could tell you.  As long as I could, I worked."
 

Return to Descendants Page