SARAH ALICE (POLLARD) LENDERMAN CARROLL SALLY
Submitted by Frank Butcher, updated
May 28, 2007
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Sarah Alice Pollard was the granddaughter of Benjamin Pollard, who settled in
Alabama at the bend of the Coosa River between Leesburg and Slackland, known a
Pollard’s Bend. She married Levi Lenderman and bore him 8 children. In 1868, Levi Lenderman was killed by “bushwackers” in an apparent robbery not far from the family home in Pollard’s Bend. According to family lore, Levi was murdered for a pouch of tobacco, and his death left the family destitute. With eight children, and no husband, and in the difficult times following the Civil War, the family was in dire financial straits, and Sarah is said to have worked for a black sharecropper for a time. The family survived on cornbread and milk, and after Sarah fed her children and they left the table, she would eat the left-overs. These hard times are said to have steeled the resolve of young Benjamin Levi Lenderman to do whatever it took to make sure his children would not suffer like he and his mom. As a result of Levi’s death, 18 year-old Henry Lafayette (Fate) became the head of the household, and the family moved to Dallas County where they were listed on the 1870 census at Harrell’s Gap at the Fort’s Post Office. The value of their personal estate was listed at $100, with Fate doing farm labor. The family lived near Loftin Campbell, a wealthy farmer, and probably all of the family worked in his cotton fields. Emma, Sarah’s last child, was born out of wedlock in 1872, four years after Levi’s death. Although the family rumor is that Emma was fathered by one of Levi’s brothers, the father’s name and whether the birth was the result of a romantic liaison or a forced relationship is a matter of speculation. About this time Sarah and her family moved to Sumter County, where her daughter, Georgia Ann, married James Carroll in 1879. Sarah then married James’ father, Joshua Avery Carroll, on 13 February 1881. Fate married Margaret Jane Ellis in 1875, and on August 1, 1878, Fate and Margaret left Sumter County with their two small children, Margaret’s mother, brother, 3 sisters, and two nieces. They traveled in one wagon pulled by a yoke of oxen that carried the mother and the 4 small children while the others walked about 12 miles a day. Fate hunted along the way with his old dog and the brother, Daniel Ellis, drove the oxen. The group was quarantined in Mississippi for several months due to a yellow fever epidemic, making their trip much longer than expected and causing supplies to become short. They lived on cornbread made with hot water, sorghum molasses, bran coffee and very little meat. Despite the many hardships, the family arrived on January 26, 1879 in Limestone County, Texas, where Margaret’s brother, John Benjamin Ellis, was living. In 1881, the Sarah and her husband followed Fate to Limestone County. According to family tradition, Sarah made the trip by train with her smallest children, arriving in Thornton, Texas. After the death of Joshua, Sarah married for the third time. This marriage was to Mack Sally in Limestone County, Texas. Frank Butcher 2007 |