For this year’s A to Z Challenge, I will be posting an event for that date involving someone in my family tree. Of course it will also involve the letter of the day. It may be a birth, a death, a christening, a journal entry, a letter or a newspaper article. If the entry is a news item, it will be transcribed immediately below. Click on photographs to enlarge in another window.
On April 25, 1872 my great grandmother Celia Rice married her first husband, Louis Cleage in Athens, Tennessee. Twenty seven years later on April 25, 1899, she married her second husband William Roger Sherman, also in Athens, Tennessee. I had never noticed this before looking for all the April events I could find in my family.
Celia was seventeen when she married my great grandfather Louis Cleage in 1872. Louis was twenty. Five children were born to this union, Josephine (1873), Jacob (1874), Henry (1877), Charles Edward (1879) and my grandfather Albert B. Cleage (1883). In 1880 the family was living in Louden County, Tennessee where Louis was sharecropping.
By 1900 Celia was in Athens and had remarried. Louis was working as a furnace laborer in Jefferson County, Alabama. Louis could not read or write.
Celia was 44 when she married William Roger Sherman, who was 53. They also married in Athens. In the 1900 census Celia was working as a cook, William Roger was a carpenter. Both of them could read but not write. Celia’s three youngest sons were living in the home and attending school. They were now 21, 19 and 17. Her daughter Josie was married and lived next door with her family. Her son Jacob lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee where he was a waiter.
Louis Cleage died in Indianapolis in 1918.
Lewis Cleage, of Athens. Tenn. has been with his son. Jacob Cleage, of this city, for nearly two years, died Thursday afternoon at the city hospital, where he was taken Wednesday. The funeral services were conducted today at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Josie Cleage, 1325 Massachusetts avenue, at 2 o’clock. The Rev. John Brice officiating. Besides a daughter. Mr. Cleage is survived by four sons, Dr. Albert Cleage Detroit. Henry and Jacob Cleage of this city and Edward Cleage of Athens, Tenn. The body will be taken to Athens for burial.
By 1920 Celia was living in Detroit with my grandfather and his family. William Roger Sherman was living in North Carolina with his daughter. He was in poor health and died later in 1920. Celia died in Detroit in 1930.
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Other Posts about them
Louis Cleage & Family – 1880
Louis Cleage – Work Day Wednesday
Louis/Lewis Cleage’s Death Certificate 1852 – 1918
Celia Rice Cleage Sherman – Her Life 1855 – 1930
Celia’s Death Certificate
On the way to bury their mother… June 1930
Sherman, William Roger- Tennessee