Tag Archives: #Saffold

A brief explanation for Eliza’s Story

I just wanted to clarify a few things in the last post before moving on.  Mary McCall’s daughter, Alma Otilla “Tillie” owned a three story brownstone in Chicago.  She and her husband, Joseph Howard, lived in one unit and relatives lived in the other ones.  In 1933, When Sayde visited her sister Blanch in Chicago,  Mary McCall (Eliza’s oldest daughter) was 87.  Mattie (Sayde’s mother and Mary’s half sister) was 59, Victoria (Mary McCall’s grandaughter) was 18,  Sadye was 16 and Margaret(Mary’s grandaughter) was 15.

Mary Allen McCall was born in 1856 in Alabama, probably Lowndes or Dallas County where her mother, Eliza was the slave of Milton Saffold.  Milton Saffold’s wife, Martha Harrison Saffold died in 1856 after the birth of her third son. Mary Allen McCall did live in Mississippi for a short time, but as an adult with one of her daughters between the death of her husband in Montgomery and the family’s move to Detroit, Michigan.  By 1933 she was living in Detroit.

I hope that isn’t too confusing.  I do have a chart showing all these various relationships but before I post that I would like to go back to my mother”s writings and then show what she got right in her memories of her great aunts and how I eventually met people from all branches of Eliza’s children and found more photographs and more stories.