December 6 - Mary Ann Hellums Jeffrey

Mary Ann Hellums Jeffrey was born December 6, 1806 to John and Margaret Pruett (Pruitt or Prewett) Hellums in Knox County, Tennessee. She moved with her parents to Madison County, Mississippi Territory about 1809 and on to Tuscaloosa, Alabama about 1818.

She married James Bishop Jeffrey in 1821 in Tuscaloosa and had 14 children between 1822 and 1851.

    James Jeffrey and Mary Ann Hellums joined the Bethel Baptist Church in September and November of 1823, respectively.

 In the year of 1819, a church was constituted in the home of Jeremiah Jeffrey, 8 or 9 miles northwest of the town of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. They named this church, Bethel. John Fleming and wife [First wife- Abigail Jeffrey Fleming – ED] were charter members of this church and later were charter members of this Bethel Church at McMahan.

http://www.bethelpbc.com/History.htm

        In 1840, the Jeffreys requested letters of dismissal from the church and James sold his 104 acres of land to Stephen B. Russell. Most of the Jeffrey, Hellums, and related families moved to Tippah County, Mississippi, between 1837 and 1840.

The financial panic and depression that swept across the United States in 1837 resulted in banking problems that caused many Alabamians to lose their savings. Crops were ruined by drought, and several epidemics of yellow fever brought added suffering.

http://c.ancestry.com/cs/media/social-state-research-guide-alabama.pdf

Many left and a great number of emigrants settled in Texas.

James and Mary Ann, however, were in Arkansas from 1842 until about 1845, probably Montgomery County, and in Caldwell County, Texas about 1846. 

        James Jeffrey died 12 March 1860. The mortality schedule of the census shows that he died of pneumonia after three days' illness. According to that report he was 64 years old when he died and that he had been born in Tennessee.

After James' death in 1860, Mary Ann married John M. Fleming on 20 December 1863. John Fleming had been married, until her death, to Abigail Jeffrey, James Jeffrey's sister. The two families had probably been neighbors in Alabama and come to Texas together.  

 Mary Ann died in Caldwell County, Texas, on 29 July 1867 and is buried in the Jeffrey Cemetery in Caldwell County, Texas.