Ancestors
Drucilla Ann Bailey
1836-1889 · South Carolina
Also recorded as Drucy Bailey
Born 1836, Union County, South Carolina
Died 1889
Children include Chalmers
Drucilla Ann Bailey, called Drucy, was born on 9 June 1836. A memorial at her grave places her birth in Union District, South Carolina, and names her parents as John B. Bailey and Hannah Bailey.
On 29 March 1855, at eighteen, she married Lee Gaston of Chester County. They farmed in the Baton Rouge neighborhood of Chester County and had ten children between 1857 and 1880: Elizabeth, James Robert, Susana, George Alexander, William Mack, Johnie Jefferson, Walker Lee, Thomas Tabor, Chalmers and Alice Gertrude. Her husband served in the 1st South Carolina Cavalry in the Civil War.
In August 1886 she lost her son Johnie Jefferson, who was not yet seventeen. In December of the same year her husband shot and killed their daughter Susana's husband, William Estes, on the road home from Chester, with both men drunk. Lee was tried for murder at Chester in March 1887 and acquitted. Susana married James Doster that year and was widowed again before the year was out.
Drucy died on 13 August 1889, aged fifty-three. Her headstone in the churchyard of Bullock Creek Presbyterian Church, in York County, reads "Drucilla Ann, wife of E. L. Gaston". Lee was buried beside her three years later. Their son Chalmers named her as his mother when he died in 1953: his obituary called him the "son of the late Lee and Drucy Bailey Gaston".
Sources
Photograph added 23 January 2013 by Grammy, Find a Grave memorial 100589645, Bullock Creek Presbyterian Church Cemetery, York County, South Carolina.
Yorkville Enquirer (Yorkville, South Carolina), 18 August 1886, page 2, letter from Chester, Chronicling America, Library of Congress.
Yorkville Enquirer (Yorkville, South Carolina), 22 December 1886, page 2, letter from Chester, Chronicling America, Library of Congress.
South Carolina death certificate 53-001521, image added 27 January 2025 by Fran Bundy to Find a Grave memorial 42421759.
The State (Columbia, South Carolina), 21 February 1953, page 8-A; clipping added 18 January 2014 by GMG to Find a Grave memorial 42421759.
Headstone, Find a Grave memorial 100589645; death certificate of Chalmers Gaston, South Carolina 53-001521; obituary of Chalmers Gaston, The State, 21 February 1953; Yorkville Enquirer, 18 August 1886, 22 December 1886, 30 March 1887 and 5 October 1887.
South Carolina Standard Certificate of Death, state file 53-001521, Chester County, 1953; South Carolina Deaths, 1915-1973, FamilySearch ark 1:1:FG1M-KRH.
Death certificate of Chalmers Gaston, South Carolina, 1953 (FamilySearch ark 1:1:FG1M-KRH); Find a Grave memorial 100589645 for the years
Yorkville Enquirer (Yorkville, South Carolina), 18 August 1886, page 2, letter from Chester, Chronicling America, Library of Congress; Find a Grave memorial 16224554.
Yorkville Enquirer (Yorkville, South Carolina), 5 October 1887, page 2, letter from Chester, Chronicling America, Library of Congress.
Death certificate of Chalmers Gaston, South Carolina, 1953 (FamilySearch ark 1:1:FG1M-KRH); obituary of Chalmers Gaston, The State, 21 February 1953; Yorkville Enquirer, 18 August 1886 and 5 October 1887; Find a Grave memorial 100589645
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Cite: Heirology, "Drucilla Ann Bailey (1836-1889)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/drucilla-ann-bailey-1836-1889-5ab7e6.