Ancestors

Edward Harper

Edward Harper was born on 7 November 1946, the date cut on his gravestone. His family gives his birthplace as Dade City, the seat of Pasco County, Florida, north of Tampa. He was a son of Johnnie Harper and Beatrice Stephens, a Coffee County, Georgia, couple who raised a very large family. The Harpers moved between the two states. His younger brother Billy Charles was born at Dade City in 1954, and the rest of the family's lives were lived around Douglas, Pearson and Nicholls in Coffee County.

He grew up one of at least fourteen children. His sister Elizabeth's obituary in 2021 counted seven brothers and six sisters. The ones named in the family's obituaries are James Luke, called Johnnie Jr., born 1937; Elizabeth, born 1940; Geneva, born 1945; Edward himself; Billy Charles, born 1954; and Glen, Thomas, Jimmy, Dorothy, Betty Sue, Margaret, Evelyn and Barbara.

His mother died on 4 April 1966, at forty-eight. Edward was nineteen. That same year he and Lillie Mae Wright, a Coffee County girl a few months younger than he was, had a daughter, Julia, born at Homerville in Clinch County. A son, Edward Tate Harper, followed on 24 August 1968 in Coffee County. Lillie's obituary in 1999 also names a son Jimmy W. Harper.

Edward died on 16 October 1971. He was twenty-four. He was buried at Franklin Cemetery, the churchyard of Franklin Holiness Baptist Church near Douglas, where his mother already lay. His father was buried beside them in 1976. His son Tate was buried in the same ground in 2024, and so was Lillie in 1999, under her later married name of Rollins.

If Edward Harper is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Edward Harper (1946-1971)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/edward-harper-1946-1971-c46a68.