Ancestors

Frances Jane Earnest

Frances Jane Earnest was born in Alabama about 1847. In 1850 she was four years old, written Francis J. Ernest, in the Lowndes County household of Asa Ernest, a planter of 50 born in Georgia, and his wife Tabitha, 43, born in South Carolina. Her brothers George, 18, and LaFayette, 16, and her sister Mary, 12, were at home. A few doors along from the Ernests lived three households of Shanks, all planters from South Carolina.

In 1865, the year the war ended, she married Asbury Shanks of Lowndes County. He had ridden for two years as a private in the 10th Confederate Cavalry and had been paroled in North Carolina that May. The Rev. Joseph M. Scott, a minister who married more than thirty Lowndes County couples between 1864 and 1871, performed the ceremony. Frances was about eighteen.

Their daughter Mary Frances, called Mollie, was born on 6 August 1866. By 1880 the family was farming at Dead Fall in Butler County. Frances was 33. The children at home were Mary F., 13, William C., 11, Edward E., 8, and Herbert B., 6. One of her sons was named Asa, as her father was, and Asa Shanks was living at Bolling in 1941. Mollie married John Henry Bush in 1883 and, after his death, George Albert Goodwin. When Frances died is not known.

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Cite: Heirology, "Frances Jane Earnest (b. 1847)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/frances-jane-earnest-1847-124f01.