Ancestors

Matilda Caroline Greenwell

b. 1839 · Kentucky → Concordia KY
Born 1839, Kentucky
Father: Benedict Greenwell
Mother: Mariah Greenwell
Children include James

Matilda Caroline Greenwell was born in Kentucky about 1839, a daughter of Benedict Greenwell, a Maryland-born farmer of the Meade County river country, and his wife Mariah. She married John H. Brown on the bond of 5 December 1859, her brother Thomas S. Greenwell going surety for the groom, and the clerk's register records the license as issued on the consent of her father. She was twenty. They were married at the Catholic church in the presence of Francis Greenwell. The county index preserves both halves of her name: one entry writes her Matilda C. Greenwell, its duplicate writes her Caroline Greenwell, and the 1870 census calls her Caroline.

In June 1860 she and her husband were living under her father's roof. Her first child, Horace, was born that September, and seven more followed. She joined every conveyance her husband made, and the clerk certified each time that she had been examined separately and apart from him as the law directed. In March 1865 she put her mark to a fifteen year lease of the farm to three men looking for petroleum. In 1861 her younger sister Isabella Jane married her husband's brother James C. Brown, and the two couples signed deeds as a foursome for the next ten years.

Her husband died before February 1876, and she appears in the suit that followed as "M. C. Brown widow," heading the list of defendants with her eight children behind her. On 16 March 1877 the commissioner signed the deed that ended it. When her father made his will on 13 May 1875 he had remembered her under her married name: "9th I will and bequeath to my daughter Matilda C. Brown five dollars to be paid out of the proceeds of my Estate." No later record of her is known.

Sources

Kentucky, County Marriages, 1786-1965; the 1860 and 1870 federal censuses of Meade County, Kentucky

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Cite: Heirology, "Matilda Caroline Greenwell (b. 1839)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/matilda-caroline-greenwell-1839-66ff4a.