Nancy Jane Horn
Nancy Jane Horn was born in January 1880 in Leake County, Mississippi, the fourth of seven children of John Horn and Darewa Ann Eliza Flowers. Her father had served the Confederacy as a boy of sixteen in the last months of the Civil War. Her mother was born in North Carolina and came to Mississippi as a child. The family called Nancy Sissie, and the name stayed with her for life. It is the only name on her grave.
In June 1880 the census taker reached the Horns at Edinburg, in Leake County. He wrote the family as Horne: John, 32, born in South Carolina, his wife Eliza, 30, born in North Carolina, and four children, Elija, 7, William, 5, Olover, 2, and a daughter of five months whom he entered simply as Sis.
About 1897 she married William Benjamin Harrell, a Leake County man six years older. Their first child, Zelma Tinnie, was born on 12 February 1898. In June 1900 the census found the young family in the town of Carthage, the county seat: William, 26, Nancy J., 20, born January 1880, and Zelma T., two. They had been married three years.
That December a son was born. He lived nineteen days, from 20 December 1900 to 8 January 1901, and was buried at Reformation Cemetery near Hopoca, Leake County. His small stone calls him the infant son of W. B. and N. J. A long gap followed before the last child, Opal C., was born on 28 June 1915.
In 1920 the census found William B. and Nannie still in Carthage, with Zelma, now 22, and Opal at home. Nancy died not long after. Her family gives the year as 1925. The state's list of death certificates names a Nancy J. Harrell who died in Leake County in 1921, and the certificate itself would settle which year is right.
She was buried at Reformation Cemetery, where the baby son lay. Her grave has no carved stone. It is marked by a metal funeral-home marker on an iron stake, its two plates reading "SISSIE" and "HARRELL". William married again, to Media Wooten, and had four more children. He lived until 1956 and was buried in the same cemetery.
Her brothers and sisters stayed close by in Leake County. Her brother James William Horn married Donnie Harrell, and her youngest brother Lafayette, called Fatie, married Letha Harrell, so the Horn and Harrell families were tied together more than once. Her daughter Opal married E. J. Harrell. A small photograph of Nancy as a young woman, taken about 1900, has come down in the family.
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Cite: Heirology, "Nancy Jane Horn (1880-1925)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/nancy-jane-horn-1880-1925-21ece8.