Ancestors

Vincent Ricketson

Vincent Ricketson was born on 9 December 1836 in the piney woods of south Georgia, in country that became Coffee County when the county was made in 1854. He was the eldest son of James Carver and Sarah Ricketson. His mother was about sixteen when he was born. He grew up as one of a large family of Carvers, with brothers Allen, Jesse and Pink and sisters Hulda, Boyce Ann, Eliza, Mariah, Lila and Sarah. He went by both surnames all his life. The state pension office, his gravestone and most of his neighbors called him Vincent or Vinson Ricketson, and the county paper could call him "Uncle Vince Carver" and "Uncle Vince Ricketson" in the same column. The records of his life do not say why he carried his mother's surname rather than his father's.

He married Sarah Tucker. From 1858 he lived on one lot of land near where he had been born, about six miles northwest of the place that became the town of Douglas, and he stayed there the rest of his life, fifty-eight years. Their children came over twenty-four years: Polly about 1859, Lizzie, Allen, Sarah in January 1867, John, Eliza, Becky, Nellie, Arthur, and Richard about 1883.

In the Civil War he served as a private in Company G of the 21st Battalion of Georgia Cavalry, which went to Virginia and fought in the cavalry brigade of Wade Hampton of South Carolina. On 11 and 12 June 1864 Hampton's horsemen met the Union cavalry of Philip Sheridan at Trevilian Station, a stop on the Virginia Central Railroad in Louisa County. It was the largest battle of the war fought by cavalry alone, and the Confederates held the railroad. Vincent was shot in the leg below the knee, and the leg was amputated above the knee, at the junction of the upper and middle third of the thigh. He was twenty-seven.

He came home on crutches to a farm and a young family. Under a Georgia act of 1887 granting pensions to disabled Confederate soldiers, on 6 May 1889 he swore to his service and his wound before the Ordinary of Coffee County and signed the application with his mark. He drew the pension for the rest of his life. In 1896 he was allowed one hundred dollars a year, and the state's 1903 warrant for him reads simply "Left leg off".

He did well on the land. A neighbor writing in the Douglas Enterprise in December 1915 said he was "well fixed in life" and lived "in a big double-penned log house with good brick chimneys, surrounded by big shade trees and a hundred acres of good open farm lands." A double-penned house is two log rooms built side by side under one roof. The same writer said he had "held many positions of honor and trust in his native county" and could not remember that he had ever lost an election. A photograph kept by the family shows him on two crutches, his left trouser leg pinned up, standing with five others in front of a long log house with a shingled roof.

Sarah Tucker died on 22 September 1904 and was buried at Hebron Church in Coffee County. Vincent lived on at the old place. In February 1916 he was one of the Coffee County pensioners who signed a public letter of thanks to the Ordinary, W. P. Ward, for the way he handled their pensions. His seventy-ninth birthday in December 1915 brought about two hundred of his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to a dinner in his yard.

He fell ill early in 1916. The country columns of the Douglas Enterprise followed it week by week. In March he was "very ill". By the end of April he was "getting along very well", and he visited his son Arthur. In May he was "not getting along well" and then "still getting along bad", and his daughters came to sit with him. In early July the Salem column reported him "seriously ill", and his daughter Sarah Harper "was called to the bedside of her father". He died on 20 July 1916, aged seventy-nine, and was buried at Hebron Church beside his wife. On 9 September 1916 his son John sold the estate's two mules, a horse, the plantation tools and the household and kitchen furniture at public outcry on "the old Vince Ricketson place", so the proceeds could be divided among the heirs.

If Vincent Ricketson is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Vincent Ricketson (1836-1916)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/vincent-ricketson-1836-1916-99a4ba.