Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - A Prolific Father

This is my first time participating in Randy Seaver’s, Genea-Musings, Saturday Night Genealogy Fun Challenges. The mission for Father's Day, if we chose to accept it, is

1) Determine who is one of the most prolific fathers in your genealogy database or in your ancestry. By prolific, the one who fathered the most children.


2) Tell us about him in your own blog post, in comments to this blog post, or in comments on Facebook.

My most prolific father was Jefferson Haynes (1852-1928), who had seven (7) children by his first wife Sarah Wilkinson (1855-1890) whom he married around 1875 in Leon County, Texas and (25) twenty-five children with his second wife Mattie Perkins (1867-1923) whom he married on 16 Feb 1893 in Leon County, Texas. Between his two wives, he had a total of (32) thirty-two children. Of the (32) thirty-two children, (26) twenty-six lived to adulthood.

 

Jefferson, the eldest son of Isaac and Adelaide (Brumby) Haynes, was born a slave in Alabama. According to oral history, the family along with the two other families (Brunson and Robinson) was owned by the Brumbys. They were brought to Texas during the Civil War around 1862. After the Civil War, Jefferson and his family eventually settled in the Friendship Community of Leon County, Texas. The community of Friendship is located about five miles south of Jewett and eight miles northwest of Centerville in northwestern Leon County. This was an African American settlement that was established after the Civil War. 

 

Jefferson was a farmer who purchased his first 50 acres from his father in 1880. Over the course of his life time, he would purchase over 800 acres of land with silver dollars because he did not trust paper money. He was also an active member of the community who was respected by both African Americans and Whites.

 

At the time of his death, the land was divided between his (19) nineteen living heirs. Each heir was given approximately 31.5 acres.