Biography written by Nathan Vaughan Marks; please cite if borrowing.
Lucy’s life is difficult to piece together from the beginning. She appears to have been born out of wedlock. Her mother was certainly Hannah Bowling, daughter of the well-known Reverend Jesse Bowling of Breathitt County, Kentucky. There is ample proof of this relationship. Lucy is listed in the Nelson Huff Journal, where he recorded information on the family history; Nelson was a grandson of John Huff, son of Leonard and Hannah. There were no other Huff families in that region of Kentucky except that of Hannah Bowling and Leonard Huff, and she was too old to be a daughter of one of their sons. Her daughter Sally’s Civil War Widow’s Pension application stating her mother’s name was “Lucy Bolin” and her ‘people’ were Bolins, Bolin being a variation of the name Bowling. In 1841, the heirs of Hannah Huff sold the last of their mother’s property to Joseph Eversole, who would become Lucy’s husband. And finally, Lucy can often be found referred to in various family histories as Lucy Huff Bolin.
Hannah Bowling married Leonard Huff before 1809. The Nelson Huff family notebook, which tends to be cited as the earliest authoritative source on the family indicates that Leonard died in October of 1824; other family genealogies specify October 20th, 1824, but with no citation for the precise date. This date would not have been recorded until decades after Leonard’s death (Nelson was born in 1887), so it is possible the year was off to a degree. A daughter who is believed to have been legitimate, Sarah Huff, who buried Justice Bowling, was supposedly born approximately 1825. So it is possible either Hannah was pregnant with Sarah when Leonard died, or Leonard died shortly after Sarah’s birth. Regardless, Leonard was clearly deceased by March 12th, 1825 when Abel Pennington, who was Hannah’s brother-in-law (married to Hannah’s sister Elizabeth Bowling) and a cousin of Hannah’s mother Mary Pennington, sold 20 acres in Perry County, Kentucky to Hannah Huff and the infant heirs of Leonard Huff. These heirs were listed as: Elizabeth, John, Daniel, Nancy, Sarah, and Rachael.
A deed states that Hannah could live on the property until she died or remarried. According to Bowling and Huff family records, Hannah died July 22nd, 1837. The 20 acres Abel Pennington had sold to Hannah and an additional 50 acres were sold to Joseph Eversole on October 23rd, 1841. Hannah is not mentioned, indicating that she was indeed deceased by this time, and the sellers were listed as John, Elizabeth [Adams], Rachel [Couch], Daniel, Sarah [Boling], and Nancy Huff. As previously mentioned, this Joseph Eversole would go on to marry Lucy Huff, Hannah’s daughter, who is not mentioned in this record.
Outside these relatively established confines of apparent fact, we begin to wade into murky guesswork. Lucy’s age has never been effectively established. There are three records that give her age, and all three are different. The 1850 Census states she is 21, indicating a year of birth of about 1829. Her marriage to Joseph Eversole states her age was 22, indicating a year of birth of 1831. The 1860 Census states she is 27, indicating her year of birth was 1833. I cannot say which is most accurate, but I am most inclined to lean toward her age given in the marriage record, as she would have been present when that was recorded. It is possible she did not answer the questions of the census-taker in 1850 or 1860, and so her husbands could have had her age wrong. In my records, I have her approximate year of birth as 1831.
Regardless which of those three approximations is correct, it is clear from her mother’s and siblings’ purchase of Abel Pennington’s 20 acres in 1825 that Lucy was born several years after the death of Leonard Huff, and therefore he could not have been her biological father. Interestingly, numerous family histories of the Bowling family name a second husband for Hannah Bowling. The 1953 “History of Perry County, Kentucky” by the Hazard Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution appears to be the main source cited by Bowling family members for this second husband. According to these sources, Hannah, daughter of Reverend Jesse Bowling, married first a “Huff”, and second a “Nelse Guy”. I have alternately seen this man listed as “Nelson Gay”. As there actually was a large Gay family living in Clay County, Kentucky during this time, I presume that family to be the one referred to.
There is no record of this marriage having occurred. No court, land, marriage, or bible records formally indicate that Hannah Bowling Huff married a second time. However, this supposed marriage ending up in family histories could be for a couple of reasons. One, a Nelson Gay did actually marry a Hannah, and she was a niece of Hannah Bowling Huff. On November 20th, 1835 in Clay County, Kentucky, Nelson Gay married Hannah Barger, daughter of Abraham Barger and Mary Bowling, sister of Hannah Bowling Huff. Perhaps their names and relations led to confusion.
Or could it be possible that Nelson Gay is the biological father of Lucy Huff, daughter of Hannah Bowling Huff? Nelson and Hannah may have lived together, or they could have even had a common-law marriage. It’s unknown if the two even knew each other. But it is possible that the reason Nelson Gay’s name is tied to Hannah Bowling Huff’s is because the family was aware that he was the father of Hannah’s illegitimate child. I cannot base that theory on any sort of hard evidence. But Nelson was born about 1812, so he would have been old enough to have a love-child by 1831, or even in 1829. He did not marry until 1835. It is possible that during a time in his young adulthood before he married Hannah Barger he had a romantic relationship with Hannah Bowling Huff. It’s even possible that he met Hannah’s niece, Hannah Barger, because of this relationship.
There really is no documentation to support such a scenario, but it does appear feasible when one considers the Bowling descendants who tied Nelson to Hannah Bowling Huff. Nelson did not die until 1899, and the Perry County, Kentucky history book was published in 1953. There were likely Bowling family members who were involved in the writing of that book who knew Nelson Guy personally. And they may have been aware of his previous relationship with Hannah Bowling Huff. Many people, especially in the older days, did not like to talk about illegitimate children and intimate relationships between unmarried persons. So in saying that Hannah and Nelson were married, in the minds of those people, it may have been covering what they considered to be a sticky area of their family histories.
Regardless of who Lucy’s father was she was a child born out of wedlock to a mother who would die when she was a young child. Whether it was in 1837 as Bowling records state, or as late as shortly before the 1841 sale of Hannah’s land, Lucy was left parentless at a young age. It is not known who took her in or who raised her. She was likely raised by either some of her Huff half-siblings, or by Bowling/Bolin/Boling relatives of her mother. In many places, she would have been considered low-class due to her status as a bastard, but it would appear she at least maintained ties with her mother’s Bolin relatives.
Around 1848-49, Lucy married a Joseph Braughton. No marriage record has been located, so it is unclear exactly when and where this marriage occurred. By 1850, Lucy was living in Knox County, Kentucky with Joseph and a one year old son, Anderson Braughton. I have found nothing on Joseph Braughton, nor anything on what became of Lucy’s child with him. On April 12th, 1853 in Clay County, Kentucky, Joseph was granted a divorce from Lucy. Lucy did not appear for the hearing. Six months later, Lucy had remarried to Joseph Eversole, “Sr.”, as he was referred to on the marriage record. Lucy gave her name as her previous married one, Lucy Braughton.
It is not known when Joseph’s first wife, Henrietta Oliver, died, so we don’t know how long after her death that he remarried. We also don’t know how Joseph’s children (ranging from ages 12 to 30 in 1853) felt about this remarriage. Lucy was now not only a woman born out of wedlock, but she was also a divorced woman, which would give even more people an excuse in their eyes to view her as lower-class. What relationship Lucy had with these step-children is as unknown to us as their relationship with Lucy’s children, their half-siblings.
Kentucky began recording births in this part of the state in the 1850s, and the birth registers for John and Sarah Eversole (one has not been found for Robert) are where we gleam what Lucy consider to be her maiden name: Lucy Huff. She is listed as Lucy Huff on both records, though as previously stated her daughter gave her maiden name as Lucy Bolin.
By 1870, Lucy’s three known children are living in separate counties, and Lucy herself is nowhere to be found in Census records. In fact, she doesn’t appear in any located records after the 1860 Census. She was alive until about 1885 based on her daughter Sally’s Widow’s Pension Application. Sally says Lucy moved with her and her brothers to Arkansas (“I came to Newton County when I was 21. My brothers and mother all came together”), and “I was about 29 years old when mother died”. Whether Lucy remarried or even had other children after Joseph’s death, or any other information about her between 1860 and 1885, is a complete mystery.
John and Sally Eversole are found in the 1870 Census in Perry County, living with the family of William Bowling and his wife, Elizabeth Eversole. In family genealogies, William is sometimes referred to as “Bluehead” or “Bluehead Willie”, and Elizabeth is sometimes called “Mary Elizabeth Rachel”. William was the son of Justice Bowling, who was a brother of Hannah Bowling Huff, and therefore was a first cousin of Lucy. Elizabeth was the daughter of Woolery Eversole, a brother of Joseph Eversole, and therefore was a first cousin of Sally and John. Robert is listed in the 1870 Census Owsley County, Kentucky, living with a man named Jefferson Baker and his family. No familial relationship with Mr. Baker has been identified.
The family is absent from the 1880 Census. By the early 1880s, the family lived in or near Newton County, Arkansas. Lucy and Sally lived on the land of and worked for a man named Jim Bailey, per Sally's Widow's Application for Union Pension for her husband Jesse Radford's service. Sally eventually bore a child with Bailey out of wedlock. Sometime after that, Sally went to live with her brother John, and when he died, with her brother Robert, before marrying the father of Robert's wife Eliza, Jesse Radford.
Lucy is not mentioned again in the pension after the reference about living with Jim Bailey. It is presumed she died around this time. The year 1885 is purely a guess; it is between the birth of Sally's son by Jim Bailey and her marriage to Jesse Radford. As Jim Bailey's place was the last known residence of Lucy, that location and the confirmed location of her son Robert's homestead were used as reference points for where Lucy was most likely to be buried. Her son John died in this same timeframe while living in the same vicinity, so it is presumed the two are buried together.
The Bolins and Eversoles, like their eastern Kentucky and northern Arkansas brethren, were the clannish type. They moved with, lived near, and were buried with their kin. While the Case and Curtis cemeteries in rural Newton County were considered as possible burial places for Lucy and John, neither were particularly close to the Bailey or Eversole homesteads, and neither appears to have any close family to Lucy buried there. The Sutherland-Bolin cemetery, however, meets both criteria. Geographically, it is the closest cemetery to the Bailey and Eversole homesteads. Further, several of Lucy's Bolin kin are buried there, including her first cousin, George W. Bolin. George's father William and Lucy's mother Hannah were siblings.
Therefore, it is believed that Lucy and John are buried among the unmarked graves at the Sutherland-Bolin Cemetery, or marked only with fieldstones. The family was not financially well-off and were unlikely to be able to afford proper headstones for either. Regardless, Lucy deserves to be remembered as the loving, hard-working woman she was. She did her best to work to provide as a good a life for her children as she could, and her descendants will admire and remember her for this.
Lucy’s life is difficult to piece together from the beginning. She appears to have been born out of wedlock. Her mother was certainly Hannah Bowling, daughter of the well-known Reverend Jesse Bowling of Breathitt County, Kentucky. There is ample proof of this relationship. Lucy is listed in the Nelson Huff Journal, where he recorded information on the family history; Nelson was a grandson of John Huff, son of Leonard and Hannah. There were no other Huff families in that region of Kentucky except that of Hannah Bowling and Leonard Huff, and she was too old to be a daughter of one of their sons. Her daughter Sally’s Civil War Widow’s Pension application stating her mother’s name was “Lucy Bolin” and her ‘people’ were Bolins, Bolin being a variation of the name Bowling. In 1841, the heirs of Hannah Huff sold the last of their mother’s property to Joseph Eversole, who would become Lucy’s husband. And finally, Lucy can often be found referred to in various family histories as Lucy Huff Bolin.
Hannah Bowling married Leonard Huff before 1809. The Nelson Huff family notebook, which tends to be cited as the earliest authoritative source on the family indicates that Leonard died in October of 1824; other family genealogies specify October 20th, 1824, but with no citation for the precise date. This date would not have been recorded until decades after Leonard’s death (Nelson was born in 1887), so it is possible the year was off to a degree. A daughter who is believed to have been legitimate, Sarah Huff, who buried Justice Bowling, was supposedly born approximately 1825. So it is possible either Hannah was pregnant with Sarah when Leonard died, or Leonard died shortly after Sarah’s birth. Regardless, Leonard was clearly deceased by March 12th, 1825 when Abel Pennington, who was Hannah’s brother-in-law (married to Hannah’s sister Elizabeth Bowling) and a cousin of Hannah’s mother Mary Pennington, sold 20 acres in Perry County, Kentucky to Hannah Huff and the infant heirs of Leonard Huff. These heirs were listed as: Elizabeth, John, Daniel, Nancy, Sarah, and Rachael.
A deed states that Hannah could live on the property until she died or remarried. According to Bowling and Huff family records, Hannah died July 22nd, 1837. The 20 acres Abel Pennington had sold to Hannah and an additional 50 acres were sold to Joseph Eversole on October 23rd, 1841. Hannah is not mentioned, indicating that she was indeed deceased by this time, and the sellers were listed as John, Elizabeth [Adams], Rachel [Couch], Daniel, Sarah [Boling], and Nancy Huff. As previously mentioned, this Joseph Eversole would go on to marry Lucy Huff, Hannah’s daughter, who is not mentioned in this record.
Outside these relatively established confines of apparent fact, we begin to wade into murky guesswork. Lucy’s age has never been effectively established. There are three records that give her age, and all three are different. The 1850 Census states she is 21, indicating a year of birth of about 1829. Her marriage to Joseph Eversole states her age was 22, indicating a year of birth of 1831. The 1860 Census states she is 27, indicating her year of birth was 1833. I cannot say which is most accurate, but I am most inclined to lean toward her age given in the marriage record, as she would have been present when that was recorded. It is possible she did not answer the questions of the census-taker in 1850 or 1860, and so her husbands could have had her age wrong. In my records, I have her approximate year of birth as 1831.
Regardless which of those three approximations is correct, it is clear from her mother’s and siblings’ purchase of Abel Pennington’s 20 acres in 1825 that Lucy was born several years after the death of Leonard Huff, and therefore he could not have been her biological father. Interestingly, numerous family histories of the Bowling family name a second husband for Hannah Bowling. The 1953 “History of Perry County, Kentucky” by the Hazard Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution appears to be the main source cited by Bowling family members for this second husband. According to these sources, Hannah, daughter of Reverend Jesse Bowling, married first a “Huff”, and second a “Nelse Guy”. I have alternately seen this man listed as “Nelson Gay”. As there actually was a large Gay family living in Clay County, Kentucky during this time, I presume that family to be the one referred to.
There is no record of this marriage having occurred. No court, land, marriage, or bible records formally indicate that Hannah Bowling Huff married a second time. However, this supposed marriage ending up in family histories could be for a couple of reasons. One, a Nelson Gay did actually marry a Hannah, and she was a niece of Hannah Bowling Huff. On November 20th, 1835 in Clay County, Kentucky, Nelson Gay married Hannah Barger, daughter of Abraham Barger and Mary Bowling, sister of Hannah Bowling Huff. Perhaps their names and relations led to confusion.
Or could it be possible that Nelson Gay is the biological father of Lucy Huff, daughter of Hannah Bowling Huff? Nelson and Hannah may have lived together, or they could have even had a common-law marriage. It’s unknown if the two even knew each other. But it is possible that the reason Nelson Gay’s name is tied to Hannah Bowling Huff’s is because the family was aware that he was the father of Hannah’s illegitimate child. I cannot base that theory on any sort of hard evidence. But Nelson was born about 1812, so he would have been old enough to have a love-child by 1831, or even in 1829. He did not marry until 1835. It is possible that during a time in his young adulthood before he married Hannah Barger he had a romantic relationship with Hannah Bowling Huff. It’s even possible that he met Hannah’s niece, Hannah Barger, because of this relationship.
There really is no documentation to support such a scenario, but it does appear feasible when one considers the Bowling descendants who tied Nelson to Hannah Bowling Huff. Nelson did not die until 1899, and the Perry County, Kentucky history book was published in 1953. There were likely Bowling family members who were involved in the writing of that book who knew Nelson Guy personally. And they may have been aware of his previous relationship with Hannah Bowling Huff. Many people, especially in the older days, did not like to talk about illegitimate children and intimate relationships between unmarried persons. So in saying that Hannah and Nelson were married, in the minds of those people, it may have been covering what they considered to be a sticky area of their family histories.
Regardless of who Lucy’s father was she was a child born out of wedlock to a mother who would die when she was a young child. Whether it was in 1837 as Bowling records state, or as late as shortly before the 1841 sale of Hannah’s land, Lucy was left parentless at a young age. It is not known who took her in or who raised her. She was likely raised by either some of her Huff half-siblings, or by Bowling/Bolin/Boling relatives of her mother. In many places, she would have been considered low-class due to her status as a bastard, but it would appear she at least maintained ties with her mother’s Bolin relatives.
Around 1848-49, Lucy married a Joseph Braughton. No marriage record has been located, so it is unclear exactly when and where this marriage occurred. By 1850, Lucy was living in Knox County, Kentucky with Joseph and a one year old son, Anderson Braughton. I have found nothing on Joseph Braughton, nor anything on what became of Lucy’s child with him. On April 12th, 1853 in Clay County, Kentucky, Joseph was granted a divorce from Lucy. Lucy did not appear for the hearing. Six months later, Lucy had remarried to Joseph Eversole, “Sr.”, as he was referred to on the marriage record. Lucy gave her name as her previous married one, Lucy Braughton.
It is not known when Joseph’s first wife, Henrietta Oliver, died, so we don’t know how long after her death that he remarried. We also don’t know how Joseph’s children (ranging from ages 12 to 30 in 1853) felt about this remarriage. Lucy was now not only a woman born out of wedlock, but she was also a divorced woman, which would give even more people an excuse in their eyes to view her as lower-class. What relationship Lucy had with these step-children is as unknown to us as their relationship with Lucy’s children, their half-siblings.
Kentucky began recording births in this part of the state in the 1850s, and the birth registers for John and Sarah Eversole (one has not been found for Robert) are where we gleam what Lucy consider to be her maiden name: Lucy Huff. She is listed as Lucy Huff on both records, though as previously stated her daughter gave her maiden name as Lucy Bolin.
By 1870, Lucy’s three known children are living in separate counties, and Lucy herself is nowhere to be found in Census records. In fact, she doesn’t appear in any located records after the 1860 Census. She was alive until about 1885 based on her daughter Sally’s Widow’s Pension Application. Sally says Lucy moved with her and her brothers to Arkansas (“I came to Newton County when I was 21. My brothers and mother all came together”), and “I was about 29 years old when mother died”. Whether Lucy remarried or even had other children after Joseph’s death, or any other information about her between 1860 and 1885, is a complete mystery.
John and Sally Eversole are found in the 1870 Census in Perry County, living with the family of William Bowling and his wife, Elizabeth Eversole. In family genealogies, William is sometimes referred to as “Bluehead” or “Bluehead Willie”, and Elizabeth is sometimes called “Mary Elizabeth Rachel”. William was the son of Justice Bowling, who was a brother of Hannah Bowling Huff, and therefore was a first cousin of Lucy. Elizabeth was the daughter of Woolery Eversole, a brother of Joseph Eversole, and therefore was a first cousin of Sally and John. Robert is listed in the 1870 Census Owsley County, Kentucky, living with a man named Jefferson Baker and his family. No familial relationship with Mr. Baker has been identified.
The family is absent from the 1880 Census. By the early 1880s, the family lived in or near Newton County, Arkansas. Lucy and Sally lived on the land of and worked for a man named Jim Bailey, per Sally's Widow's Application for Union Pension for her husband Jesse Radford's service. Sally eventually bore a child with Bailey out of wedlock. Sometime after that, Sally went to live with her brother John, and when he died, with her brother Robert, before marrying the father of Robert's wife Eliza, Jesse Radford.
Lucy is not mentioned again in the pension after the reference about living with Jim Bailey. It is presumed she died around this time. The year 1885 is purely a guess; it is between the birth of Sally's son by Jim Bailey and her marriage to Jesse Radford. As Jim Bailey's place was the last known residence of Lucy, that location and the confirmed location of her son Robert's homestead were used as reference points for where Lucy was most likely to be buried. Her son John died in this same timeframe while living in the same vicinity, so it is presumed the two are buried together.
The Bolins and Eversoles, like their eastern Kentucky and northern Arkansas brethren, were the clannish type. They moved with, lived near, and were buried with their kin. While the Case and Curtis cemeteries in rural Newton County were considered as possible burial places for Lucy and John, neither were particularly close to the Bailey or Eversole homesteads, and neither appears to have any close family to Lucy buried there. The Sutherland-Bolin cemetery, however, meets both criteria. Geographically, it is the closest cemetery to the Bailey and Eversole homesteads. Further, several of Lucy's Bolin kin are buried there, including her first cousin, George W. Bolin. George's father William and Lucy's mother Hannah were siblings.
Therefore, it is believed that Lucy and John are buried among the unmarked graves at the Sutherland-Bolin Cemetery, or marked only with fieldstones. The family was not financially well-off and were unlikely to be able to afford proper headstones for either. Regardless, Lucy deserves to be remembered as the loving, hard-working woman she was. She did her best to work to provide as a good a life for her children as she could, and her descendants will admire and remember her for this.
Biography written by Nathan Vaughan Marks; please cite if borrowing.
Lucy’s life is difficult to piece together from the beginning. She appears to have been born out of wedlock. Her mother was certainly Hannah Bowling, daughter of the well-known Reverend Jesse Bowling of Breathitt County, Kentucky. There is ample proof of this relationship. Lucy is listed in the Nelson Huff Journal, where he recorded information on the family history; Nelson was a grandson of John Huff, son of Leonard and Hannah. There were no other Huff families in that region of Kentucky except that of Hannah Bowling and Leonard Huff, and she was too old to be a daughter of one of their sons. Her daughter Sally’s Civil War Widow’s Pension application stating her mother’s name was “Lucy Bolin” and her ‘people’ were Bolins, Bolin being a variation of the name Bowling. In 1841, the heirs of Hannah Huff sold the last of their mother’s property to Joseph Eversole, who would become Lucy’s husband. And finally, Lucy can often be found referred to in various family histories as Lucy Huff Bolin.
Hannah Bowling married Leonard Huff before 1809. The Nelson Huff family notebook, which tends to be cited as the earliest authoritative source on the family indicates that Leonard died in October of 1824; other family genealogies specify October 20th, 1824, but with no citation for the precise date. This date would not have been recorded until decades after Leonard’s death (Nelson was born in 1887), so it is possible the year was off to a degree. A daughter who is believed to have been legitimate, Sarah Huff, who buried Justice Bowling, was supposedly born approximately 1825. So it is possible either Hannah was pregnant with Sarah when Leonard died, or Leonard died shortly after Sarah’s birth. Regardless, Leonard was clearly deceased by March 12th, 1825 when Abel Pennington, who was Hannah’s brother-in-law (married to Hannah’s sister Elizabeth Bowling) and a cousin of Hannah’s mother Mary Pennington, sold 20 acres in Perry County, Kentucky to Hannah Huff and the infant heirs of Leonard Huff. These heirs were listed as: Elizabeth, John, Daniel, Nancy, Sarah, and Rachael.
A deed states that Hannah could live on the property until she died or remarried. According to Bowling and Huff family records, Hannah died July 22nd, 1837. The 20 acres Abel Pennington had sold to Hannah and an additional 50 acres were sold to Joseph Eversole on October 23rd, 1841. Hannah is not mentioned, indicating that she was indeed deceased by this time, and the sellers were listed as John, Elizabeth [Adams], Rachel [Couch], Daniel, Sarah [Boling], and Nancy Huff. As previously mentioned, this Joseph Eversole would go on to marry Lucy Huff, Hannah’s daughter, who is not mentioned in this record.
Outside these relatively established confines of apparent fact, we begin to wade into murky guesswork. Lucy’s age has never been effectively established. There are three records that give her age, and all three are different. The 1850 Census states she is 21, indicating a year of birth of about 1829. Her marriage to Joseph Eversole states her age was 22, indicating a year of birth of 1831. The 1860 Census states she is 27, indicating her year of birth was 1833. I cannot say which is most accurate, but I am most inclined to lean toward her age given in the marriage record, as she would have been present when that was recorded. It is possible she did not answer the questions of the census-taker in 1850 or 1860, and so her husbands could have had her age wrong. In my records, I have her approximate year of birth as 1831.
Regardless which of those three approximations is correct, it is clear from her mother’s and siblings’ purchase of Abel Pennington’s 20 acres in 1825 that Lucy was born several years after the death of Leonard Huff, and therefore he could not have been her biological father. Interestingly, numerous family histories of the Bowling family name a second husband for Hannah Bowling. The 1953 “History of Perry County, Kentucky” by the Hazard Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution appears to be the main source cited by Bowling family members for this second husband. According to these sources, Hannah, daughter of Reverend Jesse Bowling, married first a “Huff”, and second a “Nelse Guy”. I have alternately seen this man listed as “Nelson Gay”. As there actually was a large Gay family living in Clay County, Kentucky during this time, I presume that family to be the one referred to.
There is no record of this marriage having occurred. No court, land, marriage, or bible records formally indicate that Hannah Bowling Huff married a second time. However, this supposed marriage ending up in family histories could be for a couple of reasons. One, a Nelson Gay did actually marry a Hannah, and she was a niece of Hannah Bowling Huff. On November 20th, 1835 in Clay County, Kentucky, Nelson Gay married Hannah Barger, daughter of Abraham Barger and Mary Bowling, sister of Hannah Bowling Huff. Perhaps their names and relations led to confusion.
Or could it be possible that Nelson Gay is the biological father of Lucy Huff, daughter of Hannah Bowling Huff? Nelson and Hannah may have lived together, or they could have even had a common-law marriage. It’s unknown if the two even knew each other. But it is possible that the reason Nelson Gay’s name is tied to Hannah Bowling Huff’s is because the family was aware that he was the father of Hannah’s illegitimate child. I cannot base that theory on any sort of hard evidence. But Nelson was born about 1812, so he would have been old enough to have a love-child by 1831, or even in 1829. He did not marry until 1835. It is possible that during a time in his young adulthood before he married Hannah Barger he had a romantic relationship with Hannah Bowling Huff. It’s even possible that he met Hannah’s niece, Hannah Barger, because of this relationship.
There really is no documentation to support such a scenario, but it does appear feasible when one considers the Bowling descendants who tied Nelson to Hannah Bowling Huff. Nelson did not die until 1899, and the Perry County, Kentucky history book was published in 1953. There were likely Bowling family members who were involved in the writing of that book who knew Nelson Guy personally. And they may have been aware of his previous relationship with Hannah Bowling Huff. Many people, especially in the older days, did not like to talk about illegitimate children and intimate relationships between unmarried persons. So in saying that Hannah and Nelson were married, in the minds of those people, it may have been covering what they considered to be a sticky area of their family histories.
Regardless of who Lucy’s father was she was a child born out of wedlock to a mother who would die when she was a young child. Whether it was in 1837 as Bowling records state, or as late as shortly before the 1841 sale of Hannah’s land, Lucy was left parentless at a young age. It is not known who took her in or who raised her. She was likely raised by either some of her Huff half-siblings, or by Bowling/Bolin/Boling relatives of her mother. In many places, she would have been considered low-class due to her status as a bastard, but it would appear she at least maintained ties with her mother’s Bolin relatives.
Around 1848-49, Lucy married a Joseph Braughton. No marriage record has been located, so it is unclear exactly when and where this marriage occurred. By 1850, Lucy was living in Knox County, Kentucky with Joseph and a one year old son, Anderson Braughton. I have found nothing on Joseph Braughton, nor anything on what became of Lucy’s child with him. On April 12th, 1853 in Clay County, Kentucky, Joseph was granted a divorce from Lucy. Lucy did not appear for the hearing. Six months later, Lucy had remarried to Joseph Eversole, “Sr.”, as he was referred to on the marriage record. Lucy gave her name as her previous married one, Lucy Braughton.
It is not known when Joseph’s first wife, Henrietta Oliver, died, so we don’t know how long after her death that he remarried. We also don’t know how Joseph’s children (ranging from ages 12 to 30 in 1853) felt about this remarriage. Lucy was now not only a woman born out of wedlock, but she was also a divorced woman, which would give even more people an excuse in their eyes to view her as lower-class. What relationship Lucy had with these step-children is as unknown to us as their relationship with Lucy’s children, their half-siblings.
Kentucky began recording births in this part of the state in the 1850s, and the birth registers for John and Sarah Eversole (one has not been found for Robert) are where we gleam what Lucy consider to be her maiden name: Lucy Huff. She is listed as Lucy Huff on both records, though as previously stated her daughter gave her maiden name as Lucy Bolin.
By 1870, Lucy’s three known children are living in separate counties, and Lucy herself is nowhere to be found in Census records. In fact, she doesn’t appear in any located records after the 1860 Census. She was alive until about 1885 based on her daughter Sally’s Widow’s Pension Application. Sally says Lucy moved with her and her brothers to Arkansas (“I came to Newton County when I was 21. My brothers and mother all came together”), and “I was about 29 years old when mother died”. Whether Lucy remarried or even had other children after Joseph’s death, or any other information about her between 1860 and 1885, is a complete mystery.
John and Sally Eversole are found in the 1870 Census in Perry County, living with the family of William Bowling and his wife, Elizabeth Eversole. In family genealogies, William is sometimes referred to as “Bluehead” or “Bluehead Willie”, and Elizabeth is sometimes called “Mary Elizabeth Rachel”. William was the son of Justice Bowling, who was a brother of Hannah Bowling Huff, and therefore was a first cousin of Lucy. Elizabeth was the daughter of Woolery Eversole, a brother of Joseph Eversole, and therefore was a first cousin of Sally and John. Robert is listed in the 1870 Census Owsley County, Kentucky, living with a man named Jefferson Baker and his family. No familial relationship with Mr. Baker has been identified.
The family is absent from the 1880 Census. By the early 1880s, the family lived in or near Newton County, Arkansas. Lucy and Sally lived on the land of and worked for a man named Jim Bailey, per Sally's Widow's Application for Union Pension for her husband Jesse Radford's service. Sally eventually bore a child with Bailey out of wedlock. Sometime after that, Sally went to live with her brother John, and when he died, with her brother Robert, before marrying the father of Robert's wife Eliza, Jesse Radford.
Lucy is not mentioned again in the pension after the reference about living with Jim Bailey. It is presumed she died around this time. The year 1885 is purely a guess; it is between the birth of Sally's son by Jim Bailey and her marriage to Jesse Radford. As Jim Bailey's place was the last known residence of Lucy, that location and the confirmed location of her son Robert's homestead were used as reference points for where Lucy was most likely to be buried. Her son John died in this same timeframe while living in the same vicinity, so it is presumed the two are buried together.
The Bolins and Eversoles, like their eastern Kentucky and northern Arkansas brethren, were the clannish type. They moved with, lived near, and were buried with their kin. While the Case and Curtis cemeteries in rural Newton County were considered as possible burial places for Lucy and John, neither were particularly close to the Bailey or Eversole homesteads, and neither appears to have any close family to Lucy buried there. The Sutherland-Bolin cemetery, however, meets both criteria. Geographically, it is the closest cemetery to the Bailey and Eversole homesteads. Further, several of Lucy's Bolin kin are buried there, including her first cousin, George W. Bolin. George's father William and Lucy's mother Hannah were siblings.
Therefore, it is believed that Lucy and John are buried among the unmarked graves at the Sutherland-Bolin Cemetery, or marked only with fieldstones. The family was not financially well-off and were unlikely to be able to afford proper headstones for either. Regardless, Lucy deserves to be remembered as the loving, hard-working woman she was. She did her best to work to provide as a good a life for her children as she could, and her descendants will admire and remember her for this.
Lucy’s life is difficult to piece together from the beginning. She appears to have been born out of wedlock. Her mother was certainly Hannah Bowling, daughter of the well-known Reverend Jesse Bowling of Breathitt County, Kentucky. There is ample proof of this relationship. Lucy is listed in the Nelson Huff Journal, where he recorded information on the family history; Nelson was a grandson of John Huff, son of Leonard and Hannah. There were no other Huff families in that region of Kentucky except that of Hannah Bowling and Leonard Huff, and she was too old to be a daughter of one of their sons. Her daughter Sally’s Civil War Widow’s Pension application stating her mother’s name was “Lucy Bolin” and her ‘people’ were Bolins, Bolin being a variation of the name Bowling. In 1841, the heirs of Hannah Huff sold the last of their mother’s property to Joseph Eversole, who would become Lucy’s husband. And finally, Lucy can often be found referred to in various family histories as Lucy Huff Bolin.
Hannah Bowling married Leonard Huff before 1809. The Nelson Huff family notebook, which tends to be cited as the earliest authoritative source on the family indicates that Leonard died in October of 1824; other family genealogies specify October 20th, 1824, but with no citation for the precise date. This date would not have been recorded until decades after Leonard’s death (Nelson was born in 1887), so it is possible the year was off to a degree. A daughter who is believed to have been legitimate, Sarah Huff, who buried Justice Bowling, was supposedly born approximately 1825. So it is possible either Hannah was pregnant with Sarah when Leonard died, or Leonard died shortly after Sarah’s birth. Regardless, Leonard was clearly deceased by March 12th, 1825 when Abel Pennington, who was Hannah’s brother-in-law (married to Hannah’s sister Elizabeth Bowling) and a cousin of Hannah’s mother Mary Pennington, sold 20 acres in Perry County, Kentucky to Hannah Huff and the infant heirs of Leonard Huff. These heirs were listed as: Elizabeth, John, Daniel, Nancy, Sarah, and Rachael.
A deed states that Hannah could live on the property until she died or remarried. According to Bowling and Huff family records, Hannah died July 22nd, 1837. The 20 acres Abel Pennington had sold to Hannah and an additional 50 acres were sold to Joseph Eversole on October 23rd, 1841. Hannah is not mentioned, indicating that she was indeed deceased by this time, and the sellers were listed as John, Elizabeth [Adams], Rachel [Couch], Daniel, Sarah [Boling], and Nancy Huff. As previously mentioned, this Joseph Eversole would go on to marry Lucy Huff, Hannah’s daughter, who is not mentioned in this record.
Outside these relatively established confines of apparent fact, we begin to wade into murky guesswork. Lucy’s age has never been effectively established. There are three records that give her age, and all three are different. The 1850 Census states she is 21, indicating a year of birth of about 1829. Her marriage to Joseph Eversole states her age was 22, indicating a year of birth of 1831. The 1860 Census states she is 27, indicating her year of birth was 1833. I cannot say which is most accurate, but I am most inclined to lean toward her age given in the marriage record, as she would have been present when that was recorded. It is possible she did not answer the questions of the census-taker in 1850 or 1860, and so her husbands could have had her age wrong. In my records, I have her approximate year of birth as 1831.
Regardless which of those three approximations is correct, it is clear from her mother’s and siblings’ purchase of Abel Pennington’s 20 acres in 1825 that Lucy was born several years after the death of Leonard Huff, and therefore he could not have been her biological father. Interestingly, numerous family histories of the Bowling family name a second husband for Hannah Bowling. The 1953 “History of Perry County, Kentucky” by the Hazard Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution appears to be the main source cited by Bowling family members for this second husband. According to these sources, Hannah, daughter of Reverend Jesse Bowling, married first a “Huff”, and second a “Nelse Guy”. I have alternately seen this man listed as “Nelson Gay”. As there actually was a large Gay family living in Clay County, Kentucky during this time, I presume that family to be the one referred to.
There is no record of this marriage having occurred. No court, land, marriage, or bible records formally indicate that Hannah Bowling Huff married a second time. However, this supposed marriage ending up in family histories could be for a couple of reasons. One, a Nelson Gay did actually marry a Hannah, and she was a niece of Hannah Bowling Huff. On November 20th, 1835 in Clay County, Kentucky, Nelson Gay married Hannah Barger, daughter of Abraham Barger and Mary Bowling, sister of Hannah Bowling Huff. Perhaps their names and relations led to confusion.
Or could it be possible that Nelson Gay is the biological father of Lucy Huff, daughter of Hannah Bowling Huff? Nelson and Hannah may have lived together, or they could have even had a common-law marriage. It’s unknown if the two even knew each other. But it is possible that the reason Nelson Gay’s name is tied to Hannah Bowling Huff’s is because the family was aware that he was the father of Hannah’s illegitimate child. I cannot base that theory on any sort of hard evidence. But Nelson was born about 1812, so he would have been old enough to have a love-child by 1831, or even in 1829. He did not marry until 1835. It is possible that during a time in his young adulthood before he married Hannah Barger he had a romantic relationship with Hannah Bowling Huff. It’s even possible that he met Hannah’s niece, Hannah Barger, because of this relationship.
There really is no documentation to support such a scenario, but it does appear feasible when one considers the Bowling descendants who tied Nelson to Hannah Bowling Huff. Nelson did not die until 1899, and the Perry County, Kentucky history book was published in 1953. There were likely Bowling family members who were involved in the writing of that book who knew Nelson Guy personally. And they may have been aware of his previous relationship with Hannah Bowling Huff. Many people, especially in the older days, did not like to talk about illegitimate children and intimate relationships between unmarried persons. So in saying that Hannah and Nelson were married, in the minds of those people, it may have been covering what they considered to be a sticky area of their family histories.
Regardless of who Lucy’s father was she was a child born out of wedlock to a mother who would die when she was a young child. Whether it was in 1837 as Bowling records state, or as late as shortly before the 1841 sale of Hannah’s land, Lucy was left parentless at a young age. It is not known who took her in or who raised her. She was likely raised by either some of her Huff half-siblings, or by Bowling/Bolin/Boling relatives of her mother. In many places, she would have been considered low-class due to her status as a bastard, but it would appear she at least maintained ties with her mother’s Bolin relatives.
Around 1848-49, Lucy married a Joseph Braughton. No marriage record has been located, so it is unclear exactly when and where this marriage occurred. By 1850, Lucy was living in Knox County, Kentucky with Joseph and a one year old son, Anderson Braughton. I have found nothing on Joseph Braughton, nor anything on what became of Lucy’s child with him. On April 12th, 1853 in Clay County, Kentucky, Joseph was granted a divorce from Lucy. Lucy did not appear for the hearing. Six months later, Lucy had remarried to Joseph Eversole, “Sr.”, as he was referred to on the marriage record. Lucy gave her name as her previous married one, Lucy Braughton.
It is not known when Joseph’s first wife, Henrietta Oliver, died, so we don’t know how long after her death that he remarried. We also don’t know how Joseph’s children (ranging from ages 12 to 30 in 1853) felt about this remarriage. Lucy was now not only a woman born out of wedlock, but she was also a divorced woman, which would give even more people an excuse in their eyes to view her as lower-class. What relationship Lucy had with these step-children is as unknown to us as their relationship with Lucy’s children, their half-siblings.
Kentucky began recording births in this part of the state in the 1850s, and the birth registers for John and Sarah Eversole (one has not been found for Robert) are where we gleam what Lucy consider to be her maiden name: Lucy Huff. She is listed as Lucy Huff on both records, though as previously stated her daughter gave her maiden name as Lucy Bolin.
By 1870, Lucy’s three known children are living in separate counties, and Lucy herself is nowhere to be found in Census records. In fact, she doesn’t appear in any located records after the 1860 Census. She was alive until about 1885 based on her daughter Sally’s Widow’s Pension Application. Sally says Lucy moved with her and her brothers to Arkansas (“I came to Newton County when I was 21. My brothers and mother all came together”), and “I was about 29 years old when mother died”. Whether Lucy remarried or even had other children after Joseph’s death, or any other information about her between 1860 and 1885, is a complete mystery.
John and Sally Eversole are found in the 1870 Census in Perry County, living with the family of William Bowling and his wife, Elizabeth Eversole. In family genealogies, William is sometimes referred to as “Bluehead” or “Bluehead Willie”, and Elizabeth is sometimes called “Mary Elizabeth Rachel”. William was the son of Justice Bowling, who was a brother of Hannah Bowling Huff, and therefore was a first cousin of Lucy. Elizabeth was the daughter of Woolery Eversole, a brother of Joseph Eversole, and therefore was a first cousin of Sally and John. Robert is listed in the 1870 Census Owsley County, Kentucky, living with a man named Jefferson Baker and his family. No familial relationship with Mr. Baker has been identified.
The family is absent from the 1880 Census. By the early 1880s, the family lived in or near Newton County, Arkansas. Lucy and Sally lived on the land of and worked for a man named Jim Bailey, per Sally's Widow's Application for Union Pension for her husband Jesse Radford's service. Sally eventually bore a child with Bailey out of wedlock. Sometime after that, Sally went to live with her brother John, and when he died, with her brother Robert, before marrying the father of Robert's wife Eliza, Jesse Radford.
Lucy is not mentioned again in the pension after the reference about living with Jim Bailey. It is presumed she died around this time. The year 1885 is purely a guess; it is between the birth of Sally's son by Jim Bailey and her marriage to Jesse Radford. As Jim Bailey's place was the last known residence of Lucy, that location and the confirmed location of her son Robert's homestead were used as reference points for where Lucy was most likely to be buried. Her son John died in this same timeframe while living in the same vicinity, so it is presumed the two are buried together.
The Bolins and Eversoles, like their eastern Kentucky and northern Arkansas brethren, were the clannish type. They moved with, lived near, and were buried with their kin. While the Case and Curtis cemeteries in rural Newton County were considered as possible burial places for Lucy and John, neither were particularly close to the Bailey or Eversole homesteads, and neither appears to have any close family to Lucy buried there. The Sutherland-Bolin cemetery, however, meets both criteria. Geographically, it is the closest cemetery to the Bailey and Eversole homesteads. Further, several of Lucy's Bolin kin are buried there, including her first cousin, George W. Bolin. George's father William and Lucy's mother Hannah were siblings.
Therefore, it is believed that Lucy and John are buried among the unmarked graves at the Sutherland-Bolin Cemetery, or marked only with fieldstones. The family was not financially well-off and were unlikely to be able to afford proper headstones for either. Regardless, Lucy deserves to be remembered as the loving, hard-working woman she was. She did her best to work to provide as a good a life for her children as she could, and her descendants will admire and remember her for this.
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