Aunts & Uncles~Biography of Zilpha Ann Sellers, my 4th great-grandaunt

The “Aunts & Uncles” series of biographical sketches are Artificial Intelligence (AI) compiled narratives of selected individuals from my Genealogical database.  The selected AI will used the RootsMagic Individual Summary from my Genealogical Software, Roots Magic. All genealogical data is my research material acquired over the past 46 years of research. Today's Web post is a Biography of Zilpha Ann Sellers compiled with the assistance of Claude Sonnett 5 Median and is entitled:

"Biography of Zilpha Ann Sellers"

Gordan — Gaddy  •  9 December 1830 – 2 March 1913  •  Chesterfield County, South Carolina

Zilpha Ann Sellers lived a long and eventful life on the soil of Chesterfield County, South Carolina — born into the twilight years of the American Revolutionary generation and living long enough to see her grandchildren scatter as far as Texas and Oklahoma. Widowed at sixteen, remarried to a first cousin, and the mother of nine children, Zilpha's story is one of resilience, family loyalty, and deep roots in the Cruise Branch community near Ruby, South Carolina. She is Charles Purvis's 4th great-grandaunt, a sister of Hardy Huntley Sellers in the family of Hardy Sellers, Revolutionary War Patriot.

Quick Facts

Full Name	Zilpha Ann Sellers
Also Known As	Zilphia Ann Sellers; Zylpha Ann Sellers
Born	9 December 1830 — Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, South Carolina
Died	2 March 1913 (age 82) — Ruby, Chesterfield County, South Carolina
Buried	Gaddy-Sellers Cemetery, Ruby, Chesterfield County, South Carolina
Father	Hardy Sellers, Revolutionary War Patriot (1757–1835)
Mother	Levinia Gulledge (1811–1849)
First Husband	Dickson P. Gordan (1821–1846), married 25 June 1845, Anson County, NC
Second Husband	William Jeptha Gaddy (1828–1906), married about 1854
Children	9 — one by Dickson P. Gordan; eight by William Jeptha Gaddy

A Daughter of Hardy Sellers — Parents and Early Family

Zilpha Ann Sellers was born on 9 December 1830 in Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, South Carolina, the daughter of Hardy Sellers — a Revolutionary War Patriot — and his wife Levinia Gulledge. Hardy Sellers was already an elderly man by the time Zilpha came along, born back in 1757, which meant father and daughter were separated by more than seventy years. Levinia Gulledge, born in 1811, appears to have been a much younger Second wife.

Zilpha had one full sibling from her mother, Levinia: her brother Hardy Huntley Sellers (1829–1857), who was just a year older than she was. But the Sellers household was a large, blended one. Hardy Sellers had children from an earlier marriage as well, including sons John, Abraham, Philip, and Richard Sellers, and a daughter Mary who married Thomas Gaddy. Two more of Hardy's daughters from that earlier marriage — Phoebe and Jane — had already died before their father, leaving grandchildren (Elijah, James, and Phoebe Gulledge, and Iverson L. Briley) who stood to inherit alongside their aunts and uncles.

History Note — The Nullification Crisis  (1832–1833)

Zilpha was a toddler when South Carolina became the center of a constitutional showdown over federal tariffs. The state's legislature declared the tariffs "null and void" within its borders, and for a tense stretch President Andrew Jackson threatened to send federal troops to enforce the law. The crisis was resolved by compromise in 1833, but the states'-rights arguments South Carolina made in 1832 would resurface, with far greater consequences, when Zilpha was thirty years old.

Fatherless at Four — The 1835 Estate and 1836 Court Notice

Hardy Sellers died testate on or about 17 January 1835, when Zilpha was barely four years old. His will named his widow, Levinia Sellers, and their two children, Hardy Huntley Sellers and "Zylpha Ann Sellers," alongside the children and grandchildren of his earlier marriage — a large family to divide an estate among.

Because some of the heirs and defendants named in the resulting equity suit — John Sellers, Richard Sellers, Thomas and Mary Gaddy, and Elijah, James, and Phoebe Gulledge — lived outside South Carolina, the Commissioner in Equity ordered a public notice published in the Cheraw Gazette. That notice, dated 22 August 1835 and printed on 30 August 1836, survives as a rare glimpse of five-year-old Zilpha's name in print: "Levina Sellers, Hardy H. Sellers, Zilpha Ann Sellers vs. John Evans, Turner Bryan, John Sellers and others." The underlying case, later abstracted as Evans, John Exr. vs. H.H. Sellers & others — Bill for Partition, worked its way through the Chesterfield District Court of Common Pleas, Equity Side, over the following years.

A Bride at Fourteen — Marriage to Dickson P. Gordan

On 25 June 1845, near Chesterfield Court House, South Carolina, Zilpha Ann Sellers — not yet fifteen years old — married Dickson P. Gordan (also recorded as "Gordon") of Anson County, North Carolina. The marriage was announced in more than one newspaper. The Fayetteville Observer of 9 July 1845 reported: "Near Chesterfield C.H., S.C. on the 25th, Mr. Dickson P. Gordon of Anson county to Miss Zilphy Ann Sellers, daughter of the late Hardy Sellers." The Raleigh Register and North Carolina State Gazette carried a similar notice on 4 July 1845.

The marriage was brief. Dickson P. Gordan, born in 1821, died in 1846 — the same year the couple's only child, James Dixon Gordan, was born. At just sixteen years old, Zilpha was a widow with an infant son.

Rebuilding — Life in Her Brother's Household, 1850

By the 1850 federal census, the young widow "Zilpha A. Gordon," age 19, was living in Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, in the household of her brother, Hardy H. Sellers, along with her four-year-old son James Gordon. Also in the household were Hardy's wife Mary E. Sellers, an infant daughter Adella, and two boarders, William Rogan and Alexander Blakeney. It was a household rebuilding itself after loss on more than one front — Hardy Huntley Sellers himself would die just seven years later, in 1857, at only twenty-eight.

A Second Marriage Among Cousins — William Jeptha Gaddy

Sometime around 1854, after the 1850 census, Zilpha married William Jeptha Gaddy (1828–1906), the son of James Gaddy Sr. and Amelia "Rilla" Gulledge Gaddy of Anson County, North Carolina. As family notes preserved with her record explain, Zilpha and Jeptha were first cousins — his mother, Aurelia "Rilla" Gulledge Gaddy, was the eldest daughter of Rev. Joel Gulledge, tying the Gaddy and Sellers households together through the shared Gulledge family line.

The 1860 census captured the young family in Chesterfield, South Carolina: William J. Gaddy, age 30, born in North Carolina; his wife (recorded only by initials, "Z.C. Gaddy," age 28); Zilpha's son from her first marriage, James D. Gaddy, age 14; and the couple's own children so far — Thomas H. (age 4), William P. (age 3), and infant Mary E. (age 1).

A Growing Family — Zilpha's Children

Across her two marriages, Zilpha Ann Sellers was the mother of nine children. Her only child by Dickson P. Gordan was:

Child	Birth	Death	Notes
James Dixon Gordan	1846	1914	Only child of Zilpha and Dickson P. Gordan

 

With her second husband, William Jeptha Gaddy, Zilpha had eight more children:

Child	Birth	Death	Notes
Thomas Hardy Gaddy	1855	20 Oct 1856	Died in infancy, Chesterfield Co., SC
William Preston Gaddy	1 Apr 1857	19 Dec 1949	m. Eliza Margaret Grier; died Harlingen, Cameron Co., TX
Eliza Mary Gaddy	2 May 1859	9 Oct 1862	Died as a young child, Chesterfield Co., SC
Rillia Lavinia Gaddy	4 Mar 1861	25 Mar 1925	m. William A. Johnson; died Chesterfield Co., SC
Jeptha Robert Gaddy	18 Mar 1864	19 Mar 1934	Died Lisbon, Sampson Co., NC
Elijah Johnson Gaddy	3 Sep 1866	3 Jun 1952	Died Kerrville, Kerr Co., TX
Zilpha Ann Adella "Della" Gaddy	7 Nov 1868	23 Dec 1958	m. John Franklin Horne; died Chesterfield Co., SC
Walter Francis Gaddy	25 Jun 1871	1 Jun 1940	m. Elizabeth Irene Burch; died Chesterfield Co., SC

 

Interestingly, the 1900 census recorded that Zilpha and William had been married 45 years and had 9 children, with 7 living. That figure of nine only makes sense if it counts all of Zilpha's children across both marriages — the eight Gaddy children plus James Dixon Gordan from her first marriage — with Thomas Hardy Gaddy (d. 1856) and Eliza Mary Gaddy (d. 1862) being the two who had already passed away by 1900.

Land of Her Own — The 1879 Deed

In October 1879, Zilpha A. Gaddy purchased a tract of land in Chesterfield, South Carolina from Marcus Austin and his wife, G.T. Austin, for $700 — a substantial sum for the time. The land adjoined property belonging to T.T. Burch and a neighbor recorded as Silas Fincher. The deed was recorded on 2 January 1883 in Deed Book 7, pages 113–115, in Union County, North Carolina. That the purchase was made in Zilpha's own name is a notable detail for a married woman of her era, when property was so often held and recorded in a husband's name alone.

The Farm on Cruise Branch — Home and Community

By family account, Zilpha and William made their home on land near Ruby, South Carolina that Zilpha had inherited from her father, Hardy Sellers. The family cemetery — later known as the Gaddy-Sellers Cemetery — sits on that same farm, on the bank of Cruise Branch. A family researcher, Marie Wiggins, who visited the site in 1977, described it as "well kept" and "a beautiful, serene place," a description that has stayed attached to the family's memory of the burial ground ever since.

The 1880 census found the family still in the Court House area of Chesterfield County: William J. Gaddy, 53; his wife Zilphy A. Gaddy, 50; and six of their children still at home — William P. (21), Rilla L. (19), Jeptha R. (16), Elijah J. (14), Zilphy A. A. (11), and Walter F. (8) — along with a boarder, R.D. Kellin, a 55-year-old schoolteacher.

Later Years — Widowhood and a New Household

William Jeptha Gaddy died on 3 April 1906 and was buried in the Gaddy-Sellers Cemetery near Ruby, the same cemetery on the land the couple had shared for decades. By the time of the 1910 census, 79-year-old Zilpha had moved into the household of her daughter, Rilla Lavinia Gaddy Johnson, and son-in-law William A. Johnson, in Mt. Croghan, Chesterfield County — listed in the household as "mother-in-law."

Passing — Death, Funeral, and Burial

Zilpha Ann Sellers Gaddy died on 2 March 1913 at the home of her son-in-law, W.A. Johnson, in Ruby, South Carolina, at the age of 82 — just a few months past her birthday. Funeral services were held at Ebenezer Church, conducted by Rev. T.B. Owen, and she was buried the following day, 3 March 1913, in the Gaddy-Sellers Cemetery beside her husband.

From the Pageland Journal, 11 March 1913

"Mrs. W.J. Gaddy died at the home of her son-in-law, Mr. W.A. Johnson of Ruby, last Sunday. Mrs. Gaddy was 82 years old on the 9th of last December. The funeral services were conducted at Ebenezer Church by Rev. T.B. Owen. She leaves a host of friends to mourn her death and the following children, W.P. of Oklahoma, J.R. of Anson, N.C., E.J. of Texas, W.F. of this county, Mrs. J.H. Horne and Mrs. W.A. Johnson, both of this county. Mrs. Gaddy was an excellent Christian lady." — Chesterfield Advertiser

The obituary's list of surviving children is a small window into a much larger story: by 1913, Zilpha's children had scattered from the Chesterfield County homeplace as far as Oklahoma and Texas, part of the broader wave of Southerners who moved west and southwest in the decades following the Civil War and Reconstruction, even as two of her daughters remained close by in Chesterfield County to the end.

A Life Remembered

Zilpha Ann Sellers's eighty-two years stretched from the years just before the Nullification Crisis, through the Civil War and Reconstruction, and into the early twentieth century — a span that touched nearly a full century of South Carolina history. She buried a father she barely knew, a first husband taken from her before she turned seventeen, and a second husband after more than fifty years together. She raised nine children, weathered widowhood twice over, and held onto land of her own in a time when few women did. Today she rests beside her family in the quiet cemetery on Cruise Branch that bears her married name — Gaddy-Sellers Cemetery — a fitting resting place for a woman who spent her whole life on that same ground.

Zilpha Ann (Sellers) (Dickson) Gaddy my 4th Great Grand Aunt.

Researched and Prepared By

Charles Purvis

CPurvis1@gmail.com

15 August 2026

52 Cousins~JACOB NATHANIEL KEPLEY

The “52 Cousins” series of biographical sketches are Artificial Intelligence (AI) compiled narratives of selected individuals from my Genealogical database.  The selected AI will used documents and data from my RootsMagic Genealogical Software. All genealogical data is my research material acquired over the past 46+ years of research. Today's Biography of Jacob Nathaniel KEPLEY (1832 - 1888) was compiled with the assistance of Claude Sonnett 5 Median. 

 

 JACOB NATHANIEL KEPLEY

1832 – 1888

A Family Biography · Rowan County, North Carolina

QUICK FACTS

Full Name	Jacob Nathaniel Kepley
Born	25 April 1832, Rowan County, North Carolina
Died	26 February 1888 (age 55), Salisbury, Rowan County, North Carolina
Parents	John Peter Kepley (1795–1849) and Rachael Simison (b. 1799)
Spouse	Delia Loretta Johnson (7 Nov 1834 – 21 Dec 1926); married 26 Feb 1856, Rowan County, NC
Children	8 — Lawson Monroe, Clinton Thomas, Emma Jane, Lillie Ann, Henry Lee, Jacob Wesley, Walter Columbus, and Mamie Luellen
Military Service	Private, Company K, 57th Regiment North Carolina Troops, C.S.A. (previously Company A)
Occupation	Farmer, Rowan County, North Carolina
Burial	Salisbury, Rowan County, North Carolina — recorded as both The Arbor United Methodist Church Cemetery and Gay's Chapel UMC Cemetery in source materials (see Research Notes)

OVERVIEW

Jacob Nathaniel Kepley lived his entire life within a few miles of Salisbury, in Rowan County, North Carolina — born there in 1832, married there in 1856, and buried there in 1888. In between, his 55 years took in a childhood on his widowed mother's farm, a marriage that produced eight children, three hard years as a Confederate soldier that included a Northern prison camp, a brush with the local courts as a young husband, and a quieter later life as a farmer and, eventually, a trusted court-appointed commissioner handling a neighbor's land sale. He died suddenly in February 1888, and the strange theft that followed his death — reported in the local paper just weeks later — remains one of the more curious footnotes in the family's history.

This biography draws entirely on the record group compiled for Jacob and his family: census returns, marriage and probate records, a Confederate service roster, wartime newspaper clippings, a court petition, a land-sale notice, and Find A Grave memorials for Jacob and his wife, Delia Loretta. Where those sources disagree with one another — and in a few places they do — the discrepancies are noted rather than smoothed over, in keeping with sound research practice.

ROOTS: PARENTS AND SIBLINGS

Jacob was the son of John Peter Kepley (1795–1849) and Rachael Simison (b. 1799), both of Rowan County. John Peter died in 1849, when Jacob was about seventeen, leaving Rachael to head the household. The 1850 federal census captured that household in School District 37, Rowan County, with Rachael, then 51, listed as head and Jacob, age 18, living at home alongside six siblings: Nancy Martilla (25), Miles A. (22), Jane C. (15), Crissa L. (13), Robert A. (11), and George C. (7).

That census snapshot, taken the year after his father's death, shows a family of eight still together under one roof — a widow and her seven children, spanning more than fifteen years in age from oldest to youngest, making their way in the years just before the county, and the country, were pulled into war.

MARRIAGE AND A GROWING FAMILY

On 26 February 1856, Jacob married Delia Loretta Johnson in Rowan County. (The Ancestry marriage-bond transcription for the same event gives the date as 28 February 1856 — a two-day discrepancy likely owing to the difference between the date of the ceremony and the date the return was recorded. Delia Loretta, born 7 November 1834 in Rowan County, was the daughter of unidentified parents in the current record set, though the household of Turner Johnston — who appears living with Jacob and Loretta in 1860, and again as a co-defendant alongside her in an 1864 lawsuit — suggests a Johnson/Johnston family connection worth pursuing.

Over the next 28 years, Jacob and Delia Loretta raised eight children to adulthood, all born in Rowan County:

Name	Born	Died	Notes
Lawson Monroe Kepley	9 Jun 1857, North Carolina	19 Jun 1921, Rowan Co., NC	—
Clinton Thomas Kepley	19 Dec 1859, Salisbury, Rowan Co., NC	23 Jan 1932, Salisbury, Rowan Co., NC	—
Emma Jane Kepley	20 May 1864, Salisbury, Rowan Co., NC	12 Apr 1934, Salisbury, Rowan Co., NC	m. John H. Robinson, 23 Dec 1886, Rowan Co., NC
Lillie Ann Kepley	20 Jan 1870, Salisbury, Rowan Co., NC	11 Dec 1944, Salisbury, Rowan Co., NC	Find A Grave lists m. John Locke Pinkston (unconfirmed here)
Henry Lee Kepley	27 May 1872, Rowan Co., NC	9 Dec 1928, Stanly Co., NC	—
Jacob Wesley Kepley	31 Mar 1874, Rowan Co., NC	13 Jul 1947, Rowan Co., NC	—
Walter Columbus Kepley	26 Nov 1876, Rowan Co., NC	16 Jul 1944, Rowan Co., NC	—
Mamie Luellen Kepley	28 Mar 1884, Rowan Co., NC	8 Nov 1962, Rowan Co., NC	Find A Grave lists m. — Wright (unconfirmed here)

 

The 1860 census, taken when Jacob was 24 and working as a farmer, shows the young family already underway: Jacob, his wife listed as “Loretta,” age 21, their toddler son Lawson M. (age 3), and an infant of seven months recorded as “Henry T. Kepley.” That infant is almost certainly the boy who would become Clinton Thomas Kepley — a later transcription of the 1870 census records him as “Clinton [Henry] T. Kepley,” bridging the two names and confirming he is one and the same child, A later  separate  son (1872) was named Henry Lee Kepley. Also sharing the household in 1860 were Nancy Kepley, age 35 (very likely Jacob's older sister Nancy Martilla, who would have been about that age by 1860), and Turner Johnston, age 25, likely a relative of Delia Loretta's.

By the 1870 census, the family had grown and moved within the county to the Franklin township area of Rowan County. Jacob, now 38 and still farming, headed a household with his wife (recorded here as “Lizetta,” age 33 — clearly Loretta again), and children Lawson M. (13), Clinton T. (11), Emma (6), and baby Lily A., just seven months old. Three more children — Henry Lee, Jacob Wesley, and Walter Columbus — would follow between 1872 and 1876, and the youngest, Mamie Luellen, was born in 1884, when Jacob was 52.

A SOLDIER'S TRIAL: CIVIL WAR SERVICE, 1861–1865

Jacob's Confederate service is documented in detail in the North Carolina Troops roster and corroborated by two wartime newspaper clippings from the Carolina Watchman of Salisbury — giving this chapter of his life an unusually rich paper trail. He enlisted as a private, first in Company A and then, before September 1862, transferring into Company K of the 57th Regiment, North Carolina Troops. The 57th had itself been organized at Salisbury in July 1862, recruited largely from Rowan and the surrounding piedmont counties, and went on to serve in the Army of Northern Virginia under a succession of commanders — fighting from Fredericksburg to Mine Run, then at Drewry's Bluff and Cold Harbor, through General Jubal Early's Shenandoah Valley campaign, and finally at Appomattox. Jacob's own service touched several of the roughest patches of that timeline.

In September 1862 he was hospitalized in Richmond with intermittent fever — malaria, in modern terms — and was transferred back to Salisbury to recover. He was then reported absent without leave that November and December, and home on furlough from January through May of 1863. This irregular record very nearly cost him his reputation: in August 1863, the Carolina Watchman ran a notice, reprinted below, in which Jacob and a fellow soldier publicly protested that they had been wrongly listed as deserters by their company commander.

Corporal C. D. Faris and Private J. N. Kepley, Co. K, 7th Regiment, have called at our office to complain that they have been unjustly advertised by Capt. G. A. J. Suchler, as deserters. They have papers which acquit them of the disgraceful charge, and desire the public to know it. Carolina Watchman, Salisbury, NC, 31 August 1863, p.3.

Jacob returned to duty between May and August of 1863 and was reported present on his company's muster rolls all the way through the end of April 1864 — a stretch that would have carried him through some of the 57th Regiment's hardest fighting, including the Gettysburg campaign, in which the regiment's brigade famously stormed East Cemetery Hill on the second day of battle.

His luck ran out the following summer. On or about 9 July 1864, Jacob was captured near Frederick, Maryland. The date and place are striking: that same day, Confederate forces under General Jubal Early fought the Battle of Monocacy just outside Frederick, part of Early's bold raid toward Washington, D.C. — the closest Confederate troops came to the Union capital during the entire war. Whether Jacob's capture happened during that battle or in its immediate aftermath, he was swept up in one of the more dramatic episodes of the war's final year.

He was confined first at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, then transferred on 23 July 1864 to the Union prison camp at Elmira, New York — a camp that would become notorious among Confederate veterans for its harsh conditions and high mortality rate. Jacob survived it. He was paroled at Elmira on 11 October 1864 and, after being sent south for exchange, was received at Venus Point on the Savannah River in Georgia on 15 November 1864. He spent the following winter reported absent sick, from December 1864 through the end of February 1865, and was finally paroled for good at Salisbury — his hometown — on 3 May 1865, just weeks after Lee's surrender at Appomattox brought the war to its close.

A WARTIME LAWSUIT

While Jacob was away at war — and, as it turned out, a prisoner of the Union army — he was named a defendant in a Rowan County court case back home. In August 1864, Susan M. Johnson, administratrix of the estate of William A. Johnson, filed a petition for the sale of real estate naming Clinton Johnson, Turner Johnson, and “Jacob N. Kepley, and his wife Loretta Kepley,” as defendants. Because the court found that Clinton Johnson and Jacob were “non-residents of this State” (unsurprising, given Jacob was a captive soldier hundreds of miles away at the time), the court ordered notice published for six weeks in the Carolina Watchman rather than served in person. The suit appears to have been a routine estate proceeding rather than any wrongdoing on Jacob's part, and it further confirms the close ties between the Kepley and Johnson/Johnston families — the same Turner Johnston who lived in Jacob's household in the 1860 census turns up again here as a fellow defendant.

REBUILDING: THE POSTWAR YEARS

Jacob came home from the war in the spring of 1865 to a Rowan County, like the rest of the defeated Confederacy, facing years of economic hardship and reconstruction. He returned to farming, and by 1870 was established with his family in the Franklin area of the county, as recorded in that year's census. The family continued to grow through the 1870s and into the 1880s, with five more children arriving between 1872 and 1884.

LAND, LAW, AND COMMUNITY TRUST

By the early 1880s, Jacob had evidently earned a measure of standing in his community. A September 1883 notice in the Carolina Watchman shows him acting not as a party to a lawsuit, as he had been in 1864, but as the court-appointed commissioner overseeing a land sale in a special proceeding titled “Missouri Rufty, by Jacob N. Kepley, Guardian.” The sale, set for 1 October 1883 at the courthouse door in Salisbury, involved a tract adjoining lands belonging to J. N. Kepley himself, a Mrs. Margaret Kepley, and a Mrs. Mary Knox. (The printed notice gives the tract's size two different ways — spelled out as “twenty-four” acres but printed numerically as “(84)” — an inconsistency in the original newspaper text that could not be resolved from this source alone; see Research Notes.) Whatever the exact acreage, the appointment itself is telling: by his early fifties, Jacob was trusted by the local court to serve as guardian and commissioner in a neighbor's affairs, a role that speaks to his standing in the community.

DEATH, PROBATE, AND A TROUBLING MYSTERY

Jacob Nathaniel Kepley died on 26 February 1888 in Salisbury, Rowan County, at the age of 55. He was buried nearby that same month. Within a month of his death, on 15 March 1888, Wilson Trott qualified as administrator of Jacob's estate and published the standard creditor's notice in the Carolina Watchman, giving claimants until 8 March 1889 to present their claims.

But the most striking document connected to Jacob's death is not the probate notice — it's a small item that ran in the North Carolina Herald on 14 March 1888, describing an unsettling scene at the Kepley home just two weeks after his passing:

Mr. J. N. Kepley died two weeks ago. On last Saturday morning his widow, to pay some funeral expenses, went to the trunk where her husband was in the habit of keeping his money. To her great consternation she found the hinges wrenched off and, upon examination, discovered the loss of $506 in greenbacks while the thief had left the same amount of gold and silver money untouched. There is no clue left as to who took the money. -— North Carolina Herald, Salisbury, NC, 14 March 1888, p.3

Five hundred and six dollars was a substantial sum in 1888 — easily a year's wages or more for a farming family — and the detail that the thief left an equal value in gold and silver untouched, taking only the paper currency, is an odd and specific one that the record does not explain. No suspect or resolution appears in the sources gathered here; the theft, like so many small-town mysteries, seems to have gone unsolved.

DELIA LORETTA'S LONG WIDOWHOOD

Delia Loretta outlived her husband by nearly four decades. She remained in Salisbury, Rowan County, until her own death on 21 December 1926, at the remarkable age of 92. She was buried at Saint Matthew's Episcopal Church Cemetery in Salisbury — a different burial ground than the one associated with Jacob, which is worth noting for anyone visiting the family's resting places today (see Research Notes). By the time of her death, six of her eight children had lived to see her reach old age, and her family line carried the Kepley name and its connections forward into Rowan and Stanly counties through the twentieth century.

RESEARCH NOTES & OPEN QUESTIONS

The following points are flagged for further research and have not been resolved from the materials gathered so far:

• Burial cemetery discrepancy: The family group sheet header cites the Veterans' Gravesites database and lists Jacob's burial at “Gay's Chapel UMC Cemetery,” Salisbury, while the Find A Grave memorial (also memorial #44666400) and the tombstone source both name “The Arbor United Methodist Church Cemetery.” Both are in the Salisbury area; it is not yet clear whether one source is in error or whether these refer to the same burial ground under different names.

• Land-sale acreage discrepancy: The 1883 newspaper notice gives the tract size as “twenty-four (84) acres” — the written number and the parenthetical numeral do not match. This appears to be an error in the original printed notice rather than in the transcription.

• Lillie Ann and Mamie Luellen's married names: Find A Grave associates Lillie Ann with the surname “Pinkston” and Mamie Luellen with “Wright,” and a Find A Grave contributor's general note further specifies Lillie Ann's husband as John Locke Pinkston. Neither marriage appears in the family group sheet's own marriage fields, so these should be treated as leads pending independent confirmation.

• Possible additional children: A Find A Grave contributor's general note lists two children not found among the eight in the core family group sheet — Robert L. Kepley and Ellen Kepley Kesler (wife of John Kesler). These are unconfirmed in the present record set and warrant further research before being added to the family tree.

• 1870 census name variant: The 1870 census head of household is transcribed as “Jacob A. Kepley” rather than “Jacob N. Kepley.” Given the matching household — wife Lizetta/Loretta and the same children by name and age — this is almost certainly a transcription or indexing variant of the same man, not a different individual.

• Delia Loretta's parents: This record set does not identify Delia Loretta Johnson's parents. The presence of Turner Johnston in Jacob's 1860 household, and again as a co-defendant with Delia Loretta in the 1864 Johnson estate lawsuit, suggests a family connection worth pursuing.

Jacob Nathaniel Kepley is my 2nd Cousin 4X Removed.

SOURCES

1. Find A Grave, memorial #44666400, Jacob Nathanial Kepley (1832–1888), The Arbor United Methodist Church Cemetery, Salisbury, Rowan Co., NC.

2. 1850 U.S. Census, School District 37, Rowan County, NC, household of Rachel Kepley (NARA M432, Roll 643).

3. 1860 U.S. Census, County North of the NC RR, Rowan County, NC, household of Jacob N. Kepley (NARA M653, Roll 912).

4. “Not Deserters,” Carolina Watchman, Salisbury, NC, 31 August 1863, p.3, col.2.

5. North Carolina Troops, 1861–1865: A Roster, vol. XIV, Infantry (Raleigh: NC Division of Archives and History, 1998), pp.206–207.

6. “Petition for Sale of Real Estate,” Carolina Watchman, Salisbury, NC, 12 September 1864, p.3, col.6.

7. 1870 U.S. Census, Franklin, Rowan County, NC, household of Jacob A. Kepley (NARA M593, Roll 1158).

8. “Sale of Land,” Carolina Watchman, Salisbury, NC, 13 September 1883, p.2, col.5.

9. Rowan County, NC, Estate Files, 1663–1979, Administrator's Notice for Jacob N. Kepley, 8 March 1888.

10. “North Carolina, Index to Marriage Bonds, 1741–1868,” Jacob Kepley & Loretta Johnston, 28 Feb 1856, Rowan Co., NC.

11. Find A Grave, memorial #44666502, Delia Loretta Johnson Kepley (1834–1926), Saint Matthew's Episcopal Church Cemetery, Salisbury, Rowan Co., NC.

12. “Theft of Cash,” North Carolina Herald, Salisbury, NC, 14 March 1888, p.3, col.2.

 

Prepared by

Charles Purvis

CPurvis1@gmail.com

12 August 2026