A FAMILY HISTORY BIOGRAPHY
Eliza Ann "Lycian" Eddins
c. 1811 – after 1847 | Chesterfield County, South Carolina, to Colorado County, Texas
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QUICK FACTS
Born | About 1811, Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, South Carolina |
Died | After 2 Oct 1847, Colorado County, Texas |
Father | Williams Eddins (1781–1860) |
Mother | Elizabeth Ingram (1790–1828) |
1st Spouse | Eli Trevathan (1804–1833), m. 12 Jun 1832, Pike County, Alabama |
2nd Spouse | Jacob Lynch, m. 7 Jun 1835, Pike County, Alabama |
3rd Spouse | William H. Strahan (1805–1873), m. 20 Jan 1845, Colorado County, Texas Republic |
Child | Elizabeth Jane Trevathan (1833–1925) |
Eliza Ann Eddins — remembered in family records by the intriguing nickname "Lycian" — was born about 1811 in the small community of Chesterfield, in Chesterfield County, South Carolina. She was the daughter of Williams Eddins (1781–1860) and Elizabeth Ingram (1790–1828). Chesterfield County, tucked in the rolling Sandhills region along the North Carolina line, was home to a close-knit web of Eddins, Ingram, and related families in the early nineteenth century, and it was here that Eliza spent her earliest years before her family’s path carried her south and west.
Eliza’s mother, Elizabeth Ingram, died in 1828, when Eliza would have been a teenager of about seventeen. Within a few years of that loss, Eliza herself left South Carolina and appears next in the records of Pike County, Alabama — part of the broader migration of Carolina families into the newly opened Alabama frontier in the 1820s and early 1830s.
FIRST MARRIAGE — ELI TREVATHAN (1832)
On 12 June 1832, in Pike County, Alabama, Eliza Ann Eddins married Eli Trevathan, a widower born in 1804 in Richland County, South Carolina. The marriage bond survives among Pike County’s records, authorizing "any ordained Minister of the Gospel" to perform the ceremony. Eli had been married previously, in 1827, to Elizabeth Ann Esteph, who died in 1832; the 1830 Pike County census shows Eli’s household with his first wife and two small children.
Eliza and Eli’s marriage was tragically brief. Their daughter, Elizabeth Jane Trevathan, was born 7 August 1833 — and just seven weeks later, on 30 September 1833, Eli Trevathan died in Pike County at only twenty-nine years old, leaving Eliza a young widow with a newborn daughter.
Eli’s estate was probated in December 1834. The surviving ledger of expenses is a small window into that hard year: payments were recorded for "one year and seven month[s’] ward and lodging of [the] Trevathan [widow] and his child," suggesting the estate helped support Eliza and baby Elizabeth Jane in the months following Eli’s death. A year later, on 15 December 1835, a guardian’s bond was filed appointing John Harrell as guardian of John, Mary, and William Trevathan, described as minor heirs of Eli Trevathan — apparently children from Eli’s first marriage, separate from Eliza’s own daughter.
SECOND MARRIAGE — JACOB LYNCH (1835)
Eliza did not remain a widow for long. On 7 June 1835, still in Pike County, Alabama, she married Jacob Lynch. The following year, on 2 May 1836, Jacob Lynch qualified in Pike County court as guardian of "Elizabeth Trevathan," a minor — almost certainly Eliza’s young daughter from her first marriage, now under her stepfather’s formal guardianship. Alabama court records later noted that Lynch had failed to render an account of his actions as guardian, and he was summoned to appear and settle his accounts.
A deed-related document dated 12 January 1838 records "Eliza X (her mark) Lynch, wife of the aforesaid Jacob Lynch," relinquishing her dower rights in a tract of land — confirming Eliza was still married to Jacob Lynch, and still in Alabama, as of that date. Notably, Eliza signed with a mark rather than a signature, suggesting she had not learned to write.
THIRD MARRIAGE — WILLIAM H. STRAHAN (1845)
By January 1845, Eliza — by then recorded under her married name Eliza Lynch — had made her way to Texas. On 20 January 1845, in Colorado County, then still part of the Republic of Texas, she married William H. Strahan (1805–1873), a native of North Carolina. The marriage came less than a year before Texas was annexed by the United States in December 1845, placing Eliza among the wave of settlers who built their lives in Texas during its brief years as an independent republic.
DEATH AND ITS LEGAL AFTERMATH
Eliza Ann Eddins Trevathan Lynch Strahan died sometime after 2 October 1847 in Colorado County, Texas. The circumstances of her passing are known only indirectly, through a lawsuit: a petition later filed by one William Nelson in the Colorado County district court referenced a judgment of 2 October 1847 in a case where "William H. Strahan & Eliza Strahan" were named defendants, and stated that "said Eliza has since died intestate," with letters of administration granted to Nelson by 1850. The petition sought a writ of error to bring the matter before the Texas Supreme Court in Austin.
A research note for the family: the 1850 Colorado County census lists William H. Strahan’s household with an "Elizabeth Strahan," age 38 and born in Georgia — details that do not match Eliza, who was born in South Carolina around 1811 (making her about 39 in 1850) and who, per the court petition above, had already died intestate before that census was taken. This household most likely represents a second wife of William H. Strahan rather than Eliza herself, and is worth flagging for further verification rather than treating as a continuation of Eliza’s own record.
CHILDREN
Eliza is documented with one child, from her first marriage to Eli Trevathan:
Name | Birth | Death | Spouse |
Elizabeth Jane Trevathan | 7 Aug 1833, Pike County, Alabama | 26 Feb 1925, Scallorn, Mills County, Texas | William Myrich Stewart (m. 24 Jan 1850, Colorado Co., TX) |
Elizabeth Jane Trevathan was not yet two months old when her father died in 1833. She was raised through her mother’s subsequent marriages to Jacob Lynch and William H. Strahan, and by 1850 was recorded in the Colorado County, Texas census. On 24 January 1850, in Colorado County, she married William Myrich Stewart. Elizabeth Jane went on to be counted in the 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920 censuses, and she lived to the age of ninety-one, dying 26 February 1925 in Scallorn, Mills County, Texas — outliving her mother by more than seventy-five years and carrying the family’s memory into the twentieth centry.
Research Note — Connection to the Eddins Family Project This Eliza Ann Eddins, daughter of Williams Eddins and Elizabeth Ingram, appears to be the same Eliza Eddins whose January 1845 marriage to W. H. Strahan in Colorado County, Texas ties into the ongoing Eddins research thread — including the Watkins L. Smith vs. W. H. Strahan partition suit (1854–55) concerning the estate of Delilah Strahan. This record also resolves an earlier open question about Jacob Lynch’s 1836 Alabama guardianship: it was Eliza’s own daughter, Elizabeth Trevathan, in his care, not a separately connected Lynch relative. |
THE WORLD ELIZA LIVED IN (1811–1850)
Eliza’s lifetime spanned an extraordinary period of American expansion and upheaval. She was born around 1811, the year of the New Madrid earthquakes and on the eve of the War of 1812 (1812–1815). Alabama, where she would marry three times, was not even a state when she was a small child — it entered the Union in 1819, opened to settlement in large part by the forced removal of Creek and other Native peoples, a process that intensified with the Indian Removal Act of 1830.
By the time Eliza reached Texas in the mid-1840s, that region too was in the midst of dramatic change. Texas had won independence from Mexico in 1836 and spent nearly a decade as an independent republic before joining the United States in December 1845 — meaning Eliza’s marriage to William H. Strahan, in January of that year, took place in the closing months of the Republic of Texas. Within a year of her arrival, the Mexican-American War (1846–1848) would draw many Texas families into its orbit, reshaping the Texas-Mexico border and the nation itself. Eliza did not live to see the war’s end; she died sometime in this same turbulent stretch of Texas history, between late 1847 and 1850.
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 Eliza Ann "Lycian" Eddins (1811-1847) was compiled with the assistance of Claude Sonnett 4.
Prepared by
Charles Purvis
CPurvis1@gmail.com
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