Sarah “Sallie” Gertrude Coor Sones, Older Sister of Martha Jane Coor Lancaster
Martha Jane Coor, my 3x-great-grandmother, was the youngest daughter of James Madison “Matt” Coor and Melissa Ann Welch. Her older sister, Sarah Gertrude Coor, was the oldest daughter, born thirteen years earlier in 1860. In total, James and Melissa had ten children, two of whom died in childhood. Melissa died in 1876, a year after the youngest, Daniel, was born. By then, Sallie was sixteen and likely took on the role of caring for the younger children and the household. The next sister, Irma Anna, was twelve and probably helped, too. Martha and Daniel, the two youngest were three and one. The other older children were likely in school part of the time or helped Matt on the farm. Proof of this was the 1880 census. Matt was a forty-seven-year-old farmer and widowed. Eight children ranging from five to twenty-one lived on the farm. Sallie was keeping house. The four oldest boys were working the farm. [1] Sometime in 1881, the family moved to Erath County, Texas. Sally was the first ...