Wadley, Sarah Lois, 1844-1920

Sarah Lois Wadley was born 26 November 1844, in South New Market, New Hampshire, and died 7 December 1920. She was the daughter of William Morrill Wadley (1866-1882), a president of the Central of Georgia Railway, and Rebecca Barnard E. Wadley. In 1858 the Wadley family and its slaves moved to Amite, Louisiana. In 1860 they were in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and in 1861 they moved to Onachita Parish, Louisiana, where they remained until after the Civil War. During the Civil War, William Wadley was appointed superintendent of transportation for the Confederacy. In November 1865 the family moved back to Georgia. Sarah Wadley lived in the family home at Bolingbroke, in Monroe County, Georgia, until 1905.

Sarah Lois Wadley was the daughter of William Morrill Wadley (1812?-1882) and Rebecca Barnard Everingham Wadley (fl. 1840-1884) and lived with her family in homes near Amite in Tangipahoa Parish, Monroe and Oakland in Ouachita Parish, La., and near Macon, Ga.

William Morrill Wadley (1812?-1882), the son of Dole Wadley (who had changed the spelling of his surname from Wadleigh), was born in Brentwood, New Hampshire, moved to Georgia around 1834, and subsequently worked for the Central Railroad of Georgia. He married Rebecca Barnard Everingham (fl. 1840-1884) with whom he had a number of children, including Sarah Lois (b. 1844), Mary Millen ( Miss Mary ), William ( Willie ), George Dole (b. 1857), and John Everingham (b. 1860). After living near Monroe, Louisiana, before and during the Civil War, William Morrill Wadley moved his family back to Georgia in late 1865. Other relatives mentioned in these papers are Sarah Lois Wadley's uncles, David Wadley (d. 1883) and Dole Wadley. Mary Millen Wadley married William Greene Raoul (1844-1913) after the Civil War.

Sarah Lois Wadley was the author of two published works: Brief Record of the Life of William M. Wadley, Written By His Eldest Daughter (1884) and In Memory of Rebecca Barnard Wadley (1906).

(For biographical information on William Morrill Wadley, see The National Cyclopedia of American Biography, I, 201, and The Biographical Dictionary of the Confederacy, 422-423.)