Lelia Anderson

Lelia Anderson Trabue

Peyton and Claire, this is one your gggg grandmothers.

Lelia Anderson Trabue was born in September 21, 1837 in Virginia. Her father and mother both came from families that had been in America since colonial days. Her father's mother, Martha Tompkins Anderson, was the granddaughter of Joyce Read Tompkins, a niece of Benjamin Franklin.

When Lelia was an infant or young child, the family moved to Kentucky, but her mother died as the result of a wagon accident going through the mountains in eastern Kentucky. Lelia was being carried by someone who walked beside the wagon, and was not hurt.

Lelia had at least one older sibling, a brother, who became a professional photographer and lived in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Her father remarried, and she had a number of younger half-siblings. Her father, Henry Tompkins Anderson, was a minister and teacher, and the family moved a number of times as he changed churches or teaching jobs. At some point in his career, he taught at Bethany College in West Virginia. During the Civil War, he was a minister at the Christian Church in Washington, DC, and the family has letters that he wrote to his daughter Lelia during the Civil War.

As a minister of the Disciples of Christ (Campbellites), Lelia's father was an acquaintance/friend of George Washington Trabue of Glasgow, a banker and a convert to the Campbellites. When George W. Trabue's son, Benjamin Franklin Trabue, traveled from Glasgow to (Louisville/New York?) to attend medical school, he stayed overnight with the Anderson family, met Lelia, and fell in love. The story goes that he told her he would come back and marry her when he finished medical school.

And so they did marry, in 1855, and settled in Glasgow. They lived at least the latter part of their married life in the fine Georgian-style home that had been built in the 1840's by G.W. Trabue. This house was torn down sometime after 1900 to make way for the first tobacco warehouse in Glasgow, and the front door, interior stairway, windows, and woodwork were saved by Lelia's granddaughter, Lelia Rogers Dickinson, and stored in her home on West Washington Street. When her daughter, Kate Dickinson Ganter, and husband built a house in the 1950's, they incorporated the salvaged pieces into their new brick home, at 709 Leslie Avenue in Glasgow.

Lelia Anderson Trabue had four children: one son, Henry B. Trabue, and three daughters. The oldest daughter, Kate, married Joseph Underwood Rogers and lived in Glasgow. The second daughter, Helen, married the son of a prominent politician, and they moved to Helena, Montana when her father-in-law was made an official in the territorial government of Montana. The third daughter, Benora, married and moved to Texas. All three of these daughters had daughters of their own that they named Lelia. The Glasgow one was Lelia Rogers Dickinson. The Montana one was Lelia Leslie Jackson (who reportedly had no children), and the Texas one was Lelia Terrell Stallings, and I do not know if she had any children.

Like most women of her day, Lelia Anderson Trabue was busy with raising children and taking care of a myriad of household tasks in the days before modern conveniences, although it's highly likely she would have had help in the form of slaves or 'colored' servants. She must have been a good cook, because her Kentucky descendents still swear by her pumpkin pie recipe. Also, she was known for the beautiful flower garden, which surrounded her home. She died on February 25. 1901. Her doctor husband, who was 15 years older than she, lived until 1905.