Happy New Year and a fresh start for Sally Turner Powers.

Well, I was doing ok there for a while but the fall got away from me.  Did some useful research but need to get some posts up.  To try to make sure I get at least one post a week this year, I plan to join along with the 52 ancestors in 52 weeks blogging prompt, with the slight change that mine will all be people I am researching but not necessarily an ancestor (I love collateral lines).  I also want to try to put a little more emphasis this year on the women in the family. 

The first prompt of the year (a fresh start) pertains to so many ancestors, leaving behind home and family to travel into the unknown.  For me, one of the most interesting was Sarah (Sally) Turner Powers.   Born in the late 1700s in Marion County, SC, she married John Powers on 4 January 1813.  It was not a happy marriage.  Sally was from a comfortable background, certainly not rich but she did bring some money and land into the marriage.  John, on the other hand, was considered pretty shiftless.  After 10 years (and 4 children), they separated, reportedly because Sally kicked him out.  They never divorced and Sally never remarried.  John did marry again bigamously and raised a second family in Darlington County, SC.   A few years after Sally and John split up, she moved with the children to  Alabama and then eventually to Georgia.  Interestingly, the move to Alabama was as part of a group - not unusual - which included some of John's relatives.   After a few years, Sally moved first to Crawford county, then Houston County, GA, where she lived out her life living with her daughter Margaret Powers Moore. 

The whole story of Sally and John deserves more time and space than I've given it today, but I admire the fact that she would not only kick out an abusive husband, but actually take the family to distant and at the time rather remote locations, to give the children a better chance.  Her oldest daughter, Veronica, ended up in Tennessee and at present little is known of her later life.  Her other two daughters lived their married lives in Houston County, GA, living next door to each other.  Son Charlie stayed in Georgia as well, but not near his sisters.  Later records show that the children did inherit some of Mom's spunk, when they fought their half-siblings in a bitter battle for their share of their father's estate, in 1868.