If you’ve never considered the exponential growth of your ancestors, let me break it down for you. You have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents and 32 great great great grandparents. Considering I’m at the section of my blog containing 32 great great great grandparents, I think I’ll just write a bunch of blogs and not try to put them all into one.

That being said, this blog is about my great great great grandparents:

Mary Ann Rodgers Carpenter Jolly and Rice Benjamin Carpenter.

Rice Carpenter was born to Benjamin Carpenter and Nancy Rice in Greene, Alabama on 15 Aug 1828. He was the eighth born of ten children, with six sisters and three brothers. The five eldest children were born in Franklin, North Carolina. The five youngest were born in Greene, Alabama. In 1834, family and friends (Richardsons, Alfords, Sanderfords, and Tutts) moved on a wagon train from Greene Co, AL to Lauderdale, MS for the low-cost land and fertile soil.

Rice married Mary Ann Rodgers in MS in 1846 at the age of 18.

Rice and Mary Ann had five children; Martha Lettie “Mattie”, Benjamin Hays, William Travis, Charles Clinton “Charlie”, and a son whose initials were M.F. William Travis died in 1856 at the age of two, and M.F. died at the age of one in 1863.

Rice was a farmer for a while, but by 1860 became a merchant, and he owned a general store in Marion Station, MS, which is now known as Marion. During the Civil War, he signed up for the 41st Mississippi Infantry, Company C, in 1862 and left Marion Station in May. On 31 December 1862, Rice was killed in battle at Murfreesboro, TN.

Mary Ann Rodgers was the tenth child of Hay Rodgers Sr and Mary A Scott. They had fourteen children; including two boys who died in 1834 at the ages of eight and ten of either an illness or an accident (Mary Ann was six years old at the time), and they had three sons who died in the Civil War between 1862 and 1864.

Mary Ann was 18 when she married Rice. December 1862 through March 1863 was an awful time for her. Her father, Hays, died a few weeks before her husband, Rice. Then her infant son, M.F., died a month later. Then her mother died a month after that. At the time of Rice’s death in 1862, she had fourteen year old Mattie at home, and her three sons were eleven, four and one. She was alone, running a store that was more than likely running out of supplies. The Confederate Dollar was losing value. Her children were probably hungry, with no farm or men in town to plant and harvest. She had lost her husband and three brothers to the war. She also lost her parents, her infant, and a host of brother-in-laws, sister-in-laws, nieces and nephews to typhoid, which was spreading through Lauderdale County.

In February of 1864, she married William Eades Jolly. William had been married to Rice’s sister, Harriet. Harriet died in January of 1863 of typhoid and left William with four children to raise alone. Mary Ann and William were brother-in-law/sister-in-law, but Mary Ann needed someone to feed her children, and William needed someone to run his household while he worked on his farm. It was apparently a good arrangement for them, as they had three more children together; Alice, Sarah, and John Eades.

William died in 1890 at the age of 72 and is buried in Memorial Park Cemetery, Union, Newton Co, MS.

Mary Ann died 8 years after William on 18 July 1898 at the age of 70. She is buried next to her youngest son, John Eades Jolly, at Bethel Cemetery, Nellieburg, Lauderdale Co, MS.

Mary Ann had 13 siblings. They were Lewis, James, Allen, Jackson, Susannah, Stephen, William, Timothy, Hays Jr, Wilson, John W, Elizabeth and Martha Jane. If you are a descendant of Hays Rodgers (Mary Ann’s father) or would like to know more about the family, please join us at http://www.facebook.com/DescendantsOfHaysGRodgersSr .