Mary Jane died in 1858, leaving three small children, Louvisa Jane, John Dennis, and Margaret Elizabeth Lindsey. Soon after Mary Jane’s death, Samuel joined several of his siblings who had moved some years earlier from Lawrence County to northwest Louisiana – Mark Jefferson Lindsey, Frances Rebecca Lindsey (Kellogg), and Margaret Tranquilla Lindsey (Hunter). Margaret’s husband William T. Hunter was a brother of Samuel’s wife Mary Jane Hunter.

On 18 July 1861 in Claiborne Parish, Louisiana, Samuel married Lenora Elizabeth Bickley, daughter of William Carey Bickley and Elizabeth Jane Moffett. Samuel was killed as a Civil War soldier (19th Louisiana Infantry, CSA) at the battle of the Spanish Fort near Mobile, Alabama, on 4 April 1865, and folowing his death, Lenora, who was left with two small children, Mary Jane and Samuel Asbury Lindsey (Jr.), remarried to two Robinson brothers in a row.

Recently, a descendant of Lenora by her husband Benjamin Franklin Robinson contacted me to tell me he has inherited Lenora’s old trunk, and that it contains documents about and a photo of Samuel A. Lindsey that he generously offered to share with me. The trunk’s owner is Chip Garrett, an attorney in Oklahoma and a great-great-grandson of Lenora Bickley Robinson.

Among the items in Lenora’s trunk is the tintype photo at the head of the posting, which Chip Garrett tells me (citing his grandfather Leonard Richard McCallie) is a photo of Samuel A. Lindsey taken with another man at Mobile, Alabama, during the Civil War. Chip is not certain which of the two men in the tintype is Samuel. I’m fairly sure that it’s the man to the right, and I suspect that the other man in the photo is Samuel’s brother-in-law George Bickley, who served along with Samuel in the 19th Louisiana Infantry.

I think this tintype photo may have been enclosed in a letter Samuel wrote on 6 February 1865 from Mobile to his mother-in-law Elizabeth Moffett Bickley, which is also in the trunk. Images of this letter, courtesy of Chip Garrett, are above, along with a photo that’s said to be Elizabeth Jane Moffett Bickley, which appears on a number of family trees at Ancestry. Chip tells me the letter is written on a single sheet of paper that’s folded down the middle, and is written on front and back.

The letter addresses Elizabeth, who was living in Claiborne Parish, Louisiana, as “Mother” – i.e., she was Samuel’s mother-in-law. It says that “we” will write more if Samuel lived, and this statement evidently refers to Samuel’s brother-in-law George Bickley.

Much of Samuel’s letter is actually written to his wife Lenora, whom he calls Lee. I think that Lenora and her two children by Samuel were likely living with her mother Elizabeth at this time. Elizabeth was widowed in 1860 when her husband William Carey Bickley died in Claiborne Parish on 26 June of that year.

The letter’s rather plaintive, in that Samuel is complaining that Lee hadn’t made time to write him. I would imagine she was very busy raising two small children. She was 20 years younger than Samuel and he had gone to war for the second time (he was in the Mexican War as a young man) at age 37. He’d leave Lenora a young widow of 19 with two small children when he died in April 1865.

One interesting tidbit in the letter is that Samuel says that Lee had asked him when his son John Dennis Lindsey – by his first wife Mary Jane Hunter – was born. Samuel states that John Dennis had turned 12 years old on 20 October 1852. Lenora may never have seen John Dennis and Samuel’s two other children by Mary Jane Hunter, Louvisa Jane and Margaret Elizabeth, because he left them with their Hunter relatives to raise them when he went to Louisiana shortly before 1860.

Also in Lenora’s trunk was the photo above of Samuel and Lenora’s son Judge Samuel A. Lindsey Jr. of Tyler, Texas, along with his housekeeper. Chip Garrett tells me Samuel sent the photo to his half-sister Mamie Bell Robinson McCallie, Chip’s great-grandmother.

Finally – this item is not in Lenora’s old trunk – Chip has shared with me the photo above of a portrait of Lenora Elizabeth Bickley now owned by the Oklahoma City Art Museum. This black-and-white photo of Lenora’s portrait is from a magazine called Widening Horizons (vol. 5, no. 4) published in 1957. This issue of Widening Horizons spotlights Oklahoma artist Minnie Mitchell Baker, who was a niece of Lenora’s son-in-law James Charles McCallie.

Minnie Baker was director of the art department at what is now Southeastern Oklahoma State University for many years. Among her works is this large oil portrait of Lenora E. Bickley now in the possession of the Oklahoma City Art Museum. About the portrait, Chip writes,

My grandfather [i.e., Leonard Richard McCallie] was still living at home with his parents and his grandma Lenora when the work was done. Minnie came and stayed with them while she did the sketches and painted Lenora’s hands and face, finishing the painting later. Lenora posed over the course of five (5) days and my grandfather said, “Grandma got awfully tired of sitting still before Minnie finished her work.“

Lenora is sitting in a rocking chair for the painting. I have that chair.

Chip Garrett also sent me the following transcription of an article from the Ardmore, Oklahoma, Daily Ardmoreite on 23 January 23 1946, speaking of the Oklahoma City Art Museum’s acquisition of the portrait:

Art Center Buys Baker Painting

A large oil painting bearing the title “A Pioneer Mother,” painted by Miss Minnie Baker, Ardmore, head of the art department of Southeastern State college, Durant, has been added to the permanent collection of the Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City. The picture was purchased from funds given to the Oklahoma Art Center, Inc., by S. A. Lindsey, Tyler, Texas. Lindsey gave the funds with the understanding that this particular painting be purchased. This stipulation was made due to the fact that his mother, the late Mrs. B. F. Robinson, was the sitter. Mrs. Robinson was a pioneer Oklahoman. She came to the state while it was still a territory following the death of her husband in the civil war. Mrs. Robinson leased and improved unbroken land, and underwent many hardships in keeping her family together and educating her children. This is the first of several portraits of pioneers painted by Miss Baker, and one of the best, critics say. She painted the only portrait for which Lee Cruce, the second governor of Oklahoma, ever sat. Also the only portrait from life of the pioneer Oklahoma congresswoman, Alice Robertson, Muskogee. This latter painting has been purchased for the school bearing her name, in Muskogee. Miss Baker is a sister of J. Kelly Baker (1903-1984), superintendent of schools in Carter county. She studied at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D. C., and as a student there received several awards for outstanding work. One of these was a scholarship to the Breckenridge summer school at Gloucester, Mass., where she studied under the noted painter, Hugh Breckenridge, and again received recognition for outstanding work.