As the posting I linked above notes, a journal that Greensboro, Alabama, resident Sarah Haynsworth Gayle, wife of Alabama governor John Gayle, kept in the years 1827-1835 frequently mentions Catherine Pickens Hunter, John Hunter, and their daughters Maria and Margaret. When I originally posted about Catherine Pickens and John Hunter, I had access only to a Google books copy of Sarah’s journal transcribed by Sarah Woolfok Wiggins. Sarah Haynsworth Gayle’s journal is held by University of Alabama. and is transcribed in The Journal of Sarah Haynsworth Gayle, 1827–1835, ed. Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2023). The Google books copy did not permit me to see all the pages in which the Hunter family is mentioned.
I’ve now gotten this book via interlibrary loan, and find that in a journal entry on 21 June 1829, Sarah speaks of the recent death of Dr. John Hunter on 17 June 1829. I’ve now added the following pieces to my previous posting:
Where the posting previously read, “Several days later on 13 August, Sarah writes that before she closed her journal on that night, she felt compelled to give testimony to the kindness shown to her by the family of Dr. John Hunter, which she’d sorely miss if she had to leave Greensboro,” I’ve added: She states,
I never pass their door, without a hand being stretched out, and a cordial invitation to come in. Should I leave Greensboro’, no other family will cause more regret to me, or inspire more gratitude for the friendliness with which I have been treated by them.
I also added the following paragraph later in the posting:
On 20 March 1829, Sarah notes Dr. John Hunter’s failing health: she states that Maria Hunter had returned from Selma bringing with her her cousin Mrs. Simpson and that Dr. Hunter was “daily sinking, his intellect nearly uninjured” (p. 89). The cousin Maria brought from Selma with her is perhaps Eliza Rebecca Miller, daughter of Maria’s aunt Jane Bonneau Pickens and husband John Henry Miller. Eliza married her (and Maria’s) first cousin John Allen Simpson, son of John Simpson and Ann Pickens. This marriage had not yet taken place: it would take place in Selma on 9 June 1827.
Finally, I added the following:
On 21 June 1829, Sarah Haynsworth Gayle recorded the following in her journal (pp. 99-100):
The struggle between Dr. H.’s excellent constitution and intemperate habits is over at last, and he has been laid away in his place of final rest. No change was perceivable in his views of futurity – he seemed to speak & think lightly, when he thought at all of them – ridicule the idea of a preacher’s coming to converse with him, & I presume died as he had lived, a Deist. His family nursed him in his most helpless state, with great care, patience and affection. The children all were respectful and attentive to the last. No man, I think, possessed purer principles of honor, more generosity, or more intelligence. How deplorable than [sic] they should have been rendered useless by the beastly habit of drinking.
In editing Sarah’s journal, Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins has read this passage, with its record of the death of Dr. H., to refer to the death of a Dr. Howell who is nowhere mentioned in the journal. It’s clear to me that Sarah Haynsworth Gayle is speaking here of the death of John Hunter.
BEGATS AND BEQUEATHALS 