This one takes a bit of explaining -- Mary Jane was the second wife of my 4x-great-grandfather, Benjamin Isaac Higginbotham, and thusly the stepmother of my 3x-great-grandfather, Isaac Robert "Bob" Higginbotham.
Curiously, Mary Jane was known as "Mary Jane Murphy" in the family of her Higginbotham relations, but in the records it seems (maybe?) that her LNAB was Deerin. She was Mary Deerin when she married Jacob Holt in 1866 in Franklin co. TN. Holt, who was about 67 years old at the time and twice-married, lived long enough to have three children with her.
In 1875, Mary Jane Holt married McCager Woodward. They had one son born the following year, but Woodward seems to have also died or abandoned her shortly afterward. She is back to using the Holt name when she marries Benjamin Isaac Higginbotham in 1879.
As the story goes, Isaac Robert "Bob" Higginbotham was offended by his 74-year-old father marrying a woman who was not only much younger than him (she was ten years younger than her own stepson!) but who had already been married twice and had children by both marriages. He quarreled with his father over the marriage and ended up leaving the state of Tennessee with his own family to start fresh in Alabama. From what I've been told by my great-uncle who was the family historian, Bob's break with his father over this woman was so absolute, no one in that branch even knew Benjamin Isaac went on to have two more children with Mary Jane!
Mary Jane and Benjamin Isaac added two more sons before his death in 1884. In 1880 she's still in Franklin co. TN living with her two youngest sons, but by 1920 she and her sons have moved to Texas. Perhaps she got out of the marrying business by then; at any rate, she seems to have kept the Higginbotham name for the rest of her life.
Her death certificate from San Antonio, TX shows she was born in Lincoln co., TN (a neighboring county to Franklin co. TN) and that her father's name was Murphy and her mother's name was Derring. Why then did she marry under the name Deerin? Was she born out of wedlock? Her son Archibald was the informant, so I am presuming this info was told to him by his mother.
I can't find her in 1860 under the Deerin name, but I found who I think is her living in Franklin co. TN: Mary Murphy, born about 1848, living with a female Francis Murphy (probably a sister), a Fanny Farmer, and two septuagenarians named John and Francis Eskridge. To date I have not found her at all in 1870.
While this is not my direct line, it would be nice to solve the mystery of her origins.
