An Apple for Irene

In genealogy searches, I spend significant portions of my research on those darn men. Why? Not because they're more interesting. It's because there's usually more information about them in official records. Occasionally, a rare apple emerges from a barrel of pears and a woman's history ripens.

You've heard me talk about Irene before, the wife of John Hansford Callaway. While trying to answer questions in "Oh, Where Art Thou?" I came to learn more about Irene and her Baker family. Irene was raised by a widowed mother who never remarried. (I followed Amelia Baker all the way to Texas where she died.) Amelia also bought property over the course of several years and established a fairly large estate and farm in Coffee County. The finances from the farm allowed her to turn the day-to-day operations to her two older sons while she and her two daughters and two younger sons lived in Summerfield, Dallas County, Alabama. Amelia seems like a pretty independent and intelligent woman and I wonder how that affected her youngest daughter, Irene. 

The only fact I have is from the 1860 cencus which states that Irene was a teacher in Summerfield, Alabama. Everything else I come up with are suppositions and educated guesses.  I started by trying to learn more about the town of Summerfield. Why would Amelia decide to take her family there in the late 1850s? 

Summerfield, was originally a town named Valley Creek which was just a few miles north of Selma, Alabama (which served as the county seat). Another interesting tidbit is that 30 years prior another nearby town called Cahaba was the county seat and briefly the state capitol. Therefore, this whole area appears to be an urban center of commerce and administration. I soon found out that Summerfield was an area of ministry and education as well. Before Valley Creek was renamed in 1845, the town had charted the county's first academy in 1829. Later in 1841, the Alabama Conference of Methodist Church opened the Methodist Centenary Institute, a co-educational university. 

For a mother like Amelia, this must of seemed like the ideal place to take her daughters. Her oldest daughter Dulcenia married a teacher and her younger one was teacher, maybe at the Centenary Institute. At least, I like to think so. I can't find much information about the town on the web; however, there is a wonderful account of the college is preserved in A History of Methodism in Alabama (1893) which you can download for free.