Across the river in South Carolina, Mary Clopton (Perrin) Hearst Byrd, Thomas B. Byrd’s first wife, died a year after William Parks. The Perrin and Hearst families were among the elite families of Abbeville District. 17 Thomas was Mary’s second husband. Her first, was Joseph Hearst, Jr. with whom she had three children. 18 Elizabeth (Cooksey) Parks and Thomas B. Byrd married in late 1843 in Lincoln County. 19 Rev. Henry P. Pitchford, a traveling Methodist preacher, performed the ceremony. Pitchford served the Georgia Methodist Conference for 30 years and was stationed in Lincolnton, the Lincoln County seat, in Augusta District when he married Elizabeth and Thomas. 20 Elizabeth and Thomas may have known or known of each other for years. Although they lived in different states, their counties abutted the Savannah River and had connections dating to the 18 th century. A major long-standing connection between the two states was a ferry that crossed the river upstream from Augusta. The Georgia landing of this ferry was in the militia district where Elizabeth and William lived. The road meeting this ferry on the Vol. B-E, 1796-1877, pp. 51-53. Also, William Parks obituary, Southern Christian Advocate (Charleston, South Carolina) , 12 February 1841, p. 140, col. 1, South Carolina United Methodist Collection, Wofford College, Spartanburg. 17 William Perrin and Mary Clopton (https://liveasfreepeople.com : 20 January 2019. Also, Thomas Perrin Harrison, Jr., The Honorable Thomas Chiles Perrin of Abbeville, South Carolina: Forebears and Descendants (Greenville: A Press, 1983), viii, 10. Also, Larry S. Bell and Marvin L. Cann, “Silver Spoons and Spyglasses: The Lifestyle of the Abbeville Gentry, 1820-1860,” The South Carolina Historical Magazine 115 (October 2014), 304-324, especially 306; image copy, JSTOR (http://www.jstor.org/stable/43666004 : 15 August 2019). 18 Alabama Surname File Expanded, 1702-1981,” database, Ancestry.com (access through participating libraries :18 April 2019), image, “Hearst Table of Descent,” image 45 of 424; citing Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama, Alabama Surname Files; Film M85.0588. Also, Watson, Greenwood Co. Sketches , 254. 19 Byrd-Parks marriage record in documentation file supporting membership application of Reba Bradley Hicks, National no. 592046, on Hezekiah Cooksey, approved December 1974; National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, Office of the Registrar General, Washington, D.C. They married 6 December 1843. The marriage was recorded 20 December 1843. 20 Minutes of the Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South for the Year 1882 (Nashville: Southern Methodist Publishing House, 1883), 131-132; digital images, HathiTrust Digital Library (https://www.hathitrust.org : 31 March 2019). Also, Minutes of the Annual Conferen ces of the Methodist Episcopal Church for the Years 1839-1845, vol. III (New York: T. Mason and G. Lane, 1840), 325; digital images, Google Books (http://books.google.com : 6 April 2019).
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