Byrd home. Emily and Elizabeth in my estimation were the nucleus of the Methodist women’s group who founded Greenwood Methodist Church. Their ordinary conversations about running a household grew to include not just disabled children, but widows, widows with young children and young mothers. Eliza and her husband were Methodists. Eliza had had child-rearing responsibilities from an early age. The three women probably met in the Byrd home. Elizabeth Byrd had heard Emily’s mother’s story before. But, when Eliza joined Elizabeth and Emily’s conversations, she probably told the story again, this time from a stepdaughter’s perspective. Namely, her father’s death left her stepmother with 11 children, two boys and nine girls. The boys were her brother and Milton. The girls were Eliza, her three sisters, Emily, her two sisters and Eliza’s half-sister. The estate of her stepmother’s first husband had not yet been settled. The older children probably went to work if they were not working already. Or they helped raise the younger children or both. Eliza’s brother and sisters are not known. By 1840, only one of them lived with her stepmother. Eliza’s disabled sister-in-law and half-sister were in this household too. 24 The others had scattered. Eliza and Milton had married as had one of her sisters-in-law. 25 Emily probably worked for Elizabeth’s husband and his first wife. 26 The arrival in the village of another Methodist woman, Louisa Jane Merriman, whom Elizabeth, Emily and Eliza invited to join their conversations, caused the group to add girls growing up without mothers, something she and Eliza had in common, to their list of women in need. Eliza and Louisa Jane continued the group’s socio-economic diversity. Eliza, a working woman, and Louisa Jane, a well-off woman, complemented digital image, Ancestry.com (access through participating libraries : 20 December 2018); citing NARA microfilm publication M432, roll 848. 24 1840 U.S. census, Abbeville District, South Carolina, p. 15 (penned), E. [Elizabeth] Redman [Redmond]; digital image, Ancestry.com (access through participating libraries : 11 July 2018); citing FHL microfilm 0022508. 25 1840 U.S. census, Abbeville Dist., S.C., p. 12 (penned), Mitton [Milton] Orsburn [Osborn]. Also, 1840 U.S. census, Abbeville District, South Carolina, p. 11 (penned), W.B. Cayson [Cason]; digital image, Ancestry.com (access through participating libraries : 11 July 2018); citing FHL microfilm 0022508. 26 1840 U.S. census, Abbeville District, South Carolina, p. 11 (penned), Thos. B. Byrd; digital image, Ancestry.com (access through participating libraries : 11 July 2018); citing FHL microfilm 0022508.
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