52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 3 (Jan 18-24)
Prompt:
Namesake
#52ancestors
Grace Truman Jordan
Grace Truman Jordan was born on April 6, 1909 to William and Minnie Lee Jordan. There was a mystery pertaining to Minnie Lee’s parents. The only record I could find for years was the 1880 census record where M. L. Dottry, was living with her parents, T and J Dottery. For years that is all we knew about her parents. It seemed easy to assume that Grace Truman Jordan’s name might be the clue needed to find her grandparents. Surely, she was named after her grandfather, T Dottery, making his given name, Truman.
Alas, that proved to be wrong, her grandfather’s name turned out to be Thomas G. Dottery, which is another story. Where did the name Truman come from? It seemed like it should be a surname passed down. Could she have been a distant relative to Harry S Truman? That proved to be wrong, too.
In the 1850s, Sallie Rochester Ford published a serial story in the Christian Repository owned by her husband, Reverend Samuel Ford titled, Grace Truman, or Love and Principal. The serial was published as a book in 1857 and republished multiple times[1]. The 1886 edition included an afterword in which “Ford noted that the work was semi-autobiographical and referenced her own personal and public struggle as she converted from Presbyterianism to the Baptist movement[2].” This book was influential in Baptist circles for many years.
The two sides of the character, Grace Truman, spoke to many of the faithful Baptist women of the last half of the 1800s and early 1900s. While Grace Truman was the epitome of the faithful, submissive, devoted wife, she was also a fierce warrior of her faith. She reflected a strength that appealed to many women of that time. The book, Grace Truman, must have made an impression on Minnie Lee Dottery Jordan for her to have named her daughter, Grace Truman. In fact, there were many girls named Grace Truman after different editions of the book were published. A search of the first name “Grace Truman” with no other information gives over 4 million results in Ancestry.com and 1,184 results in the family trees.
Grace Truman Jordan’s namesake was not another relative but a fictional character, a woman of faith. It gives an insight into the character and faith of her mother, Minnie Lee Dottery Jordan.
[1]Sallie Rochester Ford. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Rochester_Ford
[2] Sallie Rochester Ford: fiction, faith, and femininity: nineteenth-century Baptists offered two general, and different, cultural messages to women within the church regarding social expectations. - Free Online Library (thefreelibrary.com). https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Sallie+Rochester+Ford:+fiction,+faith,+and+femininity:...-a0138811971
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