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Silas Mercer Rainwater and wife, Mary Jane Hindman Rainwater

Silas Mercer Rainwater and wife, Mary Jane Hindman Rainwater

Silas Mercer Rainwater and wife,
Mary Jane Hindman Rainwater, ca 1880-1900

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Silas Mercer Rainwater was the son of Rev. Miles Rainwater and his wife, Nancy Edwards Rainwater, the youngest of eight children who survived to adulthood. Born on 25 July 1825 in South Carolina, he married Mary Jane Hindman around 1850, and are found living with Silas’ widowed mother in Fayette County, Alabama in the 1850 census. Silas’ occupation was farming.

Silas and Mary Jane had a large family – ten children in all. These were Hannah, born ca 1854; Miles S., born Sep 1857; Martha E., born ca 1859; Mary M., born ca 1863; Sarah F., born ca 1866; Alice L., born ca 1868; Wiley, born ca 1872; Silas Walter, born ca 1877; Lewis Oscar, born Mar 1876; and Dora Metta, born 28 Apr 1883.

Silas patented two tracts of land in Lamar County, Alabama. Land patent #33896, granted on 1 Jun 1858, contained one tract in township 16-S. Land patent #35270, granted on 1 Aug 1861, contained another tract in the same township, presumably contiguous.

On 1 March 1863, Silas enlisted the Alabama 56th Partisan Rangers, Company I, as a private in the service of the Confederacy. On 19 July 1900, he applied for a pension based on this service, which was apparently granted. Silas died two years later, and his widow applied for a continuance of the pension, which was paid until her death in 1905.

Silas Mercer Rainwater and his wife Mary Jane Hindman Rainwater and buried in Wesley Chapel Methodist Cemetery, Fayette County, Alabama.

Related items
Silas Mercer Rainwater’ Confederate pension application
Mary Jane Hindman Rainwater’ Confederate pension application

Credits
This photo was supplied by Gary Stevens. The original is owned by Brenda Roberts.


© 2018 Susan Chance-Rainwater
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License