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Miles Rainwater, 1818-1884
Miles Rainwater was born on May 15, 1818 to William and Martha "Patsy" Hodges Rainwater in Pulaski County, Kentucky. He was the youngest of six boys born to a family of eleven surviving children. William died in 1825; Martha died between 1840 and 1850; after which Miles took possession of the Rainwater family farm in Faubush.
On July 29, 1843, Miles married Frances Chaney, the daughter of Hiram and Mary Ellen Chaney. Miles made his living as a farmer, and invested his profits in additional tracts of land.
The couple had ten children who survived to adulthood:
- Silas, born ca. 1844 and died in the Battle of Chickamauga Creek in 1863
- Terrell, born 10 Feb 1846, the 19th century Rainwater family’s only professional photographer (see profile)
- David, born 30 Nov 1847
- Erasmus M., born ca 1850, he ran a general store in Golden Gate, SD
- Mary Elizabeth (Gossett), born ca 1852
- Fountain, born 12 Jan 1854, a minister and schoolteacher
- Frances Jane (Tarter), born 8 Feb 1857
- Coatney Ellen (Haney), born 10 Sept 1859
- Sarah Ann (Dawes), born 10 Jan 1862, (see profile)
- James, born 17 June 1865
Miles died on January 9, 1884, leaving a considerable estate to his wife and children. Nearly all of the children received land, except for Erasmus and Terrell, who no longer lived in Pulaski County. Frances received the farm, furniture, livestock and food stores on hand to use during her lifetime. The family farm went to Fountain and James at her death in 1911.
Miles and Frances were buried in Rainwater Cemetery, on the family farm, along with his brother Bartholomew and his wife Nancy. This cemetery was transcribed in the 1970s, but the location was not clearly identified. Researchers Darren Waters and Scott Burton, working with the Pulaski Jail Cemetery Clean-up Deputies, Mike Harris & Bryan Bishop have recently re-located the cemetery on a private farm off the intersection of Wolf Creek and Roberts Roads in Faubush, Kentucky.
Related items
Miles Rainwater’s will
Tombstone tour of Rainwater cemetery
Credits
This photograph was donated by Rick Jasper.
© 2018 Susan Chance-Rainwater
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
