Searching trees can be complex and confusing, more so when so many people were named the same names and often lived in the same areas. People tended to honor relatives and friends creating a confusing overlap of similar named people.
One case of the eldest daughter of Martin and Mary Ann Reed Terry: Sarah Terry.
Some have set her a later death date but we are informed by the words from an old family letter, collected by Jed Terry into his vital Terry Family History volumes.
According to a letter from Mary Ann Terry to her sister Lucinda Terry in Texas, she was recounting all that has happened since they last wrote in early 1861. During the war years they were unable to communicate and so "caught up" after the war as postal services were restored.
On June 23, 1861, she wrote, the family loaded what they could and hurriedly escaped the converging armies of the north and the south on Barry County soil.
"We have been completely broke up and turned out of the house and home when I scarely had life or strength enough to walk out of the house and back again, having buried Sarah a few months before (Family Bible Record indicated 3 Jan 1861). Elizabeth and Jane was my chance for help in the house. Little but little children you may say. I have heard of robbing the dead but never witness the scene before. Sarah's clothing was put in a box and set on some pegs over the head of bed and left for a few days. The box was so completely robbed I never saw one of her garments any more that was worth the name..."
Mary Ann Reed Terry to her sister Lucinda King Reed Terry, 1867.
This, then indicates that Sarah Terry had died early in the same year the family had to flee advancing armies and spent several years bouncing from place to place to avoid the conflicts. Another letter will recount the death of two sons on the old Shockly farm place where they had found refuge in Gasconde Co., Missouri.
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