Sarah Leah Nobles

Sarah Leah Nobles was born on September 11, 1807, in Laurens County, South Carolina. She would live eighty years, surviving two husbands — both killed in early Texas — and raising a family that became one of the founding clans of Walker County.¹

First Marriage: Richard Bankhead

Sarah married Richard Bankhead of Tennessee. They had five children: William Newton, James Marion, Mary Elizabeth, Eady Elmyra, and Mary Frances (“Frankie”), born July 17, 1834. When Frankie was only a few months old, the family set out for Texas, settling near the future townsite of Huntsville.¹

Shortly after their arrival, Richard Bankhead died from exposure, leaving Sarah alone with five small children in the Texas frontier. He died on January 17, 1835.¹

Second Marriage: George A. Lamb

On June 27, 1835, Sarah married George A. Lamb, a 2nd Lieutenant in the Texas Volunteers, born October 3, 1814, in Laurens District, South Carolina. The year 1835–36 was an eventful one: she buried two Bankhead sons (William and James, both dying in October–November 1835 and buried by their father at Bath), married a second time, and gave birth to a daughter, Susan, all within a few months.²

On April 21, 1836, Lamb was killed at the Battle of San Jacinto, falling in the first charge of the Texans. Sarah was widowed a second time at the age of twenty-eight. A few months later she gave birth to their daughter Susan (Susie), born November 10, 1836. Many hardships followed — the mother and her little girls were on several occasions forced to flee and hide in the cane brakes and palmettoes of the San Jacinto bottom to escape Indian raids.²

Third Marriage: Jonathan McGary

On December 17, 1837, Sarah married Jonathan McGary, with whom she lived until his death on November 8, 1862. They had five children: Claresa, Jonathan Jr., Sarah, Amanda, and Marion. Mary Elizabeth, who was thirteen at the time of Sarah’s third marriage, married Green Spillers and took her two sisters, Eady Elmyra and Mary Frances, to live with her. Later Eady Elmyra married Daniel Boone Guerrant.²

Sarah survived McGary by twenty-six years.

Death

Sarah Leah Nobles died on March 31, 1888, at the age of eighty-one years, six months, and twenty days. She was buried in old Ebenezer Cemetery, twelve miles north of Huntsville, by the side of her daughter Susan Lamb Bankhead, who had preceded her in death. Her three husbands’ graves are marked with identical marble shafts giving their names, dates, and places of birth and death.²

In 1936, there were 603 living descendants of Sarah Leah Nobles Bankhead Lamb McGary in Texas. Members establishing eligibility in the Daughters of the Republic of Texas from her line include Mrs. Annavieve Barrett, Mrs. Harry Allen, Mrs. J. W. McAdams, Mrs. Marion Wells, and Mrs. Odell Hall.²