Highlights of Sarah Jennings Healan Leet's Life

Born October 27, 1833, in Edgefield, South Carolina

• Daughter of Hasting Jennings (b. Jan. 29, 1814, d. April 1870) and Susannah “Dave” Newton (b. Nov. 9, 1811, d. July 11, 1854)

Moved with her parents and siblings to Georgia in 1851. According to Sarah's obituary, that same year Sarah joined the Methodist Church in LaFayette where the Rev. A.I. Leet was the minister.

Sarah married Andrew Jackson (Jack) Healan in 1853. The Rev. Leet performed the ceremony.

In the 1860 census, Sarah and Jack lived in LaFayette and Jack is listed as a miller. They had three children. Sarah's two sisters, Margaret Jennings, age 16, and Elizabeth Jennings, age 18, lived with them as well as Jack's 80-year-old mother, Elizabeth Langley Healan.

By 1870s four of Sarah's 10 children had died and Jack was ill. According to a family story, Jack had lost a leg in the Civil War and could not work. Sarah moved the family to Wartrace TN and opened a boarding house called, "Healan House."

In 1876, Jack died, leaving Sarah to educate their children. Corrie (b. 1870), the next to the youngest child, graduated from the Nashville College for Young Ladies. Ralph, who was born in 1867, went to the University of Tennessee.

In 1888, Sarah married the Rev. A.I. Leet. A newspaper article in that year praised Sarah's accomplishments in Wartrace.

"Mrs. Healan has been proprietoress of the Healan House for 15 years or more and by her indefatigable energy and splendid business capacity has educated her children and lived in comfort and accomplished what few would have done, left as she was by her farmer husband's death with six children to raise and educate."

Sarah moved to Rev. Leet's plantation or farm, called Beaumont, near Ringgold, GA. He died in 1892. She stayed at Beaumont for about 10 years. Then she moved in with her daughter, Corrie who had married R.L. Justice, and lived in North Carolina.

Sarah died Dec. 20, 1909, in NC and was buried in Wartrace, TN.

Links

• See the Margaret Jennings Davis web site

• See a Jennings Genealogy web site