Ancestry Magazine

One of my treasures is a piece of mourning jewelry handed down through at least five generations in my family. It is an oval medallion about two inches long and one and _ inches across. The front is an engraved scene of a woman seated beside a tomb under a weeping willow. On the tomb are the word, “Lov’d Through Life Lamented Now Dead.”

The back of the medallion is gold. Engraved on it are the words, “Eliza Walter, obt. 2d March 1788 AE 35 years.” No one in the family knew who Eliza Walter was! It has taken years to do it, but I think I now know.

Twenty years ago I met a couple from Walterboro, South Carolina, which is near Charleston. I asked if they knew about my ancestor, Col. Isaac Hayne, a martyr of the American Revolution. They did. I was pleased, but I did not connect this incident with the medallion.

I did not write to the postmaster of Walterboro until September 1991. I asked him to give my letter to the president of the local historical or genealogical society.

In the letter I explained that I am descended from the Hayne and Parks families of South Carolina, that they lived in that part of the state in the 1700s and 1800s, and that some of them may be buried in the local cemetery. I also mentioned the medallion which I’d inherited. Indicating that I believed whom the city is named, I asked for information about the founding of Walterboro.

Within a couple of weeks I received a beautifully written letter from Laura Lynn Hughes, president of Colleton County Historical and Preservation Society. She stated, “The Hayne and Walter families played an important part in our county’s history.” She enclosed a photocopy of a clipping about the Walter family written by Beulah Glover. Miss Glove had died the previous spring at the age of 103. Oh, if only I had written that letter to the postmaster 10 years earlier!

I wrote to Laura Lynn Hughes again. She sent the name and address of Miss Glover’s niece. Mrs. Leslie Rentz had inherited Miss Glover’s papers and had the task of going through them and filing them. I felt sure that she would find the missing pieces of my puzzle.

Mrs. Rentz wrote in December 1991 from her home, called “Tuck-Away,” near Walterboro. She would be glad to try to help me if I was not in a hurry (she was leaving for a month’s visit with her daughter in California). She ended her letter with this sentence: “It’s the things that come down in the family, like your medallion, that I think are treasures.”

Mrs. Rentz and I exchanged letters in February and again in July withou t much happening. I wrote her in February 1993 that my husband and I planned a trop to Georgia and South Carolina in the summer.

In March 1993 I received a letter with several enclosures from Judy Ballard, president of Old. St. Bartholomew Chapter, South Carolina Genealogical Society. I was invited to join, and I did. A newspaper clipping told of a program at the Isaac Hayne Burial Site on April 2nd, but it was too late for me to attend.

In June 1993, when we were in Charleston, we drove 50 or so miles to Walterboro and found the Colleton County Memorial Library. A most helpful librarian guided me to the Genealogical Room. There I found many books which I had read before in Clayton Genealogical Library in Houston.

If Eliza Walter died in March 1788 at the age of 35, I figured that she was born about 1753. I realized that Mary Hopkins, my great-great-great-grandmother (1776-1856), could have been her daughter.

I looked in Holcomb’s South Carolina Marriages1688-1797 and found an Eliza Bower who had married Paul Walter; she then became Eliza Bower Walter. The locket could have been hers, but how did Mary Hopkins connect? Did Eliza’s husband, Paul Walter, die, after which she married a man named Hopkins and they had Mary?

Years before I had read in Revill’s Abstract of S.C. Marriage Records, 1682-1799, the following:

Hayne, Isaac of St. Bartholomew Parish married Mary Hopkins, spinster of St. George, Dorchester, he was a physician, document dated Dec. 9, 1793 with Isaac Walter & William Peronneau, trustees, recites she is a legatee of Samuel Wainwright with property in the hands of Richard Wainwright. (Marriage Records, Vol. 2, p. 208).

There are many genealogical clues in this abstract, but at the time I was not astute enough to see the significance of all of them. I knew that William Peronneau was a family friend and that Elizabeth Peronneau married Dr. Isaac Hayne’s younger brother. I knew that the Wainwrights were friends of the family. A granddaughter of Mary Hopkins Hayne and Dr. Isaac Hayne was given “Wainwright” as a middle name.

As I sat in the Colleton County Library for the first time that trustee, Isaac Walter, got my attention. I asked the librarian for more information about the Walter family. She brought an ordinary manila folder that was simply labeled “Walter Family”; clippings about various members of the family were enclosed. Some of them were about Founder’s Days which had been celebrated in Walterboro.

Walterboro was founded by Paul and Jacob Walter, the two oldest of four brothers. The youngest brother was Isaac Walter, who married Eliza Hopkins, a widow, on 1 May 1783. Could Isaac Walter, the trustee, have been Mary Hopkin’s stepfather?

I checked birth dates, marriage dates, and death dates. It seemed quite possible that Eliza, who died in 1788, was born in 1755, married Mr. Hopkins when she was about 20, had had her daughter, Mary, in 1776. After the death of her first husband, perhaps during the American Revolution, she married again and became Eliza Walter.

As was the custom of that time, when Eliza died, her daughter wore mourning jewelry-the interesting medallion I have today.

Fortunately, newspaper reporters of the 1700s in South Carolina referred to brides as “widows” or “spinsters.” Without those clues I would probably have skipped over this vital bit of information.

Since the summer of 1993 I have been able to check my suppositions further. Marriage Notices in the South Carolina & American General Gazette, edited by A.S. Salley, Jr. (1914), includes this item on page 15: “Mr. William Hopkins to Miss Elizabeth Welch Aug. 20, 1770.” In Roster of South Carolina Patriots in the American Revolution, by Bobby Gilmer Moss (1985), page 462, is this: “Hopkins, William. He enlisted in the Sixth Regiment 2 March 1776. N.A. 653.” In Smith and Salley, Register of St. Philip’s Parish 1754-1810 (S.C.), I read the following: “Hopkins, Wm. 342, buried 21 Oct. 1780.”

So Eliza(beth) Welch Hopkins was widowed in 1780 and married Isaac Walter in 1783. If we agree that Eliza shortened her name, everything checks out.

I think I have solved the mystery of the identity of Eliza Walter.

Mourning Jewelry
Mourning jewelry began to be worn in the 17th century and was unique to England. Rings and slides of this period include white enameled skulls set with diamond eyes. Eventually, subjects became classical; a lamenting widow, encircled by weeping willow trees.

Hair jewelry was very popular in the 19th century. Brooches often contained a receptacle for a lock of hair of the beloved departed.

Bereavement for Queen Victoria popularized black jewelry. Jet, a coal-like substance, was often used with gold or offset with precious stones for earrings and bracelets.

A gentleman might bequeath a sum of money for a set of mourning rings to be worn by his friends and family. Such rings were usually in black. White enameled rings generally commemorated a child or young girl.

Sataloff, Joseph, and Alison Richards. The Pleasure of Jewelry and Gemstones. London: Octopus Books, 1975.

Flower, Margaret. Victorian Jewellry, South Brunswick, N.J.: A.S. Barnes & Co. 1967

Frances Grimes Yeargin began researching her family’s genealogical past wehn she retired from teaching. Her work has been published in various magazines.