Person:Sarah Moyer (16)

Sarah Melissa Moyer was born in Montgomery County, Ohio in 1849, one of seven children born to William H. Moyer and Magdalena Urmey. She may have gone by the name of Melissa.

Her older brothers, Perry and Andrew, were born in 1843 and 1845. Her older sister, Dianna, was born in 1847. Her younger brothers, Peter and Henry, were born in 1851 and 1852. And her youngers sisters, Christina and Lydia, were born in 1855 and 1857.

The family lived on a farm in Miami Township, settled by her paternal grandparents, Peter Moyer and Elizabeth Heck, who were still living there on the farm.

Two of the children in her family did not survive childhood. About the time Melissa was born, her brother, Andrew died. He was probably not quite four years old. Then, in 1858, the family's youngest child, Lydia, died; she was only about eight months old.

Later that year, about nine months after Lydia's death, the children's mother, Magdalena, died at the age of thirty five. Melissa was eight years old at the time of her mother's death; her oldest brother, Perry, was seventeen, and the family's youngest surviving child, Christina, had just turned three. The following year, the father, William Moyer, died as well, at the age of forty.

The six surviving children in the family were all sent to live in different homes. Though their grandfather, Peter Heck, was still living, he was close to seventy years old at the time of the death of his son, William, and perhaps felt that the children would be better cared for in other homes. The children's maternal grandparents, Abraham Urmey and Anna Frantz, were also about seventy years old, and lived in Montgomery County too, but they were incapable of attending to the needs of a house full of young children -- Anna especially so because she was then paralyzed and had been for more than ten years.

And so the family was disbursed, the children each going to different homes. Melissa went to live in the Miamisburg home of John Early, a farmer, and his wife, Catherine, a couple belonging to the German Brethren faith. The Earlys had lost an infant daughter, Lucetta, in 1855; their son, Alvadore, was three years old and impaired in some way, probably mentally; they had an infant son, William, born in 1859, who died in 1864. Also living in the home, until her death in August of 1861, was John Early's mother, Magdaline Byerly.

The Earlys raised Melissa, who probably took their name; some family notes from a much later time refer to her as Melissa Early Crockett.

When she was nineteen years old, she was working as a domestic servant. The following year, in 1871, she married Charles Allen Crockett. Before the year was out she had given birth to a child that did not survive infancy. Two years later their son, John, was born, and two years after that their daughter, Clara, was born.

Melissa and Charles went to Texas in November of 1876 to raise cotton; at that time their son was just three and their daughter, Clara, not quite twelve months old. It is unknown if the children accompanied them.

Two years later Melissa returned to Springboro, in November of 1878, and three months later, she died. She was twenty nine years old.

Sarah Melissa Moyer Early Crockett is buried in the Hillgrove Cemetery in Miamisburg, Ohio, with her adoptive parents, John and Catherine Early, and their son, Alvadore. Her birth parents, William Moyer and Magdalena Urmey, are buried on the Moyer family farm, together with William's parents, Peter and Elizabeth, and William's brother, Levi. No trace of their burial places remains; the headstones were destroyed by farm equipment in the 1980's.

To find Melissa's burial site: Proceed to Hillgrove Cemetery in Miamisburg; the entrance to the cemetery is off Hwy 725. Turn south at 10th Avenue, and go through metal gates. Turn left at the first juncture where there is a monument for SM Umberhauer. You'll pass a monument for Reedy on the right. Within 100 yards or so you'll come to a 3-way intersection, make a hard right and you'll come very soon to a monument where there is also a big flowering apple tree at the end of that section. Looking straight ahead at the next section you'll see a tall granite monument for Cassidy, then off to the right of that a monument for Dobling. Right behind the monument for Dobling is the monument for John T. Early. Sarah Melissa Crockett is buried there. On her headstone are the words, "Wife of C.A. Crockett."