Sarah Ann "Sally" Hogue (1812-1865), grieving Civil War mother , Mary Lou's 2nd Great grandmother on the Fisher side

 Sarah Ann ("Sally") Hogue ( abt 1812 - 1865) 

This is Mary Lou's second great-grandmother on the Fisher side. (Mary Lou Brown < Una Fisher < John Jackson Fisher < George Washington Fisher < Sarah Ann Hogue) 

Sarah, nicknamed Sally, lived her whole life in Rockbridge County, Virginia.  We do not know anything about her parents or her growing up years, or whether she grew up in a slave-holding family.  

Sarah married George Watson Fisher in 1834, at the age of 22, in Rockbridge County.  George was a Cooper.   He would have made barrels and casks and other wooden household items.  They had eleven children.  The 1860 census shows the large family living in District 4 of Rockbridge County, with a household worth $100.  It appears the family lived very humbly.  

As the Civil War started, one by one their four older sons, John, James,  William, and David, served in the Confederate Army.  Family recollections indicate that two of them were killed in battle and two died in Northern prisons.   As the war drug on, the Confederacy was calling up younger and younger boys.  

So, a grieving frightened mother sent her younger son George Washington (Two's paternal grandfather) away to walk almost 200 miles into the far west of West Virginia (West Virginia split from Virginia in 1863 and became a Union State) to escape being drafted.  She packed him some food, a hatchet, and a gun and sent him on his way.  George was 15 or 16 years old. 

Sally had four younger children at home.  We don't know anything about Sally's life after the war, whether she and George stayed in Rockbridge County, or relocated. Family records indicate they both died in 1865, just a year after war's end, but we do not have any concrete sources to back that up. 

Map of Rockbridge County, 1860 

Sources: 

1850, 1860 census Rockbridge County VA 

Family lore 

Cynthia Poth Nanto family tree on Ancestry dot com