Mary: Were you ever able to locate the two daughters of John N. Long and his wife Lucinda Whitten Long? I just read again your article “The Story of John N. Long and Lucinda Whitten” on your Whitten family web page, and you still list the daughters there as unknown.

The reason that I ask is I believe I may have located them.

If you recall, my great-grandfather Porter’s sister Lucy Susannah Porter (1860-1886) married John R. Bailey, son of George and Mary Bailey. The widow Mary Bailey and her three children were listed in the 1860 Winston County census in the household of your widowed ancestor Jane Long and her two sons. We have no proof of the relationship, but it is likely that Mary Bailey was a daughter of your ancestors John and Jane Long.

The 1874 county boundary change removed my Porter ancestors from Winston County and put them in Choctaw County. Mary Bailey and her two sons William H. and John R. still were in northern Winston County in the 1880 census, living between the Shaw Spring and the Choctaw County line. We have the information on the children of John R. Bailey and his wife Lucy Susannah Porter Bailey; thus I never had checked for John R. Bailey in the 1900 census. I recently located this listing for John R. Bailey in the 1900 census of Choctaw County:

Bailey, John R. aged 43 widowed born Apr. 1857
Bailey, Lennie aged 15 daughter born Jan. 1884
Bailey, Minnie aged 12 daughter born Aug. 1886
Bailey, Mary C. (age unknown!!) mother widowed all 3 of her children still alive
Long, Lummie aged 26 female cousin born Nov. 1873
Long, Mary aged 17 female cousin born Apr. 1883
Car, William aged 23 black servant born Oct. 1876.

Do you think this Lummie Long, born 1873, and this Mary Long, born 1883, might be the “two motherless girls” left to mourn for John N. Long, as stated in his 1896 obituary? John R. Bailey identifies them as his cousins in the census listing.

Billy Weeks