Amanda's Legacy

I am named, in part, for my great-great grandmother Amanda Jefferies. Although I never met the woman, I understand that it is a great legacy to uphold. I know this from the stories which have been reiterated to me from my early childhood years when I first heard of her marriage and divorce from her husband John.

Amanda was an affable woman, not especially beautiful but she was wildly intelligent despite never attending formal school. Amanda and John married in the early years of the twentieth century and built a large family and an abundant business hauling logs from the Jemez mountains in northern New Mexico down into Albuquerque.

After several years they became very prosperous and a prominent family among the admittedly quaint logging camps while they also became quite affluent in the city. Wealth being what it is, John eventually met a young lady fourteen years his junior and decided to divorce Amanda and marry eighteen year-old Coraline.

During the divorce proceedings, the judge asked for records of the former couple’s assets. While John was unable to remember just how many animals he owned, Amanda said that she could: twelve horses, two cows, and two mules. It was embarrassing to John to admit that his wife knew more of his financial matters than he did, but he told the judge that she must be correct because, he said, “Amanda never lies.”

Amanda went on to cleaning houses for the people who were her friends, supplementing the little support John did give her and raising their four children herself. She never heard from John except when his man stopped by to give her a monthly allotment of money. Amanda did not remarry, believing that her vows taken before God would not be undone by a secular court.

His young wife bore him no children and it is speculated that they never shared the same bed in five years of marriage after consummation on their wedding night. Six years after the divorce, John was diagnosed with cancer and given less than a year to live. When he became confined to his death bed, Coraline admitted to him that she had fallen in love with another man; his company’s chief accountant. She left him in the middle of the night while he was sleeping and he never saw her or his accountant again, likely because they did not want to go to prison for the money they took from him.

Upon hearing the news that her ex-husband had lost so much money, was dying and that his wealthy friends and new wife had abandoned him, Amanda promptly packed her bags and moved herself and the children into the small cottage adjacent to the ‘big house’. She never would sleep in that mansion of her husband’s pretty little trophy.

Amanda lovingly nursed John until his dying day, when he made his first and last attempt at atonement by remarrying her so that she may have control of the dynasty she’d helped to build. He told her that he was sorry and that he had never been able to stop loving her and then he slipped quietly away to face his Judgement.

After John’s death in 1928, Amanda sold the business to a close family friend as well as the estate John had bought to impress his new young wife to it’s highest bidder. She moved to the Ozarks of Arkansas, to a quiet and sleepy town nestled into the mountains. There, she lived out her life providing for her children, including her youngest daughter, my great-grandmother Marie for whom I am also named. She also used the money to care for children when there was no room in the overcrowded orphanage and began the Victory garden in her backyard that continues to be planted every year to this day.

My Great-great grandmother Amanda was a saint until her very last breath. She never lied or spoke ill toward any one and she helped to make the world a better place in any way that she could. I hope that I may live up to my namesake and maybe my story might be told to my descendants to say that I, too, helped to make the world a better place, even for those people who have proven disappointing to me from time to time.