Jane Stiles Muse Hernandez

by REW

Jane Stiles Muse Hernandez was the grandmother of Stella Muse. She was born Jane Julia Stiles in 1831 and was a native of Savannah, Georgia. Her parents were Edward Stiles and Maria Peirce who were married Jun. 3rd 1829. Apparently Jane's mother, Maria, died young and Jane was living with her grandmother, Sarah A. Peirce, by the time she was 19 years old according to the 1850 census records of Chatham county.

Jane Stiles first marriage was to S. E. Muse. County records show that Miss Jane Julia Stiles married Mr. S.E. Muse, Jan. 8, 1852 in Chatham County (Savannah) Georgia. The Reverend Benjamin Burroughs, pastor of The White Bluff Presbyterian Church, conducted the ceremony. Earlier records show that on Dec. 30, 1841, 1st. Lt. Samuel Elbert Muse, U.S.A., had married a Margaret Clark. This is the same S.E. Muse, named for his great, great grandfather, General Samuel Elbert, who married Jane.

Jane had two children by Mr. Muse. The first was Edward Stiles Muse, born in December, 1852. Edward Stiles Muse was to become the father of Stella Muse. The second child, Samuel Elbert Muse Jr. was born in 1853. This youngest child, Samuel Elbert, died of convulsions in 1856 at the age of three. (It also seems that S. E. Muse's son by his first marriage, A. E. Muse, died.)

Mr. Muse, died in 1854, and in July, 1857, and two years later, just four years before the start of the civil war, Jane married again to a Mr. John V. Barbee, also of Chatham County. Jane lived with him and her son Edward (Stiles) Muse in/near Jacksonville, Florida for a while. Apparently Jane became a Catholic and was baptized in Fernandina, Florida on September 21st. 1858 according to records of St. Augustine.

Because of the laws and customs of those days, ladies of wealth usually recorded a marriage settlement in order to keep control of their personal property. A settlement before marriage would let the bride have some say in the disposition of that property. If it were a second marriage, there might be property she wanted to keep intact for the children of the earlier marriage. Such settlements listed the property of the bride and in Jane's case, it was fairly lengthy and included two slaves, one named Harry and the other called Sister. Unfortunately, there was no mention of any heirlooms in this settlement. It did, however, include "all other property inherited by her from her father or other persons."

Jane married Mr. Thomas L. Hernandez, a harbor pilot, perhaps in 1865.* She lived with her son, Edward and his young daughter, Stella, and his two sons, Elbert and William in her home temporarily after Stella’s mother died in 1895. A William A. Hernandez, a Thomas L. Hernandez and Joanna Hernandez sponsored the baptisms of Edward Muse's younger children. (William had sponsored Elbert Muse's baptism in 1883).

Having inherited some wealth either from her parents or her marriage to Mr. Muse, as recorded in the marriage settlement described above, Mrs. Hernandez enjoyed giving and attending parties. According to Stella, invitations to these affairs were sometimes hand delivered by white-gloved liverymen driving handsome carriages and presented to the recipient on a silver tray. Stella especially remembered one big party that her grandmother gave when Stella was only twelve years old. It was winter, with crisp snow covering the ground, probably January of 1901. Stella, although confined to her room, heard and viewed the party from the upstairs balcony. She later wrote: "Grandmother went proudly down the stairway to greet her guests, her skirts swishing in that silken way I loved. It was so lovely in the evening, when tall candles burned - and lovely ladies wore gleaming jewels. They danced, and little silver slippers gleamed through the laces of their skirts."

Elbert Muse, Stella's brother, often wrote of their grandmother Hernandez in letters to Stella. In 1962, he wrote: "If everybody was blessed with Grandma's wisdom, there would be no problem about integration. I got quite a kick out of reading your comments about Grandma and her views about the wisdom of 'living and let live' and of course she was dead right in her attitude toward black men and their right to live with dignity. After these many years, I often wonder if we appreciated Grandma as we should have. Recalling many conversations I had with her like when Sherman's soldiers reached the sea: She said Savannah ladies met the trains bringing the Yanks into town, expecting to see devils complete with horns. Instead, what they saw touched their hearts and filled them with pity. The ladies wound up by taking many of the poor devils into their homes - dirty, ragged, half starved - and nursing them back to health. She told me many other things too and looking back through memory's files I can see shining brighter than ever the logic of much that she said and the rare judgment that colored all of her opinions. Measured by any yard-stick she was really a great lady."

Stella told this little story about life at her grandmother's home: One day Stella tripped and fell while going down the stairs. She wasn't badly hurt, but was extremely disappointed when her grandmother, instead of asking if she was all right, asked if she had broken a vase that was located on the staircase landing. Stella thought her grandmother should have been more concerned about her than the vase and never forgot this incident.

Jane Stiles Muse (Hernandez) had papers from Elbert (a former Georgia general and governor) as well as lockets containing paintings of Elbert and his wife Elizabeth (Betty) Rae which were painted at the time Elbert was in the British army (1775). She apparently acquired these from second husband S. E. Muse. Eventually, she gave the lockets to Stella and told her not to ever let them out of her possession. Stella was only in her teens at this time. (Mrs. Hernandez apparently had children by her marriage to Mr. Hernandez as well -- who were younger.) Samuel Elbert Muse was the father of Stella's father. S. E. Muse was also the great, great grandson of General Samuel Elbert. However, Stella, being very young at the time, apparently assumed that her grandmother was a direct descendant too when she told Stella that she (Stella) was related to Elbert.

In 1900, the Chatham County Georgia census indicated that Jane wasn't living with her husband, Thomas Hernandez. Mr. Hernandez, having been wounded while serving aboard the Ram, Atlanta, during the Civil war, had been receiving income from an indigent pension he had filed for in 1897. Mr. Hernandez died March 7th. 1903. Jane applied for his widow's pension in 1910, just a year before she died. At that time, she stated that she owned no property and was applying as the widow of Mr. Hernandez on his service record. Jane Stiles Muse Hernandez died a widow Nov. 8, 1911 at the Park View Sanitarium in Savannah, Georgia. Although the death certificate gives her age as 85, early census records indicate she was only 80. The cause of death was myocarditis which Jane had been diagnosed with about six months before. She was buried in lot 184 of Laurel Groves cemetery (North) in Savannah, Georgia. There are four other grave markers in that lot as follows: Edwin R. Hernandez and Laura Amanda (they were married Apr. 10, 1871), William A. Hernandez - 1962. A third marker is unreadable and the fourth has no name.

 
Notes
The Ending of Jane's Relationship With Barbee. Actually Barbee was still living in 1870 but without Jane. Jane and Hernandez were listed in a single household on the Savannah census. All three had lived as children in Savannah although Hernandez was originally from Fernandina Beach, Florida -- where Jane had been baptized a Catholic in 1858, about the time Jane married Barbee, and which is close to where Jane and Barbee seemed to have been running a lodging house on the 1860 census. Some names have not been properly transcribed however, and are thus not available with search engines. (Divorce was possible in the nineteenth century, particularly the late nineteenth century, particularly as it got toward the 1890's, but not so easy as today -- I'm told that when one was divorced, one needed a special clause to remarry. Barbee is no longer listed on the 1880 census, and I presume that he was dead, that would have freed Jane to marry Hernandez.)

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