My great-grandmother on my mother’s side of the family.
The daughter of Eli Desmore Sargent who eloped to marry Leon Clipper.
Camilla Boyd Sargent was sixteen and Leon was eighteen years old at the time.
Camilla’s father, Eli left a farm in Upper State New York to each of his children including all of his daughters, but farming did not come easy for Leon and so he went on and became a traveling salesperson.
Their eldest daughter was my grandmother, Noni (Ethel). My grandmother spent a considerable amount of time in the South and played with black children until she was a teenager.
When sales fell off and the great depression hit America, Leon and Camilla returned to their farm in New York. But in the late 1920’s a fire burned down their main residence.
My mother and my aunt, along with their first cousin Jack, spent several summers with Leon and Camilla Sargent at the farm in upper State New York.