A life, recovered
Sarah Ann Courtney Perry
Sarah, beside her own story
Reconstructed likeness · modern artistic interpretation. Appearance is interpretive; the voice and dialogue are dramatizations, not historical recordings.
Open still portrait ↗01
The Courtney and Perry household
Sarah Ann Courtney married James Whitehead Perry in Burleson County in 1857. She was the mother of James Daniel “J.D.” Perry and belongs to the direct line connecting Clayton with the Perry family’s Brazos-country generation.
Her surname brings the Courtney family into this history. The later westward family story began with households such as theirs, whose children carried more than a surname into the next place.
Sources: The Library at the End of the Highway · UNSUPERVISED* family register · Recovered family photograph register
Clayton’s fourth-great-grandparents James Whitehead Perry and Sarah Ann Courtney Perry. The date is estimated from their known lives, clothing and photographic format.
View the source record →02
A face preserved
A portrait attributed to Sarah survives beside one attributed to James. The family dates the pair approximately to the 1870s–1880s, while preserving the limits of that estimate.
The image offers a direct encounter with the person the family identifies as Sarah. It is kept with James’s portrait and with the marriage history, without claiming that the photograph supplies every detail of her life.
Sources: The Library at the End of the Highway · UNSUPERVISED* family register · Recovered family photograph register
Look a little closer
The photographs
hold more of the story.
Open any image to see the complete photograph. Captions name the people and places in each photograph.
The opening image and the photograph in the story are the available visual record for this profile.
Return to James Whitehead and Sarah Ann Courtney Perry ↑Continue through the archive
One life leads to another.
Behind this biography
Sources & further reading
These sources support the biography and its continuing research.
- The Library at the End of the Highway ↗
Clayton’s published family account of the Perry migration and James and Sarah’s portrait.
- UNSUPERVISED* family register ↗
Existing family record supplied and maintained by Clayton Hollingsworth; conclusions retain the stated evidence limits.
- Recovered family photograph register ↗
Photograph identifications and dates retain their stated family-memory or documentary status.
More from UNSUPERVISED*