Biography

When Alwilda Jackson married into the George Jett family, she was nineteen years old and George was thirty-five. It was a second marriage for both, but one that proved to last. Jett was a pioneering Black member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in eastern Kentucky and he must have shared with Alwilda what was meaningful to him about his faith. Four years after they married, Alwilda received baptism. She did so on the same day as her two step-daughters, Katie and Sarah. Alwilda went on to raise the two girls to adulthood and then care for George through his death and burial. She did it all during the height of segregation in the United States and as a member of the only Black Latter-day Saint family in their small Kentucky congregation.

Alwilda Jackson was born on 9 April 1886 to David Jackson and Sallie Strong in Jackson, Kentucky.[1] No evidence survives to offer insight into Alwilda’s youth but at age seventeen she married for the first time. Alwilda wed a twenty-one-year-old man named Cal Crawford on 25 August 1902. The newlyweds lived in Jackson, where they had both grown up and where Cal worked as a wagoner, hauling freight.[2] The marriage, however, did not last. Cal and Alwilda divorced and Alwilda then married George Jett, less than two years after her marriage to Cal.[3] George had two daughters from his previous marriage, Katie and Sarah, whom Alwilda helped raise to adulthood.[4]

When Alwilda first met George he was already a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He no doubt shared his faith with his new wife and his daughters and the three eventually decided to get baptized together, on the same day in 1909.[5] Alwilda was twenty-three, Katie was almost thirteen, and Sarah was just weeks away from turning eleven when they were baptized and confirmed members of the LDS Church. Elder Robert Esdras Bunker, a missionary from St. Thomas Nevada, baptized Alwilda and Elder Martin Anderson from Tocqueville, Utah confirmed her on the same day.[6]

Surviving sources offer few clues into Alwilda’s religious life thereafter. She is listed along with George as a member of the faith in a 1926 Church census record and it is clear that George remained connected to the local Latter-day Saint congregation through his death in 1939. It is not difficult to imagine that Alwilda remained by his side as a Latter-day Saint at least until then.[7]

Alwilda and George moved to Ravenna, in Estill County, also in eastern Kentucky in 1920. George worked as a boiler washer in a railway shop there and the couple settled into the segregated portion of town.[8] Census records consistently list Alwilda’s occupation as “none” up through the 1950 census which instead described her occupation as “housework,” an indication of the invisible labor that women performed.[9]

It is clear that Alwilda and George valued having extended family nearby and that they maintained a connection to Katie and Sarah as they became adults and married. Katie tragically passed away in 1927 from postoperative hemorrhaging following a surgical procedure on her gallbladder. Alwilda was present at Katie’s marriage just a few months prior to Katie’s death, and then served as the informant for Katie’s death certificate.[10] Following Katie’s death, Alwilda and George remained in Estill County, close to their other daughter, Sarah. In addition, Alwilda’s father, David Jackson, lived next to them before he died in 1933.[11]

Alwilda was 53 years old when George passed away in 1939.[12] The following year, she married Alex Tye, who worked as an office janitor for the railroad.[13] Soon after their marriage, Alwilda’s nephew, John Porter, moved in with the new couple.[14] Tragically, after only five years of marriage, Alex died on 22 February 1945, making Alwilda a widow once again.[15] She resided in Irvine, also in Estill County, presumably until the time of her death, the date of which is unknown.[16] Alwilda was buried in the Kings Branch Cemetery, where her father, David Jackson was also buried. Perhaps more poignantly, she was laid to rest next to George Jett, her husband of thirty-four years.[17]

By Serena Juhasz

With research assistance from Hannah Fowler

[1] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Kentucky (State), CR 375 8, box 3338, folder 1, image 192, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. One document suggests that Alwilda was born in 1888, but the preponderance of evidence indicates 1886.

[2] Kentucky Marriages, 1785-1979, Jackson, Breathitt County, Kentucky, Cal Crawford and Alwilda Jackson, 25 August 1902.

[3] Kentucky, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1783-1965, Breathitt County, George Jett and Alwilda Jackson, 15 June 1905; United States, Breathitt County, Kentucky, World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918, Cal Crawford, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.

[4] United States, 1910 Census, Kentucky, Breathitt County, Jackson.

[5] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Kentucky (State), CR 375 8, box 3337, folder 2, image 132, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.; "Sentiments in a Nutshell," Latter Day Saints Southern Star (Chattanooga, Tennessee), 3 December 1898, 2; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Kentucky (State), CR 375 8, box 3337, folder 2, image 132, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[6] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Kentucky (State), CR 375 8, box 3338, folder 1, image 192, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[7] “Jett,” Presiding Bishopric stake and mission census, 1914-1935, CR 4 311, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[8] Eric Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad workers and the Struggle for Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 44.; Blair L. M. Kelley, Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010); "Colored L. & N. Shopman Dies," The Estill Herald (Irvine, Kentucky) 3 August 1939, 2.

[9] United States, 1910 Census, Kentucky, Breathitt County, Jackson; United States, 1920 Census, Kentucky, , Estill County, Ravenna; United States, 1930 Census, Kentucky, Estill County, Irvine; United States, 1940 Census, Kentucky, Estill County, Irvine; United States, 1950 Census, Kentucky, Estill County, Irvine.

[10] Kentucky, State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Certificates of Death, File No. 3265, Registered No. 125, Katy Wright, Kentucky Department of Libraries and Frankfort, Franklin, Kentucky.

[11] United States, 1930 Census, Kentucky, Estill County, Irvine; United States, 1940 Census, Kentucky, Estill County, Irvine; United States, 1950 Census, Kentucky, Estill County, Irvine; United States, 1930 Census, Kentucky, Estill County, Irvine; Kentucky, State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Certificates of Death, File No. 18364, Registered District No. 447, David Jackson, Kentucky Department of Libraries and Frankfort, Franklin, Kentucky.

[12] Kentucky, State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Certificates of Death, File No. 17012, Registered No. 87, George Jett, Kentucky Department of Libraries and Frankfort, Franklin, Kentucky; Hypercirrhosis is a condition when cells in the liver are damaged and cannot be repaired. Scar tissue then is formed which can cause problems with blood flow and the proper function of the liver is limited. See Staff, Editorial, “Cirrhosis and Portal Hypertension,” familydoctor.org, November 13, 2023.

[13] "Marriage Licenses," The Winchester Sun (Winchester, Kentucky), 5 March 1940, 2.

[14] United States, 1940 Census, Kentucky, Estill County, Irvine.

[15] Kentucky, State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Certificates of Death, File No. 2940, Registered No. 21, Alex Tye, Kentucky Department of Libraries and Frankfort, Franklin, Kentucky.

[16] A previous researcher concluded that Alwilda died on 26 May 1959 but no record to date verifies that.

[17] Alwilda Jackson Jett, Findagrave.com.; David Jackson, Findagrave.com.

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