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CHAPTER XVI.
THE SECOND MARRIAGE.
Annie Belle, the first child born to John Shofner after his marriage to Mrs. Isabella Beavers, was born on April 26, 1852, and lived to young womanhood near the place of her birth. At the age of twenty-one years she married Alexander E. Coleman, and continued to live in the Shofner community until after the birth of her first child, Paul Shofner Coleman, who was born June 29, 1877.
Soon after this the husband and wife moved to West Tennessee, where the young husband was stricken with fever and only lived to get home to die. This was August 31, 1880; and he died at the home of his wife?s mother, who had married William Wilhoit after the death of her second husband, John Shofner.
In the meantime, on November 11, 1879, a second child was born to Alexander E. and Annie Belle Coleman?a daughter, Pierre Allen. After the husband?s death, the wife began the struggle to rear the two children left to her care. While not left entirely without means, the young mother of twenty-six years realized that it had fallen to her lot alone to rear these two babes; and ambitious and ever alert for their welfare and comfort, she never ? ate the bread of idleness,? but was ever up and doing, always adding to the means left her, until the panic of 1893, when all was lost. Then