Jimmie Pindell

James Ann (Jimmie) Pindell was one of the Pearce daughters whose letters are collected in the Filson Historical Society’s Bodley Papers. She lived in Lexington at same time as George B. Kinkead, to whom she was also related.

Letter from Jimme (James Ann) Pindell to W. S. Bodley (her brother-in-law?) on April 9, 1850, from Lexington, reports: “Court is in session. Five negroes are being tried for the murder of young Lyon. The jury is hung. I am glad of it for the negroes were terribly tortured to make them confess. Mr. Bullock says that he would not allow such testimony to be produced in his court.” She later discloses that “the jury in the negro case has been discharged, eleven being for conviction and the twelfth for acquittal.”¹

On March 22, 1851, Pindell wrote to her sister Ellen (wife of William S. Bodley) to ask whether she had found “a white nurse” for their sister Eliza (wife of George B. Kinkead). She elaborated:

So soon as Mrs. Richard Pindell returns from N. Orleans, she will take Aunt Rhody, as she intends going to housekeeping. Alas but Eliza will never find another Aunt Rhody, as I will never find another Andrew. Tell him that all of his relations and fellow servants are well, and often ask me when I heard from him &c.²

Pindell later wrote to Bodley on November 25, 1853, to inquire “from Mr. Cassedy” whether the colonization society would pay for the passage of Andrew Ferguson’s sister to Liberia: “She has no money and her father is paying every cent he makes towards her purchase, Andrew bearing the chief part of the expense.”³

A few days later, Pindell apologizes that she did not invite the whole family to Christmas, but “I have had to give up this idea for domestic reasons.” The man servant who worked in her house:

will most probably leave us at that very time for we hire him from an old lady who is ill with paralysis and at her death he has to be sold and the woman who cleans chambers and washes is to be married, and leaves me. Even Mary Ann is talking about leaving me, for I have often told her that she might go to Liberia whenever she wished and Andrew’s going has put the notion with renewed force into her head. I will let her go if she wishes. Don’t speak of this, for it will make Matilda [Mary Ann’s daughter] feel badly, and it is not yet certain that her Mother will go. If Matilda were a boy she should go with her, but as it is, it will be cruel to expose her to neglect and want, for her Mother cannot live long after going to that country. Mary Ann was delighted to hear from Andrew that Matilda had cooked two dinners and says she hopes Miss Ellen [Bodley, Jimmie’s sister] will make her a good girl.⁴