Morristown, March 4 – A singular circumstance recently came to light at Ball’s Point, in Grainger County, this state.

Mrs. Elizabeth Singleton, who was supposed to have been kidnapped during the war, when she was too young to remember much about it and did not know for certain her name and did not even know whether she had a relative living in the world, has lately found out who she was and what her name was and from whence she came. She was only about three years old when she was taken and over her lonely and sad condition she had shed many tears.

A few weeks since she related her history and life to the pastor of her church and he had so much sympathy for her that he concluded to try and remove the mystery surrounding her sad life. By publishing an account of it in a newspaper. Fortunately a lady in Scott County, Mississippi, saw the article and knowing something of the circumstances, she wrote to Mrs. Singleton informing her that her real name was Livingston and that her father was still alive and doing well in Mississippi.

It seems that her father was a soldier in the war and that in his absence from home, his wife took up with another man and ran off with him, giving her two small children to a Mrs. Leo, who brought them to Indiana and then to Kentucky and from there to Tennessee, where this one, Mrs. Singleton found a good home with the family of Mr. Thos Jarnagin at Tate Springs, her sister having died in Kentucky.

When she was grown she married a respectable young man, who died shortly after, leaving her a widow with three children. Her father afterwards was married again and did not know that his children, either of them were living or what had ever became of them.

Who can tell what joy there was when she found that her father was living and that she had received a letter from him and what an effecting scene was witnessed in the church a few days since, when she came up and informed her pastor with tears in her eyes that she had been successful in finding her long lost father.

Knoxville Daily Tribune — Saturday, March 5, 1892

Transcribed by Robert McGinnis and used by permission.