(From Wayne County, Georgia, Its History and Its People, published by the Wayne County Friends of the Library, Jesup, Georgia, article submitted by Betty Martin, p. 301.)

William Absolum Pence and
Eliza Ann Hill Pence

About the turn of the twentieth century, there was a general exodus of people from the mountains of North Georgia to Wayne County. Most all of the families were related to each other or were good friends. Probably the first family migrated and wrote back home that there was an abundance of good, flat farming land, and no snow--and one by one the others came.

About 1922, William Absolum Pence and his wife Eliza Ann Hill Pence with the two children who were still at home, Ina and James C., followed their oldest daughter Bertie and her husband, Thomas F. Gates and their two children Clyde C. (married Willa Ward) and Buren (Mrs. Gordon Harris), south. The Gates owned a country store in the O'Quinn community, and were well-known in the county. The Pence's were soon joined by another daughter, Minnie and her husband, Richard Lattie and their children: Herman Osborne (married Ida Sheffield), Ella Lee Oborne, Allen Osborne (Grace Nichols), Quenton Osborne (married Christine Crawfore), Kermit Lattie, and Haydon Lattie (married Colleen Crawford).

Their older son, Edward, with his wife Lizzie Harper, and their two sons, Mayford and Hugh, moved to Akron, Ohio.

The remaining daughter, Opal, had married Frank Carter, and they and their two daughters, Elizabeth and Hilda (married James Ray Smith), lived in North Carolina until the 1940's when they moved to Wayne County.

Ina and her husband J. Frank Purvis had one daughter, Lorena (married Joe Davanti), and two sons, William (married Joan Mann) and Robert (married Betty Purvis).

James C. "Jim," lived in Akron, Ohio for many years, where he married Goldie Piper. They had one daughter, Sandra, in 1944. They moved to the Pence home place in Wayne County.

William Pence died in 1948, after he and his wife celebrated their 63rd wedding anniversary. Eliza Ann Pence died in 1957. They are buried at Liberty Cemetery.

Of their four daughters, three married men named "Frank" and three sons-in-law were railroad men.

Two granddaughters married sons of families who migrated. Ella Lee Osborne married Wayne L. Miller, and Elizabeth Carter married Robrt H. Martin.

Sixteen grandchildren, and a number of great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren survive, many of whom still reside in Wayne County.