Lee Roy Jefferson was born about August 30, 1896 in Bates, Arkansas in Scott County, Arkansas. His mother left the family and his father died when Lee Roy was quite young. Lee Roy's older sister Emma Catherine raised him. She married Claude Elmo Barnes in 1907. On the marriage certificate, Emma's last name is listed as Matthews, which sounds as if she had been married and widowed at a young age. They moved over the state line to Poteau, Oklahoma between 1910 and 1920, where Lee Roy worked at cotton gin owned by Claude Barnes.
Lee Roy married Nancy Bethel Patterson on October 18, 1924. They had three sons, Arnold, Milford and Wesley and two daughters, Colleen and Shirley. Coleen died when she was very young, but no one living remembers the date. Lee Roy and Bethel, as she was called, did not own land and moved around quite a lot. In the 1940's the family was living in Florida when Lee Roy and Bethel separated. In the 1950's, Lee Roy married a woman named Zora and they lived in Gilroy, California. They moved to Mulberry, Arkansas in the 1960's and went back to Lee Roy's home town of Poteau, Oklahoma in the 1970's. It was while Lee Roy was living there that he developed Non-Hodgkins lymphoma and died on May 30, 1976.
United States Social Security Pension Application
Le Flore County, Oklahoma Marriage Certificate
U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-Current
U. S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918
Oral Family History
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