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annie adkins dobbins

1881-1919

Life Story

Early Life and Family

Annie Adkins was born in June 1881 in Newton County, Mississippi, to George Adkins and Sallie Thompson Adkins. She grew up in Beat 4, within a large and industrious farming household rooted in the Lawrence community.

The 1900 U.S. Census records Annie (listed as Amie Adkins) at age 18, living at home with her parents and eleven siblings. At that time, her father George was a farmer who owned his land (though mortgaged), and Annie was already contributing to the family economy as a farm laborer.

Unlike many rural Black women of her generation, Annie had formal schooling. The 1900 census notes that she attended school for four months that year and was able to read and write—a significant achievement in post-Reconstruction Mississippi.

Her known siblings included:

Annie was among the eldest children, part of what might be called the “bridge generation”—born after Emancipation but raised during the tightening restrictions of the Jim Crow era.

Marriage and Adult Life

Sometime after 1900, Annie married John Dobbins, a laborer employed in the sawmill industry. The couple resided in Newton, Mississippi, where John worked as a mill laborer.

Together they built a family during the early twentieth century. Their known children were:

  • George Dobbins (b. 1906)
  • Sallie Dobbins (b. 1908)
  • Flossy Dobbins (b. 1910)
  • Arthur Dobbins (b. 1910)
  • C. P. Dobbins (b. 1916)
  • Ydeosa Dobbins (b. 1918)

By 1918, Annie was the mother of six young children, the youngest still an infant.

The Dobbins household remained closely connected to Annie’s extended family. Her brother Thomas Adkins, Jr., who lived in nearby Lawrence, would later serve as informant on both Annie’s and John’s death certificates—evidence of the strong sibling ties that defined the Adkins family.

The Influenza Pandemic of 1918–1919

The winter of 1919 brought devastating loss to the Dobbins family during the height of the global influenza pandemic.

Annie became ill with influenza, which progressed to pneumonia and was complicated by nephritis (kidney inflammation). According to her Mississippi death certificate, she died at approximately 11:00 p.m. on January 12, 1919, at about 40 years of age.

In a heartbreaking turn of events, her husband John succumbed to the same combination of illnesses just 26 hours later, in the early morning hours of January 14, 1919. Both death certificates list influenza and pneumonia as primary causes.

Within two days, six children lost both parents.

The influenza pandemic struck rural communities with particular severity, where medical resources were limited and households were large and interdependent. The Dobbins family became one of many Mississippi families permanently altered by that winter.

The Children After 1919

By the 1920 U.S. Census, the orphaned Dobbins children were in the care of Annie’s sister, Emma Adkins Wash. Emma assumed responsibility for raising her nieces and nephews, ensuring they remained within the Adkins family network.

This act of guardianship reflects a longstanding tradition within Black Southern families: when tragedy struck, kinship networks absorbed the shock. Extended family stepped forward, preserving stability where possible.

The presence of the children in Emma’s household in 1920 stands as quiet testimony to familial resilience in the face of catastrophic loss.

Burial and Community

Annie and John Dobbins were both laid to rest at Union Chapel United Methodist Church graveyard in the Lawrence community of Newton County.

The undertaker listed on the certificates was Samuel Whitehead, a name deeply connected to the Lawrence community and its burial traditions.

Annie’s death certificate lists her brother Thomas Adkins as informant, underscoring the close-knit nature of the family during moments of crisis.

Legacy

Annie Adkins Dobbins lived during a period of tremendous historical transition:

  • Born just sixteen years after the Civil War
  • Raised in the tightening climate of Jim Crow Mississippi
  • Literate in a generation where education was hard-won
  • Mother of six children in a rural working-class household
  • Married into the working-class timber economy
  • Taken by one of the deadliest pandemics in modern history

Her story is not only a family record—it is a window into rural Black life in Newton County at the turn of the twentieth century.

Her death left six children orphaned, but not abandoned. Through her sister Emma and the extended Adkins family, her legacy continued.

Annie’s life, though cut short, remains permanently inscribed in the records of Union Chapel and in the survival of the Dobbins children who carried her lineage forward.

Resting Place

Union Chapel United Methodist Church Graveyard

Photos/Albums

Annie Atkins Dobbins

Sources

  • 1900 Federal Census
  • U.S., Find a Grave® Index, 1600s-Current
  • Mississippi, U.S., Index to Deaths, 1912-1943

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