Sallie Liddell circa 1870

Sarah Catherine Duncan Liddell (Sallie) is buried beside her husband, Moses Frank Liddell (M.F.) at Sweetwater Chapel Cemetery on Pleasant Hill Road.  They were married in 1870.  Sarah Catherine Duncan Liddell’s birth date of April 5, 1851 is carved on the monument that she provided for the cemetery plot. She was known in the Liddell family as Granny Liddell.  

By many accounts she was a formidable, strong-willed woman who kept the family farm not only intact in economic hard times, but added considerable acreage to it after her marriage into the Liddell family.  William Liddell, the great grandfather of her new husband, had settled on former Native American land in the newly-formed Gwinnett County. As a Revolutionary War veteran, he had received acreage after the Land Lottery of 1818.

Sallie Duncan married into the Liddell family, who were living in a farmhouse of hand-hewn logs built sometime around 1840. This house was situated near Bromolow Creek, a tributary of Beaver Ruin Creek, and present-day West Liddell Road. She brought Duncan family land from inheritance and purchase into the Liddell land holdings. This added property was called the Upper Place and lay between Norcross and Duluth in the Pittman Circle community.  The land was bordered by the 1857 easement for the Georgia Airline Railroad, which was established as the Southern Railroad in 1870. The community and trading center known as Howell’s Crossroads was renamed Duluth after the tracks were completed. The tracks bordered the original Duncan family property; it was bisected by a road that would become US Highway 23, now commonly known as Buford Highway.  

She was a widow for twenty-four years after her husband, Moses Frank Liddell, died in 1910. Through the economic hardships of the late nineteenth century with its declining crop prices, the devastation of the boll-weevil infestation on cotton prices, a world war, and the Great Depression of 1929-1934, she employed her financial means and leadership to aid the family. She raised two young sons, one of whom (Thomas Emmett Liddell born in 1880) left the farm for for a financial career with Standard Oil. After several years he became Secretary of Standard Oil in the Atlanta office of the company. She also provided care for extended family: her parents-in-law (Thomas Haney Liddell and Margaret Elizabeth Collier Liddell). She cared for the elderly parents-in-law in the family home until they died in 1903 and 1904.

After 1903, she was left with a thirteen-year-old son (Daniel Meredith Liddell born in 1890) to help manage a 500+ acre agricultural farm.  The farm provided housing and life necessities to numerous white and African-American sharecroppers and their families.  Some of the sharecroppers were the descendants of enslaved people. She and her younger son managed the business affairs of this complex enterprise.  

An often-told story is that she “commanded” her younger son to find a wife by courting a young woman and cousin, Nellie Mae Mills, who lived on a neighboring farm.  Just nineteen years old, he would drive a shiny black surrey at high speed over the dirt roads in the countryside.  

The young  cousin was fourteen years old (born 9/14/1895).  Though young even for those times,  she had been vetted by the matriarch and deemed to have the leadership qualities necessary to help manage the farm.  Nellie Mae and Daniel Meredith were married September 25, 1910.  Two weeks later she was fifteen and helping manage a large farm.  

Years later, Moses Frank Liddell and Charlotte Liddell Green remembered family tales from Granny Liddell, the matriarch. These stories inspired awe in them. They repeated her remembrances and shared them with younger generations.  The tales told of Union raiding parties that stripped the Liddell farm of food supplies and items of value during the 1864 Battle of Atlanta.

Paper currency was virtually valueless during the siege of nearby Atlanta and the few silver and gold coins had been buried or concealed in hiding places. Preserved meats that were salted and smoked were tied by rope and launched into the tops of sapling trees.  The family survived and recovered in the later decades after the war.  Sarah Catherine further provided for the Liddell family in the ensuing generations.  

Having significantly increased Liddell landholdings, the matriarch provided financial security for the Liddells.  Three of her grandchildren and eight of her great-grandchildren lived in homes and had businesses on the acquired Duncan land beginning in the 1950’s.

The late 1950s saw the remarkably successful expansion of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System.  A little over two decades after the matriarch’s death, land rights-of-way were negotiated and surveyed with financial compensation to landowners.  The Liddell farm would be bisected by the vast new expressway system.  The farming enterprise would cease to exist.

Sarah Catherine Duncan Liddell died May 6, 1934, but no one had her death date carved upon her cemetery monument.  The matriarch’s death date was forgotten. Seventy-one years later, her great-grandson, Michael Perry Green, believed this oversight should be corrected.  Although he did not know her in her lifetime, he decided to have the monument finished with the accurate death date.  

He was supported and aided in family research by his wife, Mary Donley Green.  Their sons have assisted in this effort.  Sarah Catherine Duncan Liddell’s great-great grandsons, William Donley Green and Evan Michael Green, are the eighth generation of the Liddell family living in Gwinnett County. Evan Michael Green and Sarah Plancon Green have a daughter and son (Charlotte Jayne Green and Cooper Michael Green) who are the ninth generation of the family residing in Gwinnett County.

Michael Perry Green

September 2025

Michael Perry Green and Nellie Mae Mills Liddell

Gwinnett Daily News c.1980

Thomas Haney Liddell c.1870

Sarah Catherine Duncan Liddell c.1870

Surrey c.1890

Daniel Meredith Liddell c.1955

Liddell House c.1950

Sarah Catherine Duncan Liddell seated in the garden of the 1840 house with Nellie Mae Mills Liddell and five of her grandchildren. C. 1926

Thomas Haney and Margaret Elizabeth Collier Liddell with granddaughter Susie Gertrude Liddell at 1840 Liddell house. c.1903

Daniel Meredith Liddell and Nellie Mae Mills Liddell at new house c. 1960

Liddell monument at Sweetwater Memorial Chapel Cemetery, June 11, 2025