Sarah Elizabeth Allsop
Sarah Elizabeth Allsop
Born: February 5, 1826 in Belper, Derbyshire Co., England
Married: February 7, 1850
Died: May 05, 1893 in Beecher City, Ill.
John Allsop, Along with his wife Mary, their six children and Julia Martin,
another young woman, emigrated as a family to America from Derbyshire, England,
in 1845. After living for two years in Washington D.C., they moved to Illinois
and established a farm on land that John Allsop had purchased in Effingham and
Shelby Counties. Sarah Elizabeth Allsop was the eldest of six children born in
England to John and Mary Slater Allsop. In the fall of 1848, John Sturgeon of
Shelby County, Stated in the presence of Sarah's younger Brother and others,
that she and her sister were "Whores" and adulterers. Eleven months later, on
October 23, 1849, Sarah Allsop, as an unmarried adult woman retained Shelbyville
attorney Anthony Thornton and Coles County
attorney Usher F. Linder and filed suite against Sturgeon for slander.
In December of 1849, John Sturgeon hired Orlando B. Friklin, a Charleston,
Illinois, attorney as his counsel. Friklin sought the assistance of fellow
circuit attorney Abraham Lincoln for the appearance of the case at the May 1850
term of the Shelby County Circuit Court.
Before the case went to court, Sarah met and married
Thomas Douthitt Tennery,
who automatically became part of the suit by virtue of his marriage. When the
case went to trail, Sturgeon was found guilty of libel and ordered to pay $500.
Lincoln appealed that verdict and lost again.
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| Sarah Elizabeth Allsop | Tennery family group photo. |
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