Rockvale, Rutherford Co.

Mary Portis Ransom was the seventh of eight children born to Athelston Ransom and Elizabeth N. Clark. Mary’s father was a farmer in the Versailles area of Rutherford County. In 1870 Mary wed her cousin Fountain Pitts Love of Gibson County. After their marriage they lived with Mary’s mother in the Ransom home which still stands on Highway 99 near the Rockvale Consolidated School. The Love family had six children, four of whom survived to adulthood. Mary died in 1885. Both Mary and her husband are buried in the Love Cemetery in Rutherford County.

The Portis family lived near the Seay family. Mary Ann Seay’s sampler of c. 1850 (TSS 137) features the same distinctive checkerboard basket and a similar border. Mary Portis was related by marriage to Nancy Lavonia Jordan (TSS 231), who worked her sampler in 1846.