Baker Cousins

Martha (Mattie) Jane Baker (left) and Fannie Ellis Baker (right). They are cousins. Mattie was a sister of Civil War veteran James William Baker, and she married Joseph L. Hester in 1859. Fannie Ellis Baker (nee Baker) married James William Baker, her first cousin.

About this photograph, their granddaughter, Hannah Harrison Hankins Bills, daughter of Emily Ellis Baker Hankins (Emily was a sister of Fannie Ellis Baker) wrote, "The original photograph was taken when Fannie Ellis Baker finished her course at the Young Ladies' Finishing School at Richmond two or three years before the Civil War began, when her father, Alfred Moore Baker, drove to Richmond to bring her home. He took Aunt Mattie with him, and she and grandma had this picture taken."