Lucenda Beach Largent lived from July 12, 1808 to Nov. 26, 1875.

Lucenda A. Beach married Archibald Largent (Thomas Largent’s father, George Washington Largent’s grandfather, Claude Christopher Largent’s great-grandfather) in North Carolina in April, 1825, when she was 17. Before Archibalds’s death in 1838, she bore five children: Thomas W., Idella Eveline, Mahala Caroline, Archibald, and John. Lucenda was born in North Carolina, and died in 1875 in Illinois, living in Bond County. The Bond County federal census for 1830 lists Archibald and Lucenda with one child, the firstborn Thomas. As Thomas was born in Tennessee in 1828, we can assume that Lucenda and Archibald had lived in Tennessee until recently, moving to Bond County, Illinois. Nothing is known of her parents.

In the 1850 federal census for Fayette County, Illinois, Lucenda (spelled Lucinda) was a 41-year-old widow owning real estate valued at $600. She had living in her family the following: Eveline Merryman, age 20, Caroline, age 17, Archibald, age 15, John, age 13, and James, age 1. Archibald is listed as a farmer. Caroline, Archibald and John attend school. Several interesting items about this census: First, Eveline is called Merryman, and there were two families living next to the Largents with the last name Merryman. Eveline was a widow, her first husband was Cayson Harris Merriman, who was born between 1825 and 1828 and died in his twenties in 1850. James, their son, was 1 year old, and living with Lucenda. Thomas, first born son of Archibald and Lucenda, and his wife Narcissa and child Nancy lived nearby on their own farm worth $150.

In the 1860 federal census, Lucenda lived in Vandalia, Fayette County Illinois, with Eveline and her new husband, James Thomas Davis. Eveline and Thomas were married Dec 18, 1852. Eveline was to die soon after, in 1861. Lucenda’s son Thomas would lived until 1887. Lucenda’s other daughter, Mahala Caroline, married William Stokes on Dec 12, 1855.

Lucenda was a significant landowner. The year that her husband died, 1838, the land office of Fayette. Illinois, issued her “the South half of Lott number two of the South west quarter of Section eighteen in Township Six North of the base line of Range one West of the third principal Meridian, in the District of Lands Subject to sale at Vandalia, Illinois, containing forty acres.”