Interesting Visit

[Susan Higginbotham]

I think we should remember that Headley was writing forty years after the events in question. when everyone's memories had had a chance to get hazy. Maybe the surviving raiders he spoke with simply were confused as to Sarah's background and movements. Or, as I suspect and as I said earlier, maybe the former prisoners were simply conflating their memories of two ladies: Sarah, and an unnamed Kentucky widow who visited the men in prison.

I think James Hall put it best, when he writes of Headley's account of the young widow, "The story he got has the earmarks of mixed events dredged up from failing memories."

I don't think it's impossible that the photograph is of Sarah, but I think it could just as easily be of someone else.