Jeptha was my great-grandfather; his daughter Bessie Lou Oliver Strickland was my grandmother and her daughter Willie Fay Strickland Fogleman was my mother. According to family yore, Jeptha was murdered. He had left home to seek out a person who had borrowed money from him and never returned. His body was found near a railroad track in February 1921 and the family believed that he was murdered by the person who had borrowed the money. I have been unable to find records that might have recorded the crime and hope someone else can come up with something more definitive.
