The Divided Line: David & Rhoda Pennington, A Cousin Marriage and a Forgotten Daughter

In the quiet hills of Lawrence County, Tennessee, on January 6, 1848, David Newton Pennington married his first cousin, Rhoda L. Pennington, sealing a union that was both deeply rooted in family and destined for early heartache.

🧬 A Cousin Bond and Brief Marriage

Rhoda, born in 1833, was the daughter of David Pennington (1796–1868) and Elizabeth Kirk (1802–1870). Her husband David Newton Pennington, born in 1829, was the son of Isaac Pennington (1775–1838) and Elizabeth Wilkes (1800–1860). The two shared common grandparents, making them first cousins — a practice not uncommon at the time, especially in tight-knit frontier families where family ties often doubled as property, faith, and survival networks.

Rhoda and David’s marriage was short-lived but marked by two children: Farinda, born in 1849, and Elizabeth B. Pennington, born in 1854. Just one year later, Rhoda passed away at the age of 22. Her death, though largely undocumented in cause, became a turning point for the young family.

🧭 A Family Splits

After Rhoda's passing, David Newton began a new life. He moved westward to Arkansas, where he remarried in 1857 to Matilda Clingan and built a large second family. On the 1860 Arkansas census, he appears with Matilda, their first children together, and his eldest daughter Farinda from his first marriage.

But Elizabeth, just a child at the time, did not make the journey with them. Instead, she remained in Tennessee, appearing on the 1860 census in the household of her maternal grandparents, David and Elizabeth (Kirk) Pennington — seemingly forgotten or left behind as her father started anew.

This “vanishing” from the Pennington family line — and eventual rediscovery through census records and death certificates — is what led to her omission from later genealogical accounts. Her story, once overlooked, is now central to the lineage explored here.

⚔️ A Soldier, Farmer, and Methodist Deacon

David Newton Pennington’s second life in Arkansas was one of complexity and transformation. In 1862, he enlisted in the Confederate Army, serving three years in Captain Green’s Company, which later became Company H of the Arkansas 37th Infantry Regiment. After the war, he returned to farming, raising cotton and corn in Clark County, Arkansas by the mid-1880s.

Later in life, he was ordained a deacon in the Methodist Church in 1884, and though dismissed by letter from New Hope Methodist Church in 1889, his religious involvement is documented as part of his legacy.

David died in 1912 in Garland County, Arkansas, after raising at least eleven children between his two marriages — a patriarch of two family branches: one rooted in Tennessee, and one grown in Arkansas.

🌿 A Divided Legacy

The marriage of David and Rhoda Pennington represents a fork in the family tree — one branch moving forward visibly through the Penningtons of Arkansas, the other quietly surviving in Tennessee through Elizabeth, whose early placement in her grandparents’ home almost severed her line from the larger record.

But through research and rediscovery, her story — and the story of her parents — now has its place.

Details about David Newton Pennington’s life in Arkansas, including his military service, farming, and religious roles, are drawn in part from the compiled family history:

“The Descendants of David Newton Pennington and Matilda Clingan”
Prepared by Michael Thomas Pennington
(Available in full via FamilySearch)

This document was originally compiled for a family reunion and integrates records from multiple Pennington researchers. While it omitted David’s daughter Elizabeth from his first marriage, her story is now documented and restored here through independent research.