If anyone can tell me how the subject of this article, Lewis A. Avant, fits into the Bibb County, Georgia AVANTs, I would greatly appreciate any information you may be willing to share. I am not related to this family, so I cannot offer any information in return. I am interested in the research, nonetheless. Thanks! [Email me]

The Macon Telegraph
10 May 1891

DECEIVED AND DESERTED
ANOTHER WIFE OF LEWIS AVANT INTERVIEWED
Told Her of His Bigamy After They Were Married -- The Consummate Scoundrel
Has Disappeared Again -- Where is He Now?

At different times newspapers have had much to say of the amatory
escapades and bigamistic marriage of one Avant, sometimes reported as C.
A. Avant and at others C. S. Avant, but correctly as Lewis A. Avant.

According to parties in Macon, where Avant resided a long time and where
his record up to a certain age is well known, he was born in Alabama, but
was raised in Bibb county, Ga.

When about 18 years of age he left his parents' roof and authority and
went to Houston county, Ga., where he married a respectable young girl of
that county, much against her father's will.

It was a runaway match, and the ceremony was performed with one of the
groom's feet resting on the earth and the other on the step of the buggy
containing the bride, both ready to fly in a moment if the ceremony was
interrupted by the apearance of the girl's friends.

With this first wife he lived until her death, which occurred very shortly afterward.

A SECOND MARRIAGE

He next married a Miss Copeland of Macon, also a respectable lady, aged
some 21 or 22 years. With her he lived till the first and only child of
this marriage was born, when he suddenly disappeared, leaving his wife and
her child to be cared for by her father.

For some time his movements were unknown, and the next thing heard of him
was the betraying of young Miss Delia Adair of Forest Station, who ran
away with him without the formality of any marriage license or marriage.
For this he was arrested in Birmingham, Ala., on an official telegram from
Atlanta. But the girl devotedly clung to her betrayer and stoutly
declared that she had not been deceived in anything, that she went with
Avant of her own free will, with her eyes wide open to all the
circumstances of the case. On this showing her broken-hearted but
sensitively honorable father declined to prosecute the matter, and the
girl returned to the care of her parents in Forest Station.

Avant then disappeared from Birmingham, and again was lost to view for
some time till, on Friday last, May 8, the TELEGRAPH published a special
telegram from Atlanta stating that a young woman had arrived in that city
who claimed to have been married to Avant in Memphis this last March.

THE OTHER VICTIM

Yesterday this last victim was seen in Macon by a TELEGRAPH reporter while
en route returning to her home, in Mississippi.

Despite the grief and mortification of her unhappy position which have
weighed heavily upon her, she is still a very handsome woman of 24 years.
She is a brunette of plump figure, rather below the average feminine
height, has raven black hair, and black eyes that, before they were dimmed
and dulled by sorrow, were very bright.

Although it is plain to see that she is past breaking down under her
burden of trouble her rounded cheeks still retain some of the bloom of
beauty and one time perfect health. A slight limp in her right foot was
explained to be caused by her shoes paining her feet, which are
unaccustomed to the solidity of city sidewalks, for she is a country girl.

With painful effort and suppresses sobs she gave the following account of
her courtship by Avant, her marriage to him and his subsequent abandonment:

"My name is Mrs. L. A. Avant, I was named Lizzie Freddy."

"Yes, I am a country-born and educated girl. My father is a farmer. We
lived on a farm two and one-half miles from Grenada, Miss. My brother
first met Mr. Avant at Europa, Miss., where Mr. Avant was selling patent
medicines. My brother has been for some time a traveling magician and
ventriloquist. Mr. Avant, who was known as Dr. Lonny Yellowstone,
employed my brother at a monthly salary of $160 to give free exhibitions
so as to draw a crowd and hold them while the doctor sold his medicines."

"Some time previous to this, when brother was showing on his own account,
I joined him and traveled out on the road with him."

"While Dr. Yellowstone, who claimed he was own cousin to Yellowstone Kit,
and my brother were at Europa, Miss., my brother, Joseph E. Freddy, sent
for me to join him at Europa, Miss., and I went there and stayed in the
family of some friends."

ON A MOONLIGHT NIGHT

"Dr. Yellowstone was stopping there too. On a Monday night at supper I
saw him for the first. I thought he was a nice looking man. Some time
after supper he asked me, thinking, I suppose, that I belonged to the
family, "Will you please show me which is my room." I told him I did not
belong to the house, but would call some member of the family to show him
his room. He then asked me to sit down, which I did, and he asked me if I
liked to read. I sais I did sometimes. He then handed me a book, "Rube
Burrows," at the same time begging my pardon for handing me such
literature, but said that most people would read such books anyhow. He
then asked me if I was single and I replied that I was, and he said "I,
too, and single."

That was Monday evening, next Saturday we met again in a parlor in
Meridian, Miss. He remarked it was nice weather, and it was nice weather
for it was December. In the course of conversation, I forget how it came
about but he said I never drink; I'm mild."

After that I did not see much of him, but he told my brother that he'd
like to get to talk to me in the parlor sometimes. I refused, but brother
said Dr. Yellowstone was a nice, sober man and said if I'd go in and talk
to the doctor, brother Joe would go in and talk to Miss Fanny, another
young lady there.

"Well, that evening the doctor made love to me. I didn't encourage him
much and so toward the close of the evening he passed a little slip of
paper to me on which he had written, "You don't seem to care for me, I
guess I'll forget you."

I found out the doctor carried a testament with him. He used to read it
every night, even after we were married. My brother said he was a nice
man. But when father came up to see us he said: "He looks like a nice
man, but I don't like him. He is one of these go-about medicine men and
for what we know may have a wife and children somewhere already."

ANOTHER MARRIAGE

Soon after this papa left us and went home to Grenada, Miss. I went on
to Memphis with brother. And finally I found I did like the doctor and I
told him I'd marry him. So we were married by a justice of the peace in
the court house at Memphis, December 9, 1890. I can't tell you the
justice's name because the doctor always kept the records himself.

On the floor standing up to be married of course I was somewhat agitated,
but I do remember hearing with astonishment the name Avant given, but I
did not hardly know what all that meant at the time.

After the ceremony when we went back to the hotel, I asked the doctor what
all that meant. He said his real name was Avant. I then asked him why he
had gone under the name of Yellowstone, and he said as he was own cousin
to Yellowstone Kit and selling Yellowstone's remedies he thought it best
for the sake of trade to call himself Dr. Yellowstone.

From her brother, who accompanied her, it was learned that when she found
she was abandoned penniless in Memphis, she became temporarily insane from
grief and had to be cared for by the police. He was at home in Grenada,
Miss., at the time, and received a dispatch from the chief of police of
Memphis, saying, "Your sister is here deserted, wild with grief, needs
your presence, come quick." He came and has faithfully sustained his
sister in her sore trial ever since.

Mr. Freddy said they were going home and had left their case in competent
hands to be settled lawfully.

OPEN CONFESSION

He told me another reason he changed his name was because he had stolen a
girl in Atlanta and carried her to Birmingham, Ala., but he paid out of it
there and went to Meridian, Miss., and changed his name. I asked him why
he had not married that girl. He said he told her he already had a wife
and children living. I said: "Why didn't you tell me you had a wife?" He
said: "I must tell you now; I have got a wife named Carrie Copeland in
Macon, but do not love her; I love you and only you, and I never intend to
live with my wife again." Then I nearly cried myself to death.

I saw I was betrayed and I made up my mind to bear all and make the best I
could out of what had happened.

He was never unkind to me; he was always kind and gentle. Finally I got
sick, very sick, and when I began to recover my hair was falling out and
he took me to a barber to have my hair cut to stop it from falling out. I
saw the barber was spoiling my hair and called out: "Oh, doctor, do come
here and stop him; he is spoiling all my hair."

"But he was gone and I have never seen him since," and here her sobs ended
the pitiful story."

NOT THIS AVANT

Mr. C. A. Avant, Clifford Anderson Avant, deputy United States marshal, is
very wroth that he should be mistaken for this man accused of bigamy. In
Macon he is too well known for such a suspicion to rest on him for a
moment, but out in the country where his duties often call him, the
similarity of name is embarrassing, thought the accused man's real
initials are L. A., and not C. A. He says firmly that he will use every
effort to have this other Avant, no kin to him, hunted down and handed
over to justice.

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