Beginnings

      James H. Waters and Sallie Sexton married Valentine's Day in 1900,  and in 1901, the couple had a son.  They named him Basil Egbert.  Nancy Belle was born on November 25th, 1902, though some sources date her birth year as 1903.  Gotta love the records from those years.  Basil was sometimes Baswell,  Sallie was sometimes Sarah, Waters was Watters,  and, of course, then we have Belle/Bell. 

     The family stories say that James was a circuit judge when "circuit" actually meant that he travelled to perform his tasks.  He was gone when Sallie went into early labor with their daughter.  She delivered the baby alone.  Soon after the birth, little Egbert fell into the creek so the new mother rescued him.  When Sallie's mother, Nancy V. Phillips, came to check, she found Sallie gravely ill.  James returned to find his young wife either dead or near death.  Sallie died December 3rd, 1902 (or '03).
     Letcher Sexton,  recalled in his oral history of the Sexton family that:

     "Dad’s sister, SALLY, born September 25, 1877, the sixth child in the CHRIS SEXTON family,  married February 14, 1900 to JAMES WATTERS. The had two children, BASWELL and NANCY WATTERS. And she died at Helenwood, Tennessee, December 9, 1923  Soon after, JAMES WATTERS left BASWELL and NANCY with Grandma and Aunt WINNIE and AMANDA, who never married, to raise these children. " (LETCHER SEXTON  was recorded by his sister EDRIE HUFF in January 1979 and his account was later transcribed and printed in the Scott County Historical Society Newsletter)       

      The account gave a few erroneous facts.  Scott County, Tennessee records Sallie's death as December 3rd and she definitely did not die in 1923 because then the "children" would have been 21 and 22!  However, he is right in one key piece of information:  James did bring the children to be raised by their grandmother and maiden aunts Winnie and Amanda Sexton.