Lula Victoria Boyd/Rollins

[Steven Weaver]

Does anyone have further information about Lula Victoria Boyd/
Rollins? She was born on 29 September 1876 in Chatham Co., married
Cornelius S. Womble on 13 March 1898 in Durham Co., and died on 20 May
1937 in Durham Co. She is buried at Woodlawn Memorial Park.

Her death certificate lists her parents as Murphy Boyd and Louise
[Louanna] Rollins so one would expect her maiden name to be Boyd.
However: (1) She was born in 1876; (2) Murphy Boyd’s first wife, Mary
Lee Womack, died in 1877; (3) Murphy Boyd did not marry Louanna
Rollins until 1878; (4) Victoria Rollins appears as a 3-year-old
granddaughter in Robert Rollins’ household in 1880; (5) No license for
her marriage to Cornelius S. Womble appears to exist but on the
marriage register her maiden name is given Rollins, not Boyd.

What to make of this? (1) Robert Rollins’ 1860 and 1870 census
households do not include a daughter named Louise; (2) I have wondered
whether Victoria was actually a daughter of Murphy Boyd by his first
wife, Mary Lee Womack, and she listed her stepmother Louanna as her
mother; this would not explain, however, why her maiden name is listed
as Rollins in the 1880 census and 1898 marriage register; (3) Is it
possible that Victoria was an illegitimate daughter of Louanna (hence
the maiden name Rollins instead of Boyd) prior to her marriage to
Murphy Boyd, in which event possibly Murphy Boyd was not actually her
biological father at all but instead her stepfather?; (4) For this
matter, it is known that Louanna’s sister Sarah had several
illegitimate children. Sarah would have been of childbearing age
(barely) in 1876. Perhaps Victoria was one of them (which would
explain her appearance in Robert Rollins’ 1880 household and her
maiden name of Rollins) and at some point after Louanna’s marriage she
and Murphy Boyd took her in and raised her? One really wishes at this
point that the 1890 census was existent.

Can anyone shed further light on Victoria? Thanks!