Troup Andrew Bryan was born in 1828 in Houston County, Georgia, the second child of James A. and Catharine H. Bryan. His father was twenty-seven years old at his birth; his mother, twenty-five. He grew up on the plantation with nine siblings across the next nineteen years.

When James A. Bryan died in March 1847, Troup was not at home. He was eighteen years old and living in LaGrange, Troup County — the county named for the Georgia governor who had governed during the Creek removal a decade before. His account at Geo. S. Eaton in LaGrange ran to gloves, cash loans, shoes, and rubber shoes — $16.65, settled by his brother Robert in November 1847. A third account covered his travel from LaGrange to Houston County — $4.64 — suggesting he came home when the news reached him.

Troup married Frances E. Baskin on October 10, 1850, in Houston County, Georgia. She was the daughter of Robert W. Baskin, a neighbor who appears in the Bryan estate returns as a livestock seller across several years — a commercial relationship that preceded the marriage and continued after it.

Lenorah was a wedding present. Two and a half months after the ceremony, on December 30, 1850, Robert W. Baskin executed an indenture conveying to Troup, in trust for Frances and her children, a Negro girl named Lenorah — about thirteen or fourteen years of age, four feet eight or ten inches high, dark complexion. The stated consideration was five dollars and the natural love and affection which Baskin bore his daughter. The document was recorded in Houston County on June 14, 1851.

Troup and Frances had four children during their marriage. He died in 1861 at thirty-three. Frances was left a widow with four children and Lenorah, whose fate after 1861 is not recorded in any document in this archive.

Troup appears in the estate of James A. Bryan at intervals across fourteen years, never at its center. In 1850 the returns record him as overseer at $150 — working the plantation his brother Robert administered. In November 1852 he received $102.13 from the estate: six brood sows, seventeen shoats, and his share of a land sale in the 5th District. He signed his own receipt. In 1853 he traveled to Lee County to attend the sale of estate land in the 14th District and received $19.01 plus $2.25 in traveling expenses, signing again. In April 1854 the ledger records $12.00 for cutting — timber work on a land parcel.

After 1854 his name does not appear in any return. He had moved to Lowndes County, in the far south of Georgia, with Frances and their children. The estate continued without him. The cotton went to Macon. The ledger moved on.

In May 1861 his mother Catharine died. He had been away from Houston County for years. The estate bought two black bonnets on May 10 and a metallic coffin on May 11. Whether Troup came home for her burial is not recorded.

On June 14, 1861 — thirty-four days after his mother's death — Troup enlisted in the Confederate Army. He mustered at Georgia as a Sergeant in Company I, 12th Georgia Infantry, with a residence listed as Lowndes County. He was thirty-three years old.

The 12th Georgia Infantry mustered in June 1861 and moved to western Virginia, where Confederate forces under General Robert E. Lee were massing in the Alleghany Mountains. The campaign that summer was fought against weather, terrain, and disease as much as against Union forces. Typhoid, dysentery, and measles moved through the encampments. Troup was mustered out on September 26, 1861 — the designation used when a soldier died in service. He had been in Virginia 104 days.

He did not see combat. The record closes at Alleghany.

Troup A. A. Bryan died September 26, 1861, at Alleghany, Virginia. He was thirty-three years old. His mother had died four months and fifteen days before him. The Roster of Confederate Soldiers of Georgia records him as mustered out at Alleghany — the designation used when a soldier died in service. He is not among the distributees named when the estate finally closed in April 1866. The distribution narrative records only that he died in Virginia in September 1861.

His middle initials vary across the documents — A.E. in the Houston County indenture, A.A. in the Confederate roster. The discrepancy is in the record and is left there.

No grave marker has been located. No obituary appears in the Houston County papers in this archive. Four children and a widow in Lowndes County are what remain of his time.