Amanda Lackey Kitchell was born in LaMotte Township on the prairie north of Palestine, Illinois. She was the first of three daughters of Thomas Lackey (1824-1903) and Ann Eliza (Boatright) Lackey (1835-1863). Her mother died when Amanda was not quite nine years old. Her father remarried and the step-mother seemed to pay much more attention to her own blood children than the three young sisters (according to Amanda and her sisters). Around 1858 Abraham Lincoln came to Palestine to visit his friend Wickliff Kitchell who eventually was Attorney General in Illinois. While politicking, the candidates had children around (looking friendly) and Amanda was pulled up onto Lincoln's knee while he was sitting on the Kitchell's porch talking to others in the yard. When asked what she remembered, she could only remember sitting on his knee and his leg felt "boney". She remembered nothing about the speeches or what Abe looked like except he was skinny and wore a tall hat. On 20 Oct 1875 she married Richard Harvey Kitchell (1854-1885) in the Presbyterian Church in Palestine. They lived at 401 South Main Street in Palestine in the old Kitchell home built by his grandfather. This union produced two daughters: Lena and Ola, born 18 months apart in 1876 and 1877. In August of 1885 she became a widow and after that she ran a boarding house for railroad workers who needed a place to stay on the turn around for runs on the Illinois Central Railroad. She did tailoring for others and made magnificent needlework such as quilting, Battenburg lace and intricate embroidery with layers of shaded colors that in the 21st Century would be called thread painting. These won many prizes at the county and state fairs. She was a marvelous story teller and often entertained her great grandchildren, the Taylor sisters. In her later years she lived with her widowed sister, May Jennings, after Amanda was nearly blind but still quilting, and they both were taken care of by a couple, George and Sadie Bowling, who lived in the other side of a duplex house at 203 South Pike Street. May died in the summer of 1948 and Amanda died in the spring of 1949.
SIDE NOTE: Amanda had a short second marriage to Thomas Jefferson Pifer from Sep 1892 to Mar 1898 as his second of three wives. This marriage ended with a separation of over a year before a very nasty divorce in 1898. She took back the KITCHELL surname.