Angelina Eberly, who took everything frontier life threw at her and kept coming back for more, died of natural causes at the Gulf Coast port of Indianola on Aug. 15, 1860.

On her 20th birthday in 1818, Angelina Belle Peyton married her first cousin Jonathan Peyton. Her choice of grooms, something that would be frowned upon nowadays, was a common practice two centuries ago and enabled the young bride to hold onto her maiden name.

Less than a month later, the newlyweds left their native Tennessee fo...