Minnie Pearl

The character of Minnie Pearl was beloved as a simple country bumpkin whose corny humor suggested a ditzy but harmless brain. Her alter ego Sarah Ophelia Cannon was a refined Christian bluestocking. Somehow these two polar opposites existed simultaneously for years and years, and in the later part of their lives merged into one well-round flesh and blood institution.As a child the girl who would be come Minnie Pearl had an atypical life for her time and local. Born the youngest of five daughters to a college-educated mother and successful businessman father, little Sarah Cannon grew up in an upper middle-class world complete with servants in small town Tennessee. As a child she vividly recalled the arrest of a black suspect accused of raping a white woman. When rumor spread that an unruly crowd of vigilantes was planning to break him out of jail and lynch him, she remembered her father and a handful of other men confronting and dispersing the vengeful mob despite her mother's fears that he might be injured or killed himself. When writing the book nearly six decades later, she said that she no longer remembered the trial or if the suspect was found guilty or innocent; however, her family's loving pride in her father's heroic actions were fresh in her mind.Sarah Caldwell's marriage to Henry Cannon was far from the standard show biz union-she died just shy of their golden anniversary, and she wrote clearly of her belief in the sacredness of marriage. Married in their mid-thirties, the Caldwell's never had children which was an obvious disappointment, but they believed and accepted that childlessness was God's plan for them. Despite never becoming parents themselves, the humor of Minnie Pearl remained family friendly until her death. Her father, who only lived to see the early day's of his daughter's alter ego, had fortuitously advised her that she would make a fortune.