Sarah Julia Fagan is known for being the mother of the great jazz musician Billie Holiday. She was born in 1896 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, where she grew up to the age of nineteen years old.
Unfortunately, at the age of nineteen, she had to relocate to Philadelphia after being evicted from their home for being pregnant. Sarah’s siblings and mother are not known, but here is a brief history of her life.
Early Life
Sarah Julia Fegan was born in a black heritage family in an American country. She went to a public school in Baltimore girls in Maryland and fell in love with Clarence Holiday at fourteen years old.
Sarah became pregnant at nineteen after falling in love with her neighbor Clarence. Clarence and Sarah never married nor lived together when Sarah gave birth to her daughter Billie.
A short period after the birth of Billie, Clarence had to abandon his family for his love of being a guitarist and jazz banjo player.
Sarah being abandoned by her parents, she had to relocate to Philadelphia and made arrangements with her elder half-sister Eva Miller to take care of her daughter in Baltimore.
According to reports, Sarah Julia Fagan was the thirteenth family member and a black heritage American citizen out of seventeen family members.
Family, Profession, and Career
When Billie was a year old, Sarah married Philip Gough, but it ended in divorce when Billie was barely five years old. Life became tough after the divorce, and her daughter faced many challenges.
Billie started skipping school at the age of nine years for finding herself in trouble with African American girls. She later went back to school to continue with her studies, but she had faced many challenges at the age of ten, including being abused and brutalized.
When life became tough for Sarah Julia Fagan and her daughter Julia, they started working as prostitutes for five dollars. Sarah’s daughter was the youngest prostitute in town at fourteen years old.
In their job, the mother and daughter got arrested and had to be locked up for seven months.
Sarah Julia Fagan Children
Sarah Julia Fagan had only one daughter, famously known as Billie “Lady Day” Holiday, for her talent in jazz music, a talent she probably got from her father.
Despite the many challenges and tough life Billie went through in her early life, she rose to fame as an African American Jazz singer. Billie started her music in clubs at18 years old when John Hammond invited her to join their band after seeing her sing in a bar in Harlem.
Her international fame spread between 1935 to 1939, when she recorded music using Young’s piano. Billie also worked at a cafe Society where she met her husband, Jimmy Monroe, a narcotics dealer.
Jimmy Monroe introduced Billie to opium and heroin, making her an addict and singing sad tales. Many can agree that she became the goddess of terrible and sad songs later in her career.
