Sarah Fitzgerald

Little is known about Sarah Fitzgerald’s early life, including how she met Charlie.

Fifteen years his junior, Sarah would have been about twenty years old when they arrived.  It is likely that they first knew each other in Greenville, South Carolina.

There is some evidence that Charlie’s family moved about an hour and a half from his birthplace in Toccoa, Georgia, to Greenville when he was growing up and that he held some of his first jobs there.  

Sarah’s brief obituary printed in the program from her funeral says that she was born about an hour and a half in the other direction from Greenville in York, South Carolina.  The only parent mentioned is her mother, Lizzie Smith.  

Alongside Charlie, Sarah ran the family’s businesses and was deeply connected to the community and entertainers who frequented their club.

One local claimed she helped raise a young Little Richard.

Though she had no known biological children, Sarah adopted a son, Nathaniel “Bunny” Dewitt Rucker, named after both his birth parents—Allene Dewitt and Lucius Rucker (Charlie Fitzgerald). Sarah cared for Bunny until his death at age 57.

She passed away at 93 and is buried next to her son in Ocean Woods Cemetery under the name Sarah Smith Rucker.