Births Deaths Marriages, Enslaved People, Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Other Documents

Cohabitation as man and wife.

In March 1866, in order to ratify marriages and legitimate children, the North Carolina General Assembly passed an Act directing Justices of the Peace to collect and record in the County Clerk’s office the cohabitations of former slaves. Freedmen who did not record their marriages by September, 1866, faced misdemeanor charges. Stragglers rushed the courthouse that August, and on the 25th Walker Colvert and Rebecca Parks traveled the 12 miles or so from Eagle Mills to stand in line. They declared that they had been together for 13 years and named three children, John, Elvira and Lovenia. (There should also have been a son Lewis, the youngest — and who in the world is Lovenia? I have found no trace of her.)

Walker, fifty-ish at the time, was my great-great-great-grandfather. He was born in Culpeper County, Virginia, then passed, like a bedframe or milk cow, from one Colvert to another and into Iredell County, North Carolina. Rebecca was not his first wife, and his age suggests earlier children, names and fates unknown. My grandmother, who died in 2010 at age 101, knew and remembered Rebecca. And, like that, a link across five generations.

Free People of Color, North Carolina, Oral History, Paternal Kin

Lewis & Mag’s children, part 1: sons.

Lewis and Margaret Balkcum Henderson had nine or so children in Sampson County before shifting a few miles north into Wayne County, where they settled with other free-issue families near a tiny crossroads town called Dudley. Before the Civil War, Margaret bore Lewis T. (1856), James Lucian (1858), Isabella J. (1860), Ann Elizabeth (1862), and Caswell C. (1864), and after, Mary Susan (1868), Carrie (1870), Sarah Daisy (1872), and Loudie (1874).

Of Lewis T., Isabella and Mary Susan, there is not enough known to talk about; they died as children. But Lucian was my grandmother’s favorite great-uncle; the only one of Lewis and Mag’s children to stay in Dudley and farm. He and his wife Susie (born a McCullin) had only one child, a daughter Cora Q., who died early and is remembered only by her headstone in the cemetery of the Congregational Church. (I am endlessly fascinated by the Q. What could it possibly have stood for?) Lucian so impressed my grandmother that she named her firstborn son after him. He is gone, but my cousins Lucian Jr., the III and the IV, remain.

My grandmother said:

Uncle Lucian, now he look more like an Indian to me than anybody. Didn’t have too much hair, but what he had was straight and was that brownish color like it was fair. We’d come down there and stay with them. Get off the train and run all the way down there to their house. That wont nothing. And they had two beds in that front room. One on one side and one on the other’n, and they slept on that one side, and me and Mamie slept in the other’n. In the same room. ‘Cause it wasn’t no door to it, and the fireplace was in the front room. I don’t think they ever had a lamp or no light. We’d go to bed with the chickens and get up with the chickens. ‘Cause time it’s day, Uncle Lucian was up. A’nt Susie couldn’t cook. Because she couldn’t be over the stove, she’d fall out if she was over the stove. She never left the house that I know of. ‘Cause she had this thing, that, her head shook all the time. I said to Mama Sarah, I said, “That thing’s gon shake her head off.” I told Mama, “She’s gon shake her head off.” She said, “It was a palsy, that’s how come.” So Uncle Lucian always got up and cooked breakfast. And, Lord, I used to love to go down there. We would get up early mornings, and Uncle Lucian would cook breakfast and, honey, that old ham where he cooked you could smell a mile! Honey, you could smell that ham before you even got there. It was on the highway, and we didn’t go all the way ‘round the bend and come up the road. We’d come down over the fence and come down the cornrow and come up to the house. And he’d make rice, and it would be that ham gravy. And the biscuits, they looked like they’s hamburg muffins, the biscuits was so big. And you talking ‘bout good. Ooo, you’d be ‘bout to have a fit, it smelled so good. Cooking ham and rice, and had to have ham gravy, just pour water in there from frying. Great big old milk biscuits. You eat one of them — you couldn’t even eat a whole one, ’cause they was so big. And cooked on a little old bitty tin stove, a four-cap stove — the burner wont no more than bigger than that — where you had to put two, three pieces of wood in the stove, and the pipe run right straight up in the house. Yeah, I thought that was some good days and some good food. Look like to me, I thought it was the best. We had good food at home, but seem like down there, it just taste better. We didn’t have no ham everyday like they had down there, and by him having and curing it, the way they cured ham, his was different from what we had. Like with that pepper and salt and stuff and seasoning outdoors. And every one they’d kill, he’d get the hog and cook ‘em and hang ‘em in his packhouse.

But every great-uncle was not as favored as Lucian. There was also Caswell, from whom my father gained his middle name, but about whom my grandmother was ambivalent. Caswell was in New York City by 1890, where he was a white man on his job with the Customs House, but moved among colored folks at home in the Tenderloin and later in Harlem and the Bronx:

Uncle Caswell come to Wilson visiting Mama Sarah. He didn’t never bring his wife down there ‘cause he was passing for white, and she was kind of brown-complexioned. But he’d leave our house, and he would go and get a paper every morning down there to Cherry Hotel. Walk down there for the exercise and get that paper. He’d go in the hotel there and ask for a paper and talk to the people, and they all said, “Who is this white man?” And then he’d come all the way back a different way, then walk back down Green Street and come on home, so they wouldn’t know he was crossing the tracks. And so he wanted Mamie, he didn’t want me, he wanted Mamie to come stay with him and his wife. And he was gon send her to school and take care of her. He’d buy all her clothes and everything. But me, he ain’t said nothing ‘bout me. But Mama said, “Naw, you can’t. I don’t want her to go to New York. ‘Cause she don’t know nothing ‘bout New York, and, too, that would leave Hattie down here by herself.” She said, “They’s gon stay, she gon stay with me ‘cause I promised Bessie that I’d take care of them as long as I lived. I promised Bessie I’d keep ‘em together. But if you want to give her something, or help me out with her, buy ‘em clothes or something like that, you can.” So I didn’t like that. He ain’t said nothing ‘bout me. But then they said I liked to read, and so he saved the papers where he was taking, and he would send ‘em in the mail to me. But he sent Mamie candy. And I told him I wont no goat! Uncle Caswell didn’t like me. And I started to tell him he was down there trying to be cute, playing, wanting folks to think he was white. Passing for white. Well, he could pass for white. Least that’s what he was doing up in New York. ‘Cause he was working at the roundhouse, had a good job.

——

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Other Documents

A colored man of rare powers of mind.

Harriet pursued him, my grandmother said. Relentlessly. Followed him to Ohio to make her case for marriage. Certainly, that she, a widow in her early 40s, found (or allowed herself to become) pregnant suggests an impetus for her plans. Still, Thomas Alonzo “T.L.” Hart was not easily swayed. Their only child Bertha Mae was born in 1902 and not until December 1904 did he apply for a marriage license at the Iredell County Courthouse.

Alonzo was born about 1866 to Ephraim and Caroline Hart. Little is known about the years before he married Harriet Nicholson Tomlin. My grandmother asserted that he was a non-practicing lawyer, but no record has been found of his education or training. In the late 1890s, he moved briefly to Ohio; a visit home was nearly disastrous:

——

Alonzo Hart, colored, who formerly lived here but has recently been in residence in Toledo, Ohio, was arrested yesterday on a warrant sworn out by Mr. O.P. Sowers, the latter charging him with having his purse and $90 in cash which he lost on Monday, December 26th. Hart deposited $100 in cash with Justice White for his appearance at the trial which is set for to-morrow. The defendant is represented by Mr. H.P. Owen and the plaintiff by Mr. L.C. Caldwell. Mr. Sowers is positive that he lost his purse on the sidewalk in front of the Cooper block on Center Street. It is said that Hart was present at the time and as he has been pretty flush with cash since then he is suspected of having picked it up. — Statesville Landmark, 6 Jan 1899.

——

But:

At Alonzo Hart’s trial for theft, the witness testified that Hart was not the man, “and as there was no other evidence against him, [Hart] was discharged, Mr. Sowers paying the costs.” — Statesville Landmark, 11 Jan 1899.

Despite his ignominious arrest, Hart remained in Iredell County, farming in Shiloh township while his sister Etta kept house. A couple of years after marrying Harriet, he again made the local newspaper:

Alonzo Hart, colored, was severely injured Sunday night by Will Stevenson, colored, in a fight in the Poplar Branch neighborhood. Hart received several severe cuts about the body and one on the neck. The cause of the trouble is unknown. A warrant for Stevenson is in the hands of the police. — Statesville Landmark, 18 Sep 1906.

——

Fifteen years later, Hart helped prevent a lynching by negotiating the surrender of a black man wanted for killing a white man:

BOB BENSON SURRENDERS.

“Slayer of Robert Dishman Surrenders to Alonzo Hart, Colored, and Sends for the Sheriff — Others Capture Benson Before the Sheriff Arrives on the Scene and Take Him to Lincolnton — Now in the Mecklenburg Jail”

Working on clues set forth by Alonzo Hart, colored, Bob Benson was captured late yesterday evening by Messrs George Ayers, Fred Claywell, Pam Morrow, Vance Jenkins and Everett Wilkinson.

Lacking only a few hours of being a fugitive from justice a week, Bob Benson, who assaulted and killed Robert Dishman is today resting behind bars in the Mecklenburg county jail, where was taken to escape possible violence. Thus ended one of the most thrilling searches for a criminal in the history of the county.

Friday during the search on Third creek, near Morrison’s store, Alonzo Hart came to Sheriff Alexander and asked the sheriff if he should find Benson and turn him over to the sheriff would there be any violence. Upon receiving the sheriff’s promise that he would keep Benson from violence and see that he received justice, Hart said he would do all in his power to get in touch with Benson and have him give him up to the sheriff.

Early Sunday morning between 6 and 7 o’clock Benson came to the home of Hart, which is south of Hoyt Morrison’s store, wearing only a shirt and an old sack tied around his loins, and begged Hart for something to eat and a chance to rest. According to Hart, Benson said he had been lying in a thicket near Third creek during the search Friday night and Saturday, and had more than one time heard searching parties passing near him so close that he could plainly understand their conversation.

Throughout the day, Sunday, Hart persuaded Benson that it was best for him to give up to the officers, which Benson agreed to do provided he was turned over to the officers, who would take care of him. About 5 o’clock yesterday afternoon Hart came to town after the sheriff and was seen by some of the party who captured Benson, who surmised Hart was in town on business concerning Benson, and went immediately to Hart’s home, where they captured Benson in one of the rooms of the house.

Benson was carried by his captors to the Lincoln county jail last night. Early this morning Sheriff Alexander had Benson moved to the Mecklenburg County jail at Charlotte, so as to be doubly sure of his safety.

It was just one week ago yesterday evening, about 8 o’clock, on the Chipley Ford road, six miles north of Statesville, that Bob Benson, a negro, dealt Robert Dishman, white, a blow, or blows, on his head with a stick or other weapon, that resulted in Dishman’s death about 30 hours later at the Carpenter-Davis hospital. It was a week ago today that the searchers for Benson assumed the proportion of a posse. A few officers and others had begun the search soon after the killing.

Probably the search for a criminal in no other case in Iredell county has attracted more interest than has been evidenced in the Benson case. Reports which came to the officers and the posse kept this interest alive.

After the crime he is alleged to have committed Benson lost himself in the neighborhood of his home and in the neighborhood of his victim for the first night of his get-away. The earlier hours of the day following the crime brought some reports of his having been seen. Late the same afternoon came the report that up to that time had had the semblance of assurance — someone had seen him making his way from woods to woods in the country around the pump station. It was then that the crowd assumed the proportion of a posse and it was on this clue that the bloodhounds were introduced and initiated. They struck a trail and followed it to the right house but the wrong person. The search continued that night, dissipating other reports of Benson’s whereabouts. The same program was gone over day after day and night after night.

The all night man hunt was without reward Thursday. Benson had not been seen since he was shot at about 4:30 o’clock that afternoon, near the home of Mr. D.L. Raymer.

The bloodhounds were brought from Salisbury about 7 o’clock that night and were placed where Benson was last seen, but did not hit a trail durng the night. — Statesville Landmark, 26 Sep 1921.

——

THE BOB BENSON REWARD.

Attorney Z.V. Long Will Share Burden of a Decision in This Matter to Iredell Superior Court.

No decision yet has been reached in paying the reward of $300 [illegible] by the County and $200 by the [illegible] for the apprehension of Bob Benson, colored, who killed Robert Dishman and who has been convicted and sentenced to electrocution.

Two claims are offered for the reward, one by Alonzo Hart, colored, whose home Benson went and [illegible] until a number of white men went and got him and took him to the Lincolnton jail, while Hart was in town looking for Sheriff Alexander to report Benson’s presence at his house.

The matter of determining proper disposition of the reward was left to County Attorney Z.V. Long. Since it has become apparent that an amicable settlement can not be made this way, the matter will be left to Iredell Superior court to say how and to whom the reward shall be paid. — Statesville Landmark, 5 December 1921.

——

Harriet Nicholson Tomlin Hart died in 1924. When Alonzo Hart’s sister died four years later, the Landmark breathlessly reported every detail of the disposition of her sizeable estate, worth about $81,000 in 2013 dollars.

Margaret Richardson Leaves Will Disposing of $6,000 Estate

The will of the late Margaret Richardson, colored, which has been filed with the Clerk of Superior Court John L. Milholland for probate, provides for the distribution of the estate, estimated to have a value of $6,000, as follows:

The farm, one mile north of Statesville, is given to a sister, Lula Loyd; two acres laid off the northern end of the farm, adjoining the lands of J.C. Duke, and the city pump station, to Gilmer Walker; all the rest of the land and personal property to be sold and the cash distributed as follows: $10 to Mollie Alexander of Wilkes County; $10 each to Florence Camp and Minnie Brawley, both of Toledo, Ohio; $100 to Alonzo Hart of Iredell county; $25 to Zion Methodist church, colored, on South Center street; $25 to Broad Street Presbyterian church, colored; $25 to John Adkins, of Winston-Salem; $300 to Lula Loyd; $100 to Preston Smith of Virginia; $200 to Alonzo Loyd and the rest of the property to be divided equally among Lula Loyd, Bertha May Hart, Mollie Alexander, Florence Camp, Minnie Brawley, Earl Smith, and Rebecca Bailey. Mr. John A. Scott, Jr., is designated as executor of the will. — Statesville Landmark, 19 Mar 1928.

——

At the end of the following year, Thomas Alonzo Hart succumbed to tuberculosis at a Hoke County sanatorium. His final appearance in the Landmark was a respectful and laudatory one:

FUNERAL SERVICE FOR ALONZO HART.

Will Be Held Sunday Afternoon from Centre Presbyterian Church — Was Respected Colored Citizen

Funeral services for Alonzo Hart, 63, well known colored man, whose death occurred Tuesday at State Sanatorium, where he had been a patient for a short time, will be held from Center presbyterian church Sunday, December 22, at 2:30 o’clock in the afternoon. Interment will follow in the cemetery there. The surviving members of the family are one daughter, two step-sons and four sisters.

Alonzo Hart, by his extraordinary habits of frugality and industry, had accumulated a considerable estate. Although living in an age of speedy travel, he held on to an older and slower method of transportation, his regular visits to town having been made in his buggy, drawn by his faithful, dependable mule. He was a colored man of rare powers of mind, having a valuable library and keeping fully informed on the events of the day by reading newspapers and periodicals. A unique Iredell citizen has passed to his reward. — Statesville Landmark, 19 Dec 1929.

His will confirms Hart’s prosperity and reveals as well his deep ties to his family:

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Other Documents, Photographs, Virginia

Mary Brown Allen.

There’s a Mary Brown, age 20, listed in the 1870 census of Amelia County, Virginia. She worked as a laborer and shared her home with a 24 year-old man named Grief Bratcher. This is probably my great-great-grandmother.

Six years later, Mary Brown was in Charles City County, perhaps with a young daughter Nannie, and certainly pregnant. By a white man. A rape? A convenience? Love? We may never know. We do know, however, that just a few months into the pregnancy she married Graham Allen, a 24 year-old laborer from the other side of the James River in Prince George County. When she bore a son on Christmas, 1876, he was named John Christopher Allen. Over the next 40 years, Mary reared four children to adulthood (another four or five died), as well as some grandsons, while Graham farmed the small parcels of land he painstakingly accumulated and led a flock at New Vine Baptist Church. She never learned to read or write and left scant trace in the public record. Mary Brown Allen died April 1, 1916.

Photograph from the collection of Lisa Y. Henderson.

[UPDATE, 27 July 2015: As detailed here and here, DNA testing has led to the discovery of the father of Mary’s oldest son, John C. Allen, Sr. He was Edward C. Harrison of Charles City County.]

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Oral History

Introducing Martha McNeely.

My grandmother had the sweetest memories of her mother’s mother, Martha Margaret Miller McNeely.

In the 1920s, Martha McNeely left Statesville for Bayonne, New Jersey, where her daughter Emma McNeely Houser had settled, followed by several siblings. She settled a few blocks in from the river at 87-A West Sixteenth Street, a 1920 duplex that is still occupied. Said my grandmother:

I went up there one summer from Hampton and worked, and she would let me help her in the kitchen and everything like that, and so I told her, I said, “I’ll cut the corn.” And she said, “Baby, you can’t cut no corn. You can’t cut my corn.” And I said, “Yes, I can, too.” She said, “I’m sure you can’t, but if you insist, let me see you cut it.” So I cut the ear of corn like Mama had done, you know. And she said, “Mmph. Your mammy taught you.” [Laughs.] I didn’t ever forget that. “Your mammy taught you.” I said, “Yes, she did.”

And the same story, another time:

… She was so sweet and — I said, “Grandma, now, I can cut the corn.” And she liked to cook. She didn’t think anybody could cook but her. I said, “I can cut the corn for you.” She said, “Honey, you can’t cut no corn for me.” I said, “Yes, I can, too.” And so she said, “well, I’ll let you try it,” she said, “to get rid of you.” So I cut this corn down. She would split the grain, split the grain, and then you cut the top of the grain off, and you cut the second one off, and then you scrape it. And when I did this first ear, she said, “Hmph! Your mammy must have taught you!” “She did.”

When my great-great-grandmother died in 1934, two newspapers marked her passing. On June 16th, the Bayonne Times announced:

“McNEELY – Martha, at her residence, 87A West Sixteenth street, on Saturday, June 16, 1934, beloved mother of Mrs. Emma Houser, Mrs. Carrie Colvert, Miss Minnie McNeely, John and Edward. Notice of funeral later.”

Two weeks later, the New York Age informed readers that:

“Mrs. MARTHA McNEELY, one of the older residents of our city, died at her home on Saturday. Her body was taken to Statesville, N.C. for burial. Funeral service was preached by Rev. W. Atkinson at Wallace Temple.”

Photo of Martha M. McNeely in the collection of Lisa Y. Henderson.

DNA, Free People of Color, North Carolina, Paternal Kin, Photographs

DNAnigma, no. 2: Armwood????

There was a woman at home whom we called Cousin Inez. She had been born down in Dudley a few years after my grandmother, and we thought that connection was what motivated her insistence that we were kin. When I began my genealogical sleuthing, I discovered that Cousin Inez had been born an Armwood — another link, though not a blood one. The second wife of my great-great-great-great-grandfather James Henderson had been Louisa Armwood. I am not descended from her, but many of my cousins are. So, cousin-ish, but not actually kin.

Then, a couple of months ago, Ancestry.com pegged me as a 4^th-6^th cousin to a woman I’ll call A.G. This surprised me on two counts. (1) I’d recently “met” A.G. on a cousin’s family page on Facebook. A.G. and my cousin D. are related via the Simmonses, a free family of color centered in southern Wayne County. I’m not a Simmons – that I know of – but D. and I are 3^rd cousins and some change via Lewis Henderson. (2) A.G. is an Armwood! Her ancestor William Armwood, son of Major and Eliza Armwood and born about 1835, married Martha “Matta” Simmons, daughter of William and Penny Winn Simmons, in Sampson County. This is William:

So, what are the possibilities? What do we know?

A 4th to 6th cousin relationship suggests a common ancestor in the early 1800s. (Ancestry estimates very conservatively, so we may be closer.)
The relationship is almost certainly on my father’s side.
All of A.G.’s mother’s lines, back to the mid-1800s, were in the Wayne/Duplin/Sampson County area.
I have focused on her Armwood and Simmons lines because they are most familiar and intersect mine indirectly, but I may be making unwarranted assumptions.
A.G.’s Simmons line includes Wynn/Winn and Medlin lines. And I don’t know the maiden name of Major Armwood’s wife.
My Hendersons did not arrive in the area until the 1850s. I’ll eliminate them.
For the time being, I’ll eliminate my Euro-descended lines.
My Hagans line was probably from Nash County. I’ll eliminate them, too.
A.G. has a Yelverton line from northern Wayne County. Perhaps an Artis or Seaberry connection?
My Aldridge and Balkcum lines began with white women who bore children by black or mixed-race men circa 1820-1830 in Duplin and Sampson County. Is one of these unknown fathers the link to A.G.?

Enslaved People, Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Other Documents

6 chisels, a hammer & square, a grain box, a sorrell mare, 10 hogs and …

Inventory of the estate of John Alpheus Colvert, Iredell County, North Carolina, 1827.

On the second page, in the second column, are “Negroes hired for one year,” that is, slaves leased to neighbors to earn money for Colvert’s estate. “Boy Walker” was about eight years old. That he was listed without his mother suggests that he was an orphan, though he may have been kin to the others who appear in this list. Walker had arrived in North Carolina only two or three years before, passed to John Colvert from the estate of John’s father Samuel. When John’s died, his son William I. Colvert inherited Walker. William was even younger than his own slave, however, and Walker was likely hired out until the boy came of age.

Births Deaths Marriages, Enslaved People, Maternal Kin, Newspaper Articles, Virginia

Tragedy at Charlotte Court House.

I first heard a version of the story of Joseph Holmes’ assassination from my great-aunt, Julia Allen Maclin. Joseph Holmes was brother to her grandfather Jasper Holmes. I later found a few references to the murder in books about Virginia’s political history, but details conflicted widely. A few years ago, I found these digitized articles, which firmly established the date of the incident and seemed to offer better insight into what actually happened. Last summer I visited Charlotte County and, with the invaluable assistance of archaeologist Kathy Liston, began to explore the landscape of Joseph and Jasper’s lives and shine light on the aftermath of his assassination.

Tragedy at Charlotte Court House – A Negro Shot by a White Man – Particulars of the Affair – Result of the Inquest – Order for the Arrest of Those Concerned.

Richmond, May 4, 1869.

A tragedy occurred at Charlotte Court House, Va., yesterday, in which Joseph Holmes, a negro member of the late Constitutional Convention, lost his life. A few weeks since John Marshall, a son of Judge Marshall, of that county, was fired at in the night while in his residence by some unknown person. Yesterday being court day, Mr. Marshall was at the village, and there recognized a negro whom he suspected of having attempted to assassinate him. Marshall charged the negro with the crime, and he at once fled into the woods and was pursued without avail. A few hours afterwards, Joseph Holmes, who was formerly body servant of Judge Marshall, encountered young Marshall and threatened to have him arrested. A fight thereupon ensued, and both parties having pistols, firing commenced – Marshall aided by his friends. Holmes was shot through the breast, and staggering to the Court House fell dead. An inquest was hold, the jury returning a verdict that the deceased came to his death from a gunshot wound at the hands of some person unknown. The affair creates the greatest excitement in the county, where Holmes was exceedingly popular among the negroes, having been elected to the convention by a 2,000 majority over a white candidate. An order has been issued for the arrest of Marshall and party, but they have not yet been apprehended. — New York Herald, Wednesday, 5 May 1869.

——

THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS IN VIRGINIA. –

Soon after the shooting of Joseph Holmes by young Marshall, in Charlotte county, Virginia, a meeting of the republicans of the county was held, speeches were made by prominent members of the party, and among the speakers were John Watson, George Tucker and Ross Hamilton. These parties were arrested and committed to jail under an indictment which charges that they did, on the 20th May, “feloniously conspire one with another to incite the colored population of Charlotte to make war against the white population by acts of violence,” &c. A petition for a writ of habeas corpus was on Monday presented to Judge Morton of the Circuit Court of Henrico, at Richmond, wherein it is alleged that the parties are illegally detained in the custody of the Sheriff of Charlotte county, and they are innocent of the charge brought against them. This writ was granted and made returnable on Tuesday. In accordance therewith the prisoners were brought before Judge Morton on Tuesday afternoon and after discussion of certain points of law the prisoners were hailed for their appearance before the County Court of Charlotte, Va., to answer the indictment. — New York Herald, Friday, 25 June 1869.

Free People of Color, North Carolina, Other Documents, Paternal Kin

Adam Artis’ children, part 2: Lucinda Jones.

“Adam Artist” and “Lousinda” Jones married 10 October 1855 in Nash County. Lucinda’s father Jacob Ing (who was white) was bondsman, William T. Arrington witnessed, and justice of the peace D.A.T. Ricks performed the ceremony. Lucinda Jones Artis died circa 1860, and in 1870 her children Augustus Kerney, Noah and Mary Jane inherited her share of her father Jacob Ing’s estate. In 1872, Adam Artis filed this guardianship application in order to manage their estate.

Augustus “Gus” K. Artis was born about 1857. Some time after the birth of their daughter Lena in 1882, Gus and wife Mary migrated to the Little Rock, Arkansas area. The city’s 1914 directory lists him as a laborer at J.W. Vestal & Son, a nursery. He died in 1921.

Noah Artis, born in 1856, remained in northeastern Wayne County, where he farmed, married Patience Mozingo, and fathered children Nora Artis Reid, Pearl Artis, Pauline Artis Harris, Rena Belle Artis, William N. Artis, and Bessie Artis. He died in 1952 in nearby Wilson NC.

Mary Jane Artis, born in 1859, married Henry Artis, son of Warren and Percey Artis. (Though all of Wayne County Artises are probably ultimately related, the exact kinship between Warren Artis, whose father was supposedly Absalom Artis, and Adam Artis is unknown.) Mary Jane remained in the Nahunta area of Wayne County all her life and died after 1900. Her and Henry’s children were Armeta Artis, Alonzo Artis, Lucinda Artis, Callonza Artis, Mattie Artis Davis and Marion Artis.

Births Deaths Marriages, Enslaved People, Free People of Color, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

Adam Artis’ children, part 1: the Coleys.

In 1863, when the Confederate tax assessor queried administrator John Coley of Wayne County about W.W. Lewis’ estate, Coley enumerated several slaves, including Winney, age 29, Cane, age 9, and Caroline, 7. Adam Artis, the father of Winny’s children, lived nearby. He was a free man of color, and his and Winny’s relationship had not lasted long.

By adulthood, Cain Artis had adopted his father’s surname and farmed his own land in northwest Wayne County. By 1890, he had bought a house in the nearby town of Wilson and the 1912 city directory shows him operating a small business just outside city limits on the town’s main road. He died of tuberculosis in Wilson County in 1917, survived by his second wife, Margaret Barnes.

In 1878, Caroline Coley married Madison Artis, son of Calvin and Serena Seaberry Artis. Her uncle Jonah Williams was a witness to the ceremony. Caroline and Madison appear in the 1880 census of Wayne County, but have not been found after.

Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Monthly Archives: July 2013