Leasy Hagans is one of my great-great-great-great-grandmothers. She was born circa 1800, perhaps in Nash County. Though Hagans might have been her married name, the involuntary apprenticeship of her children makes it more likely that she was unmarried. “Lesy Hagins” appears as a head of a household of five children in the 1820 census of Nash County. Though it is not inconceivable that all were hers, some may have been young siblings.  The only other Hagans in the county is Lukens Hagins — I cannot work out any other reasonable interpretation of the spelling of that first name — another colored female aged 14-26 with two children under 14. In the 1840 census of Davis District, Wayne County, Leecy Hagins is a 36-55 year-old colored woman living with a boy aged less than ten years and a girl aged 10-24 years.  (Note that prior to the creation of Wilson County in 1855, Nash and Wayne shared a short border.)  In the 1850 census of the North Side of the Neuse, Wayne County, Leacy Hagans, age 50, heads a household that includes ten year-old Napoleon Hagans. He is almost certainly her grandson and appears elsewhere in the same census with Aaron and Levisa Seaberry, his stepfather and mother.

There is a small web of census and apprenticeship connections among several people that suggest that they are among Leasy Hagans’ children:

William Hagans and Calvin Hagans. In 1833, William, 16, and Calvin Hagans, 10, were apprenticed to Council Bryan in Wayne County. In the 1850 census of Wayne County, Calvin appeared as a 27 year-old farmhand in the household of William Thompson. Leasy Hagans’ household was next door.

Levisa Eliza Hagans. In the 1850 census of Wayne County: Aaron Seaberry, 32, wife Levisa, 26, her son Napolian, 11, their daughter Francis, 4, and Celia Seaberry, 17, relationship unknown. As noted above, Napoleon also appears in Leasy Hagans’ household that year, and I deduce that he was her grandson.

Matilda Hagans. In the 1850 census of Wayne County: Mary Hagins, 18, Matilda Hagins, 25, Leasy Hagins, 2, and John Hagins, 1, appear in the household of John L. Fulks, a white carpenter. I believe Leasy and John were Matilda’s children. Was, then, Leasy named for her grandmother Leasy?

Mary A. Hagans. In 1839, William Thompson apprenticed Mary A. Hagans in Wayne County. As noted above, Mary, Matilda and Matilda’s presumed children live together in 1850.

The evidence, admittedly, is thin, but it is suggestive.