My Aunt Mamie had two handsome boys. John‘s birthday was last week. Jesse Lee‘s would have been today.
Jesse Lee was a quiet, brown-eyed, blunt-featured version of his brother. Together, they were beautiful.
Happy birthday, Jesse Lee Holt (11 December 1927-27 May 1993).
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Photographs (or copies) in the possession of Lisa Y. Henderson.
It’s not clear when Caswell Henderson arrived in New York, but 1890 is a good guess. In the 35 or so years that he lived in the city, Caswell claimed at least eight addresses in two boroughs and Westchester County, most during a decade in which he and his wife seemed to move almost yearly.
This is Caswell’s New York:
1. 326 West 37th Street. When Caswell married Emma Bentley in 1893, he reported this address. He is listed there in 1896 in Trow’s New York City Directory. It’s a bit south of the 1 on the map, between 8th and 9th Avenues in the overlap between Hell’s Kitchen and the Garment District, and is now a parking deck.
2. 47 West 66th Street. By the 1900 census, Caswell and Emma had moved north to an address just outside the notorous San Juan Hill neighborhood. Caswell was still living here when he married his second wife, Carrie Lowe, in 1907. Address located in the block off Central Park West, now occupied by ABC headquarters.
3. 247 West 143rd Street. By 1909, Caswell and Carrie had moved way uptown to Harlem. Block between Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglass Boulevards, now the site of basketball courts in the Drew-Hamilton housing project.
4. 901 Grant Avenue. Per the 1910 city directory, Caswell and Carrie lived in Morrisania in the Bronx, a few blocks west of current Yankee Stadium, now the site of the Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice.
5. 527 East 167th Street. In 1912, a little deeper into the Bronx, a few blocks from Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center, now a parking lot.
6. 446 West 163rd Street. By 1915, the Hendersons were back in Manhattan at an address they held for the next ten years. Washington Heights, between Edgecombe and Amsterdam Avenues near Highbridge Park and the Harlem River, a few blocks southeast of Columbia University Medical Center.
7. 3777 Third Avenue. In 1926, they returned to the heart of the Bronx to an address that is now Gouverneur Playground. (Or did they? Caswell wrote his sister a letter from this address, but his widow was living on West 163rd when he died. Were they separated? He mentions the health benefits of living in “the country” — what did Third Avenue look like in the early 1920s?)
8. 6 Belknap Avenue. Caswell died at this home in Yonkers in 1927, though his death certificate lists his wife’s address as 446 West 163rd. It’s not clear who owned the Belknap Avenue house, but in 1930, it is occupied by French West Indian chef Marshall Mingo and family.
On 24 Sept 1870, Geo. Jno. Robinson, Probate Judge, bound to “Jonah Williams (col)” John H. Britt, Ida Britt and Cora Britt, aged 12, 10 and 6, to “live after the manner of an apprentice and servant until the said apprentice shall attain to the age of twenty-one years and until Ida & Cora shall attain the age of eighteen years” John was to be taught trade of a farmer, and Ida and Cora that of house servant. Williams “shall further provide said apprentices each with a new suit of clothes, six dollars in cash & a new Bible at the end of said apprenticeship.” Williams signed the indenture with an X.*
Who were the Britts to Jonah Williams?
They are not listed in Jonah’s household in the 1870 census. Rather, Ida, 9, and Corah Britt, 6, and their mother Hannah Britt, 39, appear in the household of drayman Doctor Thompson, his wife Feribee, and daughter Lucy in Goldsboro, Wayne County. John Britt is not found.
Ten years later, Ida Britt, 20, is listed in the Wayne County household of Jonah’s 80 year-old father, Solomon Williams. Ida and Charity Artis, 42, were described as Solomon’s “daughters.” Charity certainly was, but Ida? It is possible, certainly, that Solomon fathered three children with Hannah Britt in the eight years prior to Emancipation and his 1866 marriage to the mother of his 11 other children, born between 1828 and 1851. If so, the arrangement with his son Jonah might have been a way to insure their care. Solomon did not legitimate the Britts, however, as none appear in his 1883 estate records. The more likely explanation is that Ida was in the household as a quasi-servant, and the censustaker assigned her relationship based on his assumptions. I have not found her in any record after 1880.
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*Wayne County Apprentice Bonds, NC State Archives.
Lewis Colvert, Statesville NC – drayman, circa 1895.
Haywood Artis, Norfolk VA – driver, 1897.
Isham Smith, Goldsboro NC – husband of Nancy Henderson Smith; wagon driver, circa 1900.
Wesley Barnes, Wilson NC – teamster, 1900-1910; drayman, Tomlinson Co., circa 1919.
Mike Taylor, Wilson NC – drayman, circa 1900; drayman, circa 1908-1910s.
Dock Simmons, Logansport IN – teamster, 1900s-1920s; trucking, circa 1945.
Luther McNeely, Statesville NC – driver, dray wagon, circa 1910; driver, Statesville Grocery Company, 1916.
John W. Colvert, Statesville NC – dray wagon driver, circa 1910; driver, circa 1916; teamster, circa 1920.
William Henderson, Goldsboro NC – driver, circa 1916.
Jack Henderson, Wilson NC – transfer driver, Sam Vick, circa 1917; truck driver for woodyard, circa 1920; truck driver, Liggett & Myers tobacco company, 1930s-1940s.
Junius Allen, Newport News VA – drayman, circa 1920.
John Sampson, Goldsboro NC – husband of Cora Reid Sampson; drayman for city, circa 1920.
Bazel Holt, Greensboro NC – husband of Mamie Henderson Holt; driver, 1920s-1950s; Foster-Caveness, Inc., circa 1930.
John Long, Statesville NC – husband of Lizzie McNeely Long; railway truck driver, circa 1930.
James L. Henderson, Goldsboro NC – truck helper, “CoCola” plant, circa 1936.
Jimmie Reaves, Greenville NC – husband of Bertha Taylor Reaves; driver for department store, circa 1940.
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“Drayman” — historically, the driver of a dray, a low, flat-bed wagon without sides, pulled generally by horses or mules and used to transport goods.
“Teamster” — historically, the driver of a wagon drawn by a team of draft animals, usually oxen, horses, or mules.
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The fourth in an occasional series exploring the ways in which my kinfolk made their livings in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
We finally made our way to a theatre to see “12 Years a Slave” today. Throughout this gripping, gut-wrenching film, this ran through my head: “These are my cousins. These are my cousins. These are my cousins.”
My 23andme Relative Finder is filled with matches who know only that their families lived in Mississippi or Louisiana. All my African-American lines are upper South, rooted in Virginia and North Carolina. The link is obvious. My DNA matches are the descendants of the mothers and fathers, aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings of my ancestors, sold down South in America’s domestic slave trade. The connections are nearly impossible to recreate, the names lost to time, but I take comfort in the fact that the bonds remain detectable in blood and bone.
This roster of African-American men from Iredell County inducted on March 30, 1918, and ordered to report to Camp Grant, Rockford, Illinois, included my grandmother’s maternal uncle, Ed McNeely, and brother-in-law William Bradshaw. (Bradshaw married Golar Colvert eight days after his induction.)
[War Department, Office of the Provost Marshal General, Selective Service System, 1917– 07/15/1919. Lists of Men Ordered to Report to Local Board for Military Service, 1917–1918. Records of the Selective Service System (World War I), Record Group 163. National Archives, Atlanta, Georgia.]
23andme characterizes K.H. as my father’s first cousin (8.11% share) and my second (4.4% share). We are related via my Henderson and Aldridge lines, and much more closely in the latter. He is, in fact, my father’s first cousin, once removed. K.H.’s mother and my father’s grandfather were siblings.
K.H. shows a distant match with W.B., but not her daughter W.M. (My father and I show no match with either. Nor does E.H., who is K.H.’s nephew.) W.B. and W.M. are descended from Napoleon Hagans through his son William S. Hagans. Napoleon was the half-brother of Frances Seaberry Artis (my great-great-great-grandmother and K.H.’s great-grandmother.)
The small “Artis & Bunch” cemetery is located on Highway 222 East in Wayne County between Stantonsburg and Eureka NC on land still owned and occupied by Adam’s descendants. There are several graves, including those of Adam T. Artis (9 July 1831-11 February 1919) and his granddaughters Odessa Artis Baker and Esther Artis Bunch. (Apparently, none of Adam’s wives are buried with him.)
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Photographs taken by Lisa Y. Henderson, 2010.
My grandmother said:
Papa closed John up in the couch. Closed up the davenport on him. Just by it — he was grunting or groaning for breath or something. I went out to see what it was, coming from out of the kitchen and dining room where he was in that room across the hall on that open couch. That’s where Papa was looking his old shoes or something to put on, and he went there and turned up the end of that thing. If he had shut him up in there, it’d a killed him, but he just turned up the end of it. And he didn’t see his shoes, so he come on out. And we heard this noise – “nyyyaaa-nya, nyyyaaa-nya.” And we looked in and saw that thing turned up, and Mamie run in there and grabbed him, she grabbed up John and, oh, she was shaking and shaking and shaking, crying, and I was crying ‘cause I thought he had killed him. So we had him up by the arms, just holding him, just fanning him and fanning him and fanning him, and I was just scared he was gon die. You never know. And so after that Mamie said, “Let me get out of here.” ‘Cause you know Mamie and Papa didn’t get along – and she said that he was trying to kill her child. Papa, well, he didn’t know what he’d done. And he was sorry. He said he was so sorry it happened, he wouldn’t hurt that child for nothing in the world. And he was just crazy ‘bout John. But Mamie left there that night, honey. She left there with that baby, and she said, “I don’t know when I’ll be back here.” So I got after Papa ‘bout it. And he said he didn’t know the baby was in there. He wouldn’t hurt that baby for nothing. And so Annie Bell, she heard about it, and she come over there and laid Papa out. He said he didn’t know the child was there. He said, “Well, y’all ought to have taken up the bed when you got out.” But the child was in there still sleep. “But take him up and put him in another room.” Not put him in that thing so he couldn’t get out. So Mamie left there and went on back to Greensboro, and she didn’t never like Papa after that. She didn’t like him no how. Yeah, she just felt like he did it for meanness, but he didn’t. Then Mamie said, well, she know he was getting old, and so she forgive him ‘cause things like that happen. She said, “I’m not gon fault him for doing that. I don’t think he would have did it to the child. He might would do something to me, but….”
John J. Holt was the first child born to Bazel and Mamie Henderson Holt. His harrowing enclosure in the couch left him with lingering injuries, but he overcame them to grow into a lean, green-eyed hipster with “Latin lover” looks.
Cousin John, early 1940s.
After serving in the Army in World War II, John married Helen Mack and reared six children in Bronx, New York. At 90, he is the oldest living Henderson male.
Happy birthday, John J. Holt!
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Interview with Hattie H. Ricks by Lisa Y. Henderson, all rights reserved; photos or copies in collection of Lisa Y. Henderson.
My great-aunt Golar Augusta Colvert, born in 1897. Her uncle Harvey Golar Tomlin, born in 1894. My great-grandmother’s cousin, Goler Lee Miller, born in 1895.
Who were these people — all born within 25 miles of Salisbury, North Carolina — named for?
William Harvey Golar, the Canadian-born president of Livingstone College, a small, four-year institution in Salisbury affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Golar was appointed president in 1893 and was renowned for his energetic fundraising ability during his nearly 20 years of service.
Harriet Nicholson Tomlin Hart, mother of Golar T. and grandmother of Golar C., was an enthusiastic AMEZ, and I’m guessing that Goler’s parents George and Adline Miller were, too.
Scuffalong: Genealogy. 