Births Deaths Marriages, Free People of Color, Migration, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

Anna J. Henderson Simmons.

Something brings me back to Anna J. Henderson Simmons. At no more than 20 years old, she left all the family she knew to follow her new husband 800 miles to Canada, where his Wayne County family had settled decades earlier. It is hard to get a sense of Anna’s life. Her husband Montreville Simmons achieved a measure of success as a farmer in central Indiana, but evidence suggests that he was a difficult man to live with. Did she ever see her birth family again? Probably not, and evidence suggests that her children had an uncertain grasp on the facts of her early years.

Here’s what I know of my great-great-great-grandfather Lewis Henderson‘s sister:

In the 1860 census of Westbrooks, Sampson County, North Carolina, appear James Henderson, mulatto carpenter; wife Eliza; and four children, Anna J., Susan, Hepsie, and Alexander. Eliza (or Louisa) Armwood, daughter of John and Susan Armwood, was James’ second wife.

Ten years later, the family had moved about 20 miles east-southeast and appear in the 1870 census of Faisons, Duplin County: James Henderson, 52, mulatto farmer; wife Eliza; and children Ann, 17, Susan, 16, Hepsey, 14, Aleck, 13, John H., 11, Nancy, 6, and Betty, 3, plus James’ son James, 27, and boarders James Ammons and Thomas Cox. (Were the latter two relatives of either James or, more likely, Eliza/Louisa?)

The following spring, on 3 March 1871, Anna Henderson married Montraville Simmons, 19, son of Calvin and Hepsie Whitley Simmons, in Duplin County. The license lists Anna’s parents as James Henderson and Louisa Armwood. Montraville had been born in Wayne or Duplin County and migrated to Chatham, Kent County, Ontario, Canada with his family in the 1850s. After the death of his first wife, Victoria Brown, whom he married in Chatham in 1865, Montraville returned to North Carolina for a new spouse. (There’s a suspicious marriage on 16 April 1848 in Oakland, Michigan, between 23 year-old Montreville Simmons of North Carolina and Harriet Lucas of Richmond, Ohio. Was this yet another early marriage for Anna’s Montraville?)

Duplin County, North Carolina, Marriage Register.

The family was captured in the 1881 census of Chatham, Kent County, Ontario, Canada: Montreville Simmons, 40, farmer; wife Annie, 29; and children Elizabeth, 8, Doctor T., 7, Susan M., 4, and Montreville, 2. All were born in the United States except Doctor and Montreville jr., who were born in Ontario, and all were Baptist. [Where in the U.S. was Susan born? Had Anna gone back to North Carolina? Or had the family lived some short period across the nearby border?]

Sometime in the next twenty years, the Simmonses cast their lot permanently as Americans. For reasons unknown, they settled near Logansport, Indiana, in rural Cass County north of Indianapolis. In the 1900 census of Eel township, on Park Avenue in Logansport, the census taker recorded farmer “Montville” Simmons, born April 1850, wife Anna, born March 1861, and sons James R., December 1879, Montville, June 1882, and Dock, December 1879. Montville and Anna were recorded as born in North Carolina; their sons in Canada. Montraville and Anna had been married 28 years and reported five of five children living. The family was described as black. [The evidence concerning the Simmons children is confusing. Census records name Elizabeth (born circa 1872), Doctor/Dock (born circa 1874), Susan M. (born circa 1877), James R. (born circa 1879), Montraville Jr. (born circa 1880) and Edward (born 1881.) However, records in Indiana indicate another daughter, Moncy, who died in 1942.]

Montraville Simmons was a successful farmer, but a life of material (if heavily mortgaged) comfort did not necessarily spell ease for Anna. Montraville’s name peppered the local paper regularly, as Pharos-Tribune reporters gleefully chronicled his clashes with neighbors and his personal peccadilloes.

Anna herself managed to stay out of print until 1905, when the ailing woman parachuted into a spat between her husband and his creditors. Headlines blared her surprising intervention, and it’s hard not to see Montraville’s hand as a puppet master in this 11th hour shenanigan.

Logansport Pharos Tribune, 22 December 1905.

Sadly (she was only about 50 years old) but perhaps mercifully, within six months, Anna Henderson Simmons was dead. Her death certificate, which contains some curious errors, reported that Annie Simmons, married, died 16 Jun 1906 in Cass County, of Basedow’s disease [now known as Graves’, a disease of the thyroid]. She was born 2 February 1856 in North Carolina and was buried at Free Union Baptist in Irvin township, Howard County, Indiana, by Kroeger & Strain, funeral directors. The informant for the certificate was Montraville Simmons. The father or the son? I don’t know, but it’s hard to believe that either reported Anna as white, though that’s what the certificate notes. It’s less hard to believe that Montraville Jr. might have misreported his mother’s parents as James Harrison and Eliza Henderson. He, after all, had surely never met them. (And when he married Jessie Winslow in Cass County in 1903, he cited his mother’s maiden name as Anna Harrison.)

On 18 June, the Pharos Tribune ran a brief obituary:

——

Who were Anna Henderson Simmons’ legacies? Is there a lost branch of Hendersons in middle Indiana?

Elizabeth Simmons (circa 1872-??) probably died before adulthood. Or she is the same person as Moncy Simmons.
Moncy A. Simmons (1872-1942) married first Daniel Bassett, then Newton Palmer; no known children.
Doctor R. Simmons (27 November 1874-after 1951) married Fannie Gibson; no children.
Susan M. Simmons (circa 1877-1937) married Britton Bassett; two children, who died in infancy. She helped rear her brother Montraville’s son Harold.
James R. Simmons (circa 1879-aft. 1900) probably did in young adulthood; no children. Or, he is the same person as Edward Simmons.
Montraville Simmons Jr. (circa 1880-31 March 1910) married Jessie Winslow in 1903. His son Harold Simmons was born about 1904. On 7 October 1911, Jessie gave birth to Helen Elizabeth Simmons in Chicago and listed Montraville on Helen’s birth certificate, but he could not have been the child’s father. Similarly, in the 1920 census, Jessie Winslow Simmons, remarried to Earnest W. Griggs, attributes by inference two additional children to Montraville Jr., Frances (born 1913) and Alma (born 1916). Neither were his. Harold is mentioned in his aunt Moncy’s obituary, but does not regularly appear in census records.
Edward Simmons (24 November 1883-1936) married only after his parents’ deaths, but married four times in 20 years. He had no children.

In other words, improbable as it seems, Anna’s seven children produced a single grandchild, and he seems not to have any children. There are not, it seems, any Kokomo cousins.

Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

Case continued ….

Ummmm….

I have so, so many questions about this little blurb from the 1 April 1890 edition of the Raleigh State Chronicle.

Number one: were these men the David, Robert Jr., and Joseph Aldridge, born 1858, 1866 and 1869, who were the younger sons of Robert and Mary Eliza Balkcum Aldridge? (One and a half: if not, who were they?)

Two: Croatan Indians? (This is the name by which today’s Coharie Indians were known at the end of the nineteenth century.) The Aldridges?

Three: Voodooism?!?!! (For that matter, tramping and vagrancy? What were these Wayne County farmers doing in Wake County?)

Four: Can I find out what happened? I’ll need to get into Wake Superior Court records at the North Carolina State Archives.

DNA, Maternal Kin, Virginia

DNA Definites, no. 21: Randolph.

I came back from vacation to find a nice new match at Ancestry.com. R.M. and I are double eighth cousins, as I am descended from two children of Isham and Jane Rogers Randolph — Thomas I. Randolph (1722-1788), who married Jane Cary (1751-1774), and Susannah Randolph, who married Carter Henry Harrison (1736-1793). (Thomas Randolph, Susannah Randolph Harrison, and Bettie Randolph Railey’s sister Jane Randolph married Peter Jefferson and gave birth to Thomas Jefferson.)

Ancestry estimates our relationship as 5th-8th cousins and rates the match as “Good,” meaning that we share 6-12 cM. (Which is quite high for 8th cousins, but is attributable to (1) our double lineage and (2) luck.) That’s lower than I’d ordinarily pursue, but I’ll take it.

Business, Newspaper Articles, Paternal Kin, Photographs

Mound City Medical Forum gets ready.

Speaking of Tom Aldridge …

Pittsburgh Courier, 14 August 1937.

This is the earliest photograph I have seen of my great-grandfather, and he was 51 years old here. His hair, fallen over his forehead, seems thicker than in later studio portraits. Otherwise, disappointingly little detail can be seen. Twenty-four years later, he would be elected president of the National Medical Association.

Military, Other Documents, Paternal Kin

Pvt. Aldrich.

On 28 May 1917, James Thomas Aldridge appeared before a registrar in Brooklyn, New York. I imagine Tom dragging his feet, and his reluctance to serve shows through his notably exaggerated response to Question 9 — “Have no father (dead) Mother and three sisters to help to support” — and the basis for his claim for an exemption — “Dependents and poor health.” Tom described himself as a “student (medical),” and evidence demonstrates that he had entered medical school in the fall of 1916. (He may have done his first year at Leonard Medical School, then transferred to Meharry, from which he graduated in 1920. But what was he doing in Brooklyn? He wasn’t a resident, as demonstrated by the home address and precinct listed on the card.) Tom also gave his birth date as 14 May 1895, which would have made him 22. His age, however, is listed as 27. Neither is correct. He was born in 1886, and was 31 in 1917, but always fudged heavily on his age, possibly to disguise the long years that passed between finishing eighth grade in Dudley’s local school and entering high school at Shaw. Either way, he was called up.

Until a couple of days ago, my knowledge of my great-grandfather’s World War I service was limited to brief mentions in his obits that he had been in the Medical Corps. While looking for something else, though, I ran across an Ancestry.com database, “New York Abstracts of World War I Military Service 1917-1919.” And there, under his preferred spelling — more about that later — was James T. Aldrich.

Serial number 2,546,996. White.

Huh? How ever did Tom pull that off?

In any case, there it is — his World War I record. Service did not take him far from his home in East Harlem. (Maybe his health was poorish, after all?) Enlistment in the Medical Reserve Corps on Broadway in January 1918. Then about nine months at the Army base that Governors Island once was. (On 8 October 1918, just before leaving Governors Island, he married Athalia Freeman.) Then on to Camp Alexander in Newport News, Virginia, for six months until his discharge in May 1919. Camp Alexander, established in 1918, served as an embarkation and debarkation camp for African-American troops.

Maternal Kin, Military, Other Documents

Draft card revelations: McNeely.

Most of my grandmother’s male McNeely first cousins were too old to have served in World War II. They were required to register nonetheless, and the draft cards I’ve found offer interesting little snapshots of their lives:

The scars on Robert Henry “Jinx” McNeely‘s head were external evidence of the skull fracture he received when his bicycle collided with an automobile in 1937. His aunt, Mary Bell Woods McNeely Frink, was his mother Margaret Woods McNeely’s sister, but she was also his stepmother, having married (and divorced) his father Luther McNeely after Margaret’s death. She is an interesting choice for “person who will always know your address,” as, as far as I know, Jinx’ wife Katie Woodsides McNeely was living at the time. Jinx started working as a drugstore porter, making customer deliveries and running errands on a bicycle, in his teens.

Though he was close to her age, my grandmother never knew her uncle Edward McNeely‘s son Quincy. Ed and his wife, Lucille Tomlin McNeely, divorced early, and by 1920 she and their son had moved 100 miles west to Asheville, North Carolina. Quincy married Addie Sims in 1930, then Elizabeth [last name unknown] by 1935. He does not appear to have fathered children, and he died in Detroit in 1966.

I’ve written of James “Red” McNeely alias Smith here. He was the cousin closest in age to my grandmother, but I heard her mention him only once. After their mother Addie McNeely Smith‘s death, aunt Minnie McNeely reared James and his older sister Ardeanur. He moved to High Point, perhaps in his early 20s, and may have been briefly married to a woman named Mildred. (They appear together in the 1930 census of High Point, but I haven’t found a license or anything else about her.) It did not last, and he had no children. Red was a pool room operator and died in 1960.

This really wrecks my notions about when the Columbus, Ohio, branch of my McNeely family really put down roots in that city. The card shows that in 1942, 19 year-old Carl Taylor was living in Statesville — in the household of his first cousin, Louise Colvert Renwick — but his mother Janie McNeely (not Taylor?) was living in Columbus and working at a Children’s Home. My inability to find Janie’s family in the 1940 census makes it difficult to pinpoint when she migrated north. In any case, she apparently moved back and forth between North Carolina and Ohio during the 1930s before settling permanently in Columbus, perhaps during the War.

Education, North Carolina, Photographs

Spaulding remembers.

Last night, the C.C. Spaulding High School Class of 1965 honored my father at their 50th reunion banquet. He began his coaching and teaching career at this little school in Spring Hope, North Carolina, newly married and fresh out of Saint Augustine’s College. Seven years past Brown v. Board of Education, Nash County schools were still segregated, and the children of Spaulding were mostly from struggling farm families. Neither slender resources at home nor paltry county funding could tamp down a spirit of camaraderie and pride in achievement that lasts even to this day. Occasionally, when I’m home, we will run into one of my father’s old students or players — now in their late 60s — and they always beam to see him, the first of generations of young men and women who benefitted from his tough, but unstinting, guidance.

I took these photos of Spaulding’s gymnasium on a road ramble in November 2011. The school, now a community center, still anchors little Spring Hope. I have no independent memory of Spaulding — my father left for Rocky Mount City Schools in the late ’60s — but I was cradled there. My mother tells me that, at basketball games, teenaged girls would volunteer to change my diaper while she cheered the team on. The class of ’65 was the first to know me, and I thank them.

Little has changed.

Spaulding High School Class of 1965.

Letters, Other Documents, Paternal Kin

By all means Ward should have the Spingarn Medal.

Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963. Memorandum from W. E. B. Du Bois to Spingarn Medal Award Committee, January 2, 1933. W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.

Iconic photograph of Major (later Colonel) Joseph H. Ward during his World War I service, from Emmett J. Scott’s The American Negro in the World War (1919).

Journal of the National Medical Association, volume 21, April-June 1929.

Though it’s hard to imagine a more resounding endorsement than one emanating from Dr. W.E.B. DuBois (himself a winner), the NAACP’s 1933 Spingarn Medal in fact went to YMCA secretary Max Yergan for his missionary work in South Africa.

[For a earlier bit of correspondence from Dr. DuBois to the Wards, see here.]

Hat tip to cousin A.W.P., Dr. Joseph H. Ward‘s granddaughter, who alerted me to this document.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Migration, Other Documents

Frank, found.

My first question: why have I just found this 1940 census entry today?

My second: Cousin Ardeanur married a Jamaican????

Her age is way off — Ardeanur was 37, not 47 — but this is definitely my great-great-aunt Minnie McNeely, my grandmother’s first cousin Ardeanur Smith Hart, and Ardeanur’s mysterious husband Frank living right in Jersey City, the city next door to Bayonne (where Martha Miller McNeely and most of her children lived for greater or lesser stretches of time.) The address was 359 Pacific Avenue. A family of McKoys rented one apartment in the building, and the Harts, Aunt Minnie, and a William Macklin shared another, splitting the $30/month rent. Frank Hart, a naturalized citizen, worked as a butler in a private home and reported earning $500 in 1939. Ardeanur and Minnie were housekeepers in private homes earning $400 and $360 respectively. Macklin, an insurance agent, earned more than everybody else in the flat combined — $1700.

I still don’t know when Ardeanur married Frank Hart, but they reported that they’d been living at the same address five years before. This suggests they were married before 1935.

I don’t see Frank in earlier census records, but is this his arrival in the U.S. in 1922?

If so, did he leave his first wife back in Jamaica, or maybe Cuba?

This World War II draft registration card is definitely Ardeanur’s Frank:

The back of the card, dated 27 April 1942, described him as Negro, 5’8″ and 165 lbs., with a light brown complexion, brown eyes and black hair. It’s the last record I’ve found for Frank W. Hart.

359 Pacific Avenue, Jersey City, as seen from Google Street View. Per Zillow, the building was built in 1901.

DNA, Maternal Kin

DNAnigma, no. 19: sorting sides.

Until my mother’s first cousins tested at 23andme, I had no way to distinguish her maternal and paternal matches. Though her thousand-plus hits are still mostly an anonymous mass, I have gained some small insights. Here are two examples:

Madame XX

I sent this woman a share request on 13 June 2012, just two months after I got my initial 23andme results. It’s been crickets ever since. She is either dead or does not give one damn about genealogy. And it kills me because she is estimated as my mother and uncle’s second cousin, sharing 280 cM, (3.76%) across 9 segments with her and 273 cM (3.67%) across 11 segments with him. This mystery woman also shares 2.16%, 7 segments, and 1.98 %, 6 segments, with my deceased aunt’s daughter and son. This is high. Per ISOGG, known second cousins share on average 3.125% and 212.5 cM.

Madame XX does not match either of my mother’s paternal first cousins, M.D. and J.A. Though it’s not an absolute certainty, it’s likely, then, that she is a match on my maternal grandmother’s side. (Without knowing who the Madame is, I can’t unequivocally declare her my mother’s second cousin, but I can say that the numbers are very low for half-first or first, once removed. However, see my Harrisons, where my mother shares 267 cM with her half-second cousin, for what’s possible.)

A second cousin is the child of one’s parents’ first cousins. My grandmother had relatively few full first cousins. In fact, she had exactly none on her father’s side. On her mother’s, there were lots of McNeely aunts and uncles, but relatively few children: Luther‘s son R. Henry McNeely (1903); Emma‘s children Wardenur (1913-1941), Henry (1915-1955), and Irving Houser Jr. (1920-2001); Addie‘s children Ardeanur (1903-1996) and James Smith (1906-1960); Elethea‘s sons William (1903-??), Charles (1904-1968), James (1906-bef. 1920?) and Irving McNeely (1911-1933); Edward‘s son Quincy McNeely (1910-1966); and Janie‘s children Sarah (1911-1937), Frances (1916-??), Willa (1918-) and William McNeely (1925-1965), and Carl Taylor (1923-1988).

We can eliminate all the aunts’ children off the bat. Madame XX’s maternal haplogroup is L0a1a2. My great-grandmother and her sisters were L2d1a and passed that mtDNA down to their children. As the haplogroups don’t match, the mystery lady is not a child of a McNeely daughter. That leaves the offspring of the McNeely sons. As far as I know, neither Henry McNeely, James Smith, William McNeely, Charles McNeely, James McNeely, Irving McNeely Weaver, nor Quincy McNeely had children. (Nor Wardenur Houser Jones, Ardeanur Smith Hart, Sarah McNeely Green, Frances McNeely Williams, and Willa McNeely Sims. Now that I write this out, it sounds crazy. How is it that so few of Henry and Martha McNeely‘s grandchildren had children?) That leaves Henry, Irving Houser, William McNeely or Carl Taylor as the parents of Madame XX. (Unless, of course, my grandmother had first cousins that she did not know of.)

As far as I know, Henry Houser had three sons, only one of whom is living. Irving Houser had one daughter, whom I need to contact independently. William McNeely had one son that I know of. Carl Taylor also had sons. Right now, then, Madame XX is either Irving’s daughter or the daughter of a completely unknown cousin.

L.W.

L.W., on the other hand, matches my mother, her brother and both their paternal first cousins, making him a solid bet for her father’s side. He’s considerably more distant than Madame XX, but a good match. At 23andme, he’s estimated at 3rd to 5th cousins (.44% shared across 3 segments) with my mother and uncle, and 3rd-6th cousin (.29% across 2 segments) to cousin M.D. Cousin J.A. does not show as L.W.’s match at 23andme, but does show a 13.4 cM match at Gedmatch.

L.W.’s mtDNA haplogroup is L3d1-5, and his Y is E1b1a. I can eliminate him then as a direct patrilineal descendant of my great-great-grandfather Edward C. Harrison or my great-great-grandmother Matilda Holmes. I don’t recognize any of the surnames he lists in his profile. And the states he lists — Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Michigan, North Carolina — suggest that his ancestors moved out of Virginia (assuming that point of common origin) before Emancipation. Unfortunately, my knowledge of my own ancestors beyond the great-great-grandparent level on this side raises serious barriers to identification of our link to L.W. I know the names of the parents of Mary Brown Allen, born 1849 in Amelia County, Virginia, but little else. Jasper Holmes‘ parents were likely Peyton and Nancy Holmes, and they were probably from Charlotte County, as he was. I don’t even know his wife Matilda‘s maiden name though.

Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Author Archives: Lisa Y. Henderson