The United States didn’t qualify for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, so I’m letting my ancestry dictate my teams. Go, Nigeria!!
Author Archives: Lisa Y. Henderson
R.I.P. Ira Berlin.
Ira Berlin died this week. His Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (1974) helped me make sense of the lives of my Henderson, Aldridge, Artis, Hagans and Seaberry ancestors, whose free status I had never suspected — or perhaps even heard of — when I began genealogical research. When I veered toward a Ph.D. in American History after law school, Professor Berlin tried to convince me to come to the University of Maryland. I chose Columbia University instead, though it pained me to miss an opportunity to study under him.
Edgar and James Broady Artis.
Edgar J. “Buddy” Artis (1914-1988) and James Broady Artis (1912-1963), sons of June S. and Ethel Becton Artis, circa 1919.
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The Artis brothers were my double cousins. My great-great-great-grandfather Adam T. Artis was their paternal grandfather, and my great-great-great-aunt Amanda Aldridge Artis was their paternal grandmother.
The 1920 census of Stantonsburg township, Wilson County, recorded the family right around the time the boys posed for this portrait: on Stantonsburg & Wilson Road, farm manager June S. Artis, 30, wife Ethel, 26, and children James, 7, Edgar, 5, Manda Bell, 3, and farm laborer Edgar Exum.
Many thanks to my cousin Adam S. Artis, Edgar J. Artis’ grandson, for sharing this photo.
Cousin Elmer turns 95.
Milford Elmer Carter Jr. recently celebrated his 95th birthday. Born in Wilson in 1923 to Wayne County natives Milford E. and Beulah Aldridge Carter, he and his family boarded briefly in Cora Miller Washington‘s home at 701 East Green Street, around the corner from the Elba Street home of Milford Carter Sr’s uncle, Jesse A. Jacobs Jr. and, per the 1922 city directory, lived at 905 East Vance Street. The family soon migrated to Pennsylvania, then New York City. M. Elmer Carter Jr. is a veteran of World War II.
Photos courtesy of Carla Carter Jacobs.
Happy Mother’s Day!
On this Mother’s Day, remembering my grandmother Margaret Colvert Allen and her sisters Launie Colvert Jones and Louise Colvert Renwick.
Thankful for the love, past and present, of my mother and all the other mothers in my life.
Happy birthday, Cousin Onra!
Cousin Onra and her brother, Johnnie D. Henderson, 1940s.
Wishing my first cousin twice removed, Onra Henderson Camp Dillard, the happiest 98th birthday!
Cousin Onra and I at her home in Washington, D.C., 2016.
Campaign closes books.
Eighty-four years ago today, The Daily Press announced the failure of the failure of a fundraising drive for Whittaker Memorial Hospital in Newport News, Virginia. My great-grandfather John C. Allen Sr. was on the hospital’s board.
The Daily Press, 2 May 1934.
A birthday party in Rankintown.
The Record (Statesville, N.C.), 10 December 1937.
- For an overview of the Petty family, see here.
- Jacolia Hall was the daughter of Kermit C.J. Hall and Marjorie Petty Hall.
- Delia Macheree Walker was the daughter of Gilmer and Eva Petty Walker (and thus Jacolia’s cousin, not niece.)
- James Edward Walker was Macheree’s brother.
- Delia Petty was Eva Petty Walker’s mother.
- Eva Petty Walker was the daughter of Lon W. Colvert and Delia Petty.
Rest in peace, Louise Holt Tisdale (1925-2018).
Louise Holt Tisdale (27 April 1925-5 April 2018)
My great-aunt Mamie‘s eldest daughter, Louise Holt Tisdale, passed peacefully earlier this month after a short illness. Her memorial was held yesterday, on what would have been her 93rd birthday. The family’s great beauty, “Sister” was as lovely within as without, always ready with a warm smile, a hearty laugh and an open door.
High school graduation, circa 1943.
My favorite photo of Sister.
Unless it’s this one.
Sister with her mother, left, and aunt, my grandmother.
💔
Pvt. Petty’s pension.
As detailed here, Edmond Petty was Eva Petty Walker‘s grandfather. Petty was born enslaved in the 1830s, probably in Wilkes County, North Carolina (Iredell County’s northwestern neighbor). On 26 April 1865, he enlisted in Company H, 40th Regiment, United States Colored Infantry, in Greeneville, Tennessee. Intentionally or accidentally, his name was recorded as “Edward Pedy.” (Greeneville is about 120 miles from Wilkes County over the Blue Ridge Mountains through what is now Cherokee National Forest. This is tough terrain even today.)
After mustering out in February 1866 at Chattanooga, Edmond Petty returned to Wilkes County, married and reared a family. In poor health and finally straitened, in 1883, Petty applied to the United States government for an invalid’s pension. He claimed disability as a result of suffering a sunstroke while drilling with his regiment.
Petty’s disability affidavit provides rich details of his life. Prior to enlistment in the Army, he had lived “with B.F. Petty to whom I belonged in Wilkes County, State of North Carolina. I was there a slave.” (Benjamin F. Petty, who reported owning 23 enslaved persons in 1850, was one of the largest slaveholders in Wilkes County.) Since the war, he had lived in the Fishing Creek area of Wilkes County and had worked as a farmer when he was able. Petty claimed that his diminished eyesight and rheumatism were the result of sunstroke suffered while on duty at Greeneville and that, because of his condition, he was barely able to work.
Edmond Petty’s file comprises 84 pages of testimony by his fellow veterans, neighbors and doctors about Petty’s medical condition and its causes, as well as his ability to support himself. Said H.M. Wilder, for example, “I found him hauling wood in a small one horse wagon to the town of Statesville earning a meagre living.” In the end, he was awarded eight dollars a month for three-quarters disability due to rheumatism and one-quarter to heart trouble.The Record & Landmark published a sarcastic piece about Petty’s appeal of his initial pension award in an article that was reprinted across North Carolina’s Piedmont. The piece insinuates that Petty had done nothing to warrant his stipend, but more importantly reveals that Petty was the agent of his own emancipation. When Stoneman’s Raid passed through Wilkes County in late March 1865, capturing Wilkesboro, Petty escaped the Petty plantation and fell in with Union troops as contraband, following them all the way to Tennessee, where he enlisted to fight the Confederacy.
Record & Landmark (Statesville, N.C.), 18 March 1898.U.S. Colored Troops Military Service Records, 1863-1865 [database on-line], http://www.ancestry.com; File #471,881, Application of Edmond Petty for Pension, National Archives and Records Administration.
