Lewis Henderson’s Simmons branch.

Of all Lewis and Mag Henderson‘s children, descendants of only Ann Elizabeth and Loudie walk this earth. Loudie had just two children in her brief life, Jack and Bessie, but their collective offspring number in the hundreds. Ann Elizabeth did not live long either, but her children Daniel and Dollie ensured her legacy. I have talked about Loudie’s children here and introduced a purported photograph of Ann Elizabeth here. Now, more about Ann Elizabeth’s life.

Ann Elizabeth Henderson was born about 1862, probably in northern Sampson County. Her sister Isabella J. died early, leaving Ann Elizabeth the oldest girl in her family. The 1870 census of Brogden, Wayne County, North Carolina, shows Lewis Henderson, farmer, with wife Margarett and children James L. [known by his middle name, Lucian], Ann E., Caswell, and Mary S. [called “Sudie.”] On 21 January 1879, William Freeman applied at the Wayne County courthouse for a marriage license for Hilery Simmons, of Wayne County, age 24, colored, son of George Simmons and Axy Jane Simmons, both living, and Ann E. Henderson, of Wayne County, age 17, colored, daughter of Louis Henderson and Margret Henderson, both living. Hillary’s brother, R[iley] H. Simmons, a Methodist minister of the AME Zion Church, married the couple on two days later at Ann’s father Lewis’ home in Dudley. Hillary’s father G.W. Simmons (or maybe his brother General W. Simmons,) Hatch Brooks, and Ann’s brother Lucian Henderson officially witnessed the ceremony.

In the 1880 census of Brogden township, Wayne County, 28 year-old tenant farmer Hillory Simmons, his 17 year-old wife Ann Elizabeth, and 7 month-old daughter Abraskry shared a housheold with Ann’s sister nine year-old Sarah Henderson and 22 year-old brother Lucian Henderson. [“Abraskry”?!? Should that have been “Nebraska”? Was she named for a new state much in the news during the previous decade’s battles with Cheyenne, Pawnee, Sioux and other Natives?] The bulk of Ann Elizabeth Henderson Simmons’ life played in the two decades bracketed by the 1880 and 1900 censuses. We can assume that she was enumerated in 1890 with her husband and young children, but that record does not survive.

More intriguingly, the entire family is missing from the 1900 census, most likely the result of oversight but doubly unfortunate because she died around that time. In between, there are just a few glimpses of Ann Elizabeth in membership rolls of the Congregational Church of Dudley and in the deeds by which she and Hillary repeatedly mortgaged their 28-acre farm. In 1900 — 1901, at the latest — Ann Elizabeth Simmons died. She is surely buried in Congregational Church cemetery, perhaps next to her husband’s grave, or maybe with the Hendersons. Wherever she is, her grave is unmarked. Only children Minnie, Daniel and Annie C. “Dollie” survived her. In June 1902, Celestial Manuel Kemp, herself newly widowed, stepped into Ann Elizabeth’s shoes. Her first child with Hillary was born in 1904, the same year that H.B. Simmons applied for a marriage license for Jesse Budd of Wayne County, age 20, colored, son of John and Lou Budd, and Minnie Simmons of Wayne County, 17, colored, daughter of H.B. Simmons and Annie Simmons (he living, she dead). Rev. W.H. Mapp, a Pentecostal Holiness minister from Norfolk, Virginia, performed the ceremony on 27 May at H.B. Simmons’ residence in the presence of Edie Hunter, Cora Budd, and Sarah Jacobs, all of Wayne County. Sarah Henderson Jacobs, Minnie Simmons’ aunt, was the little girl who lived with Ann Elizabeth and Hillary just after they married, as recorded in the 1880 census.

Minnie and Jesse Budd’s first child, Jesse Manuel Budd Jr., was born 27 February 1905. Shortly after, the family moved to Philadelphia, where William Edward Budd was born in October 1906. Eddie died at home at 1652 North Darien Street at the age of nine months. Jesse Jr. died in Goldsboro of complications from an appendectomy in August 1916. Her own children lost, Minnie sought to adopt my grandmother Hattie Mae, her first cousin’s child, who was being reared by Sarah Henderson Jacobs. Sarah, however, would not separate Hattie from her sister Mamie.

Minnie Simmons Budd, perhaps the 1940s.

In 1910, the censustaker found Hilory Simmons, wife Zalista, and children Daniel, Dollie, John, Susan A., Charles and Kajy living in Brogden township. The family remained in the Dudley area, and Hillary B. Simmons died 25 October 1941. On 24 Dec 1912, Hillery Simmons applied for a marriage license for Yancy Musgrave of Wayne County, age 21, colored, son of Alford and Pollie Musgrave, both living, and Annie C. Simmons, 17, colored, daughter of Hillery and Annie E. Simmons (he living, she dead). Riley Simmons (now described as a Freewill Baptist minister) performed the ceremony the same day at Annie Simmons’ home in Dudley in the presence of Minnie Simmons of Dudley, Dave Budd of Mount Olive, and Liddie Winn of Dudley. Dollie’s children were Yancy Oliver (1913), Alfred Rudolph (1916), Bruce M. (1917), Marie Estelle (1920), Muriel (1922), Rossie Lee (1923), Ruth (1924), and Ralph Mordecai Musgrave (1926). Four months after Dollie’s marriage, on 10 April 1913, Daniel Simmons married Annie Irene Hogans, daughter of James and Annie Watson Hogans, in Goldsboro.

The couple’s first two children, James Daniel (1914) and Hettie Louise (1915), died in infancy. The family then moved briefly to Rocky Mount, North Carolina, where daughter Harriet Latta Simmons (1916-1970) was born. Daniel and Annie Irene Simmons moved to Richmond, where a second James Daniel (1919-2001), Anna Bell (1921-2000) and twins Mary (1924-2004) and Martha (1924-2012) were born; then to Philadelphia, where Hillary Bunn II (1926-2010), Stanley Armstead (1928-2000), and Matthew Dallas (1930-2009) were born; and finally Brooklyn, where twins Clement and Clifton (1931) died within a day of their birth. Annie Irene H. Simmons died soon after.

Top: Anna Bell, Mary, Daniel, Martha and Harriet. Bottom: Stanley, Dallas and Hillary.

Dollie Simmons Musgrave died in Norfolk, Virginia, in the early 1930s. Minnie Simmons Budd died in Philadelphia on 8 June 1961, and Daniel Simmons died in Farmingdale, New York, on 8 October 1964.

Daniel Simmons at left, an unidentified man, and possibly his stepmother Celestial and father Hillary B. Simmons, perhaps late 1930s, Dudley, North Carolina.

Photo of Minnie S. Budd in collection of Lisa Y. Henderson; photos of Daniel Simmons and family courtesy of D. G. Campbell.

Free People of Color, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Paternal Kin, Politics, Rights

Enlighten me; or how to obtain just dues.

In 1899, North Carolina passed a constitutional amendment that created new literacy and property restrictions on voting, but exempted those whose ancestors had the right to vote before the Civil War. The intent and impact of the amendment was to prevent generally poor and often illiterate African-Americans from voting, without disfranchising poor and illiterate whites:

Public Laws of North Carolina, 1899, chapter 218.

(Sec. 4.) Every person presenting himself for registration shall be able to read and write any section of the constitution in the English language and before he shall be entitled to vote he shall have paid on or before the first day of March of the year in which he proposes to vote his poll tax as prescribed by law for the previous year. Poll taxes shall be a lien only on assessed property and no process shall issue to enforce the collection of the same except against assessed property.

(Sec. 5.) No male person who was on January one, eighteen hundred and sixty-seven, or at any time prior thereto entitled to vote under the laws of any states in the United States wherein he then resided, and no lineal descendant of any such person, shall be denied the right to register and vote at any election in this state by reason of his failure to possess the educational qualification prescribed in section four of this article….

In 1902 — 112 years ago today — my great-great-grandfather John W. Aldridge, a steadfast if low-key supporter of local Republican politics, took pen in hand for a tight-jawed letter to the editor of a newspaper in the state capital:

Raleigh Morning Post, 15 October 1902.

——

The following “colored” men were among those who registered to vote in Wayne County in 1902. In accordance with Section 5, each was required to name the ancestor who “grandfathered” him in. Despite his very public protest, and his brothers’ successful registrations, John W. Aldridge’s name does not appear:

Joseph Aldridge, 36, Brogden, Robert Aldridge.

M.W. Aldridge, 45, Goldsboro, Robert Aldridge.

Robert Aldridge, 33, Brogden, Robert Aldridge.

Marshall Carter, 42, Brogden, Mike Carter. [Marshall Carter’s son Milford married John W. Aldridge’s daughter, Beulah.]

Williby Carter, 22, Brogden, Mike Carter. [Williby was Beulah Aldridge Carter‘s brother-in-law.]

H.E. Hagans, 34, Goldsboro, Napoleon Hagans. [Napoleon and Henry Hagans were the half-brother and nephew, respectively, of Frances Seaberry Artis, wife of Adam T. Artis.]

W.S. Hagans, 31, Nahunta, Dr. Ward. [William was another son of Napoleon. “Dr. Ward” was his white grandfather.]

John H. Jacob, 52, Brogden, Jesse Jacob. [Jesse and John Jacobs were the father and brother of Jesse A. Jacobs Jr., who married Sarah Henderson.]

Wiley Mozingo, 76, Goldsboro, Christopher Mozingo. [Wiley Mozingo’s daughter Patience Mozingo married Noah Artis, son of Adam T. Artis. His granddaughter Ora B. Mozingo married John W. Aldridge’s son, John J. Aldridge.]

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

Merchant brothers.

From the Wayne County section of the North Carolina Year Book and Business Directory, published by the News and Observer, Raleigh, 1904:

John W. Aldridge‘s brother Mathew “M.W.” Aldridge was listed under the merchant heading in the town of Goldsboro.

One lovely blog? Why, thank you!

In recent days, I’ve been twice nominated for a One Lovely Blog Award. Many thanks to Maryann Barnes and Tiffiny for their thoughtfulness and kind words. It’s always nice to know that one is not only heard, but appreciated.

The “rules” for the award:

Thank the person who nominated you and link to that blog.
Share seven things about yourself.
Nominate 15 bloggers you admire (or as many as you can think of!)
Contact your bloggers to let them know that you’ve tagged them for the One Lovely Blog Award.

Seven things:

I was born in a segregated hospital in Wilson, North Carolina.
I drew my first family tree in a fifth grade school project.
In a chance conversation in the spring of 1985, I learned that census records were on microfilm at my university library. I knew my great-grandmother’s name; I looked for it. When I found her living with her grandparents in 1910, I nearly passed out. I’ve been researching ever since.
My master’s thesis examined the involuntary apprenticeship of free children of color in Wayne County, North Carolina.
I descend from members of nearly every strata of antebellum North Carolina society – enslaved people, free people of color, Native Americans, white yeomanry, the white planter class. (I blog about free people of color at http://www.ncfpc.net.)
Since at least the Revolutionary War, all my ancestors have been born in either North Carolina or Virginia.
I have a Sankofa tattoo.

Blogs I admire (at the moment — the list changes):

Births Deaths Marriages, Free People of Color, North Carolina, Other Documents, Paternal Kin, Religion

He was faithful in all his houses.

The Wilson Daily Times was an afternoon paper in my day. It was lying in the driveway when I arrived home from school, and I could read it first if I put it back like it was — pages squared and neatly folded. (Even today, I shudder at a sloppy newspaper, flipped inside out and pages sprawling.) The Daily Times‘ roots are in Zion’s Landmark, a semi-monthly newsletter begun in 1867 by Pleasant Daniel Gold. Elder Gold (1833-1920), pastor of Wilson Primitive Baptist Church, filled the periodical with sermons and homilies, ads for homeopathic remedies, testimonials, altar calls and, most enduringly, obituaries of Primitive Baptists throughout eastern North Carolina.

African-Americans did not often make it into the pages of the Landmark, but P.D. Gold held Jonah Williams in considerable esteem. Gold preached my great-great-great-great-uncle’s funeral and published in the Landmark a lengthy obituary by Brother Henry S. Reid, clerk at Turner Swamp Primitive Baptist Church:

And what does this piece add to what I already know about Jonah Williams?

A marriage date for him and Pleasant Battle — 4 January 1867.
Some confusion about their children. I knew Pleasant had a slew of children from a previous marriage to Blount Battle. However, I had four children for Jonah and Pleasant — Clarissa (the surviving daughter referred to in the obit), Willie F. (1872-1895), Vicey (1874-1890), and J.W., whom I know only from a stone in the Williams’ cemetery plot. I’m thinking now that this is a foot marker, rather than a headstone, and I’ll revise my notes.
Jonah joined Aycock Primitive Baptist Church, part of the Black Creek Association, around 1875.
Around 1895, he and others were permitted to leave Aycock and form Turner Swamp Primitive Baptist Church, the first “organized colored” P.B. church in the area. The Black Creek Association ordained Jonah when he was called to serve at Turner Swamp.
Elder P.D. Gold preached Jonah Williams’ funeral.

Text found at https://archive.org/details/zionslandmarkse4919unse_0

Maternal Kin, Migration, North Carolina

William B. McNeely.

John Wilson McNeely‘s elder brother, William Bell McNeely, was born about 1804 in Rowan County. Their father was Samuel McNeely; their mother, Nancy Van Pool. The first known record of William’s life is John Van Pool‘s will, dated 13 October 1825 and probated in Rowan County at August term, 1827. The document named John’s sons David, Jacob, and John Van Pool; his daughters Nancy [McNeely], Margaret [McNeely] and Maria Van Pool; son-in-law Samuel McNeely; grandson Elihu N. Pool; and granddaughters Eliza Pool and Margaret T. Pool. Samuel McNeely was named executor, and witnesses were John McNeely Sr. and Jr. and William B. McNeely. (“Senior” and “junior” did not necessarily mean father and son in that era. Rather, as “II” can today, a “junior” could simply be a younger relative with the same name. Margaret Van Pool married Samuel McNeely’s brother John McNeely, who was named after his father. However, John McNeely the elder died in 1801, so could not have been the Sr. here. If Samuel’s brother John himself had a son John, he would have been rather young to have been a legal witness in 1825. Long story short, I don’t know which John McNeely in the will is Margaret’s husband, or who the other one is. William B., of course, was Samuel’s son and may simply have been close at hand.)

Five years later, on 1 Aug 1832, William B. McNeely married Elizabeth McNeely in Rowan County. Undoubtedly cousins, their exact relationship is not known. Within just a few years, the family would leave North Carolina forever, headed west to Missouri to claim a land grant.

On 24 Jan 1837, William Bell McNeely of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, deposited a certificate with the registrar of the Jackson, Missouri, land grant office. He registered a parcel described as the southwest quarter of the southeast quarter of section 25 in township 33, north, of Range 12, east and measuring 40 acres.

On 17 September, 1839, William B. McNeely married Elizabeth McPherson in Cape Girardeau County. William’s son Samuel was then about 4 years old, and it does not appear that William and his second wife had any children together.

On 10 Dec 1841, William McNeely made his final payment on the purchase of the parcel, which was located in Perry County, and took title. He had not finished moving though. In 1850, the censustaker of Saint Francois County, Missouri, counted among that county’s residents farmer William McNealy, 46, wife Elizabeth, 46, and Samuel E., 15. William claimed real estate valued at $300. Ten years later, after the formation of a new county, the family is listed in the Middlebrook postal district of Iron County: North Carolina-born farmer William B. McNeely, 56, wife Elizabeth, 56, and 7 year-old Catherine Green. William claimed $2000 in real estate and $500 personal property. Next door, son Samuel E. McNeely, 26, and his young family — wife Emily, 20, and daughter Elizabeth, 5 mos. — appear. Samuel reported $50 personal property.

William was too old to serve during the Civil War, and I have found no record that Samuel did either. William did, however, sign a loyalty oath in 1864.

In the 1870 census of Ironton, Iron County, Missouri, in Township 32, Range 3 East: Wm. B. McNeely, 66, farmer, appears with wife Elizabeth. William claimed $2500 real estate; $200, personal property.

Meanwhile, back in North Carolina, William’s brother John W. McNeely edged toward death. John’s demise in mid-summer of 1871 makes clear the totality of William’s break with his home state. John’s administrator, Joshua Miller, initially named his heirs as his widow, “Acenith McNeely a sister reported to be in Missouri and a Brother name not known and residence not known.” A little information trickled in, and Miller’s next report identified “Wm. B. McNeely, age 65, residing in Missouri Post Office unknown.” Though William had been in Iron County at least twenty years by then, Miller never found him (or Acenith), and the estate was settled without him.

Sometime between 1870 and 1880, William was again widowed. He appears in the census of Liberty, Iron County, in the household of his son, farmer S. McNeely, 45, with wife E., and children Ellen, Thomas, Owen, Margarett, Nancy, Charles, and George D. Samuel’s daughter Elizabeth — El. Huff — and her children William, 2, and Sam, 6 months, also lived in the house.

By 1900, Samuel McNeely was an elderly hired man living and working in Shoal Creek, Bond County, Illinois, some 125 miles northeast of Iron County. Samuel’s children, by this time, have moved west to Arizona and California. His father is not with him in Illinois and does not appear in the Missouri census. Most likely, he did not live to see the new century.

DNA, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

DNA Definites, no. 16: Henderson.

Hard on the heels of my first Henderson match* comes another.

K.H.’s family tree shows that he or she is a descendant of Susan Henderson Wynn, half-sister of my great-great-great-grandfather Lewis Henderson. I’ve reached out to the woman who administers K.H.’s account — bizarrely, she’s someone who reached out to me a year or ago about some Artis research she was doing for a friend — to confirm the connection.

*By this, I mean a Henderson who is not also an Aldridge. They are my double-cousins, and much closer on the Aldridge side.

Maternal Kin, Migration, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Vocation

Ardeanur, elocutionist.

Pittsburgh Courier, 2 June 1928.

This brief blurb intrigues me any number of ways:

(1) Ardeanur R. Smith? This is the first I’ve seen of a middle initial for Cousin Ardeanur.

(2) Smith? My grandmother said Ardeanur married somebody she ran off with when she was a teenager. However, every mention of her I’ve found dating before 1947 — and she is elusive in official records — names her as Smith, her maiden name. In her uncle John McNeely’s 1947 obituary, she’s a Hart for the first time. I have no idea what Mr. Hart’s first name was, where they married, or how long they stayed that way.

(3) Elocution? This may absolutely be a function of me failing to ask the right questions, but, as much as I heard about Wardenur playing the organ on the radio, I never heard my grandmother speak of Ardeanur’s singing or speaking career.

(4) And who was Ardeanur’s publicist that he or she managed to get her name and photo in the Pittsburgh Courier? And not for the last time.

(5) Staten Island?

(6) “Where a balcony fell at the closing session”?!?!?

Migration, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

That glorious climate of Arkansas.

Perhaps this sheds some light on Gus Artis and his sister Eliza Artis Everett‘s migration to Arkansas from North Carolina well after the Exoduster era:

Goldsboro Headlight, 6 November 1889.

On 27 November 1889, the Wilson Mirror reprinted a Goldsboro Argus piece that described Williams and Herring as “railroad hirelings and speculators.” “However much the desire should be divided among our people — and by this we mean the white people — for the negro to exodus this country or remain, the solid, stubborn truth shall not be kept from the poor, deluded, half-informed negro, that this is his home, the climate of his nature; that our people are the most tolerant and generous in the world; and his best friends, and that, therefore, he should stay right here where his associations date back through the centuries; where his faults, and there are many (but who of us is without faults?) are borne with from custom; where his privileges as a free citizen are unquestioned and untrammeled, and where his destinies are linked by law with the whites, who, under a Democratic administration, have for twenty years paid 90 per cent. of his government and education, while he has furnished 90 per cent. of the crime and ignorance of the State.”

Best friends, indeed.

The 20 December 1889 issue of the Wilmington Messenger chimed in the mockery, noting that “Peg leg Williams and Silas Herring have not dissolved copartnership. Peg leg is now in [Goldsboro], and he and Silas are as active as bees in inducing the “coons” of this section to leave their homes of peace and plenty here, to go the far off miasmatic lands of the West, there to die like cattle with the black tongue.”

Robert “Peg-Leg” Williams is memorialized in 100 Americans Making Constitutional History: A Biographical History, edited by Melvin I. Urofsky. Described as the most famous and successful of Southern “emigrant agents, Mississippi-born Williams, a Civil War veteran, assisted 16,000 African-Americans in leaving North Carolina in the wake of discriminatory labor laws passed in 1889.

*Kizzy Herring Herring, who applied for her husband’s Civil War pension from Lonoke County, Arkansas, was another who left Wayne County for the West. So, I suspect was Guy Lane, Jr., son of Guy and Sylvania Artis Lane, who decamped from Wayne County to Memphis, Tennessee, sometime between 1880 and 1900. Did he just not quite make it to Arkansas? Or did he double back to the city after deciding that Arkansas did not suit?

Education, Maternal Kin, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina

David C. McNeely’s erratum.

Eons ago, one of the first documents I found related to my great-great-great-grandfather John Wilson McNeely‘s family was an 1828 obituary for his brother David C. McNeely, a student at Yale College.

Western Carolinian, 22 April 1828.

Wow, I marveled. There could not have been many Scotch-Irishmen from the backwoods of Piedmont North Carolina studying at Yale at that time. What a terrible loss this must have been for John and his family. I entered David’s name into my Family Tree Maker tree alongside Samuel McNeely’s other children William and Acenith (or Acintha).

And then the other day, I found this:

Western Carolinian, 29 April 1828.

Oh. … Okay. … So all my sentiments hold — except the loss to John. David was not Samuel McNeely‘s son after all, but James McNeely’s.

If there was one James McNeely in Rowan County in the first quarter of the 19th century, there were a dozen, and I have been singularly unsuccessful at teasing apart and differentiating them. Evidence shows that Samuel and his son John W. had close relationships with several James. However, the will of Samuel’s father John McNeely (1724-1801) lists no heir named James, only John, Alexander and Samuel and their sister Ellinor McNeely Bell. It is past time that I pull together a chart or a list or a something that summarizes links I’ve found among these McNeelys and may reveal previously unnoticed clues.

Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Author Archives: Lisa Y. Henderson