Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Photographs

Family cemeteries, no. 3: Boyden Quarters.

I doubled back through Iredell County on I-77 and exited on US-70. I crossed into Rowan County on backroads, cresting rolling hills on my search for the lands on which my McNeelys and Millers lived and worked. I came out just east of Mount Ulla, the hamlet that gave its name to the entire district. Finding nothing much to see, I headed toward Bear Poplar and Salisbury on NC-801, also known as Sherrills Ford Road. From the corner of my eye, I spied a cluster of church signs pointing up a side road. “Thyatira Presbyterian” I recognized from histories of early Scots-Irish in Rowan County. And “Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, Boyden Quarters” — Boyden Quarters!!! That’s the area that many of my Miller-McConnaughey kin lived in in the early 20th century. I’d thought they were AME Zions, but decided to have a look anyway. And there they were:

Mary Emma McNeely Leazer, daughter of Joseph Archy McNeely and Ella Alexander McNeely. This stone faces into, and has been overgrown by, a cedar.

Right next to it is a double stone for Mary McNeely Leazer and her husband George H. Leazer.

Addie Brown Sifford was the daughter of William C. and Mary Caroline Miller Brown. Her grandmother was Grace Adeline Miller Miller.

Sarah Ellis Sifford was the daughter of Callie McNeely Ellis and granddaughter of Joseph Archy McNeely.

James W. McConnaughey was the son of James R. McConnaughey and Mary Leazer McConnaughey (sister of George H. Leazer, above) and grandson of John B. McConnaughey.

Births Deaths Marriages, North Carolina, Other Documents, Paternal Kin

A final account.

Lula Mae Aldridge died 16 November 1919 in a state hospital after a battle with mental illness. She was 37 years old. Lula had a few hundred dollars, probably inherited from her father, John W. Aldridge, and her brother John J. Aldridge was appointed administrator of her estate.

Lula was the oldest of John and Vicey Artis Aldridge‘s daughters, and the second to die that month. (Amanda Aldridge Newsome has succumbed to influenza ten days earlier.) Her family spared no expense for her funeral — $140.00 paid to undertaker L.T. Lightner and $80 to Goldsboro Marble & Granite Works for her marker.

Lula’s gravestone, Henderson-Aldridge Cemetery, Dudley NC

This, despite the considerable debt against her estate, primarily in the form of a $277 judgment against her by William Mozingo. (What in the world?!? I’ll have to look this up.) Lula’s brothers John and James Thomas Aldridge and her mother Vicey contributed $337.95 (about $4600 today) to settle her affairs, and the estate closed in 1923.

Births Deaths Marriages, Paternal Kin

Misinformation Monday, no. 2.

The second in a series of posts revealing the fallability of records, even “official” ones.

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The “true facts”: Richard Artis Sr. was born about 1850 in Wayne or Greene County to Vicey Artis and Solomon Williams.

Here’s his death certificate:

First of all, poor penmanship — a “bad hand,” as my grandmother would have said — will do you in. Based on that misshapen “S,” Ancestry.com has indexed this document as the death record of Richard Artis Jr. In fact, Junior was the informant, and his “J” is unambiguous. This is Richard Senior’s death cert.

Second, Richard’s father was certainly named Solomon, but not Artis, as unhelpfully pencilled in.

Third, Richard’s mother’s name is illegible, which is just as well, as it surely does not say “Vicey Artis.”

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Photographs, Virginia

Happy birthday, Aunt Julia.

Remembering Julia Elmira Allen Maclin (23 December 1904-24 March 1999) on her birthday.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Virginia

Mary, Mary?

Mary Brown, born about 1849 in Amelia County, Virginia, married Graham Allen in Charles City County in 1876. She and Graham and their children appear together in the 1880, 1900 and 1910 censuses. Mary Allen, born in Amelia County to James Brown and Catherine Booker, died 1 April 1916 in Charles City County. Who, then, was the 30 year-old Mary Allen whose death Graham Allen reported on 8 December 1887 in Charles City County?

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Photographs

Remembering Launie Mae Colvert Jones.

Grandma: Launie Mae was a mama’s baby.

Me: Aunt Launie Mae was a mama’s baby?

Grandma: Yes, Lord. [I laugh.] With all her soul.

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My mother: I thought Aunt Launie Mae looked more like Grandma Carrie than anybody. She looked the most like of her all the sisters.

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Remembering my great-aunt LAUNIE MAE COLVERT JONES (1910-1997) on her birthday.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Paternal Kin

The TB.

My grandmother: Jay’s daddy had TB, and he just gave it to them. To my aunt and Jay. But he lived years and years and years after both of them died.

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Tuberculosis, once also called phthisis, is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria. Tuberculosis typically attacks the lungs, but can also affect other parts of the body. It is spread through the air when people with an active TB infection cough, sneeze, or otherwise transmit respiratory fluids through the air. The classic symptoms of active infection are a chronic cough with blood-tinged sputum, fever, night sweats, and weight loss (the latter giving rise to the old term “consumption.“) Tuberculosis has been present in humans since antiquity. Tuberculosis caused the most widespread public concern in the 19th and early 20th centuries as an endemic disease of the urban poor and was the leading cause of death in many cities in the early 1900s. By mid-century, the development of the antibiotic streptomycin made effective treatment and cure of TB a reality.

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In memory of members of my extended family who succumbed to this disease:

Annie Locust Artis, age 28. Wayne County NC, 19 April 1915.

Minnie Clyde Sauls, age 25. Snow Hill NC, 12 May 1915.

Frances Artis Newsome, age 21. Wayne County NC, 9 May 1916.

Appie Artis, age 37. Wilson County NC, 28 May 1916.

Cain Artis, age 66. Wilson County NC, 23 March 1917.

Nettie Barnes, age 22. Wilson NC, 9 May 1917.

Toltie Forbes, age 21. Greene County NC, 18 June 1917.

Jesse Swinson Jr., age 28. Goldsboro NC, 1 July 1917.

William Barnes, age 28. Wilson NC, 6 August 1917.

Harriet Artis Brown, age 44. Wayne County NC, 6 November 1918.

Pelia N. Artis, age 11. Wayne County NC, 24 July 1919.

Charlie Barnes, age ____. Asheville NC, 28 July 1919.

Walter Clinton Artis, age 23. Wayne County NC, 15 November 1921.

Jarod C. Miller, age 21. Rowan County NC, 4 December 1921.

Elethea McNeely Weaver, age 33. Statesville NC, 10 October 1922.

Johnnie Swinson, age 32. Goldsboro NC, 25 December 1922.

Estell Artis, age 15. Wayne County NC, 20 February 1924.

John Henderson, age 63. Goldsboro NC, 8 August 1924.

Warland Barnes, age 19. Wilson NC, 4 Dec 1926.

William Coley, age 61. Near Wilson NC, 26 January 1928.

Jerrell R. Barnes, age 19. Wilson NC, 14 May 1928.

Napoleon Artis, age 21. Wayne County NC, 9 September 1928.

Sadie Holt Farrar, age 35. Greensboro NC, 13 October 1929.

T. Alonzo Hart, age 63. Quewhiffle NC, 17 December 1929.

Alberta Artis, age 23. Near Eureka NC, 9 June 1931.

Blonnie Barnes Zachary, age 24. Wilson NC, 10 January 1932.

James A. Aldridge, age 42. Near Wilson NC, 3 July 1932.

Ora Artis, age 62. Wayne County NC, 8 August 1933.

Irving McNeely Weaver, age 22. Bayonne NJ, November 1933.

Malinda Applewhite Artis, age 40. Wilson County NC, 5 March 1936.

Joe Artis, age 62. Wayne County NC, 29 November 1939.

Viola Barnes, age 48. Wilson NC, 3 July 1943.

Liberty P. Artis, age 11. Stantonsburg NC, 10 July 1945.

Alphonso Artis, age 38. Goldsboro NC, 2 May 1946.

Paul Aldridge, age 34. Dudley NC, 8 June 1947.

Annie Marie Artis Sampson, age 27. Fremont NC, 12 June 1949.

Minnie Belle Artis, age 20. Stantonsburg NC, 4 April 1950.

Births Deaths Marriages, Land, North Carolina, Other Documents, Paternal Kin

The house and the lot on which they now live.

Buck Martin never married. At the end of his life, he and his bachelor brother Alfred lived together in the “home place,” perhaps the house they had grown up in, which Buck owned. Just down the road lived another unmarried brother, Dortch, and their widowed sister, Virginia “Jenny” Martin Herring.

A few months before his death, Buck drew up a will that insured that Alfred would keep a roof over his head and that, more importantly, his younger children and their mother, Sarah Barfield, would not be dispossessed of the house and acre of land upon which they lived. By its terms, the will provided that the Barfields could remain on the property for the duration of their lifetimes and those of their survivors, after which it would revert to his brothers or their heirs. In fact, they did not stay quite so long. Sarah Barfield died in 1942, and the property reverted to Buck’s brother Ira’s children. Lillie Barfield Holmes bought the house from them, but it later burned down.

[Sidenote: Buck Martin died 18 June 1928 of sarcoma of the right thigh. His brother Ira died of heart failure exactly ten days later.]

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Oral History, Photographs

Remembering Grandma Carrie.

Me: In her pictures she always looked stern.

My mother: Grandma?

Me: Carrie.

Ma: Grandma Carrie? I know it. But she was funny. She was funny to me. She could say some of the, she could say some funny stuff. I know that’s where Mama gets it from. The little sayings.

Statesville Landmark, 20 December 1957.

My grandmother didn’t think much of Charles V. Taylor:

Course she met this guy and married him that she had known him when she was a child. Taylor. And went to New Jersey. She came back home, and Mama had high blood pressure, you know. But she kept, her doctors kept it in check. But he hadn’t let her go to the doctor for two times, and she had a stroke and died. Oooo. I could have killed that man. I was so mad with that man I didn’t know what to do. And when we went down there, Mama just got worse and worse. She went to the hospital, and they did everything they could at the hospital, and then they let her come home. And I went down there to see her one time, while she was at home, you know, and she couldn’t talk. She couldn’t talk, I mean. And she would try her best to tell me something. And I just cried and cried and cried and cried and cried. And I didn’t know what she was trying to tell me. So my sister lived not far from her. And she was a cafeteria manager, but she would come to see Mama between the meals. You know, in the morning breakfast and lunch, and then after dinner she’d come. She really did take care of Mama when she was living with that Thing. And she went to the hospital and stayed awhile, and he wouldn’t pay the hospital bill. And I took a note out at the bank, and Louise paid her doctor’s bill and everything, and when she died, he tried to make us pay all the burial expenses. And his brother came over there and told us, said, “Don’t you pay a penny. ‘Cause he’s got money, and he’s supposed to use it for that.” And said, “Don’t you do it. Don’t you give it to him.” And that man and the undertaker got together and planned all that stuff against us, you know. The three of us. It was terrible. And Mama had a lot of beautiful clothes, you know, because this man bought her things. And they were all in there looking at them. I said, “I don’t want a thing. I don’t want not one thing.” I think I got a coat. It was just like a spring coat. It was lined. And I think Louise insisted that I take it, but that was the only thing that I took.

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Remembering Caroline Martha Mary Fisher Valentine McNeely Colvert Taylor, who died 56 years ago today.

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Births Deaths Marriages, North Carolina, Other Documents, Paternal Kin

Misinformation Monday, no. 1.

The first in a series of posts revealing the fallability of records, even “official” ones.

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The “true facts”: Caswell C. Henderson was born in 1865 in Sampson County, North Carolina, to Lewis Henderson and Margaret Balkcum Henderson.

Nonetheless, this is what the records say:

(1) Marriage license, issued 1893 in New York City: Caswell C. Henderson was born in New York NY to Lewis Henderson and an unknown mother.

(2) 1900 federal census: Caswell Henderson was born in New York to New York-born parents.

(3) Marriage license, issued 1907 in New York City: Caswell C. Henderson was born in New York City to Lewis Henderson and Margaret Balcum.

(4) 1910 federal census: Caswell C. Henderson was born in New York. His father was born in Virginia; his mother, in New York.

(5) 1920 federal census: Caswell C. Henderson was born in New York to New York-born parents.

(6) Death certificate, issued 1927 in New York City: Caswell Henderson was born in North Carolina to an unknown father born in North Carolina and an unknown mother born in an unknown state.

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Who was the source of this misinformation? Did Caswell claim to have been born in New York? Why?

Sidenote: Though Caswell’s middle initial, “C,” is almost always noted, I have never seen his middle name spelled out and have no idea what is it.

Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Category Archives: Births Deaths Marriages