Enslaved People, Maternal Kin, North Carolina

Where did they go?, no. 2.

Jacob, age 65, $450. Abraham, age 45, $1100. Charles, age 25, $1500. George, age 24, $1500. Douglas, age 21, $1500. John, age 2, $150. Cephas, age 1, $100. Edwin, age 1, $100. Willy, infant, $100. Hagar, age 70, age $100. Margaret, age 42, $850. Caroline, age 23, $1200. Lucianna, age 20, $1200. Eliza, age 17, $1200. Mary Ann, age 13, $1000. Grace, age 10, $500. Martha, age 7, $350. Angeline, age 7, $350. Mag, age 3, $200.

These are the enslaved people — total value, $13,450 — that John M. McConnaughey reported to a Confederate tax assessor canvassing Rowan County, North Carolina, in 1863. Who were these 19 people? What were their links to one another?

Let’s start with the women. Hagar, at age 70, could have been the mother (or grandmother) of any or all of the McConnaughey slaves except Jacob. She was enumerated with McConnaughey in the 1850 slave schedule — 58 year-old mulatto female — and 1860 federal slave schedule — 68 year-old mulatto female. However, as detailed below, the composition of McConnaughey’s slaves changed extensively in the 1850s, and her relationship to others cannot be determined. In 1866, Hagar McConnaughey and David Litaker registered their 13-year cohabitation at the Rowan County courthouse, but she is not found in the 1870 census. Litaker appears as a single man, living in a household of white Litakers, and we can safely assume that Hagar had passed away. In 1867, when Benjamin McConnaughey married Adaline Gilliam, he listed his parents as March and Hagar McConnaughey. Here, perhaps, was Hagar’s first husband. Was he also owned by John M. McConnaughey?

Margaret was the mother or grandmother of at least six of McConnaughey’s slaves — George, Caroline, Mary Ann, Grace, Martha, Angeline and John — comprising a single extended family. Where was her husband? Among the small units of slaves like John McConnaughey’s (and the majority of other North Carolina slaveholders), husbands and wives rarely belonged to the same master or lived on the same farm. Death certificates and marriage records for several of Margaret’s children name Edward Miller as their father. (John’s father, however, is reputed to have been John McConnaughey himself.) The couple did not file their cohabitation, and Edward may have died before Emancipation. He probably had belonged to and lived on one of several neighboring farms owned by white Millers.

There are two other young women, “Lucianna” and Eliza, who were of an age to have been Margaret’s children. Were they? When Louisiana McConnaughey and Hezekiah Mitchell registered their six-year cohabitation in Rowan County in 1866, Louisiana noted that John McConnaughey had been her master. Three year-old Mag may have been Louisiana and Hezekiah’s child. If so, was she named for Margaret, possibly her grandmother? I haven’t found Louisiana, Hezekiah or Mag in the 1870 census or elsewhere, and have no evidence of their kinship to Margaret.

An Eliza McConnaughey appears in 1870 in the crazy-quilt household of John McConnaughey. McConnaughey never married and the only other white person reported under his roof was his nephew, Dr. Joseph L. McConnaughey, 34. The remainder of the household consisted of Peggy Ferran, 70 and blind; domestic servant/cook Eliza McConnaughey, 25, with her probable daughters, Alice, 7, and Rena, 4; 14 year-old Henry Ellis, a schoolboy; farm laborer Ed McConnaughey, 45; Dallas McConnaughey, 14; Harriet Barr, 40, also a domestic servant; and farm laborer-cum-schoolgirl (and my great-great-grandmother), Martha Miller, 14. Nearly all, it appears, were the former slaves of John McConnaughey (Martha and possibly Eliza) or of Joseph, who inherited them after his father James C. McConnaughey’s death in 1864 (Ed, Dallas, possibly Harriet, and possibly Eliza and her daughter Alice.)

Jacob did not register a cohabitation in Rowan County and does not appear under the surname McConnaughey in the 1870 census of the county.

In 1866 in Rowan County, Abram McConnaughey (the “Abraham” above) registered his six-year cohabitation with Eliza Barger. The family appears in the 1870 census of Mount Ulla, Rowan County: A. McConnaughey, 57, Eliza, 45, Peggy, 30, Francis, 14, Mitchel, 10, George, 4, and Charlotte McConnaughey, 1. (They are listed next door to Margaret McConnaughey, her granddaughter Angeline and son John.) In 1872, Abram married Phillis Cowan in Rowan County, and the license lists his parents as James Kerr and Esther McConnaughey. In 1893, he married again, to Jennie Rosebro, and gave his parents as James Kerr and Hester Ann Robinson. It is not clear who the parents are of the children listed in the household, and it seems possible that both Eliza and Peggy were, if not Abram’s wives, women by whom he had children. Two of Abram’s sons married in Rowan. William Giles McConnaughey, who married in 1867, listed his parents as Abram and Vina McConnaughey. The following year, James McConnaughey listed his parents as Abram and Phillis Lavina McConnaughey. In 1889, when Charlotte McConnaughey married Charles Brown in Rowan County, she listed her parents as Abram McConnaughey and Peggy Barber. (Is this the Peggy above?)

There are two Charles McConnaugheys in the 1870 census of Rowan County. One is a 36 year-old listed in the household of John Barger. Abram and Eliza McConnaughey’s cohabitation registration reveals that Eliza have been owned by John Barger (and her children with her.) If the Charles in Barger’s household was a son of Abraham and Eliza, he would not have been the Charles listed above. The other is a Charles McConnaughey, 40, listed with wife Phillis and ten children in Atwell township. This Charles is a little old to be the same as the one listed in 1863 and may instead have been the Charles owned by James C. McConnaughey.

Margaret McConnaughey’s son George is found in all post-Emancipation records as “George Miller,” having adopted his father’s surname. I have assumed that his wife, Eliza Kerr, and oldest child, Baldy Alexander Miller, born 1858, had a different owner. However, the cohabitation registration for George Washington Miller and Eliza Catherine Kerr seems to indicate that both were the former slaves of John M. McConnaughey. There was in Eliza of the right age in the 1863 list, but no young Baldy or Alex.

In 1870, the McDowell County censustaker enumerated a railroad laborer named Douglas McConaughy in a camp in Old Fort township. [He appears to have been working on the Mountain Division of the Western Railroad, a project that extended the railroad over the continental divide and connected both ends of the state.] Though his age is off by about six years, this may have been the Douglas listed among John M. McConnaughey’s slaves. Was Douglas also Margaret’s son? By age he could have been, but there is no evidence to prove so. (Of note, however: Mary Ann McConnaughey Miller named one of her sons James Douglas. For his uncle, perhaps?)

John McConnaughey was Margaret’s youngest son and is supposed to have been the son of John M. McConnaughey. He appears twice in the 1870 census, once with his mother and again in his sister Mary Ann Miller’s household.

Cephas, Edwin and Willy have not been found post-Emancipation.

Margaret McConnaughey’s six known children were born in 1835, 1840, 1847, 1853, 1855 and 1861. Given the gaps in their birth years, it is reasonable to assume that she bore additional children, perhaps Douglas (1842), Louisiana (1843) and Eliza (1846). (Though, of course, if Eliza were George Miller’s wife, she would not have been his sister.) Unfortunately, the available evidence is insufficient to establish these relationships or others among McConnaughey’s slaves.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Newspaper Articles, Photographs, Virginia

Marion Allen Lomans.

She was the aunt for whom my aunt was named. She was a teacher. She married late and had no children. And she died when my mother was small. That was about all I knew about my grandfather’s oldest sister, Marion Ellen Allen Lomans.

My uncle let me copy a scarred and badly tinted photo:

She looked like an Allen sister, but I was no less mystified. (Frankly, other than Aunt Julia, they were all a bit mysterious — how did I never meet Aunt Edith? Or Aunt Nita until I was an adult? Or even Uncle Buster, who lived right in Newport News?)

And then M., my mother’s first cousin, sent this picture, which charmed me to no end — Aunt Marion and her students at John Marshall School:

And then I found her obituary:

Virginian Pilot, 15 November 1942.

And so I learned a few more things: that, despite her marriage to Mr. Lomans, a World War I veteran whom she had married “recently” and whose Christian names were actually Gillespie Garland, she was still living at home at the time of her death. That she was a member of the United Order of Tents (a secretive charitable organization founded by black women in the mid-19th century) and the Good Samaritans (another?). That she taught for only six years. That Aunt Tee — that’s Edith — was unmarried and living in New York City when Marion died. That Marion died at Whittaker Memorial Hospital, an institution that her father served as a board member. That she was buried from Zion Baptist, the church that nurtured her father. Still, who was she?

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Migration, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Photographs

Sarah McNeely Green.

There were three uncles, and some male cousins, but the McNeelys were basically a family of women. My grandmother was the middle daughter of her mother’s three and grew up among six aunts who had many girls.

Janie McNeely, called “Dot,” was the youngest of Henry and Martha McNeely’s daughters. Born in 1894, she worked as a laundress and reared her children in Statesville’s Rabbit Town section before migrating to Columbus, Ohio, in the 1940s. Janie’s oldest child was Sarah Mae McNeely, born in 1911. She was followed by Frances V. McNeely (1913), Willa Louise McNeely (1918), Carl Graham Taylor (1923) and William Maurice McNeely (1925).

Sarah worked with her mother and sister at Statesville Laundry in the early 1930s. Soon after, she joined her grandmother, uncle John, aunt Emma and cousins in Bayonne, New Jersey, where she married a Mr. Green. (No one, including her obituary writer, seems to know his first name.)

Statesville Landmark, 3 May 1937.

A few days later, in the Statesville Record‘s “News of Our Colored People”:

Statesville Record, 7 May 1937.

[Was Sarah survived by Mr. Green or not? Who was her father? And who were the extra aunt and all those uncles?]

Photographs in the collection of Lisa Y. Henderson.

Births Deaths Marriages, Land, Maternal Kin, Other Documents, Virginia

Where we lived: ten acres near Westover Church.

In 1909, ten years after their father’s death, sole surviving heirs Mary Agnes Holmes Allen and Julia Holmes sold two parcels that Jasper Holmes had purchased in 1873 and 1879. “This figure represents a piece of land lying in Cha City Co, near Westover Church” wrote the surveyor who laid off the land and prepared this plat:

Westover, dating back nearly 400 years, is one of the oldest Episcopal parishes in Virginia. The current church was built in 1631 and remains active. Confederate breastworks running between the church and Evelynton plantation, on the south side of John Tyler Memorial Highway, are still visible.

Births Deaths Marriages, Education, Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Oral History, Photographs

There she is.

There she is. That’s one of those dresses that Mama made for her to come to Hampton. She came to Hampton a summer. She stayed more than six weeks. Must have stayed around eight or ten. But anyway, she came here, and the things that she learned! Oh, you would not believe. All kind of things – artwork she could do. Making baskets. Oh, I don’t know what all. That’s a blue taffeta dress with a white collar. And you know we had a supervisor [Mary Charlton Holliday] who came to Statesville, and she particularly liked Golar, and she was a Hampton graduate, and she wanted Golar to go to Hampton so she could learn all this stuff. All this artwork and everything. And when she got ready, when Golar got ready to go, Mama had bought – this is a navy taffeta dress with a white collar. And Mama had made all these dresses for her. She had – this was a dressy dress. And she had a pink dress, and she just, Mama just made her so many pretty things, you know. And the, two or three nights before she was to go, to leave to go to Hampton, she broke down and cried. Mama said, “What’s wrong?” Said, “We’re gonna be, we’re gonna have your things ready. You’re gonna be ready to go.” And she said, “That’s not why I’m crying.” She said, “I’m crying because Papa and Grandmama went to the bank and took out all of your money.” Mama had paid into her Christmas savings account, and the bank just gave the money to Grandma and Papa, and that’s how they got her things together. And she told Mama. Ooooo.

Golar Augusta Colvert was born in 1897 in Statesville, Iredell County, to Lon W. Colvert and his first wife, Josephine Dalton Colvert. She was about 9 years old when her widowed father married Carrie McNeely, and she grew close to her stepmother and adoring young half-siblings. When she was about 15, she enrolled at Saint Augustine’s College in Raleigh NC, where school catalogs show that she was a classmate of the Delany Sisters’ younger brothers.

Annual Catalog of Saint Augustine’s School, 1913-1914.

In 1919, Golar married William Bradshaw, son of Guy and Josephine Bradshaw. Their son William Colvert Bradshaw was born in 1921 and daughter Frances Josephine in 1924. The little girl did not live to see two years. William worked in a furniture factory and Golar taught elementary school, and the family lived in a large frame house with a wrap-around porch on Washington Street in Statesville’s Wallacetown section.

In the summer of 1931, for reasons that are not at all clear, Golar traveled to Washington DC to undergo surgery.

Yeahhhh. Went to Washington. Had this operation and, ah, we got a letter from her. Like, this afternoon, saying that she was all right, that they were gon take her stitches out, and she was coming home. And she died that night.

Statesville Landmark, 23 July 1931.

Statesville Landmark, 27 July 1931.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, North Carolina

North Carolina death certificates: MILLER & McCONNAUGHEY.

Death certificates of Margaret McConnaughey‘s children and grandchildren:

George Miller and children —

George Miller. Died 18 March 1915, Salisbury, Rowan County, of cerebral hemorrhage. Black. Widow. Farmer. Born March 1835, Rowan County, to Edward Miller and Marget Miller. Buried “Oakelm” cemetery. Informant, Margrett Miller.

Maria Miller. Died 28 July 1925, Salisbury, Rowan County. Born about 1879 to Geo. Miller and Eliza Scott, both of Rowan County. Married to Robert Karr. Buried Oakdale cemetery. Informant, Onie Miller.

Baldy Alexander Miller. Died 16 Jan 1942, Mount Ulla, Rowan County, of carditis with decompensation. Negro. Married. Tenant farmer. Born 1 Jan 1858, Rowan County, to George Miller and Eliza Carr.

Onnie Miller. Died 2 May 1970, Salisbury, Rowan County, of hypertensive cardiovascular disease. Widowed. Negro. Born 1 June 1870 to George Miller and Eliza Miller. Buried Oakwood cemetery. Informant, William F. Miller, Salisbury.

Child of Caroline McConnaughey —

Fletcher Reeves. Died 4 Sep 1910 in Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, of Brights disease. Resided 411 E. 8th St, Charlotte. Born 5 July 1854, Salisbury NC to Henry Reeves and Fina Overman. Married. Hostler. Buried Pinewood Cemetery, Charlotte. Informant, Rufus Williams.

Angeline E. Reeves. Died 25 Mar 1953, aged 99, at 1120 Church Street, Charlotte NC. Found dead in bed. Widow. Born 3 Jun 1843 [sic] in Salisbury NC to Bob McConahey and Caroline [last name unknown]. Buried Pinewood Cemetery, Charlotte. Informant, Mrs. Carrie Williams, Charlotte.

Mary Anna McConnaughey Miller, husband and children —

Ransom Miller. Died 3 March 1917, Barber, Steele, Rowan County, of “heart condition.” Black. Married. Farmer. Born 11 May 1843, Rowan County, to Edmund Miller and Malissa Miller. Buried Boyden graveyard. Informant, Richard Miller, Bear Poplar NC.

Hattie McCorkle. Died 21 November 1919, China Grove, Atwell, Rowan County, of bronchial asthma. Married to Lee Roy McCorkle. Farmwork. Born 1891 near China Grove to Ransom Miller and Mary Miller. Buried Oakland or Boyd cemetery, Rowan County. Informant, Sam McKee.

Ida Little. Died 16 March 1931, Unity, Rowan County, of carditis (contributory cause: abscess teeth). Resided Cleveland, Rowan County. Negro. Married to G.B. Little. Farmer. Born 17 February 1883, Rowan County, to Ransom Miller and Mary Miller. Buried Oakland cemetery, Cleveland NC. Informant, G.B. Little.

Ammie Miller. Died 28 May 1938, Cleveland, Rowan County of unknown causes. Negro. Married to Douglas Miller. Age 46. Born Rowan County to Henry Philips and Jennie McEmhord. Informant, Douglas Miller.

Mary Anna Miller. Died 24 Dec 1940, 6:30 p.m., Boydens Quarters, Rowan County NC of senile degeneration. Widow of Ransom Miller. Born 14 May 1840, Rowan County, to Edward McConaughey and unknown mother. Informant, W.K. Miller, Concord Rd., Box 320, Salisbury. Buried Oakland Cemetery, Rowan County NC.

Richard Miller. Died 8 June 1944, Mount Ulla, Rowan County, of cardial decompensation. Negro. Married to Lockie Miller. Farming. Born 16 September 1876, Rowan County, to Ransom and Mary Ann Miller, both of Rowan County. Buried Oakland cemetery, Rowan County. Informant, Lockie Miller.

Florence A. White Knox. Died 27 November 1950, Salisbury, Rowan County, of gastrointestinal hemorrhage. Resided Cleveland, Rowan County. Colored. Married. Born 1888, Rowan County, to Ransom Miller and Mary Miller. Buried Cameron cemetery, Elmwood NC. Informant, Forrest White.

Lockie Miller. Died 10 December 1957, Salisbury, Rowan County of coronary occlusion. Born 8 May 1875, Mecklenburg County to unknown parents. Widow of Richard Miller. Buried Oakland Pres. Cemetery. Informant, Mrs. Mary Leazer, Salisbury NC.

Lina Miller Neely. Died 26 October 1969, Salisbury, Rowan County of broncho-pneumonia. Widowed. Born 18 February 1885 to Ranson Miller and Mary (last name unknown). Buried Oakland Church cemetery. Informant, Mrs. Ethel Miller.

Grace Adeline Miller Miller and children —

Grace Adeline Miller. Born 25 Jun 1853, died 30 July 1918, daughter of Edward and Margaret Miller. Informant: Mary Brown.

Green Miller. Died 12 January 1923, East Spencer, Rowan County, of influenza and bilateral bronchopneumonia. Resided 714 Shaver Street, East Spencer. Colored. Married. Farmer. Born 28 September 1845, Rowan County, to Edward Miller and Malissa Miller. Buried Shady Grove. Informant, Mary Brown.

William Cass Brown. Died 10 March 1933, Steele, Rowan County, of cerebral apoplexy. Negro. Married to Mary Caroline Brown. Farmer. Born 9 January 1871, Rowan County, to Thomas Brown and Ellen Brown. Buried Millers Chapel cemetery. Informant, W. Ray Brown, Salisbury.

Mary C. Brown. Died 26 May 1951. Resided RFD 6, Salisbury NC. Negro. Widow. Born 18 July 1874 to Green Edward Miller and Adeline McConneighey. Informant: Ray Brown. Died of cerebral thrombosis. Buried 29 May 1951 at Miller’s Chapel cemetery, RFD 2, Salisbury.

Children of Martha Margaret Miller McNeely.

Lizzie Long. Died 28 Sep 1950, Bingham Street, Statesville, Iredell County, of accidental burning. (“Dwelling destroyed by fire due to heater exploding with kerosene.”) Born 18 Jun 1896 in Rowan County NC to Henry McNeeley and unknown mother. Housewife. Informant, John Long.

Carrie Colbert Taylor. Died 18 Dec 1957, Iredell Memorial Hospital, Statesville, Iredell County, of cerebral hemorrhage (1st CV accident in Oct 1957). Resided 515 Fall Street, Statesville. Born 22 Jun 1882, Rowan County NC to Henry McNeeley and Martha Miller. Husband, Charles V. Taylor. Informant, Louise Renwick. Buried Belmont Cemetery, Statesville.

Eletha Weaver. Died 19 Oct 1922, Statesville, Iredell County, of pulmonary tuberculosis. Married to Archie Weaver. Age 33 years, 10 months, 12 days. Born Rowan County to Henry McNeely and Martha Miller of Rowan County. Cook, S.L. Parks. Informant, Archie Weaver.

John B. McConnaughey.

John B. McConnaughey. Died 21 Aug 1931, Steel, Rowan County, of nephritis and heart disease. Farmer. Age 72. Married to Jennie McConnaughey. Born Rowan County to unknown father and Margaret McConnaughey. Buried in Oakland Cemetery. Informant, Jennie McConnaughey.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina

Lon W. Colvert.

Lon W. Colvert was born 10 June 1875 to Harriet Nicholson and John W. Colvert. He possibly was their second child and certainly was the only one to reach adulthood. My grandmother emphatically stated that his middle name was Walter, but her sister Launie Mae thought “Walker” – after his grandfather – and that’s the name that appears on certain records. Lon’s paternal grandparents reared him, but he was extremely close to his mother as an adult.

Lon was probably in his late teens when he arrived in Statesville from his family’s farm in the northern reaches of Iredell County. He was an ambitious young man with an eye on the main chance and a penchant for the shady that followed him even into his respectable years. By time he was 30, he was well-established downtown as a first-class barber, and the local paper obliged him with recognition:

Statesville Landmark, 7 May 1907

Lon and his first wife, Josephine Dalton, had three children, Mattie (1895), Golar Augusta (1897) and John Walker II (1898). Soon after Josephine’s death, he married Caroline M.M.F.V. McNeely and fathered three more daughters, Mary Louise (1906), Margaret Beulah (1908) and Launie Mae (1910).

In the mid-1920s, Lon’s business successes were short-circuited when his health began to fail. He passed away 23 October 1930, 83 years ago today.

Lon Walker Colvert Dies in Wallacetown.

Lon Walker Colvert, colored, 55 years old, died this morning at 1 o’clock at the home of his daughter, Gola Bradshaw, in Wallacetown. He was an old resident of Statesville, and for a number of years had a barbershop on South Center street, near the Southern station.

The funeral service will be Friday at 2:30, at Center Street A.M.E. Zion church, with interment in the local cemetery.

Surviving are his wife and six children; also one brother and one sister.

— Statesville Landmark, 23 Oct 1930.

Enslaved People, Maternal Kin, North Carolina

Where did they go?, no. 1: Nicholson.

In 1850, James Nicholson of northern Iredell County dictated a will that distributed 17 enslaved people – Milas, Dinah, Jack, Liza, Peter, Elix, Paris, Daniel, Carlos, Nelson, Lucinda, Joe, Manoe, Armstrong, Manless, Calvin and Sophie — among his heirs. I am descended from one, Lucinda, whose daughter Harriet was conceived after she joined Thomas A. Nicholson’s household. As I wrote here, Lucinda is found post-slavery only on death certificates of two of her children. What of the other 16? Are they any easier to trace?

In a word – no.

Mary Allison Nicholson received five slaves from her husband’s estate. Son Thomas received three outright and a share in five others. Son John McCombs Nicholson received four and a share in the same five. (It is not at all clear whether the groupings of these 17 people respected family units or were simply combinations devised with an eye for equal value.) Mary died in 1857 and, presumably, her property passed to her sons. However, in the 1860 slave schedule of Iredell County, only two Nicholson slaveholders appear: Thomas, who owned 13, and Martin T. Nicholson, who owned three. (Martin was Thomas’ brother-in-law and first cousin.) In the population schedule, Thomas reported owning $11,000 worth of personal property, a figure that would have included the value of his slaves. His brother John reported only $565. Had he sold his?

And the bigger question, where did Thomas’ slaves go after Emancipation? Freedmen did not always adopt the surnames of their immediate masters, of course, but in the 1870 census of Iredell County, only four black residents claimed the surname Nicholson. Eliza Nicholson, age 25, lived in the household of Thomas Nicholson’s son Wes. She presumably is the Liza of James’ estate. Manless Nicholson, 22, his wife (?) Maggie Nicholson, 24, and daughter Annie, 5, lived in Thomas’ household and worked for him. Manless had been jointly owned by Thomas and his brother. In Yadkin, the adjoining county, 35 year-old Alaxander Nicholson (probably the “Elix” above) is listed in the household of Isabel Cartwright. But that is it. No more.

Obviously, some people were simply inadvertently omitted from the 1870 schedule, such as Lucinda and her daughter Harriet, who were clearly living in Iredell then, and Milas Nicholson, who appears ten years later in Turnersburg township, Iredell County, as a 33 year-old with a wife and child. Also, the 1880 census of Deep Creek, Yadkin County, shows an 80 year-old Sophia Nicholson who may have been “Soffie.” (And was probably Manlius “Manless” Nicholson’s mother, as a Yadkin County marriage license and his death certificate indicate.) Of Dinah, Daniel, Nelson, Armstrong and the others, however, there is no trace, either in surrounding counties or under a different surname.

DNA, Maternal Kin

My mtDNA: haplotype L2d1a.

Mitochondrial (mt) DNA is passed down in a matrilineal line from mother to offspring of both sexes. Unlike Y-DNA (passed on the Y chromosome from father to son only), it mutates very rarely. MtDNA is classified into haplogroups. The L haplogroup is the oldest of all mtDNA haplogroups and originated in Africa. My haplotype is L2d1a, which is part of the L haplogroup. I inherited this from my mother’s mother’s mother’s mother and on back to an African maternal ancestor who lived many thousands of years ago.

Though each of us carries mtDNA, only a small group of my mother’s extended family shares my L2d1a haplotype. Of all of Martha Miller McNeely‘s daughters, only Carrie McNeely Colvert, Emma McNeely Houser and Janie McNeely Taylor passed L2d1a to female children. However, only Carrie’s daughters Louise, Margaret and Launie Mae passed it further. (Emma’s daughter Wardenur died childless, as did Janie’s daughters.) All of Louise, Margaret and Launie Mae’s children are L2d1a, but only six of their collective daughters passed it further. In my grandmother Margaret’s 2nd and 3rd generations, only I, my sister, my neice, and two first cousins carry it.

[By the way: Harriet Nicholson Hart’s mtDNA line ended when her only daughter died childless. Also, there are no known carriers of Walker Colvert’s or Henry W. McNeely’s Y-DNA. ]

Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Oral History

Possums and sweet potatoes.

My grandmother: His mother used to cook possum.

Me: Used to cook possum?

My grandmother: Oh, possum, honey. They would cook those dern things.

Me: Well, possum stew. I guess I have heard of that.

My grandmother: Naw. They didn’t have no possum stew. They’d bake this thing.

Me: Awwww!

My grandmother: And, look, wait a minute. You know they’ve got big mouths. Long mouths. A possum. And he’d put a sweet potato in the possum’s mouth. [I laugh, hard.] I don’t remember cooking one, but my grandmother sure used to cook ‘em. And Papa cooked ‘em. But I refused to cook ‘em. Not me. And you know these people when I came here ate muskrats?!

It was Harriet Nicholson Hart who fixed such special dishes for her favorite son.

Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Category Archives: Maternal Kin