Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Virginia

And then there were …

It’s beyond heartbreaking, even given the terrible infant mortality rates of times. Of Jasper and Matilda Holmes’ 11 children, only three lived to see the 20^th century. Matilda herself died giving birth to her last child, who lingered a few months before slipping away. Others died in clumps, compounding the family’s grief to unimaginable intensity.

Robert, the first child, was born in 1864. He lived long enough to be recorded in the 1880 census of Charles City County, but was dead before his father’s estate opened in 1899.

Walter and Angelina, born in 1868 and 1870, died within six months of each other in 1887, felled by tuberculosis.

William and Joseph, born in 1871 and 1874, died on consecutive days in January 1875, victims of whooping cough.

Emma, born in 1876, lived long enough to marry Cornelius Jefferson in November 1899 and to give birth to son, Jesse Holmes Jefferson, the following January. (Though, oddly, she is not listed in a transfer of property to Jasper’s heirs on 30 December 1899.) She died when Jesse was an infant, however, and the boy was reared in his aunt Agnes’ family.

My great-grandmother Mary Agnes, born in 1877, lived into her 80s. Her death in 1961 came more than 60 years after the death of all but one of her siblings.

Martha, called “Mattie,” born 1879, married Jesse E. Smith, in May 1899. She received a share of her father’s estate in 1899, but died during the next decade.

Julia Ellen, born in 1882, lived the longest of all the children. She was close to 90 in 1961 when she was listed in her sister’s obituary as the sole remaining Holmes.

The last babies, unnamed infants, died at or within months of birth. The first, a boy, died in 1880 at the age of 2 days; the second, a boy, in 1884 at the age of 6 days; and the last in 1885, weeks after his mother gave birth to him.

Maternal Kin, Photographs, Virginia

Speaking of Aunt Julia …

Here she is.

Pretty much the way I remember her, though this photograph probably dates from the mid to late 1950s, ten to fifteen years before I knew her. Her hair was always in pincurls behind the ears with a curly fluff of bang bunched up front. She always wore cotton print dresses, often with a bibbed apron. Her skin was a uniform pale, pale yellow, marshmallow soft on cheeks and upper arms, and smelling of … what? Powder? Faint perfume? My memory fails me; my mother will know.

I spent much of a summer with her when I was two, which I don’t at all recall but later Aunt Julia told me this: It is lunch time, and she has placed a biscuit on a plate before me, and as she bustles about to serve Uncle Bobby, I lay my cheek on this tiny warm pillow and fall straight into sleep.

My grandfather died long before I was born, and of his sisters and brother who lived into my childhood, she was the only one I knew. The return home from every visit to my grandmother in Newport News began with a slight jog to the left, a turn down Marshall Avenue to see Aunt Julia before we got on the road.

Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Photographs

One of those McNeely girls.

This is a surely a McNeely sister, but which one?

My grandmother wasn’t sure, but knew it wasn’t her mother Carrie, or Aunt Emma, or Aunts Minnie or Janie. Nor, she thought, was it Aunt Lizzie or Aunt Elethea. Which leaves Addie, but she nixed her, too. Not to second-guess my grandmother — or, well, to second-guess her, but in the most respectful way — I’d put my money on Addie, who died when my grandmother was about 9 years old.

Photograph in collection of Lisa Y. Henderson.

Maternal Kin, Other Documents, Photographs, Virginia

Julia Holmes Jackson.

In the late 1980s, when I was in the early clutches of my genealogical addiction, I often made copies of old pictures by photographing them through a microfilter screwed onto my Canon AE1. I spent an afternoon at my great-aunt Julia Allen Maclin’s house, sifting through a box of faded sepia-toned prints and gasping with delight as she identified Holmeses and Allens. Two of the many I copied that day were small oval portraits of the same woman. In one, she faces the camera nearly head-on, her hair puffed into bouffant tied with a dark bow. In the second, she has donned a great fluffy disk of a hat and tilts her head to the right. Strong side-lighting revealed a tiny feature I recognized immediately – an epicanthic fold at the corner of her left eye. My grandfather (her nephew) had them, and my mother does, and I do, too, though mine are a mere suggestion of her prominent flaps. This was Julia Ellen Holmes, my great-grandmother’s sister and the woman for whom my great-aunt was named.

I don’t know a lot about Julia. Though just a child at the time, she is not listed in her parents’ household in the 1880 census of Charles City County, Virginia. The first record of her that I’ve found is a deed of transfer filed 30 December 1899, at Charles City County Courthouse, from the estate of Jasper Holmes to Mary H. Allen and her husband John C. Allen and Martha H. Smith and her husband Jesse Smith, all of Newport News VA, and Julia E. Holmes, unmarried, of Charles City County, Jasper’s heirs at law.

Just months later, Julia (or a woman that appears to be her) is listed in the 1900 census of Manhattan, New York City, at 208 W. 72nd Street. There, Virginia-born Julia Holmes (born February 1880, which is not accurate if this is the right woman) lived in a boarding house that included three other servants, two waiters and a cook. Headed by 39 year-old Mary A. Phillips, the tenants included blacks, whites, southerners, northerners, a Cuban and an Irishman.

(Or is this my Julia? In the 1900 census of Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania: Julia Holmes, 17, Virginia-born servant, in the household of ice company treasurer Josiah A. McKee at 1838 Mount Vernon Avenue.)

The Holmes sisters sold off their father’s property over the next ten years, filing deeds of sale in 1905 and 1910. In the final transaction, on 10 Jan 1910, Mary Allen of Newport News and Julia Holmes of the City of New York, children and only heirs of Jasper Holmes (Martha Holmes Smith had died) filed a deed of transfer for property sold to James Clark for $300.

In the 1910 census of Manhattan, on Washington Square (North), Virginia-born Julia Holmes is listed as a servant in the household of Philo Hager, who worked in wholesale dry goods. By 1920, she had moved across the river to East Orange, which is where my great-aunt remembered her living. The censustaker found Julia Holmes at 1 Waters Avenue, listed as a servant in the household of B.C. Fenwick. Her birthplace is given as New Jersey; her parents’ as Virginia; her age as 29. Only the middle statistic is correct.

I have not found Julia Holmes in either the 1930 or 1940 censuses and assumed that she died sometime before World War II. Certainly, my great-aunt never spoke of her as if she had lived a long time.

However.

When I found my great-grandmother’s obituary in a March 1961 edition of the Daily Press, there, among the survivors, was “sister, Mrs. Julia Jackson of Orange NJ.” And then, when my cousin M., daughter of my great-aunt Nita Allen Wilkerson, sent me scans of a bunch of photos she found in an album that had belonged to Julia Allen Maclin, I found this:

I can’t see the flaps, but I’m certain: great-GREAT-aunt Julia.

(So, when, in fact, did she die? Where was she buried? Who was Mr. Jackson? Did she have children?)

Maternal Kin, North Carolina

Kinfolk?, no. 1.

In the 1880 census, Richard and Viree Morgan (John W. Colvert‘s sister) are listed in Eagle Mills, Iredell County, sharing a household with 20 year-old Squire Gray. Later that year, Squire married Rachel Way. Their marriage record lists Squire’s parents as E. Gray and R. Gray.

By 1900, Squire Gray, 39, his wife Rachel, 30, and daughters Hatty, 23, and Nelly Gray, 13, shared a household in Biltmore Precinct No. 1, Asheville, with Robert Jones, 50, his wife Caroline, age unknown, their grandchildren Robert, 10, Carrie, 7, and Valley Richardson, 8, and daughter Anne Richardson, 33. Both Squire and Robert worked as teamsters, and Rachel Gray as a cook.

In 1910, Square [sic] Gray, 61, Rachel, 59, Hattie, 18, and Nelly, 16, lived in the household of Dock and Lou Southern on Kenilworth Park in Asheville.

In 1920, Squire Gray, 70, wife Ratchel, 61, daughters Nellie, 40, and Ratchel, 35, and granddaughter Hattie, 1 ½, lived in Asheville on Kenilworth Park. [The names of Hattie and her daughter Rachel had been transposed.]

Squire Gray died 21 June 1921 in South Asheville. His death certificate noted that he was 61 years old, was married to Rachel Gray, and worked as a common laborer. He had been born in Rowan County to Orange Gray and Rachel Colbert. Squire was buried in South Asheville Cemetery.

Squire’s relationship, if any, to either Richard or Elvira Morgan was not noted in the 1880 census, but he may have been Viree’s cousin, a relative of her father Walker Colvert’s first wife, Elvira Gray. (In fact, it is possible that Elvira Gray was Elvira Colvert’s birth mother.) Or, he may have been a relative of Walker himself, if Rachel Colbert were actually a Colvert.

Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Oral History, Photographs

Emma McNeely Houser.

Aunt Emma was so pretty. And I never heard her raise her voice. Not ever. And she was she was so sedate and so pretty. We’d go to her house, and we’d eat, and everybody would get up and start – “Oh, goodness! Leave the dishes alone,” she’d say, and we’d all go in the living room and sit down, and then she finally would let us get up and go clean up the kitchen.

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Maternal Kin, North Carolina

The Lost Ones, no. 1.

Lena Tomlin and siblings. Harriet Nicholson reported to the census taker in 1910 that only three of her nine children were living. Those three were Lon W. Colvert, H. Golar Tomlin and Bertha Hart. The six deceased children were most likely all Tomlins (though it is possible that Harriet gave birth to another Colvert child in 1874.) Census records reveal the name of one, Milas Tomlin, who was born circa 1877. Newspaper articles from 1896 disclose a daughter, Lena Tomlin. And that’s it. My grandmother’s sister Launie Mae told me that several of Harriet and Abner Tomlin’s children drowned. It is good an explanation as any.
Lovenia Colvert and Elvira Colvert Morgan. Walker Colvert and Rebecca Parks’ cohabitation registration listed three children – John, Elvira and Lovenia. I have never found another reference to Lovenia Colvert. (Was she a relative who went west?) Her sister Elvira, however, left a slight record. Though she does not appear in her parents’ household in the 1870 census, in 1874, when she was about 14, Elvira married Richard Morgan, son of Richard Madison and Hilda Morgan. In the 1880 census, Richard and Viree Morgan are listed in Eagle Mills, Iredell County, sharing a household with 20 year-old Squire Gray. By 1900, the Morgans (and Squire Gray, separately) were living in Asheville at 281 S. Main Street. Richard worked as a saloon servant, and Elvira reported that she’d had no children. This is the last record I have found for her.

Land, Maternal Kin, Oral History, Photographs, Virginia

Where we lived: 748-21st Street.

My uncle: That’s where I was born and where John was born.

Me: At 748?

My uncle: That’s it.

My cousin: This crib right here?

My uncle: That’s where I was born.

Me: [Laughing.] Wow.

Tax records show that this tiny house — less than 800 square feet — was built around 1910. It now has two bedrooms and one bath, but the bath was undoubtedly a late addition. John C. Allen may have been the first to move a family into the dwelling; the Allens are shown there in the 1910 census of Newport News. John, who worked as a shipyard painter, reported that he owned the house subject to mortgage.

By 1920, the Allens had moved just around the corner to 2107 Marshall Avenue, the house I knew in childhood as my great-aunt Julia‘s. John Allen kept 748 and rented it out until his middle son married. John C. Allen Jr. and his wife Margaret Colvert Allen lived there until their fourth child, my mother, was two weeks old.

My grandmother: I lived I don’t know how many years in Mr. Allen’s house without any electricity. And just as soon as I moved out –

Me: He had it wired?

My grandmother: He had it wired. And one of the neighbors said she went out there in the street and laid him out. Said, that child over there with those children, washing and ironing and working herself to death, and you wait until she leaves out of your house, your son’s house? She said she laid him out.

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Maternal Kin, Other Documents, Paternal Kin

Early going.

My best guess is that I drafted this little chart in the late 1980s, the era in which I was seeking refuge from law school studies in dim microfilm reader rooms. I am struck by several things. Most depressingly: I have identified exactly THREE additional ancestors since I laid this chart aside in favor of genealogy software sometime in the early ‘90s. (And have lost two — both of my grandmothers – which is the most genuinely distressing observation.) The other: the mistakes and missing info.

On the green side:

(1) Lewis Henderson’s mother was Patsey Henderson;

(2) Lewis’ wife was Margaret Balkcum and my current thinking on her mother’s name is Nancy Balkcum;

(3) Frances Seaberry was indeed a Seaberry, and her mother was Levisa Hagans;

(4) Mary Eliza Balkcum’s mother’s name was Nancy Balkcum;

(5) Bessie Henderson’s father was not William D. Martin, but his brother Joseph Buckner “Buck” Martin; and

(6) Robert Aldridge died circa 1899;

(7) Mike Taylor’s name was Henry Michael (or Michael Henry) Taylor;

(8) Mike Taylor’s mother was named Fereby Taylor.

On the red:

(1) Mary Brown’s parents were James Brown and Catherine Booker;

(2) Jasper Holmes died around 1898;

(3) Walker Colvert died in 1905;

(4) James Lee Nicholson’s mother was Rebecca Clampett Nicholson Nicholson – she married her first cousin;

(5) Harriet Nicholson’s mother was Lucinda Cowles; and

(6) Henry McNeely died in 1906 and his wife Martha Miller McNeely in 1934.

Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Oral History

She would always bring him something.

My grandmother: My grandmother used to always bring him something down, she’d come down sometimes Sunday afternoon or Saturday night.

My aunt: Grandma Allen?

My grandmother: No, no, no, no, no. My daddy.

Me: Harriet.

My grandmother: She would always bring him something. In the springtime, when there’d be strawberries and rhubarb, she used to make strawberry pie with rhubarb in ’em. And she would make three or four and stack ’em like that. And cut all the way down. And she would always bring that to Papa.

Margaret C. Allen on this family’s stack pie legacy.

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Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Category Archives: Maternal Kin