John McNeely vs. John McNeely.

Okay, now I am genuinely perplexed. A couple of months ago, I wrote about finding my great-great-uncle John McNeely’s first wife, whom he married in 1899. I had just found a marriage license for John Alexander McNeely, colored, son of Henry and Martha McNeely of Iredell County, and Carry Armstrong. Prior to this, I had only known wife Laura Nesbit, whom he married in Statesville in 1912.

I have not found John and Laura McNeely in the 1920 census, but in 1930 they and Laura’s daughter Marie shared a house with John’s sister and brother-in-law, Emma and Irving Houser, in Bayonne, New Jersey. In 1940, John and Laura and Marie and her husband James Watkins were living on West 19th Street in Bayonne. And when John died in 1947, his obituary noted that he was the beloved husband of Laura (Nesbitt.)

So yesterday when I found yet another marriage for John A. McNeely, son of Henry and Martha McNeely of Iredell County, I was flummoxed.

Did John marry Laura, divorce (or otherwise leave) her, marry Jane Nichols, divorce her, then remarry Laura Nesbit? If so, where is the second marriage license for Laura? If not, who is this John McNeely? And who are the other Henry and Martha McNeely?

The only Henry and Martha McNeely in the 1900 census of North Carolina are my John’s parents, living in Statesville township. In 1880, they’re in Rowan County, and still the only couple with those names in the state. Henry died in 1906, before death certificates were kept, and Martha died in New Jersey. I have not found death certificates for any other Henry or Martha McNeely in Iredell.

As for John: John and Jane McNeely appear in the 1900 census of Statesville, my John McNeely does not. In the first decade of the century, a John McNeely pops up in the pages of the local paper for various misdeeds — shooting at a rival, having smallpox, fighting, slicing a man with a knife, shooting at a dog. I’d like to think that this is not my John, but there’s no clear way to know. And there’s no John McNeely at all in Iredell County in the 1910 census.

I’ll have to leave it here for now. I don’t have enough to know for certain whether John McNeely and John Alexander McNeely were the same man.

UPDATE, 19 June 2015: Is this a clue to the identity of John A. McNeely?

This Henry McNeely is not my great-great-grandfather Henry McNeely. He’s his nephew. Henry’s father John Rufus McNeely was, I believe, the half-brother of my Henry. Unfortunately, this Henry was born about 1863, and John A. McNeely was born about 1870. I don’t believe this Henry and Martha were the couple named on John A. McNeely’s marriage licenses.

UPDATE, 21 June 2015: Then there’s this.

This is from the marriage license of my John McNeely’s brother, William Luther McNeely, who married Mary Belle Woods in 1906 at Statesville’s Associate Reform Presbyterian Church. My great-grandparents Lon and Carrie McNeely Colvert wed there the same year. Is it just coincidence that John Alexander McNeely was also married by Rev. J.H. Pressly in this church?

Maternal Kin

Mini McNeely reunion.

A couple of weeks ago, I spent a delightful Friday afternoon in Augusta, Georgia, getting to know my cousin M.H. and his wife C.H. M.’s grandmother was Emma McNeely Houser, beloved and much-admired aunt of my grandmother Margaret Colvert Allen. M. and C. were every bit as warm and friendly as I’d expected, and the whole time we laughed and swapped stories. I wish he’d been able to meet my grandmother.

Here’s me and M.:

And here’s my great-grandmother Carrie McNeely Colvert Taylor, Aunt Emma holding a grandchild, Aunt Minnie McNeely Hargrove, and Uncle John McNeely, sometime in the early 1940s in Jersey City, New Jersey:

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Newspaper Articles, Virginia

Will my mother know me there?

On 4 September 1945, the “Colored News-Briefs” column of The Hopewell Times, included this brief passage:

That Graham Whirley‘s death by gunshot was not reported salaciously says a lot about the regard in which he was held both inside and out of his community in Hopewell.

Three days later, the Colored News-Briefs column carried a detailed account of Graham’s funeral, held at New Vine Baptist Church in Charles City County the previous Tuesday:

“Will My Mother Know Me There?” — we’ll come back to that.

This brief piece was published 14 September. I haven’t yet found follow-up articles that reveal details of Graham Whirley and Charles Williams’ fatal encounter or of the outcome of Williams’ trial. What I have found, however, are numerous examples of the esteem in which Hopewell’s working-class African-American community held this relatively young man.

The first mention, on 8 December 1936, was a sweet one — “Miss Susie Whirley of Richmond was in the city last week visiting her brother at his home in City Point.” Though Graham’s social life — party attendance and motor excursions — received remarks (especially when he was courting a woman called Miss Carrie B. Lightly,) his singing brought the most notice. Time after time, the colored news noted that he had “rendered” a beloved hymn at a Baptist church in or around Hopewell:

17 September 1937, at the funeral of Sarah Washington at Harrison Grove Baptist Church, Prince George County, “I Know She Will Know Me”;
24 November 1943, at the service for Leroy Claiborne at Harrison Grove, an unnamed solo;
4 February 1944, at the homegoing of Mrs. Ada C. Jones at Mount Hope Baptist Church, “When I Reach My Heavenly Home“;
30 May 1944, at the funeral of Elijah Miller at First Baptist Church, Bermuda Hundred, “There’s a Bright Side Somewhere”;
19 January 1945, at the service for Mrs. Maria Hutchinson at Harrison Grove, Graham’s favorite, “Will My Mother Know Me There?”;
30 January 1945, at the service for Mrs. Lena Stith Jones at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, “I Shall Meet My Mother There”;
13 April 1945, when Joe Myrick (stabbed to death by his wife) was funeralized at Union Baptist, again “There’s a Bright Side Somewhere”; and
just two weeks later, at Robert Cottrell’s homegoing, “He’ll Know Me There.”

In the middle of this, on 22 May 1944, the column announced that “Mr. and Mrs. Graham Whirley of City Point have returned after spending their honeymoon in Baltimore, Maryland.” That, of course, was where his half-brother John Whirley and sister Matilda Whirley Brinage lived. Just sixteen months after he remarried, Graham Whirley, taxi driver and sought-after soloist, was dead. Despite his move across the James River, he had never left his home church, and he is buried at New Vine.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Other Documents, Virginia

Great-great-aunt Henrietta’s passing.

Another treasure from Ancestry.com’s new Virginia vital records. The death certificate of my great-grandfather Lon W. Colvert‘s half-sister, Henrietta Colvert:

Henrietta Rebecca Colvert! I’ve never seen a middle name for Henrietta before, and it’s nice to see that she was named for her father’s step-mother.
Date of birth — 4 March 1911? More like 1893.
I’m still not sure how Henrietta wound up in Roanoke, though I assume she ended her nursing career there.
The Colvert “home house” in Statesville was on Harrison Street. The nursing home in which Henrietta spent her final years was on Harrison Avenue.
E.S., my grandmother’s first cousin and son of Henrietta’s sister Ida Colvert Stockton, lives in suburban D.C., and he told me that he and his wife visited Henrietta in her declining years. Did my grandmother know that her aunt was living in Roanoke? Did she know when she died?
Is her grave marked? There’s no listing for it in Williams Memorial Park at findagrave.com.

Enslaved People, Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Photographs

What was.

Photographs from the Welch-Nicholson House and Mill Site National Register nomination file held at the North Carolina Historic Preservation Office, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, Raleigh. Many thanks to File Room Manager Chandrea Burch and National Register Coordinator Ann Swallow.

My great-great-grandmother Harriet Nicholson Tomlin Hart walked these rooms.

This, of course, is all gone now. Burned to the ground one night in the 1980s.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Other Documents, Virginia

Allen vitals.

The Commonwealth of Virginia has thrilled and astonished me by making vital records available via Ancestry.com. Yesterday, cousin Barbie Jones notified me that the databases were up and open, and I thank her for part in the gargantuan task of indexing these documents.

Just as with North Carolina Marriages a couple of months ago, Virginia Birth, Marriage and Death Records are unveiling little mysteries and setting records straight.

I’ll start with the Allens.

In the 1900 census, Graham Allen is listed in Charles City County, Virginia, with wife Mary, sons Alexander and Edward, and grandsons Milton and Junius. My assumption has always been that Graham and Mary’s eldest daughter Emma was the mother of the younger boys.

Last night, I found this:

So, yes. Conjecture confirmed. Milton William Allen — the middle name is new to me– was 16 year-old Emma’s son. Who was Mrs. Laura Ray, “friend”? And Milton was alive as late as 1958??? Where was he living?

But then I found this:

Is this right? Was Junius really Graham and Mary’s youngest child? (For a fact, my grandmother told me Junius was John C. Allen‘s brother, but I figured this was a manner of speaking.) And who is James Dobson, “uncle” and “a neighbor at the time,” who attested to Junius’ birth for this delayed certificate? And when did Junius move to Paterson, New Jersey? And there was once a King James Bible recording family births and deaths?

And then I found Emma Allen Whirley and two of her children:

No surprises, but who was informant Joseph Ghee?

A bit of a sad surprise. As I wrote here, Graham’s brother Samuel is the one who’d had a brush with infamy, yet Graham ends up shot in the chest. Where was South “B” Village? Taxi driver and wood dealer? And where did his wife pull “Binford” from as Emma’s maiden name?

Samuel Whirley, at least, lived a longish life.

What I’ve found after just a bit of looking:

Laura Ray appears in the 1900 census of Harrison, Charles City County, with husband Graham Ray and three children. Laura Ann Wray’s death certificate shows that she was born 24 September 1873 to Lennie Glenn and “Annie” and died 12 June 1958 in Harrison district, Charles City. She was buried at New Vine church. Her husband Graham Wray’s death certificate reveals that he was born about 1871 to John Wray and Margaret Jones, that he was a farmer, that he died 3 March 1916, and that he was also buried at New Vine. New Vine, of course, was the Allen family’s church, too.
I have not found Milton in any Virginia censuses after 1900, but I’m even less sure now that the Milton Allen that lived in Kokomo, Indiana, in the 1920s is my Milton. However, he may be the Milton W. Allen listed in the 1960 Petersburg, Virginia, city directory:

I don’t have a death certificate, but the Social Security Death Index shows that Junius Allen, born 22 February 1896, died in January 1975 in Paterson, New Jersey. He had obtained his Social Security number prior to 1951 in New Jersey.
Junius’ handwriting had immeasurably improved since his scrawl on his World War I draft registration card.
A James Henry Dobson, self-employed barber and minister born 25 December 1884, registered for the World War II draft in Paterson, New Jersey. He reported being born in Richmond, Virginia, and named Mrs. Lavinia McKay as his contact person. Is this the same man? (The James Dobson above was born about 1875.) How could he have been Junius’ uncle?
Joseph Wiley Ghee’s death certificate reveals that he was born in 1897 in Charles City County to Robert S. and Lovey Williams Ghee, that he died in 1957, and that he was buried at New Vine. He was a member of the Allens’ church then, and there’s no evidence so far that he was related to Emma.
In the 1940 census of Hopewell, Virginia, Graham Whirley is listed as a 25 year-old lodger living in the Maplewood Avenue Extension household of Andrew Joyner, a fellow chemical plant worker. Graham is described as married, but no wife appears with him. This might be why:

Per Wikipedia’s Hopewell, Virginia, entry: “Due to its hasty construction as a mill town during the First World War, Hopewell had a large number of kit homes that were hauled in and erected in neighborhoods laid out by DuPont [Company, which operated a dynamite, and then a guncotton factory there] known as ‘A Village’ and ‘B Village.'”
As I’ll show elsewhere, Graham’s life contrasted sharply with his violent death. Newspaper accounts reveal that he was a church man, popular about town, and respected in and outside his community.
Samuel Whirley’s marriage to India Carter Lee was a late one. Their license correctly lists his mother’s name:

And here’s an earlier marriage:

And the sorry end of that one. (Los Angeles, California???):

I mused earlier that it was hard to believe that of Mary Brown Allen’s children, only John and Emma had children. Emma’s sole known grandchild died childless, leaving my great-grandfather’s relatively few descendants as the only extant Allens. (By my count, we number only 25 across three generations. Twenty-five.) These additional records do not change that scenario. Neither Samuel nor Graham Whirley had children, and I’ve seen no evidence that Junius or Milton did.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Migration, North Carolina

The Boston branch.

I’ve written about Angeline McConnaughey Reeves and her family — particularly her daughter Carrie Reeves Williams. But what of her other children?

——

A short notice appeared in the 14 March 1895 edition of the Charlotte Observer:

Frank Eccles and Ada Reeves, colored, were married Tuesday night. The groom is Farrior’s man “Friday.” He is a good citizen and deserves happiness and prosperity.

Five years later, the census taker trudging through Charlotte’s Fourth Ward knocked at the door of 413 Eighth Street. Forty-two year-old Angeline Reeves likely answered the door. In response to the enumerator’s queries, she identified her husband Fletcher as the head of household and detailed the three children remaining at home — 18 year-old Frank, 16 year-old Edna, and 12 year-old John. Daughter Ada, her husband Frank and 4 year-old son Harry were probably living in Charlotte, but seem to have given the enumerator the slip.

Frank married Kate Smith in Charlotte in 1902; their ill-fated story is told here. Edna was next to wed. In 1905, at the Mecklenburg County Courthouse in Charlotte, William H. Kiner applied for a marriage license for himself, age 25, of Boston, Massachusetts, colored, son of Anderson and Agnes Kiner, and Edna Reeves, age 20, of Charlotte, colored, daughter of Fletcher Reeves and Angeline Reeves. Robert B. Bruce, minister of the AME Zion Church, united them in matrimony on 5 April 1905 at the bride’s residence. According to Kiner family researcher Peggy Jorde, William Henry Kiner, actually a native of Staunton, Augusta County, Virginia, had come to Charlotte to study theology at Biddle University.

William and Edna’s first son, Addison F., was born in Charlotte in 1906, but by the following summer, when son Carroll Milton arrived, the Kiners were permanent residents of Massachusetts. Carroll has two birth records, one listing his birth place as Oak Bluffs, and a second listing Cambridge. On the first, William’s occupation was described as theological student.

Edna Reeves Kiner was not the only one of Fletcher and Angeline’s children to pack up and move north to the Bay State. The 1910 census of Cambridge, Middlesex County, shows William H. Kiner, wife Edna E., children Addison F., 4, and Carroll M., 2, sister-in-law Ada Ecles, and brother-in-law John H. Reeves living at 8 Rockwell Street. William worked as a clothes presser in a tailor shop, Ada as a servant, and John as a hotel waiter. Ada’s husband Frank (and son Harry) are nowhere to be seen, but “Aida” Eccles appears a second time in Cambridge as a servant in the household of George W. Clapp, a self-employed chemist.

John Reeves’ stay in New England did not last long. In April of 1915, at the age of 26, he died of tuberculosis in a state hospital.

Meanwhile, it’s not clear that William Kiner was ever able to respond to his religious calling. When he registered for the World War I draft in 1918, he was working as a chipper in a foundry at Hunt-Spiller Corporation.

Two years later, when the 1920 census of Cambridge was recorded, William was described as a chipper in a shipyard. His family, still at 8 Rockwell Street, included wife Edna E. and children Addison F., Carroll M., and Evelyn C. Kiner. Ada Eccles and her 23 year-old son Harry Eccles, a laundry janitor, had found their own lodging and appear in the 7th Ward at 65 Grigg Street.

I have found no death certificate for William H. Kiner, but assume that he died between 1923, when he last appears in a Cambridge city directory, and 1930. In the latter year, the census taker listed his widow widow Edna M. Kiner, her children Addison F., Carrell M., and Evelyn C., plus aunt (sister, actually) Ada M. Eccles living on Essex Street in Cambridge in the household of Joseph S. Blackburn, a black Kentucky-born railroad porter, and his wife Cynthia, a beauty shop manicurist born in Maine. Addison worked as a department store elevator operator and Carrell as a shoestore porter.

The Kiners emerged from the Great Depression decentralized. In 1940 census, Edna Kiner was over the river in Boston, Suffolk County, living in an apartment or shared house at 361 Massachusetts Avenue. Her son Carroll Kiner, a 32 year-old shoe store porter, lived in Cambridge with his Virginia-born wife Ella and three year-old daughter Caroline at 27 Pleasant Street. Addison Kiner was not captured in the census, but he seems to have remained in Massachusetts and was active in Cambridge’s small African-American social scene.

The Afro-American, 20 June 1942.

Daughter Evelyn C. Kiner had completely escaped the Bay State orbit, however, having moved to New York City and begun work as a social worker with the Department of Welfare. She was living in the heart of Harlem at 172 West 127th Street, between Lenox Avenue and what was then Seventh Avenue. She quickly integrated into the Harlem world and over the next ten or years or so appears half-a-dozen times in the social columns of the New York Age. Evelyn’s primary social activities swirled around her membership in the National Urban League Guild, but she was also actively involved in civic outreach through the Church of the Master, a Presbyterian congregation at West 122nd and Morningside.

City directories show that Edna’s sons remained in the Boston area the remainder of their lives. She, however, moved to New York to live with Evelyn in her declining years and died there in August 1969. I don’t know exactly when Carroll died, but I’m a little haunted by how closely my path crossed with Addison and Evelyn. In the fall of 1986, I arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for my first semester of law school. My residence hall, a graceless, L-shaped brick hulk, was at the campus’ far northwest corner, at Massachusetts Avenue and Everett Street. (I lived on the fourth floor of Wyeth Hall that year. Michelle Robinson Obama lived in the suite one floor above.) Unbeknownst to me, if I had walked a mile straight up Mass Ave, turned left on Walden Street, and knocked at No. 28, Addison Kiner would have answered the door. As far I can tell, he lived there for the three years that I was in Cambridge. He died 7 May 1990. After law school, I enrolled in graduate school at Columbia University. For the two years I was there, I lived in an apartment building on 121st Street, at the crest of the hill between Broadway and Amsterdam. Walking west down 121st led me to the edge of Morningside Park. Had I descended through it — and I didn’t in that era, which was crazy, crack-ravaged Manhattan at its nadir — I’d have landed on the plain of central Harlem just a block or two from Evelyn Kiner’s beloved Church of the Master. She died in February 2003, and the church was demolished six years later.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Oral History, Virginia

Kin to Thomas Jefferson.

My mother told me this long ago, and today she repeated it: “I don’t know where this came from, but they always used to say that Papa was kin to Thomas Jefferson.”

Thomas Jefferson’s mother was Jane Randolph Jefferson. Jane had a sister, Susannah Randolph, who married Carter Henry Harrison. Carter and Susannah had a son named Randolph Harrison, who had a son, Thomas Randolph Harrison; who had a son, William Mortimer Harrison; who had a son, Edward Cunningham Harrison.

“Papa” was John C. Allen Jr. Papa was Edward C. Harrison’s son. And so, as Thomas Jefferson’s first cousin five times removed, Papa was kin indeed.

I’ve always wondered if John Allen knew who his birth father was. This bit of family lore suggests that he did.

Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Other Documents, Photographs

Aunt Golar makes fashion history.

I’m not sure how it is that I didn’t write this months ago. When I went home for Christmas, there was a manila envelope on my dresser, postmarked U.K. I was puzzled. Who would be sending something from England to my parents’ house? I ripped it open, and a slender paperback slid into my hand, a scholarly journal — Fashion, Style & Popular Culture, volume 2, number 1.

I scanned the contents and suddenly remembered. Some years ago, I contributed photographs of my people to Min-Ha T. Pham’s Tumblr, Of Another Fashion. In the journal article, “Archival intimacies: Participatory media and the fashion histories of US women of colour,” Pham discusses “the critical and curatorial aims, materials and methods that underpin a digital fashion archive devoted to the histories of US women of colour ….” arguing for “the utility of participatory media in efforts to create not only new historical records of minoritized fashion histories but also new systems of record-keeping.” Among the photos illustrating the piece is one of my grandmother’s aunt, Golar Colvert Bradshaw.

Births Deaths Marriages, DNA, Enslaved People, Maternal Kin, Virginia

DNA Definites, no. 20: Harrison.

Edward Cunningham Harrison … was John C. Allen Sr.’s biological father.

A recap: my great-grandfather’s mother, Mary Brown, married Graham Allen in 1876 in Charles City County, Virginia, during her pregnancy. Except that he was a white man, we knew nothing of John’s birth father’s identity, and I didn’t really expect ever to.

However, a few months ago, I got an estimated 3rd cousin DNA match at Ancestry DNA. I was intrigued. I have only six matches at that level. Three are with known paternal cousins, and all are African-American. Except this one. A.B. is all Great Britain and Ireland and Scandinavia and Europe West.

I sent A.B. a message, and then a follow-up. She responded, and we briefly explored a dead-end or two. I examined A.B.’s family tree more closely. Two of her great-grandfathers were from Richmond, Virginia, which is just up the road from a couple of the counties in which my maternal grandfather’s forebears lived. One of A.B.’s great-grandfathers was Edward C. Harrison; the other, John S. Ellett. I inquired about both men, and she told me that her Harrisons had lived in Charles City County. We were getting warm. I asked A.B. to upload her raw data to Gedmatch, where I quickly determined that she is a solid second cousin match to my mother and maternal uncle. I told her that I believed that we were related through my great-grandfather and that Edward C. Harrison was the right age and in the right place at the right time to have been his father. A.B. immediately asked what she could do to help figure out the connection. I asked if she would test with 23andme, and she readily agreed. So did her sister.

A couple of weeks ago, their results posted. My mother, my uncle, my sister and all six of my first cousins have tested with 23andme. All of us match A.B. and her sister M.H. The closeness of the DNA matches confirm a recent common ancestor, and all signs pointed toward Harrison. I needed to eliminate Ellett though.

A.B. and my mother, 267 cM total match.

In reviewing my matches, I noticed that T.N., a long-time and fairly close match, also listed Harrison among his surnames.

From my mother’s 23andme matches — sisters M.H and A.B., T.N.’s mother, and T.N.

I also found that T.N. matches A.B. and her sister and, most importantly, they all share matching segments of the same chromosomes with my Allens. This “triangulation” proves that all of us descend from a common ancestor.

Partial screenshot of comparisons of chromosome matches of T.N. to my mother, A.B., M.H., and my uncle. (That Chromosome 7 segment gave me life. It’s the stuff of dreams.)

I sent T.N. a message and mentioned that, based on chromosome share, I thought that our common ancestor was William Mortimer Harrison, father of Edward C. Harrison. T.N. responded, forwarding an old email from his uncle that detailed his family’s history. T.N., in fact, is descended from Edward C. Harrison’s sister Caroline and thus from William M. Harrison, as I’d guessed. He is a third cousin to A.B. and to my mother, and he has no Ellett ancestry. Thus, Edward C. Harrison is confirmed as A.B. and my mother’s direct ancestor. (T.N. is descended from a separate Harrison line through Caroline’s husband James P. Harrison, her distant cousin. Relative chromosome shares between A.B. and my line, however, eliminate James as our common ancestor.)

Through Edward, we are descended from or related to the oldest colonial families of Virginia — Harrisons, Randolphs, and Carters, among others. A signer of the Declaration of Independence. Two presidents. Pocahontas. (Yes.) These families were also owners of several of the large plantation houses still standing in Charles City County, including Westover and Berkeley. (At this time, however, I don’t think that any of my forebears were enslaved in the area.) I’m not sure how John Allen’s mother Mary Brown met Edward C. Harrison or what the nature of their relationship was. She was from Amelia County, and there was a Harrison branch there, but I don’t know if she knew them.

A.B. is ecstatic to learn that her grandfather had a half-brother. So is her sister M. My family, too, is amazed. I’m hoping that, with their help and some deep sleuthing, I will learn more about the circumstances of John Allen’s birth. And I may meet A.B. when she comes to Georgia next month.

The truth will out. DNA tells the tale.

Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Category Archives: Maternal Kin