Mattie Colvert, oldest daughter of Lon and Josephine Dalton Colvert, was born in 1895 in Statesville, North Carolina. She married Charlie W. James in Statesville, North Carolina, in 1913. In the 1930s, Aunt Mat and her children migrated North to New York City, where this photo probably was taken.
Willis H. James, James E. James, Charles James, Mattie Colvert James, Carrie James James, Lon W. “Lawrence” James, John Bristol Clemons, and Shelton H. James.
For reasons that aren’t clear to me, the Aldridges that my grandmother was closest to in her adult life were two of her father’s first cousins, daughters of Matthew W. Aldridge, Fannie Aldridge Randolph and Mamie Aldridge Abrams Rochelle. They grew up in Goldsboro, not Dudley, and both migrated North before 1930, so I am guessing that she met them after she moved to Philadelphia in 1958.
I wish I’d probed these relationships more. Mother Dear and Cousin Fannie lived a short bus ride apart in West Philadelphia and saw each often enough that I recall visiting her house on Filbert Street and seeing her at my grandmother’s on Wyalusing during our short summer stays. I never met Cousin Mamie, but know that my grandmother visited her in Union, South Carolina, and took at least one sightseeing trip (“excursion,” as she called them) with her.
Fannie B. Aldridge left Goldsboro for Philadelphia shortly after the 1910 census was recorded. In 1913, she married Virginia-born Elisha Randolph (1875-1940) and, by 1917, when he registered for the draft, had settled into the rowhouse in the 5800 block of Filbert Street in which she would remain the rest of her life.
Here is a bad partial copy of a photograph of Matthew Aldridge’s daughters. Fannie is at right, standing behind one of her nieces. The boy in the middle, I believe, was Elijah Randolph, her only child. Her sisters Daisy Aldridge Williams and Mamie are left and center.
And here’s Cousin Fannie as I vaguely remember her. This Polaroid dates from about 1973 and was taken in my grandmother’s kitchen. (That’s Mother Dear at right.)
Sunday Jan. 9. 38
My Dear Hattie
I received your telegram to-day. 1 P.M. it was certainly a shock to me you & family certainly have my deepest sympathy & also from my family.
I did not know your mother was sick you must write later and let me know about her illness.
It is so strange I have been dreaming of my husband Caswell so much for the past two weeks he always tells me that has something to tell me & that he feels so well so I guess this is what I was going to hear about your mother.
I wish it was so that I could come to you & family but times are so different now seems as if we cannot be prepared to meet emergencies any more but you must know that my heart & love is with you & family.
I am just writing to you a short note now will write you again. Let me hear from you when you get time to write
From
Your aunt in law
Carrie L. Borrero
322 E. 100th St. N. Y City
——
There is no envelope with this letter, which I found after my grandmother’s death in 2001. Carrie Borrero was Caswell C. Henderson’s second wife. My grandmother never mentioned Carrie traveling to Wilson when Caswell visited, though she seems to have met her at least once during a visit to New York.
On 18 Dec 1890, Fannie Aldridge married Robert Locust in the presence of her sister Lizzie Aldridge, brother M.W. Aldridge, and Robert’s neighbor George W. Reid. Robert’s first wife, Emma Artis, had died the previous year, and it is likely that he met Fannie, who lived at the other end of Wayne County, through her family. Fannie’s sister Amanda was married to Emma’s father Adam T. Artis, and her brother John was married to Emma’s sister Louvicey Artis.
Fannie and Robert’s first two children, William Hardy and Fred Robert, were born in Wayne County. Circa 1895, the family left North Carolina for Washington DC after– it is said — Robert and a couple of Fannie’s relatives were involved in the murder of a white man. By time Robert, Fannie, his older daughters, and their boys arrived in DC, they were no longer Locusts. Robert, in fact, assumed a whole new name, and was George R. Randall ever after. According to their grandson, in order to collect Fannie’s inheritance when her father’s estate settled in 1902, the couple had to cross over into Alexandria, Virginia, where they were not known and could safely sign documents as Robert and Fannie Locust.
The 1900 and 1910 censuses recorded the family at 1238 Madison, then 138 B Street (no quadrant designated.) On 20 March 1917, Fannie “Randell” of 412 South Capitol Street was dead of heart disease. She was 44.
Washington Post, 24 March 1917.
In their 20 years in DC, she and Robert/George had been able to usher their children along the path to the middle class. Hardy Randall (1891-1967) went to work for the United States Postal Service. Fred R. Randall (1894-1996), a high school football standout, was a parks director. We met decorated officer Oscar Randall (1896-1985) here. Fannie Randall Dorsey (1900-1994) taught school, as did her sister Arnetta Randall (1904-1993). Edna Randall Breedlove (1909-1990) did not work after her marriage to Jesse Breedlove. George Randall died in infancy, as did two unnamed brothers.
When she died in 1993 in Washington DC, the estate of Arnetta L. Randall, seventh of George and Fannie Aldridge Randall‘s nine children, included her home at 1377 Florida Avenue NE.
As has much of DC, Cousin Arnetta’s section of Near Northeast has undergone considerable change in the last decade. Her estate sold the house on 18 January 2001 for $12,000. Fourteen months later, it went for $135,000. Three and a half years later, the property again changed hands, this time for $191,000. Its owner held on during the real estate collapse of 2008, then sallied forth into a resurgent market in 2011. On January 25 of that year, he sold for $315,000. The climb continued: two years later, in February 2013, the house sold for $485,000.
There is surely no part of this Arnetta Randall would have recognized. Neither the astounding amounts that have changed hands over her small two-bedroom rowhouse nor the house itself, renovated in its every nook and cranny and painted a bright yellow on its way to a half-million dollars.
It’s not clear when Caswell Henderson arrived in New York, but 1890 is a good guess. In the 35 or so years that he lived in the city, Caswell claimed at least eight addresses in two boroughs and Westchester County, most during a decade in which he and his wife seemed to move almost yearly.
This is Caswell’s New York:
1. 326 West 37th Street. When Caswell married Emma Bentley in 1893, he reported this address. He is listed there in 1896 in Trow’s New York City Directory. It’s a bit south of the 1 on the map, between 8th and 9th Avenues in the overlap between Hell’s Kitchen and the Garment District, and is now a parking deck.
2. 47 West 66th Street. By the 1900 census, Caswell and Emma had moved north to an address just outside the notorous San Juan Hill neighborhood. Caswell was still living here when he married his second wife, Carrie Lowe, in 1907. Address located in the block off Central Park West, now occupied by ABC headquarters.
3. 247 West 143rd Street. By 1909, Caswell and Carrie had moved way uptown to Harlem. Block between Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglass Boulevards, now the site of basketball courts in the Drew-Hamilton housing project.
4. 901 Grant Avenue. Per the 1910 city directory, Caswell and Carrie lived in Morrisania in the Bronx, a few blocks west of current Yankee Stadium, now the site of the Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice.
5. 527 East 167th Street. In 1912, a little deeper into the Bronx, a few blocks from Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center, now a parking lot.
6. 446 West 163rd Street. By 1915, the Hendersons were back in Manhattan at an address they held for the next ten years. Washington Heights, between Edgecombe and Amsterdam Avenues near Highbridge Park and the Harlem River, a few blocks southeast of Columbia University Medical Center.
7. 3777 Third Avenue. In 1926, they returned to the heart of the Bronx to an address that is now Gouverneur Playground. (Or did they? Caswell wrote his sister a letter from this address, but his widow was living on West 163rd when he died. Were they separated? He mentions the health benefits of living in “the country” — what did Third Avenue look like in the early 1920s?)
8. 6 Belknap Avenue. Caswell died at this home in Yonkers in 1927, though his death certificate lists his wife’s address as 446 West 163rd. It’s not clear who owned the Belknap Avenue house, but in 1930, it is occupied by French West Indian chef Marshall Mingo and family.
New York Age, 9 December 1915.
Remembering Henry A. Houser, born this day in 1915.
On March 30, 1932, in Lucy, Tennessee, just north of today’s Memphis International Raceway, an old man closed his eyes a final time. His doctor described his death in an unusually detailed, almost poetic, passage: “causes due to advanced age weakening of heart muscles beats slowing down until stopping quietly but regular.” He was, according to the death certificate, 121 years old, and his name was Guy Lane.
Guy Lane?!?!
I scanned the rest of the form: farmer … living in Shelby County … born in North Carolina … son of Guy Lane … an informant named Lillie ….
My great-great-great-great-grandmother, Vicey Artis, born free in or near Wayne County around 1810, had a sister named Sylvania. Both women married enslaved men. (And their brother Daniel married an enslaved woman.) On 31 August 1866, Vicey Artis and Solomon Williams and Sylvania Artis and Guy Lane registered their decades-old cohabitations in Wayne County and thereby legalized their marriages. Old Man Guy died before 1880, but ….
Sylvania and Guy Lane’s twelve children, who used both parents’ last names, were born over the course of more than twenty years. Morrison Artis, born 1837, was first, followed by Mary Artis (1839), Jane Lane Sauls (1842), Daniel Artis (1843), Mitchell Lane (1845), Mariah Artis (1846), Guy Lane Jr., Penny Lane (1850), Dinah Lane (1851), Julie Lane Sutton (1853), Washington Lane (1855) and Alford Lane (1859).
In 1869, Guy Lane Jr. married Dinah Dew in Wayne County. They appear together in the 1870 and 1880 censuses and had at least six children: Ora, Moses, Lizzie, William, Mary S., Milton F. Lane, and a girl. By 1900, though, Guy and his family are nowhere to be found in North Carolina. Instead, they surface 800 miles due west, just outside Memphis. (Had they been Exodusters sidetracked on the way to Arkansas?) Guy had a new wife, of four years — Eliza, born in Tennessee — but his youngest two children, Milton and Guy Jr. (actually III), both born in NC, were with him. In 1910, on the Memphis & Shakerag Road, 60 year-old Guy and Eliza Lane are listed with eight year-old daughter Lilly. Both reported that they had been married twice, and Eliza reported that only one of her nine children was living. In the 1920 census, the couple are living with Lillie and her husband Robert Burnett. Guy continued to work as a farmer, and his age is reported as 78. Ten years later, in 1930, Guy and Liza are living alone again, and his age has leapt inexplicably to 114. By time he died in 1932, Guy had gained another seven years.
The credible evidence suggests that cousin Guy Lane, in fact, was born about 1848, making him a more reasonable 84 years old when his heart slowed down until stopping quietly. He is not forgotten.
My grandmother said that her aunt Emma was the first of the McNeelys to move to Bayonne, New Jersey. She and her husband, Irving Houser, who had a job with Standard Oil, settled there around 1910. Over the next 15-20 years, most of the McNeelys followed. The family settled in an area a few blocks square, not far from the refinery that dominated Bayonne life:
(1) 87-A West 16th Street (between John F. Kennedy Boulevard and Avenue C) — The “home house,” as they say. This was Minnie McNeely‘s house, I believe, though her mother Martha Miller McNeely was the nominal head. Luther McNeely and his wife lived here for a stretch, as did Irving “Jay” McNeely when he moved North after his mother’s death. Margaret Colvert Allen stayed in this house during the summers she spent in New Jersey, and it is likely that Sarah McNeely Green also spent time here. Louise Colvert Renwick and Launie Mae Colvert Jones finished high school in Bayonne, and they probably lived on West 16th, too.
(2) 79 West 19th Street (between John F. Kennedy Boulevard and Avenue C) — John McNeely, wife Laura and stepdaughter Marie lived here.
(3) 88 Andrew Street (between John F. Kennedy Boulevard and Avenue C) — another of John McNeely’s addresses.
(4) 92 Andrew Street (between John F. Kennedy Boulevard and Avenue C) — the home of Emma and Irving Houser and children.
(5) 95 Andrew Street (between John F. Kennedy Boulevard and Avenue C) — another of the Housers’ addresses.
(6) 392 Avenue C (corner of 17th) — Wallace Temple AME Zion Church, location of funerals of Martha M. McNeely, Wardenur Houser Jones, Henry A. Houser.
(7) 421 Avenue C (between Andrew Street and 18th) — another of the Housers’ addresses.
(8) 454 Avenue C (between 19th and 20th) — the home of Edward McNeely at the time of his death.
(9) 41 West 20th Street (between Avenue C and Broadway) — Friendship Baptist Church, location of John McNeely’s funeral.
(10) 73 Andrew Street (between John F. Kennedy Boulevard and Avenue C) — perhaps the first of the Housers’ addresses.
There were surely many more veterans than that, I thought, and I started poking around my files, looking for men and women I might have missed. Oscar Randall was a possible World War I veteran, but his draft card cast doubt — he claimed a service exemption on the basis that he was “rejected by recruiting officer.”
Nonetheless, I Googled Randall and was stunned to find that not only did he serve, he led troops in battle in France during World War I, received a Purple Heart for wounds sustained in Italy during the Second World War, and achieved the rank of colonel. The most amazing find: two photos of Randall from the Chicago Sun-Times archives for sale on eBay! I ordered them immediately, and they arrived in yesterday’s mail.
The first photo, taken after the First World War, depicts a smooth-faced, heavy-jowled man in officer’s uniform. Its reverse carries a scrap of newspaper article, as well as a note that the photo was copied from a portrait hanging in Randall’s living room.
The second photo, taken in 1982, shows a solemn-faced old man, silver hair swept back from his forehead, his eyes rheumy but mouth set firmly. Light from a window creates a dramatic chiaroscuro. On the back: a slightly longer clipping from the same article, detailing the colonel’s military achievements.
Oscar Randall was born 30 November 1896 in Washington DC, the first of George and Fannie Aldridge Randall‘s children born after their migration from Wayne County, North Carolina. After the War, he returned to college and received a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois. (He served as president of Tau chapter, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, while there.) Randall taught mathematics at Chicago’s DuSable High School for many years and also worked as a civil engineer for the city’s sanitation department. In the 1950’s, he served as Chief of the U.S. Military Mission to Liberia, which advised that country’s military on training and defense. He married twice, but had no children.
Oscar Randall died three years after his Chicago Sun-Times interview. He was 88 years old.
A memorial service for Oscar Randall, 88, a civil engineer, will be held at 11 a.m. June 9 in St. Thomas Episcopal Church, 3301 S. Wabash Ave. Mr. Randall, of the South Side, died April 8 in Veterans Administration Lakeside Medical Center. A native of Washington, D.C., Mr. Randall graduated from the University of Illinois and worked for the Chicago Sanitary District for nine years. Mr. Randall also taught mathematics at Du Sable High School. In 1918 he joined the 8th Illinois infantry regiment, one of the nation’s first black-led military units. He also served in World War II. Survivors include his wife, Hilda; a stepdaughter, Vera Levy; two stepgrandchildren; two stepgreat-grandchildren; three sisters; and a brother.
— Chicago Tribune, 23 May 1985.
——
[Sidenote: Pete Souza, who photographed Cousin Oscar, is now Chief Official White House photographer for President Barack Obama and Director of the White House Photography Office.]
Scuffalong: Genealogy. 