How we went North.
Category Archives: Migration
We got strayed apart.
I was thinking about Cousin Tilithia when I was a little girl. She had a restaurant large enough to work in and serve patrons. It wasn’t real big, but they were serving patrons, and Mama carried me up there, and we spent the night there. And whenever she’d come to Wilson she’d stay with us.
Tilithia Godbold, she lived in Norfolk, and she married this man. That wasn’t her children’s daddy. King was her children’s daddy. Godbold was the man she married later. He lived over in Rocky Mount, and he worked in the roundhouse or something. I think he fixed the train, but he wasn’t the one on the train. And Godbold, Tilithia’s husband, he stayed there in Rocky Mount. ‘Cause Tilithia lived in Norfolk. Her and her five or six girls or whatever it was, and she was running what they call the Strand Café. And it was down on the first floor, and they lived up over it. Go out there, and it was a sleeping compartment. I was over there one time, and I remember it. I think I was about seven or eight years old. Went with Mama over there. We was just running all over the place. She had us waiting tables. I wanted to wait tables. I was wondering, I asked Mama, “Well, why come we couldn’t have a place like that?” And all that food! Look like whatever the food was – I didn’t even know what it was ‘cause we ain’t never had none. It was a whole lot of stuff, look like they had, I didn’t want it, but then I know it looked good, and we ate down there in the café.
And another time Mama took me over there on the train to see her. And it was right down in South Philadelphia where we went to their house. Where they was staying. And when I moved up here, her sister, she was telling me ‘bout how the children were there in Norfolk, her sister and all them. I said, well, I could remember some of them, but I don’t remember what – and I asked where some of the girls was. Some of them in Norfolk and some of ‘em, one’s dead. [Inaudible] the family. We got strayed apart.
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My grandmother reminisced fondly of “Ta-LIE-a-thy” and her cafe, but was not entirely sure how they were related. Not long into my research, I discovered that Tilithia Brewington King Godbold Dabney was born 1878 to Joshua and Amelia Aldridge Brewington. She was, then, the first cousin of my grandmother’s father, J. Thomas Aldridge. Tilithia married Emanuel King in 1898 and, by 1910, the couple and their daughters Juanita, Elizabeth, Amelia, May Bell and Tilithia had settled in Norfolk, Virginia. Tilithia and Emanuel divorced and, by 1920, she was married to railroad fireman Walter Godbold and running her cafe. Her marriage to Godbold did not last, and the 1930 census found him back in Rocky Mount NC (described as divorced) and her still in Norfolk, holding herself out to be a widow while maintaining the little restaurant at 426 Brambleton Avenue.
This was about all I could locate on Cousin Tilithia until 2009, when I met — genealogically speaking — B.J., a descendant of Tilithia’s sister Mattie Brewington Braswell (and my fourth cousin.) Ours has been a most fecund collaboration, and it was she who discovered Tilithia’s obit and what had become of her daughters. My grandmother would have pleased to know that the branches of our family had found their way back from being “strayed apart.”
Virginian Pilot, 22 November 1965.
Interview of Hattie H. Ricks by Lisa Y. Henderson; all rights reserved.
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.
Anna’s children succumb.
Kokomo Tribune, 13 April 1936.
Kokomo Tribune, 13 September 1937.
Kokomo Tribune, 7 August 1942.
Edward Simmons, Susan Simmons Bassett and Muncie Simmons Bassett Palmer were children of Montreville and Anna J. Henderson Simmons. Susan’s age was seriously overstated. (She was about 60.) And Muncie’s obit completely elides the years the family spent in Ontario.
[By the way, Second Missionary Baptist Church in Kokomo remains active.]
Finding J.T.
My grandmother’s favorite cousin was her Aunt Lethea’s son, “Jay” or “J.T.”:
My grandmother: I had a cousin named Jay. Aunt Lethea’s son. She died and left three sons. James –
Me: Charles.
My grandmother: Charles. And Jay.
Me: Okay. J.T.
My grandmother: Mm-hmm. And Jay stayed with Aunt Min ‘cause Aunt Min reared him after Aunt Lethea died. And he was at this same house with Aunt Minnie and Grandma. Let’s see. It was Aunt Min and Grandma and Uncle Luther and Jay and I. We were all in the same house during the summer that I worked up there. And Jay and I used to have a good time. Oh, he was so nice. He would, the first time I rode on a rollercoaster, he took me. And we used to have a good time. He was really nice. He was a nice person.
Jay had two brothers, William and Charles. In the 1910 census of Statesville, Iredell County, I found three boys, William, 5, James, 3, and Charlie McNeeley, 2, living in the household of Sam and Mary Steelman and described as their grandsons. I identified these children, correctly I believe, as Elethea McNeely‘s children. I also guessed that Charlie Steelman, listed in the household, was their father. If he was, he and Lethea never married. Instead, in 1920, she wed Archie Weaver, a man my grandmother spoke of with vitriol.
My grandmother: Jay’s daddy had TB, and he just gave it to them. And his mother and Jay. But he lived years and years and years after both of them died.
Me: The father did?
My grandmother: [Inaudible] give them all this stuff. Oh, I could not stand him. She was my special aunt because she had boys, and she didn’t have any girls. And she just took me over her house, you know, and let me do things that girls did, you know.
I was unable to find James McNeely, whom I believed to be “Jay,” in any other record. I knew Jay was reared by his aunt, Minnie McNeely, and died young of the same dread illness that killed his mother, but I was never able to find a trace of him. That changed last night, when I stumbled upon his death announcement in the 15 December 1933 issue of the Statesville Record & Landmark:
As Grandma Carrie so memorably said, “Well, I’ll be damn.” Here was J.T., as last. Not James McNeely — much younger, in fact — but Irvin McNeely Weaver. (The same “mysterious” Irving McNeely listed in the 1930 census in Martha McNeely‘s Bayonne household. He was described as her nephew, rather than her grandson, and I jotted in my notes: “Who is this???”) My grandmother was married and living in Newport News, Virginia, at the time of his death, and is not among his named survivors. Ardeanur Smith was his cousin, not his aunt, and Charles McNeely was his brother. Mrs. John Long was his aunt Lizzie McNeely Long, and Mrs. Lewis Renwick was his cousin Louise Colvert Renwick.
The first photo is Jay as a boy, perhaps around the time he moved to Bayonne. The second, taken in Bayonne circa 1928, shows Jay with his first cousins Ardeanur Smith, Margaret Colvert and Wardenur Houser, and an unknown girl seated in front. The last is Jay, alone, perhaps not long before he died.
——
This is just one of many, many times that I’ve found something that one or the other of my grandmothers would have been “tickled” to see. They both lived good, long lives — to 90 and 101 — but I would have kept them with me always if I could.
Interview of Margaret C. Allen by Lisa Y. Henderson; all rights reserved. Photos in the collection of Lisa Y. Henderson.
Pre-World War I Migration: HENDERSON.
Anna J. Henderson Simmons (Anna<James). Born 1852, Wayne County. After her marriage in 1871, she migrated with her husband Montreville Simmons to Chatham, Kent, Ontario, Canada, where his family had settled 20 years earlier. They appear there in the 1881 census, which records all of their children born in the US except the youngest two, born in Ontario in 1877 and 1879. By 1900, the family lived in Cass County, Indiana, where Anna died.
Caswell C. Henderson (Caswell<Lewis<James). Born 1865, Wayne County. In 1886, he was listed in the Raleigh NC city directory as a hotel porter. By 1893, when he married his first wife, he was living at 326 West 37th Street in New York City. Other addresses at which he lived were: 47 West 66th Street, Manhattan; and 247 West 143rd, 901 Grant Avenue, 527 East 167th, 446 West 163rd, and 3777 Third Avenue, all in upper Manhattan or the Bronx. He died in Yonkers, Westchester County NY.
Julia “Molly” Henderson Holt (Julia<James). Born 1872, Wayne County. In 1902, Molly married Walter Holt in Randolph County NC. She listed her address as Julian NC, a small town in extreme southeast Guilford County. By 1910, the couple were living in Greensboro NC.
Fannie Wynn Price (Fannie<Susan<James. Born 1879, Wayne County. She married William Thomas E. Price, and their oldest son Richard was born in Newport News in 1902.
Richard G. Winn (Richard<Hepsie<James). Born 1881, Wayne County. In 1903, Richard married Rosetta Robinson in Wilmington, New Hanover County NC. Their addresses included 508 McRae Street and 222 South 13th Street. Richard died in Wilmington in 1957.
Minnie Simmons Budd (Minnie<Ann Elizabeth<Lewis<James). Born 1887, Wayne County. Minnie was living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as early as 1906, when she gave birth to a son. She and her husband Jesse Budd apparently moved back and forth between Mount Olive NC and Philadelphia until the 1920s, when she seems to have settled there permanently.
Charles H. Henderson (Charles<John<James). Born 1893, Wayne County. He registered for World War I draft in Richmond, Virginia, listing 114 E. Leigh Street as his address. In 1920, the census recorded his address as 614 Baker Street, Richmond.
Daniel Simmons (Daniel<Ann Elizabeth<Lewis<James). Born 1895, Wayne County. Daniel is said to have worked in Oberlin, Ohio, circa 1912. He married in Wayne County in 1913 and moved his family to Rocky Mount NC about 1914. By 1920, they lived in Richmond, Virginia, and ten years later were in Philadelphia. By 1940, Daniel was living in New York NY. He died there in 1964.
Scuffalong: Genealogy. 