DNA, Maternal Kin, North Carolina

DNA Definites, no. 18: Neill.

As I moaned about in November, I lost most of my deep DNA matches when Ancestry rolled out its “new and improved” test analyses, mostly in lines that branch above my great-great-great-grandfather Thomas Allison Nicholson. Imagine my joy, then, when I recently noticed two new matches whose family trees indicated descent from James and Agnes Ann Falls Snoddy Neill of Iredell County, North Carolina. James and Agnes’ daughter Elizabeth Neill married Theophilus Allison (1754-1805) and gave birth to Mary Allison (1792-1857). Mary Allison Nicholson was Thomas A. Nicholson’s mother.

The first match, T.S., is their great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson. I contacted L.P., who administers T.S.’ account, and learned that he is her maternal uncle and is a cousin of J.W., my other Neill/Falls match. T.S. is my fifth cousin, three times removed. L.P. and J.W. are my sixth cousins, twice removed.

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State of North Carolina, Iredell County

In the name of God Amen,

I James Neill of Said County being in a sick & low condition but thanks be unto God being at this time in perfect mind & memory do make this my last will & Testament. & first I recommend my [obscured] unto God who gave it me & my body I recommend to the Dust to be buried at the discretion of my Exr. In a Christian & decent manner. & as touching my worldly Substance that I am now possessed of I give & bequeath as followeth (viz)

After all my lawfull debts is paid I leave unto my daughter Sarah ten shillings

& unto my Daughter Hannah I leave ten shillings also

& unto my son Wm. I leave & bequeath the land he lives on

& unto James Holmes my son in law & Each of the bodily Heirs of my daughter Mary now deceased I leave to each five shillings

And unto my son Archibald I leave ten Shillings

And unto my son James I leave & bequeath the plantation he now lives on being a part of the Tract of land my son Wm. now lives on

& unto my daugter Elizabeth I give ten Shillings

& unto my son Robert I give & bequeath the land I now live on includeing my new entry Joining my ould Samuel Neills, Andrew Ramseys, & James Patterson, lands together with the residue of my Personal Estate Except what I give & bequeath unto my beloved Wife which is as follows (viz) I leave unto her a mare called Short her saddle & bridle her bead & furniture a third of my houshold furniture a third of my Dwelling house if necissary for her accommodation the above movable property to be at her disposal at her death Together with a good & honourable maintainance to be given her by my said son Robert during her natural life Also I leave unto her my negro wench Luce & the one half of my cattle to be eaquel in value with my son Roberts half the whole of which is to be at her disposal at her death.

And Lastly I do hereby constitute & appoint my beloved Wife & my son Robert to be the Executors of this my last will And Testament And I do in the presence of the subscribeing Witnesses publishing & Decclareing this & no other to be my last Will & Testament In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand & Seal this 22d Day of June 1793

/s/ James Kerr, John Falls Jurat James X Neill {seal}

Will of James Neill, Will Book 1, page 154. Iredell County, North Carolina Probate Records 1735-1970, familysearch.org.

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August 23^rd, 1793 Iredell County State of North Carolina. In the name of God Amen I Agness Neill of the State & County aforesaid being in a Sick & poure State of health but being Sound in mind & Memory I do will & Bequeath to my son Andrew Snoddy, one feather bead the one I have for my own use with all the furniture belonging to the same also three Puter Dishes Six plates Six Basons five porringers one large Metal pots one small Do. Item I Bequeath to my Daughter Elizabeth Alison, Wife of Theophilus Alison, my Chest & all my body Cloas, also the mare willed to me at my Husbands death, Mare named Short, also Six Head of Sheep I do Give & bequeath to my son James Neill, one Cow & Calf, & one year old heifer, also my Table & four Chares & one Smothing Iron, Also I do bequeath to my son Robert Neill the Loom & What tacklings there is belonging to the Sd. Loom & one Smoothing Iron Item I Do leave & Bequeath to my grand Daughter Agness Alison, Daughter of Theophilus & Elizabeth Alison one feather Bead, & all the furniture belonging to the same as known by The white cotton tick with one Copper Tea Cittle.

I do also leave to my grand Daughter Agness Neill, Daughter to my son Robert & Margaret Neill, one feather bed, & furniture it is a striped Tick the remainder of my Stock to be Sold & Eaquell Divided among my three sons & Daughter Andrew Snoddy Jas. & Robt. Neill & Elizabeth Alison. I Do request them to give me a decent Buring to be paid out of that part of the Stock which to be Sold. I do also give & bequeath to my son Andrew Snoddy Six yards of thick cloth which I now have.

I make this my last will & Testament & do my son in law Theophilus Alison to be my Executor in Witness whereof I have set my hand & Seal this 23^rd Day of August A.D. 1793 Test

Thomas Allison Junior, Samuel Wilson Jurat Agness X Neill {seal}

Will of Agness Neill, Will Book 1, page 153. Iredell County, North Carolina Probate Records 1735-1970, familysearch.org.

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In the name of God Amen, Theophilus Allison of the County of Iredell in the State of North Carolina being very sick and weak in body But of Perfect mind and Memory thanks be unto God calling unto the mortality of My Body and Knowing it is appointed for all men all to die do make and ordain this my last will and Testament that is to say Principally and first of all I give and command my Soul into the hand of almighty God that give it and my Body I recommend to the Earth to be Buryed in decent Christian Burial at the discretion of my Executors and as touching such worldly Estate wherewith it has pleased God to bless me in this life I give devise and dispose of the same in the following manner and form first I give and bequeath to my dearly Beloved wife my Negro Woman named Soose and her child Esther my mare named Short and saddle and Bridle her Bed and furniture and all the dresser Furniture and Six head of Cattle of her own picking also six sheep of her own Choosing the one half of the Kitchen Furniture to be hers and hers for ever also I give to my well beloved Daughter Nancy Allison Peggy Allison Mary Allison Elizabeth Allison and Daely Simonton Allison and my well beloved Jefferson Theophilus Allison an Equal divide of the remainder of my property (Excepting my Land) to be given to them as Mary Becomes of age the plantation I now live on I allow my Executors to dispose of at any time if they think Best Before my son Jefferson Theophilus Allison come of age and make Good Titles and the price thereof to be my sons Jefferson Theophilus Also my Tennessee Land I allow to be equally divided among my wife and children I allow for the support of the family & use of the place my sorrel Mare called Magay and her year old filly and the horse called Tobby and wagon and four pair of Gears and all other Plantation Tolls & all the Hogs and as many of my cattle as my Executors shall Think necessary and the remainder of both Horses and Cattle to do to public sale. I also allow my Executors to keep upon the plantation the rest of my Negroes not willed but if they my Executors should at any time think Better to hire or sell one or more of my Negroes to do it and make good rights all other property not mentioned if needed for the use of the family to be kept, but if not needed to be sold and I do by these presents constitute appoint and ordain my trusty friends Elizabeth Allison my wife Richard Allison my brother and Joseph Kerr my brother in law Executors of this my last will and Testament and do by these presents revoke and disavow and disalow all other former Testaments will Legacies bequests and Executors by me in any wise before named willed or bequeathed, ratifying and confirming this and no other to be my last will and Testament in witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal this the seventeenth day of November, in the year of our Lord one Thousand Eight hundred and five signed seal published pronounced and declared in presents of us –

John Knox

Robert Knox Jurat /s/ Theophilus Allison

Jherrod Stroud

Will of Theophilus Allison, Will Book 2, page 44. Iredell County, North Carolina Probate Records 1735-1970, familysearch.org.

Agriculture, Land, Maternal Kin, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina

A sufferer by the hailstorm.

Carolina Watchman, 27 June 1889.

The Ransom Miller named above may not have been not “my” Ransom, but a white man. However, “Green Miller, col.” was definitely my great-great-grandmother Martha Miller McNeely‘s brother-in-law, husband of her sister Grace Adeline Miller Miller.

Two days earlier, a Winston-Salem newspaper had also posted an appeal for help for Rowan County’s devastated farmers.

Winston-Salem Progressive Farmer, 25 June 1889.

When it came down to it, however, despite having “lost nearly everything,” Green Miller somehow failed to benefit from the Wood Grove Alliance’s appeal.

Carolina Watchman, 11 July 1889.

Births Deaths Marriages, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2. King.

That’s this week’s thing — King. Whatever way you want to go with it. I thought I had a great Martin Luther King Jr. idea, but the photograph I thought I was going to build it on didn’t show what I remembered it showing. (That is, black folks’ Other Trinity — MLK, JFK and Jesus — mounted on my grandmother’s dining room wall. They were there, but outside the frame of the photo I wanted to use.) Another suggested King, Elvis, is not an option. The apocryphal “all Negroes can do for me is shine my shoes” story held sway in my family, and in consequence the man and his music play no role in any story I can tell. (Except the one in which my sister called her friend to tell him she’d heard Elvis had died. The girl gasped, hung up, then called back later to deliver a tearful thank you message from her father. We were mystified.)

I picked cousin Louella Henderson King instead. Said my grandmother, Hattie Henderson Ricks:

And I think Mama Sarah said that Molly was older than she was, but I reckon they was ‘long there together. Nancy was older than both of them, and A’nt Ella was the youngest one. She and Mama always were together, ‘cause they all played “sisters.” But Sarah was really Molly and Nancy and Ella’s niece. Their brother Lewis’ child.

Unfortunately, I have had few sure sightings of Louella “Ella” Henderson in the record. The first is the 1880 census of Faisons township, Duplin County, North Carolina: James Henderson, 62, wife Eliza, 38, and children Alexander, 21, John, 19, Nancy, 14, Julia, 8, Edward, 6, and Lewellen, 4. (My grandmother was not quite right. Nancy was oldest, and Ella was youngest, but Julia, called “Molly,” and their niece Sarah Henderson Jacobs Silver were about the same age.)

My grandmother recalled that Ella was married twice, and her first husband was a King. In the 1900 census of Goldsboro, Wayne County, I found Adam King, day laborer, and wife Ella, cook, married 16 years and living on George Street. There are a number of problems here though. This Ella was 34. Mine was ten years younger. Most critically, this couple’s marriage license (1) issued 29 August 1884, when my Ella was only 8 years old, and (2) it shows this Ella’s maiden name as Herring.

The same couple appeared in the 1910 census of Goldsboro, Wayne County.

On 22 April 1914, a woman named Ella King died of “exhaustion from acute mania” at the state hospital just Goldsboro. (This was a psychiatric facility reserved for African-Americans.) She was 34 years old, her parents were unknown, and she was buried in Forsyth County, North Carolina. I don’t think this is my Ella either. Her age is off by a few years, and there is no known reason for my Ella to have been buried half-way across the state near Winston-Salem.

Plus, on 27 Dec 1918, Lon Bryant applied for a marriage license for Patrick Diggs and Nancy Smith, both of Goldsboro. One of the witnesses to the ceremony was Ella Wilson, also of Goldsboro NC. Nancy Henderson Smith Diggs was the Nancy my grandmother spoke of, the elder sister of Ella. I suspect that Ella Wilson is Ella Henderson King, remarried, but I have no evidence.

Perhaps: in the 1920 census of Goldsboro, Wayne County, living on Smith Street were South Carolina-born Ed Wilson, 39, a supervisor in a box factory, and his wife Ella, 30, a washerwoman. Is this the right Ella? I don’t think so. Her age is off, too.

And that’s it. That’s all I have. My grandmother told me that Ella left Goldsboro and moved to a city in the western part of the state. Gastonia, maybe? Bessemer City? She could not definitely recall. I’ve searched statewide for women who could have been my Ella. Though I have not found her, but she is not completely lost.

North Carolina, Oral History, Paternal Kin

It felt like a weight fell off of her.

Papa asked Mama would she come back ‘cause the café wasn’t doing nothing, and she’d put all her money out, so she told Papa she’d come back home. And she come back, and, I don’t know, she seemed kind of puny and sickly. Papa said, “Well, a old man came here and he said he – Well, you come back just like the man said.” And she said, “What man?” And he said, “Well, somebody told me, said go out there and see somebody called a rootworker,” or, well, he didn’t call it rootwork, but see some person like that. And said maybe he could make her come back. And he said — well, I don’t know what he paid him, but anyway, he said he gave him stuff and told him to bore a hole in a tree on the north side and put that stuff in it and take and put a corkscrew in it. To make it stay in there. And for him to, I think he told me, for him to wet on it for nine mornings or something like that, and she would come back. Well, she come back, and she said, “Well, how come you didn’t take the mess out?” Well, he was arguing about it, saying something about it, and what I did, I got the ice pick. And went out there to – we had a peach tree and a apple tree. It was in the apple tree, and I went out there and looked around sure enough it was a corkscrew, great big one ‘bout like that there, stuck up in there, and I took that icepick and picked it out. And it come out this little trashy stuff in this cloth. And it was part of Mama’s underclothes. [We laugh.] And I think it come off – you know at that time they had a lot of lace and stuff — and one of them little pieces cut off where was the lace was up there, and he wrapped it up and put in that…. Least the man fixed it for him and told him how to bury it in the hole. And Mama, and I don’t know whether it was so or not, but she said when that stuff come out of that hole, felt like a weight fell off of her. I’ll never forget that thing. And the tree died. So, I said I don’t know whether it killed the tree, but it didn’t kill her. And Mama told me if that thing stayed there long enough [inaudible] in that mess, she’d a died.

For a scholarly in-depth study of hoodoo and root work, see Katrina Hazzard-Donald’s Mojo Workin’: The Old African American Hoodoo System.

Free People of Color, North Carolina, Other Documents, Paternal Kin, Religion

Jonah Williams and the Turner Swamp Primitive Baptist Association.

I’ve blogged often about Jonah Williams, prominent farmer, respected preacher, and brother of my great-great-great-grandfather Adam T. Artis. I was pleased, then, to find copies of the minutes of the early annual sessions of the Turner Swamp Primitive Baptist Association, which oversaw several churches that Jonah helped establish and/or lead. Jonah participated in five sessions before his death in 1915, and the minutes of two survive. I’ve extracted pages from those documents here.

London’s Church was just north of the town of Wilson (in what would now be inside city limits.) The church is most closely associated with London Woodard, an enslaved man who was purchased by his free-born wife, Penny Lassiter. Just after the Civil War, London founded an African-American Baptist church, which seems to have been the precursor to the London’s Church organized under the Primitive Baptist umbrella in 1897.

As shown below, Jonah was involved in the establishment of nearly every church in the Turner Swamp Association, including Turner Swamp (1897), Barnes (1898), Little Union (1899), and Rocky Mount (1908). Turner Swamp still meets at or near its original location just north of Eureka in Wayne County. Barnes is likely Barnes’ Chapel Church, now located at 1004 Railroad Street in Wilson. [CORRECTION: Barnes Chapel was close to Stantonsburg, in southwest Wilson County.] I had never heard of Little Union church, but a Google search turned up a list of churches within 15 miles of “Bel-Air Forest (subdivision), North Carolina,” Little Union among them. (Which is a little spooky because that’s the neighborhood in which I grew up and I didn’t input that reference point.) Unfortunately, the site’s map is blank. However, another search disclosed a recent obituary that referred to the decedent’s efforts to rebuild Little Union Primitive Baptist Church in Town Creek, North Carolina. I have not been able to find current references to Rocky Mount Primitive Baptist Church.

Jonah moved from the Eureka area about 10 miles north to Wilson in the late 1890s. Though I knew of his association with Turner Swamp, I was not aware until finding this document that he had also been pastor at London, much less two other churches.

Romans 7:4 — Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.

The approximate locations of the churches in Turner Swamp Primitive Baptist Association. Top to bottom: Rocky Mount, Little Union, London’s, Barnes’ and Turner Swamp. As the crow flies, the distance from Rocky Mount to Eureka, where Turner Swamp is located, is about 30 miles.

This news brief probably made reference to baptisms Jonah conducted at London Church, which stood a few miles from the south bank of Contentnea Creek.

Wilson Daily Times, 6 June 1911.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, North Carolina

Ida Colvert Stockton … Stockton.

My great-grandfather, Lon W. Colvert, had four half-sisters — Selma, Ida May, Lillie and Henrietta. Selma died of “exhaustion from severe burns” when my grandmother was 8 years old. Ida May and Lillie remained in Statesville all their long lives. My grandmother of course knew them, but there is a disconnect somewhere in there that I can’t quite pinpoint. Why were there no extended Colvert relatives at our early family reunions (when many were still alive), as there were extended McNeely kin? Why didn’t my mother know her grandfather’s people? It is perhaps as simple as my grandmother and her sisters being closer to their mother’s large family in childhood, especially given their father’s relatively early death. Over the years — my grandmother left Statesville for good in 1932 — these patterns persisted, solidified and were passed down. Perhaps. It seems odd to me though. Lon’s sisters were roughly the same age as his oldest set of children, and Ida May’s oldest children were roughly the same age as Lon’s youngest. The families lived in close proximity in south Statesville. What was up….?

I have blogged quite a bit about Henrietta Colvert — the aunt my grandmother knew best — who was one of North Carolina’s early African-American registered nurses. I have tracked Henrietta across the arc of her career, which happened to unfold in my hometown of Wilson, North Carolina, almost 200 miles east of Statesville. She left Wilson sometime after World War II, and I have intermittent glimpses of her whereabouts prior to her death in Roanoke, Virginia, in 1980. What of the other sisters though? I’ll start with Ida May.

Though John W. Colvert and Myra Hampton began their relationship in the late 1880s, they did not marry until 1905. Ida, their first child, was born about 1887, and three more daughters followed in short order. None of the family, however — not John, not Addie, nor their girls — are found in the 1900 census.

A lot happened in the next decade though. The 1910 census of Statesville, Iredell County, at 214 Garfield Street, shows Ida M. Stockton, a 25 (actually, 23ish) year-old widow with one of three children living sharing a household with her brother-in-law Eugene Stockton, 37 and married, her brother-in-law Jesse Stockton, and her son John, 1. Ida was a laundress, Eugene a tobacco roller at a tobacco factory, and Jesse, an odd job laborer. This arrangement would not ordinarily raise eyebrows, but — widow? Wasn’t Eugene Stockton Ida’s husband??? Why is he listed as her brother-in-law? The birth certificates of all her children, including John, list Eugene as their father. Had Ida previously been married to one of Eugene’s brothers? (Census and death records identify several, including Arthur (born circa 1875), Fred (1885), Jakey (1887), Jesse Lee (1889), and David (1891).) If so, I have not found evidence of a license. And if not Ida, to whom was Eugene married in 1910?

That last question turns out to be pretty easily answered. On 24 June 1903, Eugene Stockton, son of Henry and Alice Stockton, married Ella Cowan, daughter of Peter and Clementine Cowan in Iredell County. I have found no evidence that the couple had any children. In the spring of 1912, their divorce suit, styled Eugene Stockton vs. Ella Stockton, was listed several times in the court calendar published in the Statesville Sentinel. By 1918, when Eugene registered for the World War I draft, he listed his sister Gertrude Stockton as his next of kin.

Ida’s children were John Walker Stockton (1910), Lillie Mae Stockton (1911), Sarah Eliza Stockton (1912), Alonzo Pinkney Stockton (1917), Winnifred Josephine Stockton (1919), and Eugene A. Stockton (1924). As noted above, the birth certificates of all list Eugene as their father. (In sooth, though, all the children except Eugene had delayed birth certificates, i.e. certificates registered well after the birth of the child in question.)

Nothing had changed by time the enumerator arrived to record the 1920 census. At 214 Garfield Street in Statesville, Eugene Stockton, 46, is listed as the head of a household that included his sister Flossie Tomlin, 23, grandchild Annie L., 5 months, sister-in-law Ida M. Stockton, 33, and grandchildren Lilly M., Sarah E., Alonzo P., and Winnifred. Eugene was employed as a tobacco factory laborer, Flossie as a teacher, and Ida as a laundress. Who made this up? The census taker, or a self-conscious Ida May? She is still listed as Eugene’s in-law, despite their apparent decade-long relationship, and Lillie, Sarah, Alonzo and Winnifred are identified as his grandchildren. Eugene’s sister Florence “Flossie” Stockton Tomlin, was married to Harvey Golar Tomlin, who was the half-brother (on the maternal side) of Ida Mae’s half-brother (on the paternal side) Lon W. Colvert. Accordingly, Annie L. Tomlin was Eugene’s niece, not his granddaughter. (In a separate listing in 1920, in Statesville’s “suburbs”: Jessie Stockton, 28, sister Flossie Tomlin, 25, niece Anna L. Tomlin, 4 months, and brother-in-law Havey Tomlin.)

Finally, as her mother’s had been, Ida May’s steadfastness was rewarded. On 8 July 1922, Eugene Stockton, 49, son of Henry and Adley Stockton, and Ida May Stockton, 35, daughter of John and Adeline Colvert, were married by Z.A. Dockery, M.G., at “Eugene’s house” before Bessie Abernathy and E.A. Abernathy.

In the 1930 census, the family at last is listed openly: Eugene Stockton, 57, wife Ida M., 45, and children John, 20, Lily M., 18, Sara, 17, Alonzo, 12, Winifred, 11, and Eugene Jr., 6.

Eugene and Ida May C. Stockton, probably the early 1940s.

Eugene Stockton died 26 February 1944 in Statesville. Ida May Colvert Stockton Stockton outlived him by more than 20 years. On 23 August 1967, she passed away a week after suffering a stroke.

Statesville Record & Landmark, 26 August 1967.

Photo courtesy of A. S. Barton.

Enslaved People, Land, Maternal Kin, North Carolina

38 acres.

So, I found this deed today on the Iredell County Register of Deeds’ site:

A number of things strike me:

John Walker Colvert never registered a deed for this or any other property. Neither did his father Walker Colvert.
The property bordered that of John Greenberry “J.G.” Colvert, a son of William I. Colvert, who had been Walker and John Walker’s master.
“For further description and title, see deed of G.W. Mullis to G.B. Morgan. Also see will of Walker Colvert — Will Book 6 at page 483.” George W. Mullis was the father of Daniel A. Mullis, one of the witnesses to Walker’s will.
Though the deed was not registered until 1904, Mullis sold the 38 acres for $250 to Gabriel B. Morgan on 2 April 1863. Lying in the northeast corner of the Richardson tract on Hunting Creek, the parcel was bounded as follows: “Beginning at a hickory thence South (58) fifty-eight poles to a stone thence near south [sic] a conditional line 114 (one hundred & fourteen) poles to two oaks near a branch, then north to Beatys line thence East with said line to the beginning containing thirty eight acres more or less….” (Deed Book 30, page 234)
In the 1870 census, Walker reported owning $100 of real property. It is not clear when he bought the 38 acres, presumably from Morgan. He is listed in Union Grove township, just west of Eagle Mills township in Iredell County. His close neighbor is Beeson Baty, presumably of the “Beaty’s line” named in the deed.
Walker made his will in 1901; it was probated in 1905. Walker’s widow Rebecca was his primary beneficiary, but everything passed to John after her death in 1915.
As an aside, Walker and Rebecca’s daughter Elvira married Richard Morgan, son of Richard Madison and Hilda Morgan, in 1874. Had Richard and his mother belonged to G.B. Morgan?
P.P. mentioned that D.A. Mullis lived in the vicinity of Mullis Road and Zion Liberty Road. I’ve marked that intersection with the left-most arrow on the map below. As the deed described, this area is near Hunting Creek, which crawls across the middle of the image, and is at the eastern edge of Union Grove township. The second arrow marks the point at which I photographed the creek from the Eagle Mills Road bridge. The third points in the direction of Nicholson Mill. As the crow flies, the map depicts an area no more than a couple of miles wide.

Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

Blog blessings.

On October 23, I blogged about connecting with D.J., a descendant of my great-great-great-grandparents Adam T. Artis and Robert and Mary Eliza Balkcum Aldridge via Lillie Bell Artis Thompson McDaniel Pridgen (1891-1935). A month and a half later, quite separately, I heard from P.M. via this blog. P.M. is also descended from Lillie Bell, though from her marriage to Celebus Thompson. (D.J. is from her second marriage, to McDaniel Whitley.) To my surprise, P.M.’s great-grandmother, Lillie Bell’s daughter Genetta Thompson, married Phillip Elmer Coley, a grandson of Winnie Coley. In her short life, Lillie Belle had twelve or so children. Many migrated north to New York and New Jersey, though, and I had not been able to trace them forward. So glad Scuffalong is bridging that gap!

Genetta Thompson Coley.

Just after Christmas, P.P. commented on “All of my possessions to have and to hold,” which featured by great-great-great-grandfather Walker Colvert‘s will. She identified Daniel Mullis, one of the witnesses to the document, as her ancestor. P.P. not only lives in the Eagle Mills area, she’s an avid genealogist and local history buff, she’s my cousin! Her great-grandmother Rebecca Ann Nicholson Barnard was a sister of my great-great-great-grandfather James Lee Nicholson. P.P. has a lifetime of knowledge about northeastern Iredell County and has volunteered to help me in any way possible. Two things she’s already shared: (1) The Welch-Nicholson house didn’t just fall down from age and neglect. It was torched by hooligans out on arson spree. This was back, probably, in the 1980s, not very long after the house achieved historic register status. (2) “Cowles” is pronounced COLES.
Around the same time I heard from P.P., I received a message from P.W. She’d been talking to her grandmother about family history, jotted down some names, Googled them, and immediately found “Where we lived: 114 West Lee Street.” To my amazement, she is a descendant of Madie Taylor Barnes, who migrated to New York City during the Great Depression and lost touch with her North Carolina family. I’m looking forward to talking to P.W.’s grandmother soon.
And then today: M.S. left a comment noting that her great-great-great-grandfather baptized my great-great-great-grandfather James L. Nicholson in 1842, and she’s a descendant of John A. Colvert, an owner of my great-great-great-grandfather Walker Colvert!

Photo courtesy of Patricia Smith Muhammad.

DNA, North Carolina, Paternal Kin, Photographs

DNAnigma, no. 16: Neighbors.

A plus of growing up in the vicinity of the places your ancestors lived: every once in a while, you’ll discover that your childhood friends (or enemies, ha!) are actually your kinfolk. Just today, I noticed a match with a woman whose name sounded vaguely familiar. I checked her family tree, saw her grandfather’s name, and — bingo! — she’s the first cousin of R., one of my closest childhood friends. R.’s family lived up the street from mine, and I remember my match and her sister, who grew up in Virginia, visiting them. I zapped a message to R.’s sister on Facebook — “We’re COUSINS!” — and she is as stunned as I. I have NO IDEA what our connection is, but I’m about to put my back in this.

Me, R. and J., 1966. Cousins!

Business, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Paternal Kin, Vocation

The leading colored funeral director.

Goldsboro Daily Argus, 27 July 1920.

The esteemed James N. Guess was married to Annie Smith, daughter of Isham and Nancy Henderson Smith. [Small world moment: His nephew Kennon Guess married Esther Edwards of Greene County. I knew Mrs. Guess (later, Askew) as a first grade teacher at elementary school and as a neighbor in Wilson.]

Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Category Archives: North Carolina