DNA, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

DNAnigma, no. 13: high-school classmates?

Over the weekend, I did one of my infrequent checks for matches at Ancestry DNA. I found a new match to C.B., an estimated 5th-8th cousin. Heaving a sigh, I idly checked his family tree — and immediately recognized many of his surnames as common to Wilson County, my birthplace. I looked a little more closely at his profile, and … I’ll be damned. His daughter was my high school classmate! How in the world are we connected?

M.W. is the second Beddingfield High School grad that I’ve matched in Ancestry or 23andme. The other was a classmate of my sister. I have no clue how we match M.R. either.

I can assume the C.B. match is on my father’s side, as is M.R. I also assume that it is through an Anglo ancestor. What throws me is that I don’t know of any white ancestors from Wilson County or northern Wayne or southern Edgecombe Counties, from which Wilson was created. Clearly, I have one, or some, though, as these and a couple of other Wilson County matches attest. The most likely conduit is through my Artis-Seaberry-Hagans, who had obvious Euro ancestry about which I know nothing and who lived in northern Wayne County.

An initial exchange of messages with M.R. has fallen silent, but I’m hoping a collabo with M.W. will get me somewhere.

Births Deaths Marriages, Free People of Color, Migration, North Carolina, Other Documents, Paternal Kin

Misinformation Monday, no. 5.

The fifth in a series of posts revealing the fallability of records, even “official” ones.

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What’s right with this death certificate? Annie Simmons‘ name — more or less, as she seems to have been called Anna in her youth. Presumably, her date and place of death. Her birthday may be right, though the birth year is probably three or four years late. She was certainly female.

But she was not white.

Annie Simmons was mixed-race, described as “mulatto” in early life and “colored” (and even “African”) thereafter. She is consistently classified in census records in two states (North Carolina and Indiana) and a province (Ontario), as well as her marriage license. The local newspaper avidly carried news of her husband Montraville Simmons’ antics and was quick to point out his non-white status. (She was certainly married, if unhappily.)

(By the way, Basedow’s disease is more commonly known as Graves’ disease, or hyperthyroidism.)

Annie was probably 54, rather than 50, and she was certainly born in North Carolina, but not to “James Harrison” and “Eliza Henderson.” Rather, as is clearly set forth in her application for a marriage license in Duplin County NC, her parents were James Henderson and Eliza Armwood. Montraville Simmons probably had not seen his in-laws in more than 40 years when he gave this information. His errors are perhaps excusable, but there they are, enshrined as “fact” and forever leading researchers astray.

Maternal Kin, Migration, North Carolina, Oral History

Finally they just trickled on.

Me: When did your aunts and uncles that moved to Ohio — when did they move? And who was the first one to go. Why did they pick Ohio?

My grandmother: Well, Mama had a sister named Janie, and she had three children by this man. And he didn’t even –

Me [unfortunately, interrupting *sigh*]: That was J.T. and Charles and —

My grandmother: No, no, no, no, no. That was –

Me: Oh, Willa and them. Okay. Yeah.

My grandmother: Mm-hmm. And he went to Columbus, Ohio, and he would want them to come, but they didn’t ever go. So finally my Aunt Min and my cousin moved to Ohio — Columbus. And my Aunt Dot and her family just trickled on.

Me: Okay. So Aunt Min and who?

My grandmother: Ardeanur.

Me: Ardeanur. Okay.

My grandmother: Ardeanur. And she had a brother named James. And their mother died when they were little children, and Min reared them. Reared the children. So anyway after they went to Ohio, after she went, after Aunt Dot went to Ohio, I think. Ardeanur and Aunt Min lived in Jersey City. But they moved out there.

Me: Okay. So that’s how everybody wound up in Columbus.

My grandmother: Columbus, Ohio.

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Janie C. “Dot” McNeely, born 1894, was the youngest of the McNeely sisters. I’m not sure who the man who moved to Ohio is, but he probably was James M. Taylor, whom she married in 1923 shortly before their son Carl was born. (They’d had a daughter, Willa Louise, in 1918 and had a second son in 1925. Janie and her children (including older daughters Sarah and Frances) appear in Statesville in the 1930 census without James Taylor.

It’s still not clear to me when the McNeelys moved to Ohio. My grandmother’s statements about who went first seem to conflict, but I am fairly certain that she meant to say that Janie and her children were there before Minnie and Ardeanur. Minnie and Ardeanur were in Bayonne, New Jersey, before 1930, when Janie was still in Statesville. However, because all of them — wherever they were — seem to have been omitted from the 1940 census, it’s difficult to guess when the move to Ohio took place.

Unfortunately, the Ohio branch of the McNeelys is now largely unknown to my family. Janie’s daughter Willa may still be living, but last we heard was fighting Alzheimer’s. Few of Janie’s children had children, maybe only one, and links to them have been lost.

Maternal Kin, Migration, North Carolina, Photographs

Aunt Mat and her children.

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.

Births Deaths Marriages, Migration, North Carolina, Paternal Kin, Photographs

Funeral Program Friday: Fannie Aldridge Randolph.

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.)

Free People of Color, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

Sisters?

The case for Nancy Henderson and Patsey Henderson as sisters is circumstantial, but strongly suggestive.

(1) With a handful of exceptions, they and individuals who appear to be their children are the only known free “colored” Hendersons in Onslow County, North Carolina, in the early 1800’s. I have not found record evidence of any colored Hendersons prior to 1809. (The exceptions: three Henderson girls apprenticed circa 1810 who may have been too old to have been Patsey or Nancy’s children. I have not been able to trace them forward from their apprenticeships.)

(2) Nancy and Patsey are named in Onslow County court records as mothers of children bound out as apprentices, and Nancy may have apprenticed two of Patsey’s. (Between February, 1821, and November, 1824, seven Henderson children were shifted from master to master nine times. In the 25 years between 1809 and 1834, 14 Hendersons — sisters, brothers, cousins, nieces, nephews — appeared before the bench on 17 occasions. A group of white families dominated the apprenticeship of Henderson children — Richard, Adam, and Houston Trott; Jesse and Jason Gregory; James Glenn sr. and jr.; Lewis, William, and Uzy Mills; John and Steven Humphrey, William and Jesse Alphin. I know no familial relationship between Nancy or Patsey and any of these families, but Millses gave evidence concerning Nancy’s parentage.)

(3) Nancy’s children (Durant, Willis, Miranda, Patsey, Gatsey, Minerva, William and Betsey) and Patsey’s children (James and Bryant) were roughly the same age and were occasionally apprenticed together.

(4) Several names recur among the grandchildren of both women. Nancy’s son Durant Dove (alias Henderson) had children named Lewis James, Julia, Susan, Eliza, Edward and Nancy. Patsey’s son James Henderson had children named James, Lewis, Susan, Julia, Edward and Nancy. Durant reared his family in Onslow and Lenoir Counties NC. James reared his in Onslow and Sampson. James left Onslow in the 1850s. Despite the physical distance and probable lack of contact, both men drew from the same pool of names for children born well into the 1870s.

Births Deaths Marriages, Letters, Migration, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

I guess this is what I was going to hear.

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. 100^th 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.

Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Other Documents, Politics

Senator Nicholson, Christian gentleman.

This Christian gentleman had been a slaveholder, of course. Indeed, owner of his very granddaughter.

Births Deaths Marriages, North Carolina, Oral History, Paternal Kin, Photographs

Is Mama dead let me know at once.

Mama got sick after we come back from Greensboro. She got sick. At least, Mama, we never could tell when she was sick. ‘Cause she put on so much. If she wanted to go somewhere – go to New York, Norfolk, anywhere she could get, pack that bag, honey, and she’s gone. And leave us home! Leave us there. She took me to New York with her, and she carried Mamie to Norfolk, carried me to Norfolk one time, then she carried Mamie there. Oh, she was just always wanting to go. And Papa didn’t have enough sense, but just wherever she said she was going, she was going, and he give her the money and she’d go.

But Mama didn’t know she had a bad heart until two weeks before she died. She was always sick, sick all the time. She’d go to the doctor, and the doctor would tell her it was indigestion and for her not to eat no pork and different things she couldn’t eat. ‘Cause Mama was fat. She weighed 200. She wasn’t too short. She was just broad. Well, she was five-feet-four, I think. Something like that. And so, but she loved pork, and she’d try to eat some anyhow ‘cause we always had a hog, growing up. All the time. So after they said she couldn’t, she tried not to eat no pork, much. Fish and chicken, we eat it all the time. But she was so tired of chicken until she didn’t know what to do. And I was, too. But Papa loved all pork, so he’d always get a whole half a shoulder or a ham or something and cook it, and she’d eat some. But when she went to the doctor, and her pressure was up so high, and he told her, “By all means, don’t you eat no pork. It’s dangerous to eat pork when your pressure is too high.” And then that’s when she stopped eating pork. Well, it didn’t help none, I don’t reckon.

After that, when she was going to Mamie’s, she had that little bag. A little basket. A little, old basket ‘bout that tall with a handle on it. She had all kinds of medicine in there to take. And Mr. Silver told her, said, “Well, you just take your medicine bag.” She’d been married to him a good while. He said, “Well, you shouldn’t go up there by yourself. Since I’m down here—” See, she’d go up and stay with him a little while, and then he’d come back to Wilson and stay a while. So he said, “You just take your little basket there with your medicine in it.” So, he said, “Well, I’ll go with you up there and then I’ll come back on to Enfield.” So he went with her down there to the station. He was picking up the bags to go up there, told her to walk on up to the station and wait for the train.

So, she went up there to the station and got on there, and went on and got on the train, and when she got off the train, in Selma — ‘cause she’d done told me to send her insurance and everything to Greensboro, ‘cause she wont never coming back to Wilson no more. Because she’d done seen, the Lord showed her if she stayed in Wilson, she wouldn’t live. If she went ‘way from there, she could get well. So she was going to Mamie’s. And when she got off the train and went there – she’d just got to the station door. And she collapsed right there. And by happen they had a wheelchair, a luggage thing or something. The guy out there, he got to her, and he called the coroner or somebody, but he was some time getting there. But anyway, they picked her up and sat her in the wheelchair. They didn’t want her to be out ‘cause everybody was out looking and carrying on, so they just pushed her ‘round there to the baggage room.

And so when the coroner got there, he said, “This woman’s dead.” So they called Albert Gay, and he was working for Artis then. Undertaker Artis. And Jimbo Barnes. And called them and told them that she was dead. So, Mr. Silver couldn’t even tell them who to notify. He had Mamie living in Thelma, North Carolina, on McCullough Street, but didn’t know what the number of the house was. So he was so upset. So they had to call the police for the police to go find Mamie Holt. On McCullough Street. And her mother, they said, her mother died. Well, she did die. But they said it was, I think, Thelma. Not Selma, but Thelma. “Well, where is Thelma? It can’t be my mother. ‘Cause my mother don’t live in no Thelma. I never heard of that place. She live in Wilson.” But, see, it was Selma where she died. They got it wrong.

So then Mamie went down to Smitty’s house and had Miss Smitty send a telegram to me. On the phone. Charge it to her bill, and she’d pay her: “IS MAMA DEAD LET ME KNOW AT ONCE” She asked me if Mama was dead. And I said, when I got that, Annie Miriam and all them, a bunch of kids was out there on the porch, and so at that time, Jimbo or one of ‘em come up. And when I saw them, I knowed something. I had just got the telegram. Hadn’t even really got time to read it. Had just read it. And he said, “Well, you done got the news.” And I said, “The news? Well, I got a old, crazy telegram here from my sister, asking me is Mama dead, let her know at once.” He said, “Yeah, we just, we brought her back from Selma.” I said, “What in the – ” Well, I went to crying. And I don’t know. Albert Gay or some of the children was ‘round there, and they was running. Everybody in the whole street almost was out in the yard – the children got the news and gone! That Mama had dropped dead in Selma. So I said, well, by getting that telegram, I said, that’s what threw me, honey. I wasn’t ready for that. I’d been saying I reckon Mamie’ll think Mama was a ghost when she come walking in there tonight. Not knowing she was dead right at the same time.

Remembering Sarah Henderson Jacobs Silver on the 76th anniversary of her death.

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Births Deaths Marriages, Land, Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Other Documents, Rights

Murdock v. Deal, 208 N.C. 754, 182 S.E. 466 (1935).

In case you’re interested, here’s the text of the Supreme Court’s decision regarding Bertha Hart Murdock’s land. Property law is not my strong suit, especially as it applies to inheritance, so I will not attempt an explication.

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This is an action for a declaratory judgment construing the last will and testament of T. L. Hart, deceased, and adjudging that by virtue of said last will and testament the feme plaintiff is the owner of an indefeasible estate in fee simple in certain lands described in the complaint, and has the power, with the joinder of her husband, to convey the same in accordance with her contract with the defendant.

The facts admitted in the pleadings are as follows:

T. L. Hart died in Iredell county, N. C., during the year 1930, having first made and published his last will and testament, which was duly probated by the clerk of the superior court of Iredell county, and recorded in the office of said clerk on June 4, 1930.

By his last will and testament, the said T. L. Hart devised his home place in Iredell county “to my daughter, Bertha May Hart and her bodily heirs, forever, never to be sold, and if she dies without bodily heirs, then it must be in trust for my sisters’ heirs, to hold but never to sell the same.”

By a codicil to his said last will and testament, the said T. L. Hart devised to his daughter, Bertha Mae Hart, a tract of land in Iredell county, containing forty-five acres, and described in the complaint by metes and bounds.

At his death, T. L. Hart left surviving as his only heir at law his daughter, Bertha Mae Hart, who has since intermarried with the plaintiff W. J. Murdock. He also left surviving five sisters, three of whom are married. Each of these sisters has children. Neither of his two unmarried sisters has children. Both are now over fifty years of age.

On April 1, 1935, the plaintiffs and the defendant entered into a contract in writing, by which the plaintiffs agreed to convey to the defendant a fee-simple estate, free and clear of all liens or incumbrances, in two tracts of land, one tract containing twelve acres, and being a part of the home place of T. L. Hart, deceased, which was devised to the feme plaintiff by the said T. L. Hart in his last will and testament, and the other tract containing forty-five acres and being the tract which was devised to the feme plaintiff by T. L. Hart, deceased, by the codicil to his last will and testament. By said contract, the defendant agreed to pay to the plaintiffs the sum of $1,000, upon the execution and delivery to him by the plaintiffs of a deed conveying both said tracts of land to the defendant, in fee simple, in accordance with said contract.

The defendant has refused to accept the deed tendered to him by the plaintiffs, and has declined to pay the plaintiffs the sum of $1,000, in accordance with said contract, on the ground that the feme plaintiff is not the owner of an indefeasible estate in fee simple in said tracts of land, and for that reason the plaintiffs cannot convey to him such an estate in said lands, in accordance with their contract.

On these facts the court was of opinion and so held that the feme plaintiff is the owner of an indefeasible estate in fee simple in the forty-five-acre tract, but that she is not the owner of such an estate in the twelve-acre tract.

It was accordingly ordered, considered, and adjudged that plaintiffs are not entitled to the specific performance by the defendant of the contract set up in the complaint, and that the defendant recover of the plaintiffs the costs of the action. The plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court, assigning as error the holding of the court that the feme plaintiff is not the owner of an indefeasible estate in fee simple in the twelve-acre tract described in the complaint.

Opinion

CONNOR, Justice.

There is no error in the judgment in this action. By virtue of the last will and testament of her father, T. L. Hart, deceased, and under the statute, C. S. § 1734, the feme plaintiff is the owner of an estate in fee simple in the twelve-acre tract described in the complaint. This estate, however, is defeasible upon the death of the feme plaintiff without bodily heirs. Whitfield v. Garris, 131 N. C. 148, 42 S. E. 568, and Id., 134 N. C. 24, 45 S. E. 904. It is clear that the words “bodily heirs,” used by the testator, must be construed as meaning children or issue; otherwise the limitation over to the heirs of the sisters of the testator would be meaningless. Rollins v. Keel, 115 N. C. 68, 20 S. E. 209. See Pugh v. Allen, 179 N. C. 307, 102 S. E. 394.

The limitation over to the heirs of the sisters of the testator, upon the death of the feme plaintiff, without bodily heirs or issue, is not void. The provision in the will that the home place of the testator, which includes the twelve-acre tract described in the complaint, shall not be sold by either the feme plaintiff or the remaindermen is void as against public policy. This provision, however, does not affect the validity of the devise either to the plaintiff or to the remaindermen. See Lee v. Oates, 171 N. C. 717, 88 S. E. 889, Ann. Cas. 1917A, 514.

There is nothing in the codicil which affects the estate in the home place of the testator devised in the will to the feme plaintiff.

The judgment is affirmed.

Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Category Archives: North Carolina