Military, North Carolina, Other Documents, Paternal Kin

World War I draft registration cards: Aldridge, no. 1.

Three sons of John W. Aldridge and their first cousins, sons of George W. Aldridge:

George’s son Prince A. Aldridge appears on a list titled “Negroes Certified” (US Lists of Men Ordered to Report to Local Board for Military Duty 1917-1918, ancestry.com), but it is not clear whether he ever enlisted and served. He moved to Wilson NC after the war and worked as a plasterer and occasional tobacco factory worker. Prince died 15 May 1953.

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Prince’s brother Blanchard (“Blancher”) Aldridge was called up in July 1918 and ordered to Florida A&M’s Tallahassee, Florida campus. His gravestone indicates that he served in 78th Division, Provision Outpost, Machine Gun Training Center.

From his discharge papers: Blanchard Aldridge. #3022528. Priv, 78th Prov Co, 7th Prov Tr Gr MTDMGTC. Honorably discharged. Born in Goldsboro NC. Enlisted at 22 years of age. Occupation: Presser. Brown eyes, black hair, brown complexion. 5’8″. Camp Hannah GA, 6 Jan 1919. Enlisted 1 Jul 1918, Goldsboro NC. Not rated, marksmanship. No battles, no wounds, normal physical condition. Single. Excellent character. Entitled to travel pay from Camp Hannah GA to Goldsboro NC.

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Johnnie Aldridge was the only one of John Aldridge’s sons to remain a farmer in the Dudley area. He was newly married in 1917. I wish I knew the story of the broken skull. Johnnie died 13 April 1964.

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Though, as a medical student, he probably had fewer resources than his brothers John and Zebedee, Tom Aldridge claimed responsibility for the support of his widowed mother and unmarried sisters. He also asserted that his own health was poor. He had already begun to shave years off his age — he was born in 1886, in fact — but had not yet changed the spelling of his surname to “Aldrich.” Tom was enrolled at Meharry School of Medicine at the time he registered, and his obituary reports that he served in the Army Medical Corps in 1918. Tom died in Saint Louis MO in February 1968.

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Zebedee Aldridge, the oldest of John Aldridge’s sons, had been living in Virginia for nearly 20 years by time he registered. He was in his late 30s and was not called to serve. Zebedee died August 1958.

Births Deaths Marriages, North Carolina, Other Documents, Paternal Kin

Misinformation Monday, no. 1.

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

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The “true facts”: Caswell C. Henderson was born in 1865 in Sampson County, North Carolina, to Lewis Henderson and Margaret Balkcum Henderson.

Nonetheless, this is what the records say:

(1) Marriage license, issued 1893 in New York City: Caswell C. Henderson was born in New York NY to Lewis Henderson and an unknown mother.

(2) 1900 federal census: Caswell Henderson was born in New York to New York-born parents.

(3) Marriage license, issued 1907 in New York City: Caswell C. Henderson was born in New York City to Lewis Henderson and Margaret Balcum.

(4) 1910 federal census: Caswell C. Henderson was born in New York. His father was born in Virginia; his mother, in New York.

(5) 1920 federal census: Caswell C. Henderson was born in New York to New York-born parents.

(6) Death certificate, issued 1927 in New York City: Caswell Henderson was born in North Carolina to an unknown father born in North Carolina and an unknown mother born in an unknown state.

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Who was the source of this misinformation? Did Caswell claim to have been born in New York? Why?

Sidenote: Though Caswell’s middle initial, “C,” is almost always noted, I have never seen his middle name spelled out and have no idea what is it.

North Carolina, Paternal Kin, Photographs

Strong genes, no. 1.

Jack Henderson and Daniel Simmons, first cousins.

Jack (1893-1970) was the son of Loudie Henderson. Daniel (1895-1964) was the son of her sister Ann Elizabeth Henderson Simmons. Both were born and grew up in Dudley, Wayne County.

Enslaved People, Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Other Documents, Rights

Accept no pass unless …

Ring the Court House bell at 10 o’clock every night and at all other times when necessary to alarm the citizens.

Arrest all slaves absent from home after the bell rings and after the calaboose is finished lock them up till day light. Give them 15 lashes and inform the magistrate of their names and owners.

Accept no pass unless the place or places where the slave is permitted to go is written in the same and arrest the slave if found off a direct line or road from one place to another.

Arrest all slaves engaged in a disturbance either with or without a pass.

A pass allowing a slave to visit his wife is good for one month and then must be taken up and another given or he will be arrested.

Iredell County slave ordinances, undated. North Carolina State Archives.

Births Deaths Marriages, North Carolina, Paternal Kin, Photographs

Remembering Jesse Lee.

My Aunt Mamie had two handsome boys. John‘s birthday was last week. Jesse Lee‘s would have been today.

Jesse Lee was a quiet, brown-eyed, blunt-featured version of his brother. Together, they were beautiful.

Happy birthday, Jesse Lee Holt (11 December 1927-27 May 1993).

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Photographs (or copies) in the possession of Lisa Y. Henderson.

North Carolina, Other Documents, Paternal Kin

Jonah’s apprentices.

On 24 Sept 1870, Geo. Jno. Robinson, Probate Judge, bound to “Jonah Williams (col)” John H. Britt, Ida Britt and Cora Britt, aged 12, 10 and 6, to “live after the manner of an apprentice and servant until the said apprentice shall attain to the age of twenty-one years and until Ida & Cora shall attain the age of eighteen years” John was to be taught trade of a farmer, and Ida and Cora that of house servant. Williams “shall further provide said apprentices each with a new suit of clothes, six dollars in cash & a new Bible at the end of said apprenticeship.” Williams signed the indenture with an X.*

Who were the Britts to Jonah Williams?

They are not listed in Jonah’s household in the 1870 census. Rather, Ida, 9, and Corah Britt, 6, and their mother Hannah Britt, 39, appear in the household of drayman Doctor Thompson, his wife Feribee, and daughter Lucy in Goldsboro, Wayne County. John Britt is not found.

Ten years later, Ida Britt, 20, is listed in the Wayne County household of Jonah’s 80 year-old father, Solomon Williams. Ida and Charity Artis, 42, were described as Solomon’s “daughters.” Charity certainly was, but Ida? It is possible, certainly, that Solomon fathered three children with Hannah Britt in the eight years prior to Emancipation and his 1866 marriage to the mother of his 11 other children, born between 1828 and 1851. If so, the arrangement with his son Jonah might have been a way to insure their care. Solomon did not legitimate the Britts, however, as none appear in his 1883 estate records. The more likely explanation is that Ida was in the household as a quasi-servant, and the censustaker assigned her relationship based on his assumptions. I have not found her in any record after 1880.

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*Wayne County Apprentice Bonds, NC State Archives.

Maternal Kin, Military, North Carolina, Other Documents

Ordered to report.

This roster of African-American men from Iredell County inducted on March 30, 1918, and ordered to report to Camp Grant, Rockford, Illinois, included my grandmother’s maternal uncle, Ed McNeely, and brother-in-law William Bradshaw. (Bradshaw married Golar Colvert eight days after his induction.)

[War Department, Office of the Provost Marshal General, Selective Service System, 1917– 07/15/1919. Lists of Men Ordered to Report to Local Board for Military Service, 1917–1918. Records of the Selective Service System (World War I), Record Group 163. National Archives, Atlanta, Georgia.]

DNA, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

DNA Definites, no. 9: Hagans.

23andme characterizes K.H. as my father’s first cousin (8.11% share) and my second (4.4% share). We are related via my Henderson and Aldridge lines, and much more closely in the latter. He is, in fact, my father’s first cousin, once removed. K.H.’s mother and my father’s grandfather were siblings.

K.H. shows a distant match with W.B., but not her daughter W.M. (My father and I show no match with either. Nor does E.H., who is K.H.’s nephew.) W.B. and W.M. are descended from Napoleon Hagans through his son William S. Hagans. Napoleon was the half-brother of Frances Seaberry Artis (my great-great-great-grandmother and K.H.’s great-grandmother.)

Education, Maternal Kin, North Carolina

Golar.

My great-aunt Golar Augusta Colvert, born in 1897. Her uncle Harvey Golar Tomlin, born in 1894. My great-grandmother’s cousin, Goler Lee Miller, born in 1895.

Who were these people — all born within 25 miles of Salisbury, North Carolina — named for?

William Harvey Golar, the Canadian-born president of Livingstone College, a small, four-year institution in Salisbury affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Golar was appointed president in 1893 and was renowned for his energetic fundraising ability during his nearly 20 years of service.

Harriet Nicholson Tomlin Hart, mother of Golar T. and grandmother of Golar C., was an enthusiastic AMEZ, and I’m guessing that Goler’s parents George and Adline Miller were, too.

North Carolina, Paternal Kin, Photographs

Finding the Barfields.

Some time in the late 1980s, I learned the name of my great-grandmother Bessie Henderson’s father — Joseph Buckner Martin — and learned that, after the death of Bessie’s mother Loudie, Buck Martin had several children with a woman whose last name was Barfield. I marinated on that for a few years, then a bit of sleuthing revealed that Sarah Barfield was the woman, and her children were Walter, Amy, Lillie and Daisy Barfield. I found Walter Barfield Jr. in the phone book, cold-called him, and found him to be a gracious and welcoming cousin. His father had passed away not too many years before, but Aunt Lillie was still living, and he was happy to introduce us the next time I came home to North Carolina.

Sarah Barfield

I met my great-great-aunt in the spring of 1993 at the nursing home in which she lived in Mount Olive. She was a tiny woman with a wizened, apple-cheeked face, her ivory-white hair pulled back in a small bun.

I took notes:

She said she never saw her half-sister Bessie Henderson, but remembers when she died [in 1910]. Her sister Amy went to the funeral and came home and cried and cried.
Jack Henderson, her half-brother, used to visit them in the country. Once when he came, he wanted to meet their father. She took him there, and Buck received his oldest son in a friendly manner. He was good to his children.
Her sister Amy was in her 30s when she died; Daisy was 18. They are buried in the Barfield cemetery, between Mount Olive and Dudley, not far from the railroad.
Her youngest granddaughter has a photo of Daisy.
She has a daughter Gladys and a son Walter Lee Holmes.
She bought the house that Buck left her mother from one of Ira Martin’s children, to whom it had reverted after her mother Sarah’s death.
Her house burned up with most of her photographs.
She knew Buck’s brother Alfred Martin. He committed suicide.
Once on her way to Washington to see her husband, she spent the night in Wilson with Sarah Henderson Jacobs, who told her, “Don’t ever marry an old man.” Walter Lee was 2 years old at the time. [This would have been about 1922.]
She remembered that my grandmother had children by a “barber man.”

The second time I visited Aunt Lillie was at Christmas, and I took my grandmother with me. When we walked in, Aunt Lillie stared wordlessly, then reached out to touch her face.

Lillie Barfield Holmes passed away peacefully on 1 June 2003, just shy of her 100th birthday.

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Photographs taken by Lisa Y. Henderson, 1993.

Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Category Archives: North Carolina