Land, Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Other Documents

Where we lived: colored settlements.

Me: And where was the area that was called Wallacetown?

My grandmother: Mm-hmm. That was just out near where we lived. We lived out there. And then there was like a stream or a branch or something where you crossed that thing, that was called Rabbittown.

Me: Okay.

Grandma: We lived in Wallacetown.

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From the 1916 city directory of Statesville, North Carolina:

Popular Branch — a colored settlement southeast of Wallacetown [actually, it was “Poplar” Branch]

Rabbittown — a colored settlement southeast of Wallacetown

Wallacetown — a colored settlement southeast of the railway station

Rankinsville — a colored settlement to the right of the north end of Centre Street

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

The house and the lot on which they now live.

Buck Martin never married. At the end of his life, he and his bachelor brother Alfred lived together in the “home place,” perhaps the house they had grown up in, which Buck owned. Just down the road lived another unmarried brother, Dortch, and their widowed sister, Virginia “Jenny” Martin Herring.

A few months before his death, Buck drew up a will that insured that Alfred would keep a roof over his head and that, more importantly, his younger children and their mother, Sarah Barfield, would not be dispossessed of the house and acre of land upon which they lived. By its terms, the will provided that the Barfields could remain on the property for the duration of their lifetimes and those of their survivors, after which it would revert to his brothers or their heirs. In fact, they did not stay quite so long. Sarah Barfield died in 1942, and the property reverted to Buck’s brother Ira’s children. Lillie Barfield Holmes bought the house from them, but it later burned down.

[Sidenote: Buck Martin died 18 June 1928 of sarcoma of the right thigh. His brother Ira died of heart failure exactly ten days later.]

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.

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, Other Documents, Paternal Kin, Photographs

Funeral Program Friday: Bessie Henderson Smith.

Bessie, aged about 12.

Jack Henderson named his first child, born 24 September 1917, after his sister Bessie Lee Henderson. In the early years of World War II, she and her only child moved from Wilson to Baltimore, where she lived for 54 years.

Cousin Bessie, right, with her sister Alice Henderson Mabin on the porch of their sister Mildred Henderson Hall in Wilson, 1986.

Cousin Bessie is buried in Rest Haven cemetery, Wilson NC.

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.]

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

Adam Artis’ children, part 5: Katie Pettiford.

From the “Adam Artis Family History”:

After Amanda died, Adam died Katie Pettieford of Goldsboro. They had one son, Pickney. Adam was 71 and she was 21 when they got married. Katie employed a male nurse to look after Adam. She sold off his land bit by bit.

Adam died of old age at about 100 years. His last wife, Katie, in 1923, had someone dig down to his coffin and saw off his feet. Several years later she committed suicide. She poured kerosene around a room and set it on fire.

In fact, Adam Artis married his fourth and final wife, Katie Pettiford, on 9 July 1902 in Wayne County. He was 71, as told, and she was about 20. Their only son, Alphonzo Pinkney Artis, was born in April 1903. By common account, Pinkney left home as a boy — ran away, in fact, to Baltimore. Adam died in 1919 at age 87. Katie, who remarried, died in 1940. Her death certificate notes that she burned up inside her house, but does not mention suicide.

As for the rest, the story I’ve heard is that Katie, guilt-ridden over her abuse of Adam in his decline, grew convinced that he was haunting her from the grave. On the advice of a root doctor, she had his body exhumed and his feet cut off to keep him from walking the world.

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

Age 121?!?

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.

Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Category Archives: Other Documents