Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Other Documents, Virginia

Great-great-aunt Henrietta’s passing.

Another treasure from Ancestry.com’s new Virginia vital records. The death certificate of my great-grandfather Lon W. Colvert‘s half-sister, Henrietta Colvert:

Henrietta Rebecca Colvert! I’ve never seen a middle name for Henrietta before, and it’s nice to see that she was named for her father’s step-mother.
Date of birth — 4 March 1911? More like 1893.
I’m still not sure how Henrietta wound up in Roanoke, though I assume she ended her nursing career there.
The Colvert “home house” in Statesville was on Harrison Street. The nursing home in which Henrietta spent her final years was on Harrison Avenue.
E.S., my grandmother’s first cousin and son of Henrietta’s sister Ida Colvert Stockton, lives in suburban D.C., and he told me that he and his wife visited Henrietta in her declining years. Did my grandmother know that her aunt was living in Roanoke? Did she know when she died?
Is her grave marked? There’s no listing for it in Williams Memorial Park at findagrave.com.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Other Documents, Virginia

Allen vitals.

The Commonwealth of Virginia has thrilled and astonished me by making vital records available via Ancestry.com. Yesterday, cousin Barbie Jones notified me that the databases were up and open, and I thank her for part in the gargantuan task of indexing these documents.

Just as with North Carolina Marriages a couple of months ago, Virginia Birth, Marriage and Death Records are unveiling little mysteries and setting records straight.

I’ll start with the Allens.

In the 1900 census, Graham Allen is listed in Charles City County, Virginia, with wife Mary, sons Alexander and Edward, and grandsons Milton and Junius. My assumption has always been that Graham and Mary’s eldest daughter Emma was the mother of the younger boys.

Last night, I found this:

So, yes. Conjecture confirmed. Milton William Allen — the middle name is new to me– was 16 year-old Emma’s son. Who was Mrs. Laura Ray, “friend”? And Milton was alive as late as 1958??? Where was he living?

But then I found this:

Is this right? Was Junius really Graham and Mary’s youngest child? (For a fact, my grandmother told me Junius was John C. Allen‘s brother, but I figured this was a manner of speaking.) And who is James Dobson, “uncle” and “a neighbor at the time,” who attested to Junius’ birth for this delayed certificate? And when did Junius move to Paterson, New Jersey? And there was once a King James Bible recording family births and deaths?

And then I found Emma Allen Whirley and two of her children:

No surprises, but who was informant Joseph Ghee?

A bit of a sad surprise. As I wrote here, Graham’s brother Samuel is the one who’d had a brush with infamy, yet Graham ends up shot in the chest. Where was South “B” Village? Taxi driver and wood dealer? And where did his wife pull “Binford” from as Emma’s maiden name?

Samuel Whirley, at least, lived a longish life.

What I’ve found after just a bit of looking:

Laura Ray appears in the 1900 census of Harrison, Charles City County, with husband Graham Ray and three children. Laura Ann Wray’s death certificate shows that she was born 24 September 1873 to Lennie Glenn and “Annie” and died 12 June 1958 in Harrison district, Charles City. She was buried at New Vine church. Her husband Graham Wray’s death certificate reveals that he was born about 1871 to John Wray and Margaret Jones, that he was a farmer, that he died 3 March 1916, and that he was also buried at New Vine. New Vine, of course, was the Allen family’s church, too.
I have not found Milton in any Virginia censuses after 1900, but I’m even less sure now that the Milton Allen that lived in Kokomo, Indiana, in the 1920s is my Milton. However, he may be the Milton W. Allen listed in the 1960 Petersburg, Virginia, city directory:

I don’t have a death certificate, but the Social Security Death Index shows that Junius Allen, born 22 February 1896, died in January 1975 in Paterson, New Jersey. He had obtained his Social Security number prior to 1951 in New Jersey.
Junius’ handwriting had immeasurably improved since his scrawl on his World War I draft registration card.
A James Henry Dobson, self-employed barber and minister born 25 December 1884, registered for the World War II draft in Paterson, New Jersey. He reported being born in Richmond, Virginia, and named Mrs. Lavinia McKay as his contact person. Is this the same man? (The James Dobson above was born about 1875.) How could he have been Junius’ uncle?
Joseph Wiley Ghee’s death certificate reveals that he was born in 1897 in Charles City County to Robert S. and Lovey Williams Ghee, that he died in 1957, and that he was buried at New Vine. He was a member of the Allens’ church then, and there’s no evidence so far that he was related to Emma.
In the 1940 census of Hopewell, Virginia, Graham Whirley is listed as a 25 year-old lodger living in the Maplewood Avenue Extension household of Andrew Joyner, a fellow chemical plant worker. Graham is described as married, but no wife appears with him. This might be why:

Per Wikipedia’s Hopewell, Virginia, entry: “Due to its hasty construction as a mill town during the First World War, Hopewell had a large number of kit homes that were hauled in and erected in neighborhoods laid out by DuPont [Company, which operated a dynamite, and then a guncotton factory there] known as ‘A Village’ and ‘B Village.'”
As I’ll show elsewhere, Graham’s life contrasted sharply with his violent death. Newspaper accounts reveal that he was a church man, popular about town, and respected in and outside his community.
Samuel Whirley’s marriage to India Carter Lee was a late one. Their license correctly lists his mother’s name:

And here’s an earlier marriage:

And the sorry end of that one. (Los Angeles, California???):

I mused earlier that it was hard to believe that of Mary Brown Allen’s children, only John and Emma had children. Emma’s sole known grandchild died childless, leaving my great-grandfather’s relatively few descendants as the only extant Allens. (By my count, we number only 25 across three generations. Twenty-five.) These additional records do not change that scenario. Neither Samuel nor Graham Whirley had children, and I’ve seen no evidence that Junius or Milton did.

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

Evidence of the rites of matrimony.

More revelations from Ancestry.com’s updated North Carolina marriages database:

No mystery why I didn’t find this earlier. Jonah Wiggins? No, actually, Jonah Williams, brother of my great-great-great-grandfather Adam Artis. And though I knew Pleasant Battle was from the Battleboro area, I don’t think I’d ever searched Edgecombe records for their marriage license.

Here’s the marriage bond:

I don’t know who George Terrell was to Jonah. He and his wife Martha Lindsey, who married a few days before Jonah and Pleasant, appear in the 1870 census of Cokey township, Edgecombe County.

And here’s the marriage license. I am a little surprised that Jonah was married by a Justice of the Peace, rather than a minister of the gospel, but perhaps he was not yet the man he would become:

Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Other Documents, Photographs

Aunt Golar makes fashion history.

I’m not sure how it is that I didn’t write this months ago. When I went home for Christmas, there was a manila envelope on my dresser, postmarked U.K. I was puzzled. Who would be sending something from England to my parents’ house? I ripped it open, and a slender paperback slid into my hand, a scholarly journal — Fashion, Style & Popular Culture, volume 2, number 1.

I scanned the contents and suddenly remembered. Some years ago, I contributed photographs of my people to Min-Ha T. Pham’s Tumblr, Of Another Fashion. In the journal article, “Archival intimacies: Participatory media and the fashion histories of US women of colour,” Pham discusses “the critical and curatorial aims, materials and methods that underpin a digital fashion archive devoted to the histories of US women of colour ….” arguing for “the utility of participatory media in efforts to create not only new historical records of minoritized fashion histories but also new systems of record-keeping.” Among the photos illustrating the piece is one of my grandmother’s aunt, Golar Colvert Bradshaw.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Other Documents

Aunt Ida May revisited.

Ancestry.com’s North Carolina Marriages data collection is not through demystifying my kin. A previously unknown marriage license clarified a question I had my great-great-aunt Ida’s life. If Eugene Stockton were her husband, I wondered here, why was she a Stockton in the 1910 and 1920 censuses, but referred to as his sister-in-law? In gaining an answer, I also uncovered a terrible tragedy.

Ida May Colvert‘s first marriage license was so hard to find because she married under her mother’s maiden name, as Ida May Hampton. The license lists her parents as John and Adline Colvert, but they did not marry until 1905, just over a month after Ida married Dillard Stockton on 27 December 1904. (Ida’s age is listed as 21 on the license, which is almost surely too high. Her birth year as recorded in various documents varies widely, but averages about 1885.) Dillard’s parents were listed as Henry and Frances Stockton, which seems to indicate that Dillard and Ida’s second husband Eugene shared a father and were half-brothers. (Eugene’s mother was Alice Allison [or maybe McKee] Stockton.)

Ida was a Stockton Stockton then. But what happened to her first husband, Dillard? A quick Newspapers.com search turned up the awful story:

Statesville Record & Landmark, 12 March 1907.

A little over two years after they married, Dillard Stockton and five other African-American men were crushed by a cascade of soil and scaffolding in a Statesville ditch. [Surely my grandmother knew this story?]

The stretch of Race Street in which the cave-in occurred.

For all the breathless detail of the initial report of the tragedy, greater Statesville soon moved on. As reported in the local paper, within two months, the city had settled four of the deaths with payments of $750 (roughly $19,000 today) and were close to settling with the remaining survivors, including Ida May Colvert.

Dillard Stockton is buried in Statesville’s Green Street/Union Grove cemetery. I snagged this photo from findagrave.com. I don’t recall seeing it during my recent visit and don’t know if it’s near the Colvert graves.

A horrifying post script:

Winston-Salem Union Republican, 12 May 1912.

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

Elvira.

I knew Rebecca Colvert was my great-great-grandfather John W. Colvert‘s stepmother. Until now, though, I’d seen his mother Elvira Gray‘s name listed only on his death certificate.

On 30 January 1905, six days before his father Walker‘s death, John married Adeline Hampton, mother of his four daughters. I’d seen the marriage register entry for their union, but not the actual license. Here it is, and there is the second reference to Walker’s first wife.

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

28 August 1866.

I’ve seen these cohabitation registrations many times, but I just noticed today that Vicey Artis, Sylvania Artis and Daniel Artis, whom I believe to be siblings, and their spouses all registered their marriages on the same day before the same justice of the peace, Henry J. Sauls.

Did the six travel to Sauls’ home together, walking or, perhaps, in a wagon? August 28 was a Tuesday during the relative lull before fall harvesting began. Did the families celebrate?

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

Uncle John’s first wife?

I am clearly getting my whole life in these marriage records, but I have to wonder. What in the world have I been doing? Why have I missed so many of these records? Have I just assumed that what was on the shelf or on-line was all that was available? Fie.

Here’s another.

Lots about this license says it relates to a previously unknown first marriage for my grandmother’s uncle, John McNeely. First, the parents are named correctly, and they were the only Henry and Martha McNeely in Iredell County at the time. Second, the church is right, as the McNeelys were Presbyterians. (Except when they were being Episcopalians.) Third, that middle name, Alexander — the first I’ve heard of one for John! — is a family name, borne first by Alexander “Sandy” McNeely, son of Henry McNeely’s sister Alice. In fact, the only thing that throws me is John’s age. Uncle John was 27 in 1899, not 21. That’s a curious error, but not critical enough to trump the other details. I’ll update my tree to include John’s middle name and his first wife.

John A. McNeely as a young man. (I think. Even as I post this, something is worrying me about the timeframe of this photo….)

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

C-O- …

And why have I never been able to find the marriage license of my great-grandfather Lon W. Colvert to his first wife?

Because: Cottrell.

Here is the entry in an Iredell County Indexed Register of Marriages. Ancestry.com rides to the rescue again.

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

William emerges.

As I discussed here, my great-great-grandmother Harriet Nicholson Tomlin Hart had two half-brothers named William. I discovered her mother’s son, William H. Nicholson, in the 1900 census. The newly widowed Harriet and her young son Golar — the only one of her Tomlin children to see the 20th century — were living in her brother’s household in Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. With this information, I found William’s 1909 death certificate. Harriet was the informant, and she listed his parents as Burwell Carson and Lucinda Nicholson. Other than a few city directory listings, this was the only documentation of William that I had until last night, when I found this:

It’s hard to read, but it’s a Mecklenburg County marriage license for William H. Nicholson. On 3 April 1884, he married 38 year-old Lizzie King of Charlotte.

… William had a wife?

I went back to the 1900 census and examined it more closely. At 611 East Stonewall, William “Nickolson,” age 51, plasterer; Harriet Tomlin, 38, his sister; and Golda, 6, his niece. (Actually, his nephew.) Harriet was described as a widow, with only one child of ten living. (This is not quite right either, as her oldest child Lon was also alive, but 80% mortality versus 90% is meaningless.) William, in fact, is described as married, but there is no wife in the household. Where was Lizzie Nicholson?

I searched further. More city directories have been digitized since last I looked, and I quickly found several entries from the latter half of the first decade of the 1900s. Here’s one:

Walsh’s City Directory for Charlotte, North Carolina, 1907.

If there had been a rough patch around 1900, it was smoothed over within a few years. William’s 1909 death certificate describes him as married (though his sister came all the way from Statesville to provide information.) Lizzie died just a year later.

I went back further. I’d seen city directory listings for William Nicholson in Charlotte in 1890 and 1891, but last night I found a couple like this:

A Directory of the City of Charlotte, North Carolina for 1896 and 1897.

Same occupation, same address, same wife. This appears to be William using his middle name, Henry. I found others: in 1889, Henry Nicholson, brickmason, and Lizzie Nicholson, cook at the Central Hotel, living at 611 East Stonewall. In 1897, Henry H. Nicholson, laborer, and Lizzie Nicholson at the Stonewall address. The entry below: Nicholson & Allen (c) [for “colored”] (Lizzie Nicholson & Richard Allen), proprs Northern Rest, 220 East Trade. In 1904: Henry Nicholson (Isabella), plasterer, 611 E Stonewall.

A Newspaper.com turned up nothing on William Henry, but there were several notices published in late 1910 and early 1911 regarding Lizzie Nicholson’s estate, and a delinquent property tax listing in 1894 that reveals that she was the owner of the Stonewall address. Levine Museum of the New South’s People of 1911 Charlotte project depicts the Sanborn drawing of this one-story house on an unpaved street and lists its owner at that time as Montgomery Caesar. The Second Ward street is no longer residential, and 611 is just a block from the NASCAR Hall of Fame. East Boundary Street, William and Lizzie’s other address, is gone. And 220 East Trade is now the Epicentre.

When Northern Restaurant was, though, a small but confident ad:

Charlotte Observer, 16 September 1896.

Then, less charitably:

Charlotte Observer, March , 1897.

Charlotte Observer, 8 October 1897.

So, to update what I know about Harriet’s brother:

William Henry Nicholson was born between 1842 and 1848 to Lucinda Nicholson and Burwell Carson. His whereabouts in 1870 and 1880 are unknown. He was trained as a brickmason and plasterer and plied both trades in Charlotte. In 1884, he married Lizzie King (whose first name was possibly Isabella). It was at least her second marriage. (Her parents’ names on the license are nearly illegible, but they are not “King,” and she is referred to as Mrs. in the document.) Lizzie worked as a cook at a hotel, and then at her own establishment, Northern Restaurant, which she co-owned with Richard Allen. Perhaps before her marriage to William, Lizzie bought or inherited a house at 611 East Stonewall in Charlotte. For a brief period around 1900, William’s half-sister Harriet lived at the Stonewall house. By 1907, William and Lizzie had moved to 200 East Boundary, and each of them died in the house there. William died in December 1909, and Lizzie not quite two months later in February 1019.

Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Category Archives: Other Documents

Great-great-aunt Henrietta’s passing.

Allen vitals.

Evidence of the rites of matrimony.

Aunt Golar makes fashion history.

Aunt Ida May revisited.

Elvira.

28 August 1866.

Uncle John’s first wife?

C-O- …

William emerges.