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

Remembering Mother Dear.

I had pneumonia twice. The first day I went down to Graded School, that day it rained. I come back – there was a hole in my shoe, and I slopped in all the water and got my feet wet. That’s what Mama said, anyhow, and I taken with a fever.

If I got wet – when I went to Graded School, it rained, and I slopped in all the water coming back from there. Had a hole in my shoe. Had pasteboard in there. And then I’d go to sneezing and coughing. And so Mama said, “You know you oughtn not to got wet!” Well, how was I gon help from getting wet? Had to come from school! So that was the first year I went to school. I remember that. And I was sick that whole rest of the year. I mean, wasn’t strong enough to go down to Graded School – she wouldn’t let me go down there. So I stayed home, and Mama put all them old rags, that old flannel cloth, and she’d put it in red onions and hog lard. And I had pneumonia. And they was sitting up with me. Said I hadn’t spoken in three days. And so that old clock where Annie Bell took, it was up there on the mantel, it struck two o’clock. Mama was sitting on one side of the stove, and Papa on the other. So I said, when the clock struck, I said, “It’s two o’clock, ain’t it, Mama?” And they thought I was dying. So they had been sitting up with me. So I think didn’t think nothing ‘bout it. I went on back to sleep. I didn’t know nothing ‘bout it. Said I had double pneumonia. So Mama got – honey, I had to wear a piece of cloth up here on my chest, one on the back, with Vick’s salve and hog grease or whatever that stuff was, mixed all up together and pinned it to my undershirt.

And I thought about it, with Bessie dead — she died when I was eight months old. And Mama Sarah took me as a baby and brought me to Wilson. And I was the only child there. Well, that’s how come, look like Papa, he felt sorry for me, I reckon. Her husband did, and I called him the only Papa I knew. So they all – I was always sickly and puny and: “Give her anything she wanted,” that’s what Dr. Williams – white doctor – so he said, “She can’t live nohow.” And that’s when I had the pneumonia. And so I didn’t want nothing but water. So, “Well, give her all the water she want ‘cause she can’t live nohow.” But I fooled ‘em! Dr. Williams’ gone, Mama’s gone, all of ‘em, and I’m sitting right here!”

The mantel at 303 Elba Street, 2014.

And for most of my life, she was right there indeed. Every summer, when we drove up from North Carolina to spend a week with her in Philadelphia. Every winter, when she came down to spend the holidays with us and my aunt’s family and her sister. Later, when I was in law school and grad school, I spent my breaks with her, and I even lived with her a short bit when I moved to Philadelphia. I will regret till I’m gone that I did not visit her more often after I left, but when I did I had the good sense to record her stories. Her death was my first real loss, the one that broke the spell, and it pangs me almost as much now as it ever did. I miss this woman.

Remembering Hattie Mae Henderson Ricks (6 June 1910-15 January 2001), my Mother Dear.

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

Family cemeteries, no. 7: Turner Swamp Primitive Baptist Church.

Rev. Jonah Williams once led the flock at Turner Swamp, and its cemetery is full of kin.

There’s Richard Artis (whose father Richard was Jonah’s — and my great-great-great-grandfather Adam Artis‘ — brother) and his wife, Penny Coley Artis …

… Richard’s brother John Henry Artis (1896-1963) and sister Emma Artis Reid (1877-1964) …

… and several of Richard and Penny’s children, including Alfonza Artis (1908-1948), C. Columbus Artis (1910-1985), Louis D. Artis (1916-1983), Jonah Artis (1918-1966) and Jesse L. Artis (1919-1960) …

… and Magnolia Artis Reid (1871-1939), daughter of Richard and Jonah’s sister Loumiza Artis Artis (wife of Thomas Artis, no kin);

… and descendants of Adam, Richard, Jonah and Loumiza’s sister Zilpha Artis Wilson, wife of John Wilson, including her daughter Elizabeth Wilson Reid‘s children Milton C. Reid (1890-1961) and Iantha Reid Braswell (1893-1955) …

… Nora Artis Reid (1894-1965), who was married to her cousin Milton Reid and was the daughter of Adam Artis’ son Noah Artis, and …

… even Wade Ashley Locus (1897-1945), a distant Seaberry relative of Adam’s wife Frances Seaberry Artis.

Photos taken by Lisa Y. Henderson, December 2013.

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.

——

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, Paternal Kin, Religion, Vocation

Where we worked: men and women of the cloth.

Joseph Silver, near Enfield NC – husband of Sarah Henderson Jacobs Silver; founder of Plumbline Holiness Church, 1893; organizer of the United Holiness Church of America (see Estrelda Alexander, Black Fire: One Hundred Years of African American Pentacostalism); 1890s-1958. [Said my grandmother: Mama got married there on Elba Street, there at the house. Yeah. Reverend Silver was a little short brown-skinned man, and he was a elder and the head of the church where was down there in Halifax County.]

Graham Allen, Charles City County VA – Baptist minister, circa 1880?-1928.

Jonah Williams, near Eureka NC – Baptist minister; pastor of Turner Swamp Primitive Baptist Church and other small churches between Wilson and Goldsboro NC; circa 1890?-1915.

William H. Henderson, Goldsboro NC – minister, ??-1950s.

Larry R. Artis, Washington DC – minister, Sharon Baptist Church, 9^th Street between U and Barrett Place NW, circa 1917.

Sarah Henderson Jacobs Silver, Wilson NC – Holiness evangelist, 1920s-1938.

Ruffin C. Carroll, Goldsboro NC — preacher, 1920s.

Kinchen C. Holt, Greensboro NC – husband of Vera Baker Holt; African Methodist Episcopal minister; Presiding Elder, Greensboro District, 1924; circa 1900?-1940.

Joseph Aldridge, Goldsboro NC — minister, ??-1930s.

Joseph L. Aldridge, Dayton OH — United Methodist minister.

Elias Lewis “E.L.” Henderson, Eureka NC — founder of Saint Mark Church of Christ, Saulston NC.

——

The ninth in an occasional series exploring the ways in which my kinfolk made their livings in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

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.

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, Free People of Color, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

Misinformation Monday, no. 4.

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

——

Margaret Henderson‘s maiden name was Balkcum. I think. I wouldn’t go so far as to describe this as a “true fact,” but I stand by my theory about it. Getting to it, however, means reconciling a tilting plane of evidence (and lack thereof):

1. Margaret does not appear in the 1850 census under any name.

2. Nancy Balkcum of Sampson County NC lists a daughter Margaret Balkcum in her will. For reasons set forth here, I believe this was my Margaret.

2. No marriage license for Lewis and Margaret Henderson has been found.

3. Son Caswell Henderson‘s marriage license, issued in New York City in 1907, reports his mother’s name as Margaret Balkcum.

4. Margaret’s own 1915 death certificate, issued in Wayne County NC, lists her mother as Margaret Bowkin and her birthplace as Sampson County. Son Lucian Henderson was the informant, and I suspect he gave his own mother’s name in response to a query, rather than his mother’s mother’s. It’s a mistake I’ve seen before. But “Bowkin” is nicely evocative of “Balkcum,” and I believe that’s what he meant.

5. Lucian Henderson died in 1934 in Wayne County NC. His death cert lists his mother as Margaret Hill. Hill??? Johnny Carter was the informant. Johnny was not a blood relative, though his maternal uncle Jesse Jacobs married Lucian’s sister Sarah Henderson. Lucian’s only child died young, and Johnny cared for him in his dotage. He left his estate to Johnny Carter, but I have no reason to believe that Johnny had any certain knowledge of Lucian’s mother’s maiden name.

6. Daughter Sarah Henderson Jacobs Silver, the last surviving child, died in 1938 while traveling from Wilson to Greensboro NC. Her death certificate names her mother as Margaret Carter. My grandmother Hattie Henderson Jacobs is listed as the informant. When I asked her about it, she had no independent recollection of being asked anything. She averred that she didn’t know Grandma Mag’s maiden name and certainly would not have told anyone that it was “Carter.” (She knew Johnny Carter’s family very well, but regarded them as Papa Jesse’s people.)

Margaret Henderson is a case in point. One should regard early death certificates with skepticism. They are no stronger — or more accurate — than the informant’s personal knowledge, and the source of the informant’s knowledge was not questioned. The two bits of evidence from Mag’s own sons, Caswell and Lucian, are fairly consistent, but reports originating beyond their generation diverge widely. The death certs of Mag and her children reflect what people thought they knew, or had heard, or maybe even made up, about Mag’s early life. They are useful — but flawed.

Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Category Archives: Paternal Kin