My father’s second older brother Jesse A. Henderson passed away 11 years ago.
Category Archives: Paternal Kin
Funeral Program Friday: Hattie Mae Holt Crawford.
Remembering my father’s first cousin, Hattie Mae.
Funeral Program Friday: Catherine Aldridge Davis.
Catherine Aldridge Davis, the last surviving of John and Louvicey Artis Aldridge‘s children, died at age 108.
Three tobacco barns burned.
Arsonists struck the Eureka community in the summer of 1960, destroying barns and tobacco at the Leslie Artis farm and the Adam Artis farm (owned by his descendants).
Wilson Daily Times, 23 July 1960.
Native pride.
DNA test results reflect only the tiniest inheritance, but today I honor my Native ancestors, the American Originals, on Indigenous Peoples Day.
Celebus Thompson killed.
Celebus Thompson, was killed by gunshot in December 1913, leaving his widow, the former Lillie Beatrice Artis, and two small children.
Goldsboro Daily Argus, 15 December 1913.
The Wilmington paper’s coverage of the incident reversed the actors in its headline.
Wilmington Morning Star, 17 December 1913.
——
Celebus Thompson, 21, son of Wheeler and Ora Thompson, married Lillie B. Artis, 18, daughter of Adam and Amanda Artis, on 18 November 1908 at Adam Artis’ house in Wayne County.
In the 1910 census of Saulston, Wayne County: on Goldsboro and Snow Hill Road, Celepus Thompson, 23, wife Lillie, 20, and daughter Jenettie, 5 months. (Next door, Lillie’s half-brother Napoleon Artis and family.]
Artis brothers.
Brothers Jonah Artis (1889-1975) and John Henry Artis (1896-1963), sons of Richard and Susannah Yelverton (or Hall) Artis. Jonah was named for his paternal uncle, Rev. Jonah Williams.
Treasures.
I’m in D.C. for work this week, and I was able to steal away from my conference to spend a few hours with O.H.D., my grandmother’s first cousin. Cousin O. has lived in the District since 1940 and in her Capitol Hill row house since 1945. Our conversation was wide-ranging, but I, of course, drew out stories of our family’s history. Cousin O. spoke of my grandmother Hattie, of my grandfather, of her grandmother Louvicey Artis Aldridge (from whom she received her middle name), of her uncles Johnny and Zebedee Aldridge, of C.E. “Uncle Columb” Artis, of her aunts Lula and Frances Aldridge, of Uncle Fred Randall, of Alberta Artis Cooper, of C.C. Coley (in whose restaurants she occasionally filled in as cashier and in whose convertible she rode during Howard University homecoming parades), of Lucian and Susie Henderson, and of many others. She knows me well and had set aside a tiny treasure she’d recently uncovered — a postage stamp-sized photo of her first cousin, James Earl Aldridge. Cousin Earl, born the year before Cousin O., was the son of John and Ora Mozingo Aldridge. He passed away in 1975. As always, love and thanks, Cousin O.
James E. Aldridge Sr. (1919-1975).
Happy birthday, Daddy!
During the school year, the rhythms of my childhood moved around my father’s coaching schedule. He assisted in football and track, but basketball was his forte. Tuesdays and Fridays were game nights from the time I was born — that first winter, students changed my diapers in the gymnasium bathroom while my mother cheered in the bleachers.
My father has been a rock and a guide to my sister and me, but he also deeply impacted the hundreds of young men who played basketball for him. He was a sternly principled coach who cared as much about their lives off the court as their production on it. Basketball had been a path to success for him, a means to get an education that his family could not otherwise have afforded. He is a great believer in “getting your books,” and he did all he could to prepare his players for college and to guide them to opportunities to play at that level.
#7, center, C.H. Darden High School varsity basketball team, 1952.
During his years playing basketball in the Air Force, circa 1956.
Playing center at Saint Augustine’s College, circa 1960.
Every once in a while, some of my father’s former players will get together to take him out to reminisce over a good meal. I’m sure they all join me, my mother and sister in wishing him the happiest of birthdays!
Photo credits: C.H. Darden High School yearbook, 1952; personal collection; courtesy of J. Battle.
Cousin Dollie.
Said my grandmother:
The house where Dollie, Cousin Min’s sister, lived, well, they had gone to Goldsboro to live. I think. First they were living in Mount Olive, then Dudley. She married Yancey Musgrave. He was a brown-skinned man. And Dollie used to visit, too. She had asthma real bad. And she used to come home and have to sit up. You had to take a quilt and fold it up and put it up in the bed for her to sit up on. ‘Cause she couldn’t lay down. She couldn’t breathe. I don’t know what become of Dollie. Her and Cousin Min’s mama was Ann Elizabeth. Mama Sarah’s sister. They had a brother named Daniel. Yeah. Daniel. Daniel, he lived, he come to Wilson and stayed with us a while, and then went back to Goldsboro. Got married anyway and had a whole bunch of children. And come up to … I believe he come up to Baltimore. And he had a whole lot of children.
I’ve written of Daniel Simmons and Minnie Simmons Budd here. With Annie C. “Dollie” Simmons Musgrave, they were the only children of Ann Elizabeth Henderson Simmons to live to adulthood. My grandmother’s “Mama” was their aunt Sarah Henderson Jacobs Silver. Her mother Bessie was their first cousin.
Annie C. “Dollie” Simmons Musgrave, perhaps in Norfolk.
Dollie Simmons Musgrave died in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1946 after a battle with cervical cancer. (She apparently had remarried to a Green — she and Yancey divorced? — but I do not know who, where or when. Her death certificate erroneously lists her mother as Annie Green, rather than Henderson.)
Virginia, Death Records, 1912-2014 [database on-line], http://www.ancestry.com.
Scuffalong: Genealogy. 