DNA, Free People of Color, North Carolina, Paternal Kin, Photographs

DNAnigma, no. 2: Armwood????

There was a woman at home whom we called Cousin Inez. She had been born down in Dudley a few years after my grandmother, and we thought that connection was what motivated her insistence that we were kin. When I began my genealogical sleuthing, I discovered that Cousin Inez had been born an Armwood — another link, though not a blood one. The second wife of my great-great-great-great-grandfather James Henderson had been Louisa Armwood. I am not descended from her, but many of my cousins are. So, cousin-ish, but not actually kin.

Then, a couple of months ago, Ancestry.com pegged me as a 4^th-6^th cousin to a woman I’ll call A.G. This surprised me on two counts. (1) I’d recently “met” A.G. on a cousin’s family page on Facebook. A.G. and my cousin D. are related via the Simmonses, a free family of color centered in southern Wayne County. I’m not a Simmons – that I know of – but D. and I are 3^rd cousins and some change via Lewis Henderson. (2) A.G. is an Armwood! Her ancestor William Armwood, son of Major and Eliza Armwood and born about 1835, married Martha “Matta” Simmons, daughter of William and Penny Winn Simmons, in Sampson County. This is William:

So, what are the possibilities? What do we know?

A 4th to 6th cousin relationship suggests a common ancestor in the early 1800s. (Ancestry estimates very conservatively, so we may be closer.)
The relationship is almost certainly on my father’s side.
All of A.G.’s mother’s lines, back to the mid-1800s, were in the Wayne/Duplin/Sampson County area.
I have focused on her Armwood and Simmons lines because they are most familiar and intersect mine indirectly, but I may be making unwarranted assumptions.
A.G.’s Simmons line includes Wynn/Winn and Medlin lines. And I don’t know the maiden name of Major Armwood’s wife.
My Hendersons did not arrive in the area until the 1850s. I’ll eliminate them.
For the time being, I’ll eliminate my Euro-descended lines.
My Hagans line was probably from Nash County. I’ll eliminate them, too.
A.G. has a Yelverton line from northern Wayne County. Perhaps an Artis or Seaberry connection?
My Aldridge and Balkcum lines began with white women who bore children by black or mixed-race men circa 1820-1830 in Duplin and Sampson County. Is one of these unknown fathers the link to A.G.?

Free People of Color, North Carolina, Other Documents, Paternal Kin

Adam Artis’ children, part 2: Lucinda Jones.

“Adam Artist” and “Lousinda” Jones married 10 October 1855 in Nash County. Lucinda’s father Jacob Ing (who was white) was bondsman, William T. Arrington witnessed, and justice of the peace D.A.T. Ricks performed the ceremony. Lucinda Jones Artis died circa 1860, and in 1870 her children Augustus Kerney, Noah and Mary Jane inherited her share of her father Jacob Ing’s estate. In 1872, Adam Artis filed this guardianship application in order to manage their estate.

Augustus “Gus” K. Artis was born about 1857. Some time after the birth of their daughter Lena in 1882, Gus and wife Mary migrated to the Little Rock, Arkansas area. The city’s 1914 directory lists him as a laborer at J.W. Vestal & Son, a nursery. He died in 1921.

Noah Artis, born in 1856, remained in northeastern Wayne County, where he farmed, married Patience Mozingo, and fathered children Nora Artis Reid, Pearl Artis, Pauline Artis Harris, Rena Belle Artis, William N. Artis, and Bessie Artis. He died in 1952 in nearby Wilson NC.

Mary Jane Artis, born in 1859, married Henry Artis, son of Warren and Percey Artis. (Though all of Wayne County Artises are probably ultimately related, the exact kinship between Warren Artis, whose father was supposedly Absalom Artis, and Adam Artis is unknown.) Mary Jane remained in the Nahunta area of Wayne County all her life and died after 1900. Her and Henry’s children were Armeta Artis, Alonzo Artis, Lucinda Artis, Callonza Artis, Mattie Artis Davis and Marion Artis.

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

Adam Artis’ children, part 1: the Coleys.

In 1863, when the Confederate tax assessor queried administrator John Coley of Wayne County about W.W. Lewis’ estate, Coley enumerated several slaves, including Winney, age 29, Cane, age 9, and Caroline, 7. Adam Artis, the father of Winny’s children, lived nearby. He was a free man of color, and his and Winny’s relationship had not lasted long.

By adulthood, Cain Artis had adopted his father’s surname and farmed his own land in northwest Wayne County. By 1890, he had bought a house in the nearby town of Wilson and the 1912 city directory shows him operating a small business just outside city limits on the town’s main road. He died of tuberculosis in Wilson County in 1917, survived by his second wife, Margaret Barnes.

In 1878, Caroline Coley married Madison Artis, son of Calvin and Serena Seaberry Artis. Her uncle Jonah Williams was a witness to the ceremony. Caroline and Madison appear in the 1880 census of Wayne County, but have not been found after.

North Carolina, Paternal Kin, Photographs

Conviction?

These men were convicted of the August 1922 murder of mail carrier Cyrus Jones in Swansboro, NC, largely on the testimony of another man, Willie Hardison, who was tried separately for the murder. Hardison later confessed that he had made up their involvement under the threat of being lynched. The state electrocuted Hardison in 1923, but both the trial judge and the prosecutor wrote letters requesting executive clemency for George Williams and the brothers Frank and Fred Dove. After almost six years on death row, the three were given full pardons in March 1928 by Governor A.W. McLean.

Sidenote: My people are from Onslow County, just west of Swansboro. My furthest traceable Henderson ancestor was a free woman of color named Patsey Henderson, born about 1800. Patsey’s sister Nancy married (or perhaps didn’t) a free man named Simon Dove. The Onslow County Doves, including Fred and Frank, are descended from their son Durant Henderson, alias Durant Dove.

Image from “Capital Punishment in North Carolina,” Special Bulletin from the North Carolina State Board of Charities and Public Welfare, Raleigh, N.C. (1929). Copy courtesy of the North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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

The death of Lewis Henderson.

My grandmother, who was born in 1910, said her great-grandfather Lewis Henderson died when she was very small. She did not remember him, though her sister Mamie had reason to. He threw a brush at her — it hit her in the head — because she was making too much noise. She could not have been older than four.

North Carolina did not keep death certificates until 1914, and Lewis’ grave is unmarked. How do we know exactly when he died? This is a page from one of the few volumes of early church records that survive for the Congregational Church of Dudley. Lewis had helped found the church in 1870, and this list shows tithes paid by male congregants. The sixth name: Henderson, Lewis. And this notation: “Died July 5 — 1912.” He would have been about 76.

Enslaved People, North Carolina, Other Documents, Paternal Kin

Kinchen Taylor’s inventory.

Nash County, North Carolina, 1856. An inventory of the slaves of Kinchen Taylor, deceased. Number 32 is Green. Number 88 is his wife Ferribee; and 89, 90 and 91, their oldest children. Most of Kinchen Taylor’s slaves were divided among his children, but two lots of slaves were sold. Green and Ferribee and their children were included in one of those lots, and it is not clear to whom they went, or if they went together. However, in 1870, in the first post-Emancipation census, they are listed in southern Edgecombe county as an intact family: Green Taylor, 52, his wife Phebe, 55, and children and grandchildren Dallas, 19, Christiana, 15, Mckenzie, 13, Mike, 9, and Sally Taylor, 1. Henry Michael “Mike” Taylor was my great-grandfather.

The file of Kinchen Taylor (1853), Nash County, North Carolina Estate Files 1663-1979, https://familysearch.org, original, North Carolina State Archives.

North Carolina, Oral History, Paternal Kin

Scuffalongs and muscadines.

Great big old black ones. Lord, he might as well have told me to go out there and eat all I wanted. I eat all the way down the corn row down to that lady’s house, Mary Budd, and come up through the corn field and come back to the road and went over there stood up there and eat all I want and throwed the hulls over in the pasture. The hog pasture, or whatever that thing was out there where pigs was. They thought I was gon give ‘em something to eat, I reckon. And I throwed the things over there, and I reckon that’s where Uncle Lucian discovered that we was eating ‘em. And he said, “Y’all stay away from out there! Somebody’s been out there —!” “Wont me!” [She laughs.] Them things seem like was the best things I ever had. And the arbor there on the yard where was all up in the trees, it’d be grapes. And I’d go there and eat them, but they was little. It was what they call scuffalongs. White grapes. And I’d eat them, too, but I wanted some of them old big ones. Them old big black ones.

I recorded interviews with my father’s mother in 1994, 1996 and 1998. Her scuppernong story was one of my favorites.

Free People of Color, North Carolina, Paternal Kin, Photographs

The case for Margaret Henderson as daughter of Nancy Balkcum.

The case for Margaret Henderson as the daughter of Nancy Balkcum (and sister of Mary Eliza Balkcum Aldridge) —

1. Margaret was born 1833-1836, probably in Sampson County NC. Mary Eliza was born in 1829 in Duplin or Sampson County.

2. Her photo clearly indicates that she was mixed race, as was Mary Eliza. Mary Eliza Balkcum’s mother Nancy Balkcum was white.

3. Margaret is not listed in the 1850 census, and neither is Nancy Balkcum.

4. Nancy Balkcum’s will makes reference to a daughter Margaret Balkcum, as well as a daughter Eliza Balkcum. The will was probated in 1854 in Sampson County, prior to Margaret Balkcum Henderson’s marriage circa 1855. Margaret Balkcum purchased a number of small items from her mother’s estate.

5. Margaret named her second son James Lucian Henderson in 1857. Compare: James Lucien Balkcum, born 1838, son of Nancy Balkcum’s daughter Mariah Balkcum Johnston.

6. Margaret named her first daughter Isabella circa 1860. Compare: Isabella Johnson, born 1858, daughter of Mariah Balkcum Johnson.

7. Margaret named her second daughter Ann Elizabeth circa 1866. Compare: Ann Eliza Balkcum, born circa 1840, daughter of Nancy Balkcum’s son John Balkcum.

8. Margaret named her third daughter Mary Susan circa 1868. Compare: Mary Susan Balkcum, born 1844 to John Balkcum, and Susan Johnson, born 1844 to Mariah Balkcum Johnson.

9. Between 1860 and 1870, Margaret and her husband Lewis Henderson and Eliza and her husband Robert Aldridge migrated to the Dudley area of southern Wayne County. The families are listed side by side in the 1870 census.

10. Caswell C. Henderson’s November 1907 marriage license, issued in New York City, reports his mother’s name as Margaret Balkcum.

11. Matrilineal descendants of Margaret Henderson have mtDNA haplotype H3. Descendants of Mary Eliza Aldridge have mtDNA haplotype H3.

12. Certain descendants of Margaret Henderson share significant autosomal cM totals with descendants of Mary Eliza Aldridge, but have no other known lines of common descent.

Problematic points:

1. Margaret’s death certificate lists her mother as Margaret Bowkin, not Nancy. Informant was her son Lucian Henderson. (I have seen instances in which an informant listed his own mother’s name, instead of the decedent’s mother’s name. Is this the case here?)

2. Margaret’s son Lucian’s June 1934 death certificate lists his mother’s maiden name as Hill.

3. Margaret’s daughter Sarah’s January 1938 death certificate lists her mother’s maiden name as Carter. Informant was Hattie Mae Henderson, Sarah’s great-niece, who told me 60 years later that she did not recall giving this information and did not believe it was correct.

4. Perhaps most puzzlingly, there is absolutely no tradition of kinship between the two families. Hattie Mae Henderson was reared by her great-aunt (Lewis and Margaret’s daughter) Sarah Henderson Jacobs. If Sarah had been first cousin to Robert and Eliza Aldridge’s children, it seems that there would have been some acknowledgement of the relationship passed down — not only to Hattie (my grandmother), but to others descended from the free colored families in this small community. They (Simmonses, Winns, Jacobses, Hendersons, Aldridges, etc.) intermarried freely, so consanguinity would not have been shameful. The one exception: Hattie Henderson reported visiting with Sarah a “Cousin Tilithia” in Norfolk as a child. This was Tilithia Brewington King Godbolt Dabney, daughter of Robert and Eliza’s daughter Amelia Aldridge Brewington. Did Sarah call Tilithia “cousin” because they themselves were related, or because Hattie was related to Tilithia (through J. Thomas Aldridge, her father and Tilithia’s first cousin)? A point to consider: all but one of Lewis and Margaret’s children (son Lucian, who himself had no children who lived to adulthood) had died or migrated from Dudley by about 1905. The “lack of tradition” I perceive may simply be a function of a gap in familiarity between those people who knew Lewis and Mag’s family and those I was able to interview 80-90 years later.

Photo of Margaret Henderson in collection of Lisa Y. Henderson.

Civil War, Free People of Color, North Carolina, Other Documents, Paternal Kin

Hillary Herring, Union man.

#563,970. Claim of Kizza Harring, widow of Hillary Harring, Co. A, 37 U.S.C.T., for Widow’s Pension.

Hillary Herring enlisted in the Union Army in 1864. At his enlistment, he reported that he was 23 years old, 6 feet 1/2 inches tall, light-complexioned, with black eyes and dark hair, was born in Onslow County NC, and worked as a farmer. (Census records reveal that he grew up in Wayne County.) Documents in Herring’s widow’s pension application file show that he was discharged from the army on 11 February 1867, making it likely that he fought in the 37th in battles across southern Virginia and eastern NC. (See a history of the 37th U.S.C.T. here.) He married Kizzy Dudley on 18 December 1869 in Burgaw, Pender County NC. Rev. Elisha Boon performed the ceremony. It was Hillary’s first marriage, but Kizzy was the widow of a John Herring that she’d married in 1863. (Hillary’s kin?) Hillery Herring died 30 June 1876 in Bentonsville, Johnston County, of “disease of lungs.” Dr. Martin Harper attended him during his final illness. Lewis Hood furnished his coffin and served as undertaker, and Rev. John James Harper, a white man, preached the funeral sermon.

On 21 November 1872, Hillery and Keziah Herring and my great-great-great-grandparents Lewis and Margaret Henderson sold two tracts in Wayne County totalling about 80 acres to John P. Cobb and Jesse Hollowell. The four had purchased the tracts from William R. Davis, but the deed was not recorded. Both Lewis and Hillery were born in Onslow County. Were they related? If not, why did they buy land together?

Births Deaths Marriages, Free People of Color, Letters, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Oral History, Paternal Kin

Comments, upon the death of Rev. Silver.

REV. JOSEPH SILVER DIES AT HIS HOME AT 100 YEARS OLD

Reverend Joseph Silver, Sr., well known and highly respected Negro minister, died Tuesday at his home in the Delmar community, on Enfield Route 3. He celebrated his 100th birthday anniversary last July 22 at a large gathering of friends and relatives. Rev. Silver had been in poor health about four years and had been confined to his bed for the past four months.

Funeral services will be held from the Plumbline Holiness Church, Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. The body will lay in state at the church an hour before the funeral. The Rev. L.G. Young, of Henderson, will preach the funeral and burial will be in the family plot. Among those expected at the final rites are Bishop M.C. Clemmen of Richmond, Va., and Bishop H.B. Jackson of Ayden.

Rev. Silver began preaching in 1893 when he he organized and built Plumbline Church. Among other churches built by his ministry are ones at Ayden and Summitt, near Littleton. He was an organizer of the United Holiness Church of America and served on the board of Elders until his death.

Rev. Silver was married three times; first to Felicia Hawkins, who died in 1931, then to Sarah Jacobs of Wilson, who died in 1938; and last to Martha Aldridge of Goldsboro, who survives. In addition to his wife, Rev. Silver is survived by five sons N.D. and Samuel Silver, of Washington, DC; Gideon, of Pittsburg, Pa.; Joseph, Jr., of Halifax and A.M. Silver of Route 3, Enfield; three daughters, Epsi Copeland and Roberta Hewling, of Enfield, Route 3, and Emma Goines, of Pittsburg, Pa. Eighty grandchildren, 109 great-grandchildren, and 17 great great grandchildren also survive.

— Unnamed newspaper clipping, 10 January 1958.

——

P.O. Box 193 Nashville

N.C. c/o Brake

Feb. 2, 1958

Dear Hattie –

You heard of Rev. Silver’s death Jan. 7^th although I didn’t notify you as I was sick and still is sick but not confine to bed. Sarah had some things in the home. A bed which I am sure you wouldn’t care for and a folding single bed which I am going to get but my main reason for writing you she has an oak dresser and washstand that Rev. Silver told me you wanted and said he told you you could get it if you would send for it so it is still there and it is good material if you want it. Amos has already seen a second hand furniture man about buying it. The Silver’s will “skin a flea for his hide and tallow.” The Aldridges holds a very warm place in my heart and always will. If you wish to do so you may write to Rev. Amos Silver Route 3 Box 82 Enfield and ask him if your mother Sarah’s furniture is still there. There is also a carpet on the floor in the living room you need not mention my name. I am very fond of Johnnie Aldridge of Dudly. Come to see me whenever you can I think you might get with Reka at Fremont some times, she and Luke come to Enfield to see me occasionally I am going to write Reka next week. I married your great uncle Rev Joseph Aldridge write me

Your friend and great aunt by marriage.

M.C. (Aldridge) Silver

——

And then this was what my grandmother had to say:

Mr. Silver, he had a bunch, he had 11 children, and his son had a whole bunch of ‘em. Joseph Silver. And I went up there one time and one of the brothers was crazy. And they had one of them there things built up where you could put a person in it, and you can just slide their food right in it. And it was a seat in there, least it was built in the thing where you could sit on. When the person would act up, and you can’t do nothing with him, you’d lock him up in that thing, and he had one of them things in the backyard. Big old thing. It was just like one of them tanks where oil come in. And I went in there, peeked through the thing, and I was scared, and I’m drawed all up and looked, but I couldn’t see in there. But they told me how it was. … When Mama got married there on Elba Street, there at the house. Yeah. He come up there … He 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. And all the children …. Epsie? Epseline? What was his first wife’s name? But him and Mama fell out ‘bout the cooking stove. She took and got the wood and got the little stove – was four caps on it. I’ll never forget it. And it was red-hot in the middle. And he said, “Don’t put too much wood in that stove! Get Epsie’s stove that hot! I know she’ll turn over in her grave!” And she told him, said, “What? Epsie ain’t here!” Said, “I’ll tear the whole stove down!” or something, and she hit the stove! He didn’t want her to – They had chinches all over the house. It was a sealed plank house, and the chinches was all in the, where the cot was up against the wall? And Mama said she went there and, I told her, I said, when she was telling me ‘bout she was scalding water, had the stove hot and had buckets of water up there on the stove so it would be hot enough to kill the eggs and everything. And he didn’t want her to pour no water on it, talking ‘bout she got the stove red-hot and Epsie’ll turn over in her grave. She had that stove that hot. “Epsie didn’t never used to have it that hot.” She said, “Well, Epsie ain’t here now, and I’ll burn it up! House and all!” She said, “To get rid of these here chinches.” Chinches all over everywhere!

“Epsie,” of course, was Rev. Silver’s daughter, not his wife. This letter addressed to “Miss Hattie Jacobs Sanatorium Wilson N.C.,” postmarked Feb 2 1958, Nashville N.C. is in my possession. Martha Silver’s previous husband had been Joseph Aldridge, younger brother of my grandmother’s grandfather John W. Aldridge. The Johnnie Aldridge referred to was my grandmother’s uncle. Reka Aldridge Morrisey Ashford was the daughter of George W. Aldridge, John W. Aldridge’s older brother. I interviewed my grandmother in her home in Philadelphia in 1994.

Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Category Archives: Paternal Kin