The Daily Press, 9 May 1911.
The Daily Press, 10 November 1912.
The Daily Press, 10 December 1939.
My great-uncle J. Maxwell Allen, great-aunt Marion Allen Lomans, and first cousin once removed J. Maxwell Allen Jr. excelled in their elementary school studies at John Marshall School in Newport News, Virginia. John Marshall opened in 1896.
I finally ponied up for expanded access to Newspapers.com’s holdings and immediately tapped into a vein of articles about my Allen family in Newport News, Virginia. Expect a river of posts, starting with the earliest print references I have found to my great-grandfather John C. Allen Sr.
Richmond Planet, 7 March 1908.
Richmond Planet, 2 April 1910.
John Allen arrived in Newport News from Charles City County in 1899, an unlettered farm boy. Less than ten years later, he held high office in the Knights of Pythias of North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, an African-American fraternal organization founded in Richmond in 1869 after a black man was denied membership by the Pythians’ Supreme Lodge.
These notices, published in Richmond’s black newspaper, signaled to the public the fraternal organization’s trustworthiness and largesse and undoubtedly attracted new members and expanded its influence.
In the summer of 2002, my uncle Charles C. Allen told me this about my grandfather John C. Allen Jr.:
[Daddy] had to get reestablished after the war. But he had a friend named Buster Reynolds. And Buster Reynolds was reputed to have made his money in the numbers, and so when the numbers were getting real hot and heavy, when it was reputed that the Mafia was trying to take the numbers over, Buster got out. And he built this service station, and he had a Texaco franchise, and he had Daddy to build the station. And Texaco liked the work so much that Daddy built two more stations for Texaco. And both of the stations that were built in the black community are still up. They’re not gas stations anymore, but the buildings are still up. And the one that was built Overtown is gone. But even the station that was in the white community, Texaco had him to build that one, too.
Today I found this:
The Daily Press (Newport News, Virginia), 1 February 1948.
My uncle passed away in January; I wish dearly that I’d been able to share this with him.
The former service station at 28th and Chestnut, Newport News, 2002.
1948 yearbook, Frederick Douglass Senior High School, Upper Marlboro, Maryland.
Senior Dorothy L. Whirley listed “no discrimination” as the characteristic of a true democracy, “stocking runs” as her pet peeve, and “to become successful” as her plan after graduation. Dorothy, the daughter of Matilda Whirley and McKinley Steward, was born in Charles City County, Virginia, in December 1929. Her grandmother was Emma Allen Whirley (1879-after 1930), daughter of Graham and Mary Brown Allen.
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.
Norfolk Journal & Guide, 20 April 1946.
Toney Cemore Brewington (1894-1973) was the son of Joshua and Amelia Aldridge Brewington and first cousin of my great-grandfather, J. Thomas Aldridge.
Going back six generations, I have 126 direct ancestors. I have images of only a sixth of them. Twenty, to be exact.
Here they are:
From top left across each row to bottom right:
One (of 64) great-great-great-great-grandparent — William M. Harrison (1817-1865); two (of 32) great-great-great-grandparents — Margaret Balkcum Henderson (1836-1915) and Mary Eliza Balkcum Aldridge (1829-1924); five (of 16) great-great-grandparents — Louvicey Artis Aldridge (1865-1927), Martha Miller McNeely (1855-1934), Harriet Nicholson Tomlin Hart (1861-1926), Edward C. Harrison (1847-1908) and Mary Brown Allen (1849-1917); six (of eight) great-grandparents — Bessie L. Henderson (1891-1911), J. Thomas Aldridge (1886-1968), Lon W. Colvert (1875-1930), Caroline McNeely Colvert Taylor (1883-1957), John C. Allen Sr. (1906-1948) and Mary Agnes Holmes Allen (1877-1961); all four grandparents — Margaret Colvert Allen (1908-2010), John C. Allen Jr. (1906-1948), Hattie Henderson Ricks (1910-2001) and Roderick Taylor (1883-1947); and my parents.
Hat tip to A. Kearns for the inspiration.
My great-grandfather John C. Allen‘s grandfather and father.
William Mortimer Harrison (1817-1865)
Edward Cunningham Harrison (1847-1908)
Many thanks to A.H.W. for these images.
Cousin B.J., my partner in all things Aldridge, sent me this clipping a few days ago from the 28 June 1952 edition of the Norfolk New Journal and Guide:
1612 Lovitt Avenue was the house in which Tilithia Brewington King Godbold Dabney had lived in her latter years. Who was this Elizabeth Aldridge? And who was in the family plot?
We quickly suspected that this was Lizzie Aldridge, sister of my great-great-grandfather John W. Aldridge and B.J.’s great-great-grandmother Amelia Aldridge Brewington, but knew little of Lizzie’s whereabouts as an adult. I’d wondered if our Lizzie was this woman, found in the 1900 census of Norfolk, Norfolk County, Virginia: North Carolina-born dressmaker Lizzie Aldridge, 30, shared a household with a boarder, William Hendricks, 36, a divorced day laborer. So there was some precedent to the speculation that Lizzie had migrated to Norfolk. But why the “Mrs.”? We don’t know for sure, but quickly determined that this death announcement was definitely for Lizzie Aldridge, daughter of Robert and Mary Eliza Balkcum Aldridge, and she seems to have been the longest-lived of their children. In other words, Elizabeth Aldridge was Tilithia Dabney’s aunt.
In the 1870 census of Brogden township, Wayne County: Robt. Aldridge, farmer, with wife Eliza, and children George, 18, John, 17, Amelia, 14, Mathew D., 13, David S., 12, Amanda, 10, Ella, 9 Eliza, Robert and Joseph, 7 months, plus farmhand Isham Gregory.
In the 1880 census of Brogden township, Wayne County: Robt. Aldridge, wife Elizar, and children Matthew, Sloan, Amanda, Louella, Lizzie, Robert, Joseph, and Fannie.
By 1898, Lizzie (and, it appears, her teenaged nephew Zebedee, John’s oldest son, and her sister Louella) had migrated to Norfolk, Virginia. Here are their listings in the city directory:
In the 1900 city directory, Louella remains at 100 Henry, but Zebedee, working as a fireman, is living with his aunt at 17 Nicholson. Nonetheless, as noted above the census taken that year showed Lizzie sharing a household only with a boarder.
On 4 July 1902, Wayne County Superior Court set off a dower and partitioned Robert Aldridge’s land among his wife and heirs. With Lot No. 10, Lizzie Aldridge received 32 acres on the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad and Stoney Run Branch valued at $193. (Louella, referred to as Louetta, received a similar share, but two years later it was divided among her siblings when she died without heirs.)
In the 1904 Norfolk city directory, Lizzie is at 17 Nicholson, but in 1906, she is listed at 100 Henry. As “Elizabeth Aldridge,” she is living at 100 Henry in the 1907 and 1908 directories, too.
In the 1910 census of Norfolk, Virginia: Elizabeth Aldridge is listed as the keeper of a lodging house at 100 Henry Street. She had nine lodgers, all born in North Carolina, and one of whom, 22 year-old Jessie Baker, may have been Jesse Frank Baker, son of Lizzie’s first cousin Mary Ann Aldridge Baker.
Per city directories, as early as 1913, Lizzie Aldridge was living at 852 Henry in Norfolk.
In the 1920 census of Monroe Ward, Norfolk, Virginia: at 852 Henry Street, Elizabeth Aldridge, 49, keeper of a lodging house, headed a household that included her 7 year-old adopted son Elisha Newton and eight lodgers aged 16 to 20, all North Carolina-born and working as longshoremen or, in one instance, a fireman on a boat.
In the 1930 census of Norfolk, Virginia: in rented quarters at 940 1/2 Hanson Avenue, 60 year-old laundress Elizabeth Aldridge, her adopted son Arther E. Newton, 18, and a boarder named Mack Rice, a longshoreman. Elizabeth claimed to be a widow who first married at age 21.
In the 1940 census of Norfolk, Virginia: at 938 1/2, Elizabeth Aldridge, 70, was herself a lodger in a household headed by Lena Forekey.
As for the “family plot,” B.J. discovered the following (probably partial) list of Aldridge family members buried together in Norfolk’s Calvary cemetery: Elizabeth Aldridge, Section 22, Block 22, Lot 182, Space SW 0 06/15/1952; John Dabney, Section 22, Block 22, Lot 182, Space W CTR 0 12/29/1974; Tilithia Dabney, Section 22, Block 22, Lot 182, Space NW 0 11/24/1965; and Arthur Newton, Section 22, Block 22, Lot 182, Space SE 0 09/09/1979.
I’ve written of Cousin Tilithia Brewington King Godbold Dabney here and here. Her restaurant in Norfolk, the Strand Cafe, made a deep impression on my grandmother, who laughingly recalled waiting tables there on childhood visits and being dazzled by Cousin Tilithia’s menu offerings.
Thanks to B.J., great-granddaughter of Tilithia’s sister Mattie Brewington Braswell, who found these Norfolk Journal & Guide articles, we now know more about the cafe:
12 March 1921.
9 December 1922.
28 May 1927.
Scuffalong: Genealogy. 