Tag Archives: Armwood

Births Deaths Marriages, Free People of Color, Migration, Paternal Kin

Indiana Chronicles, no. 2: To pay respects.

Ten A.M. After some nervous indecision, I’d parked in the driveway of a nearby farmhouse and was hustling up the road toward a tiny cemetery. The odor of cow dung was large. The crack of thunder at the horizon was larger. I arrived in Kokomo three days after catastrophic F3 tornadoes had ripped through, and I was not anxious to get caught out in the new storms racing across central Indiana. But I’d come 600 miles for this, and I wasn’t leaving before I got what I came for.

With his wife dead and nothing to hold them in Onslow County, North Carolina, James Henderson gathered up his children and pushed 60 miles northwest to Sampson County. There, James married Eliza Armwood and, about 1852, their first child was born. It does not take a great leap of imagination to picture my great-great-great-grandfather Lewis, oldest of James’ first bunch, cradling his baby sister Anna Jane in his arms or hoisting her to his shoulders in the years before his own children were born. Nor is it hard to conjecture his sense of loss when Anna left with her new husband Montraville Simmons to join his family in impossibly faraway Canada. She was the only one of James’ children to leave North Carolina, and she did so in a big way. The Simmonses eventually quit Ontario for Indiana, but, practically speaking, the Midwest was no closer to home. It’s not clear when Anna last saw any of her people, but it’s a sure bet that none ever visited Cass County, and not a one has ever visited her grave.

Thus, I found myself navigating the grid of backroads between Logansport and Kokomo, one eye on the western sky as bands of rain lashed my windshield. Properly speaking, I was not headed to Anna’s actual grave, for it is unmarked. But to stand in Bassett cemetery would be close enough.

 

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

DNAnigma, no. 2.1: Another Armwood.

I seldom check FTDNA, but last night I moseyed on to study the new My Origins feature. A glance in the corner of the screen showed a  new high match, an estimated 2nd to 4th cousin whom I’ll call L.A. I emailed him, and he quickly responded. We immediately identified Sampson County, North Carolina, as a potential point of commonality, and I asked his grandparents’ names. I looked them up and found that one was the offspring of John Wesley Faircloth and Laura Wynn (or Simmons). A little further research — and consultation with Stephen Maynor, my point man for all things Sampson County — revealed that Wesley Faircloth, born about 1856, was the son of Nancy Armwood. Again with these Armwoods!

Nancy was the daughter of John and Susan Armwood, and her sister Louisa (or Eliza) was my great-great-great-great-grandfather James Henderson‘s second wife. Am I an Armwood though?

While refreshing my recollection about this family — which has always frustrated my efforts to track them properly — I discovered a previously unnoticed tangle of intermarriages between and among the Armwoods, Wynns, Simmonses and a few Hendersons in northern Sampson and Duplin Counties and southern Wayne County.

The base couples:

  • Major Armwood (~1798-??) and wife Eliza [last name unknown] Armwood (~1806-??).
  • Richard Armwood (1832-??) and wife Mary Faircloth Armwood.
  • John Armwood (~1800-??) and wife Susan [maiden name unknown] Armwood (~1820-??).
  • James Simmons (1798-1860) and wife Winnie Medlin Simmons (??-1902).
  • Gray Winn (~1815-1850) and wife Sarah Greenfield Winn (1816-1909).

And the marriages and other relationships that flowed therefrom:

And this is just a generation or two of intermarriage. I’ve asked A.G., my other Armwood match, to test with 23andme so I can compare our matches and see if she matches my known Hendersons. Stay tuned….

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Agriculture, Free People of Color, Land, North Carolina, Rights

But for marl.

I don’t know if I’m an Armwood or not, but (1) my great-great-great-great-grandfather James Henderson’s second wife, Louisa, was Henry Armwood’s cousin, (2) I’ve got a DNA match with one of Henry Armwood’s descendants, and (3) Inez Armwood Watson always said we were kin. Either way, I claim him just on the strength of the moxie he displayed when he, a tenant farmer, fought back against the landowner who sought to cheat him of his cotton.

Herring v. Armwood, 130 NC 177 (1902).

B.W. Herring filed this suit in Duplin County, North Carolina, to recover from William Henry Armwood two bales of cotton worth $81 that he alleged belonged to him. Armwood responded that the cotton was worth much more than $81 and that it was not Herring’s. Further, countered Armwood, he rented the farm on which the cotton was raised under this contract: “I, B.W. Herring, do hereby agree to rent my farm to Henry Armwood for the year of 1899 for five bales of cotton of the first picking, weighing five hundred pounds, or the equivalent in money. I do also agree to dig marl to the amount of two thousand bushels, more or less, and Henry Armwood agrees to haul the same and scatter on the land.” Armwood was to use the marl in lieu of commercial fertilizers to improve the land and increase crop yield. However, Herring refused to dig the marl, and Armwood’s crops suffered.

At trial, Herring testified that Armwood paid only three of five bales of cotton he owed in rent. Armwood took two more bales raised on the rented land to Ruffin Cameron’s to be ginned and those bales were seized. Herring’s testimony is somewhat confusingly recounted in the opinion, but he seems to assert that he did not agree to dig any marl for the 1899 crop, but that he used it as an experiment in 1898 on about 16 of the 40 acres he rented to Armwood.  Armwood countered: “It was agreed that the two thousand bushels of marl shoul dbe hauled on the crop for 1899. I lived on the plaintiff’s land in 1898, and hauled marl for 15 or 16 acres. The crops were increased by the use of the marl 50 to 75 per cent. I hauled the marl from Mr. Dan Lee Flowers. He had the bed, and furnished Mr. Faison Hicks, Mr. Ab Herring, Andrew Barfield, and others in the neighborhood. My crop was decreased by the failure to use the marl at least 50 per cent.” Herring objected to this testimony on the grounds that it was too remote, and the trial judge sustained the objection. Though Dan Lee Flowers testified in support of Armwood, the judge rendered a verdict and judgment for Herring. Armwood appealed.

The North Carolina Supreme Court neatly framed the issue: “The sole question involved in this appeal, when stripped of its technical paraphernalia, is whether an action for damages will lie for a breach of contract in failing to furnish fertilizers, whereby the yield of the crop was decreased, because such damage or failure in the yield will be too remote.” And decided: “… the conclusion is irresistible that a lessening in the yield would be the natural result of a failure to use the marl, if marl be beneficial to the growth and development of the crops, and that the lessened yield would be incidental to such breach, and therefore plaintiff would be liable.” Further, everybody knows that fertilizers increase yield and marl can greatly increase production. “… [i]f damages be recoverable for a breach of contract which decreased the yield, they can also be recovered for a breach of contract whereby the yield was not increased.” Armwood had a right to present his proof to the jury. Error in the lower court, and a new trial awarded.

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Births Deaths Marriages, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

James Henderson’s children, part 2: Eliza Armwood.

Around 1851, as his oldest set of children moved into their mid-teens, James Henderson married Eliza (sometimes noted as “Louisa”) Armwood, daughter of John and Susan Armwood. They reared their ten children in the tri-county area formed by the meeting of Sampson, Duplin and Wayne Counties:

Anna Jane Henderson, born in 1852, married Montreville Simmons, son of Calvin and Hepsey Whitley Simmons in 1871 in Duplin County. The Simmons family had migrated to Ontario, Canada, in the 1850s, and after the death of his young first wife, Montreville journeyed home to find a second. The family is found in the 1881 census of Chatham, Kent, Ontario: Montreville Simmons, 40, farmer; wife Annie, 29; and children Elizabeth, 8, Doctor T., 7, Susan M., 4, and Montreville, 2. All were born in the US except the two youngest children, and the family was Baptist. They returned to the US in the 1890s, and in 1900 are found in the census of Eel, Cass County, Indiana. Annie Simmons died 16 June 1906 in Cass County.

Susan and Hepsie Henderson, born 1854 and 1856, married brothers Edward J. and Washington F. “Frank” Wynn and raised their families near Dudley.  Susan H. Wynn’s children were Elizabeth Wynn Simmons, Sallie Wynn Manuel, Fannie Wynn Price, William H. Wynn, Arthur Wynn, Eddie Wynn, Minnie Wynn Greenfield, Cora Wynn Bennett, Jessie Wynn and Danzie Wynn. She died 6 January 1907 and is buried in a family cemetery near Dudley. Hepsie’s children were Alice Wynn, George Wynn, William Wynn, Sallie Wynn, James Wynn, Richard G. Wynn, Dock Wynn, Georgeanna Wynn and Israel Henderson Wynn. Hepsie died circa 1895.

Alexander Henderson, born 1860, was the only one of James’ sons to leave farming.  In 1900, he, his wife Mary Odom Henderson and children were living near Mount Olive, but by 1910, Alex had moved his family to James Street in Goldsboro.  Alex and Mary Odom Henderson’s children were William Henderson, Mary Jane Henderson Wooten, Theodore Henderson and Connie Geneva Henderson Smith. He died 13 June 1919 and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Goldsboro. Inexplicably, his death certificate lists his father as “Stephen Henderson.”

John Henry Henderson, born 1861, married Sarah E. Simmons, daughter of Bryant and Elizabeth Wynn Simmons, in 1886 at the Congregational Church in Dudley.  John and Sarah’s three surviving children were Charles Henry Henderson, Frances Henderson Wynn and Henry Lee Henderson.  At John’s death on 8 August 1924, he was the last of James Henderson’s sons.  John’s son Charles Henderson moved away to Virginia, but “Frankie” and Henry remained in Dudley and are the forebears of a great many of our present-day Hendersons, some of whom still live on ancestral land.

Nancy Henderson, born 1865, married Isham Smith, son of Milly Smith.They lived in Goldsboro, where Isham worked as a wagon driver.  Their children were Annie Smith Guess, Oscar Smith, Furney Smith, Ernest Smith, Elouise Marie Smith, Johnnie Smith, Mary E. Smith Southerland, James Smith, Willie Smith, Effie May Smith, and Bessie Lee Smith. Nancy’s second husband was Patrick Diggs. She died 11 December 1944.

Betty Henderson and Edward Henderson, born 1867 and 1874, appear in one census record each, and nothing further is known of them.

Julia Henderson, born 1872, known as “Mollie,” married Alex Hall in Wayne County in 1889. They had two daughters, Lula and Sadie. In 1902, Mollie married Walter Holt, son of George W. and Martha Holt, in Randolph County. (How — and why — did she get from Wayne County to Randolph?) By 1910, they were living in Greensboro NC.  She died circa 1929.

Louella Henderson, born 1876, married first a man whose last name was King, then one named Wilson. (According to my grandmother.) She may have died in Bessemer NC.

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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  4th-6th 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 3rd 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:

william-armwoodSo, 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.?

 

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