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

DNAnigma, no. 6.

I recognized his name immediately and shot off a message to his Ancestry.com inbox. … And then another message. … And then another one. … And still, crickets. In the meantime, I had an email from his first cousin, and I shared news of the match with her. She was excited and said she’d prod him. Apparently, he is prod-proof.

In any case, this is another match between descendants of Adam T. Artis, with an Aldridge twist. H.B.’s great-grandfather was Henry J.B. Artis, son of Adam by his fourth wife, Amanda Aldridge, who was a daughter of Robert and Eliza Balkcum Aldridge. H.B. and I are roughly 4th cousins, which Ancestry correctly predicted.

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

Up from slavery.

Vicey Artis, a free woman of color, and Solomon Williams, a slave, had eleven children together – Zilpha Artis Wilson, Adam Toussaint Artis, Jane Artis Artis, Loumiza Artis Artis, Charity Artis, Lewis Artis, Jonah Williams, Jethro Artis, Jesse Artis, Richard Artis and Delilah Williams Exum — before they were able to marry legally. On 31 August 1866, they registered their 35-year cohabitation in Wayne County. Vicey died soon after, but Solomon lived until 1883. The document above, listing his and Vicey’s six surviving children and heirs of their deceased children, is found among his estate papers.

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

Louvicey Artis Aldridge.

Vicey was little, rawboned-ed. With a peaked nose, and she was more Indian color. But she had that pretty hair. I remember her when she used to come to Wilson. She come up there visiting once in a while. Vicey was, ahh …. You remember Josephine Sherrod? Well, she was lighter than her. But she had that peaky nose and had nice hair.

This is my grandmother’s description of her paternal grandmother, Louvicey Artis Aldridge. Josephine Artis Sherrod (in the second photo) was Louvicey’s half-sister — and niece. Their father was Adam T. Artis. After the death of Vicey’s mother, Adam married Amanda Aldridge, sister of Vicey’s husband John W. Aldridge.

DNA, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

DNAnigma, no. 3: An Artis match, after all.

I was geeked. After all, my great-great-great-grandfather Adam T. Artis had 25+ children, and I have thousands of cousins in their descendants. (Not to mention the descendants of Adam’s many siblings.) I was crestfallen, then, when H.A. responded that he was descended from Absalom Artis, through Warren Artis, then Henry, then Alonzo, then William Henry Artis. I know the Absalom Artis line (though I didn’t know Warren was in it), and I have no known connection to them. Absalom was born in Virginia circa 1780 and was in northern Wayne County by the early 1800s. He and Adam lived in close proximity, but the record gives no clue to other links. Of course, ultimately, all of the free colored Artises in Wayne County – indeed, throughout Virginia and NC and out into Indiana and Ohio – were likely kin, but the links are so remote that reconstructing them is likely impossible. H.A. and I share enough DNA that our common ancestor had to have been within the last 5 generations or so. In other words, more recent than any common ancestor of Adam and Warren or Absalom.

But then….

While reviewing my notes for a post about Adam’s second set of children, I was reminded that his daughter Mary Jane Artis had married an Artis. Henry Artis. Son of Warren and Pearcy Artis. And mystery solved! H.A. and I are not related through his patrilineal Artis line, but via a wife whose father was my great-great-great-grandfather.

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.

Births Deaths Marriages, Enslaved People, Free People of Color, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Paternal Kin, Photographs, Vocation

These Artises.

“It comes from Fremont, Wayne county, that Adam Artis, colored, 75 years old, who lives near there, is the father of 47 legitimate children and that in addition there are 80 or 90 grandchildren.” — Statesville Landmark, 9 Jan 1906.

Try as I might, I can only account for 32 children. My great-great-grandmother, by Adam’s third wife Frances Seaberry, was one of them. Adam was born in 1831 in Greene County, North Carolina, to a freeborn mother and an enslaved father. They gave him the middle name Toussaint, and I’d love to know that story. He was apprenticed as a carpenter and purchased his first acreage in 1855 from his brother-in-law, John Wilson. Over the years, he bought and sold a few hundred acres in northern Wayne County, and descendants still live on land that was his. It is said that his fifth wife, 50+ years his junior, treated him badly in his last days, and was so afraid that he would haunt her that she had his feet cut off before the burial. No photos of him remain, but his legacy is well-secured. As his granddaughter Beulah Williams once told me: “These Artises, they are innumerable.”

Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Tag Archives: Artis