Tag Archives: Canada

Migration, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

Citizenship.

Were the Henderson-Simmonses American or Canadian?

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I have not been able to find naturalization records for any, and the evidence available points in conflicting directions. One by one:

Montraville Simmons, Sr. — Despite what the 1910 census enumerator recorded, Montraville was certainly born in the U.S. to American parents. It is also likely that he “immigrated” back into the U.S. long before 1895, and it is not clear why he would have naturalized, unless he renounced his citizenship as a young man. (Canada was a British colony until 1867.)

Anna Henderson Simmons — As the evidence consistently reflects, Anna was born in NC. She was American. Her obituary stated: “Mrs. Simmons was … born in North Carolina. For fifteen years she lived in Canada, where her five children were born.” That is likely inaccurate.

Elizabeth Simmons — This daughter only appears in the 1881 Canada census. She was born about the same time as daughter Moncy and, though the names are not the least similar, may in fact be the same person.

Moncy Simmons Bassett Palmer — Moncy is not listed in the 1881 Canada census in which Elizabeth appears. In U.S. censuses, her birth place is generally consistent, with 1910 as an exception. She provided no information about immigration or naturalization to censustakers.

Doctor T. Simmons — Dock was born in Ontario and consistently provided Canada as his birthplace in records. However, there is conflict about when he immigrated, and neither 1874 nor 1880 seems accurate. If he naturalized in 1917, where is the record?

Susan Simmons Bassett — Susie consistently is described as U.S.-born.

Montraville Simmons, Jr. — Montraville Jr. was also born in Ontario.

James R. Simmons — This son only appears in the 1900 census, was born about the same time as Edward, and was probably, in fact, Edward.

Edward R. Simmons — Edward was also born in Ontario. His World War I draft registration card notes that he gained citizenship when his father was naturalized before Ed turned 21. The 1930 census states that he immigrated in 1900, but that is surely wrong. His obituary says that he lived in Kokomo from the time he was seven years old, which implies that he arrived in the U.S. about 1890.

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Births Deaths Marriages, Free People of Color, Migration, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

Anna J. Henderson Simmons.

Something brings me back to Anna J. Henderson Simmons. At no more than 20 years old, she left all the family she knew to follow her new husband 800 miles to Canada, where his Wayne County family had settled decades earlier.   It is hard to get a sense of Anna’s life. Her husband Montreville Simmons achieved a measure of success as a farmer in central Indiana, but evidence suggests that he was a difficult man to live with. Did she ever see her birth family again? Probably not, and evidence suggests that her children had an uncertain grasp on the facts of her early years.

Here’s what I know of my great-great-great-grandfather Lewis Henderson‘s sister:

In the 1860 census of Westbrooks, Sampson County, North Carolina, appear James Henderson, mulatto carpenter; wife Eliza; and four children, Anna J., Susan, Hepsie, and Alexander. Eliza (or Louisa) Armwood, daughter of John and Susan Armwood, was James’ second wife.

Ten years later, the family had moved about 20 miles east-southeast and appear in the 1870 census of Faisons, Duplin County: James Henderson, 52, mulatto farmer; wife Eliza; and children Ann, 17, Susan, 16, Hepsey, 14, Aleck, 13, John H., 11, Nancy, 6, and Betty, 3, plus James’ son James, 27, and boarders James Ammons and Thomas Cox. (Were the latter two relatives of either James or, more likely, Eliza/Louisa?)

The following spring, on 3 March 1871, Anna Henderson married Montraville Simmons, 19, son of Calvin and Hepsie Whitley Simmons, in Duplin County. The license lists Anna’s parents as James Henderson and Louisa Armwood. Montraville had been born in Wayne or Duplin County and migrated to Chatham, Kent County, Ontario, Canada with his family in the 1850s. After the death of his first wife, Victoria Brown, whom he married in Chatham in 1865, Montraville returned to North Carolina for a new spouse. (There’s a suspicious marriage on 16 April 1848 in Oakland, Michigan, between 23 year-old Montreville Simmons of North Carolina and Harriet Lucas of Richmond, Ohio. Was this yet another early marriage for Anna’s Montraville?)

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Duplin County, North Carolina, Marriage Register.

The family was captured in the 1881 census of Chatham, Kent County, Ontario, Canada: 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 United States except Doctor and Montreville jr., who were born in Ontario, and all were Baptist. [Where in the U.S. was Susan born? Had Anna gone back to North Carolina? Or had the family lived some short period across the nearby border?]

Sometime in the next twenty years, the Simmonses cast their lot permanently as Americans. For reasons unknown, they settled near Logansport, Indiana, in rural Cass County north of Indianapolis. In the 1900 census of Eel township, on Park Avenue in Logansport, the census taker recorded farmer “Montville” Simmons, born April 1850, wife Anna, born March 1861, and sons James R., December 1879, Montville, June 1882, and Dock, December 1879. Montville and Anna were recorded as born in North Carolina; their sons in Canada. Montraville and Anna had been married 28 years and reported five of five children living. The family was described as black. [The evidence concerning the Simmons children is confusing. Census records name Elizabeth (born circa 1872), Doctor/Dock (born circa 1874), Susan M. (born circa 1877), James R. (born circa 1879), Montraville Jr. (born circa 1880) and Edward (born 1881.) However, records in Indiana indicate another daughter, Moncy, who died in 1942.]

Montraville Simmons was a successful farmer, but a life of material (if heavily mortgaged) comfort did not necessarily spell ease for Anna. Montraville’s name peppered the local paper regularly, as Pharos-Tribune reporters gleefully chronicled his clashes with neighbors and his personal peccadilloes.

Anna herself managed to stay out of print until 1905, when the ailing woman parachuted into a spat between her husband and his creditors. Headlines blared her surprising intervention, and it’s hard not to see Montraville’s hand as a puppet master in this 11th hour shenanigan.

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Logansport Pharos Tribune, 22 December 1905. 

Sadly (she was only about 50 years old) but perhaps mercifully, within six months, Anna Henderson Simmons was dead. Her death certificate, which contains some curious errors, reported that Annie Simmons, married, died 16 Jun 1906 in Cass County, of Basedow’s disease [now known as Graves’, a disease of the thyroid]. She was born 2 February 1856 in North Carolina and was buried at Free Union Baptist in Irvin township, Howard County, Indiana, by Kroeger & Strain, funeral directors. The informant for the certificate was Montraville Simmons. The father or the son? I don’t know, but it’s hard to believe that either reported Anna as white, though that’s what the certificate notes. It’s less hard to believe that Montraville Jr. might have misreported his mother’s parents as James Harrison and Eliza Henderson. He, after all, had surely never met them. (And when he married Jessie Winslow in Cass County in 1903, he cited his mother’s maiden name as Anna Harrison.)

On 18 June, the Pharos Tribune ran a brief obituary:

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Who were Anna Henderson Simmons’ legacies? Is there a lost branch of Hendersons in middle Indiana?

  • Elizabeth Simmons (circa 1872-??) probably died before adulthood. Or she is the same person as Moncy Simmons.
  • Moncy A. Simmons (1872-1942) married first Daniel Bassett, then Newton Palmer; no known children.
  • Doctor R. Simmons (27 November 1874-after 1951) married Fannie Gibson; no children.
  • Susan M. Simmons (circa 1877-1937) married Britton Bassett; two children, who died in infancy. She helped rear her brother Montraville’s son Harold.
  • James R. Simmons (circa 1879-aft. 1900) probably did in young adulthood; no children. Or, he is the same person as Edward Simmons.
  • Montraville Simmons Jr. (circa 1880-31 March 1910) married Jessie Winslow in 1903. His son Harold Simmons was born about 1904. On 7 October 1911, Jessie gave birth to Helen Elizabeth Simmons in Chicago and listed Montraville on Helen’s birth certificate, but he could not have been the child’s father. Similarly, in the 1920 census, Jessie Winslow Simmons, remarried to Earnest W. Griggs, attributes by inference two additional children to Montraville Jr., Frances (born 1913) and Alma (born 1916). Neither were his. Harold is mentioned in his aunt Moncy’s obituary, but does not regularly appear in census records.
  • Edward Simmons (24 November 1883-1936) married only after his parents’ deaths, but married four times in 20 years. He had no children.

In other words, improbable as it seems, Anna’s seven children produced a single grandchild, and he seems not to have any children. There are not, it seems, any Kokomo cousins.

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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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