Napoleon Hagans and other “colored” men remained on Wayne County’s voter rolls through Reconstruction and beyond. As a result, at least until the 1890s, they were called to serve as jurors alongside their white male neighbors.
Goldsboro Headlight, 5 February 1890.
23andme characterizes K.H. as my father’s first cousin (8.11% share) and my second (4.4% share). We are related via my Henderson and Aldridge lines, and much more closely in the latter. He is, in fact, my father’s first cousin, once removed. K.H.’s mother and my father’s grandfather were siblings.
K.H. shows a distant match with W.B., but not her daughter W.M. (My father and I show no match with either. Nor does E.H., who is K.H.’s nephew.) W.B. and W.M. are descended from Napoleon Hagans through his son William S. Hagans. Napoleon was the half-brother of Frances Seaberry Artis (my great-great-great-grandmother and K.H.’s great-grandmother.)
Napoleon Hagans had four sons. William Coley was born to Winnie Coley, an enslaved woman who lived on a nearby farm. Henry E. and William S. Hagans, were born to his wife Apsilla “Appie” Ward Hagans. Joseph H. Ward was born to Appie’s sister, Mittie Ward. By virtue of their father’s wealth and foresight (Henry and William) or their own pluck and good fortune (Joe), three were well-educated and accomplished men.
Though I knew the names of Appie’s boys, for many years I was unable to trace them beyond the early 20th century. (I didn’t know of Joseph’s existence at all.) A stroke of luck led to me to one of William’s granddaughters, then to a grandson, then to Joe’s granddaughter. My collaborative research (and development of “cousinhood”) with B., the grandson, has been one of the highlights of my many years of genealogical sleuthing.
Napoleon and Appie Hagans’ grave marker stands in a cornfield several hundred feet west of his house. One side of the plinth memorializes his life; the opposite side, hers.
Photographs taken by Lisa Y. Henderson in July 2010.
In a nod to his relative political and economic clout, Napoleon Hagans was named an Honorary Commissioner of the 1884 World Industrial and Cotton Centennial. (The certificate is little hard to read, but that’s his name at the center fold.) According to the official program, Hon. H.K. Bruce [sic, this was surely Blanche K. Bruce, Republican Senator for Missouri 1875-1881] was Chief of Department, Colored Exhibits, and North Carolina’s “Honorary State Commissioners (Colored)” were J.S. Leary of Fayetteville and Jno. H. Williamson of Louisburg.
The 1884 World’s Fair was held in New Orleans, Louisiana, at a time when nearly one third of all cotton produced in the United States was handled in that port city. The Cotton Planters Association first advanced the idea for the fair, dubbed “World Cotton Centennial” because 1784 marked the earliest surviving record of export of a shipment of cotton from the United States to England.
The U.S. Congress lent $1 million to the Fair’s directors and gave $300,000 for the construction of a large Government & State Exhibits Hall on the site. However, the planning and construction of the fair was marked by corruption and scandals, and the Louisiana state treasurer absconded abroad with $1.7 million of state money, including most of the fair’s budget.
Despite such serious financial difficulties, the Fair succeeded in offering many attractions to visitors. It covered 249 acres stretching from Saint Charles Avenue to the Mississippi River and could be entered directly by railway, steamboat, or ocean-going ship. The main building enclosed 33 acres and was then the largest roofed structure ever constructed. The building was illuminated with 5,000 electric lights – still a novelty at the time and said to be ten times the number then existing in the rest of New Orleans. There was also a Horticultural Hall, an observation tower with electric elevators, and working examples of multiple designs of experimental electric street-cars. The Mexican exhibit was particularly lavish and popular, constructed at a cost of $200,000 dollars, and featuring a huge brass band that was a great hit locally.
On December 16, 1884, two weeks behind schedule, President Chester Arthur opened the Fair via telegraph. It closed on June 2, 1885. In an unsuccessful attempt to recover financial losses, the grounds and structures were reused for the North Central & South American Exposition from November 1885 to March 1886. Thereafter the structures were publicly auctioned off, most going only for their worth in scrap.
The site today is Audubon Park and Audubon Zoo in Uptown New Orleans.
Adapted from World Cotton Centennial, www.wikipedia.org. Copy of certificate courtesy of William E. Hagans.
At the heart of Wayne County Superior Court proceedings stemming from the suit in J.F. Coley v. Tom Artis (1908) was a dispute over 30 acres of land. Thomas “Tom Pig” Artis began renting the property in 1881 from W.J. Exum. In 1892, Exum’s widow Mary sold it to Napoleon “Pole” Hagans. In 1896, after Napoleon’s death, the land passed to his sons Henry and William S. Hagans, and in 1899 Henry sold his interest to his brother. In 1908, William S. Hagans sold the 30 acres to J.F. Coley. Coley filed suit when Tom Artis laid claim to it, arguing that Napoleon had sold it to him. Tom claimed that the 800 lbs. of cotton he tendered to Napoleon Hagans (and later, his son William) was interest on a mortgage, but William Hagans and other witnesses maintained that the payment was rent.
The trial transcript is replete with testimony revealing the personal relationships among witnesses. Tom Artis testified that he rented the “Adam Artis place.” William Hagans testified that his father was in feeble health in 1896 when he called him and Henry together “under the cart shelter” to tell them he would not live long and did not know to whom the land would fall. William testified that Pole asked them to let “Pig” stay on as long as he paid rent, and they promised to do so. Tom Franks testified that “Pole was a first-rate business man.” Jonah Williams, Adam Artis’ brother, testified that he borrowed money from Napoleon to open a brickyard in the spring of 1893 and had preached his funeral. He also noted that “Tom married my sister [Loumiza Williams Artis, who was deceased by time of this trial]. He is not a member of my church. I turned him out. He is a Primitive Baptist. I preached Napoleon Hagans’ funeral.” Jesse Artis, another of Adam Artis’ brothers, testified that he had worked on Hagans’ property as a carpenter for 18 years and noted, “I don’t know that Tom and I are any kin, just by marriage.” John Rountree testified that he was a tenant renting from Hagans on thirds. Simon Exum, Delilah Artis‘ husband, testified: “I am no kin to Tom [Artis] as far as I know, except by Adam. His first wife was my wife’s sister.” H.S. Reid testified that he was Tom Artis’ son-in-law.
The court found for Coley and against Artis.
——
Thomas Artis was a son of a free woman of color, Celia Artis, and her enslaved husband, Simon Pig. Though, ultimately, nearly all free colored Artises are descended from a common ancestor in southside Virginia, by the late 1800s knowledge of these remote links had faded. There were dozens of Artis families in Wayne County during the antebellum period, and the relationships between them are unknown. Celia Artis was a close neighbor of Adam Artis, but the families apparently did not regards themselves as kin. Still, they were inextricably intertwined. The Artises, Haganses and Reids had been neighbors in the Eureka area for generations. Celia Artis and Henry S. Reid’s grandmother Rhoda Reid were the wealthiest free women of color in the county. Adam Artis married Napoleon Hagans’ half-sister Frances Seaberry. Adam’s sister Loumiza married Tom Artis, as noted above. Henry S. Reid, son of Washington and Penninah Reid, married Tom Artis’ daughter. Henry’s first cousin Henry Reid, son of John and Mozana Hall Reid, married Adam Artis’ daughter Georgianna Artis. Adam Artis’ son William Marshall Artis and grandson Leslie Artis married Tom Artis’ nieces, Etta and Minnie Diggs. And on and on.
Documents found in file of the Estate of Thomas Artis (1911), Wayne County, North Carolina Estate Files, 1663-1979, familysearch.org
Around the time he testified before the US Senate, Napoleon Hagans had this house built below the south bank of Aycock Swamp, near Fremont in northern Wayne County. It remains occupied and is featured in J. Daniel Pezzoni and Penne Smith’s Glimpses of Wayne County, North Carolina: An Architectural History (1998):
“The house, a single-pile center-hall-plan dwelling, has retained much of its charming original hip-roofed front porch, now supported by replacement square columns. Windows are surmounted by moulded peaked arch surrounds. … One original single-shouldered exterior end chimney was plastered; the other was replaced by a concrete-block flue. …”
A stone monument marking the graves of Napoleon and his wife Apsilla Ward Hagans stands in a cornfield about one hundred yards west of the house.
Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, December 2010.
TESTIMONY OF NAPOLEON HIGGINS.
NAPOLEON HIGGINS, colored, sworn and examined.
By Senator VANCE:
Question. Where do you reside? Answer. Near Goldsborough. I don’t stay in Goldsborough, but it is my county seat. I live fifteen miles from town.
Q. What is your occupation? A. I am farming.
Q. Do you farm your own land? A. Yes, sir.
Q. How much do you own? A. Four hundred and eighty-five acres.
Q. How did you get it? A. I worked for it.
Q. Were you formerly a slave? A. No, sir; I was a free man before the war.
Q. You say you worked for it? A. Yes, sir; I worked for it, and got it since the war.
Q. What is it worth per acre? A. I don’t know, sir, what it is worth now. I know what I paid for it.
Q. What did you pay for it? A. I believe I paid $5,500, and then I have got a little town lot there that I don’t count, but I think it is worth about $500.
Q. Then you have made all that since the war? A. Yes, sir.
Q. How much cotton do you raise? A. I don’t raise as much as I ought to. I only raised fifty-eight bales last year.
Q. What is that worth? A. I think I got $55 a bale.
Q. How many hands do you work yourself? A. I generally rent my land. I only worked four last year, and paid the best hand, who fed the mules and tended around the house, ten dollars; and the others I paid ten, and eight and seven.
Q. That was last year? A. Yes, sir.
Q. What did you give them besides their pay? A. I gave them rations; and to a man with a family I gave a garden patch and a house, and a place to raise potatoes.
Q. What about the rate of wages in your section of the country; does that represent them? A. Yes, sir; of course a no account hand don’t get much, and a smart one gets good wages.
Q. Have you made any contracts for this year? A. Yes, sir; but I am only hiring two hands this year.
Q. What do your tenants pay you for the use of your land? A. Some of the tenants give me a third of the corn and a third of the cotton. Then I have got some more land that I rent out to white men, and they give me a fourth of the cotton, and another gives me a thousand pounds of lint cotton for twenty acres.
Q. Does anybody interfere with your right to vote down there? A. No, sir.
Q. Or with any of the rights of your race? A. No, sir; we vote freely down there. Of course, if one man can persuade you to vote with him, that is all right. But you can vote as you please.
Q. What are your politics? A. I am a republican, and that is the way my township generally votes.
Q. You say there is no interference with the rights of your race there? A. Not that I know of.
Q. There has been something said here about the landlord and tenant act. Do you think that does anybody any harm? A. I think it is a good law.
Q. The object of it is to give you a lien on everything your tenant has until your rent is paid? A. Yes, sir; and I think I am entitled to that.
Q. These white tenants can’t run off any of your cotton until you are paid? A. No, sir; I am five or six miles from them, and they can’t run it off. They might do it and I not see them if I did not have the law to back me; and they are just as apt to run it off as not when they start.
Q. Then you think it is a good protection to you in your rights? A. Yes, sir; I do.
Q. Do you have any schools down there? A. Yes, sir.
Q. How is the money raised for them? Most of it is by a property tax, is it not? A. Yes, sir.
Q. And the poll tax all goes to education except twenty-five cents on the dollar? A. Yes, sir.
Q. Do you know how much land your race has acquired in that county? A. I reckon they have got fifteen hundred acres in our township; but I could not tell how much in the county.
Q. Is there any distinction made between the whites and the blacks down there in the renting of lands? A. None that I know of.
Q. Both are paid the same wages? A. Yes, sir; unless a man wants to hire some man to lock his doors and look after and keep his keys; then they pay him more. And if it is a colored man that he has confidence in, they pay him the same.
Q. Is there any distinction there to take all white men as tenants? A. No, sir; in our township they take them without regard to color. If a man is a smart man, he gets in just the same as a white man. Colored men rent from white men, and white men from colored men.
Q. Did you ever have any talk with any of those people who went to Indiana? A. No, sir; I never saw one who went.
Q. Did you ever hear any of the speeches of any of these men who were stirring up these men? A. No, sir.
Q. Did you see any of their circulars? A. No, sir.
Q. Nor hear of any inducements offered to them? A. No, sir.
Q. Did you get any letters from any of them who went out there? A. No, sir; I wasn’t acquainted with any who went. I learned more of it at Goldsborough last Monday night, when I was coming on here, than I ever knew before.
Q. Are there any complaints among your people to discriminations in the courts, between the whites and blacks? A. Yes, sir; I have heard them say that the same evidence that will convict a colored man for stealing won’t convict a white man.
Q. When they are convicted, are they punished alike? Yes, sir; in the same cases. I have spoke to them and told them, lots of times, that of course they would be convicted many times where a white man would get out, and the only way to avoid that was to quit stealing. I told them, a white man has got more sense and more money to pay lawyers and knows better how to hid his rascality, and the best way for the colored man to keep out of the penitentiary was to quit stealing.
By Senator WINDOM:
Q. Is it the general impression among colored people down there that they don’t get justice? A. Yes, sir; when two or three colored men get convicted they think so. But there are more black men convicted because there are more of them tried.
Q. You say they have not got sense enough to get out of it when they get in; they have attorneys, do they not? A. Yes, sir; but very often they have not got the money to feed up an attorney; and, you know, they more you pay a lawyer the more he sticks with you.
Q. Is there not discrimination there in the employment of mechanics? A. No, sir; I never heard of it.
By Senator VOORHEES:
Q. Do you know of any of these people, white and black, who have been convicted that you thought were convicted wrongfully? A. No, sir.
Q. You thought they were rightfully convicted? A. Yes, sir.
Q. You have been on juries yourself; did you ever make any difference between them? A. No, sir; I have sat on juries there many times, and sat on a case of a white man who was tried for his life.
Q. Was there any other colored man on that jury? A. No, sir; I was the only one on that one; but I have been on others.
Q. You have sat on juries when white men’s cases were being tried, both on the criminal and on the civil sides of the court? A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did any white man object to you sitting on them? A. No, sir.
Q.Then most of this talk about discrimination and injustice is by men who have been disappointed in the results of their suits? A. Yes, sir.
Q. You see no cause for it yourself? A. No, sir.
Q. You have heard white men complain just as bitterly? A. Yes, sir; of course. I suppose they are like I am. I always try to beat the case.
By Senator WINDOM:
Q. You say you think this land and tenant act a good thing; do you think the renter is in favor of it? A. I don’t know; they never say anything to me about it. I am on the other side of that question.
Q. Does not the fact that you own 285 [sic] acres of land give you a little better standing in the community than most of your colored friends? A. Of course; I suppose it does.
Q. How did you start it? A. I rented a farm and started on two government horses. I went to the tightest man I know and got him to help me. I rented from Mr. Exum out there.
Q. Are there others who have succeeded as well as you? A. Yes, sir; there are. One or two men who have succeeded better than me. There are several of them in good circumstances there in our township. I think, altogether, they own 1,500 acres there.
Q. How many colored people own this? A. I reckon 150.
Q. The 1,500 acres is divided up among 150 people? A. No, sir; a good many of them have got none.
Q. This is what I asked you: How many own this 1,500 acres, all put together? A. I reckon a dozen. It might not be more than eight. It is from eight to a dozen, anyhow. But there are a number who own some little lots of land of four or five acres that I have not mentioned.
This, of course, was Napoleon Hagans (not Higgins)’ testimony before a Senate Select Committee investigating the migration of hundreds of African-Americans from the South to Kansas Indiana in the late 1870s, allegedly because of “denial or abridgment of their personal and political rights and privileges.” Hagans’ testimony about the source of his relative wealth, as well his opinions about the political and judicial climate for colored men in his part of North Carolina, were well-received by the committee, which concluded that all was well in Dixie. Nonetheless, it is perhaps possible — if one suppresses natural feeling and attempts to stand in Napoleon’s shoes — to detect a very subtle undercurrent of resistance here and there in the essential conservatism of his words.
Transcript in Senate Report 693, 2nd Session, 46th Congress: Proceedings of the Select Committee of the United States Senate to Investigate the Causes of the Removal of the Negroes from the Southern States to the Northern States, Washington DC, beginning Tuesday, 9 March 1880.
From an unsigned narrative (“The Adam Artis Family History”) written, I think, by one of Adam Artis’ great-grandchildren:
“Adam Artis had about five wives and 39 children. His first legal wife was Frances Hagens of Eureka. She was very fair and had beautiful long black silky hair. Adam was very tall and slender. He owned a large farm in Eureka and was a first class carpenter. They lived in a nice two story house. Frances’ brother, Napoleon Hagens, owned a very large plantation near Eureka. He had several tenants and/or slaves there. He was very mean to his wife and tenants. He would sit on the fence in the shade and watch the tenants plow. If they didn’t plow the way he wanted them to, he would crack them with a whip. One day a tenant grabbed the whip and beat Napoleon’s shirt off.”
This is a nice starting point, if not entirely accurate. Frances Seaberry was Adam’s second legal wife. If he had 39 children, not even his last surviving daughter could name them. Her half-brother Napoleon Hagans never owned slaves, though he had many tenants, and he cast a shadow large enough that his sister’s descendants thought his last name was hers.
Also, “Frances and Adam Artis had 9 children (Hayward, William, Walter, Addie, Jesse, Doc, Georgianna, Luvicie and Ida.) Luvicie and Ida were twins. Frances died when the twins were only 13 years old.”
In fact, they had 11:
Ida Artis was born about 1861. (And was not Louvicey’s twin.) She married Isaac Reid (1853-??), son of Zion and Lucy Reid, about 1876 .Their children were Frances Reid (1877-??) and Lorenzo Eli Reid (1879-1952). Ida Artis Reid died 1880-1900.
Napoleon Artis, known as “Doc,” was born 28 February 1863. He married Sallie Taylor; their sons were Humphrey, Leslie and Odell. Doc died 16 October 1942. His descendants still live on land along Route 222 between Stantonsburg and Eureka once owned by Adam Artis.
“When Luvicie Artis was 13 years old, she married John Aldridge of Dudley. John was the son of Robert and Eliza Aldridge. … Luvicie had very high cheek bones. Luvicie was a mid-wife and nurse. She died at the age of 64. She only wanted to eat peas and sweet potatoes. She wouldn’t eat much meat or green vegetables, and would drink hardly any water.”
Louvicey Artis was born in 1865 and married John Aldridge in 1879. Their 11 surviving children were Zebedee Aldridge, Lula Aldridge, Frances Aldridge Cooper, John J. Aldridge, James Thomas Aldridge, Amanda Aldridge Newsome, Beulah Aldridge Carter, Correna Aldridge Newsome, Catherine Aldridge Davis and Christine Lenora Aldridge Henderson. Vicey Artis Aldridge died 13 February 1927.
Louvicey’s twin, Eliza Artis, married Haywood Everett. Before 1900, the couple migrated to Arkansas and settled in Lonoke County. They had no children, and Eliza died 10 October 1936.
Georgeanna Artis was born 1867. She married Henry Reid (1859-1930), son of John and Mozana Hall Reid (and first cousin to Isaac Reid, above) on 29 Nov 1883. Their children: Alice Reid Williamson, Cora Reid, William H. Reid, Brodie Reid, Lenny Reid, Nita Reid, Henry N. Reid, Linda B. Reid, and Georgia Reid. She died 18 August 1923 in Goldsboro NC.
Adam Toussaint Artis Jr. was born in 1868. He married Rena G. Wynn in 1893 in Wayne County and had one son, Lafayette. He migrated to Washington DC, and married Agnes West in 1904. Their son was Harry L. Artis.
Haywood Artis was born in 1870. He migrated to Norfolk, Virginia, in the 1890s, and married Harriet Hawthorne. Their children included Bertha Artis, Jesse Artis, Hattie Artis Johnson, Mae Willie Artis, Haywood Artis Jr., and Charles Artis.
Emma Artis, born 1872, married Robert H. Locust and died within months of the wedding. [A tidbit: Robert H. Locust’s second wife, Fannie Aldridge, was the sister of John Aldridge (Louvicey Artis’ husband) and Amanda Aldridge Artis (Adam Artis’ third wife.]
Walter Scott Artis was born 2 October 1874. He married Hannah E. Forte. Their children: Napoleon Artis, Beatrice Artis, Estelle Artis, Adam Toussaint Artis III, and Elmer H. Artis. Walter Artis died 25 June 1951.
William Marshall Artis was born 28 August 1875 and married Etta Diggs. Their children: Margaret Artis, William M. Artis Jr., Frances Artis, Irene Artis Carter, Adam H. Artis, Fletcher Artis, Doris V. Artis, Haywood Thomas Artis and Beulah M. Artis Exum. William died 28 September 1945.
Jesse Artis was born in 1878, presumably not long before his mother’s death.
Leasy Hagans is one of my great-great-great-great-grandmothers. She was born circa 1800, perhaps in Nash County. Though Hagans might have been her married name, the involuntary apprenticeship of her children makes it more likely that she was unmarried. “Lesy Hagins” appears as a head of a household of five children in the 1820 census of Nash County. Though it is not inconceivable that all were hers, some may have been young siblings. The only other Hagans in the county is Lukens Hagins — I cannot work out any other reasonable interpretation of the spelling of that first name — another colored female aged 14-26 with two children under 14. In the 1840 census of Davis District, Wayne County, Leecy Hagins is a 36-55 year-old colored woman living with a boy aged less than ten years and a girl aged 10-24 years. (Note that prior to the creation of Wilson County in 1855, Nash and Wayne shared a short border.) In the 1850 census of the North Side of the Neuse, Wayne County, Leacy Hagans, age 50, heads a household that includes ten year-old Napoleon Hagans. He is almost certainly her grandson and appears elsewhere in the same census with Aaron and Levisa Seaberry, his stepfather and mother.
There is a small web of census and apprenticeship connections among several people that suggest that they are among Leasy Hagans’ children:
William Hagans and Calvin Hagans. In 1833, William, 16, and Calvin Hagans, 10, were apprenticed to Council Bryan in Wayne County. In the 1850 census of Wayne County, Calvin appeared as a 27 year-old farmhand in the household of William Thompson. Leasy Hagans’ household was next door.
Levisa Eliza Hagans. In the 1850 census of Wayne County: Aaron Seaberry, 32, wife Levisa, 26, her son Napolian, 11, their daughter Francis, 4, and Celia Seaberry, 17, relationship unknown. As noted above, Napoleon also appears in Leasy Hagans’ household that year, and I deduce that he was her grandson.
Matilda Hagans. In the 1850 census of Wayne County: Mary Hagins, 18, Matilda Hagins, 25, Leasy Hagins, 2, and John Hagins, 1, appear in the household of John L. Fulks, a white carpenter. I believe Leasy and John were Matilda’s children. Was, then, Leasy named for her grandmother Leasy?
Mary A. Hagans. In 1839, William Thompson apprenticed Mary A. Hagans in Wayne County. As noted above, Mary, Matilda and Matilda’s presumed children live together in 1850.
The evidence, admittedly, is thin, but it is suggestive.
Scuffalong: Genealogy. 