North Carolina, Paternal Kin, Photographs

Finding the Barfields.

Some time in the late 1980s, I learned the name of my great-grandmother Bessie Henderson’s father — Joseph Buckner Martin — and learned that, after the death of Bessie’s mother Loudie, Buck Martin had several children with a woman whose last name was Barfield. I marinated on that for a few years, then a bit of sleuthing revealed that Sarah Barfield was the woman, and her children were Walter, Amy, Lillie and Daisy Barfield. I found Walter Barfield Jr. in the phone book, cold-called him, and found him to be a gracious and welcoming cousin. His father had passed away not too many years before, but Aunt Lillie was still living, and he was happy to introduce us the next time I came home to North Carolina.

Sarah Barfield

I met my great-great-aunt in the spring of 1993 at the nursing home in which she lived in Mount Olive. She was a tiny woman with a wizened, apple-cheeked face, her ivory-white hair pulled back in a small bun.

I took notes:

She said she never saw her half-sister Bessie Henderson, but remembers when she died [in 1910]. Her sister Amy went to the funeral and came home and cried and cried.
Jack Henderson, her half-brother, used to visit them in the country. Once when he came, he wanted to meet their father. She took him there, and Buck received his oldest son in a friendly manner. He was good to his children.
Her sister Amy was in her 30s when she died; Daisy was 18. They are buried in the Barfield cemetery, between Mount Olive and Dudley, not far from the railroad.
Her youngest granddaughter has a photo of Daisy.
She has a daughter Gladys and a son Walter Lee Holmes.
She bought the house that Buck left her mother from one of Ira Martin’s children, to whom it had reverted after her mother Sarah’s death.
Her house burned up with most of her photographs.
She knew Buck’s brother Alfred Martin. He committed suicide.
Once on her way to Washington to see her husband, she spent the night in Wilson with Sarah Henderson Jacobs, who told her, “Don’t ever marry an old man.” Walter Lee was 2 years old at the time. [This would have been about 1922.]
She remembered that my grandmother had children by a “barber man.”

The second time I visited Aunt Lillie was at Christmas, and I took my grandmother with me. When we walked in, Aunt Lillie stared wordlessly, then reached out to touch her face.

Lillie Barfield Holmes passed away peacefully on 1 June 2003, just shy of her 100th birthday.

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Photographs taken by Lisa Y. Henderson, 1993.

Births Deaths Marriages, North Carolina, Other Documents, Paternal Kin, Photographs

Perhaps even the custom.

A Social Note: Miss Florence [sic: should read “Frances”] Ann Henderson married her first cousin, Israel H. Wynn. This relationship was very common in her youth, perhaps even the custom, she believes. Rev. R.B. Johns officiated at her marriage on December 12, 1908 in her parents’ home. Many friends and relatives attended including Val Simmons, Milford and Freddie Carter, Mrs. Eva Kornegay, and Mrs. Tina Hagans. In fact, there were so many guests that the floor of the house gave way under the weight of the people.

— from the souvenir booklet commemorating the 100th anniversary of the First Congregational Church, United States of Christ, Dudley NC, 1870-1970.

—–

Frances Ann “Frankie” Henderson was the daughter of John H. and Sarah Simmons Henderson. Israel Henderson Wynn was the son of John’s sister Hepsie Henderson and her husband, Washington F. “Frank” Wynn. Marriages among descendants of Wayne County’s free families of color were certainly the custom in the 50 years or so after the Civil War, and cousin marriages (if not first cousin) were concomitantly common.

Copy of photograph in possession of Lisa Y. Henderson.

Births Deaths Marriages, Free People of Color, North Carolina, Paternal Kin, Photographs

Edward & Susan Henderson Wynn.

Edward James Wynn (1838-1922) was the son of Gray Winn and Sarah “Sallie” Greenfield Winn. His wife, Susan Henderson Wynn (1854-1907), was the daughter of James H. Henderson and Louisa Armwood Henderson. They are buried in a small family cemetery near Dudley in southern Wayne County.

North Carolina, Oral History, Paternal Kin, Photographs

Going through the pea vines.

And David John, I don’t know what happened to him. And his wife. Well, now, David John come to Wilson and used to stay with us, and he worked in the factory. So I don’t know whatever become of them folks down there. And the girls that was all down there. ‘Cause we went down there — me and Mamie went down there — and stayed with David John’s sister Estelle and worked in green tobacco. And that’s where a mosquito bit me on my foot, and I scratched it, and, going through the pea vines, and the dew on ‘em, my foot swelled up so big I couldn’t walk on it. And so Uncle ‘Lias, their daddy, brought me back home to Wilson. Mamie stayed on down there, but I didn’t want to go back down there no more.

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My grandmother’s reminiscences about Uncle ‘Lias (pronounced something like “LAH-iss”) were one of my early clues about the breadth of the Henderson family. I knew he was not her mother’s brother, or even her grandmother’s brother, and I was determined to find out exactly what the connection was. In fact, Elias Lewis Henderson was not an uncle at all, but a cousin. Born about 1880 in southern Wayne County, he was the oldest son of James Henry Henderson, who was the brother of my great-great-great-grandfather Lewis Henderson. (James Henry also named his youngest son Lewis Henderson after his brother.)

Elias married first Ella Moore. Their children were: David John (1901, married Amelia Artis), Mary Estelle (1903, married Theodore Rowe), twins Anna Bell (married Willie Johnson) and Mae Bell (1905), James Henry (1906, married Bessie Hagans), Myrtie Mae (1907), Olivia (1909, married James Raynor and [unknown] Whitaker), and Ira Junior (1911, married May Bell Bryant and Betty Ellis). With his second wife, Sarah Edmundson, he had a son, Jazell Westly (1924, married Nancy).

Though my grandmother lost contact with David John and Mary Estelle, when she moved to Philadelphia in the late 1950s, she was reunited with their sister Anna Bell’s daughter Eunice Johnson Smith. Here, in the early ’60s, are Eunice’s daughter Wilma Smith, Eunice and my grandmother at a dinner at a Sheraton hotel in Philadelphia:

Births Deaths Marriages, Paternal Kin

Lucian J. Henderson, Sr.

Happy birthday, Uncle Lucian!

My father’s oldest brother, Lucian J. Henderson, Sr. (28 October 1926-19 March 2003).

Births Deaths Marriages, North Carolina, Other Documents, Paternal Kin

Keeping it in the family.

James N. Guess operated a funeral home that served Goldsboro, North Carolina’s black community for at least 40 years. (He also ran a barbershop for a half-century and, in the early years, a billiards and pool hall.) Guess’s father Matthew Guess, father-in-law Isham Smith, nephew Kennon Guess and son James N. Guess Jr. worked for or with him to build his business.

Goldsboro City Directory, 1916-17.

Hill’s Directory of Goldsboro, NC, 1950-51.

Not surprisingly, Guess provided services to members of the extended family of his wife, Annie Smith Guess, daughter of Isham and Nancy Henderson Smith. Among those he buried were:

James N. Guess was born 2 May 1882 in Goldsboro to Matthew and Martha Guess. He died 28 November 1957 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, after a lengthy illness.

Births Deaths Marriages, Migration, North Carolina

Pre-World War I Migration: HENDERSON.

Anna J. Henderson Simmons (Anna<James). Born 1852, Wayne County. After her marriage in 1871, she migrated with her husband Montreville Simmons to Chatham, Kent, Ontario, Canada, where his family had settled 20 years earlier. They appear there in the 1881 census, which records all of their children born in the US except the youngest two, born in Ontario in 1877 and 1879. By 1900, the family lived in Cass County, Indiana, where Anna died.

Caswell C. Henderson (Caswell<Lewis<James). Born 1865, Wayne County. In 1886, he was listed in the Raleigh NC city directory as a hotel porter. By 1893, when he married his first wife, he was living at 326 West 37^th Street in New York City. Other addresses at which he lived were: 47 West 66^th Street, Manhattan; and 247 West 143^rd, 901 Grant Avenue, 527 East 167^th, 446 West 163^rd, and 3777 Third Avenue, all in upper Manhattan or the Bronx. He died in Yonkers, Westchester County NY.

Julia “Molly” Henderson Holt (Julia<James). Born 1872, Wayne County. In 1902, Molly married Walter Holt in Randolph County NC. She listed her address as Julian NC, a small town in extreme southeast Guilford County. By 1910, the couple were living in Greensboro NC.

Fannie Wynn Price (Fannie<Susan<James. Born 1879, Wayne County. She married William Thomas E. Price, and their oldest son Richard was born in Newport News in 1902.

Richard G. Winn (Richard<Hepsie<James). Born 1881, Wayne County. In 1903, Richard married Rosetta Robinson in Wilmington, New Hanover County NC. Their addresses included 508 McRae Street and 222 South 13^th Street. Richard died in Wilmington in 1957.

Minnie Simmons Budd (Minnie<Ann Elizabeth<Lewis<James). Born 1887, Wayne County. Minnie was living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as early as 1906, when she gave birth to a son. She and her husband Jesse Budd apparently moved back and forth between Mount Olive NC and Philadelphia until the 1920s, when she seems to have settled there permanently.

Charles H. Henderson (Charles<John<James). Born 1893, Wayne County. He registered for World War I draft in Richmond, Virginia, listing 114 E. Leigh Street as his address. In 1920, the census recorded his address as 614 Baker Street, Richmond.

Daniel Simmons (Daniel<Ann Elizabeth<Lewis<James). Born 1895, Wayne County. Daniel is said to have worked in Oberlin, Ohio, circa 1912. He married in Wayne County in 1913 and moved his family to Rocky Mount NC about 1914. By 1920, they lived in Richmond, Virginia, and ten years later were in Philadelphia. By 1940, Daniel was living in New York NY. He died there in 1964.

North Carolina, Oral History, Paternal Kin, Photographs

Was it that long?

They are now swaddled in acid-free paper in an acid-free box: three coils of plaited hair. Two are narrow as fettucine (and nearly as flat after all this time), tapering through a curl to nothing; the first a deep, deep brown, the other sandy. The third braid is twice as long as the others and, at its thickest, the breadth of an infant’s forearm. If I place the cut end at the nape of my neck, the tip unfurls heavily to the seat behind me.

No visit to my grandmother was complete without her lifting a small green leatherette suitcase from atop a chifforobe in her bedroom. Underneath packets of photographs, which I also had to examine, she eased out the plastic bags preserving the hair cut from her own head (the great thick braid); her mother Bessie‘s (the thin dark brown one); and her mother’s first cousin, her namesake Hattie Mae (the blondeish plait.) Hattie Mae died in 1908 at the age of 13. Bessie died in 1911 at the age of 19. Her own hair she cut in the late 1950s, after enduring years of headaches from the relentless pressure it exerted when coiled atop her head. It was only the second time she’d cut it.

And so Mama was working at the factory, and I used to go up there and look at her. And so that’s when I first cut my hair. I went there, and the lady was asking Mama at the table where she worked to, and she didn’t say nothing to me, but she said, “Unh, who is that child with all of that long hair?” And she took one of my plaits and held it up. I had it in three plaits. I’ll never forget it. I had one down here used to come here. Yeah, it come down to below the shoulder. Like I plait it up, and it be from there. Two plaits here and then this one down across. And I always put that one behind my ear. ‘Cause I didn’t like it parted in the middle. Seem like it just wasn’t right in the middle. So I asked Mama ‘bout cutting my hair, could I cut my hair. ‘Cause everybody: “How come you don’t cut your hair? ‘Cause you’d look pretty in a bob.” I don’t know. I just wasn’t half combing it. And it was nappy. Like I’d go to try to comb it, and knots would be in there. And then I’d get mad with it. Then I’d take the scissors and clip that little piece off. And then all that other part would come off. And so I wondered, “Mama, could – ” “It’s your head. It’s your hair. I don’t care if you cut it off.” And so one day, a fellow stayed up there on Vick Street was a barber downtown, a colored fellow, Charlie Barnes or whatever his name is. So he passed there one day, and I asked him, “Would you cut my hair for me?” And he said, “Yeah.” Said, “You come on down to the shop.” And I said, “Where is the shop?” And he went on and tried to tell me, and then he stopped there one day, and he told me, he said, “You say you want to get your hair cut?” He said, “You got too pretty a hair to cut.” And I said, “Yeah, but I can’t half comb it.” He said, “Well, anytime you want to come on down there, I’ll cut it for you, if it’s all right with your mama. You ask your mama?” I said, “Yeah, she allowed me to cut it.” So sho ‘nough, I went around there one Saturday morning, went down there. And so, he turned around and cut off my plaits on both sides ‘cause I had two plaits there. He cut them off, and then he put some kind of stuff on it and then somehow fluffed it all up. Awww, I thought I was something. I reckon I was ‘bout 12, 13 years old. After then I cut it off in a boyish bob.

I got a plait of Hattie Mae’s hair and a plait of my mama’s, Bessie’s hair, and then mine. I was looking at that the other day, and I looked at it, and I said, “Huh, it was that long?” Rudy, Rudy Farmer took that picture. ‘Cause I – He saw my hair. I was standing there with my housecoat on. I still got that thing now. And: “Goodness! I didn’t know your hair was that long!” We were staying on Reid Street. And he said, “I’d sure like to have a picture of that.” And I said, “Well, you got a Kodak?” And he said, “Yeah! You’d let me take a picture?” I said, “Yeah.” And so he went home and got it and took a picture of it. I was standing up in one and sitting down in one.

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

Two sisters.

We would visit A’nt Nancy in Goldsboro. Her oldest daughter married the undertaker, Jim Guess. And her youngest daughter, me and her was the same age. Bessie Lee. And Mama used to go over there to see A’nt Ella. And A’nt Ella stayed up there on that other little street back there, but her and Nancy were sisters. Two sisters. So, I said, ‘I’m going over there, and they all never come and see me or nothing.’ So I stopped going, and after Mama died, I just forgot about it. ‘Cause they ain’t never bothered nothing about it. And then too, they seemed like they were cool. They wasn’t friendly enough. Like to say, if you’re family and have something to talk about, or go talk about anything, just make up something to say. Act like you like ‘em whether you did or not, while they was around. So I stopped going over there. ‘Cause Bessie Lee …. Let’s see, the last time I was over there, she had gone some place and so I didn’t get to see her that time. So I said, she didn’t never want to come to Wilson to see me, and I had always asked her ‘bout coming to Wilson, and she said she was coming over there sometime, but she never did. So I just stopped going to Goldsboro, too. I don’t know what happened to them.

Nancy, born about 1865, and Louella Henderson, born about 1876, were daughters of James and Louisa Armwood Henderson. In 1881, Nancy married Isham Smith, freeborn son of Milly Smith and her enslaved husband Peter Ward. They settled in the Harrell Town section of Goldsboro, where Isham worked as a wagon driver and then an undertaker. Their children were: Annie Smith Guess (1883), Oscar Smith (1884), Furney Smith (1886), Ernest Smith (1888), Elouise Marie Smith (1890), Johnnie Smith (1891), Mary E. Smith Southerland (1894), James Smith (1896), Willie Smith (1899), Effie May Smith Stanfield (1904), and Bessie Lee Smith (1911). (Was Bessie really a daughter? Or a granddaughter?) Isham died in 1914, and Nancy married Patrick Diggs four years later. After Patrick’s death, Nancy restored her first husband’s surname. She died in Goldsboro in 1944 after suffering a fractured pelvis from a fall from her bed.

Louella Henderson is more difficult to trace. My grandmother recalled that Ella was married twice, the first time to a King, and moved from Goldsboro to a city in the North Carolina Piedmont, perhaps Gastonia. Wayne County census records reveal an Adam and Ella King, but their marriage license lists Ella’s maiden name as Herring. An Ella Wilson witnessed Nancy Henderson Smith’s second marriage, but the Ella Wilson (wife of Ed) listed in the 1930 census is much too young. Though she must have lived into the 1920s at least, I can find no certain trace of Ella after the 1880 census. [Update here.]

[P.S. The continuing connection between Nancy Henderson Smith and her siblings’ families is evidenced by the frequency with which her son-in-law James Guess was called upon to handle their funerals. Nonetheless, knowledge of the connection seems to have dropped off sharply after her death. I have met only one person — my grandmother — who knew that undertaker James Guess (whom people had heard of) had married into the family or that any Smiths in Goldsboro were their kin. And I’ve been unable to locate any Smith descendants.]

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

For 15 years she lived in Canada.

Obituary of Anna J. Henderson Simmons, daughter of James and Louisa Armwood Henderson.

Logansport, Indiana, Pharos-Times, 18 June 1906.

Scuffalong: Genealogy.

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