Tag Archives: Henderson

Births Deaths Marriages, Other Documents, Paternal Kin

Misinformation Monday, no. 7.

The seventh in a series of posts revealing the fallability of records, even “official” ones.

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How does this even happen?

This is Minnie Simmons Budd‘s death certificate:

SIMMONS -- Minnie Budd Death Cert

Difficult to read, but here are the pertinent details: Born 7 May 1892 (actually, some years before, but okay); in Dudley NC (check!); to Hillary Simmons (check!); and Ludie Henderson — SCREEEEEECH!

What?

My grandmother spent considerable time with Minnie, who wanted to adopt her after her mother Bessie died. (Minnie’s two children, boys, did not survive childhood.) Bessie‘s mother was Loudie (or Ludie) Henderson. Minnie’s mother, on the other hand, was Loudie’s much older sister Ann Elizabeth Henderson.

Could I be mistaken? (“I” really meaning my grandmother.) Was Minnie some sort of secret love child of Loudie Henderson and her sister’s husband Hillary? And, if so, why would Minnie’s husband Jesse Budd blow up this fallacy in her death certificate? (Jesse was also from Dudley and presumably not only knew his mother-in-law’s name, but knew her personally in his youth.)

The answer, with as much certainty as I can muster absent DNA tests, is no. The biggest stumbling block to Loudie-as-Minnie’s mother is Minnie’s birth year. As noted above, Minnie was not actually born in 1892. The 1900 and 1910 censuses would be most helpful for pinpointing her age, but I can’t find her in either. Still, she married Jesse Budd in 1904 and most certainly was not a 12 year-old bride. In fact, their license lists her age as 17 (and her mother as Annie Simmons.) That would push her birth year back to 1887. The 1920 census yields 1884. Whether 1884 or 1887 or between, Loudie is unlikely to have been Minnie’s mother as Loudie was not born until 1874.

As ever with misinformation enshrined in vital records, there is no ready explanation for Jesse’s provision of Loudie’s name as Minnie’s mother. The confusion occasioned by grief is as good a guess as any. Moreover, Jesse was an elderly man himself and would live just six more years after his wife’s death.

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Births Deaths Marriages, North Carolina, Paternal Kin, Photographs, Religion

This Book was give to Sarah Jacobs.

Sarah Henderson Jacobs Silver left two Bibles. One, a gift from her second husband, Rev. Joseph Silver, had originally belonged to his first wife, Felicia Hawkins Silver. The other passed through several hands before arriving in mine.

There are three inscriptions inside the front cover. “This book was give to Sarah Jacobs from Ganny Caroline 1920 of Wilson NC” — that’s my grandmother’s handwriting. Then, faintly: “Present by Mrs Caroline Vick of Wilson N.C. present in May 18th year 1904.” Then: “Gladys OKelley book give to her by Charity Pitt keep as long as I live no one to take it a way from me year 1913 Dec 23.”

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Who are these folk?

Carolina Williamston Vick was born in Newton County, Georgia in 1844. How or why she came 425 miles north to settle in Wilson, North Carolina, may never be known, but a clue might lie in her maiden name. “Williamson” was a prominent southwest Wilson County family that included slaveholders. Did some migrate — or sell their slaves — South? In any case, Carolina was in Wilson by 1880 when she is listed in a household headed by 28 year-old Robert Vick. They are married and have three children, Alice, 18, Willie, 15, and Cora Vick, 3. (It appears that the older two were Robert’s step-children.) By 1900, Carolina was living in the 700 block of Green Street (around the corner from the Elba Street house) and spent the reminder of her life living with a rotating series of children, grandchildren, in-laws and lodgers and serving as a midwife to women in the community. “Granny Caroline” died in July 1925, when my grandmother was 15 years old.

carolina Vick

As for Gladys O’Kelly (or Gladys O. Kelly), the nine year-old that so vigorously assorted her ownership in 1913 — see below.

The Bible’s frontispiece introduces another owner:

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Unfortunately, her name is too common to begin to identify her.

As was custom in good quality Bibles of the era, the book’s text is halved by a shiny section of maps and illustrations and charts. My grandmother filled blank pages and the backs of leaves with the births and deaths and marriages of her family, her handwriting gradually shifting from a barely recognizable, youthful, curlicued version to the one I know so well.

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The “Births” page introduces another family. Or maybe families. Gladys O’Kelly is there, and there are two Carolina Vick entries.

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The others seem to be members of an extended family I found in the 1880 census of Hillsboro, Orange County, North Carolina: Yunk Strayhorn (45), his wife Patsey (36), son Isaac (18), son-in-law Louis Pitt (25) and daughter Charity Pitt (23), children Rose (24), Jane (17), Henry and Reuben (13), Sandy (23) and Clara (21), and grandchildren Richard (3), Adeline (12) and Margaret (9). (Lewis Pitt married Charity Strayhorn in Edgecombe County in 1872 and moved to Wilson.) Little Gladys O’Kelly? She seems to have been the daughter of Rose Strayhorn’s daughter Gatsey and her husband, Reubin O’Kelly, both of Orange County.

And then there are Madison Perry, son of Carolina Vick’s daughter Cora, who married Isham Perry, and the Shiverses:

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IMG_4935I’ve been unable to find all the Shiverses, and what I have found doesn’t align cleanly with the dates inscribed here (for example, John and Nicey Shivers, born about 1872 and 1880, are listed in the 1900 census with six-month-old daughter Kizzy), but this appears to be a family that lived in Greenville, Pitt County at the turn of the 20th century.

I don’t hope to be able to reconstruct how this Bible bounced all over eastern North Carolina like this before coming to rest with my family, which has had it nearly 100 years. I share it here in hopes that descendants of the other families who cherished it will find themselves in its pages.

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Free People of Color, North Carolina, Other Documents, Paternal Kin, Photographs, Rights

Jurors and judges of election.

As tax-paying landowners, many African-American men in Wayne County, North Carolina, in the 1870s were called alongside white men to fulfill their civic duties. Here are two entries from Superior Court Minute Book 2:

ImageNapoleon Hagans of Nahunta township was appointed a judge of elections.

ImageMy great-great-great-grandfather Lewis Henderson drew jury duty for the first week of the next term of the superior court.

Superior Court Minute Book 2, Wayne County Register of Deeds Office, Goldsboro, North Carolina.

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Births Deaths Marriages, North Carolina, Paternal Kin, Photographs

Carrie Henderson Boseman Grantham.

My grandmother met none of Mama Sarah‘s sisters, but she know of them. Loudie, of course, her own grandmother. And Ann Elizabeth, mother of Minnie and Daniel and Dollie Simmons. And Carrie. Who was a little more elusive because she had no children that my grandmother knew of.  She was only a name Sarah mentioned.

I managed to find a few references to her. The earliest is in the Records of the Congregational Church of Christ in Dudley, vol. II, in which Carrie Henderson appears in membership rolls for 1886 with sisters Suddie, Lutie and Sarah Henderson.  (“Suddie,” or Mary Susan Henderson, was not one of the great-aunts my grandmother knew.) Next to Carrie’s name are these notations: “Bowsman” and “absent.”

“Bowsman” was “Boseman,” actually, the surname of the man Carrie married a year later. Wayne County NC marriage records show that, on 25 June 1887, George Boseman, 24, “col’d,” and Carrie Henderson, 18, col’d, applied for a marriage license.  A.T. Dove, M.G. performed their ceremony on 29 June 1887, in Brogden, before Dortch Winn, Jno. Winn, and Frank Parker.  (They apparently were not wed in Carrie’s church, as Dove was not pastor there.)  The marriage was childless, and probably ended with George’s death.

On 21 Dec 1899, Carrie Boseman, 28, married Arch Grantham, 48, colored, in Brogden township. R.B. Johns, M.G. (of the Congregational Church) officiated and W.D. Grantham and Georgiana Winn witnessed.  The family appears in the 1900 census of Grantham township, Wayne County: farmer Arch Grantham, wife Carrie (29), and (his) children [illegible], Emma, Annie, Barfield A., and Lula A.  Carrie reported 0 of 0 children living.

This is where things stood until a couple of years ago, when I ran across B.B., a descendant of Archie Barfield Grantham (1851-1915) and his first wife, Mary Adeline Raynor (1855-1897). In 1906, Arch married his third wife, B.B. told me — so Carrie, still childless, died within five years or so of their wedding. It was nice to be able to round out the thread of her life in that way, but there was more. For many years, a portrait hung on his grandparents’ wall, a hand-tinted, charcoal-enhanced photograph of Archie … and Carrie.

Carrie & Archie Grantham

 

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

Remembering Mother Dear.

I had pneumonia twice.  The first day I went down to Graded School, that day it rained.  I come back – there was a hole in my shoe, and I slopped in all the water and got my feet wet.  That’s what Mama said, anyhow, and I taken with a fever.  

If I got wet – when I went to Graded School, it rained, and I slopped in all the water coming back from there.  Had a hole in my shoe.  Had pasteboard in there.  And then I’d go to sneezing and coughing.  And so Mama said, “You know you oughtn not to got wet!”  Well, how was I gon help from getting wet?  Had to come from school!  So that was the first year I went to school.  I remember that.  And I was sick that whole rest of the year.  I mean, wasn’t strong enough to go down to Graded School – she wouldn’t let me go down there.  So I stayed home, and Mama put all them old rags, that old flannel cloth, and she’d put it in red onions and hog lard.  And I had pneumonia.  And they was sitting up with me.  Said I hadn’t spoken in three days.  And so that old clock where Annie Bell took, it was up there on the mantel, it struck two o’clock.  Mama was sitting on one side of the stove, and Papa on the other.  So I said, when the clock struck, I said, “It’s two o’clock, ain’t it, Mama?”  And they thought I was dying.  So they had been sitting up with me.  So I think didn’t think nothing ‘bout it.  I went on back to sleep.  I didn’t know nothing ‘bout it.  Said I had double pneumonia.  So Mama got – honey, I had to wear a piece of cloth up here on my chest, one on the back, with Vick’s salve and hog grease or whatever that stuff was, mixed all up together and pinned it to my undershirt.  

And I thought about it, with Bessie dead — she died when I was eight months old.  And Mama Sarah took me as a baby and brought me to Wilson.  And I was the only child there.  Well, that’s how come, look like Papa, he felt sorry for me, I reckon.  Her husband did, and I called him the only Papa I knew.  So they all – I was always sickly and puny and: “Give her anything she wanted,” that’s what Dr. Williams – white doctor – so he said, “She can’t live nohow.”  And that’s when I had the pneumonia.  And so I didn’t want nothing but water.  So, “Well, give her all the water she want ‘cause she can’t live nohow.”  But I fooled ‘em!  Dr. Williams’ gone, Mama’s gone, all of ‘em, and I’m sitting right here!” 

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The mantel at 303 Elba Street, 2014.

And for most of my life, she was right there indeed. Every summer, when we drove up from North Carolina to spend a week with her in Philadelphia. Every winter, when she came down to spend the holidays with us and my aunt’s family and her sister. Later, when I was in law school and grad school, I spent my breaks with her, and I even lived with her a short bit when I moved to Philadelphia. I will regret till I’m gone that I did not visit her more often after I left, but when I did I had the good sense to record her stories. Her death was my first real loss, the one that broke the spell, and it pangs me almost as much now as it ever did. I miss this woman.

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Remembering Hattie Mae Henderson Ricks (6 June 1910-15 January 2001), my Mother Dear.

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

Misinformation Monday, no. 5.

The fifth in a series of posts revealing the fallability of records, even “official” ones.

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HENDERSON_--_Annie_Simmons_Death_Cert

What’s right with this death certificate? Annie Simmons‘ name — more or less, as she seems to have been called Anna in her youth. Presumably, her date and place of death. Her birthday may be right, though the birth year is probably three or four years late. She was certainly female.

But she was not white.

Annie Simmons was mixed-race, described as “mulatto” in early life and “colored” (and even “African”) thereafter. She is consistently classified in census records in two states (North Carolina and Indiana) and a province (Ontario), as well as her marriage license. The local newspaper avidly carried news of her husband Montraville Simmons’ antics and was quick to point out his non-white status.  (She was certainly married, if unhappily.)

(By the way, Basedow’s disease is more commonly known as Graves’ disease, or hyperthyroidism.)

Annie was probably 54, rather than 50, and she was certainly born in North Carolina, but not to “James Harrison” and “Eliza Henderson.” Rather, as is clearly set forth in her application for a marriage license in Duplin County NC, her parents were James Henderson and Eliza Armwood. Montraville Simmons probably had not seen his in-laws in more than 40 years when he gave this information. His errors are perhaps excusable, but there they are, enshrined as “fact” and forever leading researchers astray.

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Free People of Color, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

Sisters?

The case for Nancy Henderson and Patsey Henderson as sisters is circumstantial, but strongly suggestive.

(1) With a handful of exceptions, they and individuals who appear to be their children are the only known free “colored” Hendersons in Onslow County, North Carolina, in the early 1800’s. I have not found record evidence of any colored Hendersons prior to 1809. (The exceptions: three Henderson girls apprenticed circa 1810 who may have been too old to have been Patsey or Nancy’s children. I have not been able to trace them forward from their apprenticeships.)

(2) Nancy and Patsey are named in Onslow County court records as mothers of children bound out as apprentices, and Nancy may have apprenticed two of Patsey’s. (Between February, 1821, and November, 1824, seven Henderson children were shifted from master to master nine times.  In the 25 years between 1809 and 1834, 14 Hendersons — sisters, brothers, cousins, nieces, nephews — appeared before the bench on 17 occasions.  A group of white families dominated the apprenticeship of Henderson children — Richard, Adam, and Houston Trott; Jesse and Jason Gregory; James Glenn sr. and jr.; Lewis, William, and Uzy Mills; John and Steven Humphrey, William and Jesse Alphin.  I know no familial relationship between Nancy or Patsey and any of these families, but Millses gave evidence concerning Nancy’s parentage.)

(3) Nancy’s children (Durant, Willis, Miranda, Patsey, Gatsey, Minerva, William and Betsey) and Patsey’s children (James and Bryant) were roughly the same age and were occasionally apprenticed together.

(4) Several names recur among the grandchildren of both women. Nancy’s son Durant Dove (alias Henderson) had children named Lewis James, Julia, Susan, Eliza, Edward and Nancy. Patsey’s son James Henderson had children named James, Lewis, Susan, Julia, Edward and Nancy. Durant reared his family in Onslow and Lenoir Counties NC. James reared his in Onslow and Sampson. James left Onslow in the 1850s. Despite the physical distance and probable lack of contact, both men drew from the same pool of names for children born well into the 1870s.

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Births Deaths Marriages, Letters, Migration, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

I guess this is what I was going to hear.

Sunday Jan. 9. 38

My Dear Hattie

I received your telegram to-day.  1 P.M.  it was certainly a shock to me you & family certainly have my deepest sympathy & also from my family.

I did not know your mother was sick you must write later and let me know about her illness.

It is so strange I have been dreaming of my husband Caswell so much for the past two weeks he always tells me that has something to tell me & that he feels so well so I guess this is what I was going to hear about your mother.

I wish it was so that I could come to you & family but times are so different now seems as if we cannot be prepared to meet emergencies any more but you must know that my heart & love is with you & family.

I am just writing to you a short note now will write you again.  Let me hear from you when you get time to write

From

Your aunt in law

Carrie L. Borrero

322 E. 100th St.  N. Y City

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There is no envelope with this letter, which I found after my grandmother’s death in 2001. Carrie Borrero was Caswell C. Henderson’s second wife.  My grandmother never mentioned Carrie traveling to Wilson when Caswell visited, though she seems to have met her at least once during a visit to New York.

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