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.

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.

Maternal Kin, Other Documents, Photographs, Virginia

Julia Holmes Jackson.

In the late 1980s, when I was in the early clutches of my genealogical addiction, I often made copies of old pictures by photographing them through a microfilter screwed onto my Canon AE1. I spent an afternoon at my great-aunt Julia Allen Maclin’s house, sifting through a box of faded sepia-toned prints and gasping with delight as she identified Holmeses and Allens. Two of the many I copied that day were small oval portraits of the same woman. In one, she faces the camera nearly head-on, her hair puffed into bouffant tied with a dark bow. In the second, she has donned a great fluffy disk of a hat and tilts her head to the right. Strong side-lighting revealed a tiny feature I recognized immediately – an epicanthic fold at the corner of her left eye. My grandfather (her nephew) had them, and my mother does, and I do, too, though mine are a mere suggestion of her prominent flaps. This was Julia Ellen Holmes, my great-grandmother’s sister and the woman for whom my great-aunt was named.

I don’t know a lot about Julia. Though just a child at the time, she is not listed in her parents’ household in the 1880 census of Charles City County, Virginia. The first record of her that I’ve found is a deed of transfer filed 30 December 1899, at Charles City County Courthouse, from the estate of Jasper Holmes to Mary H. Allen and her husband John C. Allen and Martha H. Smith and her husband Jesse Smith, all of Newport News VA, and Julia E. Holmes, unmarried, of Charles City County, Jasper’s heirs at law.

Just months later, Julia (or a woman that appears to be her) is listed in the 1900 census of Manhattan, New York City, at 208 W. 72nd Street. There, Virginia-born Julia Holmes (born February 1880, which is not accurate if this is the right woman) lived in a boarding house that included three other servants, two waiters and a cook. Headed by 39 year-old Mary A. Phillips, the tenants included blacks, whites, southerners, northerners, a Cuban and an Irishman.

(Or is this my Julia? In the 1900 census of Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania: Julia Holmes, 17, Virginia-born servant, in the household of ice company treasurer Josiah A. McKee at 1838 Mount Vernon Avenue.)

The Holmes sisters sold off their father’s property over the next ten years, filing deeds of sale in 1905 and 1910. In the final transaction, on 10 Jan 1910, Mary Allen of Newport News and Julia Holmes of the City of New York, children and only heirs of Jasper Holmes (Martha Holmes Smith had died) filed a deed of transfer for property sold to James Clark for $300.

In the 1910 census of Manhattan, on Washington Square (North), Virginia-born Julia Holmes is listed as a servant in the household of Philo Hager, who worked in wholesale dry goods. By 1920, she had moved across the river to East Orange, which is where my great-aunt remembered her living. The censustaker found Julia Holmes at 1 Waters Avenue, listed as a servant in the household of B.C. Fenwick. Her birthplace is given as New Jersey; her parents’ as Virginia; her age as 29. Only the middle statistic is correct.

I have not found Julia Holmes in either the 1930 or 1940 censuses and assumed that she died sometime before World War II. Certainly, my great-aunt never spoke of her as if she had lived a long time.

However.

When I found my great-grandmother’s obituary in a March 1961 edition of the Daily Press, there, among the survivors, was “sister, Mrs. Julia Jackson of Orange NJ.” And then, when my cousin M., daughter of my great-aunt Nita Allen Wilkerson, sent me scans of a bunch of photos she found in an album that had belonged to Julia Allen Maclin, I found this:

I can’t see the flaps, but I’m certain: great-GREAT-aunt Julia.

(So, when, in fact, did she die? Where was she buried? Who was Mr. Jackson? Did she have children?)

North Carolina, Oral History, Paternal Kin

The link.

As a daughter often is, in the early 20th century Sarah H. Jacobs Silver was the linchpin of Lewis and Mag Henderson’s family. Death and migration had forced in wedges. Sarah set her broad back against them. She was in Wilson with her sister Loudie’s son and grandchildren; her brother Lucian was in Dudley; and brother Caswell in New York. Sister Ann Elizabeth Henderson Simmons died leaving children, but Carrie Henderson Boseman left none behind. Sarah maintained links between them and across generations, made sure her aged parents were cared for, and, later, when Lucian was failing, saw to it that he and his sickly wife ate:

Mama Sarah’d fix dinner and send it down to Dudley on the train. The man that run the whatchacallit, engine? Up there, where stokes the fire or whatever is on the train. He would take it. She would tell what day she was gon send it. And so somebody’d be up there to the train station to get it. And the train, ‘cause a lot of time the train didn’t stop. But anyway, the man, the conductor, he would pull the thing, whatever, for the train to stop long enough for him to drop off this package. And that’s the way Mama sent food down there to Uncle Lucian and A’nt Susie.

Though her mother was dead, and her grandmother, and her great-grandmother, and though she lived a long day’s journey away from her birthplace – because of Sarah my grandmother knew her family. Visited Uncle Lucian, A’nt Nancy, A’nt Ella, Cousin Henry and his wife Nora, and Cousin Dolly in Wayne County. Uncle Caswell in New York. Cousin Min in Philadelphia, and Min’s brother Daniel in Baltimore. Lived for a while with A’nt Mollie in Greensboro. Worked in tobacco with Cousin Elias and his children David John and Estelle. She didn’t always know exactly how she was kin to all these Hendersons, and over the years the bonds faded, but she knew they were her people. With her stories as blueprints, I was able to rebuild.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Oral History, Other Documents, Vocation

Irving Houser gets a McNeely Girl.

Me: Okay, and Emma, she was up in Bayonne.

My grandmother: This man went up there in his young years. I think he had an eye on her. People used to say that the men — all of Mama and her sisters were supposed to have been catches, you know. They were good-looking women and everything, and they just said the men said it didn’t matter which one it was so long as they got one of them.

Me: One of the McNeely girls?

My grandmother: McNeelys. Mm-hmm.

Me: So he came back and married Aunt Emma and carried her to New Jersey. To Bayonne — oh! Irving Houser, Sr.

——

Irving L. Houser was born in 1885 in Iredell County to Alexander “Dan” and Lucy Houser. He and Emma McNeely were married 6 September 1910 in Statesville. The couple migrated to Bayonne, New Jersey, and settled on Andrew Street.

Six years later, in a span of three days, Irving appeared twice in New York City newspapers. First:

OLD JOBS OFFERED BAYONNE STRIKERS

Standard Oil Co. Tells Them They May Come Back, But Without Increase of Wages.

MRS. CRAM PLANS NEW VISIT.

Says She Will Consult a Lawyer and Won’t Be Barred — Federal Conciliators at Work.

The Standard Oil Company refused yesterday to grant the wage increases demanded by employees whose strike has tied up practically every big Plant in the Constable Hook section of Bayonne, N.J. for more than a week, but offered to take the strikers back at the old wage scale whenever the men wanted to resume work. The Committee of Ten, which learned these terms from George B. Hennessey, General Superintendent of the Bayonne plant, endeavored to report to the body of strikers. The police prevented them because no police permit to hold a mass meeting had been requested, but one was issued for a meeting this morning, at which the strikers will decide whether to accept or decline the terms.

…

Pending today’s meeting, the strikers were quiet yesterday. Early in the morning there had been some disorder at Avenue E and Twenty-fourth Street, bringing a squad of policemen, who fired as many more. They caught Irving Houser of 92 Andrew Street, an employee of the Edible Products Company, which plant is near the Tidewater Oil Company, and locked him when they found a revolver in his pocket.

New York Times, 18 Oct 1916.

Then,

Bayonne, N.J.

Miss Viola Houser, of Orange, N.J., visited her brother and sister, Mr. and Mrs. Irving Houser, Andrew Street, on Sunday, October 10.

New York Age, 21 Oct 1916.

Amid social unrest and social calls, Irving and Emma had three children: Mildred Wardenur (1913), Henry A. (1915) and Irving L. Houser Jr. (1920). For many years, Irving worked in various jobs in an oil refinery, but by time he registered for the “Old Man’s Draft” of 1942, he was employed at Bayonne City Hall. By then, he had purchased a house at 421 Avenue C, a site now occupied by Bayonne Giant Laundromat. Irving Houser Sr. died in 1962.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Photographs

Death of a colored man.

“Death of Colored Man.”

John Colvert, aged 70 years, a respected colored man, died Thursday night at his home on Green Street. Funeral arrangements have not been made as he has relatives in the west who will attend.

Statesville Landmark, 10 Oct 1921.

This, of course, is John Walker Colvert, son of Walker Colvert. But who in the world were the “relatives in the west”??? His mysterious sisters and their progeny? And what was “the west”? Ohio? Missouri? California?

John Colvert was buried in Green Street cemetery, a square, three-acre concavity surprisingly devoid of markers in the heart of black Statesville. His and his wife Addie’s tombstones stand at the edge of South Elm Street, near that of his daughter Selma, and they are the only Colvert grave markers I have been able to locate.

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.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Virginia

John C. Allen arrives.

John Christopher Allen made his way down-river to the newly established city of Newport News around 1899, a thick-set country boy with dark curly hair. In April of that year, he had purchased ten acres in Turkey Trot from A.H. Drewry and wife, but he did not hang around to farm it. What pulled — or pushed — him out of Charles City County is not precisely clear, but he would never turn back.

Newport News was a boomtown at the turn of the 20th century. The extension of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad down the peninsula, bringing coal from West Virginia for world-wide transport, was followed shortly by the development of the shipyard for which the city is still famous.

In June of 1900, the census taker found John Allen sharing a boarding house run by Henry Burrell with several single men. The house was in the crowded East End, near the heart of industrial Newport News. John was working as a shipyard laborer, and he was illiterate. That year, on the day after Christmas, the 24 year-old son of Graham and Mary Allen, married 23 year-old Mary A. Holmes, daughter of Jasper and Matilda Holmes, at New Vine Baptist Church in Charles City County. They returned to Newport News to start their 50-plus years together.

Letters, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

I pray for the whole family.

A few months after my grandmother passed away in January 2001, my father, mother, sister and I converged on her little rowhouse at 5549 Wyalusing Avenue, Philadelphia, to clean it out. In a drawer of a large steel desk in the basement, I found a packet of papers. In them, a letter I’d never known existed, from my great-great-grandmother Loudie‘s brother Caswell C. Henderson to their sister, Sarah H. Jacobs Silver, who reared my grandmother.

Though he does not say so directly, Caswell seems to have been responding to the news of the death of Sarah’s husband in early July. She has asked him to come home, for a visit or perhaps permanently, but he cannot, pleading health and finances. He is hopeful, though, that soon they will be together to “help one another.” He expresses the importance of his family (if not his wife, who garners no mention) by sending greetings to his great-nieces and inquiring after Minnie Simmons Budd, daughter of his and Sarah’s deceased sister Ann Elizabeth Henderson Simmons. Of course, while “prayers are wonderful when said in all sincerity from the heart,” the prayers of his friends could not keep Caswell forever, and he died 16 January 1927.

Maternal Kin, Virginia

Matilda & Dorothy Whirley.

I called her cold, admittedly. Never could she have expected to pick up the phone to a call from her great-uncle’s great-granddaughter. Still, I’ve made lots of these kinds of calls in my life. Dorothy Whirley was decidedly more guarded than most and had a little edge in her voice that sounded almost irritated. She could not deny me though, for what slick stranger could pull names and dates out of Charles City County like that?

Dorothy was the daughter of Matilda Whirley and granddaughter of Emma Allen Whirley, my great-grandfather’s sister. Dorothy could not, or would not, tell me much, except to confirm that Emma, her husband and children had migrated to Baltimore, where she continued to live. Her mother, to whom she had been very close, had died not too many years before our connection, and she seemed somewhat estranged from her remaining kin. She knew of John Allen Sr., but had little more to say about him than that he held himself apart from — thought himself better than — his half-siblings because of his light skin. Our conversation foundered, and I hung up with a promise to send her a family tree. I never got around to it, and she died in 1999. I have not been able to track down any other living Whirleys, but have found small traces of Dorothy and her mother.

The Baltimore Afro-American, 26 December 1959.

Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Tag Archives: migration