Free People of Color, Land, North Carolina, Photographs

Napoleon Hagans’ house.

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.

Births Deaths Marriages, North Carolina, Other Documents

Aunt Jane and the alligator.

While perusing the November 2001 issue of Trees, the publication of the Wilson County Genealogical Society, I ran across a previously unnoticed article about Jane Sauls and her daughters and their encounter with an alligator on their farm near Stantonsburg. (“Unnoticed” in that I’d read it years ago, but not appreciated what I was reading.) Jane was a first cousin to my great-great-great-grandfather, Adam T. Artis (1831-1919).

Jane Lane Sauls was born circa 1842 in Greene County NC. She died on 16 Dec 1928 in Stantonsburg township, Wilson County, North Carolina. She was one of several children of Sylvania Artis, a free woman of color, and her husband Guy Lane, an enslaved man, but is not found in the 1850 or 1860 censuses.

In the 1870 census of Nahunta township, Wayne County, farm laborer John Sauls, 35, wife Jane, 27, and children Mary, 3, and Silvany, 1, are listed with Trecinda Barnes, 20, Jane Barnes, 7, and Edwin Barnes, 1. No marriage record for Jane and John has been located, and their relationship to the Barneses is unknown.

The 1880 census of Nahunta township, Wayne County, shows farmer John Sauls, 45, wife Jane, 36, daughters Mary, 12, Silvany, 9, Anner, 7, and Lucy, 6, plus Jane’s sister Fanny Lane, 14. (Sister? Really? I’d bet niece.)

On 30 Nov 1894, J.W. Coley applied for a marriage license for Morrison Artis of Wayne County, 50, colored, son of Guy Coley and Sylvania Coley, both dead, and Jane Farrior of Wayne County, 35, colored, of unnamed parents, both dead. (This is the only instance of Coley as a surname for Guy.) The ceremony was performed by D.F. Ormond, Justice of the Peace, on 6 Dec 1894 at John Sauls’ house.in Nahunta township, before B.W. Best, John Sauls, and J. Reid. Morrison Artis was Jane Lane Sauls’ brother. Some of the siblings adopted their mother’s surname, Artis; others used their father’s, Lane.

The 1900 census of Nahunta township, Wayne County, shows John Sauls, wife Jane, daughters Mary and Sylvania Sauls, and “grandchildren” Louvenia (Apr 1883), Henry (Oct 1885) and John Lane (Oct 1886). In fact, these children were probably the children of Jane’s brother Alford Lane.

The 1910 census of Nahunta township, Wayne County, shows John Sauls, 76, wife Jane, 56, Mary, 38, Sylvany, 36, Anna, 33, and Snobe, 10, plus niece Louvenia Lane, 23, and boarder Freeman Swinson,14. Anna reported that she was divorced; Snobe was her son. John B. Sauls, alias Snow B. Nobles, died in 1925. His father was Columbus Nobles. Freeman Swinson was the son of Jane’s sister Mariah Artis Swinson.

The 1920 census of Nahunta township, Wayne County NC shows Anna Sauls, 45, widowed, sharing a household with her sisters Sylvania, 46, and Mary, 49, widowed mother Jane, 76, and cousin Levenia Sauls, 28.

Jane Lane Sauls died 16 Dec 1928 in Stantonsburg township, Wilson County, of paralysis due to hypertension and cerebral hemorrhage. Her death certificate reported that she was born in 1842 in Greene County NC to Guy Lane and Sylvania Artis, both of Greene County, and she was the widow of John Sauls. She was buried 17 Dec 1928, Union Grove cemetery, Wayne County, by C.E. Artis, Wilson NC. (C.E., son of Adam Artis, was her cousin.) The informant was Anna Sauls, Rt. 6 Box 94, Stantonsburg.

Anna Sauls died 20 Dec 1950 in Stantonsburg township, Wayne County, of cerebral hemorrhage. Her death certificate reports that she was a widow and was born 1 Jan 1878 in Wayne County to John Sauls and Jane Lane. She was buried 23 Dec 1950, Union Grove cemetery, Wayne County NC. The informant was Louvenia Sauls, R#2 Box 300, Stantonsburg NC.

Sylvania Sauls died 23 Oct 1957 in Stantonsburg township, Wilson County, of cerebral hemorrhage. Her death certificate reports that she was about 87 years old and was born in Wayne County NC to John Sauls and Jane Lane. She was buried 28 Oct 1957 in Union Grove cemetery. The informant was Louvenia Sauls.

Mary Sauls died 29 Dec 1960 in Fremont township, Wayne County, of cerebral hemorrhage. [Did all these women really die of strokes, or was that a default diagnosis?] Her death certificate reports that she was born 3 Sep 1861 in Wayne County to Johnnie Sauls and Jane Lane. Mary was buried 3 Jan 1961, Union Grove cemetery, Wayne County. The informant was Anna Ray, Rt. 2 Box 143, Fremont NC.

Births Deaths Marriages, North Carolina, Paternal Kin, Photographs

John H. & Sarah Simmons Henderson.

John Henry Henderson, son of James and Louisa Armwood Henderson, married Sarah Elizabeth Simmons, daughter of Bryant and Elizabeth Wynn Simmons, in about 1886. The couple remained in the Dudley area their entire lives and reared three children — Frances, Charles Henry and Henry Lee — to adulthood. John died of pulmonary tuberculosis in 1924.

Agriculture, Free People of Color, Land, North Carolina, Other Documents, Paternal Kin, Politics, Rights, Vocation

I worked for it.

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.

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

Robert Aldridge.

Again from “The Adam Artis Family History“:

Robert Aldridge was born in 1819, in or near Savannah, Georgia. He owned about 700 acres of land in Dudley. He ran a brick kiln, where he employed a lot of extra hands to make bricks. He was taken ill in the woods opossum hunting and never recovered. He died in 1871 at the age of 52. He had 7 or 8 brothers and sisters.

Sentence by sentence:

(1) I suppose that it is remotely possible that Robert Aldridge was born in or near Savannah, but it seems highly unlikely. More probably, as reported in the 1850 census, he was born in Duplin County NC and was the free colored son of a white woman. An extended family of white Aldridges lived in the Duplin/Greene/Lenoir County area and at least one, Winnie Aldridge, had children of color during the right timeframe.

(2) At his death, Robert owned just under 600 acres of land near Dudley, as his estate division attests.

(3) His brick kiln was located on present-day Durham Lake Road, near the lake, which is a dammed stretch of Yellow Marsh Branch.

(4) Interesting.

(5) Actually, he died about 1899.

(6) If he did, who were they??? I am reasonably sure that John Matthew Aldridge was a brother, but that’s it.

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

John William Aldridge.

John Aldridge and his brothers George and Matthew Aldridge were hired to teach in Wayne County in the late 1870s. For reasons unknown, they were assigned to schools in the far north of the county, some 15 miles north of Dudley:

From the same unsigned family history:

John Aldridge met Luvicie Artis at the school where he taught; she was one of his students. He built a 7 room house for her when they got married. John was a stout man with a reddish brown complexion and wavy black hair. He stopped teaching when he married Luvicie and started to farm and run a general store. The store was burned down in 1911. He sent his children to a private school. He died in 1910 of a congested chill. He was 58 years old when he died, and was worth about $30,000 at that time.

If John was worth $30,000 when he died, it was all in realty. His personal estate was paltry:

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

Bessie Lee Henderson.

Bessie Henderson is the fulcrum. Or Bessie’s death anyway. The point at which my Hendersons diverged from the line, left Dudley’s track, frayed the thread that bound to them to their people. Her death launched my grandmother out of Wayne County and away from what could have been. Given all that happened later, the ways things turned out, it is not hard not to see why my grandmother cast the first few months of her life as the glory days. She was with her own mother and surely cherished.

Let’s look at her. At the only photo we have. Probably the only one there ever was.

She is a broad-faced, heavy-lidded beauty, the barest hint of a smile playing on her lips, a high-yellow Mona Lisa. Thick dark hair pulled up a la Gibson Girl; a hint of widow’s peak; a straight-bridged nose; a full bottom lip. The fat lobes of her ears depend from the nest of her hair. I recognize them as my grandmother’s.

What was the occasion? Why the first photograph of her life? It was surely taken in Goldsboro, or maybe Mount Olive, the small town and smaller town that bracketed Dudley, the crossroads at which she passed her entire short life. There are no props. The painted backdrop is mottled and indistinct, save a white bird swooping downward, a wingtip brushing her left hand. The portrait is three-quarter length, and it is hard to gauge her size. She was surely of no great height, perhaps an inch or two over five feet, and slim, but with a hint of hippiness. Her daughter and nieces were narrow-shouldered, but she seems not to have been so.

One arm, folded behind, rests on her hip. The other hangs loosely at her side, a slender hand brushing her thigh. I do not recognize the fingers; they are not my grandmother’s. Her arms, exposed below the elbows of her ruffled white blouse, are much, much browner than her face, evidence of her time in her grandfather’s fields, straw hat shielding her brow. There is a ring on her left middle finger. There are also two lockets hanging from her neck. She barely knew her mother; her father was a kind but distant white man; she never married. Who then gave her these trinkets? What became of them? What tiny images hid in the clefts of the lockets? Who loved her?

Like her own mother before her, Bessie was just nineteen when she died. She looks older here. A little weary maybe. A little sad. A second child born out of wedlock would get her drummed out of the church that her grandfather had helped found. The baby’s daddy joined church weeks later. Within months, Bessie was cold in her grave.

My grandmother tells it this way:

I thought of many times I wondered what my mama looked like. Bessie. And how old was she, or whatever. See, she was helping Grandpa Lewis. The pig got out of the pasture and, instead of going all the way down to where the gate opened, she run him back in there, to try to coax him in there. And when they picked him up and put him over the fence, she had the heavy part, I reckon, or something, and she felt a pain, a sharp pain, and so then she started spitting blood. Down in the country, they ain’t had no doctor or nothing, they just thought she was gon be all right. And I don’t think they even took her to the doctor. Well, she would have had to go to Goldsboro or Mount Olive, one, and doctors was scarce at that time, too, even if it was where you had to go a long ways to get them. And so she died. She didn’t never get over it. I don’t remember ever staying down there. ‘Cause they brought me up to Wilson to live with Mama and Papa. I stayed with them after Bessie died. My sister says she does, but I don’t remember Bessie. You never know what you’ll come to.

——

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

Adam Artis’ children, part 3: Frances Seaberry.

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.

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

Richard Artis.

There had been a photograph of Adam Artis, cousin Daisy told me, but it was stored with other things in an old barn, and rain ruined it. She recalled an image of a tall, brown-skinned man — or the suggestion of brown skin, anyway, in the soft sepia and charcoal tones of portraits of that day — but not what he actually looked like.

If no photograph of Adam exists, however, there is one of his youngest brother. This image, in fact, is the only one known of any of Vicey Artis and Solomon Williams‘ children.

Richard Artis was born in 1850 in Greene County, very near Wayne. He spent his youth out of sight of censustakers, but in 1873, he married Susanna Yelverton (also known as Susanna Hall,) the daughter of free woman of color Nicey (or Caroline) Hall and a white Yelverton. Their children included: Lucinda Artis Shearod, Emma Artis Reid, Ivory L. Artis, Loumiza Artis Grantham, Richard Artis Jr., Susan Artis Cooper, Jonah Artis, Charity Artis Coley, Frances Artis Newsome, John Henry Artis and Walter Clinton Artis.

Richard Artis farmed in northern Wayne County all his life. He died of apoplexy on 12 February 1923 in Great Swamp township and was buried the next day by his sister’s son, Adam Wilson.

——

Photo courtesy of Teresa C. Artis.

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

The case for Leasy Hagans’ children.

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.

Tag Archives: Wayne County