Acount of the Sale of the Property of Bethana Jones Dest. Sold the 28 of December 1852 on a Credit of Six months the Percher to Give Note With Two Approved Surities before the Rite is Changed Sold by Benjamin Simpson a Special Admin.

Bethana Jones was a prosperous farmer, matriarch of a sprawling family that knit all of southern Nash and western Wilson Counties’ major free families of color, including Joneses, Blackwells, Powells, Evanses, and Locuses.  Kinsmen purchasing goods from her estate included Willis Jones, Jacob Jones, William Jones, Asberry Blackwell, Dempsey Powell, Shadrach Jones and Joseph Jones. She was a head of household as early as 1830, when the census of Eatmons district, Nash County, shows her leading a household of nine.

Estate Records, Records of Wilson County, North Carolina State Archives.