Carrie Cooper, 20, school teacher, was living alone in Wilson township, south of the Plank Road, when the 1880 census taker arrived.
Mahala Williamson was born in Old Fields township, Wilson County, to Patrick and Spicey Williamson. On 11 June 1892, she married Henry S. Reid, of Nahunta, Wayne County, son of Washington and Penninah Reid, in Wilson in the presence of Samuel H. Vick, Elijah L. Reid, and M.H. Cotton. (Henry was a brother of veterinarian Elijah Reid and principal/banker/hospital officer J.D. Reid. His first wife, Emma E. Hicks, daughter of Mariah Hicks, was a sister of Owen L.W. Smith.) Mariah apparently died soon after the wedding, as Henry again married in 1896.
Lucy Leary Robinson‘s father — who “fell in the John Brown raid” — was Lewis Sheridan Leary (1835-1859).
From Twenty-Two Years’ Work of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute at Hampton, Virginia (Records of Negro and Indian Graduates and Ex-Students with historical and personal sketches and testimony on important race questions from within and without, to which are added, by courtesy Messrs Putnam’s Sons, N.Y., some of the Songs of the Races gathered in the School (Hampton Normal School Press, 1893).
Ms. Henderson, this is an amazing blog! What a treasure trove of sources. I am curious about Lucy Leary, given the description from the Hampton report that she was a descendant of Lewis Sheridan Leary. Do you know any more about her? I tried to discover her mother’s identity but had no luck searching marriage records for Lewis Leary (he married Mary Sampson Patterson of Fayetteville in Oberlin, Ohio, in 1858, so Lucy’s mother possibly she died shortly in childbirth or soon thereafter). In the event that Leary did not marry Lucy’s mother, I also checked bastardy bonds for Cumberland County and New Hanover County (where the Hampton report says Lucy’s cousin Maria Mallette was born) and came up empty-handed. Based on a variety of other sources, I suspect that Leary was in Ohio for at least the latter portion of 1854 and possibly part of 1855, which significantly narrows the window of time when Lucy might have been conceived in North Carolina and born there in 1855. Since Lucy’s marriage certificate did not identify her parents I am beginning to wonder if the Hampton report is erroneous. What do you think the odds are?
Thank you! The Hampton report is, it appears, drawn from self-reported information, so I have no reason to think it’s erroneous. (From the standpoint of the editor, anyway.) The records concerning free people of color in North Carolina are maddeningly sketchy, and I have any number of ancestors/collateral relatives whose parents or spouses or even children I can’t pin down. As Lucy spent only a few years in Wilson and was not a native, and my blog is very narrowly focused, I have not attempted to verify her relationship to L.S. Leary.