Month: April 2023

The estate of John Farmer (1852).

As Hugh B. Johnston put it, “John Farmer lost his mind in 1824 and had spells of irrationality until the end of his life.” “It is said,” he wrote, “that John Farmer was rather violent sometimes, and his family was then forced to chain him in the log corn crib near the public road a short distance east of Wilson on the present highway 42.” Until his death in 1852, Farmer’s affairs were managed by a series of legal guardians, the last of whom was Joshua Barnes. Despite allegation that an early guardian was a wastrel, by all appearances the estate was well cared-for, and Farmer’s healthy assets included twenty enslaved people.

On 3 January 1853, a committee met at James D. Barnes’ house in Wilson to divide Farmer’s enslaved people among his ten heirs — nine adult children and his widow. The value of each share was $1057.50, and getting as close as possible to that amount was the driving factor in determining who was paired with whom. Not kinship.  Surely some of the people named in this list were children, perhaps quite small, separated from their immediate families. (Overs and unders, by the way, were fixed with cash exchanges.)

  • Lot No. 1 — Henry and Fanny, $1450, to Arthur Bardin for wife Lency Farmer Bardin
  • Lot No. 2 — Dick and Minters, $1350, to Blunt Bulluck for wife Polly Farmer Bulluck
  • Lot No. 3 — Sarah and Amos, $1075, to Thomas Yelverton for wife Nancy Farmer Yelverton
  • Lot No. 4 — Peter and Caesar, $1025, to John W. Wilkins and wife Delphia Farmer Wilkins
  • Lot No. 5 — Joe and Ned, $975, to George T. Yelverton and wife Edith Farmer Yelverton
  • Lot No. 6 — Jim and Dorcas, $925, to Jesse Farmer
  • Lot No. 7 — Grace and Elvin, $1000, to John Farmer
  • Lot No. 8 — Julia and Penny, $900, to William D. Farmer
  • Lot No. 9 — Will and Cherry, $900, to Isaac B. Farmer
  • Lot No. 10 — Abram and Treasy, $975, to Nancy Farmer, John Farmer’s widow

Shortly after the distribution, Isaac Farmer, John’s son and administrator, paid Daniel Hocott ten dollars for “keeping Negro woman Julian while lying in with her child Penny.” Julia and Penny then, who went to William D. Farmer, were a mother and infant.

——

To date, I have no evidence of family ties among the other distributed pairs, but we have met Henry before. He secured his own freedom by leaving Arthur and Lency Bardin’s farm, making his way to the coast, and enlisting in the United States Colored Troops.

Thomas and Nancy Yelverton and George and Edith Yelverton lived in the Pikeville area of northern Wayne County, North Carolina. Amos Yelverton married Martha Coley on 12 January 1867 in Wayne County. He and his family are found in the 1870 census of Pikeville township. Ned Yelverton enlisted with the United States Colored Troops in Goldsboro in April 1865. He married Gustin Faison; they are found in Wayne County census records.

Peter may have been Peter Wilkins, who married Julia Wilkins in Edgecombe County, North Carolina, on 12 August 1866. They are found in the 1870 and 1880 censuses of Sparta township, Edgecombe County.

Caesar Wilkins, son of Samuel Horn and Sarah Farmer, married Bina Barnes, daughter of Benjamin Barnes and Violet Barnes, in 26 January 1871 in Wilson County. (Caesar’s mother, perhaps, was the Sarah who went to Thomas and Nancy Yelverton with Amos.)

Abram, who remained with Nancy Farmer, was Abram Farmer, whom we met here and here. Abram Farmer was baptized at Toisnot Primitive Baptist Church in 1842 and joined the church about 1870. Abram Farmer and Cherry Bridges registered their 11-year cohabitation with a Wilson County justice of the peace in 1866. In the 1870 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: farm laborer Abraham Farmer, 57; wife Cherry Farmer, 54; Jane Farmer, 16; Caroline Armstrong, 30, and her children Gray, 6, Thadeus, 4, and John, 2 months; and farm laborer York Gill, 35. (Was Cherry Bridges the Cherry who went to Isaac B. Farmer? Perhaps.)

John Farmer Estate (1852), Edgecombe County, North Carolina Estate Files 1663-1979, http://www.familysearch.org; Johnston, Hugh, “Looking Backward,” Wilson Daily Times, 2 January 1960.

The obituary of John Hearne, servant.

Wilson Daily Times, 20 May 1935.

  • John Hearne 

In the 1900 census of Black Creek township, Wilson County: farm laborers Sallie Hearn, 65, widow, and son John, 35.

In the 1910 census of Black Creek township, Wilson County: at West Railroad Street, Manalcus B. Aycock, 34, farmer; James M. Aycock, 40, farmer/partner; wife Annie, 29; sons Yancey, 10, and Douglass, 8; and servant John Herring, 38.

John Hearn died 19 May 1935 at Mercy Hospital, Wilson. Per his death certificate, he was 60 years old; was born in Pitt County, N.C., to John [illegible] and Sallie Lawrence; was single; and worked as a cook.

John Hearn was buried on his employers’ farm, but I have not been able to identify that location. (Manalcus and Annie Moore Aycock were buried in Maplewood Cemetery in Wilson.)

John Hearne lived and worked in this house, built by Manalcus B. Aycock 1900-1901 in Black Creek. The house, which is listed on National Register of Historic Places, still stands on West Center Street.

“I haven’t freed you yet.”

Hugh B. Johnston, writing as “An Old Reporter,” wrote dozens of genealogy columns for the Daily Times and Rocky Mount Telegram. His piece about Jesse Farmer relayed two anecdotes highlighting the violent treatment of enslaved people.

In the first, after naming the eight people Jesse and Mary Batts Farmer enslaved near present-day Elm City — Nellie, Clarkey, Ailsey, Dinah, Jim, Jerry, Hilliard, and Cindy — Johnston recounts Dinah’s reaction to Emancipation. “I understand that I’d been freed,” she told Jesse Farmer. “Well, I haven’t freed you yet,” he responded, and beat her.

The second incident occurred during the Civil War. A free woman of color named Clarkey had just died, and her body lay in a cabin at the edge of the yard. Jim O’Neal, overseer on a neighboring plantation, arrived with several people enslaved by Dr. George Sugg. O’Neal accused Jerry of having stolen one of his hogs with Bill, an enslaved man standing “nearly naked and bound with leather straps.” Mary Batts Farmer defended Jerry and declared he would not be beaten. When O’Neal threatened to do so anyway, Mary Farmer told Jerry to defend himself. He grabbed an ax and walked away, and despite orders, the enslaved men with O’Neal refused to follow. O’Neal then took Bill under the lean-to of Clarkey’s cabin and forced the others to beat him with switches “until he almost smoked.”

Rocky Mount Telegram, 14 March 1956.

  • Jerry Farmer

In 1866, Jerry Farmer and Kate Sugs registered their two-year cohabitation with a Wilson County justice of the peace.

In the 1870 census of Gardners township, Wilson County: Jerry Farmer, 26, and wife Kate, 26.

In the 1880 census of Gardners township, Wilson County: farm laborer Jerry Farmer, 37, widower.

On 10 January 1884, Jerry Farmer, 39, married Annice Pender, 23, at Abram Sharpe’s. Charles Barnes, Haywood Batts, and Haywood Pender were witnesses.

Recommended reading, no. 12: crossroads.

I am a champion of oral histories and memoirs as sources of information that adds texture and nuance to the dry data of documents. In Crossroads: Stories of the Rural South, Montress Greene has published her recollection of growing up in Pender’s Crossroads, a community anchored around Bridgers Grocery and Farm Supply, her family’s country store, in the 1940s and ’50s. Though Greene’s focuses her memories largely though the prism of family life, she offers invaluable granular detail for our imagining of the world through which the men and women of this blog moved. Though that world was legally segregated, whites and African-Americans interacted closely and regularly, and Greene addresses race relations forthrightly, if through the eyes of a child. “Much of this will revolve around the strength of women and especially black women,” she writes. Beyond these personal stories, however, Crossroads reveals the country store as public space vital to all in the community. 

Montress Greene in the early 1940s outside Bridgers Store. An older African-American man is seated on a box behind her.

Interrogating evidence in census records.

Here is a vexing example of why you cannot accept census entries at face value, but must interrogate them to get closer to truth.

This snippet from the 1900 census of Wilson township, Wilson County, appears to show Willis Barnes, his wife Farby, their children, and his mother Rose. The reality is quite different.

In fact, this is a blended family. Willis Barnes’ first wife, Cherry Battle (or Eatmon) Barnes, died in the mid-1890s. They had at least nine children together, none of whom are listed here; their younger children were taken in by older siblings when their mother died.

On 2 March 1897, Willis Barnes, 59, of Wilson township, married Fereby Artis, 47, of Toisnot township, in Wilson County. They had not, as the census taker noted in the column next to that in which he wrote an M for “married,” been married 25 years.

Fereby (or Phereby, or any number of spellings) Barnes was born about 1849 to Silas Barnes and Rosetta Farmer Barnes. On 20 December 1879, Fereby Barnes married Benjamin Artis Jr., who was born about 1849 to Benjamin Artis Sr. and Fereby Woodard Artis, a daughter of London and Venus Woodard. (So, yes, Ben Jr. and his wife had the same names as Ben Jr.’s parents.) Fereby and Benjamin Artis Jr.’s children included Harriet Artis Simms, Morrison Artis, Silas A. Artis, Louvenia Artis Hayes, and Wade Artis.

The four children listed in this census entry — despite the dash implying their surname was Barnes — were Fereby’s children (Willis’ stepchildren) and were Artises. And Rosa Barnes was not Willis’ mother at all. She was his mother-in-law —  Fereby Barnes Artis Barnes’ mother.

Small fire at Lou Miller’s.

Wilson Daily Times, 26 April 1912.

  • Lou Miller

In the 1908 Wilson, N.C., city directory: Miller Lou (c) grocer Elba nr E Green h 630 E Green

In the 1910 census of Wilson, Wilson County: widowed cook Lou Miller; her daughter Cora Washington, 34, a widowed school teacher; her grandchildren Irene, 7, James, 4, and Cora Washington, 1; and two boarders, Mary Hadley, 20, cook, and Mary Pender, 60, widowed servant. 

In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 630 Elmo [Elba] Street, teacher Cora Washington, 39; daughters Irene, 16, Janie, 13, and Cora, 10; mother Lou Miller, 70; and boarders Isic Hicks, 28, carpenter, Manuel Wooten, 22, hotel laborer, Dalis Cutter, 20, barbershop laborer, and Eliza Henderson, 42, teacher.

In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 701 East Green Street, George Farmer, 55, porter for A.C.L.R.R.; wife Cora, 51, school teacher; daughters Lena, 20, teacher, and Janie L., 23, department store elevator girl; stepdaughter Cora M. Washington, 21 (marked as “absent”); mother-in-law Lou Miller, 75; and boarders Mildred Norfleet, 23, courthouse elevator girl; and Amos Moor, 35, hotel porter. [Janie, in fact, was Cora’s daughter and George’s step-daughter.]

A “pounding” for Mercy Hospital.

Wilson Daily Times, 5 April 1930.

A “pounding” is Christian tradition in which a congregation gives its new pastor welcoming gifts, i.e. a pound of coffee, sugar, or flour. In April 1930, the community participated in a pounding for Mercy Hospital, supplying much needed food staples, linens, toiletries, and cleaning supplies. 

Clipping courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.