Renegade South is pleased to announce thatMarvin Tupper Jones will lecture on North Carolina’s Chowanoke History on Tuesday, October 4, 11:30 am, at the Roanoke Chowan Community College in Ahoskie NC! “Last month’s talk in Elizabeth City,” he writes, “caught a lot of attention and even garnered amagazine article.“ (To review the earlier presentation, click here.)
Mr. Jones’s new lecture will include many new images and may also beviewed online. Whether you attend in person or virtually, please don’t miss it! —VB
Late last year, I was contacted by Raymont Hawkins-Jones, a descendant of a family I’d written about many years earlier: the Andersons of Granville County, North Carolina. The Andersons were one of the many fascinating free families of color that I’ve studied over the years, and I enjoyed learning more about their history from Raymont. Back in pre-internet 1992, pretty much everything I knew about my subjects was what I’d learned from records held at the North Carolina State Archives. Today, social media has enabled me to meet many of their descendants and to access additional records posted on the internet. The same digital revolution that stimulated me to create this blog also allows me to revisit my early topics of research and bring their stories up to date! (1)
The Andersons and the families with whom they intermarried belonged to a community of people defined by society as non-white, but who rarely appeared as slaves in North Carolina’s state and court records. As I’ve noted in earlier Renegade South essays about the mixed heritage communities of Gloucester County, Virginia, and the “Winton Triangle” of North Carolina, the lives of free people of color reveal far more complicated histories of racial identity, class, and race relations than the broad images of “white freedom” and “black slavery” would suggest.
In fact, families such as the Andersons are central to understanding historical events that preceded and followed the institution of slavery, including colonization, the American Revolution, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the postwar rise of the Ku Klux Klan, and the New South era of white supremacy.
The very existence of free people of color, especially those in the South, threatened the growing institution of slavery. Southern whites especially feared their influence on slaves as the United States moved toward a Civil War generated by national conflicts over slavery. Determined to prevent free people of color from exercising full rights of citizenship and mobility, lawmakers increasingly policed their behavior through oppressive laws and customs.In my first book, Unruly Women: the Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South (1992), I published my findings on the Andersons and touched on the lives of free families bearing the names of Boon, Chavis, Curtis, Day, Fane, Haithcock, Kearsey, Mayo, Richardson, and Tyler. During the course of my research, I also become familiar with the Bass, Guy, Pettiford, and Taborn families of Granville County. With no diaries or first-hand accounts available to me from the families themselves, I focused on their court-house experiences and what they revealed about the lives of multi-ethnic free people governed by race and class-based laws in a slaveholding state.
Back in 1992, I knew next to nothing about these families’ heritage, and mostly referred to them as “free blacks.” Today, thanks to conversations with Raymont and after reading Kianga Lucas’s Native American Roots blog, I realize that the courts’ label of “free people of color” masked their extensive and varied Indian ancestry. The Bass family, for example, with whom the Andersons intermarried, originally descended from the Nansemond tribe of Virginia’s Powhatan Confederacy. Likewise, many of Granville County’s free people of color claim descent from various Indian tribes such as the Tuscarora of eastern North Carolina and the Pamunkey, Chickahominy, and Saponi of Virginia. Descendants of these tribes were among the earliest people of color to migrate to Granville County, where they settled in the vicinity of the town of Oxford and the townships of Fishing Creek, Kittrell, and Tally Ho. (2)
Map courtesy of Kianga Lucas.
Writing for the Atlantic Monthly in 1886 under the pseudonym David Dodge, Oscar W. Blacknall of Kittrell township gave an eye-witness description of his neighbors. Because of “exclusive intermarriage in their own class,” he wrote, they displayed a “considerable infusion of Indian blood” revealed by their
“long coarse, straight black hair and high cheekbones . . . joined with complexions whose duskiness disclaims white blood and with features clearly un-African.”
Sampson Anderson (1844-1906) with wife Jane Anderson (1852-1923) and son Robert F Anderson (1872-1914). Sampson was the son of Henry Anderson and Nancy Richardson. Jane was the daughter of Mark and Crecy Anderson. The family lived in Granville and Wake Counties and relocated to Washington, D.C. in their later years. Source: Ancestry, Username: rewinder11. Courtesy Kianga Lucas.
Lillian Anderson (1882-1932) daughter of Thomas Anderson and Sarah Tyler. Lillian was about four years old when Blacknall’s article appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. Photo courtesy of Lawana Holland-Moore.
Because the Andersons were free during colonial times, I wondered whether they and their kinfolk had descended from indentured servants rather than slaves, or had perhaps been freed between 1740 and 1770, when European Enlightenment ideals generated criticism of slavery. That era not only provided the ideological underpinnings of the American Revolution, but fueled debates about the morality of slavery, setting in motion the gradual abolition of slavery in the Northern colonies. The plantation South did not follow suit, but numerous Southern slaveholders nonetheless sought to save their souls by privately manumitting slaves.
Greed overcame white misgivings about slavery enough for framers of the U.S. Constitution (ratified in 1788) to grant protections to the institution. The matter was anything but settled, however. Antislavery sentiments never completely died out, and reemerged in the 19th century among various religious groups, notably Wesleyan Methodist farmers in North Carolina, and politically in the Free Soil and Abolitionist movements.
Although the 17th century Bass family of Virginia appears never to have suffered enslavement, the Andersons, who lived nearby, were held in bondage by John Fulcher, an English planter of Norfolk, Virginia, who eventually freed them. In 1712, decades before the era of the American Revolution, Fulcher manumitted fifteen slaves, thirteen of whom bore the surname Anderson, two the surname Richardson. He bestowed 640 acres of land as well as freedom on these slaves, eight of whom were still children.
I suspect that John Fulcher was kin to the Andersons. Not only were kinships common between masters and manumitted slaves, there is also the matter of Fulcher’s divorce from his wife, Ruth, some twenty years earlier. In 1691, Ruth Woodhouse Fulcher was granted a legal separation from her husband by Virginia’s Lt. Governor Francis Nicholson. Such separations were rarely granted to women in 17th century Virginia, particularly not under the terms granted by the Lt. Governor. Nicholson not only assigned legal guardianship of the couple’s son to Mrs. Fulcher, he also ordered Mr. Fulcher to pay her two thousand pounds of tobacco annually. (3)
These were unusual decisions in an ardently patriarchal society. Clearly, Lt. Gov. Nicholson was disturbed by whatever undisclosed charges Ruth Fulcher brought against her husband. Might she have accused her husband of sexually crossing the color line, of fathering children among his slaves? Were the slaves he manumitted in 1712 his own children, and did they include the mother(s) of those children? (4)
Whatever his reasons, John Fulcher’s freeing of his slaves fed fears of slave revolts among Virginians. The colony’s General Assembly responded by recommending passage of a law forbidding manumission, citing it as an incentive for slave revolts.
Exactly when and where the Andersons were first enslaved seems as uncertain as how they gained their surname. In the Southern colonies, where Indian wars, servitude, and slavery overlapped, they may originally have been Indian war captives whose descendants mixed with other Indians, African slaves, English colonizers, or white servants, creating mixed-heritage peoples with no fixed racial identity—except in the minds of white leaders who marked them as non-white under the heading of “free people of color.” The Bass and Anderson families’ lives intersected in 1699 when Edward Bass, a son of William Bass, Sr., purchased land from John Fulcher. After Fulcher freed the Andersons, the two families intermarried. In the first half of the eighteenth century, they migrated from Norfolk, Virginia, to Granville County, North Carolina. Once settled, Basses and Andersons married among other free families bearing names such as Chavis, Day, Goins, Harris, Hawley, Kersey, Pettiford, Mitchell, and others. These families, too, identified their roots as Native American. (5)
By the late eighteenth century, the names of free people of color appeared frequently in Granville court records and documents. George Anderson, whose will was probated in May 1771, left an estate that included at least seventy acres of land to heirs bearing the surnames of Anderson, Bass, Pettiford, Harris, and Smith. To Nathan Bass, he left a “plantation’ on which Bass already lived. To various other kinfolk, he left cattle, a mare, pewter plates, and a bed. Clearly, the founding families of this community had established solid yeoman-class roots. (6)
A revealing petition about the families’ status was also presented in 1771 to the North Carolina Assembly. Here we see Granville’s growing community of free people of color asking to be exempted by the state from paying taxes that were described as “highly derogatory of the Rights of Freeborn Subjects.” (7)
Colonial taxation laws had long discriminated against people of color, taxing not only free males over the age of twelve, but also females, on the assumption that all non-whites “worked the ground,” whether enslaved or not. In this era of emergent republican ideals, race-based economic discrimination against free people was condemned by the petitioners as unjust. Grouped among their names were those of free people from the area of Oxford and Fishing Creek: Gibea Chavis, Benjamin Bass, Lewis Anderson, Edward Bass, David Mitchell, and William Chavis. (8)
Criticisms of slavery and demands that free people of color be respected as citizens were soon quashed after the American Revolution. As the 19th century’s Cotton Kingdom emerged, Southern demand for slave labor increased. The one drop rule of race came to prevail. Whether free people of color were dark or light-skinned, and regardless of whether they had white or Indian ancestors, they were labeled “Negroes” or “Mulattoes”—meaning that they were fit for slavery and their freedom thus a threat to its stability. For that reason, Southern states passed laws further limiting slave manumission. At the same time, they passed stricter laws that further limited the mobility and rights of free people of color.
In response to their diminishing status, Granville County’s free families of color emphasized their Native American roots and often denied African ancestry altogether in hopes of distancing themselves from slavery. Local court records from the three decades before the Civil War, 1830-1860, reveal a fractious caste of people, one in which intra-family feuds and scuffles with whites generated court charges of affrays, assault & batteries and filings of peace warrants. Not surprisingly, white authorities seemed all too eager to police the neighborhoods of families who lived in the interstices of freedom and slavery. (9)
Social contact between people of color and whites ranged from affectionate to violent. People from various backgrounds traded goods, drank, gambled, fornicated—and occasionally tried to marry—across the lines of color and status. Tavern keepers were frequently targeted for running “disorderly houses” that included all manner of such interracial activities. Public affrays no doubt reflected internal tensions created by such activities.
Illustration from frontispiece of Victoria Bynum, Unruly Women
Poor white and free women of color occasionally ran taverns as an alternative to working in the homes and fields of other (mostly white) people. When taverns added interracial prostitution to the menu of services, authorities labeled them “bawdy” as well as “disorderly” houses. White women Elvira and Sally Short, for example, were specifically cited for “procuring” “whores” who engaged in “dreadfully filthy and lewd offences” that included “men, women, free persons, and slaves” who gathered there day and night. (10)
But it was not prostitution per se that seemed to concern white authorities. The courts punished sexual relations between whites, free people of color, and slaves far more frequently than they punished the sale of sex among whites. By their very nature, taverns were assumed to encourage sexual activity among patrons; it followed, then, that owners who ignored boundaries of race and status were suspected of fostering sexual intimacy across those boundaries.
Free people of color were not to fraternize with either slaves or lower-class whites. In 1856, tavern-keeper Nancy Anderson was accused of violating laws that forbade such camaraderie. Specifically, the courts charged her with running a “disorderly” house in which whites, free people of color and slaves engaged together in “whoring, drinking, and gambling.” That she was not charged with running a “bawdy” house indicates that interracial mingling (including sexual intimacy), not prostitution, was the offense.
It was not whites who initiated the charges against Nancy Anderson. The three men who testified against her (one of them her kinsman, Ephraim Anderson) were free men of color. Although we know that ethnic differences, economic status, and who one associated with all contributed to conflicts among people of color, we don’t know the exact reasons that these men appeared to police social contact between a woman of their community and neighboring slaves. (11)
Among whites, mingling between the races ended in death for Tom Peace, a white man, who carried on a relationship with Tabby Chavous (Chavis), a free woman of color, for some ten years. The fact that Tom regularly treated Tabby with the respect reserved for white women infuriated his brother, Dickerson Peace, who brought fornication charges against the couple in 1844. Undaunted, Tom and Tabby continued to attend public gatherings together well into the 1850s. When they appeared together at a neighborhood barbecue in 1854, an enraged Dickerson attacked and killed his brother. (12)
The courts regularly sought to counter interracial relationships and, that failing, to control the lives and labor of mixed-race children born to such relationships. The long-term relationship between Susan Williford and Peter Curtis, discussed here and in Unruly Women, (pp. 88-93) demonstrated the stages of that control: first, the guilty party was charged with fornication. If the woman subsequently became pregnant, bastardy charges would follow. At some point, usually after the age of five, the bastard child, defined as an “orphan,” (i.e. lacking a legal father) would be apprenticed to a member of the community until age 21. By contract, these apprenticed children worked for their “masters” until adulthood, depriving them of their freedom and the affections of their parent(s). Their mothers, of course, were deprived of both their children’s affection and their labor—a crucial element of survival in the rural Old South. Her punishment by the courts also demonstrated the larger threat that personal as well as political alliances of class and race presented to slaveholding society.
In part, the courts’ forcible apprenticeship of illegitimate children—many of whom were impoverished whites—to more prosperous members of the community prevented them from becoming economic and social burdens for county governments. By 1830, however, the system clearly provided a handy way to deny freedom to an increasing population of free children of color, at the same time claiming their labor for the white community. (13)
Relatively prosperous free families of color such as the Andersons managed to escape the apprenticeship system. Marriage among free people of color within their own community, land ownership, and gainful employment defended them against this practice. A number of free families of color from Granville, including William Evans, Anderson Pettiford, Joseph Curtis, and Lucy Richardson, managed even to rescue the children of friends and family from the apprenticeship system by becoming apprenticeship masters themselves. These families gained custody of community children through the very system that would otherwise have bound the children out to whites. (14)
The free community of Granville’s Oxford area struggled for autonomy right up to the Civil War and beyond. Archibald “Baldy” Kersey, a propertied free man of color with multiple ties of kinship to its core families, had long engaged in illicit trade among slaves and white citizens. (15) Court records show him charged more than once with illegally possessing guns and with various thefts connected to illegal trading. During the Civil War, such trade networks among slaves, free blacks, and whites flourished, causing Sheriff William Philpott to describe Kersey to Governor Zebulon Vance as
“the worst rogue and seducer of slaves I have ever known. He has a range from here to the extremity of the state east, as he has been trading that way for years.” Furthermore, Philpott reported, Kersey had recently broken out of jail with the aid of two white men. (16)
Scene from movie The Free State of Jones, 2016. STX Entertainment.
Baldy Kersey’s resistance to authority took a political turn during the Civil War and Reconstruction. One can only imagine the formidable force that he and Newt Knight of Mississippi’s Free State of Jones would have presented the Confederacy had Kersey been part of a coalition of free people of color, slaves, and deserters fighting from the swamps of the Leaf River.
From the Daily Conservative, Oct. 7, 1864. Courtesy Kianga Lucas
In 1868, Kersey joined a coalition from the Tally Ho district of Granville County to fight against the Ku Klux Klan’s overthrow of Reconstruction. He and six men from the Curtis, Williford, Anderson, and Tyler families petitioned Governor William Holden in the name of “the Colored Race and laboring class of white people” for aid against “outrages” committed by the Ku Klux Klan in Granville County. (you may read those petitions and my analysis here.)
People of color were powerless without a full commitment from Northern leaders to hold back the tide of violence and white supremacy campaigns that derailed Reconstruction and ushered in segregation and second-class citizenship for people of color. The descendants of Granville’s free community of color, however, successfully resisted at least one method—the Grandfather Clause—devised by Southern white politicians to deny the vote to people of color.
During the late 19th century, poll taxes and literacy tests proved an effective means of disfranchisement, since many freed people were poor and illiterate. Even if one could read, literacy tests were designed to be failed. Some Southern politicians, however, objected to such laws because they also discriminated against poor white men (whose votes they needed). Enter the Grandfather Clause. In 1900, North Carolina’s state constitution echoed those of other Southern states by exempting voters from taking literacy tests and paying poll taxes if their grandfather had legally voted in or before the year 1867.
As intended, this blatant act of racial discrimination disfranchised men whose fathers had been slaves. In North Carolina, however, free men of color had legally voted until 1835, the year in which the state’s new constitution outlawed it. Thus, the grandfathers of many people of color had voted! Accordingly, in 1902, 1904, 1906, and 1908, some eighty descendants of the Anderson, Boon, Mayo, Tyler, Taborn, Pettiford, Kearsey, Howell, Day, and Chavis families successfully registered to vote during the South’s most violent era of racial disfranchisement and segregation. (17)
John Thomas Tyler (1862-1943), son of William Tyler Jr. and Sally Kersey. One of many Granville Co. citizens who registered to vote under the Grandfather Clause, he was the nephew of Baldy Kersey, who, like Wm. Tyler, protested KKK outrages during Reconstruction (see petitions). Photo courtesy of Kianga Lucas.
The mixing of peoples from three continents of the world in the North American colony of Virginia was an unintended result of an international Commercial Revolution that eventually reshaped the world. The Andersons and other ambiguously labeled “free people of color” carry the DNA of diverse peoples who variously lost lands, were wrenched from homelands, were reduced to chattel slavery, or who became rich from all of the above. Native peoples of early 17th century Virginia faced dispossession, enslavement, and slaughter by English entrepreneurs. Poor whites were uprooted from England as indentured servants to serve as menial laborers in America. By the second half of the century, these servants were replaced by African slaves, who represented a more stable economic investment for Virginia planters.
But colonization only begins to tell the history of America’s free people of color throughout the United States’ ongoing struggles over religious, racial, economic, and territorial hegemony. Their 19th century experiences are central also to understanding how conflicts over slavery led to the Civil War, how Reconstruction was thwarted by a violent and political corrupt counter-revolution that resulted in “redeemed” state governments committed to white supremacist doctrines.
By 1900, Southern literature and politics overflowed with the sentimental language of the South’s glorious Confederate “Lost Cause” version of the Civil War. The myth that states’ rights—not slavery—caused the war, leavened by “old timey” images of benevolent planters and contented slaves, provided a romantic origins tale for New South whites. As the 20th century opened, Southern leaders entertained the belief that racial segregation protected “pure” bloodlines while they placed the governance of society in “superior” white hands.
The battle against legalized segregation and disfranchisement on the basis of race brought a constitutional victory against racism in 1955, but America’s understanding of racial identity—what it is, what it means, and who decides it—remains a hot button issue of debate in the 21st century. As stated by historian Barbara Fields, “Racism is not the product of race. Racist actions produce the illusion of race.”
Louis Henry Horner, 1875-1927, great-grandson of Henry Anderson (1793-1849) and Nancy Richardson (1805-1866). Courtesy of Raymont Hawkins-Jones.
Armitta Magdeline Horner Wilson (b. about 1876), great-granddaughter of Henry Anderson and Nancy Richardson. Courtesy of Raymont Hawkins-Jones
Samuel Horner, (1887-1955), great-grandson of Henry Anderson and Nancy Richardson. Courtesy of Raymont Hawkins-Jones.
NOTES:
My work on communities of free people of color appears in Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South (1992), and The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies (2010).
The historical origins and racial identities of free people of color were far more complex than communicated by contemporary labels such as “black,” “Negro,” “Indian,” “Mustee” or “Mulatto” The Basses self-identified as Indian and English. In 1727, William Bass Sr. obtained court documentation swearing that he was of English and Indian heritage, with no admixture of African. In 1742, his son, William Bass Jr., did the same. According to family historian Kianga Lucas, the Andersons, likely of Indian, English, and African heritage, shared the Basses’ Nansemond Tribal connections. On the erasure of Native American ancestry by white authorities in the age of segregation, see Lucas, https://nativeamericanroots.wordpress.com/tag/evans/page/2/
On Southern patriarchal law and its effects on divorce and charges of interracial sex as grounds for divorce, see Bynum Unruly Women, pp. 59-87.
Colonial Granville County marriage records include the names of many free people of color. Before 1800, the Bass name was most common, followed by Chavis, Anderson, Mitchell, Evans, Day, Pettiford, and Kersey. These families would remain the most visible of Granville’s free people of color before and during the Civil War Era. Published in Brent Holcomb, Marriages of Granville County, NC, 1753-1868 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, Inc. 1981.)
George Anderson will reprinted in Thomas McAdory Owen, Granville County: Notes in Preparation for the History and Genealogy of. Montgomery. AL.
William L. Saunders, The North Carolina Colonial Records (Raleigh: Josephus Daniels, 1890)
In September, 1668, Virginia passed the first colonial taxation statute that specifically targeted free people of color, including women, on the basis that all people of color were agricultural laborers: “WHEREAS some doubts, have arisen whether negro women set free were still to be accompted tithable according to a former act, It is declared by this grand assembly that negro women, though permitted to enjoy their ffreedome yet ought not in all respects to be admitted to a full fruition of the exemptions and impunities of the English, and are still lyable to payment of taxes.” Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large, vol. 2, p. 267. Petition signer Lewis Anderson is likely the same man who left a will in 1814 that named the following free people of color as heirs: Isaac Anderson, Abel Anderson, Augustine Anderson, Wright Anderson, Zachariah Anderson, Thomas Anderson, John Anderson, Darling Bass, Sarah Anderson (from Owen, Granville County Notes, vol. 2)
Criminal Action Papers, Criminal Actions Concerning Slaves and Free People of Color, and Miscellaneous Records of Slaves and Free People of Color, Granville County, NC State Archives. Discussed in Bynum, Unruly Women, pp. 78-82
State v. Nancy Anderson, County Court, May 1856, Criminal Action Papers, Granville County, NC State Archives.
State v. Dickerson Peace, March 1854, Criminal Action Papers, Granville County, NC State Archives.
In 1826, the state legislature passed a law that empowered county courts to apprentice any child of a person of color who did not have “honest industrious occupation.” This meant that even married couples of color might lose custody of their children if the court deemed it advisable. Between 1830 and 1860, Granville County’s free children of color were bound out in far greater numbers than were white children.
Apprenticeship records, Granville County, NC State Archives;Bynum, Unruly Women, pp. 99-103.
According to Kianga Lucas, the Kersey family arrived in Granville County in the early 1800s. Their tribal origins, she notes, are with the Algonquian speaking Weyanoke tribe who later intermarried with the Iroquois speaking Nottoway and Tuscarora tribes.
Politics is a particularly nasty business these days at the state as well as national level. Take North Carolina, a state I dearly love. In recent years, the right-wing swingof that state’s government provided the impetus for the Reverend William Barber’s courageous “Moral Monday” movement, which in turn fueled the nail-biting gubernatorial election of Attorney General Roy Cooper, a moderate Democrat. Now, however, the Republican state legislature has passed laws to severely limit the power of the new governor. North Carolina is at the breaking point, politically, socially and constitutionally.
The state’s current crisis is not unprecedented. Author Ian McDowell’s recent article, “The Triad’s Real Civil War Heritage, transports us back in time to Civil War North Carolina, providing instructive examples of how political hubris, outright lies, and historical illiteracy have long served up a combustible brew. Reactionary anger replaces reasoned debate, with much of that anger based on a false understanding of the past as well as the present. Tragically, “fake news” has exploded with the advent of electronic social media. It is not a new phenomenon, however.
The “Lost Cause” version of the Civil War, with its cardinal tenet that slavery did not cause the war, is one of our longest lasting fake stories. In fact, like a number of Southern states, North Carolina has a fiercer history of support for the Union than does The Free State of Jones in Mississippi. Drawing on the work of Civil War historian William Auman, McDowell notes that
In William Owens, North Carolina had its own version of Newton Knight, the Mississippi Unionist recently played by Matthew McConaughey in the film The Free State of Jones. Owens may not have shared Knight’s belief in the equality of men, and his story ended less happily, but he opposed the Confederacy just as violently. When the conscription age was raised to fifty, Owens organized a band of armed guerillas and declared de facto war on the Confederacy.
Many folks in North Carolina ignore this history, particularly those opposed to recent efforts to remove Confederate flags from state buildings. Those who revere the Confederacy are loath to believe they just might have descended from staunch defenders of the U.S. government—that is, from plain folks who concluded that southern secession from the Union and the creation of the Confederacy were all about maintaining slavery—amid a “rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight” that brought death on the Civil War’s battlefields and starvation on its home fronts.
One of the leading opponents of secession from Moore County was Bryan Tyson, author of The Southern States . . . . Our Sectional Troubles
Shaded area shows principle area of Unionist activity in North Carolina
While attending a “Southern values” rally organized by a notable heritage group, “Alamance County Taking Back Alamance County” (ACTBAC), Ian McDowell had no luck in appealing to participants to consider the fact that
during the Civil War, many Triad Southerners felt themselves to be under attack, not from Union forces, but from Confederate troops.
Gary Williamson, founder of ACTBAC, dismissed Ian McDowell’s remarks about North Carolina’s Civil War Unionist past with the following words:
You have what you think your history books say, but I have the heritage in my heart.
And there you have it. Time and again, we hear such words. Not history, but emotions, anger, and Lost Cause sentimentality drive much of today’s reverence for Southern ancestors—ancestors who I like to imagine rising up, if only they could, to bellow “I fought for the Union you damned fool!”
And so I urge you: read Ian’s article; discuss it with friends, post it on Facebook and Twitter. Because if there’s anything the past seventy-five years have shown us, it’s that all the well-researched books on the Civil War, and all the dedicated teachers of the world, are not enough to defeat the mythology of a noble Confederate cause. As ACTBAC flies the Confederate flag in its movement to “take back” Alamance County, McDowell reminds us that the same county
in 1861 voted 1,114 to 254 against secession (the only time they were allowed to vote on the subject), and where peace rallies were held in 1864 advocating a return to the Union.
NOTE: If you wish to learn more about anti-Confederate and Unionist activism by white men and women, slaves, and people of color in Civil War North Carolina, Renegade South is a great place to start. Just click on the following essays of your choice:
Hell and High Water, Richard Grant’s article about runaway slaves or “maroons” of the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina, appeared last month in Smithsonian Magazine (Sept., 2016). Dedicated to African American culture and history, the story revolves around the research of historical archaeologist Dan Sayers, and his passion for uncovering the secrets of these lost populations.
The 1888 painting below depicts Maroons taking refuge in the Dismal Swamp before the Civil War. In addition to swamps, many fled to creeks and desolate river bottoms throughout the South. Mountainous areas were not as attractive as places of refuge due to bounties offered to Native American tribes in those regions for the capture, dead or alive, of those who escaped.
Slaves in the Great Dismal
The swamp, Dan tells his interviewer, “teems with water moccasins and rattlesnakes and the mosquitoes are so thick they can blur the outlines of a person standing 12 feet away.” His description of “toiling through sucking ooze, with submerged roots and branches grabbing at your ankles” is testimony to the determination and endurance of anyone daring to enter.
My primary interest in this subject stems from my own ancestral research, and the discovery of a certain strand of my racial identity. Although I am white, early Federal Census records indicate that my 5th Great Grandfather, James Shoemake, and members of his household were listed under the category of “All Other Free Persons.” The households of his sons Sampson, Solomon, and James were likewise listed.
What exactly does the phrase “All Other Free Persons” mean? Were those so labeled free from indentured servitude as well as from the shackles of slavery? They were certainly not “free” to do as they pleased. One would assume that in the South of the late 1700s and early 1800s they were of African descent. Was the label applied by a census taker and based on the appearance of an individual, or were individuals asked “are you Indian; are you Negro?” But then, in this era of removal or annihilation of native peoples and enslavement of Africans, would someone posed with that question answer truthfully? Perhaps they were so well known in the community that their status and race were already known.
What about the terms “Mulatto” and “Mustee”? A Mulatto is defined as a person of mixed white and black ancestry, originally, as having one white and one black parent. A Mustee is the offspring of a white person and a quadroon (one quarter black) or octoroon (one eighth black). But can we depend on the knowledge of those who applied the terms? I’ve seen both labels—and, later, “Melungeon”—used in conjunction with my ancestors. The signatures, or marks, of James and his sons are on a 1794 petition, part of which reads as follows: “The Petition of the people of colour of the state aforesaid who are under the act entitled an Act for imposing a pole tax on all free Negroes, Mustees, and Mulatoes.” The petition in Georgetown, now Marion County, South Carolina, which was initiated to cease the discriminatory taxation of “free Negroes”, contains the names of Bolton, Shoemake, Gibson, Oxendine, and others.
Seventy-five years later, in Hamilton County, Tennessee, the testimony in a trial known as the “Melungeon Case”, which involved the descendants of Solomon Bolton and the grandchildren of Spencer Bolton (named in the above petition), stated that the Boltons, Shoemakes, Perkinses, etc.,“were called Melungeons and known to be Portuguese or Spaniards,” further complicating the possibilities of their ethnic background. The term Melungeon is thought to have first appeared in print in the 19th century, and used in Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina to describe certain groups thought to be comprised of European, Native American, and African ancestry.
And then we have the Maroons. Sampson and Solomon Shoemake had documented land holdings between Cat Fish and Gum Swamps along the Pee Dee River in Northeast South Carolina in the late 1700s. James Shoemake and his wife Mary appear on a list of “Black” taxables” in the Fishing Creek District of Granville County, North Carolina, in 1762. In Alexander Gregg’s History of the Old Cheraws, he describes how “a man named Thompson, from the Poke Swamp settlement, on the westside of the river, as he jumped the fence, found a large and powerful mulatto, Shoemake by name, pressing closely upon him, with his rifle aimed and in the act of firing.”
Happily for Thompson, the rifle miss-fired and before it could be adjusted he made his escape. Twenty years later, Thompson learned that Shoemake had gone to Camden, caught him, and inflicted “severe punishment”. This story emerged between 1776 and 1783 during Tory and Whig confrontations in the Cheraws, an area in early Northeast South Carolina. Shoemake, the “powerful Mulatto”, and also a noted Tory, is thought to be James Shoemake. Were James and his sons Maroons? Were they of Portuguese, Native American, or African descent—or perhaps all three?
Throughout history, various terms were used to define the ethnicity of people labeled as “free persons of color.” Can such terms, used not merely to identify one’s race but to determine one’s rights and mobility in society, help researchers to determine their own racial identity?
After having my DNA tested through Ancestry.com, the ethnicity report showed the following distribution: Great Britain 29%, Eastern Europe 22%, Scandinavia 20%, Ireland 13%, Iberian Peninsula and Italy/Greece both 5%, and Western Europe 4%. I linked my connection to Great Britain and Ireland through my family surnames of Boyce, McScrews, Landrum, Pitts, Holliman, Sumrall, Hutto and Walters. My maternal grandparents were of Prussian and German descent, so the Eastern Europe was easily understood.
But Scandinavia—I had no idea where that came in. This is where the black and white of DNA became gray.
The Vikings invaded and occupied the British Isles and Northern Europe for hundreds of years. The Moors of Northern Africa did likewise in Southern Europe and the Iberian Peninsula. The influence of Italy and Greece extended as far west as France, Spain and Portugal, northward to the British Isles and Northern Europe, and South into Africa. And Western Europe was conquered over the years by Celts, Romans, and Germanic tribes. Ancestry estimates that approximately 60% of DNA from native people of Great Britain actually comes from this region, that of the Iberian Peninsula 51%, and Western Europe 48%.
Any African DNA is apparently at this point too minor to register, though further testing might reveal its presence.
I’ve been researching my ancestry for over 30 years. Based on early findings, I was convinced that my family descended from Jean de la Chaumette (pronounced Shumate), a French Huguenot, expelled from France in the mid-1600s during the purge of the Huguenots. After settling in London the Huguenots were banished by Charles II and given transportation out of the country. They disembarked on the island of Martinique, considered a “dumping ground” for Huguenots, where Chaumette established a plantation, and lost his first wife to disease. Leaving his eldest son Antoine to tend to the plantation, he immigrated to America with the remainder of his family and settled in Elk Run, Virginia, ironically only a few short miles from where I was raised in Manassas. Both are located in what is now Prince William County. There has been extensive research done on the descendants of Jean de la Chaumette. Though researchers and historians are aware of and acknowledge the Shoemakes in Northeastern South Carolina, they have been unable to link them to Jean de la Chaumette. I’m not as convinced of the connection now, though somewhere between the “All Other Free Persons” of the James Shoemake household and Jean de la Chaumette there may well be a story.
The 1800 census shows Solomon and Sampson Shoemake, brothers, living side by side in Liberty County, Marion District, South Carolina. Both are labeled “All Other Free Persons.” That designation disappeared from the Sampson Shoemake family in 1810, when they were labeled “Free White Persons” by the federal census enumerator, and on subsequent census records as well. In the Darlington District of South Carolina, however, Sampson’s brother, Solomon, and his family remained “Free Colored Persons” on the 1820 and 1830 census. In 1840 and 1860, the Darlington County enumerators designated their households variously as “free colored,” “Mulatto,” and “white.”
How can one brother be defined as free white and another free colored? With such inconsistencies, and knowing the social and political significance of racial labels in a society based on slavery, one must question the knowledge and motives of those who applied them.* Though highly significant socially and politically, biologically such terms can be meaningless, as revealed in this era of DNA.
In the final analysis, relying on historically-based racial labels, terms, and designations makes it easy to get hung up on our racial identity, and much harder to pin it down. True passion lies in discovering our ancestors—and their stories—and placing them in their historical and social context, of which racial designations supply an intriguing part of the picture.
Marvin T. Jones, Executive Director of the Chowan Discovery Organization, is the author of one of Renegade South’s most popular essays, “The Chowan Discovery Group,” a history of the mixed-race origins of North Carolina’s Winton Triangle.
The Rock Creek Civil War Roundtable group will host the talk between 9:30 am and 11:00 am at the U.S Park Service’s Rock Creek Nature Center in Washington, D.C.
Here’s an overview of the event by Marvin T. Jones:
On June 24, the release of the movie THE FREE STATE OF JONES will present to the public perhaps the best known story of Southern resistance to the Confederacy. In anticipation of the movie’s release, Marvin T. Jones of Chowan Discovery will present an overview of loyal Southern groups, ranging from the Winton Triangle of North Carolina, to Jones County, Mississippi—where Newt Knight’s “Knight Company” held sway—to the Big Thicket of East Texas, where the infamous “jayhawkers” hid out during the war.
Very little has been told and much has been suppressed about Southerners who defended the Union during the Civil War. In and north of the Winton Triangle, the unruly Jack Fairless Buffaloes operated in several counties along the Chowan River. South of the Winton Triangle, the more soldierly Buffaloes of Bertie County co-ordinated with Union forces along the lower Chowan River.
If you’re in the D.C. area, I hope you attend Marvin Jones’s talk! Many attendees will join Mr. Jones afterward for a fun lunch at Ledo’s Pizza at 7435 Georgia Avenue, NW in Washington, D.C.
Some weeks ago, Lacy A. Garner, Jr., submitted a comment to one of my posts that included the following Civil War story about Thomas P. Maness of Ritter township, Moore County, North Carolina. Because upper Moore County is part of the Randolph County Area ( a hotbed of Unionist activity during the Civil War), I asked Lacy if I might include his story as a guest post. Written more than 150 years after the war, this story of resistance to Confederate conscription is Lacy Garner’s interpretative version of the oral family history passed to him by Thurman D. Maness, the grandson of Thomas P. Maness. Born in 1909, Thurman learned the stories from his own father, Reuben, who heard them directly from his father, Thomas P. Maness. In Lacy’s own words:
The following story really caught my attention and I just had to write it down. It’s another example of women who took charge during the war. Thurman died in 2010 at the age of 101 and was very proud of his grandmother Eliza. I miss him greatly but he is never more than a story away. The names of the two soldiers in this story have been lost forever. Their names I chose at random. Everything else is just as Thurman told it to me.
THEIR HEARTS WEREN’T IN IT
by Lacy A. Garner
Thomas P. Maness. Photo courtesy of Lacy A. Garner
Thomas Maness (1834-1900) had no passion for war. His middle initial “P” stood for nothing in particular. “Thomas ‘P.’ Maness.” He just liked the sound of it. It seemed to add a bit of notoriety to an otherwise common name. The sound had to be considerably more pleasant than those emanating from the battlefields of war.
At the age of thirty, Thomas had devoted the last two years of his life to staying one step ahead of conscription. First as a constable, and then as a teacher, he had successfully maintained an exempt status. By the fall of 1864, he had exhausted all legal options. No one seemed exempt from the scourge that plagued the land.
Thomas had never been one to run away from anything, particularly a fight. This time it was different. There was too much at stake for a man to venture into a fight absent of his heart. Thomas had no convictions, one way or the other. He would have preferred to awaken one morning to find it had all been a dream, but denial for the earthly reality of things was a luxury afforded only the angels in heaven.
Shaded area, including upper Moore County, NC, was a principle area of Unionist activity.
The reality of war came knocking in September of ’64, with news that his beloved brother Reuben (1836-1864), a Chaplain with the 46th N.C.S.T., had died in the trenches of Petersburg. If a Chaplain was not exempt from the horrors of war, what possible chance did he have? With cheeks still moist over the loss of his brother, Thomas P. Maness took to the safety of the forests and streams in an attempt to avoid the fate of his brother. With no formal declaration, he became a member of that group referred to as “Outlyers.”
By 1864, the Southern army had intensified its efforts to round up Outlyers and conscript them into military service. Thomas, like so many men in upper Moore County, was determined to defeat their efforts. Evading capture proved more difficult, with each passing day. Small detachments of Confederate soldiers were ordered to the homes of men known to be afoot. Their orders were to remain there for three weeks in an attempt to starve those men from hiding. In the winter of 1864, they came in search of Thomas.
Thomas’s wife, Mary Eliza Stewart Maness (1845-1897), awoke one wintry morning to the sound of men’s voices. She cracked the shutters ever so slightly, hoping to catch a glimpse. Pitching a tent less than thirty yards away, were two soldiers, dressed in tattered Confederate gray. Her husband had left only hours earlier. The soldiers’ presence caused her to breathe a sigh of relief. “He must be safe, at least for the moment, or else they would not be here.”
She tried to ignore their presence, and concentrated on her chores. Hungry mouths had to be fed before anything else could be considered. Her stepson Benton (1858-1941) was six years old, and her daughter Mary Ella (1862-1942), only two. Recent changes in her body suggested that another one was on the way.
After the children were fed, she again directed her attention outside. Peering through cracks in the shutters, she saw them hang a portion of a side of beef from a nearby limb. She suspected it was to be their food supply, while they laid in wait for her husband. She whispered under her breath, “That ain’t gonna last them long.” They snuggled their collars about their necks, to ward off a nip in the air. They seemed scantly clothed for the weather.
They set about the business of building a fire, and rejoiced in its rewards. A cloud of steam shrouded their faces, as it rose from the tin cups they clutched with both hands. They cherished the coffee’s warmth more than its flavor. Their neatly stacked rifles pointed towards heaven at precisely the same angle.
It was obvious from a considerable distance that one of them was wounded, for he walked with a noticeable limp. He had probably been assigned this detail while awaiting his wounds to heal. The other had a scar across his cheek, which might suggest that he too had fresh recollections of the cost of war. He was in the process of growing a beard, which would eventually conceal his disfigured face. His youthfulness suggested that might yet take awhile. Once, when he caught Mary Eliza staring at him through the shutters, he turned quickly, presenting her with only the more symmetrical side of his face.
As far as their physical attributes, their age troubled her most. At almost twenty years of age, she figured she had two or three years on the oldest. War had an appetite for boys, young in mind and body. Ravishing youthful bodies only left war thirsty for more.
There was the notion that she should feel contempt for those that came in search of her husband. Yet, she felt something entirely different. A sense of compassion swirled around inside her head before finally taking root. How could she claim the rewards of heaven while knowing she had joyfully watched as others had suffered? She hung her head and cried, as mothers are apt to do. She hoped that which stirred within her womb would be spared the carnage of war. It seemed that death came much too quickly, on its own accord, without war spurring it on.
Thomas’ safety no longer consumed her, but rather the safety and sanity of everyone involved. Thomas was undoubtedly the luckiest one of the three.
The soldiers’ constant presence deterred Thomas little. He continued to come and go freely between midnight and dawn. Mary Eliza saw to it that he always had plenty to eat. He would lie with her and the children a few hours each night, and be gone before the break of day.
The soldiers never ventured inside the house, and she never quite understood why. She suspected they were waiting for Thomas to grow comfortable and careless. Perhaps they intended to storm him some night, and in front of his wife and children, convert him to their way of thinking. Was their youthfulness to be considered the perfect disguise, or was it the only thing holding them back?
One night, on the dark of the moon, she confided in her husband as they lay a bed. “Tommy, these soldiers are nothing but boys. How can I hate them when they have done nothing to us? Hate has already stolen their youth and left them scarred for life. How could God sanction me adding to their misery by heaping more of the same upon them? They have mothers tonight that are worried sick, wondering if they are dead or alive. I would feel no differently for this one, which stirs within my womb. The light from the same moon fails us all tonight.”
Thomas could find no words to prove her wrong. He held her tightly in his arms, while setting her spirit free. “Eliza, you do as God would expect of you; no more and certainly no less.” He kissed her upon the forehead before settling in for a few hours sleep. He had no idea of the power he had unknowingly unleashed.
She awoke at dawn to find her husband gone again. She cracked the shutters just enough to watch the soldiers as they went about their morning chores. She watched as they took down the last of their rations, with still two weeks left to go. The weather had taken a turn for the worst and she feared for their safety.
With temperatures plummeting well below freezing, she watched them two more days. They boiled water over an open fire, pretending to have plenty to eat. Alas! She could tolerate their suffering no longer. She bundled herself and the children and went to introduce herself. She approached them cautiously, not wanting to be misconstrued. “Good morning gentlemen,” she announced while still halfway there. They tipped their hats in the true Southern fashion of acknowledging a lady’s presence. The older, the one with the limp, offered up a reply. “Mornin’ Ma’am. I’m Private Johnson, and this here’s Private Jones. We’re a special detachment from the Confederate States Army.”
“I’m Mary Eliza Maness; this here’s Benton and Mary Ella.” Little Benton took considerable offense to anyone that would harm his father. “Are you gonna hurt my papa?” There was no reply forthcoming.
Mary Eliza continued with her introduction. “I’m glad to make your acquaintance. I’m sure you’re aware of the fact that Tommy Maness is my husband.”
“Yes Ma’am, we figured as much.”
“You aim to capture my husband?”
Her outright openness took Johnson by surprise. “Well, yes Ma’am, that is if we happen to see him, that is. Course, if we don’t ever see him, well, that might prove to be a troublesome chore.” A smile graced his lips momentarily, before taking a permanent leave of absence.
In those first few words, a covenant was formed between Mary Eliza and those that would harm her husband. It was her intentions, that by the grace of God, they would never set eyes upon him. She seized the moment, realizing she had taken them completely by surprise. It was an invaluable military maneuver. “Why don’t you boys come in the house? I’ll fix you a decent meal.”
“Oh, no Ma’am, I’m afraid the Captain would take considerable offense to our fraternizing with an Outlyer’s wife, but we’re much obliged just the same.”
“Very well, as you wish, but the offer still stands.” With those departing words, she gathered her children and returned to the comforts of an open fire, and the smell of cornbread baking.
Shortly after sundown, there was a knock upon the door. She slowly opened the door to see Johnson and Jones, standing with their hats in their hands. “Evenin’ Ma’am. Uh, we were just wonderin’ if Thomas Maness was around.”
Mary Eliza smiled, “No, I’m afraid he ain’t, but feel free to come in and wait for him if you’d like.”
Jones turned to Johnson, and uttered the first words she had heard him speak, “Duncan, ain’t nothin’ wrong with that, is there?”
Johnson had already given it considerable thought, “No, ain’t nothin’ wrong with that – that I can see.”
She invited them in and closed the door behind them. “Now, you boys stand over there by the fireplace and warm a spell while I fix you something to eat.”
They leaned their rifles against the wall and quickly turned their backsides to the fire, twiddling their fingers behind them. The silence gave way to the popping and cracking of the glowing hardwood embers. It was an awkward situation for all of them, but the warmth of the fire and the smell of food bridged that awesome gap between friends and would be foes.
The soldiers quickly ate their fill. After thanking Mary Eliza for her generous hospitality, they retreated outside, back to the less hospitable elements of nature. It was as though they had risen through the depths of hell to carouse the streets of heaven, only to be cast into the former.
Thomas would understand such things. The heaven they had only briefly encountered was the same heaven he refused to surrender. Late that night, Mary Eliza told Thomas all that had happened. The spirit of God stirred within her heart as she spoke. Like that which stirred within her womb, it was invisible, yet convincingly undeniable.
“Tommy, you should have seen them boys! They ate like there weren’t no tomorrow.” Thomas wondered if his brother Reuben had acted likewise, the day before the bullet found its mark. He felt a twinge of resentment rising from the depths within. Reuben had died, yet they still lived. What made them so special? Still, he trusted Mary Eliza, and was at the mercy of her feminine intuition. He had seen it work miracles before.
The next evening she invited them in, informing them that supper was ready. It was a call she would not have to make twice. Unlike her stepson Benton, they came forthwith, as the crow would fly, only twice as eager. They gorged themselves on the meal set before them until the contentment of their bellies loosened their tongues.
Johnson was the first to acknowledge the similarities. “Ma’am, you cook like my mama does. This meal pleasantly reminds me of her.” He paused a moment to let the reality of what he had said fully sink in. Precious memories flooded his soul to the brink of fullness and beyond. The excess stood in pools about his eyes. How he wished he was home again. War had taken him far away, and now he wondered how he would ever find his way back.
Jones was also moved to speak. “Ma’am, it reminds me of home too. The smell of this place brings home a lot closer. I can almost reach-out and touch it.” He raked a sleeve across his eyes before continuing. “Truth is, it’ll be a miracle if we make it back. This may be as close as we ever get. Ma’am, thank you for reminding us of the way things used to be.” She noticed tears filling his eyes. They threatened to spill over those self-imposed levies of glory and honor.
Then, there was only silence. No one uttered a word. There was no need to speak. It would have tainted the moment. In that one fleeting moment of self-inflicted solitude, their spirits merged as one, but nothing lasts forever, certainly not silence. She quickly rose and gathered the dishes, wiping a tear as she went. The clattering of plates, forks and knives, signaled it was time to move on. Silence can only endure so long before it is emptied of things to say.
Emotion is conveyed in one of two ways: In words, or in the absence thereof. There was no denying the latter. When one heart touches another, there is only the deafening sound of silence. In a bold move she changed the subject, “Why don’t you boys stay the night. There’s a spare bedroom in back, and Tommy wouldn’t mind if you made yourselves at home.” With the sound of her words still ringing in her ears, she stopped a moment to consider what had possessed her say such a thing. The thought had never crossed her mind; yet had found its way into words.
Johnson and Jones huddled themselves, weighing the pros and cons. Jones had considerable reservations. “Duncan, the Captain will have us shot if he ever finds out!”
Johnson wanted to debate the issue. “Josh, who’s gonna know? Besides, the way I see it, one man’s bullet hurts ‘bout as much as the next man’s does. We’ve ‘bout froze ourselves to death out there. We ain’t got nothin’ to eat. A bullet might bring us some welcomed relief, but in the mean time, I’m for accepting this lady’s hospitality.” Without any further discussion, Johnson accepted her invitation for the both of them. “Ma’am, we’re much obliged. We’ll try not to get under foot and we’ll be up and out of the house before the first light.” That was good, for she knew how the neighbors loved to talk.
Thomas slipped in sometime after midnight. She met him at the door and placed a finger across his lips, her gesture for silence. “Be quiet! You’ll wake them two soldiers in the back room.”
Thomas’s mouth fell open. “Mary Eliza, have you gone crazy? You’re gonna have me on the front line at Petersburg before the day is through.”
“Tommy, trust me. They mean you no harm. They’re just a couple of boys away from home. They’re wonderin’ if they will ever see home again. The least we can do is ease their pain and suffering. They’ll be up and out before first light. You just make sure you’re gone by then. As long as they don’t see you, you ain’t got nothin’ to fear.” She pointed to their rifles still leaning against the wall. “See, they ain’t concerned with you.” Thomas took his wife at her word, putting his fate in her hands. He continued to slip in and out of the house, under the cover of darkness.
Johnson and Jones were always asleep long before midnight.
Sometimes, between midnight and dawn, Thomas would sit by the fire, cleaning their rifles and shining their boots as they slept. He had no understanding of what possessed him to do such a thing, only that his brother Reuben would approve. Thomas considered it his contribution to the war.
The soldiers never acknowledged his deeds, possibly for fear of learning the truth. They rightly judged that the proper etiquette would be never to ask too many questions. Many nights they sat by the fire and conversed with Mary Eliza. She was greatly impressed by their inherent singing abilities. She had never heard anything like it. Josh sang the prettiest tenor Mary Eliza had ever heard. It rivaled that of an angel. The sound of the two of them together was unlike anything to be heard on earth. The next two weeks melted away, like butter in a warm skillet. No one wanted to talk about it, but soon they would have to go.
Mary Eliza wanted to know, so one night she up and asked them. “Where you goin’, I mean, after you leave here?”
Duncan hung his head before again lifting his eyes. “Well, Ma’am, I guess we’ll be goin’ back to the regular army. You know they’re having a terrible time keeping them Yankees at bay ‘round Richmond. I suspect that’s where we’re headed.”
She could see the concern on their faces. They had obviously heard the stories. “You boys be careful now, you hear me? That’s where Reuben fell.” She went into the story, of how a Yankee sniper’s bullet had pierced his neck. “If your mammy was here she’d tell you the same thing. Just you be careful.”
Jones accepted her interest as legitimate concern, but was also prepared to accept his fate. The army had taught him how to live, but was vague on how to die. That was yet to be learned. “Yes Ma’am, we’ll be careful alright. I promised my mama I’d be home soon. That was nearly three years ago. I suspect she’s all but given up hope.”
Mary Eliza was quick to scold him. “Josh, giving up hope, that ain’t in a mother’s nature. This war will be over soon, and everyone is going home – Tommy included. Don’t much matter which side you’re on, seem we all got our share of suffering to bear. But, someday it will all be over. Tommy calls it a bad dream. We’re all gonna wake up soon.”
Three weeks to the day from the time of their arrival, it was time for them to go. With tears in her eyes, Mary Eliza hugged them goodbye. They would always hold a special place in her heart. “I’ll pray every day, and may God go with you, wherever that might be.”
Another concern found its way into words. “How will I ever know you made it?”
Duncan offered her a solution. “Ma’am, if we make it back, we’ll be sure to come by and let you know. It’ll give us a chance to meet your husband, whom I’m glad to say we ain’t ever laid eyes on. When the war is over, and after a fair amount of time, if we ain’t come by, then we’ll see you on the other side.”
She hugged them both, one last time, and watched until they walked out of sight. A cold feeling descended upon her, more chilling than the winter’s wind. She suddenly realized that she would never see them again. She was all too familiar with that eerie feeling, which arose from somewhere within. She had felt it before, that day when Reuben went away. Now, that same chilly hand of death had reached out and touched her on the shoulder again.
On April 9 1865, General Lee surrendered. The war was finally over. The long and slow procession of men returning home began, but Duncan and Josh were never among them. After a year of praying and hoping that her feminine intuition was wrong, Mary Eliza abandoned all hope of ever seeing them again; at least upon this earth.
On August 5, 1865 Mary Eliza and Thomas’ second child was born. They named him Reuben. He was not only the namesake of Thomas’ brother, but also Josh, Duncan, and all those soldiers who had given their all in the pursuit of Glory and Honor. It had been a long, hard struggle. Four years of death and destruction were finally over, but all would never be forgotten. Those two men, whom I shall now refrain from calling boys, willingly marched into the jaws of hell, while sparing Tommy Maness. It was something the Maness family would never forget. Mary Eliza would always remember those two soldiers she befriended in the winter of ’64. She took comfort in knowing that she had fulfilled her Christian obligation to alleviate pain and suffering – if only for awhile. She felt it important enough to pass this story on to her son Reuben.
Reuben Maness (1865-1953) would often recount this story to his children. His son Thurman (1909-2010) committed it to memory as a very young child and I was inspired to put it to paper. All involved have long since departed this life, but as long as their story continues to touch our hearts and minds, they shall live forever. —– Lacy A. Garner, Jr.
One of the leading opponents of secession from Moore County was Bryan Tyson, author of The Institution of Slavery in the Southern States . . . . Our Sectional Troubles
Many years ago, while researching my doctoral dissertation in the North Carolina State Archives, I came across a curious poem in the official papers of Civil War Governor Zeb Vance. Anonymously written in 1864, the poem celebrates the mounting victories of the Union army over Confederate forces, with its author(s) taking particular delight in taunting Governor Vance. The poem ends by lauding the courage of North Carolina’s pro-Union women as they faced down Confederate soldiers determined to learn the whereabouts of their sons and husbands.
I discovered the poem at the same time that I was researching the inner civil war that raged between Confederate and anti-Confederate forces in the North Carolina Piedmont—specifically, in the heart of its Quaker Belt, at the apex of Randolph, Montgomery, and Moore Counties (see map below). I was struck by how closely the poem fit the events of that region, particularly the clashes between Wesleyan Methodist Unionists and Confederate militia and home guard soldiers. So perfectly did the poem’s final stanza about “bold” Unionist women describe what I found in state and local records, that I quoted it in Unruly Women (p. 131).
The mass gravestone of three brothers who lost their lives in these clashes—William, John, and Jesse Hulin—with its single engraved description, “Murdered,” is pictured below.
Grave of William, John, and Jesse Hulin, Lovejoy Chapel cemetery, Montgomery County, NC. Photograph courtesy of Elaine Reynolds
Despite how closely the 1864 poem parallels events occurring simultaneously in Montgomery County, a single place name written in its margins, “Taylorsville,” indicates that it originated in Alexander County, located further to the west and just outside the Quaker Belt (see map below).
The northern portion of Alexander County shares borders with northern Iredell and southern Wilkes counties, both considered part of the Quaker Belt, which was a hotbed of southern dissent during the Civil War. Alexander County shared in that history of dissent, despite the presence today of a monument to the Confederacy on its courthouse lawn. Like so many southern counties, Alexander’s Civil War history is far more complicated than Lost Cause histories and monuments would indicate.
In his recently published study of the Civil War in the North Carolina Quaker Belt, William T. Auman reported that Confederate authorities were compelled to station a regiment of some 300 Home Guard soldiers in a region that included northern Alexander County. Citing numerous examples of clashes in this region, Auman described several that occurred specifically in Alexander. At one point, he wrote, two Home Guard soldiers were reported to Governor Vance as having “presented their guns at a Lady in Alexander last week.” So also were a number of Guardsmen reportedly shot by deserters.The old Union flag “waves every day,” read one letter from an Alexander County citizen to a soldier in the field. Replied the soldier, “I hope it will Wave over me bee fore long.” (From Auman, Civil War in the NC Quaker Belt)
The poem, predicting victory for the Union and its loyal southern and northern citizens and shame for Governor Vance, is printed here in its entirety, with original spelling intact:
This war is strange on every hand We hear its song from every land The Yankees are victorious In every Battle they hav faught For twelve months or there abought They renderd themslfvs glorious
Then why will the rebbles forse Stand And against the union armey contend When they see thir mighty power Reason would teach them that they was rong And all that to thir [word smeared] belongs If they reflect one hour
The union fast is gaining ground In evry state and all around We hear the men complaining Jeff Davis they will overthrow And to the union they will go And stil thir caus keeps ganing
They do believe that Govner Vance Would slip rite back if he’d the chance Into the glorious union If they’d promis him a pritty seat To sit at Abriham Lincoln’s feet He [would] quickly take communion
I could not believe that antie Zeb Would hav turned out to be a reb Although his actions prouved it When he tuck holt of the govner’s chiear Confederate caus to him was dear For fiear that he might loose it
Then my little lawyer Zeb Think of the blood that you hav shed And begin to make repentance Before your frightend ghost doeth stand Before the judge of all the land And hear its awful sentence
Let old Jeff davis wag along And all that to his caus belong They’ll travel on together In a short time they’ll see thir fate When thir cause is lost and it’s too late And thir forses they can’t geather
Carolina fair and mountain land Hath for the Union tuck a stand Hir men ar bould and dairing The rebble citizens doeth leave And at thir fate doeth cry and grieve And goes off quite desparing
Then my Union friends we’ll chiear For glorious news we soon shall hear [word smeared] libberty’s banner flying The vanquisht armeys of the foe Will soon be heard of hear no more For they will leave a crying
Then chiear up you Union ladies bold For of your courige must be told How youv withstood abuses When your property they’d take The witty ansers you would make That would vanish thir rude forces
—Anonymous
NC in 1860, with Quaker Belt Counties shaded in gray, and Alexander County shaded in red.
KKK costumes in N.C., 1870. Engraving by US Marshall JG Hester. NY Public Library.
By Victoria Bynum
Some time ago, I posted an essay about the Ku Klux Klan’s terrorization of Orange County, North Carolina, in the years following the Civil War. Recently, I recovered from my files evidence of the Klan’s rampages through neighboring Granville County as well.
The following petitions, sent in 1868 and 1869 to North Carolina’s Republican governor, William W. Holden, include the names of numerous Granville County men of color who were free from slavery long before the Civil War. Silas L. Curtis, Terral Curtis, Cuffee Mayo, William Tyler, and A. B. Kerzy lived in the Tally Ho township of Granville County. Having grown up before the war, they were forbidden by law to learn to read or write; thus, most of the men were semi-literate or illiterate. Silas Curtis, who wrote both the petitions, was an exception. The signatures of Cuffee Mayo (elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1868) and William Solomon indicate their literacy as well.
The 1868 petitioners belonged to a local branch of the Republican Union Leagues (also called Loyal Leagues) which were under assault by the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, determined to turn back Reconstruction, drive Republicans from power, and reassert dominance over African Americans, functioned as a terrorist arm of the pro-Confederate southern wing of the Democratic Party.
The petition is blunt in describing the violence wreaked upon the community, and includes details of the sexual humiliation of a woman of color and the attempted murder of another. The petitioners are adamant in declaring their rights and their need for state assistance. In signing or allowing their names to be placed on such a petition, they risked great personal danger. A note at the bottom asks its deliverer to hand the petition directly to Governor Holden to prevent the “Rebels” from destroying it.
I recognize many of the men’s names from the extensive research I conducted in county records while writing my first book, Unruly Women. In that book, I discussed A. B. Kerzy (Archibald Kearsey), at some length for his participation in underground trading during the war; others are mentioned as well. Although I also briefly mentioned the petitions, they are published below in their entirety.
In transcribing the letters, I have added paragraph breaks and used common punctuation and grammar, but endeavored to spell words exactly as they appear on the originals. (The originals of both petitions are contained in the Governors’ Papers, W.W. Holden, N.C. Department of Archives and History)
Oct 11, 1868
Our Governor–Dear Sir:
I take the privilige of writing to you on this occasion for this reason, not because we are scared out, but in the first place, you are our State Executive. And when we are having outrages comitted among us, you are our only refuge to which we have to flee for advice and protection.
Therefor I take the privilige to inform you of some outrages comitted amoung us. And it is not only now and then—it is geting to be a genrel thing. On Saturday night last, the Ku Klux were raging in Oxford and Tally Ho. They first formed themselves in line in front of the Colored School Room, thinking the Leagues men were at lodge in there. And failing to find them, went off to other places and don the same, tho as it happen the leagues had adjoined [adjourned] before they came out and they watched them.
And they now say they intend to brake up the Leagues before the Election. Col. Aimey, in a speech on Friday last at Oxford, [said] that if we would stop the Leagues he would stop the KuKlux. And if not, he could not do nothing with them.
On Thursday night last they went to a Colored man’s house and got him out and Beet him cruley, beet his wife and cut her dress open and tied her to a tree—then told them if ever they told it, or told who it was, they would kill them. They then went to another one’s house and comence to tarring the top of his house off and some of them at the door. I broke in [and] got hold of his wife—he got out of the way—and got her out and she got loose and ran and they shot her in the back and by the side of the face and she now lies in a low state of helth. And a few nights ago they went to another colored man’s house and treated him the same.
I will now give you the colored mens names: Ned Mallory, Parson Jones, and Pressley Herndon. Those white men was John C. Hugen, William Stem, John Wheeler, John Day, William Boles, Hay Stem, and one by the name Bishop, Jack Boothe, Flay[?] Moor, Sam Boothe, Henry Hasken, Flucher [Fletcher?] Moor, Tom Jones, Wm. Jones, and others—that are comiting these outrages. And I have not told near all they have and are doing.
We appeal to you—for some protection in some way. Such men oght to be stoped in their outrages.
Sir, I hope to hear from you soon. We don’t want a malissia [militia] here among us. But God in heaven knows we must have something—otherwise we will have to give up Gen. Grant and take Seymour.* And if I have to do that I am going to take me a rope and go to the woods. Your obedent Servant,
The second petition, 1869, protests Tally Ho’s township election, claiming that Democrats deliberately miscounted votes in order to claim victory for their own candidate.
This petition, also written by Silas Curtis, contains similar but fewer names and appears to have been written in much greater haste. One of the appended names, “Lunchford Wiliford” (Lunsford Williford), caught my eye immediately. Lunsford was the son of Susan Williford, a poor white woman who appears prominently in chapter four of Unruly Women. Antebellum North Carolina laws against interracial marriage forbade Susan to marry Peter Curtis, who, like Silas L. Curtis, belonged to one of Granville County’s most prominent free families of color. Susan had several children by Peter Curtis, though it’s not clear whether Curtis also fathered Lunsford. Nevertheless, Lunsford became part of the Curtis family when he married Harriet Curtis, the daughter of Peter’s sister, Nancy Curtis.
Note that this petition proclaims an alliance between “the colored race and the labering class of white people,” reflective of kinship ties that created vibrant communities of mixed-race people in North Carolina.
–vb
August 11, 1869
Your Exencilence Governor W.W. Holden,
Dear Sir, We the Republicans of Granville County most respetifully protest against the township election of Tally Ho in consequence of the way it was conducted. And do earnestly believe that it oght to be remoddled, and a fair and square election given.
We most recollect that the Democrats will—and do—do all and everything they can to get in power. And they think if they can fool the Republicans, as they have already done at Tally Ho and other places, and get in power in the townships. By that means, after awhile, they can get the county offices and from that to the state’s offices and United states offices. And then they can nullify the republican form of government and place the colored race, and labering class of white people, in the same position—only wors—as they were before.
And please your honor, Sir, if you cannot grant us a re-election—which we honestly believe that we oght to have—what must we do in such a case? And we can also prove by a colored man, a responsible one—that the Democrat candidate told him that they had beet them. And if the Republicans had had as meny more as they did have, we would have beet them. And as it was, they only beet [by] about thirty.
What must we do? Must we put up with sunch [such], when we know there are frode [fraud?]. Know we will die first.
Recollect that dividing into townships all of the counties makes a consitable difference—among the colored people—egnorent as they are.
And meny and numbers are dissatisfied at the Election except [if] it had bin don fair, and we appeal to our Superior—our Surpream, for refuge.
At the state archives I found the testimony of a wife about the killing of her [Unionist] husband. He was shot while plowing . . . . A man walked up, squatted down took aim, and BANG!, shot him. While dying, he told his young daughter, who was right there by his side all the time, that he loved her and wanted her to take good care of the dresses that he recently bought her. Made tears come–this is why I love history. Fiction is boring in comparison.
William T. Auman to Victoria Bynum, January 19, 1987
I recently learned that my favorite historian of North Carolina Civil War Unionists, William T. “Bill” Auman, had revised and published his important 1988 dissertation detailing North Carolina’s inner civil war. I no sooner learned this exciting news when I discovered that Bill passed away in April, 2013, shortly before his manuscript went to press. Saddened by the news, and disappointed that I can never congratulate Bill on his accomplishment, I want, nevertheless, to pay tribute to his work. Certainly, historians and others interested in Civil War dissenters and guerrillas will want to read Bill Auman’s Civil War in the North Carolina Quaker Belt.
My friendship and scholarly relationship with Bill goes back to our years as history doctoral students–he, at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, me at the University of California, San Diego. I first learned of his research shortly after returning to California from North Carolina after completing a year of research (1982-83) on the dissertation that eventually became my first book, Unruly Women (1992). While still in North Carolina, I’d become excited by what I found in the Civil War court records of Montgomery County, as well as the Governors’ Papers, of the North Carolina State Archives. So, what began as a study of women during the antebellum years of Granville, Orange, and Montgomery Counties, North Carolina, was now expanded to the war years in order to include women from pro-Union families who tangled with the Confederacy over the status and whereabouts of their outlier/deserter husbands and sons. With that decision, my research began to dovetail with Bill Auman’s.
Very soon, I discovered Bill’s work on Southern Unionists of the Randolph County area (a region that included Montgomery County). After completing his M.A. thesis on the topic in 1978, Bill had published three articles between 1981 and 1984 on the region’s Wesleyan Methodist Unionists, on the underground Unionist organization known as the Heroes of American, and on Unionist leader Bryan Tyson of Moore County. Carefully researched and meticulously argued, those articles put me on the fast track to understanding the political context in which Montgomery County women (such as Martha Sheets, Caroline Hulin, and Phoebe Crook) confronted local pro-Confederate citizens for their abuse of local families who opposed secession and refused to support the Confederacy.
On a return trip to North Carolina in 1984, I attempted to locate Bill at the university, but learned that he had returned home for the summer. Instead, we spoke by telephone, and were both excited to share our mutual interest in Quaker Belt Unionists. At that point, we began writing one another (too early for email!), and sharing our ideas. Bill was the expert on the Quaker Belt’s inner civil war; I was the newcomer, and, besides, only a slice of my dissertation concerned the Wesleyan Methodist Unionists of Montgomery County. But it was more than that. Bill’s expertise emanated not only from superb training, but also from his personal background. A native of Randolph County, he was descended from several of the Unionist families of which he wrote, and thoroughly immersed in the geography, culture, and kinship of the region.
After corresponding for two years, during which time Bill read and critiqued several of Unruly Women’s chapters-in-progress, we met for the first time in Chicago, at the December 1986 convention of the American Historical Association (AHA). We spent a lively afternoon discussing not only our research, but the history profession in general. As anyone who knew Bill Auman can tell you, he was irreverent in his judgments of academia, and preferred to remain outside its hallowed halls as much as possible. He was delighted to learn that I enjoyed country and bluegrass music, and wrote to me about his love of the Sandy Creek Boys, the Bass Mountain Boys, and Raymond Fairchild, who he described as a “genuine North Carolina Cherokee raised on the Reservation.” Bill himself had learned to play a five-string guitar from the “good ole boys” he’d met at fiddler’s conventions.
By then, I was teaching at Southwest Texas University in San Marcos, TX (later renamed Texas State University). Bill did not yet have a teaching position, but in 1988, simultaneously with finishing his dissertation, he accepted a position at Georgia Southern University. By 1990, he’d moved on to the University of the Ozarks.
In 1991, Bill and I served together on a panel of the Organization of American Historians (OAH) in St. Louis. He presented a paper on “The Origins of Dissent in Confederate North Carolina”; I served as a commentor. And that, I’m sorry to say, was our last contact, either in person or by letter.
I can’t say why we lost touch, but I can guess. We were both terribly busy by 1991, working full-time with heavy teaching loads and dissertations waiting to be turned into books. In one of his final letters to me, Bill declared that “the pace is unbelievable. Too much for an old man. Jeepers.” In another, he commented that three of the four courses he was teaching were totally new preparations. And, of course, there were always conference papers and book reviews waiting to be written. Such is the life of the newly-minted PhD–that is, if you’re lucky enough to have a job in your profession.
I think around this time Bill abandoned his teaching position in the Ozarks and headed back home. It was always the scholarship, after all, that he loved. His research was inseparable from his love of North Carolina, and when he did return to teaching it would be there, in his home state.
As the preeminent historian of Civil War dissenters in central North Carolina, Bill has long been, and remains, the authority on that region’s most notorious Civil War guerrilla, Bill Owens. No one, I believe, knows more about Owens’ anti-Confederate activities and his violent death in 1865 at the hands of a lynch mob than Bill Auman. In fact, the guerrilla Bill lived at the apex of Randolph, Montgomery, and Moore Counties, very close to the ancestors of the historian Bill.
At a certain point, Bill Auman told me long ago, an old-timer of the neighborhood had taken him to the original home of Bill Owens. And so, much of what I wrote about Bill Owens and his wife–who was famously abused by local Confederate officials–in Unruly Women, and later in Long Shadow of the Civil War (2010),was enhanced by Auman’s insights into an otherwise elusive couple.
A problem emerged for me, however, as I wrote about Bill Owens and his wife for my latest book, Long Shadow of the Civil War. Based on Auman’s own research, Bill Owens was lynched in 1865. And yet, Auman identified William Bailey Owens and his wife, Mary, of Moore County as the guerrilla couple, although that Bill Owens was still alive in 1880 according to federal manuscript population censuses. Furthermore, the same censuses revealed another William Owens living just a few miles away, over the county line in Montgomery, who, appropriate to having been lynched, disappears from the census after 1870. This William Owens had a wife named Adeline, and this Bill Owens, I suspected, was the guerrilla Bill Owens.
Frankly, I wasn’t certain that I was correct. Bill Auman, after all, was thoroughly familiar with the people and neighborhoods of the Randolph County area. And what about the old timer who had taken him to visit Bill Owens’s original homestead? Still, I kept coming back to the fact that a man lynched in 1865 could not be alive in 1880, and so I respectfully presented my theory that Bill and Adeline Owens of Montgomery County were the “real” Owenses in my 2010 book, Long Shadow of the Civil War.
Turns out I was in for a third surprise when I received my Kindle edition of Civil War in the North Carolina Quaker Belt. I was shocked and delighted to discover that Bill had read Long Shadow of the Civil War, seen the footnote in which I reported my belief that he had incorrectly identified Bill Owens, reconsidered the evidence, and now agreed with me.
I guess that makes it official: William Owens and his wife, Adeline, of Montgomery County, NC, and not William Bailey Owens and his wife Mary, of Moore County, is our guerrilla couple. Thank you, Bill, for this final posthumous judgment. Oh, how I wish I’d written directly to you about my concerns so we could have reached that conclusion together while you were still alive.
Renegade South 