July | 2013 | Fourth Generation Inclusive

A condition of ill-feeling.

State v. Shadrach Manuel, 72 NC 201 (1875).

This indictment for malicious mischief was tried in Cumberland Superior Court.

At trial, the State introduced evidence of the “condition of ill-feeling” between Shadrach Manuel and Sylvia Jenkins. He had threatened injury to her person and property, and in August, 1873, he had killed a couple of her hogs and had chopped her ox on the hip with an axe, seriously wounding the animal, which had be stitched and was unable to work until he healed. Also, her hogs and ox were in the habit of breaking into Manuel’s field of the defendant and injuring his crop, and he had complained to her and threatened to kill them if they did not stop.

Manuel argued in his defense that he could not have committed “malicious mischief” because the ox had only been wounded and had recovered from its injuries, and thus was not destroyed. Manuel was convicted and appealed to the State Supreme Court, which held that malicious wounding of cattle, short of destruction, is not an indictable offence at common law. Judgment reversed.

In the 1870 census of Flea Hill, Cumberland County: Shadrack Manuel, 48, farmer, wife Sarah, 36, and children Martha J., 17, Dolphus W., 13, Fredrick B., 10, Shadrack, 7, John M., 5, Mary M., 3, and Elizabeth A., 6 months. [Sidenote: Shadrach Manuel cannot be definitively identified in the pre-War censuses, but he is is likely to have been a member of one of the free colored Manuel families of Cumberland or Sampson County.]

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July 10, 2013

Acts passed to emancipate.

The following are the Titles of the Acts passed at the Session of the General Assembly of the State of North-Carolina, held at the city of Raleigh, on the 1^st of November, 1795.

…

To emancipate a mulatto boy by the name of Gustavus Adolphus Johnston, in the county of Chowan; and also a mulatto girl by the name of Amy Philips, in the county of Brunswick.

…

North-Carolina Journal, Halifax, 12 December 1795.

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July 9, 2013

He saw his money walk into a white man’s pocket.

State v. Jarrott, a slave, 23 NC 76 (1840).

This case arose in Person County. Jarrott, an enslaved man, was indicted for the murder of Thomas Chatham, who was 18 or 19 years old. A 14 year-old white boy named John T. Brooks testified that he went with Chatham to a fish-trap in the neighborhood in a Saturday night and remained until “about two or three hours before day.” They were the only white people present. Jarrott and a free negro named Jack Hughes argued over a card game and called on Chatham to “keep the game for them.” After a second argument, Hughes refused to play anymore. Jarrott snatched up the handkerchief they had been playing on, knocking a twelve-and-a-half cent coin into the leaves. When he was unable to find it, he said “he saw his nine pence walk into a white man’s pocket, and that any white man who would steal a negro’s money, was not too good to unbutton a sheep’s collar.” Further, he charged Chatham with being raised on and living on stolen sheep, accused him of stealing his money, threatened to kill him if he did not give it up, and brandished a stick over his head. Chatham invited Jarrott to search his pockets, and turned them out when Jarrott refused. When Jarrott then accused Chatham of hiding the money in his shoes, he pulled off his shoes and socks. Another man got a light, searched among the leaves, and found the coin near where Chatham stood, which was “some six or seven steps from the spot” where Jarrott jerked up his handkerchief. Chatham sat down near the fire and Jarrott “continued to abuse him, using very indecent and insolent language.” Chatham asked Brooks for his knife, saying he wanted to cut his nails. He then told Jarrott that if he did not hush, he would stick it in him. Jarrott raised his stick and dared him, and Chatham chased him around the fire with a length of fence rail. Jarrott ran off, but returned and “said something.” Chatham picked up his fence rail and approached Jarrott with the knife in his other hand. Brooks heard two blows, then saw Chatham lying on the ground.

The testimony of Isaac, an enslaved man, essentially corroborated Brooks’, but he added that there was about a 15-minute gap between the argument about the money and Chatham’s renewal of the dispute and threat to stab Jarrott.

A free negro named Nathan Jones corroborated Isaac, but denied that Jarrott ever brandished his stick over Chatham. He also swore that Chatham said he would kill Jarrott that night or go to his master Monday and have him whipped, then would waylay him and shoot him with a rifle. Two other witnesses testified about Chatham’s wounds (two to the back of the head, about two inches in length); his size (“small and slender for a boy of his age,” said one, “not tall, but stoutly built,” said the other); and Jarrott’s stature (“about six feet high, and of the ordinary size of negroes of that height; and was about twenty-three years of age.”)

Jack Hughes testified that Chatham swung at Jarrott and missed before Jarrott knocked him down and struck him several blows.

The jury found Jarrott guilty of murder, and the judge pronounced a death sentence.

The appeal focused on the judge’s jury instructions. Though not agreeing with his every ruling, the Supreme Court upheld the verdict, establishing that “the same matters which would be deemed in law a sufficient provocation to free a white man … from the guilt of murder, will not have the same effect when the party slain is a white man, and the offender a slave ….”

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July 7, 2013

In payment of Confederate taxes, no. 1.

Form of the estimate and assessment of agricultural products agreed upon by the assessor and tax-payer, and the value of the portion thereof to which the government is entitled, which is taxed in kind, in accordance with the provisions of Section 11 of “an Act to lay taxes for the common defence and carry on the government of the Confederate States,” said estimate and assessment to be made as soon as the crops are ready for market.

Adam Artis by wife

Cured Fodder Quantity of gross crop. — 1500 Tithe or one-tenth. — 150 Value of one-tenth. — $4.50

I, Adam Artis of the County of Wayne and State of North Carolina do swear that the above is a true statement and estimate of all the agricultural products produced by me during the year 1863, which are taxable by the provisions of the 11^th section of the above stated act, including what may have been sold of consumed by me, and of the value of that portion of said crops to which the government is entitled. /s/ Adam X Artis

Sworn to and subscribed to before me the 3 day of December 1863, and I further certify that the above estimate and assessment has been agreed upon by said Adam Artis and myself as a correct and true statement of the amount of his crops and the value of the portion to which the government is entitled. /s/ J.A. Lane, Assessor.

The Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms, 1861-1865 (NARA M346), often called the “Confederate Citizens File,” is a collection of 650,000 vouchers and other documents relating to goods furnished or services rendered to the Confederate government by private individuals and businesses.

The “Citizens File” was created by the Confederate Archives Division of the Adjutant General’s Office from records created or received by the Confederate War and Treasury Departments that were in the custody of the U.S. War Department. The Citizens File was created to aid in determining the legitimacy of compensation claims submitted for property losses allegedly inflicted by Union forces. The records were used by the Treasury and Justice Departments, Southern Claims Commission, Court of Claims, and congressional claims committees to determine whether the claimant had been loyal to the Union or had aided the Confederate government and thus not eligible for compensation.

[Sidenote: In 1863, Adam Artis was married to Frances Seaberry. They are my great-great-great-grandparents. — LYH]

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July 3, 2013

For fear of cholera, a drain is contracted.

In March 1873, the Messick pond was ordered surveyed and drained in the general cleaning up made in fear of the appearance of cholera. The contract for building a sewer or drain, with twelve-inch hard clay pipe, was awarded to Jennings Larter for twenty-nine cents a cubic yard.

From History of Lawrence and Monroe Counties, Indiana, B.F. Bowen & Co.

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July 3, 2013

Train hand killed.

WELDON, Feb. 20.

Fatal Railroad Accident. – A free negro man, employed as a train hand on the Seaboard and Roanoke Rail Road, was killed at Garysburg today by falling from the Portsmouth cars just as the train was crossing the bridge which spans the track of the Petersburg Railroad.

Semi-Weekly Fayetteville Observer, 22 February 1855.

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July 2, 2013

The predicament.

As we have already noted, according to the laws of the colonial period, illegitimate children acquired the status of the mother, and this ruling explains the predicament of John Oggs’ children. Oggs was a bachelor whose housekeeper and cook was his slave, a Negro woman named Hester. By her he fathered four offspring, two males and two females. To “my gairl Alley (Alice)” and “my boy Jesse” he devised an equal interest in the plantation whereon he lived. To “my gairl Prudence” and “my boy Charles” he bequeathed the “land on the Island.” The total acreage of his real estate was between two and three hundred acres. He had failed, however, to provide for the manumission of either the mother or her children and since the law prohibited a slave from owning real property, the complications produced by the will became immediately evident. Here were properties clearly intended for individuals who were unable to exercise the privileges of ownership.

This peculiar state of affairs continued for a period of eighteen years, the boy Jesse having died in the meantime, when John Hamilton solved the problem by sponsoring a special legislative enactment, doubtless at the behest of interested persons in Camden and in Pasquotank. Following are quoted pertinent passages from the act finally passed by the State Legislature: “And whereas, the within mentioned Hester, and her children Charles, Alley and Prudence Oggs, are recommended to this General Assembly by several very respectable inhabitants of Camden and Pasquotank, as worthy of being manumitted and set free agreeable to the intentions of their father John Oggs. . . . Be it therefore enacted, that the said Negro woman Hester, and her children Charles, Alley and Prudence Oggs, are hereby manumitted and set free to all intents and purposes, and to possess all rights and privileges as if they had been born free.”

Exercising their long-delayed rights of ownership, for a few years the Oggs heirs sold and bought real estate. The father had owned one tract located in a neighborhood now known as Wickham, and the other was on Indian Island. Prudence finally purchased fifty acres on Indian Island, where she apparently spent her last days. Hester and the other two children later assumed the surname of Dixon. Eventually they sold all their possessions and departed for parts unknown.

Excerpt from Jesse F. Pugh, Three Hundred Years Along the Pasquotank (1957).

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July 2, 2013

They have always been a nuisance, and now become a great danger.

North Carolina. To the Senate & House of Commons, Your memorialists, citizens of Currituck County, respectfully petition your honorable bodies to take immediate steps to relieve the people of this State of the free negro population, which has always been a nuisance, and now become an element of great danger. Scattered over the State, having at all times free communication with the slaves, the free negroes furnish a ready and safe medium for the diffusion of incendiary doctrines which we have abundant reason to believe have, especially of late, been instilled into the minds of the slaves, and they thereby rendered insubordinate and ripe for any wicked enterprise to which they may be instigated by Northern Emissaries. The minds of our people have for several years past been directed to this source of danger, but recent events have produced a deep and settled conviction of the necessity of guarding against it, either by expelling the free negroes, or reducing them all to the condition of slavery. Your memorialists are [page torn] with us qualms as to the right of the Legislature either to expel them from the State, or to reduce them to a condition of slavery. Disfranchised in this State by the convention of 1835, the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest judicial tribunal in our country, by a late decision has decided that they are not citizens under the Constitution; and it must be admitted that here, the only rights to which they are entitled are strictly & solely legal, and therefore subject to revision or change by act of the Gen’l Assembly. Whatever diversity of opinion, however, may be Entertained in reference to this question, it strikes your Petitioners that there is one view of the subject that cannot fail to impress the mind of Every good citizen; all must admit that the present is a time of great danger; such in fact as never before Endangered the peace & safety of the Southern States, and threatened the institution of slavery; it is unnecessary to enter into any statement of facts to prove the truth of this declaration, what is the first duty of the people of North Carolina? Surely, to provide all necessary means to ward off the threatened danger – your Memorialists, firmly believing the removal of the free Negroes from the State, or their reduction to the same condition of the slave population, one of the necessary means, hold that the plain right of self defense would justify such action on their part through their Legislature, and that such legislation at this time would meet the approving voice of the whole body of the Southern people & challenge the approbation of all others throughout the country who properly appreciate our position & respect our rights. But your Memorialists do not design submitting any argument upon the subject to your honorable bodies, either as to the right or the expediency of the policy they recommend; nor do they propose to advise any particular plan for the accomplishment of the object in view, being content to leave the matter to your own good judgement, guided as they believe it will be by sound patriotism and a just sense of your representative duties. They cannot refrain, however, from suggesting that according to their own judgements the wisest and most judicious policy would be to provide for the removal of all such as might choose to go to the Northern States within a certain fixed time, and to authorise the several county courts to sell as slaves all such as remained after the Expiration of the time named in the act and believing that sound policy requires that all proper means should be resorted to to strengthen the institution of slavery by increasing the number of slave holding citizens and otherwise, your Memorialists would recommend, in case the above policy be adopted, that the right of purchase should be confined to these citizens of the state who are not already owners of slaves; that no one person should be allowed to become the purchaser of more than one, except in the case of mothers and small children, that all negroes so purchased shall be exempt from execution for debt, and not transferable by sale and purchase for a term of years. Trusting that your honorable bodies will give this subject that serious attention which its importance entitles it to, your petitioners will ever pray &c

General Assembly Session Records, November 1860-February 1861, Petitions Box 8, North Carolina State Archives.

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July 2, 2013

Wayne County Apprentices, 1843.

Eliza Hagans, 16, was bound to Lovet Peacock in 1843.

William Ayers, 13 was bound to Fred Hollomon in 1843.

In the 1860 census of Black Creek, Wilson County: William Ayres, 30, farm laborer, in the household of Stephen Privett, farmer.

John Q. Barfield, 12, Thomas Barfield, 11, and Henry Barfield, 7, were bound to John Hooks in 1843.

In the 1850 census of North Side of Neuse, Wayne County: Henry Barfield, 14, in the household of Mary Hooks. In the 1860 census of Nahunta, Wayne County: Thomas Barfield, 32 turpentine hand, with Charly A., 16, and Melvina Barfield, 2.

William Ayers, 13, was bound to Enos Rose in 1843.

Ruben Artis, 1, and July Artis, 1, were bound to John Exum in 1843.

In the 1850 census of Warren, Warren County: Reuben Pettiford, 50, stonemason, wife Judy A. Pettiford, 37, children Eliza Artis, 21, Alfred Artis, 15, Jack Artis, 13, Rhody Artis, 12, Ruben Artis Jr., 10, Julian Artis, 9, Mary Artis, 7, Elizabeth J. Pettiford, 5, and Virginia Pettiford, 3, plus Middy Artis, 60, and Isah Artis, 4 months. [Sidenote: This family appears in a number of permutations in the 1850 and 1860 censuses. Apparently, Reuben Pettiford and Judy Pettiford married late, if at all, and did not always cohabitate. –LYH.]

Simpson Artis, 14, Jordan Artis, 11, Henry Artis, 9, Duncan Artis, 7, Ned Artis, 7, Leonard Artis, 4, Nancy Artis, 2, Rasberry Artis, 1, and Levinah Artis were bound to Burket Barnes in 1843.

In the 1850 census of Monroe, Howard County, Indiana: Simpson Artis, 22, laborer, born NC, and John Owens, 24, born Indiana. In the 1850 census of North Side of Neuse, Wayne County: Henry, 15, Duncan, 13, Lenoard, 10, and Ashberry Artice, 7, in the household of Burkett Barnes, farmer. In the 1860 census of Saulston, Wayne County: Olive Artis, 60, Elizabeth Artis, 20, Jordan, 27, and infant, 1 month.

Apprentice Records, Wayne County Records, North Carolina State Archives; federal censuses.

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July 1, 2013

Shot through the breast.

A Homicide. – On last Sunday morning a free negro named Locklier was found dead about eight miles north of Lexington, North Carolina, dead, shot through the breast. John Shoaf has been arrested on suspicion, and is now in jail. Patriot & Flag, Greensboro.

People’s Press, Salem, 24 April 1857.

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Month: July, 2013