Migration | Fourth Generation Inclusive

November 12, 2012

North and back: an odyssey.

On 20 September 1865, Montreville Simmons, 22, born in NC, residing in Chatham Township, Kent County, Ontario, Canada, son of John C. and Hepsie Simmons, married Victoria Brown, 16, born in Indiana, daughter of John and Mary Brown. Witnesses: Edwin Simons and C. Moore.

In the 1850 census of the South Side of the Neuse River, Wayne County: Calvin Simmons, 42, wife Hepsey, 46, and children Harriet, 13, Susan, 11, Montrival, 9, Jno. R., 7, Margaret, 5, Dixon, 3, and Geo. W. Simmons, 1, plus Robert Aldridge, 26, hireling.

In the 1861 census of Chatham and Gore townships, Kent County, Ontario: John C. Simmons, 50, wife Hepsy, 55, and children S.M., 16, Montreville, 15, John R., 14, Margaret A., 12, Dickie, 10, and George Simmons, 9. All reported being born in the US, and all were Baptist.

By 1870, Calvin Simmons and his youngest sons had returned to North Carolina, and are listed in Brogden township, Wayne County: Calvin Simons, 63, and Montville, 29, John R., 26, Dickson H., 21, and George W. Simmons, 20. On 3 March 1871, in Duplin County, Montville Simmons, son of Calvin Simmons and Hepsey Whitley, married Anna Henderson (1852-1906), daughter of James Henderson and Louisa Armwood.

By 1881, Montreville Simmons (40, farmer), wife Annie (29) and children Elizabeth (8), Doctor T. (7), Susan M. (4) and Montreville (2) are listed in the census of Chatham, Kent, Ontario. All were born in the US except Doctor and Montreville jr., who were born in Ontario, and all were Baptist. By 1900, the family was back in the United States, and are found in the census of Eel, Cass County, Indiana: on Park Avenue in Logansport, farmer Montville Simmons (Apr 1850), wife Anna (Mar 1861) and children James R. (Dec 1879), Montville (Jun 1881), and Dock (Dec 1879). Montville and Anna were born in NC; their sons in Canada. Montville and Anna had been married 28 years and reported 5 of 5 children living.

Marriage Registers, Kent County, Ontario, Canada; Canada census records; marriage register, Register of Deeds, Duplin County NC; US population schedules.

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November 11, 2012

Your petitioners feels themselves Americans.

A petition from William Smith & others – free person of colour, praying to be colonized in some of the territory of the United States

Jan 14th 1851 — To the Honourable Assembly of the State of North Carolina.

The time has come where a portion of your people deem it necessary and prudent to cast themselves at your feet. This portion is the free coloured people in the State of North Carolina. Who in judging the future by the past do Humbly unite in praying and in petitioning this Honourable Assembly to [illegible] Congress in their behalf, to grant them a portion of the western Territory as a colony. Your petitioners feel themselves much at a loss for proper words and language to express their feelings and apprehensions. But their motive being pure they hope to find favor and clemency in your honourable wisdom.

Your petitioners are well aware of the importance of this petition, But the point they are activated by is reciprocal. Many of your petitioners are the off springs of those who yielded their all in the revolutionary struggle But the blessings of which from political policy are withheld from them.

Your petitioners feels themselves Americans knowing no other clime nor soil and that pride has made it difficult for them to Beg abroad when they can ask at home. While it is equilly hard to alienate their feelings. Altho state policy may induce them to ask for a separation. Should this meet your favor your petitioners hope to carry in their Bosoms parental and filial regard.

The law requires that your petitioners shall live alone praise the punish. But when success ennurns labour the public feelings pays, that the pressing influence has an injurious and gives a false stimulus to an other class. Under this sense of fear, your petitioners have been constrained to be very vigilant in inactivity until that virtue has become a vice and now a source of public complaint. Thus your petitioners find themselves in the condition of duress and punished for not labouring. Your petitioners are no Aggressors on states rights nor policy. Yet they regreat to see that they used as the whip in hand to flush the offenders into [illegible]; still the knel is constant on the public Ear – that your petitioners are the Eating cancers and the morbid incubus on the public purce. Your petitioners feel and behold with regreat the strong and painfull effort now making which [illegible] them in the spirit of peace to ask for a Separation in the name and meaning of a colony.

Your petitioners are some what aware of the magnitude of the subject but fully persuaded of the good resulting will compensate for the hardships they may encounter. Were your petitioners strangers they would hesitate to express a choice in this matter. But being children of the American soil and traind to mechanical and farming arts they would dare that choice and if this should meet with favor in your wisdom they pray that your kindness will urge a salubrious clime and a productive soil, that the milk flowing there from may redound to the glory of the giver. Like the infant sucking at its mothers Breast which every suction it makes draws from the springs of affection.

Your petitioners think they feel and see in this their prayer much Balm to heal the growing malidy and a spirit that may give peace and happiness to themselves and country. The free people of this state numbers about 35,000 — some of the southern states more and some less. Should your Wisdom decide in favor of a state or a general colony. Your petitioners disdains to mention any theory but facts known better by your honours than themselves On presenting this petition they deem is unnecessary to say that they are proscribed. This fact is known to your honours. They now affix their names to this prayer in the presence of Each other and by proxy for many But all in the presence of God.

/s/ William Smith, James Dunn, Oscar Halston, Marcus L. Gervis, Branch Hughes, Thomas Roe, Henry J. Patterson, John Malone, Wyatt Copland, A. Payne, Lewis S. Leary, Lewis S. Chester, John E. Patterson, M. N. Leary

Legislative Papers for 1851-1852, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.

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November 10, 2012

Knowing their future would be very dark if they remained, they started North.

Federal Writers’ Project of the W.P.A., District #6, Marion County

Anna Pritchett, 1200 Kentucky Avenue, Folklore

Mrs. Lizzie Johnson, 706 North Senate Avenue, Apt. 1 [Indianapolis, IN]

Mrs. Johnson’s father, Arthur Locklear, was born in Wilmington, N.C. in 1822. He lived in the South and endured many hardships until 1852. He was very fortunate in having a white man befriend him in many ways. This man taught him to read and write. Many nights after a hard days work, he would lie on the floor in front of the fireplace, trying to study by the light from the blazing wood, so he might improve his reading and writing.

He married very young, and as his family increased, he became ambitious for them, knowing their future would be very dark if they remained South.

He then started a movement to come north. There were about twenty-six or twenty-eight men and women, who had the same thoughts about their children, banded together, and in 1852 they started for somewhere North.

The people selected had to be loyal to the cause of their children’s future lives, morally clean, truthful, and hard-working.

Some had oxen, some had carts. They pooled all of their scant belongings, and started on their long hard journey.

The women and children rode in the ox-carts, the men walked. They would travel a few days, then stop on the roadside to rest. The women would wash their few clothes, cook enough food to last a few days more, then they would start out again. They were six weeks making the trip.

Some settled in Madison, Indiana. Two brothers and their families went on to Ohio, and the rest came to Indianapolis.

John Scott, one of their number was a hod carrier. He earned $2.50 a day, knowing that would not accumulate fast enough, he was strong and thrifty. After he had worked hard all day, he would spend his evenings putting new bottoms in chairs, and knitting gloves for anyone who wanted that kind of work. In the summer he made a garden, sold his vegetables. He worked very hard, day and night, and was able to save some money.

He could not read or write, but he taught his children the value of truthfulness, cleanliness of mind and body, loyalty, and thrift. The father and his sons all worked together and bought some ground, built a little house where the family lived many years.

Before old Mr. Scott died, he had saved enough money to give each son $200.00. His bank was tin cans hidden around in his house.

Will Scott, the artist, is a grandson of this John Scott.

The thing these early settlers wanted most, was for their children to learn to read and write. So many of them had been caught trying to learn to write, and had had their thumbs mashed, so they would not be able to hold a pencil.

Interviewer’s Comment: Mrs. Johnson is a very interesting old woman and remembers so well the things her parents told her. She deplores the “loose living,” as she calls it of this generation.

She is very deliberate, but seems very sure of the story of her early life.

Submitted December 9, 1937
Indianapolis, Indiana

From “Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Indiana Narratives,” Works Projects Administration.

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November 9, 2012

We are pleased with him.

Wayne County Nov 16th 1852

To the Members Comprising both houses of the legislature for the State of North Carolina 1852

We the Undersigned Say to you as our representatives that we have a Coloured person living in Goldsboro whose name is Hilary Croom Ailias Coor who was born of a woman of reputable parentage though his father was reputed to have been a Slave of Colour We know the raising of Sd Croom and his Standing now he is Now of fair Standing he is one of the best blacksmiths we have he was born and raised in our County. When he grew to be a Man he intermarried with a girl of colour the property of one Graddy Herring. Soon after their Covenant as man and wife sd Herring Removed to the State of Alabama this Character Croom also moved with sd Herring after remaining there some years the legislature of the State of Alabama past a law that all Colourd person which were free Should leave that State within a certain period of time during this time this Citizen Croom purchased his wife and children of Sd Herring and J.B. Herring one of the Subscribers have seen his bill of Sale which can be produced at any time. In consequence of which the said Croom returned back to his Native State and his wife and family with proper papers from Sd Herring showing he had purchased his Wife and Children. When he returned to our State our Legislature had pasd a law to the purpost that all Coloured person which had left this State if They returned Should leave this State or forfeit a large sum. Now we are well acquainted with this man Croom he lived by our town Goldsboro in Wayne County we are pleased with him as a blacksmith we pray that he Sustains a fair industrious character he has [blank] children whose names are Ann Charles Temperance

We the undersignd knowing that under our present laws there are many coloured persons among us of more more bass character Must and does remain with us petition to you as our representative, that you pass and act which will be attended by our friend W.H. Washington that said Hilary Croom be Sufferd to remaine with us that his above named Children before at their arriving to the age of twenty one years and Enjoy all the rights of Citizenship of their Colour to which we the Undersigned have assigned our names the above date. Hillory X Croom, Benajah Herring, W.C. Bryan, Wm. Smith, L. Cogdell, Wm. Thompson.

The 1850 census of the South Side of the Neuse River, Wayne County, shows Hillery Croom, 41, blacksmith, with children Annie, 14, Charles, 13, Tempy, 10, and John, 9. All were described as mulatto. The 1850 slave schedule shows that Hillery owned two slaves, a 55 year-old woman and a 32 year-old man.

3 Comments

November 6, 2012

United States Colored Troops, no. 1.

28 U.S.C.T. Nicholas Manuel. Co. D, 28 Reg’t U.S. Col’d Inf. appears on Company Descriptive Book of the organization named above. Description: age 27, years; height, 5 feet 11 inches; complexion, yellow; eyes, black; hair, black; where born, Samson Co., NC; occupation, farmer. Enlistment: when, Dec. 28, 1864; where, Lafayette, Ind.; by whom, Thos. Brown; term, 3 years.

This is possibly (1) the 12 year-old mulatto Nicholas Manuel listed in the household of Ismael and Martha Manuel in the Northern District of Sampson County and (2) the 31 year-old Nicholas Manual listed with wife Anna, 25, in Washington, Boone County, Indiana.

8 U.S.C.T. Thomas Artis. Co. A, 8 Reg’t U.S. Col’d Inf. appears on Company Descriptive Book of the organization named above. Description: age, 30 years; height, 6 feet 5 inches; complexion, colored; eyes, black; hair, black; where born, Wayne Co., NC; occupation farmer. Enlistment: when, Mar 21, 1865; where, Wabash, Ind.; by whom, Capt. Cowgill; term, 1 year.

This is not the Thomas Artis, age 15, listed in the household of Celia Artis (his mother) in the 1850 census of the North Side of the Neuse River, Wayne County. He is possibly the Thomas Artis, age 20, listed as a farmhand in the household of white farmer William Hooks in the same district. He is likely the Thomas Artis, age 27, listed in the 1860 census of Reserve township, Parke County, Indiana, with wife Mary, 22, daughter Sarah C. (2) and “farmer boy” John Bass. Thomas and Mary were born in NC; Sarah and John in Indiana.

4 U.S.C.T. Mathew Jones. Co. F, 4 Reg’t U.S. Col’d Inf. appears on Company Descriptive Book of the organization named above. Description: age 32 years; height 5 feet 7 inches; complexion mulatto; eyes black; hair black; where born Nash Co., NC; occupation farmer. Enlistment: when, Aug. 30, 1864; where, Bournesville, Oh.; by whom, Joseph Bourgess; term, 1 year.

Matthew Jones, age 18, is listed with his mother Easter Jones and siblings in the household of white farmer Jacob Ing in the 1850 census of Nash County. Ing was his father. See earlier post.

Combined Military Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers, National Archives and Records Administration; federal population schedules.

Category: Migration

Federal Writers’ Project of the W.P.A., District #6, Marion County