“Information wanted of my children. I was sold from them in 1860. At that time we belonged to a man named Jacob Certain. I was sold by him to a man by the name of Buren Wardell, then living in Memphis, Tenn. The oldest child’s name was Millie, in her ninth year; the second was Mary, nearly seven years old. It will be twenty years in October since I saw them, and I would be more than glad to hear from them. Their youngest sister, Martha, is now living at Cape Girardeau, Mo. Any information will be gratefully received by their mother, Nancy Williams, Abbeville, Mo.”
******
After reading this advertisement asking for information about the daughters she had not seen in 20 years, I decided to see if I could find her and her daughters. Here is what I found using census records, newspaper items, death certificates and marriage records.
************
Nancy Williams was born into slavery in Florida about 1835 to Millie Palmer, an enslaved woman. Nancy was sixteen when her oldest daughter Millie was born. I imagine she was named after her grandmother. Two years later Mary was born. Youngest daughter Martha was born when Nancy was 21. There was a fourth child born, but there is no record except for the census records that say Nancy Williams gave birth to four children So I don’t know if that child was male or female and born during or after slavery.
I wanted to find the man who sold Nancy Williams away from her daughters. I first found a Jacob Certain in DeKalb county, Tennessee. There was no record that he was a slave holder. His father, Asa, held five people in slavery in 1860. None were the right age or sex to be Nancy Williams or her daughters. Both men died in 1861, leaving no will or probate record.
I found another Jacob Certain in Huntsville, Alabama. His occupation was listed as “slave dealer” on the 1860 census. He turned out to be a brother of Asa Certain back in Tennessee. (For more information about the domestic slave trade, click this link.) I believe him to be the one who sold Nancy and Martha away from her daughters. As he was a slave dealer, there is no way of knowing if he sold the daughters to someone else or who they would have been, or where they lived.
I found Buren Wardell, the man that Nancy Williams named as the one who bought her, in Memphis. He was a lawyer, later a real estate agent. In 1860 he had three enslaved people listed in the Slave Census, two 40 year old women and a 60 year old man. Unfortunately the census was taken in August and Nancy was taken from her daughters in October.
Mapping Nancy Williams Life. Click to enlarge.
After Slavery I found Nancy Williams and family In the 1868 Missouri State Census. She lived in Cape Girardeau with her husband Jesse Williams and her daughter Martha Williams. They owned two horses and one cow.
In 1870, Nancy was listed as 35, keeping house and like the others in her household, was unable to read or write. Her husband Jesse, 36, worked as a teamster. Martha was 14 and attended school.
Widowed
Jesse Williams, her husband, died sometime between 1880 and 1900. In the 1900 census, Nancy Williams lived with two lodgers, neither of whom seem to be related to her. She was able to read but not to write, had given birth to four children, two were still alive, her parents were both born in Florida, as she was. She rented her home, as a widow and no occupation is listed.
In 1910, 74 year old Nancy Williams lived with her granddaughter, 18 year old Vassey Barber. Both were widows. Nancy did laundry at home. Vassey was literate and was a cook at a hotel, possibly at one associated with her aunt Martha’s husband Manuel Scott, a well know hotel proprietor and restaurant owner. Nancy had birthed four children and only one was then living. Vassey had no children. Vassey was born in Arkansas and her mother was born in Mississippi. Both were listed as “mulatto”.
Vassey Berry Barber
Vassey was the daughter of Armilda Hite and her husband Isom Berry. Unfortuantely, Armilda (who was listed as ‘Millie” on several of her children’s death certificates, died about 1893 in Randolph county, Arkansas, before death certificates were kept. However, Vassey was listed as Nancy’s granddaughter in the 1910 census. In 1930, Nancy’s granddaughter, Martha was living with another of Armilda’s daughter, Norma Berry Byrd. Martha was described as “Aunt”.
Martha Williams Scott
Martha, Nancy’s daughter, married Emanuel Alexander Scott in 1874. She was 18 and he was 22. In 1876 Missouri State Census, Martha and Emanuel lived next door to her parents. Martha’s husband was eventually a noted restaurateur in Cape Girardeau. They had two children. One son, Philip A., survived to adulthood.
Item from the 1892 Cape Girardeau Democrat
Item from the 1897 Cape Girardeau Democrat
Obituary of Martha Williams husband. Click to enlarge. The obituary describes Manuel Scott as being comparable to Tony Faust of St. Louis.
I believe I found Nancy Williams and her daughter Martha and her daughter Millie. I was unable to find Mary. I hope she was in touch with her mother before her death.
Elkins Family photo- Mary Virginia holding Doris Diana, Frank Elkins .
Another item I found in the Detroit Tribune. My cousin Doris Diane was christened at our great grandmother Turner’s house in 1944.
Fannie and Mershell Graham
Detroit Tribune July 22, 1944 Sunday, four generations were represented at the christening of Doris Diane Elkins, the small daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Elkins of McDougall. The ceremony took place at the home of the baby’s maternal great grandmother, Mrs. Jennie Tuner, of Harding avenue. Her paternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. M. C. Graham, also her paternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Elkins, Sr.; her aunts, Misses Daisy and Alice Turner, and Mrs. Elizabeth Roberts were present to witness the event. The baby’s godparents, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Franklin, of Oakland, Calif, sent their godchild a beautiful bonnet for the christening.
“Kris in Nanny’s & Poppy’s backyard. June 15, 1948. Watching the birds and butterflies. 22 months” It was my grandparent’s 29th wedding anniversary.
“Barbara – August 1948 – 7 months old”
The Detroit Tribune, Socially Speaking by Sylvia – July 17, 1948. They should have given the names of the children!
“Reverend and Mrs. Albert Cleage (Toddy and Doris) and their little daughter are back home again in Springfield, Mass after a three week sojourn here with their parents Dr. and Mrs. Albert and Mr. and Mrs. M.C. Graham. During their stay in Detroit, a triple christening took place at Plymouth Congregational church when their 22 month old daughter was christened, along with the five months old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Elkins, and the two children of Mr. and Mrs Henry Roberts All four children are cousins.”
I never knew that my cousin Barbara Elkins and two of her cousins were baptized on the same day that I was until I was going through the archives of the Detroit Tribune recently. It was published by my grandmother Fannie’s first cousin, James McCall and there were lots of little family mentions that were never mentioned in the white papers of the day.
We should have known that. As my sister Pearl said, it gave us a special bond, Baptism Sisters. Barbara and I did have a special bond. I didn’t see the other girls enough to develop a bond. They were Barbara’s cousins on her father’s side while we were cousins on our mother’s side.
Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman (Rev. Albert B. Cleage ) preaching.
Riot
or rebellion?
By Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman
(Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr.)
Below is a partial transcription of the sermon delivered above in it’s entirety.
Excerpted from “No
Halfway Revolution,” text of a sermon delivered at Central United Church of
Christ, the Shrine of the Black Madonna, on July 23, 1967, several hours after
the Detroit Rebellion began:
“And Samson
said, ‘Let me die with the Philistines.’ Then be bowed with all his might; and
the house fell upon the lords and upon all the people that were in it. So the
dead whom he slew at his death were more than those whom he had slain during
his life” (Judges 16:30).
Our Scripture
lesson is taken from the Book of Judges. While the riots were going on down in
Watts [in August 1965], I preached on the same text. Samson is a good Biblical
figure and he fits into the framework of riots and rebellion.
The Book of
Judges has to do with the early leaders of Israel who presided over the young
Nation Israel and were called “judges.” Samson was never a leader of Israel in
the sense of having an official position. Yet his story is included in the Book
of Judges because he was a leader in the fight against the Philistines. …
During this
period when Israel was in bondage to the Philistines, Samson was the person
people looked to. He was a kind of center, the outstanding personality. Yet he
was different from all the other judges, essentially because the times were
different. Israel needed somebody like Samson.
I remember when
the riot in Watts was going on, the front page of Life Magazine pictured a young black militant with a do-rag around
his head. He was a symbol of what was happening. He represented rebellion against oppression.
So I have
selected the same Scripture lesson now because that which started in Watts two
years ago and which is now sweeping the nation is the same kind of rebellion
against oppression which Samson represented in Israel. The same kind of hoodlum
character emerges as some kind of peculiar hero because he does the things
which have to be done at a particular time in human history.
Samson wasn’t
any hero kind of person in normal circumstances. Normally people would have
frowned on him. They would have called him a hoodlum. They wouldn’t have listed
him in their religious scriptures as a “judge” of Israel. But during this
particular time, he had what everybody wanted. He wasn’t afraid, he didn’t mind
dying, he was emotional, he struck out against oppression. So everybody called
him a judge of Israel. …
A riot becomes a
rebellion when people tend to support the little group of people who begin some
kind of violence. In America today, we have riots or rebellions taking place in
almost every city across the country. …
This is the kind
of times in which we live. We had our own riot here in the City of Detroit.
Riot or rebellion, you pick your own word for it. I think what we had is a
riot. I think it has been participated in by relatively few people — so far.
The radio
stations called me and asked if I wanted to issue a statement asking people to
cool it. I said I had been trying to get white people to do something that
would make it possible to cool it for years, and nobody had paid any attention,
so I didn’t have any statements about cooling it now.
I tried to
explain that if everything is alright in Detroit, if nobody is alienated, if
nobody feels oppressed, if all black people feel that there are other things
they can do to change the situation, if they are confident that they have
alternatives to violence, then it is just a little thing that broke out and it
won’t last for long.
But if all black
people in Detroit feel that they are helpless and hopeless, and that there is
no chance of solving their problems peaceably, that they can’t solve them by
the ballot or by organizing or by economics, then you have a rebellion on your
hands — because, in that case, more black people are going to join in, once it
has started.
There is a
difference then between a riot and a rebellion. A riot is a little group,
perhaps more interested in looting than in freedom. But a rebellion is a
community that has decided that it will no longer tolerate the kind of racial
oppression that it has been forced to tolerate.
So across the
country we are getting a combination. In some communities there are riots.
Little bands hear about what is happening somewhere else and think it might be
good to have one here. And in other communities, it is not a riot at all; it is
a rebellion.
People look
around and say, we are tired of these slums. We are tired of all the conditions
that we have to put up with. We are tired of the whole situation and we are not
going to tolerate it any longer. And then a whole community erupts, and other
people say, we don’t know why it happened. That is a rebellion. And more and
more of these eruptions are rebellions, rather than riots.
Now in any
period of rapid social change … you are going to get all kinds of people
participating, and everybody who participates is not going to be a great
freedom fighter. If you start a fight on a corner because your freedom has been
transgressed, there is going to be somebody who comes up just because there is
a crowd of people and picks all the pockets he can.
That doesn’t
mean that freedom wasn’t involved in the first fight. That just means that
somebody else who was broke or knows how to pick pockets utilized the situation.
But when that
happens, and we all stand back and say, “there was nothing going on but some
people picking pockets,” that isn’t true. And usually that is not true in a
community, no matter how much emphasis is placed upon the looting. Usually
there are other things that are important to the people. There are people who
loot, just as there are people who do every other kind of thing that they want
to do for their own personal satisfaction. …
As long as we
had a place and we knew where it was (the man had made it for us), and we were
afraid to get out of it, there was no possibility of a riot or a rebellion or
whatever you call it.
I point this out
to show you that there is some good in what is going on. It must mean that a
whole lot of black people no longer believe that they “have a place.” And
whether you like the expression that this new feeling takes or not, this change
is a fact, and that is good.
I prayed for,
lo, these many years that there would come a day when we wouldn’t know our
place, and if that’s what is indicated throughout the country, that
increasingly black people no longer know their place, then I say that is good.
If not knowing
our place leaves us for the moment confused so that we do some things that are
not constructive in the sense of planned campaigns for freedom, then that is a
part of the struggle, an inevitable part of the struggle. …
In a rebellion
or riot, a lot of people are concerned about things other than self. I am not
talking about the looters now — those who are trying to steal what they can and
get it home for themselves. They are just like the middle-class. I am talking
about those who are outraged, whether it is a sensible outrage or an irrational
outrage, outraged at the indignities that black people have to live with.
Those people
strike out not selfishly but because they identify with a group. They identify
with black people, and a policeman doesn’t have to shoot them before they are
outraged at police brutality. A policeman doesn’t have to beat them over the
head personally before they become involved in a reaction against police
brutality. …
It
is a complex thing, this struggle for freedom. It is so easy after we become
involved in a struggle to say, “Well, we have gone far enough now, let’s cool
it. I got some of the things I wanted. I got my job, I have been promoted, I
got a poverty program job now. Let’s call it all off now.”
But essentially
what we were trying to get from the very beginning wasn’t something for you. It
was equality for all of us. And when we once started it about 13 years ago,
there wasn’t any calling it off.
Now you have
been talking all this time about “I want freedom, I would give anything for
freedom, I am tired of whitey, I am tired of him being on my back, I want to
run my own community.” You have been saying it, but it is harder to say it now
because they have fought on 12th Street and it may be on your street
soon. It is not over by any means. …
We were all for
the people in Newark [during the uprising in mid-July 1967] because we said
they were striking a blow for freedom. We said, “Isn’t it wonderful, what they
are doing?” And this Sunday some of you say, “Are those Niggers crazy? There
they go, just acting a fool, up and down 12th Street, robbing and
stealing.”
That’s right.
Plenty of them are acting a fool up and down 12th Street. And soon
they are going to be acting a fool up and down Linwood Street. They are going
to be acting a fool all across town, up and down Dexter, up and down Joy Road.
But that is a
part of what you started. You didn’t think you were going to have a rebellion,
a freedom struggle, and nobody was going to get hurt, did you? Did you think it
was going to go on everywhere else, and they were coming to Detroit in the end
and say, “You all are black, too. We are going to give you the things that
these other people were fighting and dying for. We are going to give it to you
because you all were so good.” It doesn’t happen like that. When it started, it
started for everybody.
Some of the
people who holler so much about violence had a part in starting it. [NAACP
executive secretary] Roy Wilkins doesn’t want to be reminded of it now, but
when they started taking these cases to the Supreme Court, when the NAACP won
the case to outlaw segregation in schools throughout the South, that was one of
the first gunshots of the rebellion.
And Wilkins can
say now that he doesn’t like what is happening, but he had a big part in
starting it because at that time we didn’t know what we were. We didn’t know
what the possibilities were in human life. We didn’t know what we could do.
When the Supreme Court said [in its school desegregation decision on May 17,
1954] you have to give equal education, we said if we have to have equal
education, there are a whole lot of other things we have to have too.
Martin Luther
King said he didn’t believe in a whole lot of things which are now going on.
But when he had the bus boycott in Montgomery [from Dec. 5, 1955-Dec. 20,
1956], that was the second shot. When black people started marching in
Montgomery and white folks couldn’t stop them, black people all over the
country said, “Look here, the man hasn’t got as much strength as we thought he
had.” That was the beginning of our changed conception of ourselves, and a
changed evaluation of the white man.
Then some people
said, “We are not going to ride in the back of the bus anymore.” So we had the
Freedom Riders [beginning in May 1961]. The whites burned up busses, they
turned them over, they whipped black men and women over the head, but the
Freedom Riders didn’t stop. Another shot. The rebellion is going on, people’s
ideas are changing. …
A few years ago
a black man stepped off the sidewalk in one of those Southern towns if a white
man looked like that was what he wanted him to do. When you come from the stage
where you step off the sidewalk to the point where you are ready to let police
dogs and everybody else try to stop you but you keep on, you have come a long
way in your mind. …
Even in Detroit,
provincial and backward as we are, we have been thinking differently the last
few years. … You remember the Freedom March in Detroit when more than 300,000
black people marched down Woodward Avenue [on June 23, 1963]? What happened at
Cobo Hall when we got there is something else.
But we marched
in protest, 300,000 of us. Even then, we were in the process of changing. Our
thinking was changing. When you start this process, when you start black people
deciding that they are going to be equal; that they are going to change
conditions; that the white man is not going to keep them in bondage and slavery
and oppression; that if be does, he is going to have to do it with force and
naked power, then a whole new world is being born. That is what we are in the
midst of now.
When Stokely
Carmichael [chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] screams
“Black Power,” he is only putting into a phrase the change which has been going
on for almost fifteen years. Things had reached the point where the change
could be put into a phrase. And so Stokely said “Black Power,” and everybody
screamed “Black Power,” and the white man said — “uh-uh.”
Then the white
man began to ask, “What is Black Power, what do you mean? What is the
philosophy of Black Power?” But the white man knew that some big and basic
change had already taken place, or Stokely Carmichael could not have cried
“Black Power” and gotten a Black Power response.
This is the kind
of thing that we are in the midst of everywhere in these United States. You
look at the paper now and you wonder at the places that rebellions or riots are
breaking out. Little communities that don’t have enough black people for you to
feel comfortable in are fighting — 3,000 in a community of 80,000, and they are
tearing up the town.
But those 3,000
have been systematically mistreated and oppressed, and when they get ready to
strike back, they don’t always care whether they win or whether they lose. This
we have got to understand.
Most of you are
rational. You are for freedom, for justice, for equality. You make rational
decisions, you are going to fight in a rational kind of way, you realize that
there are certain things you can do.
But you know
this freedom thing is exploding in people’s heads. And everybody is not going
to be rational about it. When someone decides, “They have been mistreating my
momma and my grandmamma, they have been mistreating all of us, and I don’t like
it,” they are not all going to be rational about it. …
Everything that
happens in a rebellion is not sensible. …
You try to give at every step a sensible alternative to violence, as we
do here at the Shrine of the Black Madonna. We believe in political action. Now
a lot of black people say, “I don’t care about political action, that is just
the white man’s bag.” Well, that is what they think.
We have got to
try political action because that is an alternative to violence. We have got to
use picket lines, boycotts, all the things that offer the possibility of power
without the necessity of violence. We try to do those things. That doesn’t mean
that at the same time we look with disdain on these other people who are
fighting in this country for the same cause that we are fighting for.
We have got to
understand that it takes all kinds of people to fight a rebellion, and a lot of
them are not going to be doing it the way you are doing it at any single
moment. And a whole lot of people are not going to agree with the way you are
doing it, either.
It won’t be too
long before they will be calling you “Uncle Tom,” because unless you throw a brick
you are an Uncle Tom. That would be a logical development, wouldn’t it? But you
understand why people do what they do.
Because
essentially we are trying to get free and we want justice and we are no longer
talking about love and all those other things that cluttered up people’s minds
for so long. We want justice and we are going to fight for it. But there are a
lot of ways to fight. Because we fight one way, let’s not join in some
universal denunciation of people fighting in some other kind of way.
The rebellion
goes on. There is no halfway revolution. When it starts, it is going to go to
its logical conclusion. Either we get free or we end up in concentration camps.
You can understand that. There is no turning back, no stopping. You may wish
you hadn’t started, but you did. It is going on and there is no way you can
stop it. You can try to utilize reason, you can channel power, but you can’t
stop it. …
For
years now we have been engaged in a process of trying to break the black man’s
identification with the white man, so that a black man says, “I’m a black man
and I am not ashamed of it. I am a black man and I don’t feel I have to go
along with anything the white man says.” …
The times
determine our heroes. Recall, again, in the Book of Judges, how Samson was
considered one of the judges of Israel because he lived at a time when they
needed that kind of person, fearless, strong, with a deep hatred for the enemy.
And how Samson fought. And remember the end of the Scripture lesson this
morning.
Sometimes you
wonder, “What are they trying to do, what do they hope to accomplish?” Remember
when Samson was in the Temple and the Philistines were all around, making fun
of him, robbing him of his dignity. They brought him out because be symbolized
the enemy whom they had fought against, the enemy who had humiliated them so
many times. …
And a little boy
brought Samson out and put him in between these two big pillars that held up
the Temple. His hair had begun to grow back because he had been down in the
dungeon so long, and with it his strength returned. He asked the little boy to
put his hands on the two pillars because he couldn’t even see. They had blinded
him. And the little boy put his hands on the pillars so Samson could support
himself. And when Samson got his hands on the pillars, he knew what he was
going to do.
You may not like
it, you may not agree with it, but Samson spoke right out to God about it. “Let
me die with the Philistines. Oh God, that I may be avenged upon the Philistines
for one of my eyes.” You have to understand that indignation, anger, hatred,
all of them stemming from systematic oppression, can develop to the point where
an individual says, “I am willing to die if I can take a whole bunch of them
with me.”
That is what
Samson said. I am not quoting from anybody in Detroit or Newark. That is the
Bible. “‘Let me die with the Philistines.’ Then he bowed with all his might and
the house fell upon the Temple and upon all the people who were in it. So the
dead he slew at his death were more than those he had slain during his life.”
This you are
going to have to understand because this is a part of the rebellion. There are
people like this in Detroit, Newark, Birmingham, California, New York, Chicago
who are willing to destroy even themselves if they can express antagonism, if
they can strike out against oppression. So to the Hebrew people, the Jews,
Samson is a great hero.
Who knows but
that a hundred years from today we may remember as heroes some of these very
individuals we call hoodlums today, who are striking out for freedom? We don’t
know. But they fight for freedom in their way and we in ours, confident that
God will see that freedom comes. …
(Source: Albert B. Cleage, Jr. The
Black Messiah [Kansas City, Kan.:
Sheed Andrews and McNeel-Universal Press Syndicate, 1968], pp. 122-28)
Edited by Paul Lee
Other posts relating to the Detroit Riot/Rebellion
Rebellions Create Strange Leaders Sermon from the Sunday after this one, June 30, 1967 and historical context provided by historian Paul Lee
This Sunday afternoon, I came across this article on the fb page of one of my cousins. Article and transcription below.
April 12, 1952 The Michigan Chronicle – “America’s Fastest Growing Weekly”
The Cleages An Introduction to one of Detroit’s most Versatile and Accomplished Families
A bright-eyed little lad of eight crossed 12th
street just below Edison and walked down to the St. Mark’s Community Church
near Atkinson. He opened the door,
entered and was directed to the Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., who sat on a
table in the basement watching a troop of Brownie girl scouts busily making
puppets.
“Can I help you?” the Rev. Mr. Cleage asked the little boy.
The boy nodded. He was trying to locate his cub scout group.
He gave the Rev. Mr. Cleage the troop number and the minister located the troop
meeting place through a church bulletin. He gave the boy directions, and the
boy went away.
The incident was typical of the attitude of the people of
that community toward each other and the St. Mark’s Church in general, and
toward the Rev. Mr. Cleage in particular
In less than a year, the boyish-looking pastor of the church has succeeded in making the church not only a spiritual stronghold but a center of community interest and service as well.
Practical institutions like a day nursery, with a paid
worker, where all members of the community can bring their children are
integral parts of the total church program.
Youth activities, including sports, socials and dramatics,
are not merely encouraged – they are directed and supervised by adults in the
church.
The Rev. Mr. Cleage believes that the church should serve the community as a whole and not simply the adults. He also believes –in his own words – “That the church cannot have much influence on the congregation if it merely serves as a meeting place for services on Sunday morning.”
This intelligent approach toward religion, which draws into
it all the normal aspects of living, characterizes the Rev. Mr. Cleage. It is
an attitude which does not spring solely from his theological training but
which has its roots deep in his family background.
For the Cleage family is one of Detroit’s most versatile and
accomplished families.
The Cleage family is headed by Dr. Albert B. Cleage, Sr.,
veteran physician who has practiced medicine on the city’s west side since
1913, and by his wife, Pearl.
A graduate of Knoxville college and of the University of
Indiana medical school, Dr. Cleage instilled in his four sons and three
daughters an appreciation for education, sound principles and respect for human
dignity.
All seven of the younger Cleages attended Wayne University.
The Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., the oldest son, went on to graduate from the
Oberlin (Ohio) Graduate School of Theology and to work on his doctorate in
Visual Education at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles.
The second son, Dr. Louis J. Cleage, gradated from the Wayne
University medical school. After interning at the Homer Phillips hospital in
St. Louis, Dr. Cleage returned to Detroit to practice medicine with his father.
Henry W. Cleage, the third son, graduated from the Wayne
university college of law and is a member of the legal firm of Cleage ad League
in Detroit.
The youngest son Hugh, who studied agriculture at Wayne and
at Michigan state college, is presently a clerk in the Detroit Post Office.
Two of the three Cleage daughters are now married and live in other parts of the county. Mrs. Barbara (Cleage) Martin lives in Newburg, N.Y. and Mrs. Gladys (Cleage) Evans, a former Detroit schoolmarm resides at the Veterans hospital at Tuskegee, Ala., where her husband is a physician.
Anna, the youngest of the Cleages, will graduate from the
Detroit, will graduate from the Detroit Institute of Technology’s school of
pharmacy in June. She has already received her bachelor of arts degree from
Wayne university.
During the war years, capitalizing on Hugh’s training and
Henry’s zeal, the two Cleage’s bought a 100-acre farm at Capac, Mich., and
proceeded to raise chickens and operate a dairy. They maintained an average of
1,000 broilers plus 500 laying hens, and a herd of 15 milk cows.
Though successful, the venture proved just a bit strenuous for the two, so they sold the farm and returned home. Henry went back to his law books and Hugh became a postal employee.
The Cleage family is a closely-knit unit, the kind of family
which is held up as an example of the typical American family. It is a
disciplined unit, with the wisdom of age and experience meeting the enthusiasm
of youth, and the two being molded into a liberal philosophy of life.
From this family background, the Detroit community has profited. For, aside from the fact that such a well-balanced group is a community asset in itself, the family produced the Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., who is demonstrating through his leadership of the St. Marks congregation the virtues of his family training. – by Fuller
Nine years ago I started this blog, Finding Eliza to tell the story of my family and my search for their stories. I had no idea how much I would learn, nor the connections I would be able to make.
Letters written by my grandmother Pearl Reed Cleage from 1903-1905
This past year has been a very productive one for me and the blog. I discovered that over forty of my paternal grandmother, Pearl Reed Cleage’s letters written from 1903 – 1905 were for sale online. By the time I tracked them down, they were in the Special Collections of the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. I was able to purchase copies of them for a reasonable price and blogged all of them with additional contextualizing materials. A list of those posts is at this link Pearl Reed’s Letters.
Historical Society Long Beach Cemetery Tour 2018 – Zadie Cannon as Amanda Cleage Photo by Kayte Deioma
I worked with Roxanne Patmore of the Historical Society of Long Beach to find information that would help to tell the story of Amanda Cleage, from the Cleage plantation in Athens, Tennessee. After exchanging information, we finally decided to order Amanda’s and her husband Abram’s Civil War Pension file. There was so much information, so many answers to questions our questions.
It was amazing and led me to order the pension files of all the Cleages who served with the United States Colored Troops. So far I have blogged one of the files completely, that of Katie Cleage and her fight to get her pension. Because it was a contentious case with many people testifying and Katie answering, it gave me a real picture of life on Alexander Cleage’s plantation. Katie Cleage Civil War Pension File. I will be blogging more of those pension files this year.
The paper that caught my attention
While checking through the pension files of other members of the same regiment of the United States Colored Troops that the Cleages were in, I noticed my great grandmother Celia Rice Cleage Sherman’s 2nd husband’s name – W.R. Sherman. Looking more closely, I discovered that this was the file of my great grandmother’s mother’s widow’s pension file. Her name was Susan Rice Ragan and I had not known her name before. By finding her, I found the names of her other children and parts of their stories. I blogged some of these findings in this years A-Z Challenge and I plan to share more during the coming year.
I also published several posts about my grandmother’s brother, George Reed, sharing his Will. probate records and letters relating to the case which showed the strained relationships between various family members.
There are so many connections and so many stories waiting to be found and shared that I don’t even suspect today! Here is a link to my very first blog post 9 years ago. Who Was Eliza?
David Gallimore was the second husband of Sally Ragan Hale the 4th child of my great great grandmother Laura Rice Ragan. Today’s testimony comes from his application to be recognized as a member of the Eastern Cherokee.
In 1906, the U.S. Court of Claims appointed Guion Miller from the Interior Department to determine who was eligible for funds under the treaties of 1835-36 and 1845 between the United States and the Eastern Cherokee.
Document found on Ancestry dot com
No. 1013
David Gallimore, being first
duly sworn and examined, deposes and says:
My name is David Gallimore: I was born in Roan Co., Tenn. 1838; I am seventy years old; I claim my Indian blood through my father, James Gallimore; my father was born in N. C. I do not know what county; 1816; my father got his Indian blood through his father; my grandfather’s name through whom I claim was James Gallimore; I think my grandfather, James Gallimore, was born in N. C.: I make no claim of Indian blood through my mother: I was about ten years old when my grandfather died; I am related to James Gallimore: James Gallimore is my third cousin: the grandfather of James Gallimore, David Gallimore, was a brother of my grandfather, James Gallimore: I have been married twice: the maiden name of my first wife was Mariah Baker; the maiden name of my second wife was Sally Hale; none of the ancestors through whom I claim were ever held as slaves; neither I nor any of the ancestors through whom I claim were ever enrolled and never received any money, land or other benefits; my grandfather and father told me that they lived with the Cherokee Indians as a member of the tribe in N. C. and came with them when they came to Tenn.; I never heard of my father and grandfather ever having as Indian name; none of my relatives ever went West with the Indians; in 1851 I lived in Roane Co., Tenn.
David (his mark X) Gallimore
SUBSCRIBED AND sworn to
before me, at Harriman, Tenn., this 25th day of June, 1908.
Signed
Assistant to special Commissioner Of the court of claim.
George Hays, being first duly
sworn and examined, deposes and says;
My name is George Hays: I knew the father of David Gallimore; his name was James Gallimore; I first became acquainted with him about 1846; I knew the grandfather of James Gallimore or his father in N. C.; I became acquainted in with him in Roane Co., Tenn. The father of David Gallimore told me that he had lived with the Cherokee Indiana as a member of the tribe in Cherokee Co., N.C.; he told me that he ought to have gone to the West with them: he told me they got a white man to be his guardian; the name of his was A. L. Green; he was never a slave; he looked to me to be a full blooded Cherokee Indian.
George (his mark x) Hays SUBSCRIBED and sworn to before me at Harriman Tenn,. This 25th day of June, 1908.
FAB
David Gallimore, Rockwood, Tenn Rejected. Ancestors not enrolled, were not living in the Cherokee domain in 1833-6 and 1846 and does not show genuine connection with the Cherokee tribe.
I, Leonard M Quill Clerk of the Circuit Court of Marion County of the state of Indiana certify that Albert B. Cleage has complied with the laws of the state of Indiana relating to the practice of medicine, surgery and obstetrics in the County and State aforesaid.
Witness my hand and seal of said Court, this 1st day of Sept, 1910
This is the 7th year I have participated in the A-Z. As usual, I did not prewrite. Although I had all the records on hand and was familiar with them, I didn’t actually choose which I would use until the weekend before the challenge. I did change a few as I went along. Most of the testimonies and documents spoke for themselves and I did not have to do a lot of writing aside for an introduction or concluding paragraph.
In the past year I have done two series on my blog that consisted of over 40 posts each. I didn’t do them in alphabetical order, but did post them daily. Maybe that made this year easier, although at first I found it a challenge to have to skip around to different people instead of doing one person’s story in order. It did get me to look closely at 26 testimonies and during the next year I will probably post the stories of the various people featured in those posts in more depth.
It seemed to me that comments were down this year, so I decided to check my comments from all the years. They were actually pretty consistent. I visited back everyone who visited me. I checked out some new people from the list and some from comments on pages I visited. I didn’t look at the fb links this year and probably missed some interesting posts that way. My favorite new blog this year was Sonia’s Musings about the nerve wracking process of entering her three year old in a new school.
The series I wrote this year outside of the challenge were: Katie Cleage’s story told through her pension file and My Grandmother Pearl’s Letters 1903-1905. In the coming year I plan to write a series of posts about finding my great great grandmother Susan Rice Ragan and what her life was like.
This is my 7th year participating in the A to Z Challenge. In the 2015 challenge, I wrote about the Cleages formerly enslaved on the plantations of Samuel and his sons Alexander and David Cleage of Athens, McMinn County, Tennessee. Most of the people in these posts are not related to me by blood or DNA, however my ancestors were enslaved on the same plantations with them.
Late last year, I ordered the Civil War Pension files of the Cleage men who served in 1st Regiment, United States Colored Heavy Artillery (USCHA), during that war. Through these files I learned that their lives were much richer and more complex than census, death and other records can show. I am using the information from pension files and records that I found through the pension files for this years challenge.
In the 1870 census, the transcriber saw this name as “Zona”.
I was afraid I would be unable to find a “Z” name or word related to the pension files. I was overjoyed to find in my family tree a Zona Bayless. She was the sister-in-law of George Cleage, the George Cleage who remained in Athens, Tennessee. After inspecting the only census record in which Zona Bayless appears, I discovered that there was a transcription error and her name was actually Missouri. Missouri is the name she appeared under in the 1880 census before disappearing from the record.
************
Department of the Interior Bureau of Pensions
Washington D.C. May 12 1894
Sir
You are informed that the name George “Cleage” has not been found on the rolls of I.1st U.S.C.H.A. The correct spelling of clients name should be given and if he enlisted and served under any other name than this one he now bear he should state under oath what that name was and he should prove by at least two comrades that he is the identical person who so enlisted and served. His discharge certificate should be furnished if possible.
He also state whether other was any other soldier of the same or similar name in you Co. or Regt?
Very respectfully, Commissioner
Joel I. Payatt Athens, Tenn.
I wrote about the other George Cleage here George Cleage X 2.This post is about the George Cleage who lived in Athens, Tennessee.
George Cleage was born about 1845 in McMinn County, TN. His family was enslaved on Alexander Cleage’s plantation. His parents were Jim and Hulda Hurst and he had at least five siblings, including Abram Cleage who served in UscHeavy Artillary and Katie Cleage who was the widow of a U.S.C. Heavy Artillary soldier.“
I was unable to find George Cleage in the 1870 census. About that time he married Jemima Bayless, who was born into a free family of color about 1854 in McMinn County. I could not find her in the 1870 census either.
In 1880, George and Jemima Cleage had three young daughters, Anna, 6, Mary, 4 and Lizzie, 2 years old. George was employed as a laborer. Jemima was keeping house. Neither of them could read or write. In 1893, George applied for a pension. He did not follow through and it was dropped.
By 1900 George was a widower. Two of his daughters were enumerated with him in the 1900 census. Daughter Anna had married Frank Cunningham who died before 1900. Anna has one child with her husband, 2 year old Mazinia Cunningham. George’s daughter Lizzie was working as a cook. Both of the daughters were literate, George was not.
That is the last I found of George Cleage. Lizzie disappears soon after the 1900 census. She may be the Lizzie Cleage in Knoxville or she may not. Mary and Anna ended up in Indianapolis where they died in the 1920s. Anna is listed in the city directories as “Anna Cleage (widow of Frank) and that caused me some confusion because I thought she might have been a wife of my great grandfather Louis’ brother Frank Cleage, but that turned out not to be the case. She must have gone back to her maiden name after Frank Cunningham died. My grandfather and three of his siblings lived in Indianapolis at this time. I wonder if the two families crossed paths.
