Naomi Tulane about four years old. 1904. (Copyright Jacqui Vincent)
This photograph of my grandmother Fannie’s cousin, Naomi Vincent was printed on the cans of Tulane Coffee. This was one of her father Victor Tulane’s many projects, which included real estate, founding a Penny Bank, and owning Tulane’s Grocery. He was also on the Board of Directors of Tuskegee Institute and a generally active citizen of Montgomery. I found the advertisement below in the Montgomery Advertiser.
V.H. Tulane, Prop. was married to my great grandmother’s sister, Willie Lee (Allen) Tulane. Miss Fannie M. Turner, Mgr., was my maternal grandmother.
Years later, he traveled North selling Alaga Syrup. Naomi traveled with him and it was on a trip to New York City that she met her future husband, Dr. Ubert Vincent.
Alphonso Brown, Victoria McCall, 1970 photo of former Tulane Grocery, More recent photo of empty building.
This is my 4th year participating in the A-Z Challenge. I am writing about people who were born into slavery and lived to be free, and their descendants.
Lowndes Adams and Rufus Taylor, Montgomery, Alabama
Today I am going to write about my maternal grandfather’s friend Lowndes Adams. Lowndes parents were both born into slavery. He and his siblings were born free after the Civil War and raised in Montgomery Alabama. I have written several other posts about Lowndes over the years and there are links at the bottom. Lowndes had a niece named Ula Mae and she was kind enough to lend us her “U” for this post. (Click on photographs to enlarge.)
“THE ADAM’S OF MONTGOMERY, ALA.
“In presenting interesting colored families of the state and elsewhere from time to time, we could not overlook this one. This group is Mrs. Ida M. Adams and her children. The history of this family is connected with that of Tuskeegee Institute, a brother, George Adams, being one of the founders of that school. Reading from right to left is the elder daughter, Sarah, now Mrs. W.C. Payne, she graduated from Miss Whites School for girls and subsequently from the State Normal School of Montgomery and taught several years in that city. Next to her is Jesse, then the only son, Lownes, who is the father, as well as brother and son, for the paternal head of this family is dead, and Lownes is faithful in his stead. to his right is Maud another teacher in the state schools, and by her hands Emalina. who is now Mrs. Edgar Spigener, and whose baby, Edleline is in its grandmother’s arms. On either side of Mrs. Adams is the younger daughters, Alice and Janie respectively. With such families as this we must base our hope for acclaiming the Negro’s future.” (Date about 1912. Name of Newspaper not known.)
Three generations of the Adams Family in the 1930s. Lowndes is in the center back directly behind his mother Ida Mae Adams. I believe that Ula Mae is in this photograph but I do not know for sure. Copyright Kevin Payne.
In a series I wrote several years ago about my grandparent’s migration north, I wondered if my grandfather had seen Lowndes again. Later I found that Lowndes died in Detroit in 1976, several years after my grandfather. Recently I found Lowndes’ WWII draft registration card and saw that he was living in Detroit in 1942 and worked at the Ford River Rouge Plant, which is where my grandfather worked. They lived less than 2 miles apart. This morning, I found that Lowndes lived in Detroit as early as 1935 and worked as a trim finisher at the Ford plant. In 1940 he lived with his older sister Jesse Ida and her family. He was a high school graduate.
In the 1950 Census, Lowndes Adams was living with his nephew, Lowndes Payne and his wife Marie at 101 E. Philadelphia in Detroit. He was employed as a typist at an auto plant. He was 57 years old. His nephew worked as a bench inspector at an auto plant. Marie was a homemaking teacher at a city high School.
I have decided to go through my grandparent’s photographs and see how many of their friends I can trace. Yesterday I was looking at my grandfather, Mershell C. Graham’s friends from home when I came across “Hands up. Just a little desperato. You know why.”
I turned it over and saw there was a bit written there in pencil. Holding it up to the sunshine coming in the window, I was able to read: “From my friend Charlie Watkins. 10/22/07. Mershell Graham. Chas’ wife Emma Dee died 1949.”
In 1907 my grandfather was still living in Montgomery, Alabama. When looking for information about people who aren’t relatives, I’ve found it very helpful to start a tree for them on Ancestry. I’m able to put all of the information I find in context. I made Charles Watkins with wife Emma Dee (maiden name unknown at that point) the starting couple.
I was zipping along finding information when I decided to check out some photographs that were suggested. Imagine my surprise when I realized that Charles Watkins was the brother of William Watkins that I wrote about earlier here He Hid Beneath the Floor. It tells the story of Victor Tulane, my 2X great uncle by marriage, hiding a family friend, Montgomery dentist, William Watkins, under their floor to save him from white vigilantes. When I wrote that post I researched the Watkins family. I recognized the photograph of their father, William Watkins Sr.
Charles married Emma Thompson, a seamstress, in 1910 in Montgomery. By 1917 the family was living in Chicago, IL. They had two children, William born in 1912 and Sarah born in 1916. Emma was no longer working. Charles was a carpenter, as his father had been. By 1920 they were living in Los Angeles, California. He was the first member of the family to move west. Others followed later as most members of the family left Montgomery after brother William was smuggled out to escape the mob.
Charles Watkins died in Los Angeles at the age of 74. I still don’t know why he was a little desperado.
The photograph of three of my grandfather Mershell C. Graham’s friends was perfect for today’s Sepia Saturday prompt. To read about their lives, click this link – The Migration Part 3 – Those Left Behind. It turned out that some of them also left Montgomery, AL and moved north.
Lowndes Adams, Rufus Taylor and Lewis Gilmer & Lowndes little niece, Edoline.
Edward McCall was the husband of my great grandmother’s oldest sister, Mary Allen McCall. He worked as cook at the City Jail for 30 years, according to the article below. He was also listed as “turnkey” at the jail in several censuses. Edward’s wife, Mary was a talented seamstress, a skill she learned from her mother, Eliza (who I named this blog after).
Edward McCall died in Montgomery, Alabama on February 2, 1920 and is buried there in Lincoln Cemetery. For many years this cemetery was horribly neglected and vandalized. Several years ago the Lincoln Cemetery Rehabilitation Authority was formed and has been working to clean it up and put the graves in order. I hear that it is in much better shape.
Only Fifteen Will Enjoy the Hospitality of the City on Christmas Day
Twenty-six city prisoners whose sentences originally ranged from thirty days to six months, and who had a balance of time of from one to thirty days yet to serve, were given their liberty Saturday at noon as a Christmas present, upon an order to Chief Taylor of the Police Department from Mayor W. A. Gunter, Jr., this being, the annual custom in vogue for a number of years in Montgomery with reference to the city’s prisoners.
The release of the twenty-six left a remaining number of twelve, which together with three convictions at the Saturday session of the Recorders Court, who were unable to pay their fines, aggregate fifteen who will be given holiday Monday and a sumptuous Christmas dinner, which is being prepared today by Ed McCall, the negro (sic) who for thirty years has served as chef at police headquarters.
The dinner will be served in the regular dining room at headquarters and will consist in a menu of camp stew, bread, cakes, fruits, coffee and other good and tasty articles of substantial foods.
Camp stew is similar to Brunswick stew. You can learn more about it here “How Camp Stew Became A South Alabama Icon.“
A Christmas card from my Grandparent’s ( Mershell and Fannie Graham) collection, date unknown. I read on a post by Pauline on Family History Across the Seas about the people who sent Christmas Cards. It started me thinking about the cards I had from my grandparents collection with photographs of people I only knew were friends of the family, but nothing else about them. I wondered what I could find out. I picked this one out because, unlike some of the others, it had a name and a street address, although there was no date and no city. My grandparents lived in Montgomery, AL before moving to Detroit in 1919, so I started there. Here is what I learned from the census and Montgomery Directory about Addie Smith.
Addie Smith “Ma Smith” is written on the shingles near her face level.
“Merrie Christmas and happy New Year. Addie Smith 105 Hutchinson St.” My mother wrote “Don’t know date- friend”
Addie was born in 1869 in South Carolina to parents also born in South Carolina. In 1888, (the year my grandmother was born), Addie married Fountain Smith, a laborer about 14 years her senior. This was her first marriage. Fountain may have been married before. They had no children.
By 1906 Fountain and Addie were living at 105 Hutchinson Street in Montgomery. She would live in this rented house for the rest of her life. A Fountain Smith filed for bankruptcy in 1906. Over the years Addie Smith worked as a char woman/janitress in the Post Office. She may have also worked in that capacity in other public buildings.
At 53 years old, on October 26 in 1922, Addie Smith died. She is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Montgomery. Fountain lived another 8 years, dying on November 3, 1930. He would have been about 62. Because Addie died in 1922 and my grandparents moved to Detroit in 1919, I am guessing that this card was sent in 1920.
My grandparents Fannie and Mershell Graham soon after their marriage in 1919.
Looking at a map of the 4th Ward in Montgomery in I found that Hutchinson street no longer had houses below #800, However, my great Uncle Victor Tulane had a grocery store at Ripley and High street. My grandmother Fannie managed the store for a number of years before her marriage. This store would have been several blocks from Addie and Fountain Smith’s house. I am supposing that this is how they met.
Ransom Allen was the oldest son of Dock and Eliza (Williams) Allen. He was born free in Alabama about 1860. He and his 7 siblings grew up in Montgomery. He was my great grandmother Jennie’s older brother. His father was a carpenter. His mother was a seamstress. He became a barber.
In 1883 Ransom married Callie Whitaker in Troup County, GA. I don’t know how or where they met, but she was born in Georgia. In 1888 their son, John Wesley, was born in Montgomery. John was the only one of their three children to survive childhood.
The family relocated to Chicago, IL about 1917 where Ransom continued to barber and John worked as a Mechanic. John married Bobbie Conyer and their only son, Harold Thomas, was born in 1932 in Chicago, IL.
In 1933 Ransom’s wife Callie died. The following year Ransom died at age 74. Their only grandson died in 1946 at 14 years of age. That was the end of Ransom’s branch of Dock and Eliza’s family.
While watching “Many Rivers to Cross” this week, an episode full of stories of resistance, escape and fighting back, this is the family story that came to mind.
Dock Allen – tintype with frame attached.
It had been a wet spring, that 1861 in Dallas County, Alabama. Dock Allen was 21 years old and already a good carpenter. He was a white man’s son, but the man who now held him in slavery was not his father. His owner was known as a cruel man who kept vicious dogs to instill fear in his slaves. He wanted them to be afraid to run. When Dock made up his mind to escape, he had a plan to throw the dogs off of his track. There was a swampy area where wild ramps grew. He rubbed himself with them, poured the water on himself and rolled around in the field so the strong onion odor would hide his own human smell.
He had been running and running. He was bone tired. He could hear the dogs tracking him in the distance when he came to a small farm near Carlowville. He couldn’t go any further. He climbed up into the hay loft, covered himself with hay and lay there barely breathing. The dogs came into the hay room. He could feel their breath as they walked over him, but they didn’t smell him because of the ramps. Eventually they left.
Eliza
This was the same place where Eliza and her small daughter Mary, lived. Eliza had been freed several years before. She lived on the farm of Nancy Morgan. Did Eliza hear the dogs and see Dock stumble into the yard? Did she silently direct him to the hide in the hay?
Later Dock decided to give himself up. Nancy sent a message to his master. It wasn’t long before he came to the house. He said that no one had ever out smarted his dogs and that any man who was smart enough to do that deserved to be free and he freed Dock. Dock stayed on that place and he and Eliza married. They stayed together until he died in 1909. He was 69.
Doc Allen in the record.
Dock and Eliza (Williams) Allen’s grave.
I found Dock Allen in in the 1867 voter registration database living in Montgomery, AL. He appears with his family in the 1870, 1880 and 1900 census in Montgomery. According to the records he was a carpenter born in Georgia. He owned his own home. In the 1900 census he and Eliza had been married 40 years which puts the beginning around 1860.
I have three addresses for him, 237 Clay street, 216 Holt street and finally 444 S. Ripley street where he lived for the five years before he died March 29, 1909 of “inflammatory bowels” after being ill for several weeks. His mother is named as Matilda Brewster on his death certificate. No father is listed. He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Montgomery.
I don’t know if this is exactly how Dock Allan escaped from slavery. This is the oral history that we have. I never knew this story until my cousin Jacqui Vincent and I made contact years ago. Dock and Eliza (Williams) Allen were my 2X Great grandparents. I’ve written more about Eliza’s story in these posts.
This is my fifteenth post for the April A-Z Challenge. I began with the intention of writing about my first cousin twice removed, Alma Otilla McCall Howard. I started by going to my Ancestry.com family tree page and pulling up her profile. I noted she was the 5th of 6 children and that her wedding date was missing. I opened my Reunion family tree software, hoping it was there. Her marriage date read 1911. That couldn’t be right. Her husband’s son by his first wife wasn’t born until 1912. There was no date for that marriage either. In fact there wasn’t even a name for Otilla’s husband, Joseph Howard’s, first wife.
Top row: Doorway to Otilla’s Chicago house. Siblings – Jeanette, Otilla, Roscoe, Annabelle, James. 2nd row: Students at Mississippi Industrial College(MIC) 1908; Otilla’s mother, Mary Allen McCall; postcard of the girls dorm at MIC; 1908 photo of MIC. 3rd row: Joseph, Jr. with drums and friends; Otilla’s apt house in Chicago; Otilla and her husband Joseph Howard about 1939. 4th row: MIC building now; my grandmother Fannie and friends in Holly Springs.
I searched on Ancestry.com. No luck. Tried Family Search, no luck. Then I remembered listening to an interview that my cousin Margaret McCall Ward did with Otilla’s step-son, Dr. Joseph H. Howard, JR, about his amazing drum collection. Maybe there was something there. Looked for the interview in my itunes list and listened. Unfortunately, he speaks sort of quiet at the beginning when he is telling us his mother’s name and I can’t quite get it. I think he said “Evie” and then changed and spelled it out as “Dama”. Turned that off.
Joseph Jr.’s drum collection sounds interesting. Maybe there is something out there with biographical information. I google Dr. Joseph Howard drums. Several articles come up. I read them and learn the extent of his collection, his wife’s name and his two children’s name. And there are even photographs of him. Nothing about his mother. Unfortunately, he isn’t even actually related to me and none of this is about Otilla.
I remember another interview that Margaret did with her Uncle Roscoe’s wife, Stella. Stella’s daughter and Joseph Jr. were both there and putting in comments. Maybe the information is there. It only takes a few minutes to find the transcript of the tape on my computer and open it up. Yay! That is what I was remembering. Right at the start of the interview, Margaret starts talking to Joseph and he tells where he was born and how his parents met in Guyana. His mother lived there and his father was working on a ship. He gives his mother’s name and even spells her last name, Sempert. I try looking for her using first name of first Evie and then Dama, hoping to find a death record. Nope.
About this time I decide to check in on facebook. I find that I was chosen by Family History Magazine as one of the Top 40 Genealogy Blogs! I was shocked and thrilled. I spent some time going to the Family History Magazine website, congratulating other bloggers I know who were on the list and thanking others for their congratulations. But, eventually, I had to get back to the post.
Later in the transcript, Joseph talks about how his step mother, Otilla and his father, Joseph Howard met. She was teaching at Mississippi Industrial College in Holly Springs, MS. Joseph Howard SR was a physician and I don’t know if he was practicing in Holly Springs or if he was in school. Unfortunately, just as Margaret was getting ready to go deeper, she stopped herself and got back to her task of trying to find out where her grandfather was buried. I wondered what Mississippi Industrial College looked like? I googled and found a few photographs from 1908, a brief history, and a lot of information and photographs of how the beautiful, historic buildings are falling down before our eyes. There doesn’t seem to be any money to save them. An architect who worked on a rehabilitation project years ago writes about how he hated to stop when the funding ran out. Someone warns about walking up the steps of the auditorium and finding themselves looking two stories down to the basement.
Having read some articles about “ruin porn” while I was off on a tangent when writing a different post, I tore myself away from the wrecked buildings. Holly Springs? I remember a photograph of my grandmother and some of her friends that was taken in Holly Springs. I wonder if they were visiting Otilla? I find the photo and find nothing except place and names on the back.
I remembered an email exchange with my cousin, Ruth about her memories of Otilla and her large house in Chicago. I go back and find the emails and re-read them for any interesting information. She talks about her parents bringing her home from the hosptial to that house and the other family members who lived there. It was a multi-unit dwelling. I found a photograph of the house on google maps when I was going to write Otilla and family up for the 1940 census. There was some confusion about whether the house I found was actually the house. I looked up the address on the 1940 census and googled it. I found several real estate descriptions and photographs of the house. I’m satisfied I found the right place.
At that point I started thinking about all the side roads I took and decided to write about that. I still owe Alma Otilla McCall Howard a post. It shouldn’t be too difficult because there can’t be any other side roads to go down, right?
On June 11, 1919 Mershell Graham and Fannie Mae Turner applied for a marriage license in Montgomery, Alabama. They were married by Rev. E.E. Scott at First Congregational Church in Montgomery on June 15. I have no photographs of the marriage or memories that were handed down. I could find no record of their marriage license in the Montgomery Advertiser. They seemed to have no section devoted to “News of the Colored Folk” as some newspapers did.
Soon after the ceremony my grandparents left and returned to Detroit where Mershell was working. I assume they took the train, which would have been segregated at that time. They roomed with friends from home, Moses and Jean Walker. There were other roomers, all of them saving up to be able to purchase their own homes.
To read Mershell’s letter of proposal read The proposal To read Fannie’s letter of acceptance read – The acceptance
I found several marriage related, handwritten poems in my grandparents papers and have printed them below. I wonder if they read these during the ceremony or exchanged them.
The gift Yes, take her and be faithful, still, and may your bridal bower, Be sacred kept in after years, and warmly breathed as now, Remember tis no common tie that binds your youthful hearts Tis one that only truth should breath and only death should part.
Remember tis for you she leaves her home and mother dear, To have this world with you alone, your good and ill to share, Then take her and may future years mark only joys increase And may your days glide sweetly on in happiness and peace.
The Brides Farewell
Soon, soon I’ll go – from those I love You, Mother, Sister, among the nest, Where I will often think of you, Far in the distant west.
Farewell, Mother, though I leave you Still I love you, Oh! believe me and when I am far away Back to you my thoughts will stray. Oft, I’ll think of you and home Though in other lands I’ll roam. Yes, though miles may intervene, I will keep thy memory green Mother, sister, from my heart Thoughts of thee shall never depart.
