Sad, Sad Saturday - Death of Walter Davis

This won't be a long post. Right now, I don't even have enough words to express the jolt of sadness I'm feeling this morning after reading this very descriptive article about the death of my maternal great-grandfather, Walter Davis; but I must honor him right this minute, by sharing (what I know of) his story, here on my blog.

Walter Davis was born July 16, 1875, in Brunswick County, Virginia to parents Lewis Davis and Dolly Ann Crutchfield.
He spent his childhood in Warren County, NC (which is the only place I'd known the family to live until recently discovering his tie to Virginia). In 1895, 20-year-old Walter married Minerva Brown, and by 1900, the couple (still residing in Littleton, Warren County) had given birth to two children, Samuel (1896) and my grandmother, Mary (1897). By 1910 the family was living in Norfolk, Virginia, where Lewis was a Foreman (Coal Trimmer)* at the coal piers, located in the same Lambert's Point section of the city where the family home stands to this day. Sadly, little Samuel is no longer with the family and is presumed to have passed away.

Just about a year ago, I obtained this photo of my great-grandfather, Walter, who I'd never seen a confirmed photo of, before that point.

Walter Davis

I'd been told by my mother and her siblings that their grandfather had died in a tragic accident at the coal piers where he worked, but I never knew the of the gory details that are included in the following article. At the time of this tragedy, my mother would have only been 15 months old. Her brother, Howell, was 3. Their sister, Jane, wasn't yet born. My great-grandparents, my grandparents, and my mother and uncle all shared a home in Lambert's Point, so this loss had to have hit the entire family very hard; although it gives me comfort to know that my great-grandmother, Minerva, was not alone during this horrible time. However, what makes this even more dismal is that, 12 years earlier, my grandmother, Mary, had lost her first husband in just as tragic an accident. at the same location that had now claimed the life of her father. I wrote about that calamity in my post, "Sentimental Sunday - My Grandmother's Loss".

Just looking at Walter Davis in this photo, I sense that he was a hard-working, very determined, and perhaps serious-minded man. I can't help but wonder if there is something more to this story. Didn't he hear the bell ringing? Did he not get off the tracks on purpose for some reason? Could someone have pushed him onto the tracks?

My heart is truly aching this morning after reading this article. (Click to enlarge.)

                     

Update:
Not too long after composing this post, I was able to obtain my great-grandfather's death certificate, on a visit to the Library of Virginia. This document further confirms the family tradition, as well as the newspaper accounts of Walter Davis' very sad, extremely tragic death.

Death Certificate of Walter Davis, stating that he died of "Shock following multiple injuries to whole body" with the contributory source being "Steam Rail Road Accident".

Walter Davis, I say your name. 
May you forever rest in peace.

Your great-granddaughter,

Renate

Thanks for reading.

* A coal trimmer or trimmer is a position within the engineering department of a coal-fired ship which involves all coal handling tasks starting with the loading of coal into the ship and ending with the delivery of the coal to the stoker. 


Sources: 
Coal trimmer definition  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_trimmer)

HOLD FINAL RITES FOR ACCIDENT VICTIM. (1935, Jul 06). New Journal and Guide (1916-2003) Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/567336517?accountid=44788

Library of Virginia, Accession Number 36390: Walter Davis, Certificate Number 14008, June 28, 1935.

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(Almost) Wordless Wednesday - Ancestor LOVE

On my inaugural visit to Roanoke Chapel Baptist Church Cemetery, I stumbled across this little "message" from my great-great grandfather, Asa Brown, and other ancestral family members whom I'd found buried there.  Needless to say, my heart was warmed in this touching moment.

Renate

Tombstone Tuesday - Asy BROWN - #A-ZChallenge

I am participating in the 2017 A-Z Challenge, and this is Day 2, April 2, 2017. 

My "B" post is dedicated to my 2x great grandfather (maternal), Asa/Asy BROWN.It was originally posted on April 3, 2012.

"In memory of ASY BROWN
BORN 1833
DIED 1909
He died as he lived, trusting in God."

Although most of the attention in the genea-world to day is on what folks are finding in the 1940 Census, I'm reflecting on the excitement I felt just a couple of weeks ago when I discovered a picture of the headstone of my maternal great-great grandfather, Asy BROWN.  Asy (Asa/Acy, as I'd been spelling it), is just one of the many ancestors I've discovered on my research journey.  I'd never heard of him before, and neither had my mother, or either of her siblings until I found my way to him through extensive research a couple of years ago.

Most of Asy's life remains a mystery to me, but what I do know is this:

1870 - Asa is a 26 year-old, illiterate farm-hand living (alone) in Hamilton Township, in Martin County, NC.

Between 1870-1880 - Asa marries Luvenia Ross (daughter of Everett Ross and Minervia Dobbins).

1880 - Acy, a farm laborer (servant), now lives in River Township, Warren County, NC, in the home of Charles and Creecy Squires. He is marked as both "single" and "widowed", but I believe both to be inaccurate. My research shows he and Louvenia to have married prior to this, but to be living (working) apart in 1880.  (I also have an indication that Louvenia may have been married before this, so maybe they were both widowed and then got married. This is an area for further research.)

At this same time, "Lou", as she seems to be called, is enumerated in Halifax Co. (Enfield Township), working as a farmhand and living in the home of Essex Whitaker.  At the time of the census, she has a 1-month old (unnamed) daughter.   Like Acy, she is noted to be single. 

1900 - Acy and Lou V (Louvenia) are living in Roanoke Township, Warren County, NC. They have been married for 28 years, according to this census, which would put the marriage around 1872. Louvenia has had 12 children, of which 9 are still living.  Seven of the children, ranging in age from 6 to 18, still live in the home.  (Those were Lottie, Weslie, Cora, Addie, Gus, Brutus, and Sadie.) He is a farmer - renting his home (sharecropper?).  Although the census date is June 22nd, Acy reports only being employed for four months that year.

1909 - Asy (according to his headstone) "died as he lived - trusting God". His grave is almost in the very center of the Roanoke Chapel Missionary Baptist Church cemetery, in the Elams section of Warren County. I wonder if that location is indicative of a prominent position in the church, especially with it being a small obelisk?

*Although the date of birth on Asy's headstone give 1833 as the year, I am not changing it in my database, unless I find proof of that.  Everything else I have on him indicates his birth year to be 1843-44.  Since mistakes are often made by the living, I'm going to stick to what I had before finding this picture.

*Special thanks to Find-a-Grave volunteer, George Seitz, who took this picture of my ancestor's grave, and uploaded it to the site.  As a Find-a-Grave volunteer myself, I encourage everyone reading this to get involved in this effort.  Seeing this headstone for an ancestor who had before been only a name to me, made him very real.  I cried tears of joy when I just happened to discover this on a Google search last month.  Not only did seeing the headstone help to make my gg-grandfather's life seem more tangible, but reading the loving inscription gave me a peek into who he was.  It made me feel that he was respected and loved, but best of all, it gave me a warm feeling to know that, despite what appears to have (possibly) been a life of poverty and struggle, he was connected to, and trusted God.

Renate

Happy New Year! (More to come!)

2012!

Well, it's a brand new year, and like most, I've set some personal goals.  This is something that I typically do quietly, and privately.  I don't make "resolutions", but I do spend time reflecting each year on the previous one, and making decisions (which I hope to stick to) about how I might do things differently in the new year.  Usually, I do a pretty good job of sticking to my plans, but of course there are some things that end up carrying over to the next year's goals.

Anyway, this is my third year blogging, and I've been reading everyones' genealogy-related goals.  I applaud those of you who diligently post your resolutions each year, and then, go back and "grade" yourselves (publicly) on how well you've done.  Certainly, there's an aspect of accountability that comes with doing it that way, and perhaps I'll graduate to such heights in the future.  But, for now, I just want to share a few thoughts about where I am in my genea-life, and to clarify, or perhaps, reassert my commitment to this work.

Although I've always been curious about my family, my official start as a family historian began in 1997.  Two life-changing events occurred that year, both of which contributed to my quest to learn more about who I am, and where I come from:  I got my first computer; and my father died.  As I wrote my father's obituary, and designed and published his funeral program (using my new computer), I ended up learning more about the man I called, "Daddy", than I'd ever known before.  Later, as the executor of his estate, and the one who handled his personal effects, I discovered even more, especially with regard to his military career.  With each new find, I gained a greater respect for my dad, but I also realized how little I'd actually known about him - about his younger years, and about the experiences he'd had which made him the man that he'd become.  This led me to a new level of reflection and wonder about my entire family, but in particular, about myself.  Who am I, exactly?  What am I really made of?  Why am the way I am?  What made me this way?

I began to try to find as much information as possible about my family.  I remember using AOL for something, and eventually (after 2000), I started to use Ancestry.com, and Familysearch.org to look at documents. At some point, Google became my friend. But, before all of that, I just started asking QUESTIONS.  I visited and interviewed my mother, aunts, uncles, and cousins, most of which involved taking road trips to North Carolina towns. I took lots and lots of notes, and I began building a hand-written pedigree chart, which I'd actually started in 1990.   I remember being amazed just to learn the names of ancestors that were only two generations ahead of me, whom I'd never even heard of before!  But, sadly, there were very few stories to go with those names.  It seemed that my family was historically disconnected, and that very little effort had been made to preserve the history that was ours.  I wanted to change that.  And so, I began...

My first pedigree chart, which I started in 1990.  (Home address and phone number are covered with sticky and scratched over.)

 

Now, it's 15 years later.  I've spent hours and hours in courthouse backrooms and basements, archival repositories, and county, state, and university libraries and municipal offices, all resulting in thousands of copies of original documents, for which I'm still trying to find just the "right" organizational system! (Smh) I've visited public and church-owned cemeteries, as well as private burial grounds on plantation properties, on which my ancestors once labored.  I'm a member of two genealogical societies (about to join a third), and I travel in and out of the tiny towns from which my ancestors hailed, taking photographs of places they might've been, and feeling sure that I sense their presence in some of them.  I have two blogs, and I volunteer as an indexer for two companies and one major project in the genealogical community. I've published two articles in the Franklin County Heritage Book (Volume 1, 2008), and I also worked as part of the committee which published it.  I'm a contributing member of FindaGrave.com, and I put out a monthly e-newsletter to all of my family members for whom I have email addresses.  I maintain subscriptions to Ancestry.com and Tribalpages.com, and have trees on both sites.  I'm a member of Afrigeneas.com, and I follow and contribute to message boards all over the Web. I've had my DNA tested, which has given me data about my maternal line, and I've gotten two male cousins to submit theirs, allowing me to obtain, confirm, and learn more information about two of my paternal lines (HAWKINS and YARBOROUGH). I have discovered and "met" (online) a female cousin in another state who has recently submitted a DNA sample that will give us much-needed information about the maternal line that began with my gg-grandmother, Anna GREEN. I communicate with people all around the country each day via Twitter and Email, as we work together to figure out family lines and to share research techniques. I've scanned hundreds of family photos and documents, and have shared many of those, electronically. And yes, I spend countless hours on the Internet, digging, digging, digging for ANYTHING I might find that will lead me to more information about my ancestors.  I do this because they are who I am.  They are where I come from.  Learning about them, gives me the answers to the questions that began tugging at me unstoppably in 1997, and which will no doubt one day pull on the heart of one of my descendants.  Hopefully, the work I've done will make it easier for that yet-to-be-known somebody to find their answers.



Slave auction-block and hitching post at Cascine Plantation - Franklin County, NC (taken in July, 2007)

So.... What will 2012 bring for this researcher?  More of the above, because there are still so many questions, unanswered.  I renew my commitment to fidelity in sourcing my information, something I didn't know to do in the early years of my research.  I will work on creating a better, "just right" (for me) filing and storage system for my hard copies of documents, and I will continue to scan family photos, so that they can be preserved for the future in digital format. I plan to begin participating in "Amanuensis Monday", a Geneabloggers meme, which encourages transcribing and sharing historical documents on the Internet.  I'll keep sending the family e-newsletter, even though I sometimes want to stop because I get so little feedback from it. Nevertheless, I will continue, because the work I'm doing is not just for me, it's for ALL of the descendants of my ancestors! I will try to do more to help others in the genealogical community.  And, I hope that 2012 will be the year in which I attend my first genealogical conference! 

For me, genealogy is not a hobby, at all.  It is work - hard work.  But it is hard work with a purpose, and for the most part, I do enjoy doing it.  Researching my family has it ups and downs.  There are long periods of frustration, and brick walls that seem insurmountable, but for me, these are incentives to keep at it.  Anyone who knows Renate knows that once I start something, I perservere until it's finished.  I guess that means I'm in this for my lifetime, because, as I've learned from many who've been at it for longer than I, researching one's family history is a "job" that never ends!


Happy New Year, and thanks for reading Into the LIGHT, and supporting me in my genealogical quest!

Renate

Checking in

I've been a little quiet on the blog scene lately but I wanted to check in, just in case anyone is still following me. I'll be honest - I've been a little discouraged that I didn't get many responses to my last several posts - especially the Mysterious Monday ones, so I've kind of just been doing my thing without blogging about it.

I have been following a few new leads on my Green mysteries, and I'm excited that I've finally heard back from the archivist at the Cornell University Library
http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/collections/cuhist.html, who seems to have a bit of information on my great-uncle, William L. Greene, who obtained a Masters Degree from there in 1929. I'm hoping to see his records so that I can see how he was spelling his name at that point, since it is he who changed the spelling of the surname Green, to Greene, and thus all of his descendants carry that spelling, which distinguishes his line from all the rest of Anna Green's descendants. Unfortunately, I've been going back and forth with the archivist for several days because they need "proof of death" before they will release his records to me. (He was born in 1901......, but they have him listed as a living alumnae...hmmm). I have sent her the copy of his death certificate 3 times, but she keeps telling me that her email won't receive the document. Now, it's the weekend, so I guess I'm put off til Monday, but I might have to make a trip to a fax machine to get this ball rolling!

Also, on the Hawkins front - I've been having a dialogue with a fellow researcher, which started on the Hawkins board at Ancestry, and has now moved to us exchanging private emails. This was all spurned by my finding of Nathaniel Hawkins' great-grandfather's will, in which he mentions his grandson, Philemon, who was my gg grandfather, Nathaniel's father. I was surprised and excited to learn of the possibility that this Philemon may possibly have been Mulatto himself (although if he was, I don't think it was a well-known fact, and he must not have looked it). However, this other researcher disagrees with my interpretation of the language, and does not think he was. So, we've kind of been debating this, and although I have never read anything that would have indicated this as a possibility, and I know that my new friend is probably right, I can't discount it without proof to the contrary after reading the wording of Philemon Hawkins' will. On the same day that I discovered the will, I also ran across this letter from Philemon (the possible mulatto) to his father John. http://docsouth.unc.edu/unc/unc06-70/unc06-70.html Knowing that he attended UNC makes it even less likely that he was Mulatto, I guess, but still... I need PROOF! One other thought that has occurred to me is that this John could have very well had two sons named Philemon, one being the child of his wife (and the one we all know about - Nathaniel's father), and the other being the child of the slave, Amy.

As I'm typing this, I'm having another ah-ha moment, as I realize another possibility. (Thinking out loud... well, actually on paper...lol.) There has been a Nathaniel Hawkins that I've have run across many times in my research. He was in Warren County, and he was born in 1830, just like my Nathaniel Hawkins. I have held on to his information, and even shoeboxed him in Ancestry. He was married to a Green, but her name was, Patience. The reason I've not followed up on him more, is because he was listed as BLACK. So... now I have to wonder, if my Nathaniel Hawkins' father (Philemon) was half-Black, could this be my gggf???

Anyone who is interested can read the wording in question in the book, In Full Force and Virtue: , if you own the book, or you can read it here. http://books.google.com/books?id=usSoUtSJChgC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA281#v=onepage&q=&f=false It is the last paragraph on page 281. To me, it is clear here that Philemon is stating that his grandson (and namesake) is the son of his son, John and a negro woman named, Amy. The bold print is as it already was in the the reader, so I'm assuming that was done by the author. Also, to me it doesn't sound like he's in denial about this at all, but he is writing young Philemon out of his will and his "legacy" more because of his attempt to deceitfully and underhandedly get some of his grandfather's property.
I'm thinking:
1. Why would the grandson have to underhandedly try to write his way into his grandfather's will if he weren't mulatto, or a child outside of his father's marriage? It's obvious that Philemon was generously bestowing gifts upon his children and grandchildren in the will, and this last paragraph is obviously an addition that was made after the writing of the original will. To me, that means that Phil (the grandson) probably found out that he wasn't in it and did something to try to deceitfully change that.
2. How would Matthew, the slave boy, know so much? Well, again I can argue that there was much talk amongst the slaves (in and out of the quarters). The other researcher thinks that Matthew may have been Phil's child, and if he was, maybe his nephew tried to convince him to go in on the deceitful act, since he wasn't addressed in the will either. But nevertheless, folks talk, and I believe that Philemon was probably bragging or telling of what he'd done amongst his people, and that's how Matthew found out.
3. Philemon states that his grandson would not have "both this legacy and the property described in the said deed". Legacy to me means the family name and rights, which is different from property or wealth, and here Philemon distinguishes between the two. How often do we hear of people taking away the "legacy" from their own (White) children or grandchildren?

Your comments are welcome.

A Sunday Surprise - for Someone!

I can scarcely imagine what it would be like, as an African-American genealogist to run across a document containing even an iota of the wealth of information in this one, so when I found this on the Franklin County genweb site, I knew I had to post it, just in case anyone researching these families happened by my blog. This is an amazing document, and it even holds a surprise for any slave desendants of the families mentioned, so take a look, researchers. For someone, this is GOLD!
http://www.ncgenweb.us/franklin/families/solomon1.html