The Lettie

Naming your boat after a beloved, beautiful or famous woman is a custom that goes back hundreds of years. The ships that carried early explorers from Europe to the New World had names of women. It was also common practice of the British Navy and until recently the US Navy.



The Lettie

There may not be any conclusive reason for it but most traditional seagoing men still stick to it. I'm looking for a light weight Kayak to add to our camping equipment and will probably Christen it "Mary."

I read that Bartholomew "Bat" Fogarty of Fogarty Boatworks in Manatee County, Florida built a Schooner in the early 1900s that he raced several times and it had a reputation for being extremely fast. There are several newspaper articles about it in the Manatee River Journal archives.

There are at least two surviving photos of the boat identified with the name "Lettie" and saying Fogarty sold to Captain Carl William Bahrt who was a Ship Pilot in Tampa Bay.

Carl William Bahrt was married to Luddie Garner, the sister of my great grandmother, Sallie Adams Fulford.

My first thought after seeing the name was that it was named after Bahrt's wife but I wasn't sure this was true because of the spelling. I never met the Bahrts or their children and couldn't find any record of Luddie being called Lettie.



1967 Interview of Ollie Zipperer Fogarty

In addition, Bat Fogarty had a sister named Mary Letitia Fogarty so maybe the boat was named for her.

Recently I found an interview the Manatee County Historical Society did of Ollie Zipperer Fogarty in 1967. She was a contemporary of Bahrt and Luddie and in the interview she called her Lettie.


I don't know if Bart Fogaryt had a name on the boat when he owned it but I'm now pretty sure it was Carl William Bahrt that painted on the name Lettie.




Luddie Garner Bahrt

Luddie Garner Bahrt was born September 13, 1885 in Carteret County, North Carolina and died March 31, 1964 in Tampa, Florida. She is buried in the Myrtle Hill Memorial Cemetery in the Bahrt family plot. Her father was Elijah Meadows Garner and her mother was Hope Jane Foreman.

Tearing Down Monuments

Fulford Day Memorial at Municipal building

There has been a lot in the news recently about tearing down Memorials to Political and Military leaders, Wars and even Explorers.


As a person who studies family history that is intertwined with history of the place where family lived I'm very much opposed to this.


I'm sure some folks who want to remove memorials have sincere feelings but most seem to be involved for the blood sport or because they read only the news headlines.


I discovered a War Memorial to a family member several years ago and had not written about it because I got too busy with other things. I decided to do so now before it is bulldozed over.

Beaufort News May 12 1921

James Irvin Fulford was a distant relative, a 5th cousin. Far enough that the DNA connection would be slight, but I've researched his family for a while and know several family members who are also doing research.


We share a common ancestor, Joseph Fulford of Carteret County, North Carolina.



I learned of the memorial to him and Leonard Day while searching online newspapers for family surnames in North Carolina. I found several articles about the Fulford - Day Memorial in Morehead City, North Carolina from newspaper articles in the early 1920s.


I visit Morehead City several times a year and decided to try to locate the memorial.


In May of 1921 It had been erected on Arendell Street which is US Hwy 70, the main road through town at the intersection of 8th Street.


The memorial was originally a fountain in the middle of the road, next to the railroad track.



Fulford Day Memorial Fountain on Arendell Street

There wasn't any record of it in recent years but I did locate something that said it had been moved to several blocks to Evans and Jib Street at one point and then later to the Morehead City Municipal Building many years after the building was constructed in 1926.


Two years ago while making plans to visit the area I contacted the City Maintenance department and they said it was still outside the building. I stopped by one afternoon to get the photo.



Beaufort News March 31 1921

Irvin Fulford was honored with a memorial along with another local man because they both died in WWI.



Irvin was born July 15, 1898 to Walter Ernest and DeElla Sawyer Fulford.


He was killed on October 11, 1918, one month before the Armistice of Compiegne was signed which ended the fighting. We celebrate this Armistice and our Veterans every year on November 11th.


He died in one of the last great battles of the War, at the Hindenburg Line. This resulted in a win for the Allies and the Germans losing over 36,000 prisoners. Immediately after this defeat the Germans requested an armistice.


James Irvin Fulford WWI Service Card

His body wasn't returned home until the following March.

He was buried in the Bayview Cemetery in Morehead City in a family plot that thirty years later would make room for his parents.


James Irvin Fulford Gravemarker

Bewitched

I have to admit it, Bewtiched was one of my favorite TV shows growing up. I mean, what's not to like about it. A good looking woman who could do all kinds of magic when needed. I'm sure most guys would like being married to someone like her and women would like to be her.

I was reading a transcript of an interview my grandmother's cousin, Louise Lundy Simmons gave in 1988 to the Manatee Historical Society and found an interesting story about being Bewitched.

My great great grandfather, William Augustus Lundy died in 1903 in Manatee County Florida. The family story I heard was that he died of cancer.

Louise heard a different one, from his wife Marjorie Henry Lundy. Marjorie Lundy died in 1933 when Louise was 22 years old. Louise told the historical society:

Marjorie Henry Lundy - 1930

"Well, my Grandmamma told me that he was out riding in the woods on his horse. And there was a lady sitting on a log that had fallen over. And she was a fortune teller. And she asked him to give her $15 and she’d tell his fortune.

Well, he wouldn’t do it. And she said just to let him know what she was talking about, she told him something that was really true. But he still wouldn’t give her $15. And then he got sick, and they thought that the old lady had bewitched him."

"And they got him and they took him, my Uncle Jim and Aunt Ada, they went somewhere up north. There was somebody up there that could break that spell. And they went north and that man told them that the rest of the family had to go home. And leave him here with me. They wouldn’t do it so they brought him home."

I knew about them taking him to Glen Springs in South Carolina in 1902 shortly before he died, but didn't know it was an attempt to break the spell from a witch.

Legal immigrants

I found this record showing my entry back the USA after my family spent two years in Europe.

My father was in the Air Force and had to do a tour overseas so he took his family with him. I have a letter he wrote to my grandfather shortly after I was born saying he was being pressured to go overseas again.

He had been in the armed forces for parts of three decades by then and most of that time had been overseas, including the Pacific during WWII. He had been able to avoid going after he got married and had four kids.

We were in France for those years where he helped setup the Strategic Air Command bases that were part of NATO for many years.

When we came back we spent two year in Kansas, before he retired.

Ancestry.com just put these records online and it was surprising to see my name. Since today is Armed Forces Day, I though it was a good time to share this.

I apologize that I haven't been posting to this blog in a while, but that's not because I don't have stories to share. There have been a lot of other things taking priority recently so I've been putting them in the cue and hope to be able to have time to write them out here soon.

Buying the Fort

I've been doing a lot of research on family members who lived in Craven County North Carolina recently. The County made a lot of old records available online which makes it very convenient to locate them from home.

Fort Barnwell

I found a land record showing one of my great grandfathers bought the land where a fort was built during the Tuscarora Indian War of 1711.

Francis Nunn settled in the Craven County area in the early 1700s. He may have been one of the Militia members from South Carolina who came to fight the Tuscarora Indians after they attacked New Bern, North Carolina and massacred over 400 white settlers.

There was a Francis Nunn in South Carolina at the time who would have been the right age to be a part of the militia. Several men who took part in the war ended up moving to North Carolina afterwards because they found the land better and readily available.

1729 Deed from William Hancock

South Carolina sent a militia of 30 white officers and 313 friendly Indians under the command of Col. John Barnwell. They built a fort on the bank of the Neuse River at Half Moon Swamp in 1712. The State of North Carolina put a historic marker there in the 1950s.  

In 1729 Francis Nunn paid 95 pounds to buy a Plantation of 640 acres, including the old fort, from William Hancock, Jr. His father, Col William Hancock had received the land as a Grant from the Lords Proprietors.

Four years later Francis Nunn was given permission to operate a Ferry across the Neuse River at Fort Barnwell.

The Court file says "ye said Mr. Nunn to receive the sum of two shillings and six pence for ferin man and horse."

Francis Nunn's gg granddaughter Mary Nunn was the mother of Mary Catherine Ellis who married David Fulford of Carteret County in 1862. Their son, William Thomas Fulford was my great grandfather.

William's Famous Peas

I wrote a story about my distant first cousin Capt. William Fulford several years ago. That told of the unfortunate circumstance of his house being blown up in 1863 by Union troops. They were trying to put out a fire on Front Street in Beaufort, North Carolina, that had started in the kitchen of his neighbor Mr. Ensley and intentionally blew up William's house as a crude fire break.

I found this article in the July 26, 1859 edition of the New Bern Weekly Progress, four years before the fire. The same Mr. Ensley who started the fire, was trying to get some notice for the gardening skills of Capt. Fulford so he took his extra large peas to the newspaper in New Bern.

 

  

I think my daughter inherited the Fulford gardening chromosome because she produced some pretty large organic Kale in her backyard last summer and even sold some to the local grocery store.  

Confederate Memorial Day

If you live in Montgomery, Alabama you would find the State offices closed today. It is one of the few States that still recognizes Confederate Memorial Day and calls it by that name.

First White House

Several years ago I received a book, Sweet Mystery, from a distant cousin who had researched her family history and learned I had a connection not only to Montgomery but to one of the more unusual Confederate Memorials. Several of the stories I will share come from her book.

In this day of trying to change our history to make it more acceptable I thought this would be a good time to tell the story. It has all the components of what any history contains, some good and some not so good parts. You can take it as a whole or only focus on those components that make you comfortable.

If you visit downtown Montgomery one of the places on any Tourist Map is the First White House of the Confederacy. The house was built in the 1830s and shortly before the original seven States, that had been first to secede, formed a Provisional Confederate Congress it had been bought by Edmund Harrison of Lowndes County Alabama. Colonel Harrison as he was called was the 2nd husband of Elizabeth C. Ware. Elizabeth's mother, Judith Anthony, had been married first to William Green in Georgia and after he died, she married Robert Alexander Ware and moved to Montgomery, Alabama in 1822. So Elizabeth was the step-sister of my distant Green family cousins.


Exchange Hotel 1961

Colonel Harrison offered to lease his house to the Confederate Congress for use of the newly appointed President Jefferson Davis in February 1861.

The house was leased for $5,000 a year fully furnished with servants. Unfortunately by the time Jefferson Davis and his wife moved in, on April 14, 1861 the weather in Montgomery was already hot with a "record breaking heat wave" so on  May 20, 1861 the Provisional Confederate Congress decided to move the Confederate Capitol to Richmond, Virginia. Harrison sold the house three months later for $20,000 to Willis Calloway.

The fact that the First White House is one of the more revered places in Montgomery is strange since it was only used by Jefferson Davis for five weeks. In fact Davis camped out at the Exchange Hotel in Montgomery for almost twice as long. Unfortunately the old hotel was torn down in 1973 to make way for a new office building. This was three years before the old White House was renovated and opened as a tourist attraction.

Colonel Harrison could easily afford to lease the house with servants because he was one of the larger slave owners in the area. I found a family history blog page trying to trace some of his former slaves.

On the 1850 census Harrison is listed as owning 71 slaves and on the 1860 census the number had grown to 79.



Cowles Mansion in Montgomery

I am currently reading a biography of Theodore Roosevelt that talks about his mother's family in Savannah, Georgia being slave owners while his father was an abolitionist from New York. The author says TR's Georgia grandfather was listed as a Planter on the 1850 census because he owned land and more than 20 slaves. I'd never heard the definition of Planter being tied to the number twenty and am not sure if this was widely accepted but Harrison and the Ware family in Montgomery were all listed as Planters.



1860 Slave Census - Elizabeth Cowles

Elizabeth Ware was also a large slave owner. The story goes that when her parents moved from Georgia to Montgomery they brought 20 slaves.

Elizabeth's first husband, Thomas Meriwether Cowles, was listed with 112 slaves in 1850 and owned not only a large plantation but a mansion in Montgomery on River Street. Today both the house and the street no longer exist.

According to the History of Alabama and Dictionary of Alabama Biography, published in 1921, when President Millard Fillmore visited Montgomery in 1854 he spent the day at the Cowles Plantation.  After Cowles died in 1857 his estate was divided between wife Elizabeth and his two siblings, so on the 1860 census she was only listed with 22 slaves.

So if you want to just conclude this was a terrible family who made their money on the backs of slaves, kidnapped from their home country and forced to a life of horrors, you should stop reading now.

The other side of the story, and the family, are those who after the Civil War used their money, reputation and risked their lives to do good for the former slaves.

Elizabeth Ware's niece, Augusta Knox Walker was born in a mansion in downtown Montgomery, the first floor occupied by Yankee Army Officers, in 1871. Her grandfather, Henry Tabb Walker was from Memphis and had organized the 2nd Regiment Confederate Infantry among the Irish Immigrants in Memphis and fought at Shiloh with his 17 year old son Hal. The grandfather fell ill soon after with Typhoid and Dysentery and went home to Memphis to die. His son, the father of  Knoxie Walker, joined on as aide to Confederate Calvary General Frank Crawford Armstrong for the rest of the war.

William Burns Patterson

Knoxie Walker's future husband was also in Alabama about 80 miles from Montgomery. His father, William Burns Patterson, an Immigrant, from Tullibody Scotland moved to Alabama during the Reconstruction years and settled first in Hale County, Alabama. He started teaching former slaves, now working for the railroad, how to read and write. He started a school in 1871 and called it Tullibody Academy in Greensboro, Alabama.

In 1878 he moved to Marion, Alabama to run the American Missionary Association's Lincoln School. In 1873 the Alabama legislature provided funds and renamed it the Normal College for Negroes. This was the first State sponsored college for blacks and quickly became known as a "Teachers College."

The campus of the school in Marion was burned by vigilantes in 1880. The Alabama legislature in 1887 allocated $10,000 to build a new campus for the Normal College in Montgomery.  The school was renamed Alabama State University in 1969 and today has over 5,500 students.

Tullibody Hall Montgomery Normal College - 1906

Will Patterson continued as the head of the school after it moved to Montgomery and served for a total of 37 years.

He also started a nursery business, called Rosemont Gardens, growing flowers in the back yard. Several years after the move to Montgomery he and his wife awoke in the middle of the night to find a cross burning outside their small frame shotgun house and a note giving them 24 hours to leave town. The next night the vigilantes returned to find him sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch. As they came closer to the house they also found five Confederate veterans from Montgomery sitting on the porch in back of Will Patterson, with their rifles across their laps. That was the end of his problems with vigilantes.

The Patterson family sent roses to the five former Confederates every year on their birthdays for as long as they lived, as a sign of gratitude for the way they helped save the school.

So there are a lot of memories of Confederates today. You'll find celebrations in many small towns and folks dressed in period costumes. You won't see most of these on the news and if they are talked about, it won't be kindly. But there are many sides to the story of what happened and sometimes we need to open our minds to the other side, from what makes us feel comfortable.

DNA Day Sale 2016

I haven't posted any stories for a while as I have been pretty busy but hope to get back sharing about my family history research soon.

In the meantime, I wanted to pass on information about National DNA day, coming up this Monday.

The DNA testing services for genealogy research will have reduced products so it's a good time to order a test. Below is an email I received from Family Tree DNA but www.ancestry.com and www.23andme.com will have special prices Monday also.

Dear Group Administrators, As you may know, National DNA Day is April 25th, and commemorates the day in 1953 when a paper detailing the structure of DNA was published in Nature magazine. It also recognizes the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003.   At  Family Tree DNA, we celebrate those accomplishments by having a sale on DNA tests for genealogy!  Later today, at some point before our offices close (that’s 5:00 pm Central, Thursday, April 21), we’re launching the much-anticipated DNA Day Sale. which will extend through Tuesday, April 26, 2016 (11:59 PM Central). We’ll begin emailing the customer base later today, but we wanted you to know about it before we do. The prices are below, and are valid on new tests and add-ons only. Discounts do not combine with existing group discounts. Upgrades will be discounted in June.        Product Retail Pricing    Sale Price Family Finder        $99      $79 mtFull Seq       $199     $149 Y37       $169     $129 Y67       $268     $199 Y111       $359     $289 BigY       $575     $460 SNP Packs       $119     $109       mtDNA plus   Not on Sale   As always, thank you for your hard work! We appreciate you.

Sincerely, The Family Tree DNA Team

Presidential Connection

I started reading Jimmy Carter's latest book this week. I had requested a digital copy about a month ago from our local Library, before he announced he had cancer.

I had never read any of his other books so when I heard him announce his cancer fight live in a press conference, while driving across the State a couple weeks ago I was even more interested in reading it.

In the first chapter he talks about his family history and how the Church of Later Day Saints had given him a book about his ancestors back when he was President. His son has since become interested in genealogy and has traced the family tree in more depth. 

I have to admit Jimmy Carter was and is my favorite of all the Presidents I've known about first hand.

This reminded me that I found a family connection to his mother a number of years ago. Bessie Lillian Gordy Carter, who the press called "Miss Lillian" was the first cousin of the wife of my first cousin, 2x removed.

Eleanor Gordy married Carl William Bahrt in 1926, the son of my Great Aunt, Luddie Garner Bahrt. Eleanor was born in Columbus, Georgia and Carl was born in St. Petersburg, Florida. They met when he went to college at Georgia Tech. They ended up in Galveston, Texas where he worked as an Engineer. They died within a month of each other in 1989.

The 1925 Georgia Tech yearbook has this bio for Carl: 

"Carlos has succeeded in making an ideal college life for himself. A happy medium between hard study and the social side of life. Consequently he has developed into an efficient engineer and a dog with the women."

I wonder if that last trait would show up in our DNA match.

Gone a Hundred Years

Today is the 100th anniversary of my grandmothers' death. It is kind of strange to think that your grandmother has been dead for 100 years.

Obviously I never met her and my Dad was only three years old when she died.

Seth Rowell family

Ila L Rowell was born in 1885 in the Shady Grove community of Taylor County Florida and died August 24, 1915 in Perry, Florida. She was only 28 years old and apparently died from a heart problem.


This Rowell family picture was taken about 1900 and shows her standing on the far left at age 15. Her mother Martha Jane Williams Rowell is standing next to her and her father Seth David Rowell is sitting on the far right. Her grandmother, Versanoy Smith Rowell is sitting next to her father.

She married Millard Fillmore Green in January 8, 1905 and had her fist son, Alton a year later. She had four more sons over the next 10 years.

Ila Rowell Green

On the 1910 census it showed she also had one daughter who had died.

Most of the Rowells I've met have red or light colored hair but all her photos look like her hair was dark. My oldest sister was named after her but didn't inherit the dark hair.

A transcript of the Perry newspaper article is below.

The Taylor County Herald
August 1915


Death of Mrs. Ila Green


The many friends and even neighbors of Mrs. Ila Green were shocked Tuesday about noon to learn that she was dead. She had been in better health than usual during the past few weeks, but Tuesday morning was complaining some, nothing to cause alarm, and her body was found about 12 o'clock, still warm, but lifeless. Heart failure is given as the cause.

Ila Rowell Green Grave Marker

Mr. Green was away from home at the time of her death, being the county census enumerator, but was reached during the day and came home at once, and the shock was almost unbearable to him.


Mrs. Green was 28 years of age and a devout Christian. She was a member of the Baptist church and her life work demonstrated that she was truly consistent with her belief. Mr. and Mrs. Green had been married ten years and five boys, the youngest less than a year old, are left motherless, while no words can express the loss to this husband and companion.


The funeral took place Wednesday morning in the City Cemetery, Rev. J. A. Kirtley having charge of the ceremonies. Many friends attended the burial service thereby expressing their appreciation of the life work of this good woman.

Ila Green was buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery in Perry, Florida. The first family member in a large plot my grandfather bought. He was the last one buried there in 1973.

Her grave marker had deteriorated so much my grandfather had it replaced shortly before he died with a marble column.

Stay Away From the Big City

Thomas Fulford was the brother of my great great grandfather. He was one of those people who I only learned of because they were listed on one of the census records.

When you do family history research there are a lot of these folks. They show up on a census or bible record as being in the family but then you don't know what happened to them. When the next census was done, ten years later, they aren't listed. I probably have hundreds or thousands of these people in my records.

Thomas Fulford was the youngest son in the family of Col. Thomas and Susan Fulford and was born in 1840. On the 1850 and 1860 census he was living with the family in the Straits area of Carteret County, North Carolina and then he disappeared.

In my records I just showed that he died sometime after 1860 but had no other information about him. With the Civil War just after that, I assumed he had enlisted and died or just moved away by the time the 1870 census came out.

Recently I obtained some family estate records from the period and one of them was a $20 promissory note to Ralph Martin signed by Thomas Fulford on September 18, 1860 in New York City.

Promissory Note

The note was very unusual and I had no information about him or other family members living in New York and wasn't sure why this would be in the family records. I decided to check Census and City directories in New York for him.

He was not and there was only one Fulford listed who had been born in North Carolina, a distant cousin Captain William Hawkins Fulford. Captain W. H. Fulford was a Sea Captain who operated out of New York and sailed literally around the world many times in the 1860-1870s.

I had newspaper records of him regularly delivering cargo to Carteret County, North Carolina around this same time and wondered if Thomas Fulford had hired on as a member of his crew and that is how he ended up in New York. It was certainly possible since they were close to the same age and Capt. Fulford's father and siblings lived in the area.

So if Thomas Fulford was living in New York in September 1860, what happened to him?

I started checking the death records which were available online and found a listing for a Thomas Fulford on October 11, 1860. It didn't have any details other than a name and date so I contacted the City of New York to see if they had death certificates from this period.

I was surprised to receive the ledger below, which shows the Thomas Fulford who died October 11th was born in North Carolina and 21 years old, which matched my great uncle.  

Then I noticed the second page and cause of death listed as Confluent Smallpox. It wasn't unusual for Sailors to contract Smallpox while traveling to other countries and then bring it back to port towns. Philadelphia had a Smallpox epidemic in 1860 and New York had over 2,000 cases even though effective vaccines had been available for over 40 years.

New York City Death Certificates October 1860

Confluent Smallpox was one of the more severe forms of the disease where the blisters form over the entire surface of the skin and the fatality rate was double that of the ordinary type. It was a gruesome and painful way to die. The death certificate shows Thomas died at a hospital but does not say which one.

He was buried in the Trinity Church Cemetery. In the family records I found a receipt to Griffin Titus for the funeral and grave marker. The total cost was $66.00 and $21.25 was for a grave marker.

Funeral bill

I decided to try and locate his grave. Trinity Church Cemetery is an old one and they have tours for tourists to show the graves of famous people, such as Astors, Audubons and former NYC Mayor Koch who are buried there.

I found a New York City Historian and newspaper columnist who wrote about Trinity Cemetery and he was kind enough to respond to my email. I asked if there were records to identify the location of old graves. He had a copy of a book published in 1931 "Gravestone Inscriptions of Trinity Cemetery, New York City, New York," that listed all the legible markers.

There was one for Thomas and the marker was shown in the "Parish Ground" of the Eastern Division of the Trinity Church Uptown Cemetery.

Book excerpt

The cemetery office has an archivist who checked the area. He said he could not locate a marker but from the description in their records he gave the location as "behind the Church of Intercession near the tree stump altar."

There are thousands of graves in the cemetery and I don't know if I will ever get there to check myself but plan to try.

Finding Miss Mittie

My uncle Julian died three years ago and I did some research on his family. This turned up several questions that just recently were answered.

The family knew Julian's father, even though he died before Julian married my aunt, but didn't know anything about his father's parents. Julian's father was born when his father was very old so Julian never met his grandparents.

Julian Fraser Riddick

Julian's father, Julian Washington Riddick  was born in 1892 in Jackson County Florida and died in 1960 at the VA Hospital in Pinellas County Florida.

On the 1900 census I found him and his father, Julian Fraser Riddick, living in Grassy Point, Washington County Florida but there was no sign of a mother or the many siblings that I knew he had. His father was 55 years old at the time and listed as a Widowed School Teacher. The next record I found for his father was his death in 1903 at the Old Confederate Soldier's Home in Jacksonville, Florida.

There were three generations of Julian Riddicks so it's a little confusing but the first one was born in 1845 in Suffolk City, Virginia. He enlisted in Company A, Virginia 16th Infantry Regiment on April 17, 1862 at age 16. He was discharged the next year as a Private. The Confederate Government passed a Conscript Act then excluding those under age 18.

When he died in Jacksonville his death certificate was completed with information given by Elizabeth Winfrey Reddick from Greer, Florida who he married in 1872 and had been listed as his wife on the 1880 census. She even filed for a Civil War Pension as his widow in 1917.

So where was this Elizabeth in 1900? I finally found her and four children on the census but she listed herself as a widow three years before Julian Fraser died. Elizabeth eventually ended up in Manatee County Florida with several children, the same town as Julian and his father. When she died in 1925 she was buried in the Manasota Cemetery, where Julian's father was buried in 1960.

I figured there had to be a divorce as many times women would list themselves as a widow after their marriage broke up, out of convenience. I couldn't find a divorce record as those weren't being reported to Tallahassee at the time but found a marriage record for a J Reddick and Mittie Harrison dated November 26, 1888 in Jackson County Florida. I wasn't sure if this was Julian as there were many Riddicks in the area.

Another family member told me they heard Julian and Elizabeth broke up. He wasn't sure if they divorced, but he thought Julian married again and had several children with the 2nd wife. So was this Mittie Harrison the 2nd wife, and if so, where was she on the 1900 census and why wasn't she listed on the death certificate instead of Elizabeth?

The Dothan Eagle October 28, 1931

I found a Mittie Jane Harrison listed in Holmes County Florida, near Jackson and also found a record of her 2nd marriage on January 4, 1905 to James Newton Gay in Jackson County. It didn't take long after that to find records of her on subsequent censuses, her husband's death in 1917 and her death in 1931.

The unusual thing about her death is that it was reported on the front page of the Dothan, Alabama newspaper as a result of a terrible truck accident. She was killed instantly when her step-son lost control, after being hit by another vehicle and his truck turned over several times.

Julian's family knew he had a uncle named Grady Reddick, who was younger than his father but I couldn't find Grady or Mittie on the 1900 census. He wasn't living with his father and wasn't living with Elizabeth. I figured he was with Mittie but even now I can't find them on that census.

I decided to obtain Grady's death certificate from 1960 to see what it said about his parents. Thankfully, his wife knew more about the family than the rest of us and she listed his parents as Julian Riddick and Mittie. So this became the proof needed that Mittie Harrison was the grandmother rather than Elizabeth.

Julian Fraser Riddick had eleven children born between the two wives and the youngest, daughter Anna Verra grew up with Elizabeth, the first wife. So there are still some questions that I will have to save for another day.

Henry's Design Flaw

Augusta Franklin Wilson was my grandmother's brother. He was born on March 5, 1904 in Oneco, Florida and died at age 18 on January 18, 1923.

Manatee River Journal Jan 25, 1923

His father had a farm in Oneco, where he grew tomatoes other row crops. Manatee County Florida is still a major producer of tomatoes.


Frank was killed when his Dad's new Fordson tractor turned over on top of him. I have heard this story for years but only this week found a newspaper account of the event.


This is from the Manatee River Journal, dated January 25, 1923. Gasoline powered farm tractors had to be unusual in 1923, especially on small farms in rural parts of Florida.


Henry Ford only started selling the Fordson tractor in 1917. Like the Model T it soon took over the market from the smaller companies who had been there before.

Augusta Franklin Wilson

The Fordson tractor is recognizable in photos because it had a unusually large radiator on the front. This helped keep the 20 hp engine from overheating but also because the tractor had a reputation for the front end rearing up. The extra weight was supposed to prevent the type of accident that killed Frank.


Obviously they still had work to do on fixing the problem. If they had ambulances at the time, I'm sure some Ambulance Chaser would have sued Ford for negligence.


Frank was buried in the Major Adams Cemetery next to his younger brother Freddie who had died thirteen years earlier.

The Era G

Dinah and her dog Nicky aboard the Era G

I have looked at this picture many times and but recently noticed the name of the boat and realized what it meant.

The "Era G" was a boat owned by my uncle Alton Green in the late 1950s to mid 1960s. We have some old home movies from trips to visit him and show us riding in the boat.

Alton was living in Jacksonville, Florida at the time and on his 5th marriage.

We called her Aunt Dinah but I didn't find out until a year or so ago that her given name was Era.

Dinah and Alton

Era Dinah Dorough was born in 1903 in Tallassee, Alabama and died in 1998 in Catawba County, North Carolina. She and Alton were married twice and divorced twice. Neither one ever had any children.

When she died Dinah was living with her sister Rubye's family because she had been sick. When Alton died in 1976, he had been living with my Dad after he came down with cancer. Both Dinah and Alton are buried next to their sibling.

Spy School

I have a couple nephews who dreamed of being a Spy when they were younger, maybe they still do. It made it easy to find birthday and Christmas presents they would appreciate for several years.

I wrote a story a while back about a distant cousin, Emeline Pigott, who was a famous Confederate Spy in North Carolina.

I found this receipt in the estate file for my ggg grandfather, Thomas Fulford. It shows his daughter Susan was going to a school, taught by the future Confederate Spy in 1858.

Susan Fulford was born on August 15, 1850 to Thomas and Susannah Whitehurst Fulford in Carteret County, North Carolina. her brother David was my gg grandfather. Her father died when she was four so her oldest brother was her legal guardian until she married and had to keep receipts like this of the expenses he paid.

Susan Fulford married Russel Willis on January 16, 1873 and they had nine children. She died September 29, 1924, living in the Marshallberg community, after falling and breaking her hip. This was five years after her former teacher. Susan and her husband are buried in the Victoria Cemetery.

Grandfather's Champion Oak

Nathan Adams was my gggg grandfather. In genealogy speak, that is my fourth great grandfather. His great granddaughter, Sallie Adams, was my great grandmother.

Nathan Adam's Will -1820

Nathan Adams lived on the bank of the Newport River in Carteret County, North Carolina. I have been researching the family for a while, trying to find out what happened to his grandson, William H. Adams, who was Sallie's father.

Nathan Adams was born in 1760 in Carteret County and lived in what is now Morehead City. During the Revolutionary War he served at Fort Hancock on Cape Lookout in Captain Tillman's Company.

He first acquired land in 1783 when he leased 32 acres from his wife's step father Absalom Shepard. He continued to acquire land for farming and owned over 600 acres when he died.

All of it was near the Newport river and on Bogue Sound. He wrote his will on September 9, 1820 and it distributed his personal property and a Beaufort, NC town lot among his wife and seven daughters. In 1819 he had divided his farm and plantation house among his four sons.

When Nathan Adams died in 1830 he was buried in the family cemetery on the river. There is no marker for him now but at one time there were a number of wooden markers on the older graves. During the Depression, the WPA sent workers out to compile census records of graves in cemeteries. They did a census of Carteret County cemeteries in 1937 but missed this one, no doubt because it was small and on private property.

Nathan Adam's Will - 1820

Nathan Adam's oldest son Elijah Adams (1788-1854) was the father of William H. Adams and received  half of a 50 acre plot on the Newport river which was split with his brother Jesse.

William H. Adams was shown living with his father Elijah up through the 1850 census in the Bogue Sound area and after he died with his mother in the newly incorporated Carolina City, North Carolina. On October 4, 1868 he married Hope Jane Foreman and they were shown living in Newport on the 1870 census.

William H Adams doesn't appear on the 1880 census and his wife Hope is listed as a widow. She remarried a couple years later to Samuel Garner and moved to Perico Island in Manatee County, Florida. I assume William Adams died before 1880 in Newport but haven't found any records to prove it.

I was looking for him in the the Carteret County Wills and Probate records recently, page by page, since there is no index, and came across information about his grandfather Nathan and his land holdings. In checking the location of the properties I found that 175 years after he died he was recognized for having a Champion Live Oak tree on his farm.

Nathan Adam's Oak

In 2005 a local conservation group, the Carteret County Tree Awareness Group started a campaign to locate and identify the Champion Live Oak tree for the county.  They publicized the effort in the newspaper and TV and had over 50 trees nominated. The group then went out to look at all the trees, measured and estimated ages.

The winning tree, determined to be the largest and oldest was found on the former property of Nathan Adams, in the middle of the Adams Family Farm Cemetery.The cemetery is located on Crab Point Loop in Morehead City, North Carolina. At the time of the award a gggg granddaughter of Nathan Adams still owned the land around the cemetery.

The tree is estimated to be 310 years old with a date of planting in 1705. It is located very close to the bluff of the Newport River and it has survived an estimated 100 hurricanes over the last 300 years.  

The Champion Live Oak for North Carolina is located in Airlie Gardens in Wilmington, NC. It is estimated to be 470 years old.

Wild Ponies of Shackleford Banks

Sheckleford Banks

My wife and I have been to the Outer Banks of North Carolina several times on vacation and also for me to visit some dead relatives in the area.

One of the unique places is the Shackelford Banks, a barrier island just offshore from Beaufort, North Carolina. It is currently populated only by wild ponies.

The original owner of the property was John Shackleford who acquired it in 1713. The Island was always sparsely populated, mostly by fisherman who lived there to be closer to the fish. The last community, Diamond City, was disbanded in 1902.

My Fulford family ancestors owned land on the coast facing the Island.

Thomas Fulford grave marker

The story of the ponies on Shackleford Banks is that they can be traced to Spanish explorers who somehow got off the ships as they passed the coast and swam to shore.

I don't know how they got there but there have been wild ponies on the Island for several centuries.

In the 1800s folks from the mainland would hold round ups to collect horses, they could then use on their farms and plantations.

I found this inventory record in the estate file of my gg grandfather Colonel Thomas Fulford.

Thomas Fulford died on April 20, 1854 and is buried in the Fulford cemetery on Piper Lane in Gloucester, NC.

NC Estate Files - Thomas Fulford

Stephen F. Fulford, his oldest son, was handling the estate and acting as guardian to three minor siblings. He had to provide regular accounting of expenses and inventories of assets.

One of the items he listed in May 1861 was three ponies on the Core Banks, valued at $526.93.

Thomas Fulford's estate inventory listed him as the owner of a 200 acre tract of land on Shackleford Banks.

Summer Vacation Post Card

Like many folks in the South in the 1970s, my grandpa Green had a picture of Martin Luther King on his living room wall. His actually had been there for several more years than those that were sold after the 1968 murder in Memphis.

I have often thought about the photo and just recently came across it in a box that contained old letters, rental house journals and other papers. When he died in 1973 I guess my Dad packed them all up and they stayed out of sight until my sister found them a couple years ago.

This week as I was reading the old letters I found the photo. It supposedly was taken in 1957 and shows MLK sitting next to several men who were supposed to be members of the Communist Party in America,


The post card was produced by the "American Opinion" organization in Belmont, Massachusetts. It is known today as the John Birch Society.

I'm not sure how my grandpa got it because as far as I know there wasn't a local branch of the John Birch Society in Perry, Florida. He read the news and undoubtedly saw it advertised somewhere and sent off  for it, or one of his friends gave it to him.

Looking at this card today and especially considering he had it up on his wall for five years after King was murdered it would be easy to criticize him. When you consider he was born 15 years after the end of the Civil War and both his parents lost family members in the war, I can at least understand how he came to have such deep opinions about integration. I have other family members who feel the same way and don't have an excuse for it.

Abner W. Berry was born in Texas and died in June 1987 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina at the age of 85, after suffering a stroke. He had been a community organizer for the Communist party in Harlem in 1934.

Aubrey W. Williams was born in Alabama and died on March 15, 1965 of stomach cancer, in Washington, DC. He had worked for the WPA during the New Deal and later became head of the Southern Conference Education Fund. In the 1950s he became a target of the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security investigating Communist Party membership.

Myles Horton was born in Savannah, Tennessee and died in January 19, 1990 at the age of 84. He founded the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee in 1932. The post card calls it a Training School for Communist.

The school did serve as a training ground in a way. Rosa Parks visited it shortly before her decision to refuse to give up her seat on the bus. She credited the school for giving her courage. The school was integrated which was illegal when it was started in Tennessee.

Horton was also investigated by the Senate for Communist Party affiliation and denied being a member. One of his friends, a communist organizer, testified before the Senate that Horton was not a member but agreed to have a communist party member work at the school to recruit the students for membership. The school was shut down in February 1960 by the Tennessee Supreme Court based on the fact that integrated classes were still a violation of State law.

Trolling the Colonel

Sometimes you find really strange stuff about your family in the newspapers.

Captain Carl William Bahrt was a distant relative by marriage. His son Carl William Jr. married Luddie Garner in 1903. She was the sister of my great grandmother, Sallie Adams Fulford.

Manatee River Journal November 21, 1889

Capt. Bahrt has an unusual story that I still haven't figured out. I've been doing research on him, assisting his grandson and great granddaughter, trying to sort out some of the family stories to determine which ones are true.

I came across this newspaper clipping from the Manatee River Journal dated November 21, 1889 and was again amazed at the things you find over a hundred years later. I'm sure no living relative had ever seen it or heard of his chicken raising exploits.

It tells that he had a chicken with four wings. It was actually published two months after Capt. Bahrt died, which tells you something about the competency of the newspaper editors.

At the time they wrote they story, he was living in Manatee County Florida in a community called Fogartyville, that is now only a historic marker. He had retired as the Captain of a two masted Sloop, based in Fogartyville, he used to carry cargo and passengers across the Gulf of Mexico and as far as New York City.

In 1895 he was appointed the Lighthouse Keeper at Mullet Key in Tampa Bay with an annual salary of $550. He was also the Federal Quarantine Officer for the area,which was actually a pretty important job, inspecting ships as they came into port to make sure the passengers and crew did not have any disease. Yellow Fever was a regular visitor to the area, usually brought in via a ship.

So when I googled four winged chickens to find out how rare this was I discovered there is a story circulating that Colonel Sanders and his folks have been trying to create mutated chickens with not only four wings but four legs.

Something about the popularity and high prices of the football viewing staple of hot wings.