188, 189. America Fuqua and Saluda Fuqua

Well, nobody can say these two students had common names! America Fuqua and Saluda Fuqua were students at the Mordecai School in its later years, 1816 to 1817 for America, and 1816 to 1818 for Saluda. The adult name attached to their account is Samuel Fuqua. Also, my dissertation appendix says that Saluda was born in 1805, and died in 1886. So that's a lot to start with, for a change... 

America and Saluda were the daughters of Captain Samuel Fleming Fuqua (1787-1820) and Prudence Ford Fuqua (1787-1813). A few years after their mother died, their father placed them at the Mordecai School. 

Saluda Baker Fuqua (1805-1886) was born in Charlotte County, Virginia, when both of her parents were 18 years old. She was 16 when she married William Henry Browne Christian in 1821, the year after her father died. The Christians had six children. After she was widowed, she married again in 1847, to William Harloe Watson, and had one more child. She lived in Douglas County, Kansas, in her later years, and died there in 1886. Her eldest daughter America Fuqua Christian (born 1824) married Daniel Woodson, who was the acting Territorial Governor of Kansas several times in the 1850s.

Saluda's younger sister America E. Fuqua (born 1810) was a student at the Mordecai school when she was a small child of 6 and 7 years, but her older sister was also there. She died young, before 1830.

These girls had another sister, Evaline Ann Frances Fuqua (1807-1832) But I don't see any evidence of her attending the school, and she may have had chronic health issues. Evaline lived with Saluda and W. H. B. Christian in her last years. Their only brother, La Marquis Washington Fuqua (1810-1846, known as Marc) also died young.

A last note: The source of America's first name is obvious, but Saluda's name origin may be less so. Saluda River, Saluda Mountains, Saluda, North Carolina, and Saluda County, South Carolina, are all Southern placenames, but not very close to where Saluda Fuqua was born or lived. (There is also a Saluda, Virginia.) But the name seems to come from a Cherokee word, Tsaludiyi, meaning "green corn place".

181-187. The Freemans

There were seven students named Freeman in the Mordecai school roster I assembled in the early 1990s:

• Eliza Freeman (one session, 1812)
• George Freeman (four or five sessions, 1809-1811)
• John Freeman (1811, both sessions)
• Maria Freeman 1809-1810, three or four sessions)
  
• Martha Freeman (1812, then 1816-1817, four sessions total)
• Mary/Polly Freeman (1810, both sessions)
• Sarah/Sally Freeman (1816, both sessions, and 1818, both sessions)
  

Okay, so: two boys, five girls, most attending early in the school's run, but a few (Martha and Sally) attending later in the school's existence. All one family? Two or more families? I'm going to assume the Freeman boys are from a family lives near Warrenton (boys would have been day students). I don't have much more about any of these children in my dissertation notes. So let's see what some googling and ancestry.com can tell me now.

Hm, not much. Common names and not a lot of context, but here are some leads for starters.

A George W. Freeman was principal of Warrenton Academy in the early 1820s; I'd be surprised if none of these Freeman children had any connection to him, but... I'm not finding it right now.

Maria could very well be Maria L. A. Freeman, born 1795,  the daughter of Robert Freeman and Sarah Freeman. She married John Snow in 1812 in Warrenton, and had two children, Theophilus Hunter Snow (born 1813 or 1814) and Emma J. Snow (born 1815).  Her husband died in 1819, in his thirties; there were four enslaved people mentioned in his will (Tom, Ephraim, Shadrack, and Pinny). As Maria A. Snow, she appears as head of her household in Warrenton in the 1820 census, with her young children and three slaves. In 1823, she remarried to Alexander J. Lawrence, in Franklin County, and had two more children, Alexander Lawrence and Anna Lawrence. In 1843, her elder son was vice-president of the Raleigh Temperance Society. In the 1850 and 1860 censuses, the Lawrences are keeping a hotel in Raleigh with their daughter Anna. In the 1870 census, she is still alive, living with her second husband in Raleigh; both of their children and two Snow granddaughters also live with them. In the 1880 census, she is a widow again, and living with her son Alexander in Raleigh.

UPDATE: From Shannon S. Christmas in comments: "Sarah Freeman, daughter of Robert Freeman and possibly Sarah Green, was the wife of Adam Hawkins (son of Philemon Hawkins and Mary Christmas) of Franklin County, North Carolina. After marrying in Franklin, the couple appears to have relocated to Tennessee's Haywood County, before settling in Mississippi's Marshall County. Adam Hawkins died prior to 1856, leaving his widow to raise their children in Mississippi. Sarah died after 1860."

 Thanks Shannon S. Christmas!

180. Nancy Franklin (1795-1874?)

There is a student named Nancy Franklin in the roster of Mordecai school students in my 1996 dissertation. It says she was at the school in 1814.

I suspect she might be this Nancy Franklin: Ann P. Franklin (1795-1874), daughter of Jesse Franklin and Maria Perkins Franklin. Jesse Franklin was governor of North Carolina from 1820 to 1821. When Nancy was at school, Jesse Franklin had just finished a term in the United States Senate. She married William Slade in Surry County, NC, in 1821? That's a perfect year for an 1814 student to be marrying, in North Carolina. She was later known as Nancy P. Slade, lived in Rockingham till at least 1870, and had at least five children. Her husband William Slade died in 1865. (1850, 1860, 1870 censuses, via Ancestry) 

Besides the good timing, there was also a student named Helen B. Slade at the Mordecai school, also in 1814, and also from Rockingham. So if Mrs. Slade is, indeed, the Mordecai student Nancy Franklin, she married into a classmate's family, which is pretty typical. 

If we have the right Nancy Franklin, one of her sons, Jesse Franklin Slade, died at the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War.  Her two daughters died before that, both in their 20s. And two of her sons survived her, Thomas Howard Slade and William B. Slade.

And if this is the right Nancy Franklin, here's her grave in Caswell County, North Carolina.