205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210. The Greens (Ann, Eliza, G. Macon, Harriet, Mary, and Nathaniel T.)

 There were six students at the Mordecai school named Green, according to the appendix of my 1996 dissertation: 

• Ann (Nancy) Green and 
• Mary Green were both at the school for the two 1814 sessions, were listed as being from Waynesboro, and having Robert Green as their guardian 
• Eliza Green was also at the school for the second 1814 session. 
• Harriet Green was also at the school for the second 1814 session; she was listed as being from Franklin County, and having William Harrison as the adult associated with her account 
   
• G. Macon Green, a local boy from Warren County, was at the school in 1809 and both 1810 sessions 
• Nathaniel T. Green was at the school in both 1815 sessions, and the name Solomon Green is associated with his account. 

Whew. Okay, looks like we might have several Green families here. And Green is such common name... so hmm. Let's dive in to the 2025 internet and see what it can tell us now.

 ***

Gideon Macon Green (1798-1838) was the son of Solomon Green and Frances Hawkins Green. He was born in Warrenton and died in Mississippi in 1838, at about age 40. His father was a planter and legislator in North Carolina, and so was his brother Thomas Jefferson Green (1802-1863).His grandfathers William Green and John Hawkins, and his great-grandfather Philemon Hawkins, were all officers in the American Revolution, and Senator Nathaniel Macon was his great-uncle. 

G. Macon Green was at the Mordecai school in its first two years, when enrollment was lowest and boys were more common among the students. He seems to have gone to Warrenton Academy next; a newspaper clipping from 1813 finds him in a class there with fellow Mordecai boy Arthur Gloster. 

Gideon Macon Green married Frances L. Bullock in 1818. In the 1820 census, the Warren County household of Gideon M. Green included 19 enslaved people, ten of whom were children under 14. His wife died in 1837, and he died in 1838, in Lafayette, Mississippi.

 ***

Nathaniel T. Green was apparently Gideon Macon Green's brother.  In 1826 he married Sarah Cornelia Coleman; but she died in 1827, before her 18th birthday. Many years later, in 1851, Nathaniel T. Green and George W. Mordecai were both elected to the board of directors of the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad. He died in 1874, from injuries sustained when his buggy was overturned by a frightened horse.

***

I'll come back to work on the four girls named Green. Stay tuned. 

 

203, 204. Harriet Goodwyn, Susan Goodwyn

 Two Mordecai students named Goodwyn are listed in the appendix to my 1996 dissertation: 

Harriet Goodwyn was at the school in its final year, both terms of 1818, and has the name Braddock Goodwyn attached to her account. Susan Goodwyn was only at the school for one term, the first half of 1816, and has the name Susan Goodwyn attached to her account. I don't have much more to go on; Harriet may have been from a place called Goodwynville, and Susan from a place abbreviated "Btsbg". But their name isn't so common, maybe there will be something out there now?

Or maybe not.

Easiest name to search was Braddock Goodwyn (c1741-1820). He was from Dinwiddie, Virginia, and one of his many children was... Harriet Goodwyn (born 1795). Which might be the right age for a Mordecai student, but not for one who attended the school in 1818--she would have been in her 20s by then. So I suspect we're looking for another Harriet, a niece or younger cousin of the one born in 1795. Like I said--big family. Peterson Goodwyn, a Congressman and Braddock Goodwyn's brother, was probably a relative, but he didn't have any daughters named Harriet or Susan.

Goodwynsville was once a settlement in southern Dinwiddie County; it no longer exists.

201, 202. Arthur Brehon Gloster (1799- ) and Elizabeth Gloster Anderson (1796-1873)

There were two local students named Gloster at the Mordecai school in its early years; Arthur Gloster was there in 1809 and 1810, and Elizabeth Gloster was there from 1809 through 1811. Both were the children of Thomas Gloster, an Irish-born local physician in Warrenton, and his wife, Mary Hayes Willis Gloster. These siblings both had paragraphs in my dissertation appendix, so much of the following is taken from there.

In 1996 I knew that Elizabeth Willis Gloster was born in 1796, married Jack Anderson in 1814, had about ten children, was widowed in 1848, and died in 1873. (I encountered her more during my post-doctoral work in the Cameron Family Papers, because Jack Anderson was a Cameron cousin.) Elizabeth Gloster Anderson attended the last "reading of the cards" at the Mordecai school in 1818, saying that she had also been there for the first such event. She was also at the school's last examination. Elizabeth Gloster Anderson raised the daughter of her classmate Eliza Adam Cameron, and was close to Caroline Mordecai Plunkett into the 1820s.

Elizabeth (also known as Betsy) moved to western Tennessee in 1827, with her husband and children, and her mother and brother too. She had asthma, and found Tennessee's climate more healthful, and reported in her letters that she was walking seven or eight miles without being fatigued. Her husband started an Episcopal church there. Caroline Mordecai Plunkett also moved to western Tennessee, in 1833, and Betsy taught drawing at Caroline's school there. So she's one of the Mordecais' first students, and one that continued her connection to the family well into adulthood, and across many miles. She moved to Texas in 1859. Her papers are in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC.

Elizabeth's younger brother Arthur Brehon Gloster, born 1799, went to West Point Military Academy in 1819, but he did poorly on exams and was back in Warrenton by 1821. He moved to Tennessee when the Andersons did, and married a cousin, Mary, in 1829. Arthur and Mary ran a tavern in La Grange, Tennessee, and had at least eleven children, all born and baptized in Tennessee, according to the family Bible I looked at in Warren County. Most of them died young; the only living son at the time of the Civil War died as a soldier for the Confederacy.

(Although the Mordecai school was considered a girls' school, there were some male students, usually young boys from Warrenton who had a sister or other female relative also attending.)

The family's Tennessee graveyard has a historic marker, though the stones do not survive.

Want to see a quilt that Elizabeth Gloster Anderson made in 1844? Sure you do! The Henry Clay Estate at Ashland has this one, a political quilt supporting Henry Clay: