The Mordecai Female Academy

81. Sarah Camp

2012-02-04T11:47:00.000-08:00

One student named Sarah Camp attended the Mordecai school, for both 1818 sessions. She's listed as being from Norfolk VA, with a John Camp as the adult on the account.

First thing I see from online is that the surnames Camp and Kemp can be found interchangeably. Good to know. And apparently there's a genealogical volume out there, The John Camp family pertaining to the ancestors of John Camp of Norfolk Virginia (1936) by Sadie Scott Kellam, but it's not (yet) on Google Books. These Camps and Kemps, including Lt. John Camp, a Revolutionary War veteran from Virginia, might also be kin? Especially interested to see that they were connected to the Nashes, who were kin the Camerons (see immediate previous entry on Cameron girls). Lt. John Camp (1743-1818) of Norfolk did have a daughter Sara (aka Sallie), but she was born about 1770 (d. 1854), probably too old to be a Mordecai student herself. But she reminds me to remember to look at Sarah/Sara/Sallie/Sally as equivalent names, too...

I can't seem to get any further than this. Suspect the Camp family all those links connect to is the right one, but beyond that... the right Sarah (or Sara, or Sallie) Camp (or Kemp) isn't jumping out of the genealogical websites.

79-80. Charlotte and Mary Ann Cameron

2012-01-16T19:56:00.000-08:00

Two girls with the surname Cameron are in the rolls for the Mordecai School:

Charlotte Cameron attended the school for four sessions, 1810-1811.
Mary Ann Cameron attended the school for four years, 1814-1818.

I have written a good bit about Mary Ann Cameron's brother Thomas, so her family and her story I know very well. I'll get to that in a moment.

I have no idea who Charlotte Cameron was. She wasn't a sister of Mary Ann's, or a close cousin, and I have no other mentions of her in the Mordecai papers, though she was with them for a longer-than-average time. I have no hometown, no adult's name attached to the account, nothing. That doesn't mean she didn't exist, but it's also just possible that I misread a record--both "Charlotte" and "Cameron" appear in other contexts throughout North Carolina history. I'd have to see the rolls again in person to confirm what I saw almost 20 years ago.

(I did find a Charlotte Cameron, b. c1792, who married Joshua Holt Toomer c1812, which would make sense for an older Mordecai student, to marry a year after she leaves school; but I can't find any stronger evidence to link her to the school. And the Mordecais might have remarked on a recent student's wedding, but there's no mention of Miss Cameron becoming Mrs. Toomer.)

Now, Mary Ann Cameron, on the other hand.... She was born in 1804, the eldest daughter of Duncan Cameron and Rebecca Bennehan Cameron--and thus, born into a lot of property. She struggled at the Mordecai school. Dozens of her report slips and letters to home have been preserved in the Cameron Family Papers at the Southern Historical Collection, and they present a frustrating tale of a child who can't ever be quite neat enough, can't ever pay sufficient attention, to avoid scolding and other petty punishments. She was sent to the foot of the class, and even made to wear a dunce's cap on one occasion, for doing her grammar repetitions poorly. She quarreled with other girls, she wouldn't sing loudly enough in music class, she wasted paint in art class. The list of minor infractions was almost endless. She apologized to her parents, over and over, for the bad reports. She also asked about her younger brothers, and hoped they would write to her--but Thomas (1806-1870) was slow to learn and soon overtaken by their brother Paul (1808-1891).

Mary Ann returned to her family when the Mordecai school was sold in 1818; she was fourteen years old. Rachel Mordecai Lazarus encountered Mary Ann ten years later, and was surprised to find Miss Cameron "improved in appearance," with "genteel manners" and a pleasant singing voice (Rachel Lazarus to Ellen Mordecai, 22 January 1828, Mordecai Family Papers at the Southern Historical Collection, Chapel Hill). Mary Ann lived at home the rest of her life, which was a short one: she died in 1839, age 35, from tuberculosis, a disease that would also claim three of her sisters.

It was while visiting the Cameron plot in a cemetery in Raleigh, in 1995, that I started thinking about the project that became my postdoctoral research--a study of Thomas Cameron, Mary Ann's brother--so, in a way, it was Mary Ann who introduced me to the academic field that became my home (disability history). Glad to have finally reached her in the alphabetical parade of Mordecai students.

78. Eliza Callagham

2012-01-03T19:59:00.000-08:00

I have a student named Eliza Callagham (or Callaham, or possibly Callaghan or Callahan) on my Mordecai school roster, listed as being from Halifax VA, kin to James Callagham, attending the school just one session (the second half of 1815). James is shown in the ledger paying for Eliza's tuition in July 1815; otherwise I don't think the Callaghams appear in the Mordecai materials.

Seems like the name might also be Calliham... this family tree finds several spellings used interchangeably by Southern Callahams/Callihams in the 1700s and 1800s. That tree includes a James Callaham (b. c. 1773) who married a Mary "Polly Smith" in 1797, in Halifax Co., VA. That puts them just exactly in the right place and time to be the parents or at least guardians of this Mordecai student. Beyond that listing, the trail seems to run out--I can't find Eliza herself. But maybe someone else is more creative in their spelling and searching?

77. Martha Cain

2011-11-09T20:22:00.000-08:00

Well, this entry might get some stray hits, from folks searching the surname "Cain"! Hi folks. Unless you're interested in a schoolgirl in 1810s North Carolina, you probably aren't going to find what you want below. --Ed.

A student named Martha Cain is in my list of students--she was at the school just one term, the second half of 1811. A William Cain made payments to the school in December 1811.

I know this is a repeated refrain in this project, but there were a lot of Cains in North Carolina in the 1810s--and a lot of them had daughters named Martha. A William Cain was born in Virginia in the 1670s, and seems to have been the patriarch of a very productive family for several generations--many families of nine or ten children in their tree. So this will be a matter of finding one born about 1800, for starters...

Aha! I've found a Martha Ann Cain born 22 June 1799 in Orange County, NC (near Chapel Hill), youngest daughter of William Cain Sr. (1743-1834) and Sarah Alston. (Her mother's surname Alston is attached to several Mordecai students--likely cousins to Martha.) That would make her the aunt of William Cain III--who married Sarah Jane Bailey (1828-1927), the daughter of Priscilla Brownrigg Bailey, another Mordecai alumna. This Martha Ann Cain's older sister Charity married Willie Person Mangum, a rather prominent North Carolinian with connections to many other Mordecai families. Assuming this is the same woman who attended the Mordecai school, she was about twelve when she was at Warrenton, briefly.

There's a PDF called "Families of Saint Mary's Episcopal Chapel, Orange County, North Carolina," that comments about this Martha Ann Cain that "she apparently did not marry." Was she buried under this name? I have a note in my dissertation appendix that she may have died in 1834, but I don't know where I got that tidbit.

There was another younger Martha Ann Cain (1825-1900), this woman's niece, who attended the Burwell School in Hillsborough.

72-76. The Burwells (Eliza, Lucy, Martha, Mary, and N)

2011-10-11T14:18:00.000-07:00

So my list has five girls(?) named Burwell who attended the Mordecai school:

Eliza Blair Burwell was there for both sessions of 1812.
Lucy Burwell was there for both sessions of 1817.
Martha C. Burwell was there for four sessions, 1811-1812.
Mary W. Burwell was there for both sessions of 1812.
And N. Burwell was on the rolls for 1809.

I have most of these names attached to Mecklenburg County, Virginia, and the adults named Armistead Burwell and Richard Boyd are found in the ledger, paying for their accounts (possibly also William Robards). Martha C. Burwell was married to Grandison Field in November 1816, and is mentioned as "Mrs. Field" in some of the Mordecai letters after that date (for example, 3 July 1831, Caroline Plunkett to Ellen Mordecai, in the Jacob Mordecai Papers at Duke University). So that's where I'm starting from.

I know this is a recurring theme of this blog, but there were a lot of Burwells in the area--and even several Armistead Burwells, all related. One branch of the family even ran a girls' school in Hillsborough NC, in the 1830s. (That linked website for the Burwell school does some of what I'm trying to do here, in listing all the known students and, where possible, their life stories.)

With that in mind, we'll start with the one we know most about: Martha Christian Burwell (b. 1795) was the youngest child of a very large family of Burwells--she was the sixteenth and last child born to Col. Lewis Burwell (1745-1800), who served in the Revolutionary War, and the fourth child born to the second Mrs. Burwell, Elizabeth Harrison (1754-1824). She would have been a five-year-old when her father passed away, and was a teenager during her years at the Mordecai school--seventeen when she left, making her one of the older students. She married Charles Grandison Field in 1816, in Richmond. (His name is sometimes spelled Feild or Fields or Feilds, by various branches of the family.) Charles Grandison Field and Martha moved to Tennessee in 1836, with their whole household, including a significant number of slaves. (Among the slaves in that group were the ancestors of Tennessee Assemblymen John Boyd and William A. Feilds.) Martha was widowed in Tennessee, and seems to have remarried at least once. She might have had children, but I can't find mention of their names (she might also have raised step-children). I saw one mention of her dying in 1898, which would mean she was over a hundred years old--possible, but without seeing it mentioned in multiple places I'm not going to assume that's true.

The other Burwell girls couldn't have been Martha's sisters, because all her sisters were older than her and wouldn't have been young enough to attend the Mordecai school. Unfortunately, they all have fairly common names for the Burwell families, and I'm not locating any that are the right age.

Thus end the Bs! Next entry, we move onto the C names.

71. Eliza Burton (poss. Eliza Williams Burton Anderson, 1795-1859)

2011-09-12T19:22:00.001-07:00

There was a student named Eliza Burton on the rolls at the Mordecai school, attending for both sessions in the year 1810. There's no adult's name or hometown attached to the listing in my dissertation appendix. And I can't find any mention of her in the Mordecai correspondence.

To add to the complications of finding this student, "Eliza Burton" isn't a very unusual name; there's an Eliza Burton Conley in Wikipedia for example (who sounds very interesting, but she's not the Mordecai student). But let's look anyway...

There are a lot of Burtons in the Virginia/NC border region around 1800. The most likely candidate for a family connection is Col. Robert Burton (1747-1825) of Granville County, NC. He was politically connected and had business associations with several other men who had Mordecai school connections; his wife Agatha Williams was kin to the Bullocks (already mentioned as having Mordecai school connections). Robert and Agatha had a daughter Eliza Williams Burton (1795-1859), their eleventh child. She married a Scotsman, James Anderson (1796-1874), and was buried in Henderson, Vance County, NC. (A photograph of her gravestone is here, and a photograph of James Anderson's gravestone in the same cemetery.) This Eliza Burton's son Robert Burton Anderson (c. 1833-1889) became a Presbyterian minister and a teacher at a South Carolina "female college," and his papers are in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill.

There's a good chance she's the Mordecai student--the age and location and social status are all perfect for a girl to be at the school in 1810. But I'd still love to find a stronger tidbit of information to secure that match. Maybe there's a letter in the Robert Burton Anderson papers, recounting his mother's story.

69. and 70. Maria Burt and William Burt

2011-09-01T19:30:00.000-07:00

Two student named Burt were at the school for both sessions of 1810, Maria and William Burt. Maria stayed longer, through the end of 1814, one of the school's longest-running students. They were probably local kids--most boy students were--and the adult name attached to the account was William Burt.

William Burt appears throughout the school's ledger during Maria's school years, including a notation in February 1814 that she was taking music lessons as an add-on to her tuition. Oddly, for local students who stayed a while, there's very little else about the Burt children in the surviving Mordecai correspondence.

There were a lot of Burts in the vicinity of the Warrenton, and a lot of them were named William, so this took a little detangling, but.... This William Burt of Halifax NC married Martha Elizabeth Eelbank Bond (d. c. 1814), in 1797, and they had children William S. Burt, Harriet Burt (Mrs. Richard Eppes), and Maria Louisa Burt, according to various wills. Maria Louisa Burt married Henry Garrett before 1823. Her brother William became a doctor, married Priscilla M. Williams, and moved to Tennessee in 1833. (There was Mordecai student named Priscilla Williamson--hmmmm. I know from my own patronym that people add/subtract the "son" from such names very casually, maybe especially in the South, so that could be the same person.)

However! A different William Burt (1782-1848), also local, married another Mordecai student, Susan Sims, in 1812. He'd be too old to be a student at the school, but I mention him to illustrate the trickiness of all this. It'll be a while before Priscilla Williams or Susan Sims get their own entries at this blog, but when they do I'll link back to this.

68. Margaret Burcher (d. 1855)

2011-08-02T20:38:00.000-07:00

There was a student on the rolls at the Mordecai school for four sessions (1815-1816) named Margaret Burcher, of Norfolk VA. The adult names attached to her account are Mr. Geddis and Capt. Samuel Vickery.

Margaret Burcher was at the school long enough to make appearances in Mordecai correspondence. "Eliza Armistead, Miss Burcher, & Miss Taylor arrived today from Norfolk," Rachel Mordecai wrote to her brother Samuel on 25 January 1816; the following year, Solomon Mordecai wrote to his sister Ellen that "I also met with Margt. Burcher; she is a diminuitive little figure, in no respect altered in appearance since you saw her, but do not say so to any of her Norfolk acquaintances, I am told it mortifies her not a little." (Solomon to Ellen, 15 July 1817; both letters quoted here are in the Mordecai Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill). Solomon wrote again to Ellen on 24 November 1822 to say that "M. Burcher is improved." Margaret was "keeping school" in Hampton in the summer of 1828, and Ellen had an idea of Margaret becoming an assistant at Caroline Mordecai Plunkett's school, saying that "She is sensible & no doubt teaches in the same way that you do, would probably be glad of the situation ,and it would be so much more agreeable to have a female than a stranger male for an assistant." (Ellen to Caroline, 27 July 1828, Jacob Mordecai Papers at Duke). But Caroline was not interested in pursuing the plan (Caroline to Ellen, 2 August 1828, Jacob Mordecai Papers at Duke).

Turning to the online resources: There's a Miss Margaret Burcher buried in the cemetery at Christ Church, Norfolk VA, who died 19 September 1855, with a note that she's among those who died from yellow fever that year. In death, the schoolteacher became more newsworthy than she ever was during her lifetime: her name appeared in the New York Times on 24 September 1855, as one of the epidemic's many Norfolk fatalities (one Norfolk newspaper at the time estimated that 2000 yellow fever victims were buried in a ninety-day period).

The only other mentions I find of her include a note in the finding aid for the Cocke Family Papers at the University of Virginia Library; she wrote to John Hartwell Cocke about a school-teacher's position in 1840. There is also mention of Miss Margaret Burcher in the Galt Papers at the Special Collections Research Center, in a child's letter written 1846, from Caroline County VA.

So it looks like Miss Margaret Burcher worked as a teacher for much of her life, and died in her 50s in a terrible epidemic. Because that story doesn't include marriage or children, she's nobody's ancestor; being a lifelong single woman makes her less likely to appear in traditional genealogies (concerned with linking ancestors and descendants). But still, where was she born? When? To whom? How long did she teach?

65, 66, and 67. Ann, Catherine, and Eliza Bullock

2011-06-01T20:19:00.000-07:00

Three girls named Bullock are listed as Mordecai students:

Ann Bullock from Warren County (?) attended from early 1816 to the last session with the Mordecais, in late 1818; Richard Bullock is the adult name on her account.

Catherine and Eliza Bullock both attended the Mordecai school in 1809 only. They were probably also from somewhere near Warrenton, because many of the first students at the school were local children.

A Richard Bullock appears throughout the school's ledger for the years Ann attended; there's also mention of a James Bullock in June 1818. There's mention of Ann's father paying a lot of attention (courting) a Mary Turner in 1820 correspondence by the family; and in an 1822 letter from Warrenton, Caroline Mordecai Plunkett reports that "There are several weddings now in agitation among the number is Ann Bullock's she is to be married to a son of Judge Henderson." (Caroline Plunkett to Rachel Lazarus, 7 September 1822, Jacob Mordecai Papers, Duke University)

That last tidbit leads us to Anne E. Bullock Henderson (1804-1883), of Granville County (not Warren), Ashland Plantation, who indeed married Archibald Erskine Henderson (1801-1853) in 1822, in Warren County. Archibald's father was Judge Leonard Henderson (1772-1833), Chief Justice of NC. Archibald was a UNC alumnus, a planter and a magistrate. Their seven children were all born in Granville County, between 1823 and 1845. Looks like she was widowed at age 49, with her youngest child just eight at the time. In 1860, the census finds the Henderson household with 129 slaves.

The other Bullock girls are likely relatives of Anne's, but it's a big family in the area. There's a Catherine Lewis Bullock, b. c. 1802, who married Joseph Newton Sims, himself the grandson of a woman named Sarah Bullock. The wedding was in 1822, in Warren or Granville County. Catherine would have been widowed in 1850, in Louisiana. This Catherine Bullock had at least one son, James Bullock Sims, who was born at Tennessee; and a daughter, Sallie Sims. She also had a sister-in-law named Susanna Sims Burt--and a Susan Sims is listed among the Mordecai students who only attended in 1809, along with Catherine Bullock. So it seems like a decent chance she's the Mordecai student.

64.Nancy Bryant

2011-06-01T19:58:00.000-07:00

Well, this one might be a stumper. I have a student named Nancy Bryant attending the Mordecai school for one semester, the first half of 1810. No hometown, no adult's name, in my dissertation's appendix. Just a name and a date. And the name is both fairly common, and subject to multiple variations (Nancy as a nickname for Ann(e); Bryant and Bryan are names that turn up interchangeable in Southern family history records). She seems not to have been mentioned by the Mordecais in correspondence, and may only have appeared the one time, in the student register.

This one will have to await further information from interested contributors.

63. Mary Ann Elizabeth B. Bryan Isler (c1805-1860)

2011-05-14T10:40:00.000-07:00

There was a student named Mary Eliza Bryan at the Mordecai school for two-and-a-half years, mid-1815 to the end of 1817. She may have been from Franklin Co., NC, and the adult attached to her account is called "Genl. Bryan." A William Burlingham also left money for M. Bryan, according to the school's ledger for October 1815. "M. Bryan" was among the students who used the services of a dentist in January 1816.

Looking to the online family history sources: Mary Ann Eliza B. Bryan was the oldest child of Joseph Hunter Bryan Jr. (1782-1839) and Sarah Burlingham; William Burlingham seems to have been her grandfather. Mary Eliza's father was in the War of 1812, and served in the North Carolina legislature, as a trustee at UNC, and finally as a Congressman from North Carolina. (His brother Henry was a congressman from Tennessee.) Joseph died in Tennessee.

Mary Eliza was born before 1808 in North Carolina, and died 13 February 1860 in St. Louis, Missouri. She had two much younger brothers, Joseph (b. c1815) and Elisha (b. c1824). Was she sent to the Mordecai school because there was (or would soon be) a new baby in the house in 1815? Mary Eliza married Dr. Jesse Isler (c1796-1865) in 1821 (she would have been about sixteen years old), in Granville County, NC, and they had at least five children, the last born in Tennessee.

62. Priscilla Elizabeth Brownrigg Bailey (1800-1874)

2011-04-20T19:44:00.000-07:00

Well, this is a student I already know a good deal about. She became a significant part of an article I published a few years ago (Penny L. Richards, "'Could I But Mark Out My Own Map of Life': Educated Women Embracing Cartography in the Nineteenth-Century American South," Cartographica 39 (3)(Fall 2004): 1-17). Her husband's papers, mostly letters between Priscilla and her husband and their sons, are at the Southern Historical Collection in Chapel Hill, a rich collection that includes her granddaughters' drawings while at school in Raleigh. (No surprise it's there, by the way: their great-granddaughter Bessie Henderson Cotten was one of the early organizers of the Southern.)

Priscilla Elizabeth Brownrigg (1800-1874) was from Edenton NC. Her family had a commercial fishing operation on the Chowan River. Her mother was Ruth Baker (1768-1802)--from the dates you can see that Priscilla hardly had a chance to know her mother; her father Thomas Brownrigg remarried and had three children younger than Priscilla. Priscilla was probably named for her mother's sister Priscilla Baker Graham. Priscilla's older sisters Mary Ann and Sarah had also attended school in Warrenton, before the Mordecai school opened. Priscilla was nearly sixteen when she arrived at the Mordecai school, and she stayed through three sessions, to the end of 1817. In 1821, she married John Lancaster Bailey, a young lawyer. They stayed around Edenton for a while, long enough for their first child to be born and, sadly, die as a small girl. Their three other children were also born there, but they grew up in Hillsborough, where the Baileys lived while John was working as a traveling judge. Priscilla loved Hillsborough, a walkable, sociable town. John tried to start a law school in Hillsborough. In 1858, John bought a farm at Swannanoa, in western North Carolina. Priscilla didn't want to leave her friends and familiar places, but she moved anyway. Within a year, she was permanently injured by a fall from a mule. She was bedridden for more than a year, and used crutches afterwards.

She moved to Asheville to stay with her daughter Sarah Jane Cain during the war years; after the war, her son tried to persuade the family to move to Brazil (where slavery was still legal), but they didn't go. Priscilla died in 1874, following a stroke, after 53 years of marriage. She was 74. Her daughter Sarah Jane lived almost a century, 1828-1927.

I keep waiting for the first entry I can put here with a photograph of the subject; but I'll have to keep waiting! When I was preparing the Cartographica article, I looked everywhere in the Bailey papers, and couldn't find any images of Priscilla.

61. Margaret Broadfoot Hooper (1801-1880)

2011-03-26T10:46:00.001-07:00

Margaret Broadfoot of Fayetteville was at the Mordecai school for a long time--nine sessions, or four-and-a-half years, from mid-1810 to the end of 1814. Her father Andrew Broadfoot, born in Scotland, died in early 1810; her cousin and guardian William Broadfoot paid her tuition and attended examinations in place of a parent. She took music lessons at the school, and the ledger shows an atlas being purchased for her. Because she was with the family so long, the Mordecais kept track of her after she left school, and I already have a lot of the details from their letters and the letters of Lucy Plummer Battle. Margaret Broadfoot was among those who welcomed Rachel Mordecai Lazarus to Wilmington as a new bride in 1821. She married later that year herself, to a newspaper editor named James Hooper, in Fayetteville (she sent Rachel Lazarus a piece of her wedding cake, somehow), and in 1823 she had lost some weight and her "manners [were] more formed" when Rachel saw her. In 1826, she had moved back to Wilmington. She started her own "infant school" in 1831 when her husband's financial condition became "much embarrassed."

In 1845, she was a widow in Chapel Hill staying with a Miss Mallett (one of her husband's cousins married a Caroline Mallett); her old schoolmate Lucy Plummer Battle visited with her there, and reminisced about old school days:

"I called on Tuesday to see Mrs. James Hooper, who is an old schoolmate (Margaret Broadfoot). Of course she did not know me. But as soon as I told her who I was, she seemed very glad to see me. I invited her & Miss Mallett to take tea with me but they could not do so. From her I learned the wearabouts &c of several of my old friends. I enjoyed her society wonderfully." (Lucy Martin Plummer Battle to her husband William, 4 October 1845, Battle Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection)

But by the time of the 1850 census, Margaret was back in Fayetteville, listed as a 50-year-old widow with real estate worth over $10,000. She died in 1880.

The whole family seems to be buried together, which is helpful: Margaret Broadfoot Hooper's dates are 1801-1880; her mother's name is given as Hetty Coit or Hetty Mumford (1776-1820); James Hooper's dates (1797-1841) indicate that Margaret became a widow in 1841, at age 40. She seems not to have had any children.

Some extra items about Margaret's husband: James Hooper's grandfather was William Hooper, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence from North Carolina. His brother Thomas married another Mordecai alumna from Fayetteville, Eliza Donaldson, in 1825, but Eliza died within six months of the wedding. James Hooper's stepfather was Joseph Caldwell, the first president of UNC.

59. and 60. Mildred and Sarah Britton

2011-03-12T16:38:00.000-08:00

Two girls named Britton are on the roles of the Mordecai school. Mildred and Sarah are both listed as being from SW Laurel, VA, and both attended for three sessions, from the beginning of 1817 to the middle of 1818. The name William Britton is associated with their account. "Wm Britton" is paying for "daughters" in the January 1817 pages of the ledger; he's also shown making payments in June 1817, November 1817, January 1818, and June 1818.

There's a definite mention of Sarah Britton's wedding in an 1820 letter from Rachel Mordecai to her brother Solomon:

"If you feel inclined to laugh, look into the Enquirer of the 22d & you will find the marriage of Ellen Lady of the Lake, alias Sarah, daughter of William Britton esq, to, not Malcolm Graeme, but James fitzJames, alias Dr. Bouldin. Never did I imagine that Scott's beautiful lines could be so sadly misapplied, or could be made to appear so superlatively ridiculous."

(letter dated 24 February 1820, Jacob Mordecai Papers, Duke University)

From this passage, a reader will get a good sense of the tart way the Mordecais sometimes talked about their former students (not just poor Miss Britton). This was not, apparently, a beloved or admired young woman in their conversations. But it certainly gives solid leads about her adult life! In another letter, there's mention of a "Miss Britton" going to the Virginia Springs for her health in July 1817 (Ellen to Solomon, 24 July 1817, Mordecai Family Papers, Southern Historical Association).

From there, we have no trouble locating these sisters: Sarah and Mildred Britton both married Bouldin men, brothers: Sarah Barksdale Britton married Rev. Robert Ephraim Bouldin (1795-1881), and Mildred W. Britton married Stith (Seth?) Bouldin (1797-1867); and apparently the both married in 1820: Sarah in January and Mildred in July. (Mildred may not have lived long after she married; her husband had a second wife, one of Mildred's cousins, Lucy Pleasants.) A family bible belonging to Sarah's descendants gives her birth as 1802, and her death as 1884; and shows her having three daughters, Elizabeth (1825-?), Margaret (1833-1878), and Henrietta (Etta; 1835-1908).

So now, we see 14-year-old Sarah Barksdale Britton and her younger(?) sister Mildred, daughters of William Britton and the former Elizabeth "Betty" Thweatt of Virginia, arrived at the Mordecai school in January 1817. One of the girls left for health reasons in July, but returned to finish their three sessions there in mid-1818. Two years after they left school, 18-year-old Sarah and her sister Mildred had married brothers; Sarah had three daughters, while Mildred may have died young.

Why did the Mordecais have such a mocking tone about Sarah Britton in 1820? No idea; that's the kind of information that generally can't be teased out of genealogical data.

58. Olivia Brickell

2011-02-16T20:27:00.001-08:00

There was a student named Olivia Brickell on the rolls at the Mordecai school, for one year (1817). She was listed as being from "Washington," with a Slade Pearce attached to her name in the February 1817 ledger entry. (Not the child actor Slade Pearce, though I suspect the identical name may bring some traffic here from disappointed fans. Sorry kids! This Slade Pearce seems to have had a tin factory near the Bridge in Beaufort County, and had a noteworthy library too. He was also Beaufort County sheriff a few times between 1807 and 1817.)

An Olivia Ann Brickell was named in legal documents with a Mirina Brickell, and as a co-heir to Slade Pearce of some land in Beaufort County NC.

Also at Washington, Beaufort County, Olivia A. K. Brickell and William Ellison married in January 1829. She is described as the daughter of the late Mr. Benjamin Brickell. A Benjamin Brickell (1773-1812) was a member of the State Senate from 1809-1811, from Franklin County (closer to Raleigh than coastal Beaufort County). His sister Ann married Dr. Hill and lived in Warren County (where she was apparently friends with Caroline Mordecai Plunkett in the 1820s). But he's listed in a Brickell family Bible as having only one daughter, an oddly-named Benjamin Ann Brickell. (Perhaps that girl's name was changed after Mr. Brickell's death in 1812, but before she attended the Mordecai school in 1817?) This Benjamin Brickell also had a sister Marinia, b. 1777, who might be the Mirina in the documents mentioned above.

A William Ellison was the land entry officer for the County of Beaufort in 1820, and a county clerk in 1833. This Ellison family tree has Olivia Brickle married to William Ellison.

But still.... no firm story here. What was Slade Pearce's connection to the Brickells and Ellisons? How old was Olivia when her father died, when she went to school, when she got married in 1829? Was Olivia once "Benjamin Ann"? Feel like I'm looking at the right people but not finding anything much to put together about Olivia Brickell/Brickle Ellison(?).

57. James G. S. Brehon, aka James Somerville

2011-02-03T19:57:00.000-08:00

There was a student named James G. S. Brehon at the Mordecai school for one session, the second half of 1811. He was a local boy in Warrenton.

Wait, what? Yes, boys attended the Mordecai school. They were usually young local boys, probably filling seats when enrollment dipped, or sitting in with a sister.

James G. S. Brehon was apparently kin the town's Irish-born doctor, James Gloster Brehon (1740-1819; the Gloster in his name is a simplified spelling of "Gloucester"). Dr. Brehon was a trustee of the Warrenton Academy when it was founded in 1786, and donated the land for its building in 1805. (Jacob Mordecai had worked briefly as steward at the Warrenton Academy, before opening his own school.) But who was he, exactly? Well.... he seems to have been a nephew, James Somerville, who was not actually called by the name Brehon as a boy, except after 1819, when childless(?) widower Dr. Brehon required the name change in a will, for James to inherit land. (Solomon Mordecai to his sisters, 11 April 1819, letter in the Mordecai papers at Duke University)

This makes him a cousin to the Gloster children, Arthur and Elizabeth, who were also at the school (more on them when we get to the Gs). The existence of several Brehons and Glosters in Warrenton, including the name-changing nephew, leads to some confusion in local histories.

A letter by Ellen Mordecai written in 1820 intimated that James was a heavy drinker (of his grandfather's whiskey, left to him as part of his inheritance), and " it is generally thought he will become deranged." But he seems to have become a doctor, married and become the father of a daughter, Rebecca Brehon (Mrs. Thomas Crossan).

55. and 56. Ann Elizabeth and Maria Brander

2011-01-03T20:27:00.001-08:00

Two students named Brander attended the Mordecai school. Ann Elizabeth Brander was at the school from mid-1815 to the end of 1816 (so, three sessions); Maria Brander was there for both 1816 sessions. Both girls have James (or J.) Brander listed as the adult on their account. The Branders might have been from the Richmond area, according to this sentence in a Mordecai family letter:

"This will go to Richmond by a Mr. Brander, who with a Mr. Bott of Manchester is to be out in a few days, each with un petite fille."--Rachel Mordecai to her brother Samuel, 12 June 1815 (Mordecai Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, Chapel Hill NC)

James Brander appears in the school ledger for June 1815 (paying for "Ann Eliza"), and again in November 1815, January 1816 (paying for Ann Eliza and Maria, "board & musick"), June 1816, and November 1816.

Genealogical websites pretty quickly show Ann Elizabeth Brander (1800-1826), daughter of James Brander (1760-1829), a Scotsman by birth, and Elizabeth T. Harrison, born at Manchester, Chesterfield County, Virginia.* She was the fifth of twelve children born to her parents, and was apparently sent to the Mordecai school shortly after the birth of the twelfth child, her sister Mary Catherine. She only lived to be 26; no indication that she married or had any children. (Her older brother Alexander named his daughter Ann Elizabeth Brander in 1842, probably in her memory.) But here's the surprise: Ann Elizabeth didn't have any siblings named Maria. So... Maria Brander might have been a cousin?

Yes. Found references to a Maria Brander Moore Robertson (1803-1873), daughter of John Brander (also of Scotland) and Martha Field Robertson. She married John Thomson Robertson Sr. (1801-1882, maybe her cousin?) in 1823, at Petersburg VA, and they had six children together, between 1823 and 1841. (She may have had a brief marriage before this one, to account for the Moore in her name.) During the Civil War, one of her daughters, Lelia, died in childbirth (in 1863), her son Stanhope was in the 12th Virginia Infantry, CSA; her son Archibald was a young physician who died from typhoid in 1864. (Another son, James, had died in 1847, age 24; and an newborn infant, Maria, died in 1841.)

So it looks like two Scottish brothers, John and James Brander, both lived in the Richmond/Petersburg neighborhood; James brought his 15-year-old daughter Ann Eliza to the Mordecai school in 1815, then after one session she was joined by her 13-year-old cousin Maria.

*Today in Chesterfield County, Virginia, you can find streets named Branders Creek and Branders Bridge.

54. Eliza Bradley

2010-12-15T19:43:00.000-08:00

A student named Eliza Bradley attended the Mordecai school for one session, the first part of 1811. She is mentioned as being from Wilmington, with Richard Bradley as the adult on her account. A Richard Bradley also appears in the Mordecai's ledger making a payment in February 1812.

In a letter from Rachel Mordecai Lazarus to Caroline Mordecai Plunkett dated 17 May 1821 at Wilmington (Southern Historical Collection), we read that "Eliza Bradley (Mrs. Hill) has the same lovely eyes we used to admire, and is quite a pleasing woman." In another letter dated 27 August 1827 (same writer, same library, this time to Ellen Mordecai), that "Mrs. Hill (E Bradley) confined but a fortnight lay with the rain dripping on her, changed repeatedly, the house shaking & roof vibrating with the wind, kitchen afloat, children climbing on the bed & crying for something to eat, when to cap the climax the door blew off its hinges & for some hours two persons were obliged to hold it up by main force, neither man nor tool to be had...Mr. Bradley's house surrounded by water & in danger of being carried away, salt works much injured." So Eliza's former teacher knew her in her married life in Wilmington, well enough to know her circumstances in a bad storm.

Turning to the genealogical web to fill in more details: Miss Eliza Rebecca Bradley (1800-1866) was daughter of Richard Bradley, Esq. (1759-1834, a bank officer) and his first wife Rebecca Green (c1770-c1805). She was very young when her mother died, and soon had a stepmother, Eliza Claudia Yonge, and eventually nine half-siblings. Eliza was sent to the Mordecai school when she was 10, but after just one session she returned to the family. She married Dr. John Hill (d. 1847) on 15 May 1817, in Wilmington. As the letter by Rachel Lazarus suggests, she had quite a few children by 1827: this website lists ten children born to her. Eliza was a widow at 47, and died at 66. By blood and/or by marriage, Eliza Bradley Hill would have been kin to much of Wilmington's elite, including the DeRossets, the Greens, the Browns, the Wrights, the Swanns, the Lords, and the Jones families.

Why did she come to school and leave so quickly? I think I found the answer! Her first cousin was Mary Brown. Mary Brown married Alexander Calizance Miller (d 1831*), the Mordecai school's mysterious and dashing music instructor. This was a blow to the Mordecais, professionally and personally (Ellen Mordecai, in particular, tearfully confessed a crush on the Frenchman). The wedding was in July 1811. So Eliza might well have returned to Wilmington for the wedding, and not returned to school afterwards, given the awkward feelings that might exist toward the Bradley-Brown-Green-Wright clan right at the moment.

*For more on this man, see William E. Craig, "The Mysterious Frenchman: Alexander Calizance Miller in America, 1797-1831," Lower Cape Fear Historical Society Bulletin 29 (October 1985): 1-6.

52. and 53: Eliza and Evelina Boykin

2010-11-30T19:58:00.000-08:00

Two students named Boykin attended the Mordecai school:

Eliza Boykin from Smithfield was at the school for three sessions, mid-1815 to the end of 1816, with Simon Boykin as the adult name attached to the account.

Evelina Boykin, also from Smithfield, was also at the school from mid-1815 to the end of 1816, also with Simon Boykin taking responsibility for her account.

The notation in the ledger page for October 1815 says "Simon Boykin for Eliza and Evelina." Another notation at May 1816 just says "Majr Boykin," and at September 1816 there's "Maj. S. Boykin" making another payment.

I'm going out on a limb and guessing that Eliza and Evelina are kin. ;) Not necessarily sisters; they could be cousins. But first: Smithfield VA or Smithfield NC? Smithfield NC still has a Boykin Motors listed among its major local businesses. But Smithfield VA (home of Smithfield ham) has Fort Boykin Historic Park, on the James River. A Simon Boykin of Virginia seems to have been a Revolutionary War officer, but there were a handful of men named Simon Boykin, all in the same family, including sometimes brothers (who went by Simon Jr. and Simon Sr., and named their sons Simon just to keep things interesting).

One interesting tidbit emerges from the mess of Simons: Major Simon Boykin (of Smithfield VA) had a daughter Louisa Boykin (1791-1850). She married a Daniel Boon (1786-1870--not the Daniel Boone), and they had a number of children, including daughters Eveline and Eliza, both born c. 1815. Were the Boon daughters named for Louisa's sisters, who would have been young teens and soon Mordecai students at the time? To complicate things, this Boon family seems to have lived in Smithfield NC before moving West in 1835.

So, which Smithfield? Which Boykins? Surprising that the rather uncommon name "Evelina Boykin" gets no useful hits, even with various spellings. So she doesn't turn up in marriage records or cemeteries or even family genealogies (not so uncommon for daughters, especially if they don't marry or die young). Or maybe she just used another first name for most of her life? There are several Eliza Boykins who might be the right age to be the Mordecai student, but not much about any of them.

Anyone want to claim the Boykin girls?

48, 49, 50, 51: The Boyds

2010-11-01T12:03:00.000-07:00

Four girls named Boyd attended the Mordecai school:

Christian Blair Boyd was there for both sessions in 1811.

Eleanor Boyd of Mecklenburg Co., VA, was there from mid-1815 to the end of 1817; the name Mrs. Elizabeth Boyd is associated with her account.

Jane Boyd was at the school for one session, in the latter half of 1815, with the name William Boyd associated with her account.

Virginia Boyd attended in 1816.

Just as an illustration of how complicated Southern family naming habits could get, the Christian Blair Boyd (1801-1860) above was born in Warren Co., daughter of Panthea Burwell and Col. John Boyd; but she had a double-cousin also named Christian Blair Boyd (1816-1868); his mother was Panthea's sister, and his father was Col. John's brother. (We'll be getting to the Burwell girls soon, but the Boyd and Burwell families are fairly entwined, so hold on tight.) The female Christian Blair Boyd married John T. Garland in 1819, and they lived in Lunenburg VA; they had three children (1821, 1824, and 1826). The youngest died in infancy in 1827; Christian would also bury her only daughter, Panthea Ann Garland, in 1848. Her son John Richard Garland lived to 1899, and became a prominent judge and mill owner in Lunenburg. Christian was widowed young, in 1828, and she remarried in 1832, apparently to a kinsman of her late husband: David S. Garland (c1787-c1865).

Christian Blair Boyd didn't have any sisters, but it looks like the other Boyds were probably her cousins. Eleanor Boyd (1801-1833) of Mecklenburg Co. VA, daughter of David Boyd (1778-1815) and Elizabeth Ott Durell Boyd (1783-1835) seems to have been sent to school in the event of her father's death in the same year, which is why her widowed mother "Mrs. Elizabeth Boyd" is the adult on the account. Eleanor had a sister Virginia (b. 1805), who might well be the Virginia Boyd who attended the school; she married a Richard Pryor in 1821, and moved to Hempstead Co., Arkansas with him. David Boyd's brother was Col John Richard Boyd, so these girls would be first cousins to Christian Blair Boyd.

The Boyd men also had a brother William (1767-1834). He married Frances Bullock in 1791, and their second daughter was.... Jane Boyd (1798-1835). Good chance she's the fourth Boyd. Jane Boyd married Dr. Charles Lewis Read (1794-1869), in 1816, and moved to Granville County, NC. She had ten children before she died at age 37 (in childbirth).

So this is the scenario:

Three Boyd brothers with daughters around the same age; the eldest girl, Christian, went off to the Mordecai school for couple sessions in 1811; a few years later, when brother David Boyd dies, her his daughter Eleanor Boyd and her cousin Jane are also sent to the school, and soon Eleanor's little sister Virginia joins them.

47. Eliza Ann Bowell (1802-1865)

2010-10-06T12:16:00.001-07:00

There is a student named Eliza Bowell in the rolls of the Mordecai school. She attended for three sessions, 1816 and the first half of 1817. The adult name that may be attached to her account is Abner F. Bowell, and she's linked to Fayetteville.

There was an Abner F. Bowell who died in Fayetteville in 1827, age 50. He turns up in the 1820 US Census as a head of household in Fayetteville, with eleven free white people in the home: a boy under 16, three boys 16-18, three men 16-26, a man 26-46 (probably Bowell himself), and a girl 10-16, a woman 16-26, and another woman 26-45. All the adult males in the household may be explained by Bowell being a shop owner, perhaps a printer, who housed his employees and apprentices. This family historian links the surname Bowell with Bowles/Boles in North Carolina. She also mentions an Eliza Bowell who married a man named Ochiltree.

Taking that lead: This family historian has Eliza Ann Bowell (1802-1865), daughter or niece of Abner Bowell of Fayetteville, marrying Archibald Ochiltree (1793-1832), in 1818. She was widowed at thirty, and seems to have moved to Texas later in life, to be with one or more of her children. Looks like she may have had a son Hugh Ochiltree (1820-1891) who was born in NC, but was a lawyer and community leader in Madison, Texas. (Here's a picture of Hugh.) Ochiltree County, Texas, on the Oklahoma border, is named for Hugh's cousin (Eliza's nephew?) William Beck Ochiltree (1811-1867), who was also born in Fayetteville. The DAR record for Hugh Ochiltree's daughter Arabella Ochiltree Bancroft (1870-1924) has "Eliza A. Powell" as his mother.

So.... Eliza Ann Bowell was a Fayetteville girl, born 1802. She went to school in Warrenton when she was 13-14, for a year and a half, then married at 16 to Archibald Ochiltree. They had at least one child before Eliza was widowed 1832, at age 30. She may have moved to Texas and died there in 1865.

44, 45, 46: The Botts (Catharine, Lucy J., and Martha)

2010-09-15T20:32:00.001-07:00

I have three girls with the surname "Bott" in the rolls of the Mordecai school:

Catharine Bott attended the school during 1816 (both sessions), with Miles Bott as the adult name attached to her account.

Lucy J. Bott of Mansfield, Amelia Co., VA also attended the school during 1816 (both sessions, with James Bott as the adult name on the account.

Martha Bott attended the school for three sessions (from mid-1815 to the end of 1816), with Miles Bott as the name attached to the account.

So all three Bott girls were at the school together for the two sessions of 1816. Probably not a coincidence--it was common to send sisters and cousins to school together. And there were a lot of Botts in Virginia, including several generations of Miles Botts. A Miles Bott served on the Virginia jury for the inquest into the treason charges against Aaron Burr in 1807. The Botts are much entangled with the Branch family, and we'll get to them soon in the alphabetical order.

Best I can tell, Martha Ann Bott was the daughter of Miles Bott Jr. (1762-1835) and his wife, whose surname was maybe Beverley or Broadie. She was born in 1799, and married for the first time to Samuel Parkhill in 1817, not long after attending school in Warrenton; she moved to Florida about ten years later, and married two more times, to judge Hiram Manley (1802-1853) of Tallahassee (a Harvard alum who was originally from Massachusetts), and John Johns. She may have ended up back in Virginia by the time of the third marriage. "Martha Ann Manley, late Parkhill" appears in the case notes for a Florida Supreme Court judgment in 1844, as the administratrix of her dead first husband's estate.

Lucy J. Bott was probably the daughter of James Bott and Lucy F. Branch. James Bott died in 1813, so maybe it was his estate or a son also named James who paid Lucy's school bills.

Catharine Bott doesn't turn up anywhere--except as the living British soprano of the same name--but she was likely a sister to Martha Ann?

43. Minerva Bonner

2010-09-02T19:01:00.001-07:00

A student named Minerva Bonner attended the Mordecai school in 1816, both sessions. She's listed as being from Harrisville VA, and has Williamson Bonner as the adult attached to her account. "Minerva" and "Williamson" are nice unusual names, and we have a geographical detail to go on, so this student should be easy to catch in the online genealogical net.

Right?

Except... Harrisville VA is in northern Virginia, fairly far from the school's usual catchment area. There are several men named "Williamson Bonner" in Virginia history, but they seem to be from Prince George County and Sussex County, both near Richmond and not in the neighborhood of Harrisville. And I can't find any Minerva Bonners of the right age cohort to work for this student, either.

So, interesting names or no, this entry hits a dead end, unless someone reading this can point me to more information.

42. Martha Bond (1796-1845)

2010-08-04T19:42:00.000-07:00

There was a student named Martha Bond in the rolls of the Mordecai school. She was there for three terms, starting summer 1810 and staying through the end of 1811. I don't have a hometown or adult's name attached to her name.

Seems like that should be a pretty dead end for further exploration, but just to be sure, searched out a "Martha Bond" in NC around the right age. And I found one! Martha Bond, daughter of James Bond (1760-1812) and Mary Hoskins (1767-1831), married David Small in 1822. Her parents married in 1787, and she was the third of their six children, which likely lands her birth year in the mid-1790s--very plausible for a Mordecai student in 1811. What makes this Martha Bond Small a very likely candidate is her family connections... Mary Hoskins, born in Chowan County NC, was kin to the Blount/Blunt family (see previous entry). Three of Mary's siblings married people named Blount.

The North Carolina Historical Register has Martha Bond Small as mother of six: Jane E. Small (1829-1873), William B. Small (1831-1854), Mary Frances Small (1831-1835), David Small (1833-1866), Edmund Small (1835-1862), Thomas M. Small (1837-1909). She died a widow in 1845. Three of her sons were in the CSA; one died in the war; one died afterwards from an illness contracted in the army; and the youngest survived as a disabled veteran ("His lameness is very perceptible in walking").

Remembering that some Marthas were called "Patsy" or "Patsey" in her place and time, I also searched Pats(e)y Bond Halls... sure enough, there's mention of her marriage to David Small as "Patsey Bond," married by an Obadiah Small in Chowan County. These sources have her marrying in 1826 or 1828, which might match better with her children's birth dates. Someone in Edenton owns (or at least owned) the family bible of David and Martha Small, which shows her as born 8-14-1796. (And David Small as slightly younger, born 11-13-1796.)

So to sum it all up: Martha "Patsey" Bond was born 1796, the third child of her parents. She went to the Mordecai school just before she turned 14, and stayed until she was 15. Soon after she left school, her father died, in February 1812. Martha married when she was about 30, and had six children before she was widowed; one of her daughters, Mary Frances (possibly a twin?), died at age 4. Martha Bond Small died in 1845, age 49. When she died, her youngest sons were 10 and 8.

39, 40, 41. Eliza, Martha, and Mary Ann Blunt

2010-07-14T19:48:00.000-07:00

There were three girls named Blunt who attended the Mordecai school:

Eliza Blunt was there for two terms in 1811, and her account was attached to a "Dr. Blunt."
Martha Blunt was there for two terms in 1817, and her account was attached to a Captain Richard Blunt.
Mary Ann Blunt was at the school for five sessions, 1814-1816, and her account was also attached to Captain Richard Blunt. There's also a notation that she's from Georgia, and that she married in 1822.

(A complication for this post is that the Southern surname Blunt is spelled various ways, often as Blount in North Carolina. I'll spell it as I see it in the various sources.)

Okay, let's see what we can see in the genealogical sources and sites online.

MARY ANN RIDLEY BLOUNT SANFORD
(1802-1879)

Richard Augustus Blount's papers are at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville. Blount (1774-1849) was a postmaster and active in Methodist Church matters. He was also a translator for various state dealings with the Cherokee Nation. When he died, his daughter Mrs. Mary Ann Sanford inherited slaves from his estate, delivered in 1853.

The box listing for Richard A. Blount's papers has an aha! item: Folder 3 in Box 2 contains "A small carefully written letter from Marianna R. Blount, age eleven, to her parents in Lebanon, Washington County, Ga., dated Sparta March 1st, 1813. A letter from Sally Ridley to Marianna Blount, at school in Warrenton Virginia, no date." And yes, there was a Sarah Ridley at the Mordecai school, in Warrenton, North Carolina. Miss Ridley attended the school exactly one term, so I can say with some assurance that the letter (which I haven't seen, but will try to get a copy of) is from the first half of 1810. Ridley being Mary Ann's middle name, Sally might have been a cousin?

Miss Mary Ann Blount, daughter of Col. Richard A. Blount, married Mr. John W. A. Sanford of Baldwin County, at Lebanon, Washington County, Georgia, on a Wednesday in late November, 1822, according to the 3 December 1822 Chronicle and Sentinel. John W. A. Sanford (1798-1870) was a college graduate who would later serve in Congress, briefly (for a few months in 1835), fought in the Cherokee War, and be elected to the Georgia Senate. From 1841-1843 he was Georgia's Secretary of State. His papers are at Georgia State University. John Sanford and Richard A. Blount worked together in the late 1820s on the Georgia-Alabama Line Boundary Commission.

John and Mary Ann Sanford were sued just after the war by a Thomas Finney, guardian of an Emily P. Gibson. Apparently John Sanford had a debt from before the war, and Mary Ann co-signed the note. The case focused a lot on Mary Ann's separate assets: the Sanford's plantation and many of their 50-60 slaves legally belonged to Mary Ann, not to John. The case against Mary Ann went to the state Supreme Court in 1870, to further consider women's obligations for the debts of their husbands.

Marianne Ridley Blount Sanford (the name as it appears on her tombstone) was widowed at age 68, and died at age 77.

Mary Ann's son John William Augustine Sanford Jr. (1825-1913) was elected Attorney General of Alabama several times from 1865 to 1876, and clerk of the Alabama Supreme Court. He was a colonel in the CSA, and surrendered at Appomattox.

Mary Ann's younger son Richard H. Sanford (1829?-1841) was stabbed to death at age twelve, by the fourteen-year-old son of a prominent lawyer. The boys were students together. Young Sanford was bullied and taunted by William A. Harris, who used a borrowed knife to attack Sanford. Sanford died ten days later from his wounds.

Back to the Mordecais: In their letters, there's a mention of Richard A. Blount trying to convert Jacob Mordecai to Christianity. They also mentioned Mary Ann passing through Warrenton in 1821, on her way to Ballston Springs NY (a popular spa). The Mordecais received a printed wedding invitation from her in 1822. But they misheard (or miswrote) her spouse's name as "Saunders," and that's how I had her listed in my dissertation: as Mary Ann Blunt Saunders, instead of Marianna Blount Sanford. Another reason to go back over this material!

(I'll be back to deal with the other two Blunts. Mary Ann's story took up all my time today.)

38. Eliza A. T. Blake

2010-07-05T19:12:00.000-07:00

There was a student named Eliza A. T. Blake at the Mordecai school when it first opened--she was there from 1809 till the end of 1810. She's listed as being from Petersburg VA, and has an Ellis G. Blake listed as the adult on her account.

An Ellis Gray Blake (1768-1816) of Boston MA married Mary "Polly" Taylor (c1773-1811), daughter of Col. Henry Taylor of Southampton County, Virginia. They had a son Henry Taylor Blake (1798-1866), who became a merchant, a son Bennett Taylor Blake (1800-1882), a clergyman who founded the Greensboro Female College and another girls' school in Raleigh; a son Ellis Gray Blake (1802-1863), who became a medical doctor and a teacher; a son Nathaniel Oliver Blake (1804-1880), also a clergyman.

Did they also have a daughter Eliza, about the same age as these four sons? Ellis's older sister Elizabeth Blake died in 1801; a daughter born around that time might well have been named for her, and the T would be for Taylor (the same middle name that two of the sons have). If so, she's not listed in this 1898 Blake genealogy along with the others. But daughters are often left out of such works, especially if they don't live to adulthood, marry or have notable sons.

If this is the family of Mordecai student Eliza A. T. Blake, she has a rather infamous connection on her mother's side. Polly Taylor's sister Elizabeth Taylor married Peter Blow of Southampton VA in 1800. And Peter Blow was the first owner of Dred Scott. Peter Blow's son (Eliza's first cousin?) Henry Taylor Blow (1817-1875) was a Congressman from Missouri, and served the Lincoln administration as ambassador to Venezuela (1861-1862), and the Grant administration as ambassador to Brazil (1869-1870). And Henry's daughter Susan Elizabeth Blow (1843-1916) was founder of the first kindergarten in St. Louis.

Were these Eliza A. T. Blake's relatives? If so, did she live to see any of these events? Or is her time at the Mordecai school her only mark on the historical record?

UPDATE (11.1.10): I realized that I had more information about Eliza A. T. Blake in another appendix of my dissertation. "After leaving the school... Eliza continued contact with the family, visiting in 1813, and welcoming [Ellen Mordecai] to Petersburg in 1817. By that later event, she was Mrs. Willcox. She and another Mordecai alumna, Susan King Moss, ...made plans to attend the examination at the Plunkett school in 1822."

The Willcox connection is the key. In a Blake genealogy published 1898, we find Eliza Ann Taylor Blake Willcox (1795-1825), who was indeed the daughter of Ellis Blake and Mary Taylor, and the elder sister of Henry, Bennett, Ellis, John and Nathaniel Blake. Eliza A. T. Blake, then, was fourteen when she arrived at the Mordecai school; at 16, she lost her mother, and was probably called home to help around that event. She married in 1815, so she was twenty that year. The next year, her father died. Eliza herself died in 1825, age 30. No evidence of children, and the answer is, no, she didn't live to see any of the events affecting her maternal relatives, as outlined above.

37. A. E. Blankenship

2010-06-30T20:22:00.000-07:00

There was a student in the rolls of the Mordecai school named A. E. Blankenship. She was at the school for its last year, 1818, both sessions, and an "Ed. Anderson" might be connected to the account.

A. E.? I suspect her first name was shorted to initials because her last name was long and there was limited space in the ledger. Could be Ann Eliza? Anne Elizabeth? Something more unusual? We can guess she was probably born 1805-1810. But I'm coming up empty with only these slim details to work from. There were certainly other Andersons connected to the Mordecai school community, and there were Southern families named Blankenship, in Virginia and North Carolina, but I can't find any aha! family history charts to even tentatively attach to Miss A. E. Blankenship.

Yet. Do you know this student's story? Leave a comment or links for this entry to be expanded.

35. and 36. Eliza Anne Bennett and Jane Bennett

2010-06-17T19:37:00.000-07:00

Some very Jane Austeny student names this time!

Eliza Anne Bennett attended the Mordecai school for both terms in 1818, with Richard E. Bennett as the adult associated with her account, and Petersburg VA as the place name.

Jane Bennett attended the Mordecai school much earlier than Eliza Anne, for six terms, from the beginning of 1811 to the end of 1813. She is also listed as being from Petersburg VA, but her account is associated with a Thomas Bennett. There's further note that she must have been married by 1827 (because the Mordecais mentioned her as married in a letter that year).

So who are the Misses Bennett? Hmmm... First thing I find in the genealogy forums is a Jane Grey Bennett marrying a Thomas N. Lee in 1823, in Petersburg VA. Elsewhere she's Jane Gray Bennett Lee, born 1802 to Sarah Elizabeth Wall (1778-1847) and Thomas Bennett, named for her maternal aunt Jane Gray Wall Shore Haxall (1766-1831), married to Thomas Noble Lee. She seems to have had a daughter Jane Gray Lee who died in infancy in 1824. Through her mother's family, Jane Gray Bennett was related to many of her classmates, including Olivia and Margaret Barrow. (The Grays were in Virginia beginning at Jamestown c. 1616, so many of the planter families of the area could claim Gray kin.)

Jane's husband Thomas Noble Lee was an Englishman, a tobacconist born in Yorkshire, who "held thirty or more slaves in the tax assessments for 1836 and 1838" and was a member of the PBMA (Petersburg Benevolent Mechanics Association), according to L. Diane Barnes, Artisan Workers in the Upper South: Petersburg, Virginia, 1820-1865 (LSU Press 2008). He was also a director of the Petersburg Savings Institution when it was founded in 1837.

None of these leads turn up the Eliza Anne Bennett who also attended the Mordecai school. There's no reason to think the girls were sisters--different men paid their accounts, and they didn't attend school together. But they're both from Petersburg, and they may have been related somehow. And none of the leads on Jane Bennett give any clue of her life after the mid-1820s. I'll dig up the Mordecai letter about her from 1827 to see if that sheds any further light on her story after getting married.

34. Sarah Batte

2010-06-12T14:38:00.001-07:00

A student named Sarah Batte appears in the rolls of the Mordecai school. She attended for the last two sessions of the school, in 1818. She's listed as being from Bellfield and an Alexander Batte is the adult name on the account.

Alexander Watson Batte (1778-1853) of Greensville County VA seems a good candidate for the adult--he married his first wife, Mary Pettway, in 1803, which would be time enough for their daughter to be at the school in 1818. The Alexander Watson Batte House in Greensville County was built starting in 1815. He married his second wife Elizabeth Spencer in 1819, so presumably Mary Pettway Batte died in 1818 or earlier--providing a reason for the girl to be at school (many of the Mordecai students were there following the death of a parent, while practical arrangements were made at home). And there is a Belfield District in Greensville County--it was a town before 1887 when it merged with Hicksford to form Emporia.

Still, can't find any evidence of a daughter named Sarah, born to Alexander and Mary Pettway Batte. There's only mention of Alexander Batte's daughter Cornelia Alvinia Batte, born 1819, so her mother was Elizabeth Spencer. So Sarah might have been a niece or other kin.

32. and 33. Ann and Mary E. Baskerville

2010-05-26T19:55:00.001-07:00

Two students named Baskerville attended the Mordecai school:

32. Ann Baskerville of Mecklenburg Co., Virginia, was at the school in 1810 (both sessions), then from 1812 to 1814 (five sessions), then from 1815-1816 (two sessions). So there were two breaks in her time at the school.

33. Mary E. Baskerville, also of Mecklenburg Co., Virginia, was at the school for both sessions of 1810.

Both girls have William Baskerville as the adult attached to their accounts. That makes their identity fairly easy to pin down: William Rust Baskerville (1756-1814) of Lombardy Grove, Mecklenburg County, was a merchant and planter, married to Mary Eaton (1763-1842), daughter of Col. Charles Eaton of Warren Co., NC. Mary and Anne are among their children.

So, adding in what can be learned from online family histories:

32. Anne "Nancy" Baskerville (b. 1800) first attended the school with her older sister Mary; then for a few more years, returning home around the time of her father's passing; she enrolled for a few more sessions after he died. Ann Baskerville married Thomas Turner (b. 1795) of Warren County, and they had at least two children together (Mary Veal Turner and James Turner). Her daughter Mary Veal Turner seems to be named for one of Nancy's Mordecai classmates, Mary Veale, who was at the school in 1812, 1813, and 1814. (Interesting detail: Thomas's brother Daniel Turner was married to the daughter of Francis Scott Key.) Anne Baskerville Turner must have died very young, because Col. Thomas Turner is listed as having a second wife that he married in 1822.

33. Mary Eaton Baskerville (b. 1795) was the elder of the sisters, and indeed one of the elder Mordecai students; she married Patrick Hamilton (b. 1789) around 1810 (presumably after she left the school that year). Patrick was a recent arrival from Scotland. The Hamiltons had at least seven children together (William, Mary, Charles, Robert, James, Isabella Alston, and Alexander), at Burnside NC.

And to make the family histories a little more complicated--or maybe a little less complicated, in a sense--in 1836 Nancy's daughter Mary V. Turner (d. 1872) married Mary's son, William Baskerville Hamilton (d. 1875). A later William Baskerville Hamilton, 1908-1972, was a history professor at Duke University.

30. and 31. Olivia and Margaret Barrow

2010-05-17T11:34:00.001-07:00

Two girls named Barrow attended the Mordecai school:

30. Olivia Barrow (1806-1857) of Tarboro NC attended the school for a year, in 1818.
31. Margaret Barrow of Tarboro NC attended the school for a year, in 1818.

Both Barrows have the name "Bennet Barrow" attached to their account.

So let's start with Bennet Barrow. Seems a Bennet Barrow (1777-1833) was born in Halifax Co., and was the son of Olivia Ruffin and William Barrow. The Ruffins are all over the extended families attached to the Mordecai school; and this particular connection gives Olivia Barrow her first name, too. Much of the extended Barrow family (Olivia Ruffin Barrow, three daughters, three sons) moved to Louisiana in 1798, by covered wagons and barges, to build some rather famous plantation homes for themselves. Two Barrow sons stayed behind in North Carolina for a while, then joined the clan. One of them was Bennet Barrow; he was listed as the cashier at the Tarboro branch of the State Bank of North Carolina, when it opened in 1811. He moved to Louisiana in 1816.

So... it's a prominent family, and it's not hard to track down the Mordecai students Olivia and Margaret. Their cousin Bennet H. Barrow (1811-1878) was a Louisiana planter and diarist. (This is another of those families where the same names are used by multiple members of the same generation; they had a brother Bennet Barrow, but his middle name was James; the diarist's father was William H. Barrow.)

Olivia Ruffin Barrow (1806-1857) was named for her late grandmother. Her father was Bennett Barrow and her mother was Martha Hill. When she attended school in Warrenton NC with her sister Margaret, their family was already mostly moved to Louisiana. She married her first cousin, William Ruffin Barrow (1800-1862). They had ten children together; five died young. They were the planters in residence at Greenwood Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana, which at its peak encompassed thousands of acres; the Ruffins held about 750 slaves at Greenwood. (Today the house still stands, much restored, and is open as an inn.) Here is Olivia's house on Flickr.

Margaret Barrow, Olivia's sister, "died young." "No information available." But we know something about her: she attended the Mordecai school with Olivia for a year, in 1818. One of the benefits of studying the rolls of a girls' school is that the many women who died young are still "caught" by the school's records--because their attendance was recorded, they have a bit more trace than a tombstone, or a date in a family Bible.

29. Martha Barnes

2010-05-17T10:58:00.001-07:00

Another sparse entry in the rolls of the Mordecai school. Martha Barnes attended the school for one year, 1810. Not much else to go on--no hometown, no adult name attached to the account. The student's name isn't even that uncommon.

One possible candidate, from looking around the family history pages:

Martha "Patsey" Barnes, Mrs. Samuel Gann Jr.; b. 31 March 1796 in Rockingham Co. NC; one of the nine children of Revolutionary War-veteran Chesley Barnes and Mary Means; married c.1819, same county; died c.1870. Generation and location are all dead on. But did Martha Barnes Gann witness a document in 1852 "by mark"--not by signature? Could a girl have spent a year at the Mordecai school without being able to sign her own name forty-two years later? Probably a strike against this as a match, but not a deal-breaker; it could still be her. Or not.

28. Helen Barclift

2010-05-03T11:49:00.000-07:00

A student named Helen Barclift attended the Mordecai school for two terms in 1814. No hometown, no adult name attached to the account. Slim details to go on.

BUT, checking for the name anyway, for any plausible Helen Barclift, I find one! In his 1807 will, Ur Barclift of Edenton NC (somehow part of an extended family of Barclifts in that part of the state) names his friend "Henry A. Donaldson of Edenton" as executor and as guardian of her daughter, Helen Barclift. There were three girls named Donaldson who attended the Mordecai school, all of them from Fayetteville; not a very uncommon name, but that gives some reason to think this might be the girl. So, let's look at her further. Or rather, at her guardian:

Henry A. Donaldson (1782-1870s) was a merchant based in Edenton. In 1807, he was newly married to Elizabeth McDonald. After that date, he turned to the textiles industry, building a mill in Edgecombe County that began operating in 1820. He designed and sold another cotton mill for Fayetteville, and soon became "chief promoter" of the Fayetteville Manufacturing Company. He moved to Wake County in 1830, then to Mobile AL around 1835. He became a banker there, and eventually moved to Texas, where he died after the Civil War.

Or maybe two different Henry A. Donaldsons are being conflated at that biography? Because the textile mill Donaldson was apparently from Rhode Island, and moved to NC in 1817. But there's definitely an Edenton marriage record for a Henry A. Donaldson in 1807. So... possibly not the same guy? Hmmm... and anyway, what ever happened to Helen Barclift, whichever Donaldson was her guardian?

There was a Helen Donaldson who married Edward G. Benners in Mobile AL in 1845. Seems a bit late for her to be marrying for the first time, given the general trend of the Mordecai cohort, but not impossible; and the location matches the biography above. The name would suggest she had taken her guardian's name sometime after 1814? This is getting pretty far beyond what we really know; it's only a possible lead. (Edward G. Benners was brother of Augustus Benners, whose plantation journal beginning in the 1850s and carrying through Reconstruction was published last year.)

26. and 27. Lucy Ballard and Rebecca Ballard

2010-04-26T13:26:00.001-07:00

Two students with the surname Ballard attended the Mordecai school: Lucy Ballard was on the school rolls for all of 1810, and Rebecca Ballard was on the school rolls for all of 1814. Not much to go on there--no hometown, no adult's name attached to the account, nothing.

But... there is a rather large extended family of Ballards in Virginia in the early 19th century. And Lucy was a name used frequently in that family, as was Rebecca to a lesser extent. For example, this Rebecca would be about the right age and location to be a Mordecai student in 1814:

"Larkin BALLARD and Elizabeth GAINES were married on 13 Jan 1786 in Orange County, Virginia. Children were: Hiram BALLARD, Howard O BALLARD, Henry BALLARD, Humphrey BALLARD, Rebecca BALLARD, Nancy BALLARD, Catherine BALLARD, Sarah BALLARD"

We don't have any much to go on at this point, but that's what the blog is for--maybe you've got a Lucy (Lucretia? Louisa?) Ballard in your genealogy project who was born 1795-1800 in North Carolina or Virginia. Maybe she had a younger sister or cousin named Rebecca Ballard who would have been born more like 1800-1805. If so, tell us more about them!

25. Ann Baker

2010-04-20T13:26:00.000-07:00

A student named Ann Baker attended the Mordecai school for two years, 1814 and 1815; she's listed as being from Halifax, Virginia, with Leonard Baker as the adult attached to her account.

"Ann Baker" seems a very ordinary name; but "Leonard" is fairly distinctive for early 19c. Virginia. Turns out, there was a Leonard Baker in Halifax Co., Virginia, who performed many marriages 1780-1815. He's said to have died in 1818. This is one of those cases where someone's name appears often in the genealogical record, but only because he's officiating at the weddings of others.

BUT... he seems to have used the nickname "Leo." Which opens up some other avenues of identification. As Leo Baker, he's listed as "pastor of the Musterfield church" and brother of Rev. Elijah Baker (1742-1798), also a preacher in Virginia. According to James Barnett Taylor's Lives of Virginia Baptist Ministers (1838), the Baker brothers were of "humble parentage," born in Lunenberg Co.

Still no way to know for sure whether Ann Baker was Leonard's daughter or a niece or even a granddaughter.

23. and 24. Mary Jane Bacon and Petronella Bacon

2010-04-07T13:04:00.000-07:00

There are two girls surnamed Bacon in the Mordecai rolls, and they appear to be sisters:

Mary Jane Bacon and P. Nelly C. Bacon, both from Hendersonville, Virginia, both attended the Mordecai school for the same two years, from the beginning of 1816 to the end of 1817. The adult's name on both their accounts is Major Tyree G. Bacon.

Now, the name "Tyree Bacon" may seem unusual enough to make a search easy. Not so! The first name Tyree is used often through generations of Bacons in Virginia. (There's even a present-day Tyree Bacon with a MySpace page.) But Col. Tyree Glenn Bacon (1772-1830), a War of 1812 veteran, lived at Bacon's Hall in Crewe, Nottoway County. His wife was Mary Lamkin (1774-1846).

So, here are the students' stories based on what we can find about them online:

Mary Jane Catherine Bacon (b. 1804) married a Jesse H. Leath (d. 1846) in 1832, when she was 28. Mary Bacon Heath had eight children: James, Branch, Tyree, Joseph, George William (d. 1922), Virginia, Harriett, and Sarah. Mary lost her husband and her mother the same year. She inherited Bacon's Hall as specified in her father's will. All her sons were wounded as Confederate soldiers in the Civil War.

Mary's sister Petronella Ann Graghead Bacon (whose name might have been written "P. Nelly C." by the Mordecais--especially if she was called "Nelly"; Graghead is sometimes written as "Craghead" even in family records) was born 1802, according to this transcript of a family bible. She was apparently named for her mother's sister Petronella Lamkin Graghead. She married a Col. John Marshall in June 1821, when she was 19.

Oh, and "the community of Hendersonville no longer exists."

22. Caroline Avery

2010-04-02T11:48:00.000-07:00

The next alphabetical student in the roster is Caroline Avery, who was listed as being from Wilmington. She attended the Mordecai's school from mid-1814 to the end of 1816. No adult's name is attached to her account in the ledger. But the Mordecai family's letters mention her often. She arrived at the school in the company of classmate Amanda Kelly (their stays at the school coincide exactly). When Caroline was married in 1822, Rachel Mordecai Lazarus was called upon to remedy a last-minute shoe emergency for the bride. She was considered a fashionable young hostess in the Cape Fear region. Late in 1826, her husband (Mr. VanCleef) died suddenly, leaving Caroline a widow with a young son. Rachel Mordecai Lazarus was less-than-sympathetic about Caroline's loss; she considered her former student a spoiled and childish woman who probably ruined her husband by driving him to drink. In 1829, Caroline Avery VanCleef married a New Yorker, Captain James Seymour, and relocated to Staten Island.

What can we find of this alumna's life online? Brunswick County Marriage Records confirm the marriage of Mary Caroline Avery to John M. VanCleef in September 1822, and the marriage of Mary Caroline VanCleef to Captain James Seymour in November 1829. But beyond that... not much. In this case, the Mordecai family correspondence holds far more details about the student than anything I can find online. So far.

20. and 21. Eliza and Martha Armistead

2010-03-11T13:49:00.000-08:00

Two students named Armistead are in the rolls of the Mordecai school:

Eliza Armistead of Norfolk VA was at the school from the beginning of 1815 to the school's closing in 1818. She may have been an orphan: her tuition was apparently paid by a grandmother, Mrs. Newton, before Mrs. Newton's death in 1816; an uncle took over payments, but he too died in 1818. Eliza Armistead appears frequently in the Mordecai family's correspondence about the school: she was considered quite pretty. She studied astronomy and history in her later years at the school, and won a special medal at the last public examinations. She returned to Norfolk after 1818.

Martha Armistead of Norfolk VA was at the school for one year, 1818. Her account was possibly paid by a George Newton.

Turning to the online family histories, we quickly find confirmation that Eliza Tucker Armistead and Martha Juliana Armistead were sisters, the daughters of Theodorick Armistead (1774?-1812) and Martha Tucker Newton (1780-1810). Theodorick Armistead was commander of the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, 1808-1810.

Eliza Armistead married a Navy man, Alexander Porter Darragh (1789-1831), in 1823. They had two children, Margaret Porter Darragh, and Martha Julian Darragh; Martha died as a newborn. Then Eliza died in late 1826, certainly not more than 25 years old. Her widower Alexander Darragh died in 1831 and was buried on Gibraltar. Their orphaned daughter Margaret married at 18, to a cousin, Thomas Newton.

Martha Armistead married a John Williams of Fairfax and had at least four children: Elizabeth Darragh Williams Sharp (named for her late aunt), Rev. Walter Wheeler Williams (d. 1892), Theodorick Armistead Williams (d. 1890, a bank president), and John Newton Williams (b. 1842). Like many Mordecai alumnae, Martha Armistead had at least one of her sons fight in the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy.

18. & 19. Caroline and Henrietta Anthony

2010-02-13T20:19:00.000-08:00

Two students with the surname Anthony attended the Mordecai school:

Caroline Anthony was there for two years, 1817 and 1818, and the name James Gordon may be associated with hers in the ledger.

Henrietta Anthony was there for four years, 1811-1814, and an H. Anthony is associated with her account in the school ledger.

That doesn't seem like much to go on--no hometowns, no definite parent names, no reason to believe they're even related to each other. But there was pair of sisters, Henrietta and Caroline Anthony, who turn up in Southside Virginia Families Vol. 1 as the daughters of John Anthony (d. 1812) and Elizabeth Hill. John Anthony was apparently from Philadelphia, a cousin of the portrait painter Gilbert Stuart. Elizabeth Hill was the daughter of Col. Whitmel Hill and Winifred Blount--which connects these girls to the Hills, the Alstons, the Blounts, the Pollocks, the Nashes, the Camerons, the Norfleets, and many other families in the neighborhood of the Mordecai school. There's mention in one family history that Caroline was raised in part by her older sister--which would neatly explain the "H. Anthony" next to her name in the ledger.

So, retelling their story in light of what we can find in online genealogies...

Henrietta Maria Anthony left her home in Sussex County, Va., in 1811, when her father John Anthony was still alive, to attend the Mordecai school in Warrenton. After John's passing, her account was paid by James Gordon, her uncle (he was married to John's sister Elizabeth Anthony). Henrietta later sent her younger sister Caroline Matilda Anthony (1806-1861) to the same school in its last two years, 1817 and 1818. Both girls would have been at school with many cousins as their classmates.

Henrietta married a Cyrus Dillard of Surry County, Virginia, in 1817, and had at least two children, Joseph and Henrietta (b. 1829). Caroline married a William Henry Pegram (1803-1852) in October 1824, and had four children between 1825 and 1842. Her daughter Ann Pegram died as an infant; Caroline Pegram was widowed at age 46, when her youngest child was ten. (That boy, William Anthony Pegram, would die in the Civil War ten years later.)

15.-17. The Andersons: Ann, Mary F., and William

2010-01-19T14:17:00.000-08:00

Three students named Anderson are in the rolls of the Mordecai school.

Ann Anderson attended the school for a single term, the first part of 1811.

Mary F. Anderson attended the school for two terms, in 1818. She is listed as being from Richmond VA, and the name Henry Anderson is attached to her account.

William Anderson attended the school for two terms, in 1815. The name George Anderson is attached to his account.

William? Yes, boys attended the Mordecai school--they made up about 10% of the students ever enrolled. They were generally younger local boys who seem to have filled seats during low-enrollment years. So William Anderson was likely a Warrenton child who took classes at the school but lived at home. There were certainly families named Anderson in Warrenton at the time, but it's a common name and that's true of many towns in the 1810s, I suspect. Because of this, there isn't much more to find about these three students online--or, perhaps there is, but the few details I have here don't help me much in finding more.

10.-14. The Alstons (Caroline, Charity, Eliza, Emily, and Martha)

2009-12-09T18:03:00.000-08:00

There were five girls named Alston in the Mordecai rolls:

Caroline M. Alston, Eliza Alston, and Emily Alston are all listed as being from Warren County NC, and are all listed with "Th. W. Alston" as their guardian in the ledger. Caroline attended from the school's opening in 1809 through the end of 1811; Eliza was only there for 1809; Emily was there one term longer than Eliza, leaving in mid-1810.

Martha Alston is listed with Alfred Alston as the adult on the account; she attended after the girls above, and for much longer than any of them, being at the school from early 1812 until mid-1817.

Charity D. W. Alston is listed with an H. G. Williams possibly associated with her account. She was at the school for half of 1812, then returned later for three terms, 1814 through mid-1815.

Alston's a common North Carolina name--when I taught in Durham, I had several students named Alston. Because there were so many Alstons in Warren County and surroundings, and because many names were recycled within and between generations, it's hard to pin down which girls these are in the family trees. Warren County records show a Charity D. Alston assigned to Robert T. Cheek as her guardian in 1807 (he payed her board and tuition that year). Same records show a Joseph J. Williams assigned as guardian of a Caroline Alston, "orphan," in 1808. The guardian of the first three girls is probably Thomas Whitmel Alston--but there were at least a couple men with that name floating around!

The Alstons are related in various ways to the Norfleets, the Plummers, the Branches, and other families who sent children to the Mordecai school. More on them later.

***

Martha Alston was, according to the Mordecais' family correspondence, a Warrenton girl; she was a local and one of the school's longest-running students. As such, the Mordecais took a stronger interest in her life after school. In 1821, teacher Caroline Mordecai Plunkett referred to her as "good natured in appearance" and "handsome." We learn from family letters that Martha was sent to Philadelphia in 1822. In 1824, she married a Mr. Burgess (fellow Mordecai alumna Lucy Plummer Battle attended the wedding). In 1850, Lucy Plummer Battle visited with Martha and her daughter (Lucy Burgess) while staying in Warrenton.

Heading back into the genealogical websites, Martha Alston's husband was a John Burford* Burgess (or Burges), b. c. 1797. In the announcement of their marriage bond, Martha is referred to as "daughter of the late Thomas Alston." This researcher has her as Martha Janie Alston, born in 1802 as daughter of Thomas Whitmell Alston (1756-1809), and Lucy Faulcon (1763- ). This makes her the sister of Alfred Alston (1791-), who married another Mordecai girl, Mary Ann Plummer (1795-).

*UPDATE (9/7/10): Jordan Kearney, a reader and descendant of Martha Alston, sends this correction and further information (with promise of further information):

"The three other Alstons were Elizabeth Alston, Caroline Medora Alston and Rebecca Emily Alston, all daughters of Samuel and Elizabeth Faulcon Alston...They were double first cousins to Martha Jane Alston Burges. I also have information concerning Rebecca and Lucy Ballard....John Lovatt Burges was the husband of Martha Jane Alston."

Thank you, Jordan Kearney! The whole idea of putting up this blog is to tap into the wealth of information that family historians and others have, and gather it here for a fuller picture of the Mordecai students as a cohort. I appreciate your contributions and look forward to further exchanges.

7, 8, & 9. Frances, Jane, and Sarah Alexander

2009-11-17T20:22:00.000-08:00

Unlike sisters Eliza and Margaret Adam, and sisters Penelope and Ann Albertson, I have no idea whether any or all of the Alexander girls were related. I don't know much about them, period, and such a common last name doesn't bode well for learning more, but here goes.

Frances Alexander attended the Mordecai school for one session, the first half of 1810.

Jane Alexander of Mecklenburg Co., VA attended the Mordecai school for three-and-a-half years, mid-1814 to the end of 1817. The name "Mark Alexander" is associated with hers in the ledger.

Sarah Alexander of Mecklenburg Co. VA attended the Mordecai school for five sessions, not continuous: she was there from mid-1812 to mid-1814, and then again for the second session in 1815. A "Col. Alexander" is associated with her account in the school ledger.

Mecklenburg County VA borders Warren County NC. Mark Alexander isn't a difficult name to track down in Mecklenburg County. A Mark Alexander (1792-1883) was a Congressman from that county, born on a plantation near the county seat Boydton, an alumnus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1811). He seems a bit young to be the father of any girls at the school; but maybe he's an older brother?

The Congressman Mark Alexander was married to Sallie P. Turner, the daughter of North Carolina senator and governor James Turner. Sallie Turner's older half-sisters Mary and Rebecca Turner definitely attend the Mordecai school, 1812-1815. More on them later.

Mark Alexander's father was also Mark Alexander (d. 1824), and his mother was Lucy Bugg (d. soon after 1792). He seems to have had a half-sister Lucy Jane Alexander (1803-1862), who was called Jane or Jenny, and who married Lawson Henderson Alexander (c.1789-1842, apparently a cousin) in 1823 and settled in Arkansas later in life. She apparently had four children, Nancy, Lucy, Marcus, and Sarah Jane. Is this the Jane Alexander who attended the Mordecai school? Seems very likely.

Would love to hear from any Alexander family historians who can disentangle any of this!

5. & 6. Ann and Penelope Albertson

2009-10-26T11:58:00.000-07:00

Sisters, again. Ann and Penelope Albertson attended the Mordecai school together for two years, 1815 and 1816; then Penelope was also enrolled for part of 1817 and part of 1818. They're listed as being from Elizabeth City NC, and the ledger connects them to a William Albertson.

Searching around online for more details.... roughly chronological:

*Their parents: William Albertson married Penelope Sutton in August 1800, in Pasquotank Co., NC.

*Miss Ann R. Albertson married James S. Relfe on 13 June 1819, and Ann is listed as "the eldest daughter of William Albertson Esq of this city," in the Pasquotank County records. Assuming she was born within two years after her parents' wedding, that makes her 17-19 years old. It also means she was a teenager when she attended the Mordecai school.

*I also find William Albertson as the publisher of a newspaper in Elizabeth City, 1821-1825.

*From the Digital Library on American Slavery, we find petitions from Ann Albertson Relfe, Penelope Albertson, William Albertson, and James S. Relfe, all filed in North Carolina in 1826. The petitions could be any kind of legal request made in court--perhaps all four inherited or sold slaves that year, and the paperwork turns up for that event. (Additionally, an Emeline Albertson and a Benjamin Albertson are also found in 1826 NC filings.)

*Miss Penelope S. Albertson and a Mrs. Priscilla E. Bailey, both of Elizabeth City, are both listed as subscribers to a book, Miscellaneous Poems by Eliza Crawley Murden, published in Charleston in 1827. Mrs. Priscilla E. Bailey was the former Priscilla Brownrigg, and a fellow Mordecai student. (Much more on her when we get to the Bs.) So Penelope was still single in 1827.

More as I find it, but these details paint the beginnings of a picture--Ann was a teen, and Penelope was a bit younger, when they attended the Mordecai school. Two-and-a-half years after she finished school there, Ann married; Penelope waited at least nine years after leaving school to wed, if she ever did. Penelope was interested in the work of a Southern woman poet, enough to subscribe to the publication of her verses. And both young women were involved in a court petition involving slaves in 1826--probably an inheritance, or a sale on their behalf.

4. Susan Adams

2009-10-20T13:29:00.001-07:00

Some of the students on the roster don't have much detail to work from. The fourth name, Susan Adams, is one of the sketchier figures. What we know: Susan Adams was enrolled at the Mordecai school for two terms in 1811; the name "Dr. Robert Moore" is attached to her account, and the town of Hicksford VA may be related to her as well.

Hicksford is in Greensville County, Virginia, a little north of the North Carolina border. It's now called Emporia, but there's still a Hicksford Avenue and Hicksford Historic District there.

Checking with the genealogical resources online: There was a Susan Adams born to Jeremiah Adams and Elizabeth Grigg of Bedford Co. VA, sometime after 1798 (both parents were born in 1776 in Virginia, and Elizabeth was born in Hicksford). That Susan was one of ten children. A bit slim a connection, though, for such a common name. So Susan Adams may not be someone we can track down definitively, at this point. But she was a Mordecai student in 1811, so she was probably born around 1800, and she may have had an uncle or guardian named Dr. Robert Moore.

3. Margaret Jane Adam

2009-10-02T16:20:00.000-07:00

This week's student is the sister of last week's: Margaret Jane followed Eliza Ann Adam to the Mordecai school beginning in 1812... and stayed for eleven sessions, or five-and-a-half years, which makes her one of the longest-enrolled students at the school.

Recapping the story, now from Margaret's perspective--she was just a baby when her father, Scottish-born merchant Robert Adam, died in 1801. An older brother was eventually made guardian of the young Adam girls. After Margaret finished her days at the Mordecai school, she returned in 1818 to see the school's final examination, as a spectator. By then, she was mourning the death of her sister Eliza Adam Cameron.

In 1821 Margaret married Dr. William Moffat (or Moffitt, or Maffitt) of Fayetteville, against her family's wishes. Her first baby, Eliza*--maybe named for Margaret's late sister?--was born in 1823, and the pregnancy left Margaret in delicate health. She was in Wilmington seeking restoration later that year. In the early years of their marriage, William adopted a five-year-old nephew, John Newland Maffitt; a lively little boy added to her duties and probably didn't improve Margaret's health situation. (The nephew was sent to school in the north after a few years, and became a successful naval officer, serving in both the US Navy and the Confederate navy.)

By the end of 1827 Margaret Adam Moffat was feeling even worse. Another confinement resulted in a throat infection that required part of her palate to be removed (ouch), and Margaret was left speechless by the surgery. Margaret's inheritance seems to have been spent by Dr. Moffat, who may also have been cruel towards her, according to comments in the Mordecai letters.

*Eliza Maffitt became Mrs. Thomas Lewis Hybart in 1843. Eliza was a close correspondent of John Newland Maffitt when the two were young adults. Eliza was widowed within a few years of marrying Thomas, just long enough to have two sons with him (William in 1844 and Thomas in 1847). Both her sons fought for the Confederacy, and Thomas died from typhoid fever during the war, in 1864, when he was only 17. Eliza died after 1880.

2. Eliza Adam (1798-1817)

2009-09-23T15:15:00.001-07:00

By alphabetical chance, the second student to write about from the Mordecai school is one that we can know a great deal about. But sadly, the reason we know so much is that she didn't live long; she didn't even outlive the school itself.

Eliza Ann Adam of Fayetteville was born in 1798. Her father was Robert Adam (1759-1801), a wealthy Scottish-born merchant, but she was very young when he died. Arriving in 1809, Eliza was one of the first Fayetteville girls at the Mordecai school, an 11-year-old who became a great favorite of the Mordecai family. Samuel Mordecai even called her "his little adopted sister." Solomon Mordecai said of her, "no one that could appreciate the value of an affectionate disposition could feel otherwise than attached."

Eliza's younger sister Margaret joined her at Warrenton in 1812, the year Eliza finished her studies there. In 1813, Eliza was sent to the North to "polish" her manners in Boston. Soon, she was engaged to John Adams Cameron (1788-1838), a UNC alumnus and wounded veteran of the War of 1812, one of the prominent North Carolina Camerons.

This engagement was the beginning of the end for Eliza. She took an overdose of laudanum, apparently in hopes of avoiding the match. But she survived the overdose and the scandal, and the marriage proceeded as planned, taking place on 13 January 1815. In 1816, Eliza Adam Cameron's daughter was born. Eliza's health was further damaged in the pregnancy (and probably by her continuing unhappiness with the marriage). She took a course of mercury and other treatments, but nothing slowed her deteriorating health. When John Cameron's business required a trip to Europe, it was decided that Eliza might benefit from a sea voyage. At the home of a relative in Greenock (her father's birthplace on the coast of Scotland), Eliza Ann Adam Cameron died in 1817, still a teenager.

Her widower, John Adams Cameron, married again the following year. In 1822 he was appointed consul to Brazil. In 1831 he continued his diplomatic career in Veracruz, Mexico. John A. Cameron was appointed to the new US District Court of Florida. Judge Cameron died by drowning when the steamship Pulaski was lost at sea in 1838.

Eliza's only child, Mary Elizabeth Cameron (1815-1845), married Dr. Halcott Pride Jones (1815-1889) in 1838, and had at least four children--the first, Eliza Adams "Lizzie" Jones (1839-1911), named for her long-dead grandmother, the Mordecai student.

1. Narcissa Abernathy

2009-09-02T17:44:00.000-07:00

The first Mordecai student, alphabetically, is the wonderfully named "Narcissa Abernathy." From the school's records (mostly the ledger), I can say for certain that she was from a place called "Brunswick" and that a William Abernathy was her parent or guardian, and that she stayed at the school for its last two semesters: spring and fall of 1818.

"Brunswick" can mean two different likely hometowns: Brunswick County NC is in the southeastern part of the state, near Wilmington and the South Carolina border. Brunswick County VA is just over the NC/VA border from Warren County. Both places sent students the Mordecai school, but the Virginia Brunswick was closer, and has the added factor of an Abernathy family that was prominent at the time. So I'd probably assume she's a Virginia girl.

Let's see what the genealogical forums have to say: It seems there was a Narcissa Abernathy whose parents were William "Poplar Mound Billy" Abernathy (d. 1844) and his wife Nancy; who had sisters Marianne, Dionysia, and Arianna, and brothers William and Willis; who married her cousin James Abernathy Jr. by 1822, in Greensville County, VA. The couple moved to Giles County TN around 1827, and had about five children (Virginia, Martha Ann, John, William, and Samuel). She would have been widowed around 1845.

Those dates and details would make sense for a Mordecai student--a lot of Mordecai girls married in the early 1820s and moved west soon after. Is it her? I wouldn't know for sure without some family history or letters mentioning her being the same person; but I think this is a good tentative match, given her unusual name and the matches in age, placename, and father's name.

Proper Introductions

2009-09-02T17:06:00.001-07:00

Today is the first day of school in our local district--which seems the best day to start a blog about a school.

In 1996, I defended a dissertation about the Mordecai school in Warrenton, North Carolina--a girls' school that was in operation from 1809-1818. Because it was run by the Mordecai family, and because the Mordecai family's papers are in several large collections in Raleigh, Chapel Hill, and Durham, it was unusually possible to construct a complete list of the school's alumnae--about 500 women born roughly between 1795 and 1805, who all attended the school for at least one half-year term. The students were often from prominent families, and part of the project involved following their later lives.

But now, thirteen years later, so much more "following" is possible, thanks to online search engines, and the remarkable flourishing of family history websites in particular. So, I've decided to revisit the Mordecai alumnae, alphabetically, a few at a time, in this blog. I expect to write a few entries a month, covering one or more names at a time. Whatever I find, I'll report it here. In time, this blog will serve as a more complete record of the Mordecai students' lives than the dissertation ever could have.

Why am I doing this? Well, because I can. And because it's a chance to explore the possibilities of presenting historical work online. And finally, maybe, to connect with others online who are interested in the same group of women--or even in just one of the women--and who may enjoy sharing information about their lives.

A final caveat: much of what is available online about the Mordecais and their school isn't particularly accurate. It's tempting to romanticize the work of a family educating girls in the Early Republic, in the South; and the Mordecais in particular were very engaging writers, always popular with the scholars who read their letters. My dissertation was about looking past the romantic stories and really looking at the evidence from the school's decade of operation.

I can only recommend and endorse heartily the work of my friend Emily Bingham, whose book Mordecai: An Early American Family (Hill and Wang 2003) is good solid history (and a mighty fine read, too). Anything else you find, especially if it makes the school sound like a brilliant institution of higher learning, is probably 99% nonsense. The facts: the average age of the students was about twelve; most stayed for a year or less; the vast majority spent just enough time to learn a little grammar and math, maybe a few geography facts, maximum. It was an interesting, flawed, complex venture, or at least I think so, or I wouldn't have spent years of my life immersed in it.