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

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

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

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

 ***

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

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

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

 ***

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

***

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

199, 200. Claudia J. Gilmour Johnson and M. Gilmour

We are reaching the milestone of the 200th name on the list (more or less, considering--some of the students may be listed with two different names, because of handwriting or name variations).  The roster of Mordecai students I compiled in 1996 has two named Gilmour: Claudia Gilmour of Halifax County, North Carolina, who was at the school in its first session 1809, and then again from second session 1810 to second session 1813; with William Gilmour as the adult name on the account; and M. Gilmour, who was only there in 1809.

Even in 1996, I knew enough about Claudia J. Gilmour Johnson to give her a paragraph in the "Brief Biographical Sketches" appendix of my dissertation. She married Haywood Johnson in 1819 at Petersburg, Virginia; Rachel Mordecai apparently suspected that the match was against their family's wishes. They lived on a farm outside Warrenton, and were friends with Caroline Mordecai Plunkett there in the 1820s. They had a son, Arthur Gloster Johnson. Like a lot of other Warrentonians and Mordecai alumnae, she moved to La Grange, Tennessee, with her family, and helped run a girls' school there. She died by 1835.

So, that's a pretty good start! Let's see what we can find online now.

Eh, not that much, really. I thought her somewhat unusual first name and all the geographic details would help, but "Johnson" is a tough last name to work with. Claudia Gilmour may have continued as a student at Raleigh Academy after leaving Warrenton; a student with that name excelled in drawing and music at the Raleigh Academy examinations in November 1815.

But as for her birthdate? Grave site? Parents? I'm coming up blank. And that "M. Gilmour" might be a sibling, but without the rest of Claudia's picture, it's hard to say. Maybe you know more about these 19c. "Gilmour Girls", blog reader?

179. Mary (Polly) Fowler (1799-1850)

There was one student named Fowler in the rolls of the Mordecai school. Mary (Polly) Fowler (1799-1850) was born in Virginia, and attended the school during its first three years, from 1809 to the end of 1811. She married Archibald Daniel Burrows in 1820. They lived in Warren County, North Carolina, where the 1830 federal census found their household included 9 "free white persons" and two women who were enslaved. They had at least five children: William, Letitia (Bobbitt), Mary Rebecca, James, and Tom. Their youngest, Mary Rebecca, was born the same year Archibald died, in 1835. Polly Fowler died in 1850.

176, 177, 178. Charlotte Fort (Gorman), Mary Ann Fort (Mason), and Martha Fort (Andrews)

 There are three girls named Fort in the rolls of the Mordecai school that I assembled in the early 1990s:

Charlotte Fort attended the school in both sessions of 1811.

Mary Ann Fort attended the school for three years, from early 1816 until the end of 1818. She was from Hicksford (now Emporia), Virginia, with Lewis Fort as the adult name on her account. She married in 1821.

Martha (or Patsy) Fort attended the school for two years, from early 1810 to the end of 1811.

Mary Ann Fort Mason (1803-1870) I was able to learn about in the early 1990s, because she married someone fairly prominent, and because she was at the school long enough to be mentioned in the Mordecai letters. Rachel Mordecai called her parents (Lewis Fort and Eliza Harris Coleman Fort)  "quite diverting people" and noted that her mother wrote "droll letters". Her planter family held slaves. At age 18, in 1821, she married John Young Mason, whose sister was a Mordecai student. They had at least eight children together, and her husband became a congressman, and an ambassador, and Secretary of the Navy, and Attorney General of the United States--so she was a busy political wife, until he died in 1859, in Paris. At least one of her sons (Simon Blount Mason) served in the Confederate army during the Civil War. She died in 1870, in Virginia.

Now what can some online searching reveal about the other two Fort girls?  Charlotte Ann Fort married John S. Gorman in Wake County, North Carolina in 1818--the age/timing is exactly right for that to be the Mordecai student. AND she had a sister Martha Fort. Aha! So we have them.

Charlotte Ann Fort Gorman (1802-1883), daughter of James Fort and Chloe Powell Fort, married John Spear Gorman in Wake County in 1818. They had at least one child, Annie, in 1832. Charlotte was widowed when J. S. Gorman died in 1836. She died in 1883, aged 81 years.

Martha W. Fort Andrews (1797-1876) was Charlotte's older sister. She married Cullen Andrews Jr. in Wake County in 1816, and they had ten children born between 1817 and 1837. The Andrews family lived in Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama. Her husband died in Texas in 1857. Martha Fort Andrews died in 1876, aged 79, in Columbus, Mississippi.

All three Fort girls were Southern widows in their 60s when they lived through the American Civil War.

163, 164. Eliza and Harriet Field (and maybe 165. Another Eliza Field?)

Two students named Field are in the rolls of the Mordecai school, both from Mecklenburg, Virginia, both among the first students when the school opened in 1809. Eliza Field and Harriet Field were both at the school for six sessions, on and off between 1809 and 1813 for Harriet, 1814 for Eliza.

These might be Harriet and Eliza Field, the daughters of judge Hume Riggs Field (1772-1831) and his first wife Millicine (or Mildred) Young Field (1782-1827), of Mecklenburg Virginia.  The dates might not work out, though: Harriet H. Field was born in 1800--so she was nine the year the school opened, that makes sense. Eliza, however, was younger--born in 1806--maybe too much younger to be a Mordecai student in 1809.

If Harriet's sister Eliza was the Eliza Field at the Mordecai school in 1809, she would have been three years old, and the youngest known student. So I suspect she was the Eliza who attended after 1812; but a different Eliza Field, maybe a cousin, might have been there in 1809 and early 1810. The name isn't so unusual, anyway. Assuming the daughters of Hume and Millicine Field attended the Mordecai school...

Harriet H. Field (1800-1850) married Charles Perkins in about 1821, and they had at least one child, Marietta. She was widowed around 1828, and died in Tennessee in 1850, aged 50 years.

Eliza Mildred Field (1806-?) married Charles Perkins' brother, Constantine Perkins (1792-1836) in about 1824, and they had at least three children, Constantine, Ann Eliza, and Virginia in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Her husband served in the Alabama legislature, and as the state's attorney general.

162. Eliza Geddy Fenner Vaulx (1799-1845)

There's a student in the rolls of the Mordecai school named Eliza Fenner. She was at the school for a year, two sessions, mid-1810 to mid-1811. That's all I've got. But it turns she's not hard to find with just that bare minimum of detail.

Eliza Geddy Fenner, the daughter of Dr. Richard Fenner (1758-1828), and his wife Ann McKinnie Geddy Fenner (1769-1852). Fenner was the first president of the North Carolina Medical Society. Eliza Geddy Fenner was born in Franklin County, North Carolina, in 1799, which would make her exactly the right age, class, and location for a child at the Mordecai school in 1810.

Eliza Geddy Fenner married James Vaulx (1783-1862).  They had four daughters and a son; two of the daughters died in childhood. They moved to Tennessee, where Eliza is buried (here's her Find a Grave site).  Her son James Junius Vaulx became an Episcopal clergyman in Arkansas and briefly in West Palm Beach, Florida.

And Eliza Geddy Fenner Vaulx was apparently the great-great-grandmother of Arizona senator John McCain, through her granddaughter Katherine Davey Vaulx McCain (1878-1959).

157. Patsy Farrar

There's a student named Patsy Farrar on the rolls of the Mordecai school that I compiled in the early 1990s.  She was only at the school for one session (the first half of 1810). I don't have a hometown, a parent name, or any other information.

First things:  Patsy was generally a nickname for Martha, not for Patricia, as it often is today. So we can probably assume she was named Martha Farrar. And 1810 was early enough in the school's run that she was probably from NC or VA--not farther afield. Maybe more likely Virginia, because Farrar's Island was an early settlement in the Richmond area (patriarch William Farrar was born in Yorkshire in 1583 and died in Virginia in 1637--that's pretty early for an Englishman in Virginia).

This Martha Farrar (b. 1794) was from Rockingham County, NC. She would have been 16 while she was at the Mordecai school--older than most, but not impossible.

There may be better candidates; no reason to think the Rockingham Martha is definitely the Mordecai student. Anyone know more?

155. Harriet Exum

There was a student at the Mordecai school named Harriet Exum, for five sessions, non-continuous--she was there in 1810, 1811, and 1813.  A "Capt. Exum" is mentioned in 1811 and 1813 in the school ledger, and is presumably the adult on her account.



Exum is a fairly distinctive name, but it's found as a first and a last name in Southern history, and goes back to the seventeenth century in Virginia.  A Col. Benjamin Exum was a Dobbs County delegate to the state convention of North Carolina in 1776; he died about 1788, so Harriet probably wasn't his daughter, but maybe a granddaughter or niece?



Anyway, not having any luck finding a good Harriet candidate out there. She was probably from the Exum family based in Edgecombe County, probably kin to the Revolutionary colonel.  Anyone have leads?

153, 154. Jane Evans and Lydia Anna Evans

Two Evans girls were with the Mordecai school when it opened in 1809: Jane Evans was there from 1809 until mid-1811, and her sister Lydia Anna Evans (sometimes written as Lydianna, which might reflect how it was pronounced) was there until the end of 1810.  They came from Oakland, an estate near Petersburg, Virginia, and had Dr. George Evans as the name attached to their accounts in the school ledger.  The Mordecai family discussed the Evans girls in letters, beginning even before their arrival:

"The house is full of girls and... in a few weeks Lidyanna & Jane Evans will come Mrs. Johnson is now at Oakland and they will return with her." (Ellen to Samuel, 16 April 1809, Jacob Mordecai Papers at Duke)

The family were, obviously from their name, Welsh in ancestry. The girls' father Dr. George Evans (c1755-1822).  He moved South from Pennsylvania to Virginia after the Revolutionary War, in which he served as a surgeon.  Their mother was the former Mary Peyton (d. 1818).  The girls' much older sister Mary Evans married William R. Johnson, a notable Warrenton resident, in 1803. (That's the Mrs. Johnson mentioned above and below.)

The marriage announcement of Governor William Miller and Lydiana Evans
Weekly Raleigh Register (June 7, 1816): 3.
From Newspapers.com

 

Lydia Anna Evans (d. 1818) left the Mordecai school at the end of 1810; she married almost six years later, to William Miller, at Chesterfield, Virginia, in May 1816 (see announcement above). William Miller was a Warrenton man, well known to the Mordecais, but at the time of the wedding he was well-known throughout the state--because he was the Governor of North Carolina from 1814 to 1817. (So a Mordecai girl became the first lady of North Carolina while the school was still running.)  Sadly for Lydia Anna, the glamor was very short-lived: she was soon pregnant, had her son William Jr., and she died in March 1818.  (William Jr. soon joined his mother; he only lived to be five years old.) Her widower Governor Miller died in 1825, traveling through Florida on a diplomatic mission to Guatemala.

The Mordecais commented on Lydia Anna's death, of course: 

"We have just received intelligence of the death of Mrs. Miller (Lydia Anna Evans)--So young, so sweet, & so lovely, who can think without pain of her being this early nipped in her bloom. The last letter from Mrs. Johnson mentioned her being much better, & her husband had come out to prepare for her removal to their intended place of residence. Her last illness must have been short for her had not received intelligence of it, & was still absent, when the final event took place." (Rachel to Samuel, 22 February 1818, Jacob Mordecai Papers at Duke)

"The last visitation on the Evans family is a most melancholy one and you are so prone to feel another's woe, that exclusive of the attachment you had for Mrs. M., your sympathy for them must be strongly excited..." (Samuel to Rachel, 1 March 1818, same as above)

"A letter from Mrs. Johnson to Mary mentions that the amiable deceased had left to her the care of her infant, from this I conclude that she was sensible of her approaching fate." (Rachel to Samuel, 1 March 1818, same as above)

Jane Maria Evans:  No sooner had Lydia Anna died, than her sister Jane Evans, also a Mordecai alumna, followed; the Mordecais shared the news:

"You will unite with me in deep & sincere concern when I acquaint you with the new misfortune of the devoted family of poor Dr. Evans--Jane is no more, she expired on the 12th of this month, Lydia on the 13th of last.  Her health had for some time been delicate, and the shock proved too severe for her to bear. Poor Mrs. Johnson appears, as she must be, overwhelmed with grief. Does it not seem indeed too much for human nature to support? I fear it will be impossible for her poor mother to strugle against such an accumulated load of sorrow. When I think of that family as we knew it a few years ago, so cheerful, so happy, so pleased with one another, the girls so gentle, so lovely, and blooming..." (Rachel to Samuel, 22 March 1818, same as above)

"The succession of misfortune in the Evans' family is enough to excite commiseration even in those who feel less interest in their happiness than we do. I had not heard of Jane's death until you mentioned it." (Samuel to Rachel, 29 March 1818, same as above)

But there was still more tragedy for the Evans family in 1818.  That summer, the mother of Lydia and Jane, Mary Peyton Evans, also died. "The unfortunate old lady had never left her chamber since the death of Jane, but has borne her own severe sufferings with entire patience & resignation. She may indeed be said to have fallen victim of a broken heart." (Rachel to Samuel, 26 July 1818, same as above)

Death dates and circumstances are thus well-established; I still don't know when either student was born, or where they might have been buried (I assume a private family plot near the family home at Oakland?).  Does anyone know?

100. Anna Nesfield Cochran Green (1795-1842)

Number 100--and we're still in the Cs!?!  Indeed.

Anna (or Ann) Cochran (or Cochrane) was among the first students at the Mordecai school, arriving in 1809 and staying to the end of 1810.  When she didn't return in 1811, Rachel Mordecai commented, "I fear it will be long ere we shall find equal sense, solidity, & sweetness combined."  She may have gone on to Mrs. Rivardi's for 'polishing' after leaving Warrenton, but the Mordecais kept close tabs on her, so the outlines of her story are well-known.  By 1817, she was married to James Severn Green and living in Wilmington; when Rachel Mordecai moved to Wilmington to marry in the 1820s, she and Anna Cochran Green were friends.  Anna was frequently pregnant or newly delivered in those years, according to Rachel's letters.  When Mordecai alumna Jane Vance Dickinson died in 1828, Anna was among the three close friends to receive a mourning ring.  Anna's daughter Mary married in 1834, and was planning to move West.

So that's what I could learn before 1996.  What's available about Anna Cochran Green online, sixteen years later?

Looks like Anna Cochran was born in 1795, daughter of Robert Cochran Jr. (1772-1842) and the former Ann Maria de Keyser, in Wilmington.  Her name is often found with a middle name, Nesfield or Nessfield--a name that resembles that of a Cochran relative, Ann Nessfield Steele.  Anna's father was Collector for the Port of Wilmington, probably a fairly prominent job.  She married Major James Severin Green in June 1815, in Wilmington.  James Green's niece, Eliza Bradley, was a Mordecai student too (she arrived at Warrenton in 1811, just after Anna left).  Anna and James Green had at least nine children, born between June 1816 and September 1837--more than 21 years of childbearing.  We know she outlived at least one of her children, William, who died at age 14 in 1840.  Anna died in 1842, age 46; her youngest child, Sally, would have been just five years old that year.  Here is Anna's tombstone (and James's) in Wilmington (though it has her born in 1794 instead of 1795).  James outlived Anna by 20 years.

There is a portrait of Ann Nesfield Cochran Green, c. 1820, and a silver mug engraved with her name and birthdate (October 10, 1795), in a private collection in Wilmington.  (It's mentioned in the notes of Linnard R. Hobler, "Pure, Bright, and Solid:  Raising a New Standard for John McMullin and his Silver," a Master's Thesis from 2011, Corcoran School of Art.)  I found this little thumbnail version of the portrait on Ancestry.com (at right)--the first image on this blog of a Mordecai student.

So, happy 100!  We're about 20% through the rolls now. ;)

69. and 70. Maria Burt and William Burt

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.