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:

181-187. The Freemans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Thanks Shannon S. Christmas!

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.

174. and 175. Ann (Nancy) and Eliza Foote

Hello again! Okay, yes, it has been three years. I'm pretty active on Wikipedia, writing biographies of women, and most days that takes all my keyboard time, but I DO want to return to the blogs too. I no longer have a searchable version of my notes from the Mordecai papers (originally typed into MacWrite II in the early 1990s, so... yeah). But maybe I can still do this. Let's see.

After the big clump of students named Fitts, there are two girls named Foote: Ann (or Nancy) and Eliza, both attached to the adult name "Adam Foote". Here's what I had about them in my dissertation appendix in 1996:

    Ann (Nancy) Foote of Warren County, NC attended the Mordecai School in 1815, 1817, and 1818, for  a total of three non-consecutive sessions. She married in 1831, and died in 1892.

    Eliza Foote was at the Mordecai School from 1814 to mid-1815, for three consecutive sessions.

Not much. And their names aren't so distinctive, but let's give it a go.

Looks like Nancy Foote Brame (c1805 - February 1892), was the daughter of Henry Alexander Foote Jr. and Mary Moss Foote. She married Marcus G. Brame, and lived in Marengo County, Alabama. She was married in 1831, had six children, and was widowed by 1845. In the 1850 United States Census, she was listed head of her household, and owner of seven slaves, in Perry County, Alabama. Ten years later, in the 1860 census, she appears as owner of twelve slaves, living in Lowndes County, Mississippi (just over the border from Alabama).  If that death date of 1892 is correct, she was probably one of the last living Mordecai students.

She doesn't seem to have had a sister named Eliza, but there were a lot of Footes in Warren County, including historian William Henry Foote; there's even an abandoned Foote Cemetery in Warren County.

Next up: the Forts.

166.-173. The Fitts Family (Caroline, Elizabeth, John, Mary, Susan, Susan, Tempe, Winnefred)

Hello, it's been a while! Maybe I was intimidated to return, knowing the Fitts family was next alphabetically. Well I'm feeling ready to face them now. There are eight students named Fitts in the rolls of the Mordecai school that I compiled over twenty years ago. They were the children of Henry Fitts (1778-1847) and Oliver Fitts (1771-1816), Warrenton residents. Oliver Fitts, who served in the NC legislature, sold his house to Jacob Mordecai to use for the school in mid-1811, so several of these children attended school in a building that was once their father's property. Here they are, set in their sibling groups:

Henry and Sarah (Sallie) Duke Fitts' children:
Caroline Fitts (1803-1846), attended the school in 1812
Elizabeth Fitts (1805-1884), attended the school in 1812
Mary Parham Fitts (1799-1856), attended the school 1809-1812
Susan Fitts (1800-?), attended the school 1809-1811
Winnefred Fitts (1802-1870), attended the school in 1812

Oliver and Sarah Harris Fitts' children:
Susan Brown Fitts (1798-1887), attended the school 1809-1812
Temperance Winnefred Fitts (1802-1870), attended the school 1809-1815

There's also a boy named John Fitts (1804-1882), attended the school 1809-1813; might be a cousin?

(Yes, two Susans and two Winnefreds. Temperance Winnefred went by the nickname "Tempe.")

Now, let's get to know more about these students using some online resources:

Caroline Fitts Palmer (1803-1846) married Horace Palmer (1801-1882) in 1838, as his second wife; they had children Sarah (1840-1929) and William (1844-1909) together; Horace Palmer also had four sons from his first marriage. Caroline died in 1846, aged 42 years, in Warren County NC.

Elizabeth Fitts Milam (1805-1884) married Nathan Milam (1802-1870) in 1827.  They had a son Henry Duke Milam (born 1831). They stayed in Warren County, where Elizabeth was widowed in 1870 and died in 1884.

Mary Parham (Polly) Fitts Rogers (1799-1856) married Zachariah Milam in 1819, and married Colonel George Rogers in 1823. With Rogers she had four children, Emily (1823), Thomas (1824), George (1826), and Adeline (1830). They lived in Mecklenburg County VA. She died in 1856, aged 57 years.

Susan Fitts Twitty (1800-after 1854) married John Eldredge Twitty. They had children together: Henry (1822), William (1825), Mary Ann (1827), Caroline (1829), Sallie (1831). Susan Fitts Twitty founded the Sunday School at Hebron Methodist Church in Oakville NC in 1854.

Winnefred Fitts Drake (1802-1870) married Matthew Mann Drake. They had children together: Henry (1828), Mary Ann (1830), William (1832), Sallie (1835), and John Oliver (1837). She died in 1870, aged 68 years, in Warren County. Her son Maj. William Caswell Drake, a Confederate Army veteran, became superintendent of schools in Warren County in 1885. Her daughter Sallie Duke Drake Twitty (1835-1923) was a Civil War widow and a longtime teacher and school principal.

Susan Brown Fitts Ripley Comegys (1798-1887) moved to Alabama in 1816; in 1818 she married Daniel B. Ripley. They had two children together, FitzHenry Ripley and Sarah Ripley. Sarah died and in 1823 Susan was widowed. She visited her former inlaws in Boston in 1826, with FitzHenry in tow.  In 1834 she married again, to Edward Freeman Comegys (1797-1875), a bank officer. They had two sons together, William and Edward. Susan was widowed again in 1875. She died in 1887, aged 88 years, in the home of her only surviving son, Edward, in Denton TX.

Temperance Winnefred Fitts Crawford (1802-1870) was one of the Mordecai's first and longest-running students, attended their school from ages 7 to 13. In 1819 she married William Crawford (1784-1849), a bank president and judge 18 years her senior. They lived in Alabama and had two daughters together, Susan (1821-1863) and Caroline (1823-1841). When she visited Emma Mordecai Myers in 1850 she was a recent widow. She outlived both of her daughters, too, by the time she died in 1867, aged 65 years.

Nearly all of these sisters and cousins had children who married the children of others on this list.

156. Martha Whitmel Falconer Faulcon (1799-?)

There's a student in the Mordecai school rolls named Martha W. Falconer, who attended for both sessions in 1813. (That surname may also appear as Faulkner, Falkener, Falkner, and other variations.) "Alxr. Falconer" appears in the school ledger in July 1813.

Alexander Falconer Jr. (c.1765-1818), born in St. Andrews, Scotland, had about 1000 acres of land in Franklin County, North Carolina, but also had legal training. He attended the Mordecai school's examinations in 1811 and 1812, and was a trustee of the Franklin Academy from at least 1805 to 1815; Moses Mordecai is listed as a witness on Mr. Falconer's will.  In addition to daughter Martha Whitmel Falconer (1799-), he had sons John, Robert, and Alexander, and a daughter Mary Pugh Falconer (c1800-1836).Their mother seems to have been the former Mary (Polly) Harriet Wynne, who also died in the 1810s.

Martha Whitmel Falconer would have turned 14 the year she attended the Mordecai school.  Ten years later, on October 6, 1823, she married Isaac N. Faulcon in Warren County.  They had sons James (1825) Robert (1827), and Jesse (1829). She must have died by 1841, because Isaac married a second time, to a Mrs. Fannie Clanton, that year.  The Faulcons were related by marriage to Alstons, Eatons, Fittses, and other Mordecai families.


A Lucy Faulcon was one of Caroline Mordecai Plunkett's five boarding students in Warrenton in 1828 (Caroline to Ellen, 20 January 1828, Mordecai Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection)--she was no doubt part of the same family as Martha's husband.

Anyone have a deathdate or gravesite for our Martha Falconer Faulcon?

148. Rebecca Edwards Banks (1797-1869)

There's a student named Rebecca Edwards in the rolls of the Mordecai school that I compiled almost twenty years ago.  She seems to have been at the school for three sessions (mid-1813 to the end of 1814), and the name Benjamin Williamson may be attached to her account. A W. N. Edwards is also mentioned with Rebecca Edwards in the ledgers--sometimes Williamson is paying the Mordecais on behalf of both Edwardses. 

W. N. Edwards looks like he must be Weldon Nathaniel Edwards (1788-1873), a Congressman from Warren County whose papers are in Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill.  He married a Mordecai student, Lucy Norfleet; and from correspondence in his papers between Benjamin Williamson and Mr. Robert Park, we know that he was a student at the Warrenton Academy and so was his brother Isaac.  So, local family. In 1814 W. N. was serving his first term in the North Carolina state legislature, having passed the state bar in 1810. 

Weldon N. Edwards had a younger sister Rebecca Edwards (1797-1869).  As "Mrs. Rebecca E. Banks" she's buried in the family cemetery at Poplar Mount, about twelve miles from Warrenton.   Their parents were Priscilla Williamson and Benjamin Edwards.  She married Edmund Banks in July 1819.  And fifty years later she died.  But I don't have much luck finding anything about her life in between.  If anyone knows her details, leave me a note in the comments.

142, 143, 144, 145, 146: The Eatons (Eliza, Julia, Rebecca, Temperance, and Thomas)

There are five students named Eaton in the Mordecai school rolls I compiled in the early 1990s:

Eliza Eaton was at the school in 1813, both sessions.
Julia Eaton was at the school from early 1814 to the end of 1815.
Rebecca Eaton was at the school in 1815, both sessions.
Temperance B. (Tempy) Eaton was at the school from early 1812 the end of 1813.
And Thomas Eaton was there for one session, early 1813.

The presence of a male student named Eaton is a clue that this is a local family.  Or families.... there were a lot of Eatons in Warren County!

William A. Eaton shows up in the ledger paying for Temperance Eaton in 1812 and 1813, so that's a good set of names to start with:
 
Temperance B. Eaton (b. 1803) has the most distinctive name of the bunch, and she turns out to be relatively easy to find online:  She was the daughter of William Allen Eaton (d. 1818) and Mary Williams, and turned 10 the year she was at Warrenton.  Temperance B. Eaton married a lawyer named Lunsford Long Alsobrook in Alabama in 1826, and had one son, Jacob Eaton Alsobrook, born the following year.   She probably died by 1834, when her husband married his second wife, Dorothea Stone.  The Mordecais mentioned her marriage to Alsobrook, in a letter from Caroline to Ellen (29 October 1826, in the Jacob Mordecai Papers at Duke): "Mr. Alsobrook came the father of the one that married Tempy Eaton, he came for Peggy & you never saw anyone more reluctant to go than she was"--so apparently a younger in-law of Tempy's was sent to Caroline's school, too.

The other Eatons are probably not all sisters to Temperance. Julia Eaton's bills were paid by a Thomas Jenkins at the end of her time there, in December 1815.  The next month, John Rust Eaton was paying the bill for Miss Dortch (Betty Dortch, we met her already).   Temperance B. had an older sister Rebecca C. Eaton (1797-1840)--but she would have been 18 during her year at the school, and would it make sense to send the older sister to school after the younger one, without any overlap?  So I don't think this is the right Rebecca Eaton.  But it's not impossible.  (But just in case she's our student, she married in 1820 to John Howson Fenner (1798-1871), and had two children, and died at forty-three, in Halifax NC.)

And Tom Eaton was nobody's sister, of course.  Definitely local, he turns up in Caroline Plunkett's reports from Warrenton after the rest of the family has moved away, in the last 1820s; "Did I tell you Tom Eaton has left his father's again he has been in town several weeks I heard he was exceedingly disrespectful to Mrs. Eaton," she tells Ellen in 1828.  In another 1828 letter (Ellen to Caroline), there's mention of Tom Eaton's poor health, but that might be another Thomas Eaton?

There were a lot of Eatons in Warren County.  But I'm really not having much luck finding the one specific ones who attended the Mordecai school, except Temperance.  Hmmmm.

135. and 136. Edwin and Joseph Drake

I've mentioned already that sometimes, especially early in the school's era, local boys were enrolled at the Mordecai school.  Two boys, Edwin and Joseph Drake, were there a little later:  Edwin was a student at the school from 1813 to mid-1815, five sessions; Joseph was there for all of 1815.  Caswell Drake might be an adult associated with their account in the school ledger.  Caroline Mordecai Plunkett mentions "Joe Drake" in a list of Warrenton friends in an 1829 letter (Caroline to Ellen, 5 April 1829, Jacob Mordecai Papers, Duke).

Drake's a common name, of course, but Caswell stands out as a first name, and we know the family will be Warren County residents (because boys didn't board at the school).  That makes it fairly easy to find this pair of students:  Edwin and Joseph Drake were two of the sons of Rev. Caswell Drake (1776-1860), a Methodist minister in town, who also served as Warren County Clerk of Court (1819-1833).  Their mother was Mourning Drake (1772-1841) (she was a Drake by birth and by marriage); their older brother Matthew Mann Drake married another Mordecai student, Winnifred Fitts (more on her when we get to the Fs).

Joseph J. Drake was born around 1805. Looks like he might have become a physician and married Harriott (Harriet) Eliza Sessums (born around 1815).  They don't seem to have had children together, but in middle age, the couple raised a niece, Lucy Sills Sessums (aka Lucy Drake), whose mother died soon after her birth in Mississippi.  They turn up in the 1850 census living with her father, Dr. Isaac Sessums, in Nash County--maybe Joseph and Isaac practiced medicine together?

Edwin D. Drake (not that Edwin Drake) was apparently also born around 1805, and married Rebecca Edwards (1797-1869), and stayed in Warren County, where he was also Clerk of Court, after his father. They had sons Joseph and Francis born in the 1830s.   He may have been a North Carolina state senator during the Civil War.

Both men kept their names, kept local, and were fairly prominent--but I can't find a death date or gravestone for either one.  They must be out there; if you know, leave a comment.

123 and 124. Eliza Davis and Eliza Davis

I have two students named Eliza Davis listed as Mordecai students in the appendix of my dissertation.  (Ask any teacher, there's often one or two duplicate names in a school, especially if it's relatively limited in the range of cultural traditions represented. I once had two Rachel Howards in different sections of a course I was TAing at Wisconsin, for example.)

Eliza Davis of Richmond VA attended the school in its last year (both sessions of 1818), with a Major Davis as the adult on the account.

Eliza. Davis of Warrenton NC was married by 1817 (so she's not the above Eliza Davis); she attended the school for four sessions, 1812-13, and has Buckner Davis as the adult on her account.

The second girl is easier to identify, because she lived in Warrenton and the Mordecais shared news about her long after her school days.  Betsy Davis Christmas (as she was usually known) was the daughter of Buckner and Nancy Chapman Davis.  She married Thomas H. Christmas (brother of fellow students Jane and Sarah Christmas) in February 1817, apparently against her parents' wishes.  Within months it was already known in the community that he treated her cruelly.  I don't usually include long excerpts from letters here, but in this case, they tell the tale:

18 September 1817, Ellen to Solomon, from Warrenton:  "You will think with us that her disobedience is if possible too soon punished when I tell you that the unfortunate Betsy Davis (that was) has already been treated so cruelly by her husband as to be obliged to fly from his house and seek a protector in the overseer.  He brought her to Dr. D's where she remained a day, withstanding all Mr. C's entreaties to return with him until the evening.  When he cried and made many concessions which I suppose at length prevailed with her. Her poor father has just returned from the Springs with his health much improved.  He was sent for to town and wished to take her home with him but was persuaded not." (Mordecai Family Papers, SHC)

22 June 1820 Ellen to Solomon: (death of Buckner Davis mentioned) "soon after his death his son became deranged, & Betsy was so much afraid that her husband would return & beat her ill that she left her father's house and lives now at P. Davis's plantation under the protection of Steed the overseer!"(Jacob Mordecai Papers, Duke)

3 March 1826, Ellen to Solomon (from Warrenton):  "I told you in my last letter that the shooting match would probably prove fatal to Tom Xmas but he is on the recovery, and Dr. Davis is bailed until court for $10,000."  (Betsy's cousin* Dr. Stephen Davis shot Thomas Christmas, but both men survived.) (Jacob Mordecai Papers, Duke)

(The story of Stephen Davis shooting Thomas Christmas also appeared in the newspapers.)

12 May 1826, Caroline to Ellen, from Warrenton:  "T. Christmas going through the street after his wife with a stick in his hand....some of the ladies begged him to go to bed in one of the downstairs chambers, he abused his wife most shamefully & swore he would kill her.  Mrs. Soln Green got in his lap & said she would sit there to keep him from going....at breakfast he scarcely spoke civilly to anyone & immediately got up in his gig and went off with poor Betsy at full gallop.  After he got home he was very furious breaking everything to pieces, after dinner his wife ran to Mr. Ransom's & begged them to hide her...Betsy in the meanwhile had gone to Mr. Somervilles...It is said he did whip her that night whether true or not I do not know." (Mordecai Family Papers, SHC)

13 January 1827, Caroline to Ellen:  "[Mr. Anderson] told us of Tom Xmas having shot a man, one of the Nunneries' apprentices... The man bled a great deal but is now nearly recovered.  TC was taken up the next day & carried to court."  (Jacob Mordecai Papers, Duke U)

22 January 1827?, Ellen to Caroline, from Virginia: "I have been thinking of her Betsy Xmas ever since I read your letter... You remember the day we came away she said to me, 'I think sometimes no one in the world remembers or cares for me."  Poor girl--poor girl--I hope her husband may be sent away where at least he can abuse her no more." (Mordecai Family Papers, SHC)

 5 March 1827, Caroline to Ellen, from Warrenton:  "You will be sorry to hear that poor Betsy Xmas is in town she came to Judge Hall's on Tuesday night or rather Wednesday morning for she walked all night long and came alone. Sally told me she looked dreadfully & is very much bruised & she has not eaten a mouthful the day she left home... He has sent for her two or three times but I do not believe she has gone yet." (Jacob Mordecai Papers, Duke U)

12 May 1829? 1828?, Caroline to Ellen, from Warrenton:  "Tom Christmas is out of jail his mother & brother stood his securities."

After this point, Caroline Mordecai Plunkett moved out of Warrenton, and there were no longer any members of the family there to report on Betsy Davis Christmas's fate.  However, we can pick up the story in other records.  It looks like Tom Christmas had other incidents of violence within the family; his son killed a brother-in-law,* and Tom himself was convicted of murder in 1839, after killing his wife's cousin Richard Davis.*  A state supreme court case, Christmas v. Mitchell (1845), establishes that both Betsy and Tom were dead by the time the case was brought (involving the ownership and inheritance of slaves in the Davis/Christmas family). We also learn from that court document that their eldest son Leonidas was deaf from birth, and had never received an education.

The specifics are a little fuzzy, but taking several versions together gives a general picture of her life. This family history has Elizabeth Chapman Davis Christmas dying in 1842, the mother of five sons all born between 1817 and c1825. (But I think the birthdate is wrong there. She wasn't born as early as 1780; the same chart has her parents marrying in 1800.) The same family history has Thomas Christmas dying in 1842 as well.  This family history has Elizabeth (Betsy) born c1797, and shows her as Thomas's second wife--it shows him with a first marriage that lasted less than two years.  This one also shows the first brief marriage, with a child born in 1816. This family history has her with eight children, mostly sons, born 1817-1837, and has her a widow for two years before she died in 1842.

*Facts marked with an asterisk above are corrections made by Mr. Shannon Christmas, 9/3/13, a Christmas family historian--see first comment.

I'll come back for the other Eliza Davis soon.  Betsy Chapman Davis Christmas's story is a lot to deal with in one blog post.

UPDATE May 2024: Thank you again to Shannon Christmas for a link (in comments) to a newspaper death notice for Eliza Davis, wife of Thomas H. Christmas, giving 31 January 1830 as her date of death. 

114-115. Margaret and Martha Crittenden Brownlow

Two girls named Crittenden are on my list of Mordecai students:

Margaret B. Crittenden of Halifax County, NC, attended the school for both 1811 sessions.
Martha Maria Crittenden, also of Halifax County NC, attended the school for the first 1811 session.

The word "Crittendens" appears in the school ledger in September 1813, but I don't know the context of that.  There don't seem to be any mentions of them in the family correspondence.

********
Martha Crittenden (1799-1881) had a long association with Warrenton.  From a local history written in the 1920s:

"Mrs. Brownlow was Miss Martha Crittenden of Halifax County.  She was a lady of means and had received the best educational advantages of her day.  She was a boarder at the Mordecai School in Warrenton when the building burned.  At her beautiful home, La Vallee, in Halifax County, she had teachers to conduct the education of her four daughters... Mrs. Brownlow was one of the most remarkable women I ever knew.  Her courage, her indefatigable industry, her capacity along all lines, her cheerful amiability, her patient resignation when adversity came, were subjects of the comment and admiration of all her knew her..."

It goes on like that for a while.  Not sure how one session at the Mordecai school counts as "the best educational advantages of her day," but that's a pretty typical tone of local histories.   Anyway, we learn that in 1817 Martha married the most wonderfully-named Dr. Tippoo Sahib Brownlow of Wilmington (c1794-1879).*  The couple lived in Halifax County, where Tippoo was a trustee of a female seminary located on their La Vallee estate.  In 1849 or 1850, they moved into Warrenton and bought the corner hotel, "perhaps the best known and best kept hotel in the State," according to the same local history (so take that as likely hyperbole).  This is one of their grandsons, James Brownlow Yellowley (1848-1914).

*Sidenote:  There seems to have been a fashion for "exotic" names among some wealthy white North Carolinians of this generation.  Tippoo Sahib Brownlow was obviously named for Tipu Sultan (1749-99), the sultan of Mysore.  Another man from a different family, Hyder Ali Davie (son of the governor of North Carolina) was named for Tipu's father, Hyder Ali, also a sultan of Mysore. 

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I can find much less about Margaret Crittenden of Halifax County.  There's a marriage record that finds her matched with Anthony A. Wyche of Virginia in November 1818.  This family chart has his name as Augustus Wyche, and shows them with three daughters (Margaret, Laura, and Augusta). (There's a grave for Laura Wyche Henarie (1827-1915) in a Catholic cemetery in Texas.  The bio with her listing says she was born in North Carolina, the daughter of Margaret Crittenden and "Emmett" Wyche.  So Mr. Wyche's first name is a bit slippery.)

Margaret may have married twice; Margaret Crittenden Carnal (1800-1871) turns up in a cemetery in Louisiana, with a daughter Augusta Wyche Canfield (1830-1898); if that's the same woman, some sad stories are in that plot.  Augusta Wyche Canfield looks to have had three little daughters on the eve of the Civil War; her husband died in battle, and all three girls were gone by 1867 (the youngest lived to be six years old; the other two, even shorter).  So, did Margaret go to comfort her youngest daughter, widowed and thrice bereaved, in her last years? 

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Note that I still have no parents' names for Margaret and Martha, nor indeed do I know for certain that they were sisters.

UPDATE 5/15/13:  I have heard from a local historian with an interest in the Crittendens.  Margaret and Martha were, indeed, sisters, the daughters of Henry Crittendon of Northhampton County; he died in 1803.  Their mother may have died before that date, when the girls were very little.  My correspondent also confirms that Margaret married a second time, to a Mr. Carnal (whose first name isn't agreed upon in the various records).    Martha Crittenden and Tippoo Sahib Brownlow had four daughters, it seems:  Margaret (Mrs. James B. Yellowly); Elizabeth (Mrs. Benjamin W. Edwards); Rebecca (Mrs. Nathaniel Edwards), and Ellen Brownlow (unmarried), who was a teacher in Warren County, and who (many years after the Civil War) was in possession of a breastpin containing a lock of Robert E. Lee's hair.

93.-94. Jane and Sarah Christmas

Two girls named Christmas are on the rolls for the Mordecai school. Jane Yancy Christmas is listed attending for three sessions, I think (1813a, and both 1815 sessions); Sarah Christmas is there for three other sessions, one overlapping with Jane (1812a, 1813b, 1815a).  Both have Lewis Christmas as the adult name attached to the account.

The Christmas family were locals in Warrenton; there is still a Christmas family historical house standing (barely) in town.  The Mordecais who stayed in the area mention the family's doings in their letters.  One hair-raising report finds a drunken "T. Christmas" chasing his wife through the streets with a stick, breaking down doors and signs, even beating a man in his rage, because Betsy Christmas danced with another man at a party.  (Caroline Mordecai Plunkett to Ellen Mordecai, 12 May 1826, Mordecai Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection; stay tuned, because Betsy Davis Christmas was a Mordecai alumna too--more on here in a few entries.)  A later letter indicates that this man's problems continued:  "Tom Christmas is out of jail, his mother & brother stood his securities." (Caroline Mordecai Plunkett to Ellen, 12 May 1828?, Jacob Mordecai Papers, Duke University)


Well, I can't complain about it being a common surname this time, but it's also not an easy name to google.  Nonetheless, because they're local and Warrenton isn't a big town, they're pretty easy to track down.


Jane Yancy Christmas (c1798-1820) was the daughter of Jane Yancey(1774-1845) and William Christmas (1766-1804); her mother remarried, so Jane also had a stepfather, Captain John Green (to make this family a little more complicated, John's first wife was William Christmas's sister, Martha). Jane was born and died in Warren Co., NC.  Her brother was Lewis Yancey Christmas.*  As their father had died by the time Jane and Sarah attended school, it makes sense that Lewis was the tuition payer in the school ledger. 

Her sister Sarah Christmas married John H. Marshall in 1818.  Sarah sometimes appears as Lucy D. Christmas in family histories, but with the nickname "Sally."  The names Lucy and Lewis could be confusing on siblings, and maybe she preferred a more distinctive sound?  She's "Sally D. Marshall" in a bit of 1820 paperwork about land.  I can't find a record of children or a death date for either Sally or John Marshall; they may have left the area.



*Lewis Y. Christmas freed a group of his slaves, acknowledged to be his own children and grandchildren, in his 1859 will, and left funds for them to be transported safely to a non-slave-holding state (or Mexico).  The will was contested by Lewis's white kin, but it was upheld in court.  The Christmas family, black and white, still has reunions that they call "Christmas in July"--here's a report from a recent gathering. 

92. Elbert Alston Cheek (1803-1871)

Another boy's name turns up in the Mordecai rolls.  Young Elbert Cheek attended the school for both sessions of 1813.  Only local boys attended the school (no boarding room for boys), so we know he was from Warrenton. 

As usual with historical lookups, it's easier to find a man--men owned property, men didn't change their surname on marriage, and men used fewer nicknames (no Martha=Patsy problem).  So it's quick to find that Elbert Alston Cheek was born on Valentine's Day in 1803, eldest child of Robert Tines (or Tynes) Cheek (1772-1841) and Mary Hinton Alston (1782-1864), according to a family Bible.   The Cheeks owned a plantation called "Shady Oaks" outside Warrenton, and Robert T. Cheek ran a hotel in town.  By the time he attended the Mordecai school as a ten year old, Elbert had a younger brother and three younger sisters (another younger brother died in infancy).  Four more brothers and another sister arrived after Elbert's time at the school.  He married Mary Sue Hayes (b. 1803) in 1825, in Warrenton; they had nine children together between 1827 and 1851.  Their adult children lived in Mississippi and Kentucky, with a few staying near Warrenton.   (Same details given here, with slightly different dates in some instances.)  Elbert Cheek is mentioned in the 1924 local history "Glimpses of Old Warrenton," in passing (as the father of a local Civil War veteran, Col. William H. Cheek--more about William here).

(Robert Tynes Cheek pulled a bit of a stunt for genealogists:  he left an extra $500 in his will to each grandson named Robert.  So there were four grandsons named Robert, including Elbert's oldest son.)

Found an obituary for an Elbert Alston Cheek V, who died young in 2008--must be some kind of kin, because that's not a common set of names.

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

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.

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

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).

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

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.

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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.