83., 84., 85. Esther, Mary, and Winnefred Carr

I have three girls named Carr in my records for the Mordecai school:

Esther Carr of Pitt County, NC, attended the school from early 1813 to mid 1814 (so, three sessions). Elias Carr was the adult associated with her account.

Mary Carr attended the school in early 1815, and then for all of 1817 (so, again, three sessions, but these weren't consecutive).

Winnefred Carr attended the school for two sessions, early 1814 and early 1815 (two non-consecutive sessions). She was also from Pitt County with Elias Carr as the adult on her account.

Elias Carr appears in several places in the school ledger, including a mention in January 1814 of him paying tuition for his "daughters"--so that establishes the relationship between Elias, Esther, and Winnefred Carr, at minimum. He also appears making a payment in January 1817, so he may also be the parent or relative of Mary Carr. (But he's in the ledger again in April 1818, when none of the girls above was enrolled, so I won't assume that. Still, it's a start.) He's clearly not this Elias Carr, though there must be a relationship there, and thus to the girls at the Mordecai school.

And there is. The Governor Elias Carr had among his aunties a Winnefred Carr and an Esther Johnston Carr, and yes, a Mary Carr. Their father was Elias Carr (1775-1822) and their mother was Cecelia (or Celia) Johnston. (Winnefred was named for Elias's mother, and Esther was named for Cecelia's mother.)

Esther Johnston Carr (1798-1864), then, was 15 when she arrived as a student at the Mordecai school, and she stayed till she was 16 in 1814. In 1816, she married a local man, Allen Blount (1789-1828), at her father's house. The couple had six children between 1817 and 1827, five boys and a girl. Esther was widowed in her early 30s, and died in 1864, in the same county where she was born. Here's her tombstone.

Winnefred "Winnie" Williams Carr (1800-1855) followed her older sister to the Mordecai school in 1814, when she was 13. In 1822 she married a Dr. John Thomas Eason (1796-1864). They had ten children together, born between 1822 and 1843. The couple moved to Sumter County, Alabama, before the last two children were born (so, probably in the late 1830s), and Winnefred died there at age 54, having survived at least two of her children (William died at age 17 in 1842, and Elizabeth died at age 20 in 1853).

Mary Carr (1802-1822?) followed her two older sisters to the Mordecai school in 1815, overlapping with Winnefred for one session. She was about 13 when she arrived there. and 15 when she left. In early 1822, she married Josiah E. Fowle (1791-1822?) of Massachusetts, but apparently (according to family tradition) faced her father's "violent opposition" to the marriage, and was disinherited. The story continues that Josiah was killed in September 1822 when he was captured by pirates in the West Indies, while returning from the couple's honeymoon there. She may also have been "lost at sea" in the same incident, as some accounts tell their tale. If so, she was just 20 years old at her death. She doesn't always turn up in lists of Elias Carr's descendants, perhaps because she had no children in her short life, thus no descendants.

(Note that both Winnefred and Mary married in the year their father died.)

Three Mordecai students, solid identifications on all of them. Only the fate of Mary seems even slightly uncertain.

48, 49, 50, 51: The Boyds

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.

42. Martha Bond (1796-1845)

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.

38. Eliza A. T. Blake

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.