188, 189. America Fuqua and Saluda Fuqua

Well, nobody can say these two students had common names! America Fuqua and Saluda Fuqua were students at the Mordecai School in its later years, 1816 to 1817 for America, and 1816 to 1818 for Saluda. The adult name attached to their account is Samuel Fuqua. Also, my dissertation appendix says that Saluda was born in 1805, and died in 1886. So that's a lot to start with, for a change... 

America and Saluda were the daughters of Captain Samuel Fleming Fuqua (1787-1820) and Prudence Ford Fuqua (1787-1813). A few years after their mother died, their father placed them at the Mordecai School. 

Saluda Baker Fuqua (1805-1886) was born in Charlotte County, Virginia, when both of her parents were 18 years old. She was 16 when she married William Henry Browne Christian in 1821, the year after her father died. The Christians had six children. After she was widowed, she married again in 1847, to William Harloe Watson, and had one more child. She lived in Douglas County, Kansas, in her later years, and died there in 1886. Her eldest daughter America Fuqua Christian (born 1824) married Daniel Woodson, who was the acting Territorial Governor of Kansas several times in the 1850s.

Saluda's younger sister America E. Fuqua (born 1810) was a student at the Mordecai school when she was a small child of 6 and 7 years, but her older sister was also there. She died young, before 1830.

These girls had another sister, Evaline Ann Frances Fuqua (1807-1832) But I don't see any evidence of her attending the school, and she may have had chronic health issues. Evaline lived with Saluda and W. H. B. Christian in her last years. Their only brother, La Marquis Washington Fuqua (1810-1846, known as Marc) also died young.

A last note: The source of America's first name is obvious, but Saluda's name origin may be less so. Saluda River, Saluda Mountains, Saluda, North Carolina, and Saluda County, South Carolina, are all Southern placenames, but not very close to where Saluda Fuqua was born or lived. (There is also a Saluda, Virginia.) But the name seems to come from a Cherokee word, Tsaludiyi, meaning "green corn place".

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.

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.