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. 

 

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.

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. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

35. and 36. Eliza Anne Bennett and Jane Bennett

Some very Jane Austeny student names this time!

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

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

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

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

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

30. and 31. Olivia and Margaret Barrow

Two girls named Barrow attended the Mordecai school:

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. & 6. Ann and Penelope Albertson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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