32. and 33. Ann and Mary E. Baskerville

Two students named Baskerville attended the Mordecai school:

32. Ann Baskerville of Mecklenburg Co., Virginia, was at the school in 1810 (both sessions), then from 1812 to 1814 (five sessions), then from 1815-1816 (two sessions). So there were two breaks in her time at the school.

33. Mary E. Baskerville, also of Mecklenburg Co., Virginia, was at the school for both sessions of 1810.

Both girls have William Baskerville as the adult attached to their accounts. That makes their identity fairly easy to pin down: William Rust Baskerville (1756-1814) of Lombardy Grove, Mecklenburg County, was a merchant and planter, married to Mary Eaton (1763-1842), daughter of Col. Charles Eaton of Warren Co., NC. Mary and Anne are among their children.

So, adding in what can be learned from online family histories:

32. Anne "Nancy" Baskerville (b. 1800) first attended the school with her older sister Mary; then for a few more years, returning home around the time of her father's passing; she enrolled for a few more sessions after he died. Ann Baskerville married Thomas Turner (b. 1795) of Warren County, and they had at least two children together (Mary Veal Turner and James Turner). Her daughter Mary Veal Turner seems to be named for one of Nancy's Mordecai classmates, Mary Veale, who was at the school in 1812, 1813, and 1814. (Interesting detail: Thomas's brother Daniel Turner was married to the daughter of Francis Scott Key.) Anne Baskerville Turner must have died very young, because Col. Thomas Turner is listed as having a second wife that he married in 1822.

33. Mary Eaton Baskerville (b. 1795) was the elder of the sisters, and indeed one of the elder Mordecai students; she married Patrick Hamilton (b. 1789) around 1810 (presumably after she left the school that year). Patrick was a recent arrival from Scotland. The Hamiltons had at least seven children together (William, Mary, Charles, Robert, James, Isabella Alston, and Alexander), at Burnside NC.

And to make the family histories a little more complicated--or maybe a little less complicated, in a sense--in 1836 Nancy's daughter Mary V. Turner (d. 1872) married Mary's son, William Baskerville Hamilton (d. 1875). A later William Baskerville Hamilton, 1908-1972, was a history professor at Duke University.

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.

29. Martha Barnes

Another sparse entry in the rolls of the Mordecai school. Martha Barnes attended the school for one year, 1810. Not much else to go on--no hometown, no adult name attached to the account. The student's name isn't even that uncommon.

One possible candidate, from looking around the family history pages:

Martha "Patsey" Barnes, Mrs. Samuel Gann Jr.; b. 31 March 1796 in Rockingham Co. NC; one of the nine children of Revolutionary War-veteran Chesley Barnes and Mary Means; married c.1819, same county; died c.1870. Generation and location are all dead on. But did Martha Barnes Gann witness a document in 1852 "by mark"--not by signature? Could a girl have spent a year at the Mordecai school without being able to sign her own name forty-two years later? Probably a strike against this as a match, but not a deal-breaker; it could still be her. Or not.

28. Helen Barclift

A student named Helen Barclift attended the Mordecai school for two terms in 1814. No hometown, no adult name attached to the account. Slim details to go on.

BUT, checking for the name anyway, for any plausible Helen Barclift, I find one! In his 1807 will, Ur Barclift of Edenton NC (somehow part of an extended family of Barclifts in that part of the state) names his friend "Henry A. Donaldson of Edenton" as executor and as guardian of her daughter, Helen Barclift. There were three girls named Donaldson who attended the Mordecai school, all of them from Fayetteville; not a very uncommon name, but that gives some reason to think this might be the girl. So, let's look at her further. Or rather, at her guardian:

Henry A. Donaldson (1782-1870s) was a merchant based in Edenton. In 1807, he was newly married to Elizabeth McDonald. After that date, he turned to the textiles industry, building a mill in Edgecombe County that began operating in 1820. He designed and sold another cotton mill for Fayetteville, and soon became "chief promoter" of the Fayetteville Manufacturing Company. He moved to Wake County in 1830, then to Mobile AL around 1835. He became a banker there, and eventually moved to Texas, where he died after the Civil War.

Or maybe two different Henry A. Donaldsons are being conflated at that biography? Because the textile mill Donaldson was apparently from Rhode Island, and moved to NC in 1817. But there's definitely an Edenton marriage record for a Henry A. Donaldson in 1807. So... possibly not the same guy? Hmmm... and anyway, what ever happened to Helen Barclift, whichever Donaldson was her guardian?

There was a Helen Donaldson who married Edward G. Benners in Mobile AL in 1845. Seems a bit late for her to be marrying for the first time, given the general trend of the Mordecai cohort, but not impossible; and the location matches the biography above. The name would suggest she had taken her guardian's name sometime after 1814? This is getting pretty far beyond what we really know; it's only a possible lead. (Edward G. Benners was brother of Augustus Benners, whose plantation journal beginning in the 1850s and carrying through Reconstruction was published last year.)

26. and 27. Lucy Ballard and Rebecca Ballard

Two students with the surname Ballard attended the Mordecai school: Lucy Ballard was on the school rolls for all of 1810, and Rebecca Ballard was on the school rolls for all of 1814. Not much to go on there--no hometown, no adult's name attached to the account, nothing.

But... there is a rather large extended family of Ballards in Virginia in the early 19th century. And Lucy was a name used frequently in that family, as was Rebecca to a lesser extent. For example, this Rebecca would be about the right age and location to be a Mordecai student in 1814:

"Larkin BALLARD and Elizabeth GAINES were married on 13 Jan 1786 in Orange County, Virginia. Children were: Hiram BALLARD, Howard O BALLARD, Henry BALLARD, Humphrey BALLARD, Rebecca BALLARD, Nancy BALLARD, Catherine BALLARD, Sarah BALLARD"

We don't have any much to go on at this point, but that's what the blog is for--maybe you've got a Lucy (Lucretia? Louisa?) Ballard in your genealogy project who was born 1795-1800 in North Carolina or Virginia. Maybe she had a younger sister or cousin named Rebecca Ballard who would have been born more like 1800-1805. If so, tell us more about them!

ETA 3/28/12: I've heard from a family historian who has another very good candidate for this Rebecca Ballard--her grandmother's grandmother was Rebecca Taylor Ballard Woodcock, born 1800 (or possibly 1804) in Halifax Co. NC. That would make her 14 (or possibly 10) during her year at the Mordecai school, which is pretty typical. She married a doctor from Philadelphia in 1818, and they lived in Mobile, Alabama; they had at least four children, possibly as many as nine; she died in 1865.

25. Ann Baker

A student named Ann Baker attended the Mordecai school for two years, 1814 and 1815; she's listed as being from Halifax, Virginia, with Leonard Baker as the adult attached to her account.

"Ann Baker" seems a very ordinary name; but "Leonard" is fairly distinctive for early 19c. Virginia. Turns out, there was a Leonard Baker in Halifax Co., Virginia, who performed many marriages 1780-1815. He's said to have died in 1818. This is one of those cases where someone's name appears often in the genealogical record, but only because he's officiating at the weddings of others.

BUT... he seems to have used the nickname "Leo." Which opens up some other avenues of identification. As Leo Baker, he's listed as "pastor of the Musterfield church" and brother of Rev. Elijah Baker (1742-1798), also a preacher in Virginia. According to James Barnett Taylor's Lives of Virginia Baptist Ministers (1838), the Baker brothers were of "humble parentage," born in Lunenberg Co.

Still no way to know for sure whether Ann Baker was Leonard's daughter or a niece or even a granddaughter.

23. and 24. Mary Jane Bacon and Petronella Bacon

There are two girls surnamed Bacon in the Mordecai rolls, and they appear to be sisters:

Mary Jane Bacon and P. Nelly C. Bacon, both from Hendersonville, Virginia, both attended the Mordecai school for the same two years, from the beginning of 1816 to the end of 1817. The adult's name on both their accounts is Major Tyree G. Bacon.

Now, the name "Tyree Bacon" may seem unusual enough to make a search easy. Not so! The first name Tyree is used often through generations of Bacons in Virginia. (There's even a present-day Tyree Bacon with a MySpace page.) But Col. Tyree Glenn Bacon (1772-1830), a War of 1812 veteran, lived at Bacon's Hall in Crewe, Nottoway County. His wife was Mary Lamkin (1774-1846).

So, here are the students' stories based on what we can find about them online:

Mary Jane Catherine Bacon (b. 1804) married a Jesse H. Leath (d. 1846) in 1832, when she was 28. Mary Bacon Heath had eight children: James, Branch, Tyree, Joseph, George William (d. 1922), Virginia, Harriett, and Sarah. Mary lost her husband and her mother the same year. She inherited Bacon's Hall as specified in her father's will. All her sons were wounded as Confederate soldiers in the Civil War.

Mary's sister Petronella Ann Graghead Bacon (whose name might have been written "P. Nelly C." by the Mordecais--especially if she was called "Nelly"; Graghead is sometimes written as "Craghead" even in family records) was born 1802, according to this transcript of a family bible. She was apparently named for her mother's sister Petronella Lamkin Graghead. She married a Col. John Marshall in June 1821, when she was 19.

Oh, and "the community of Hendersonville no longer exists."