180. Nancy Franklin (1795-1874?)

There is a student named Nancy Franklin in the roster of Mordecai school students in my 1996 dissertation. It says she was at the school in 1814.

I suspect she might be this Nancy Franklin: Ann P. Franklin (1795-1874), daughter of Jesse Franklin and Maria Perkins Franklin. Jesse Franklin was governor of North Carolina from 1820 to 1821. When Nancy was at school, Jesse Franklin had just finished a term in the United States Senate. She married William Slade in Surry County, NC, in 1821? That's a perfect year for an 1814 student to be marrying, in North Carolina. She was later known as Nancy P. Slade, lived in Rockingham till at least 1870, and had at least five children. Her husband William Slade died in 1865. (1850, 1860, 1870 censuses, via Ancestry) 

Besides the good timing, there was also a student named Helen B. Slade at the Mordecai school, also in 1814, and also from Rockingham. So if Mrs. Slade is, indeed, the Mordecai student Nancy Franklin, she married into a classmate's family, which is pretty typical. 

If we have the right Nancy Franklin, one of her sons, Jesse Franklin Slade, died at the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War.  Her two daughters died before that, both in their 20s. And two of her sons survived her, Thomas Howard Slade and William B. Slade.

And if this is the right Nancy Franklin, here's her grave in Caswell County, North Carolina.

176, 177, 178. Charlotte Fort (Gorman), Mary Ann Fort (Mason), and Martha Fort (Andrews)

 There are three girls named Fort in the rolls of the Mordecai school that I assembled in the early 1990s:

Charlotte Fort attended the school in both sessions of 1811.

Mary Ann Fort attended the school for three years, from early 1816 until the end of 1818. She was from Hicksford (now Emporia), Virginia, with Lewis Fort as the adult name on her account. She married in 1821.

Martha (or Patsy) Fort attended the school for two years, from early 1810 to the end of 1811.

Mary Ann Fort Mason (1803-1870) I was able to learn about in the early 1990s, because she married someone fairly prominent, and because she was at the school long enough to be mentioned in the Mordecai letters. Rachel Mordecai called her parents (Lewis Fort and Eliza Harris Coleman Fort)  "quite diverting people" and noted that her mother wrote "droll letters". Her planter family held slaves. At age 18, in 1821, she married John Young Mason, whose sister was a Mordecai student. They had at least eight children together, and her husband became a congressman, and an ambassador, and Secretary of the Navy, and Attorney General of the United States--so she was a busy political wife, until he died in 1859, in Paris. At least one of her sons (Simon Blount Mason) served in the Confederate army during the Civil War. She died in 1870, in Virginia.

Now what can some online searching reveal about the other two Fort girls?  Charlotte Ann Fort married John S. Gorman in Wake County, North Carolina in 1818--the age/timing is exactly right for that to be the Mordecai student. AND she had a sister Martha Fort. Aha! So we have them.

Charlotte Ann Fort Gorman (1802-1883), daughter of James Fort and Chloe Powell Fort, married John Spear Gorman in Wake County in 1818. They had at least one child, Annie, in 1832. Charlotte was widowed when J. S. Gorman died in 1836. She died in 1883, aged 81 years.

Martha W. Fort Andrews (1797-1876) was Charlotte's older sister. She married Cullen Andrews Jr. in Wake County in 1816, and they had ten children born between 1817 and 1837. The Andrews family lived in Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama. Her husband died in Texas in 1857. Martha Fort Andrews died in 1876, aged 79, in Columbus, Mississippi.

All three Fort girls were Southern widows in their 60s when they lived through the American Civil War.

161. Elizabeth Margaret Felder Pou (1806-1853)

There was a student named Eliza Margaret Felder in the rolls of the Mordecai school.  She attended from mid-1816 to mid-1817, and she was from South Carolina. The adult on her account was John Felder.

An Elizabeth Margaret Felder turns up pretty quickly in googling; she was born in 1806 in Orangeburg SC, which would make her age 10 and 11 while she was at the Mordecai school--seems like a perfect fit.  Her parents were Samuel Felder and Ann Horger, first cousins, both of them born in South Carolina.  Eliza's grandparents and great-grandparents were born in Switzerland and Germany. Samuel died in 1813, so the John Felder on her account was likely her older half-brother John Myers Felder (1782-1851). While Eliza was in school, John Myers Felder was serving in the South Carolina Senate.

She married lawyer Joseph Pou (1805-1888; the name was pronounced like "Pew") in 1827, and they had about seven children, two daughters and five sons. She died in Talbotton GA, in 1853, age 47.  Here's her tombstone in the Talbotton City Cemetery.  Her husband remarried.

Eliza's grandson, Edward William Pou (1863-1934), was a longtime member of Congress, serving continuously from 1901 to 1934. Another grandson, James Hinton Pou (1861-1935) served in the North Carolina legislature.

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.

63. Mary Ann Elizabeth B. Bryan Isler (c1805-1860)

There was a student named Mary Eliza Bryan at the Mordecai school for two-and-a-half years, mid-1815 to the end of 1817. She may have been from Franklin Co., NC, and the adult attached to her account is called "Genl. Bryan." A William Burlingham also left money for M. Bryan, according to the school's ledger for October 1815. "M. Bryan" was among the students who used the services of a dentist in January 1816.

Looking to the online family history sources: Mary Ann Eliza B. Bryan was the oldest child of Joseph Hunter Bryan Jr. (1782-1839) and Sarah Burlingham; William Burlingham seems to have been her grandfather. Mary Eliza's father was in the War of 1812, and served in the North Carolina legislature, as a trustee at UNC, and finally as a Congressman from North Carolina. (His brother Henry was a congressman from Tennessee.) Joseph died in Tennessee.

Mary Eliza was born before 1808 in North Carolina, and died 13 February 1860 in St. Louis, Missouri. She had two much younger brothers, Joseph (b. c1815) and Elisha (b. c1824). Was she sent to the Mordecai school because there was (or would soon be) a new baby in the house in 1815? Mary Eliza married Dr. Jesse Isler (c1796-1865) in 1821 (she would have been about sixteen years old), in Granville County, NC, and they had at least five children, the last born in Tennessee.