114-115. Margaret and Martha Crittenden Brownlow

Two girls named Crittenden are on my list of Mordecai students:

Margaret B. Crittenden of Halifax County, NC, attended the school for both 1811 sessions.
Martha Maria Crittenden, also of Halifax County NC, attended the school for the first 1811 session.

The word "Crittendens" appears in the school ledger in September 1813, but I don't know the context of that.  There don't seem to be any mentions of them in the family correspondence.

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Martha Crittenden (1799-1881) had a long association with Warrenton.  From a local history written in the 1920s:

"Mrs. Brownlow was Miss Martha Crittenden of Halifax County.  She was a lady of means and had received the best educational advantages of her day.  She was a boarder at the Mordecai School in Warrenton when the building burned.  At her beautiful home, La Vallee, in Halifax County, she had teachers to conduct the education of her four daughters... Mrs. Brownlow was one of the most remarkable women I ever knew.  Her courage, her indefatigable industry, her capacity along all lines, her cheerful amiability, her patient resignation when adversity came, were subjects of the comment and admiration of all her knew her..."

It goes on like that for a while.  Not sure how one session at the Mordecai school counts as "the best educational advantages of her day," but that's a pretty typical tone of local histories.   Anyway, we learn that in 1817 Martha married the most wonderfully-named Dr. Tippoo Sahib Brownlow of Wilmington (c1794-1879).*  The couple lived in Halifax County, where Tippoo was a trustee of a female seminary located on their La Vallee estate.  In 1849 or 1850, they moved into Warrenton and bought the corner hotel, "perhaps the best known and best kept hotel in the State," according to the same local history (so take that as likely hyperbole).  This is one of their grandsons, James Brownlow Yellowley (1848-1914).

*Sidenote:  There seems to have been a fashion for "exotic" names among some wealthy white North Carolinians of this generation.  Tippoo Sahib Brownlow was obviously named for Tipu Sultan (1749-99), the sultan of Mysore.  Another man from a different family, Hyder Ali Davie (son of the governor of North Carolina) was named for Tipu's father, Hyder Ali, also a sultan of Mysore. 

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I can find much less about Margaret Crittenden of Halifax County.  There's a marriage record that finds her matched with Anthony A. Wyche of Virginia in November 1818.  This family chart has his name as Augustus Wyche, and shows them with three daughters (Margaret, Laura, and Augusta). (There's a grave for Laura Wyche Henarie (1827-1915) in a Catholic cemetery in Texas.  The bio with her listing says she was born in North Carolina, the daughter of Margaret Crittenden and "Emmett" Wyche.  So Mr. Wyche's first name is a bit slippery.)

Margaret may have married twice; Margaret Crittenden Carnal (1800-1871) turns up in a cemetery in Louisiana, with a daughter Augusta Wyche Canfield (1830-1898); if that's the same woman, some sad stories are in that plot.  Augusta Wyche Canfield looks to have had three little daughters on the eve of the Civil War; her husband died in battle, and all three girls were gone by 1867 (the youngest lived to be six years old; the other two, even shorter).  So, did Margaret go to comfort her youngest daughter, widowed and thrice bereaved, in her last years? 

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Note that I still have no parents' names for Margaret and Martha, nor indeed do I know for certain that they were sisters.

UPDATE 5/15/13:  I have heard from a local historian with an interest in the Crittendens.  Margaret and Martha were, indeed, sisters, the daughters of Henry Crittendon of Northhampton County; he died in 1803.  Their mother may have died before that date, when the girls were very little.  My correspondent also confirms that Margaret married a second time, to a Mr. Carnal (whose first name isn't agreed upon in the various records).    Martha Crittenden and Tippoo Sahib Brownlow had four daughters, it seems:  Margaret (Mrs. James B. Yellowly); Elizabeth (Mrs. Benjamin W. Edwards); Rebecca (Mrs. Nathaniel Edwards), and Ellen Brownlow (unmarried), who was a teacher in Warren County, and who (many years after the Civil War) was in possession of a breastpin containing a lock of Robert E. Lee's hair.

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.

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.