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. 

 

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.

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.