71. Eliza Burton (poss. Eliza Williams Burton Anderson, 1795-1859)

There was a student named Eliza Burton on the rolls at the Mordecai school, attending for both sessions in the year 1810. There's no adult's name or hometown attached to the listing in my dissertation appendix. And I can't find any mention of her in the Mordecai correspondence.

To add to the complications of finding this student, "Eliza Burton" isn't a very unusual name; there's an Eliza Burton Conley in Wikipedia for example (who sounds very interesting, but she's not the Mordecai student). But let's look anyway...

There are a lot of Burtons in the Virginia/NC border region around 1800. The most likely candidate for a family connection is Col. Robert Burton (1747-1825) of Granville County, NC. He was politically connected and had business associations with several other men who had Mordecai school connections; his wife Agatha Williams was kin to the Bullocks (already mentioned as having Mordecai school connections). Robert and Agatha had a daughter Eliza Williams Burton (1795-1859), their eleventh child. She married a Scotsman, James Anderson (1796-1874), and was buried in Henderson, Vance County, NC. (A photograph of her gravestone is here, and a photograph of James Anderson's gravestone in the same cemetery.) This Eliza Burton's son Robert Burton Anderson (c. 1833-1889) became a Presbyterian minister and a teacher at a South Carolina "female college," and his papers are in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill.

There's a good chance she's the Mordecai student--the age and location and social status are all perfect for a girl to be at the school in 1810. But I'd still love to find a stronger tidbit of information to secure that match. Maybe there's a letter in the Robert Burton Anderson papers, recounting his mother's story.

61. Margaret Broadfoot Hooper (1801-1880)

Margaret Broadfoot of Fayetteville was at the Mordecai school for a long time--nine sessions, or four-and-a-half years, from mid-1810 to the end of 1814. Her father Andrew Broadfoot, born in Scotland, died in early 1810; her cousin and guardian William Broadfoot paid her tuition and attended examinations in place of a parent. She took music lessons at the school, and the ledger shows an atlas being purchased for her. Because she was with the family so long, the Mordecais kept track of her after she left school, and I already have a lot of the details from their letters and the letters of Lucy Plummer Battle. Margaret Broadfoot was among those who welcomed Rachel Mordecai Lazarus to Wilmington as a new bride in 1821. She married later that year herself, to a newspaper editor named James Hooper, in Fayetteville (she sent Rachel Lazarus a piece of her wedding cake, somehow), and in 1823 she had lost some weight and her "manners [were] more formed" when Rachel saw her. In 1826, she had moved back to Wilmington. She started her own "infant school" in 1831 when her husband's financial condition became "much embarrassed."

In 1845, she was a widow in Chapel Hill staying with a Miss Mallett (one of her husband's cousins married a Caroline Mallett); her old schoolmate Lucy Plummer Battle visited with her there, and reminisced about old school days:

"I called on Tuesday to see Mrs. James Hooper, who is an old schoolmate (Margaret Broadfoot). Of course she did not know me. But as soon as I told her who I was, she seemed very glad to see me. I invited her & Miss Mallett to take tea with me but they could not do so. From her I learned the wearabouts &c of several of my old friends. I enjoyed her society wonderfully." (Lucy Martin Plummer Battle to her husband William, 4 October 1845, Battle Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection)

But by the time of the 1850 census, Margaret was back in Fayetteville, listed as a 50-year-old widow with real estate worth over $10,000. She died in 1880.

The whole family seems to be buried together, which is helpful: Margaret Broadfoot Hooper's dates are 1801-1880; her mother's name is given as Hetty Coit or Hetty Mumford (1776-1820); James Hooper's dates (1797-1841) indicate that Margaret became a widow in 1841, at age 40. She seems not to have had any children.

Some extra items about Margaret's husband: James Hooper's grandfather was William Hooper, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence from North Carolina. His brother Thomas married another Mordecai alumna from Fayetteville, Eliza Donaldson, in 1825, but Eliza died within six months of the wedding. James Hooper's stepfather was Joseph Caldwell, the first president of UNC.

55. and 56. Ann Elizabeth and Maria Brander

Two students named Brander attended the Mordecai school. Ann Elizabeth Brander was at the school from mid-1815 to the end of 1816 (so, three sessions); Maria Brander was there for both 1816 sessions. Both girls have James (or J.) Brander listed as the adult on their account. The Branders might have been from the Richmond area, according to this sentence in a Mordecai family letter:

"This will go to Richmond by a Mr. Brander, who with a Mr. Bott of Manchester is to be out in a few days, each with un petite fille."--Rachel Mordecai to her brother Samuel, 12 June 1815 (Mordecai Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, Chapel Hill NC)

James Brander appears in the school ledger for June 1815 (paying for "Ann Eliza"), and again in November 1815, January 1816 (paying for Ann Eliza and Maria, "board & musick"), June 1816, and November 1816.

Genealogical websites pretty quickly show Ann Elizabeth Brander (1800-1826), daughter of James Brander (1760-1829), a Scotsman by birth, and Elizabeth T. Harrison, born at Manchester, Chesterfield County, Virginia.* She was the fifth of twelve children born to her parents, and was apparently sent to the Mordecai school shortly after the birth of the twelfth child, her sister Mary Catherine. She only lived to be 26; no indication that she married or had any children. (Her older brother Alexander named his daughter Ann Elizabeth Brander in 1842, probably in her memory.) But here's the surprise: Ann Elizabeth didn't have any siblings named Maria. So... Maria Brander might have been a cousin?

Yes. Found references to a Maria Brander Moore Robertson (1803-1873), daughter of John Brander (also of Scotland) and Martha Field Robertson. She married John Thomson Robertson Sr. (1801-1882, maybe her cousin?) in 1823, at Petersburg VA, and they had six children together, between 1823 and 1841. (She may have had a brief marriage before this one, to account for the Moore in her name.) During the Civil War, one of her daughters, Lelia, died in childbirth (in 1863), her son Stanhope was in the 12th Virginia Infantry, CSA; her son Archibald was a young physician who died from typhoid in 1864. (Another son, James, had died in 1847, age 24; and an newborn infant, Maria, died in 1841.)

So it looks like two Scottish brothers, John and James Brander, both lived in the Richmond/Petersburg neighborhood; James brought his 15-year-old daughter Ann Eliza to the Mordecai school in 1815, then after one session she was joined by her 13-year-old cousin Maria.

*Today in Chesterfield County, Virginia, you can find streets named Branders Creek and Branders Bridge.

2. Eliza Adam (1798-1817)

By alphabetical chance, the second student to write about from the Mordecai school is one that we can know a great deal about. But sadly, the reason we know so much is that she didn't live long; she didn't even outlive the school itself.

Eliza Ann Adam of Fayetteville was born in 1798. Her father was Robert Adam (1759-1801), a wealthy Scottish-born merchant, but she was very young when he died. Arriving in 1809, Eliza was one of the first Fayetteville girls at the Mordecai school, an 11-year-old who became a great favorite of the Mordecai family. Samuel Mordecai even called her "his little adopted sister." Solomon Mordecai said of her, "no one that could appreciate the value of an affectionate disposition could feel otherwise than attached."

Eliza's younger sister Margaret joined her at Warrenton in 1812, the year Eliza finished her studies there. In 1813, Eliza was sent to the North to "polish" her manners in Boston. Soon, she was engaged to John Adams Cameron (1788-1838), a UNC alumnus and wounded veteran of the War of 1812, one of the prominent North Carolina Camerons.

This engagement was the beginning of the end for Eliza. She took an overdose of laudanum, apparently in hopes of avoiding the match. But she survived the overdose and the scandal, and the marriage proceeded as planned, taking place on 13 January 1815. In 1816, Eliza Adam Cameron's daughter was born. Eliza's health was further damaged in the pregnancy (and probably by her continuing unhappiness with the marriage). She took a course of mercury and other treatments, but nothing slowed her deteriorating health. When John Cameron's business required a trip to Europe, it was decided that Eliza might benefit from a sea voyage. They arrived at Liverpool, then took another sea journey to Greenock (her father's birthplace on the coast of Scotland).  She stayed with an aunt near Ardrossan, where Eliza Ann Adam Cameron died in 1817, still a teenager. (The Cameron Family Papers from 1817 have several reports of Eliza's final days.) (Edited for clarity after an anonymous comment, 10/30/14)

Her widower, John Adams Cameron, married again the following year. In 1822 he was appointed consul to Brazil. In 1831 he continued his diplomatic career in Veracruz, Mexico. John A. Cameron was appointed to the new US District Court of Florida. Judge Cameron died by drowning when the steamship Pulaski was lost at sea in 1838.

Eliza's only child, Mary Elizabeth Cameron (1815-1845), married Dr. Halcott Pride Jones (1815-1889) in 1838, and had at least four children--the first, Eliza Adams "Lizzie" Jones (1839-1911), named for her long-dead grandmother, the Mordecai student.