201, 202. Arthur Brehon Gloster (1799- ) and Elizabeth Gloster Anderson (1796-1873)

There were two local students named Gloster at the Mordecai school in its early years; Arthur Gloster was there in 1809 and 1810, and Elizabeth Gloster was there from 1809 through 1811. Both were the children of Thomas Gloster, an Irish-born local physician in Warrenton, and his wife, Mary Hayes Willis Gloster. These siblings both had paragraphs in my dissertation appendix, so much of the following is taken from there.

In 1996 I knew that Elizabeth Willis Gloster was born in 1796, married Jack Anderson in 1814, had about ten children, was widowed in 1848, and died in 1873. (I encountered her more during my post-doctoral work in the Cameron Family Papers, because Jack Anderson was a Cameron cousin.) Elizabeth Gloster Anderson attended the last "reading of the cards" at the Mordecai school in 1818, saying that she had also been there for the first such event. She was also at the school's last examination. Elizabeth Gloster Anderson raised the daughter of her classmate Eliza Adam Cameron, and was close to Caroline Mordecai Plunkett into the 1820s.

Elizabeth (also known as Betsy) moved to western Tennessee in 1827, with her husband and children, and her mother and brother too. She had asthma, and found Tennessee's climate more healthful, and reported in her letters that she was walking seven or eight miles without being fatigued. Her husband started an Episcopal church there. Caroline Mordecai Plunkett also moved to western Tennessee, in 1833, and Betsy taught drawing at Caroline's school there. So she's one of the Mordecais' first students, and one that continued her connection to the family well into adulthood, and across many miles. She moved to Texas in 1859. Her papers are in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC.

Elizabeth's younger brother Arthur Brehon Gloster, born 1799, went to West Point Military Academy in 1819, but he did poorly on exams and was back in Warrenton by 1821. He moved to Tennessee when the Andersons did, and married a cousin, Mary, in 1829. Arthur and Mary ran a tavern in La Grange, Tennessee, and had at least eleven children, all born and baptized in Tennessee, according to the family Bible I looked at in Warren County. Most of them died young; the only living son at the time of the Civil War died as a soldier for the Confederacy.

(Although the Mordecai school was considered a girls' school, there were some male students, usually young boys from Warrenton who had a sister or other female relative also attending.)

The family's Tennessee graveyard has a historic marker, though the stones do not survive.

Want to see a quilt that Elizabeth Gloster Anderson made in 1844? Sure you do! The Henry Clay Estate at Ashland has this one, a political quilt supporting Henry Clay:

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.

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.

47. Eliza Ann Bowell (1802-1865)

There is a student named Eliza Bowell in the rolls of the Mordecai school. She attended for three sessions, 1816 and the first half of 1817. The adult name that may be attached to her account is Abner F. Bowell, and she's linked to Fayetteville.

There was an Abner F. Bowell who died in Fayetteville in 1827, age 50. He turns up in the 1820 US Census as a head of household in Fayetteville, with eleven free white people in the home: a boy under 16, three boys 16-18, three men 16-26, a man 26-46 (probably Bowell himself), and a girl 10-16, a woman 16-26, and another woman 26-45. All the adult males in the household may be explained by Bowell being a shop owner, perhaps a printer, who housed his employees and apprentices. This family historian links the surname Bowell with Bowles/Boles in North Carolina. She also mentions an Eliza Bowell who married a man named Ochiltree.

Taking that lead: This family historian has Eliza Ann Bowell (1802-1865), daughter or niece of Abner Bowell of Fayetteville, marrying Archibald Ochiltree (1793-1832), in 1818. She was widowed at thirty, and seems to have moved to Texas later in life, to be with one or more of her children. Looks like she may have had a son Hugh Ochiltree (1820-1891) who was born in NC, but was a lawyer and community leader in Madison, Texas. (Here's a picture of Hugh.) Ochiltree County, Texas, on the Oklahoma border, is named for Hugh's cousin (Eliza's nephew?) William Beck Ochiltree (1811-1867), who was also born in Fayetteville. The DAR record for Hugh Ochiltree's daughter Arabella Ochiltree Bancroft (1870-1924) has "Eliza A. Powell" as his mother.

So.... Eliza Ann Bowell was a Fayetteville girl, born 1802. She went to school in Warrenton when she was 13-14, for a year and a half, then married at 16 to Archibald Ochiltree. They had at least one child before Eliza was widowed 1832, at age 30. She may have moved to Texas and died there in 1865.