In the first years of the 19th century a Scotch-Irishman named John Hyde settled on the Oconalufty River very near where the Oconaluftee Visitors Center to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park stands today. He’d bought the property from a speculator, Felix Walker, who was locked in an epic lawsuit with Elizabeth’s 4xggrandfather Waightstill Avery over who had better title to the land. By the time the case wound its way to the North Carolina State Supreme Court in 1820, John Hyde had already packed off for Missouri with its prospect of cheaper, better land for his large family.
On the night of October 13, 1818, just two years after he had arrived in Missouri, Hyde was killed by one of his enslaved people, a 17-year-old known as “Negro Frank.” We know nothing of the circumstances, except that they were camped out on the Gasconade River working on Hyde’s property. Frank lit out but was eventually found the next year and delivered to the jail in St Louis, the largest city by far in the region. With nearly 10,000 people, as well as a thriving slave market, St. Louis presumably had a very strong jail, especially for offenders who were enslaved. But then word came in the Missouri Gazette, a full year after the killing, that somehow Frank had broken out of jail and was again at large. The news came in a reward posted for his capture. This “runaway” notice included an amazing description of him, noting that he “speaks without embarrassment” and “has a remarkable habit of closing his eyelids in rapid succession when in conversation” (reminding me of some of the language in contemporary artist Glenn Ligon’s brilliant series of runaway prints, based on his own friends’ descriptions of himself.)
From this point on, the case seems to have disappeared from the papers. We can only hope that this young man Frank, who spoke without embarrassment, eyelids fluttering, made his final escape from slavery.
Word of John Hyde’s fate no doubt filtered back to his relatives in North Carolina, particularly his brother Benjamin, who had lived just upriver from him. Ben’s daughter Catherine had a liaison with Will Thomas in the early 1840s, resulting in the birth of son who would be named William Pendleton Hyde. Pen Hyde, as he came to be known, maintained a life-long relationship with his father and got some land from him on the very same river where Ben and John Hyde had once lived. In the last surviving letter we have from Will, written from the insane asylum in 1892, a year before his death, he told another son to “let W P Hyde retain possession of the little farm on Oconaluftee if he wants it.”
This is a listing of poeple enslaved* by the Avery-family. I’ve divided them into family groupings. I hope it will help their descendants in their searches for their family history. I’ve also added a brief history of the Avery family to help put these enslaved Africans and Americans in a wider historical context and timeline.
*A note on the terms I’m using. Race and racial slavery are such painful and difficult issues in our collective history that I am trying to do my small part by reexamining even the terms used to discuss it. The words we use reflect our beliefs; using different words can undermine those beliefs. So, for instance, rather than calling the people on this list “slaves,” they are “the enslaved” – which describes what was done to them but does not define them by it. And it places culpability squarely where it belongs – on those people like my ancestors who engaged in the enslavement of other human beings.
I also use the term “racial slavery” for slavery as it was practiced in the U.S. Slavery, of course, has been practiced, and practiced in different ways, throughout human history. The Cherokee took those defeated in battle as slaves, but then often eventually adopted them into the family with full familial rights. Slavery as practiced by whites in the U.S. was an institutionalized system of degrading, devaluing, and using people of African descent. Our economy was built on it and an entire field of pseudo-science was created to justify it (e.g. different races were believed to be different species).
The Avery family of Swan Ponds, Burke County, NC
Waightstill Avery, who founded the Swan Ponds plantation (I don’t say he “built” it because, of course, it was built by enslaved people), was born in 1741 in Groton, Connecticut. He was educated at Princeton University. In 1778, in New Bern, NC (on the east coast) he married a young wealthy widow, Leah Probart Franks. After a few years in eastern N.C., Waightstill and Leah moved to Burke County, N.C. in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains in western N.C. Swan Ponds plantation, just outside Morganton, was established. They had four children – Polly Mira Avery, Elizabeth Avery, Isaac Thomas Avery, and Selina Louise Avery. Leah and Waightstill lived at Swan Ponds until their respective deaths. Waightstill Avery died in 1821 and Leah died in 1832.
Their son, Isaac Thomas Avery (1785-1864), inherited the plantation and some portion of the enslaved population. In 1815 he married Harriet Eloise Erwin (1795-1858). The Erwins were a wealthy local family. They owned a plantation called Belvidere and, presumably, some of those enslaved by the Erwins went with Harriet to Swan Ponds. They had ten children (that survived into adulthood): William Waightstill Avery, Isaac Erwin Avery, Mary Martha Avery, Justina Harriet Avery, Alphonso Calhoun Avery, Laura Myra Avery, Willoughby Francis Avery. Three of their sons – William Waightstill Avery, Clark Moulton Avery, Isaac Erwin Avery – died in the Civil War, fighting on the wrong side of history. Their father died in 1864 after hearing of the deaths of William and Clark.
After emancipation, many of those who had been enslaved (having few options) stayed in the area. There are still many Avery descendants, both black and white, in the area around Morganton.
The people the Avery family enslaved (and who died before emancipation) are buried in unmarked graves near the small Avery family cemetery. I hope to raise enough money to put a permanent marker of some kind near or on the place where these enslave people lie, and on it all their names.
Enslaved family groups on the Avery plantation
Tina [from Franck family, with Leah]
Son Lenoir, b. 1766
Venus
Daughter Ester, b. 1766
Son Jon b. 1769
child Benna, b. 14 May 1772
Balaam, b. 11 April 1774
Jim, b. 10 April 1776
Pete born 3rd Nov. 1778
Diana born 13th Dec. 1780
Adam born 25 Dec. 1783
Sarah born Dec. 1785
Wile
Children Lilph & Rose b. 15 April 1770
E____
Son Ben, b. march 1788
Peggy
Son Owen
Rachel
Son Perry
Manual (Emanual?)
Two sons
Mary (purchased Sept 6, 1814)
son Jim, b. April 1816
Barbara
Daughter Chassey, b. August 1816
Romeo & Big Luie have 9 children at home Dec. 1815
Mara 7. Eliza or Liz
Pat 8. Dashee
Jacob 9. Mimee
Nan
Vinee
Jos. (or Joseph, and possibly given to Harriet Avery Chambers in Isaac Thomas Avery’s will)
Eliza [possibly daughter of Romeo & Big Louie becayse she named a son Romeo?]
Twins, Jacob & Mary, b. 12 Sept. 1829, d. Sept. 1840 from fever
Daughter Luann, b. 18 Aug. 1841
[same as Eliza?]
Eliz
Twins, Romeo & Sully
July hath 8 children 1815
Hampton
Dick
Henry
Peter
Chenee
George
Sally
Ginny
Monday hath 7 children living at home 1815
Stephen
Luie M.
Will
Anthony
Emperor
Sue
Jack
Diana hath 6 children living at home 1815
Ab (Abraham, Abner, or Absalom?)
Li
Isam
Balam
Celia
Cinthia
[Same Diana? Son Cyrus, b. 10 Jan. 1838 “bought by Forney and paid.”]?
Bet hath two children (could be Betty or Elizabeth)
Abe (Abraham?)
Rose
Felix hath 3 children
Tina
Lip
Primus
And one grandchild
Sam
Mary
son Jim
Barbary
Daughter Chiney
Rochele
Twins, Two smart healthy daughters, b. Sept. 1818
Sara
Son Moses
Wilsey
Son Billy “being a Mulatto” b. 2 Jan. 1805
15 August 1837
Chany
Boy child b. 28 March 1838
Aggy
Child (no name) b. 8 April 1838, d. 4 weeks old
May
Boy child died soon after birth
Abb
Boy Child b. 24 August 1838, d. same day
16 April 1829
Maria
Child Robert Ad___ b. 14 May 1829
Sophia
Son b. August 1829, d. 4 days after birth
Milly
Daughter Polly, b. 19 Nov. 1841
September
Linda and Abnus
Daughter Hulda, b. 20 Sept. 1854
Caty & Alfred
Daughter Milly, b. Swan Ponds in January
Son Anthony, b. 22 Oct. 1854
Catherine
Son Balaam, b. 22 Oct. 1852, d. 1852
Jenny (& Cathe?)
Son Willoughby Francis, b. 18 March 1855 (the fact that her son is named Willoughby Francis could indicate that the child was fathered by Willoughby Francis Avery)
(mentioned in Willoughby Francis Avery’s will in 1876)
Sophia
Daughter Jane
Daughter Lovina, b. Nov. 17 1856
Son Ephraim, b. January 26, 1861, d. Dec. 4, 1862
March 25th 1855
Cindy
Daughter, Mineva (Minerva?)
two boys, b. Dec. 15th 1860 died soon after the birth
Mary Esther
Son John Carson, b. June 24, 1855? (The Carsons were also a well-to-do local family who had many enslaved Africans/Americans. This boy could have been fathered by one of them.)
[same woman?]
Esther
Daughter Mary, b. March 10th 1862
Margaret (owner Isaac Erwin Avery)
Son Clingman August 2, 1855?
daughter Lititia, b. Dec. 6, 1862
[same Margaret as Isaac T. Avery’s Margaret?)
Cinthy (Abbi’s daughter) [same Abb as Abb Boy Child b. 24 August 1838, d. same day?]
Son Elisha, b. August 26 , 1855?
Ann
Daughter Matilda, b. December 20 1850
19th February 1857
Louisa
Daughter Lila
Celia
Son Samuel, b. 10th March 1857 at Swan Ponds
[same as below?]
Celia
Son Capt. James Wilson, b. August 4th 1861, d. 26 April 1862
[same as above]?
Cecelia (in Yancey, NC)
Daughter Ann, b. December 1856
Angelina
Twin sons b. 16th May 1857, William & The other died in October 1857
Elmina
Daughter Missy, b. August 14
Margaret (owner Isaac Thomas Avery)
child named ___ , b. Nov. 23 (1855?) died at 5 months old
Daughter Elvira, b. October 12, 1860
Cindy was delivered of two boys, b. Dec. 15th 1860 died soon after the birth
Julia & Homer’s
Son Romeo, b. January 6, 1861
1861
Thine had at the Crab Orchard (in Plumtree, NC) in Mitchel
Daughter Louisa, b. About the 20th of August
Mary (Thines’ daughter)
Son Logan, b. 30 September 1861
Angelina
bore three children on Jan 19, 1862 – two sons and one girl Rachel. Of the boys, one died in May & one in August
Martha
Daughter Sally, b. February 20, 1862
Surak (Sarah?)
Son Will Phifer, b. Sept. 11th 1862
(The Phifers were also a local white family. The use of the Phifer name could indicate that one of the Phifer men had fathered the child.)
Silvia
Daughter called —— , b. & died October 24, 1862
Roxanna & Lige (Elijah)
(There are many stories about an enslaved man named Elijah or Lige, which I’ll post soon. He was – through the Avery family’s telling of the stories – the prototypical “faithful slave” of Southern myth. Obviously his own version of events would be different and fascinating! If anyone descended from Lige reads this, I’d love to hear from you.)
daughter Anna
Cecilia & Alfred’s
Daughter Delphy, b. in Mitchell [Crab Orchard in Plumtree?] in 1862
(Alfred possibly given to Clark Moulton Avery in I.T. Avery’s will, though Clark was dead by then.)
One of our goals for this blog is to provide documents we have come across in our own researches that might help others, especially those looking to find family who have been lost by enslavement or by other kinds of social disruption. Here is the first installment in what we expect to be a regular feature. We have included it in a new category, “Lost Ancestors,” which you can click on to the right to see similar posts as they are added.
Today we focus on the people enslaved by Elizabeth’s fourth great grandfather, James Coman (1767-1842), an affluent merchant who had a store and house in Raleigh, N.C. and a farm outside the town. Coman was a Scotch-Irish emigrant from Ulster who got caught in a scheme to defraud Revolutionary War veterans of their bounty land, but managed to escape trial and go on to become a “respectable” citizen (admittedly, the bar was low). He died without a will in 1842 and his three children divided up his considerable estate of land and enslaved human beings.
The name Coman (pronounced, in my family at least, as “common”) has its origins was originally Comyn (derived possibly from either the cumin plant or the Breton word “Cam,” meaning bent or crooked). There are many variations of the name. Some are: Cummings, Cumming, Cumin, Cumins, Comin, Comins, Common, Camon, Kamon and many more.
Here is a transcription of the inventory of that “property”:
Inventory and Account of Sales of the Property of James Comans late of Raleigh North Carolina Deceased [dated May 20, 1842]
…Two negroes sold because they were unmanageable and it was thought best to sell them by all the Distributors under all the circumstances
Anika a woman Watten L Otay Cash 500
& Ingram a man Note at Int 550
…Negroes belonging to the Estate to be divided between the Distributed, viz:
1. Turner [JBL]
10. Caroline [SJL]
20. Louisa [MJC]
2. Sam [JBL]
11. James [?]
21. & child found dead
3. Henderson [MJC]
12. Sally [?]
22. Mary [MJC]
4. Lucinda [JBL]
13. Elizabeth [SML]
23. Martha [MJC]
5. Reddick [JRL]
14. Marian [MAL]
24. Jimm [MJC]
6. Dinah [JRL]
15. Mat [MJC]
25. William [MJC]
7. Emeline [JRL]
16. Fanny [MJC]
26. Rebecca [?]
8. Prince [JRL]
17. Child of Fanny [MJC]
27. John [JBL]
9. Marcus [JRL]
18. “ “ “ [MJC]
28. George [JRL]
19. Chloe [?]
29. Dick [?]
[Note: JBL= John Bell Love (spouse: Margaret Coman); MJC= Matthew James Coman; JRL= James Robert Love (spouse: Maria Coman), SJL=Sarah Jane Love, JRL’s daughter; SML=Sarah Malinda Love and MAL= Mary Ann Love, JBL’s daughters.]
And here is the distribution agreed to by the heirs:
State of North Carolina, Haywood County
To wit for John B Love’s wife Margaret E Love one of the heirs of Jas Coman decd, the following negroes, wit 12th Dec 1842
Negro John 40 years old valued at 350.00
Negro Sam 25 years old valued at 600.00
Negro Turner 20 years old valued at 600.00
Negro Lucinda 16 years old valued at 500.00
The following negroes allotted to MJ Coman both by the consent of MJ Coman and Jas R Love his Guardian
Mat a yellow man 40 years old valued at 400.00
Fanny wife of Mat 35 years old two Girl children 550.00
Negro Girl Louisa 16 years old valued at 400.00
Negro Mary Mat Daughter 10 years old valued at 350.00
Negro Jim Mats Son 5 years old valued at 300.00
Martha Daughter of Mats 4 years old valued at 200.00
Wm Mats Son 2 years old valued at 150.00
Henderson Mats brother valued at 23 years old 600.00
The following negroes allotted to J.R. Love & wife Maria A Love one of the heirs of J Coman decd wit
Reddick Negro man 50 years old valued at 350.00
Negro Dinah & Child Reddicks wife aged 38 years 450.00
Prince Reddicks son 15 years old valued at 500.00
Marcus Reddicks son 5 years old valued at 300.00
Emeline Dinah’s daughter 25 years old valued at 350.00
George a boy 10 years old valued at 400.00
The heirs all being present we have allotted to the several heirs the Negroes set under their name and we by the heirs consent have had a particular regard to arrange each lot agreeable to families all of which we do certify 12th December 1842. Signed W. [William] Welch, B. [Bannister] Turner, A. J. Davidson
[Original documents available online at “North Carolina Probate Records, 1735-1970,” images, <i>FamilySearch</i> (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-194-234299-1-39?cc=1867501 : accessed 29 January 2016), Wake > Wills, Inventories, Settlements, 1841-1845, Vol. 25 > image 59, 95, 96 of 320; county courthouses, North Carolina.]
Recently we came across some further documents relating to Jim Coman, the boy who was five years old and distributed with his father Mat to Matthew Coman. These are from Will Thomas’s undated accounts and memoranda, undated but probably in 1866-1867, after the Civil War and emancipation. I’ve transcribed it with the original line breaks, to preserve its mundane poetry:
Jim Comman Dr [Dr=debit, i.e. owed to Thomas]
Negro Jim & wife Josephine
1 pair of half soles for Jim
1 pair for Josephine
1 home made pair of shoes for Jim
1 pair of store shoes for Josephine (very good)
Let Josephine have five and a half yards
of spun cotton (which would be about one
fourth a bunch) bunch sells at $3.50
dyed two yards of deep blue and 2
yards of pale blue Indigo for Josephine
For the weaving, warping, and spooling
of 15 yards of striped cloth $1.50
flax thread to make pants 10 cents
Let Jim have a sheep skin raw
Let Josephine have a half worn
Linsey dress
Jim had a bed tuck cut up
and made into a pair of
drawers
Another sheet headed “Jim Comans colored” lists debits of $5.00 for 5 yards of [house?] jeans and 15 cents for thread “to make 4 yards and ¾ of blue jeans, one dollar and half per yard.” Below that he lists “cash paid you by WHT [Will Thomas] in the first month,” itemized as:
To [i.e. debit] cash used to purchase
To cash 4.00
Josephine 2.00
Josephine was making clothing, that is certain, and Will was advancing her cash and materials, but how the profits were distributed we can’t tell from here.
In the 1870 census for Culowhee township in Jackson County (near present-day Western Carolina University), James Commans age 34 appears with his wife Josephine age 23, both listed as “mulatto,” and, in the same household, a Henry Thomas. The nearest neighbors were also Thomases, Dick and Susan, age 62 and 64, listed as “black.” And their neighbors were Amanda and William Casey: Amanda had grown up as an enslaved person belonging to Will Thomas. All of this shows a strong connection between Jim & Josephine Coman and the African Americans who lived and worked in Will Thomas’s household and farm.
After 1870, Jim and Josephine disappear from the census records.
My mother lived with us for the last four years of her life because she had dementia. We had a rotation of agency in-home care givers to help us with the hard job of caring for an adult who could no longer care for herself. Much of the time caring for her – moving her, cleaning up messes – was more than one woman could easily do alone, so the care givers and I spent a fair amount of time together and became quite friendly. One evening, in the quiet, relieved minutes after we had at last wrangled my mother into bed, the aide – I’ll call her Mary – and I were standing there just looking at my mother asleep now on the bed. Mary, who was black, turned to me and said hesitantly, “She looks like my grandmother.”
“Hold on, “ I said. “I want to show you something.” I pulled out a photo album, leafed through it, and pulled out a picture of my mother’s grandmother when she was a girl. When I showed it to Mary, she gasped. “You know what she looks like….” She didn’t finish her sentence, but she didn’t have to. My great grandmother had wild frizzy hair, black eyes, and non-Aryan features. Anyone looking objectively at the photo, not knowing who it was, would say that she wasn’t white – in the American one-drop definition of whiteness. She looks “high yellow.”
My mother had always said we were part Cherokee. She never said how that might have happened, or which ancestor slipped out of our well-documented history of white-to-white marriages to mix up our gene pool. Of course, many Americans claim to be part Cherokee. The Cherokee, now that they’re no longer inhabiting lots of land that we want, have the dubious honor of being the most popular native tribe for whites to claim relationship to. Now, given that my great-great grandfather was an adopted member of the North Carolina Cherokees, and given that no one knew precisely who his father, “Richard Thomas,” was, we had more basis for that belief than most. But still, was my mother implying that her great grandfather, Will Thomas, was actually illegitimate and the product of an affair his mother had with a Cherokee? Not at all; she liked, I think, the romance of the relationship without wanting to know the particulars. Me, I always want to know the fascinating, gossipy particulars.
So when we started this project, I had my mother’s dna tested. She is 94% Scottish/English/Irish descent and 6% mystery. Now, for my mother to be 6% something-or-other, she had to have inherited it from a great-great grandparent, someone whose name and history we know. Genetic tests determine ethnicity by comparing your genes to the genes of populations around the globe. 94% of my mother’s genes are similar to the genes of people who live in the British Isles and Scandinavia. But that remaining 6% is uncertain and interpreted differently depending on the testing service. My mother has been tested three times and had three different explanations for it. The first test said she was 6% Native American. The second test said Western European and Middle Eastern. The third interpreted it as Mediterranean, Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian.
Interestingly, some dna analysis of the Cherokee themselves, show them to be (by current limited testing definitions) part Mediterranean and/or Middle Eastern. Does this mean, as some people have speculated, that the Cherokee mixed with early European invaders and that what we’re seeing is the traces of that? It’s possible. Just as it’s possible that my 3rd great grandmother, Temperance Thomas, had an affair with a Cherokee before or during her marriage to Richard Thomas. (My fondest hope was that we would discover she’d had an affair with the Cherokee chief Yonaguska and that was why he’d adopted Will Thomas.) Again, not impossible but, given the social mores of the time for women anyway, unlikely. And having almost certainly identified Richard Thomas (an Anglo-American) I have no idea where that 6% came from.
Which leaves me thinking about race in America. We European-Americans invented the Frankenstein monster of race to justify the taking of land and the taking of humans, and so race is encoded into our national dna. “Whiteness” and “blackness” are constructs created when we left the tribal/clan boundaries – whether Celt, Gael, Viking, Mayan, Iroquois, or Yoruban – that had defined “us” and “them.” In North America, we had to find a new us and a new them. The Atlantic slave trade and racial slavery created the lumped ethnicities we now have of white, black, and Native American, and left us, in America, with an obsession with something we call “race,” which doesn’t really exist. What exists are shared geographic and genetic origins. My mother’s genes tell us she is a mix of peoples who came from Scandinavia (the Vikings), Scotland (which the Vikings invaded), and England. Not long ago these groups, that we see now as simply “whites,” would have forcefully denied any similarities; they all hated each other, warred with each other, and considered each other barbarians. So now, in the U.S., each of us – whether the majority of our genes are Native, Caucasian, or African – is a mix of once-warring tribes that saw only their differences and yet, are now mixed and unified in our American bodies.
It would be a beautiful thing if this newly widespread tool of genetics could bring us to the realization that race doesn’t exist. If Mary, standing with me looking at the worn out, sleeping body of my mother, could have said, “She looks like my grandmother,” and meant only that, without the ellipsis of unspoken racial identity hanging in the air. If she didn’t have to cautiously state it so that I could ignore or misunderstand it if I chose, or worry that I would take umbrage if I did understand. Someday I hope my children – who have varying geographic/genetic origins and various amounts of pigment in their skin – might begin to see a world where marking difference by skin pigmentation will seem as bizarre and arbitrary as the Scottish hating the Swedes who once, long ago, invaded them.
But, honestly, even in that imagined post-racial world, I’d still want to know who slept with whom and where that 6% came from. I’m just nosey that way.