Husband James B. Turner
Born: 1802 - Virginia
Christened:
Died: Bef 1860
Buried:
Marriage: 20 Apr 1822 - Campbell County, Virginia
Wife Polly Davidson
Born: 1803 - Virginia
Christened:
Died: After Apr 1847
Buried:
Father: James Davidson
Mother: Jane Cockrane
Other Spouse: Robert Wright - 1816 - Campbell County, Virginia
Children
1 F Julia E Turner
Born: 1828 - Virginia
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
2 M John W Turner
Born: 6 Jan 1834 - Virginia
Christened:
Died: 28 Feb 1904
Buried:
Spouse: MF
Spouse: Lucy A
Marr: 1871
3 M Richard Turner
Born: 1834 - Virginia
Christened:
Died: 31 Oct 1914 - Stewartsville, Bedford County, Virginia
Buried:
Spouse: Nancy E
4 F Sarah Turner
Born: 1840 - Virginia
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
5 M Archibald H Turner
Born: 8 Apr 1840 - Virginia
Christened:
Died: 12 Jul 1927
Buried: - Blue Ridge Baptist Church Cemetery, Roanoke County, Virginia
Spouse: Rhonda Feather
6 F Mary Turner
Born: 1844 - Virginia
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
7 M Leroy A Turner
Born: Jan 1845 - Virginia
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
Spouse: Amanda L
General Notes: Husband - James B. Turner
see entry for Pollys mother, Jane see entry for Pollys mother, Jane. Polly wrote letter regarding mother in April, 1847. 1810 Campbell County, VA see entry for Pollys mother, Jane. Polly wrote letter regarding mother in April, 1847. Illinois State Census POSSIBLE 1880:, john W's father had died Initial information from Donovan Hatfield's AncestorsInernet tree, Ron Hatfield, rshatfield@kih.net Initial information from Donovan Hatfield's AncestorsInernet tree, Ron Hatfield, rshatfield@kih.net from ancestry.com tree: Family of Mary Marinda Edwards (Owner: cfm1151) from ancestry.com tree: Family of Mary Marinda Edwards (Owner: cfm1151) Initial information from Ancestry tree of Richard S Dwyer (Owner: RichDwyer69)
West Virginia Death Index Find a Grave
------------------------------------------------------
1830 census in Lynchburg includes a James Turner, who is a free colored
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Possible:
War of 1812 (no date)
Soldier:
Widow:
Roll Number:
Archive Publication Number:
Capt Nathaniel Colliers Co, Va MilitiaRockingham guy is a different one
Rockingham County, Virginia Deaths--the
Name:
Race:
Sex:
Death Date:
Cause of Death:
Age:
Months: 1
Days: 29
Father's Name:
Mother's Name:
Birthplace:
US Federal Census Mortality Schedule
Name:
Gender:
Race:
Marital Status:
Place of Birth:
Estimated Birth Year:
Age:
Month of Death:
Cause of Death:
Census Year:
Census Location:
District 1, Rockingham, Virginia
Line:
Archive Collection Number:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: There was also a marriage of James Turner who married Polly Dowdy in 1825 in Bedford Va. The family shown here could be incorrect.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1830 census, Bedford County, James Turner 2 males, age 20-30, 1 female age 20-30
2 boys under 5, 2 girls under 5
---------------------------------------------------------
1850 census, Southern Division, Bedford County, Nov 15, 1850
(all are indicated as born in Va)
James Turner, age 48, farmer
Mary Turner , age 47 (note: Polly is a nickname for Mary)
Julia E., age 22 .
John W., age 18
Richard,age 16
Sarah, age 10
Archibald H., age 8
Mary, age 6
Leroy A. age 4
1860 Southern Revenue District, Bedford, Virginia (next to a Wright H Wright)
Mary Turner
L A Turner
M Turner
1870 Chamblissburg, Bedford, Virginia (next to Archibald)
PO: Liberty
Leroy A Turner
Amanda Turner
Florence A Turner
Mary Turner
Alice Crouch
Note: There is a James Turner who moved, with Micajah Davidson, from Smith Co., TN to Effingham Co., Illinois. His oldest son, David S. Turner, was born in Buckingham Co., Va in 1822. This family stayed in Effingham, but perhaps these two James Turners are related.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Possible, Mary below is born in GA. Perhaps James is a widow. Mary's ae would match wedding year.
Name:
Age:
Birth Year:
Birthplace:
Home in 1850:
Gender:
Family Number:
Household Members:
Name
James Turner
Mary Turner
Jemima Turner
Anna Turner
Thomas Turner
Johnston Turner
Sally Turner
Wm Turner
Nancy Turner
Fernine Turner
Rebecca Turner
John Turner
Emiline Turner
General Notes: Wife - Polly Davidson
------------------------------------------------------------
Marriages of Campbell County, Virginia,
Name:
Gender:
Marriage Date:
Marriage Place:
Spouse:
FHL Film Number:
--------------------------------------------------------------
Right next to Robert Wrights estate
1820 census, Campbell County, Va
Davidson, Polly 000100 - 01011
1 male age age 16-26 (William?)
1 female age under 10
1 female age 16-25 (Polly?)
1 female age >45 (Jane?)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Virginia Marriages, 1740-1850
about POLLY DAVIDSON
Groom Name:
Bride Name:
Marriage Date:
County:
State:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Possibility:
1860 Southern Revenue District, Bedford, Virginia (next to a Wright H Wright)
Mary Turner
L A Turner
M Turner
or:
Name:
Age in 1860:
Birth Year:
Birthplace:
Home in 1860:
Gender:
Post Office:
Household Members:
Name
Mary Turner
Name:
Age in 1870:
Birth Year:
Birthplace:
Home in 1870:
Race:
Gender:
Post Office:
Value of real estate:
Household Members:
Name
Leroy A Turner
Amanda Turner
Florence A Turner
Mary Turner
Alice Crouch
Virginia Deaths
Name:
Birth Date:
Birth Place:
Death Date:
Death Place:
Death Age:
Race:
Marital Status:
Gender:
FHL Film Number:
Husband Robert Wright
Born: 13 Jun 1780 - Bedford County, Virginia
Christened:
Died: 14 Oct 1818 - Campbell County, Virginia
Buried:
Father: Thomas Wright Wright
Mother: Silvy
Marriage: 1816 - Campbell County, Virginia
Other Spouse: Mary Godsey - Oct 1806 - Campbell County, Virginia
Wife Polly Davidson
Born: 1803 - Virginia
Christened:
Died: After Apr 1847
Buried:
Father: James Davidson
Mother: Jane Cockrane
Other Spouse: James B. Turner - 20 Apr 1822 - Campbell County, Virginia
Children
1 F Martha Ann Wright
Born: Oct 1818 - Campbell County, Virginia
Christened:
Died: 1818 - Campbell County, Virginia
Buried:
General Notes: Husband - Robert Wright
Name:
Home in 1810 (City, County, State):
Free White Persons - Males - Under 10:
Free White Persons - Males - 26 thru 44 :
Free White Persons - Females - Under 10:
Free White Persons - Females - 26 thru 44:
Number of Household Members Under 16:
Number of Household Members Over 25:
Number of Household Members:
Next to Robert Wright SR
Silvey Wright
Wat Taylor
George Davidson
James Taylor
Jacob Woodson
John Woodson
Unfixing Race: Class, Power, and Identity in an Interracial Family Author(s): Thomas E. Buckley
Source: The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 102, No. 3 (Jul., 1994), pp. 349-380
Published by: Virginia Historical Society Stable URL: <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4249451?origin=JSTOR-pdf>
Accessed: 18/03/2010 00:38
In November 1816 Robert Wright, a slaveholding farmer from Campbell County in the Virginia Piedmont, petitioned the General Assembly for a divorce. Because the state courts lacked jurisdiction over divorce in the early nineteenth century, the legislators regularly considered such re-quests. Wright's petition, however, was unlike any other the assembly had ever received. According to Wright's account, his marriage to Mary Godsey in 1806 had been a happy one. Describing his behavior toward her as "kind and affectionate," Wright acknowledged that Mary had brought him "great domestic comfort, and felicity" until 1814, when William Arthur "by his artful, and insidious attentions" replaced Wright "in her affections." The couple eloped in January 1815, taking with them some of Wright's property including a female slave, but were caught in neighboring Bedford County. Wright reclaimed his possessions, and Mary consented "to return to the Home, and the Husband she had so ungratefully, and cruelly abandoned." Despite her infidelity, Wright maintained that he had again treated his wife with affection, hoping "time . . . would reconcile her to her situation and restore her to Happiness." His hopes proved illusory. Ten months later, Mary and William ran off to Tennessee. Charging her with desertion and adultery, Wright asked the assembly to pass a law ending their marriage.
Thus far the case was familiar. Tales of infidelity, desertion, and scorned love the legislators had heard before. What made Wright's petition unique was his frank admission that as "a free man of color" he had married a white woman and so violated Virginia's law forbidding interracial marriage. While avoiding a rhetorical style that was either defiant or obsequious, Wright defended the validity of his union and presented his case in matter-of-fact fashion. His free status apparently empowered him with a sense of personal worth and dignity and a claim to equal treatment that he was unafraid to assert publicly. Equally noteworthy were the affidavits submitted with the memorial. Defying the mores historians commonly ascribe to white southerners, more than fifty white citizens of Campbell County ignored Wright's miscegenation, endorsed his request for a divorce, and testified to his good standing in their community.
Wright's legislative petition and the accompanying documents are remarkable on several counts. First, they introduce us to the power relationships and the interaction of race and class, both within an interracial family and between that family and the local community, that operated as discursive processes in constructing the shifting identities of Robert Wright and his family. Second, they suggest a level of openness in interracial sexual relationships and a degree of white acceptance of miscegenation that challenge historical generalizations and traditional stereotypes of both free blacks and the slaveholding society of the early nineteenth-century South. Finally, they contest the commonly accepted view that free blacks operated cautiously on the fringes of southern society. This essay does not argue that the situation of Robert Wright and his family was typical, even of free blacks who held land and slaves, but rather, as Ira Berlin pointed out, that historians must pay attention to exceptions. A scrutiny of Wright's background and his family and community connections demonstrates the complexity of antebellum race relations while simultaneously dramatizing the importance of studying the free black experience in terms of individual, family, and local his-tories at a time when slavery was vigorously expanding.
In a burst of uncharacteristic liberalism, Virginia legalized manumis-sion by deed or will in 1782. Early in the next decade, however, the Old Dominion retreated from emancipation when a new codification of laws concerning slaves spelled out their status as chattels and forbade free Negroes from entering the state. The revelation of Gabriel's plot in 1800 increased the outcry for harsher laws that would further restrict the activities of both slaves and free Negroes, prevent any more manumis-sions, and remove the free black population. The assembly responded by requiring newly emancipated slaves to leave Virginia and encouraging the various African colonization societies that sprang up in the next decade. Meanwhile, by the end of the Revolution, the Piedmont held more slaves than the Tidewater. During the next three decades, the state's slave population doubled, while more and more whites joined the slaveholder ranks. Richard R. Beeman has documented the expansion of slavery, with its concomitant commitment to agrarianism, into Lunen-burg County and asserted that by 1830 the peculiar institution provided "the central point of definition for the Southside's white citizens." In nearby Campbell County, the same social and economic system provided the context for the Wright family. Fortunately, an abundance of sources makes it possible to reconstruct the interplay between family members. In addition to the divorce petition and the data available from deeds, wills, and census and tax records, a series of legal battles after Robert Wright's death left a rich deposit of court papers detailing his economic affairs as well as family and community relationships. A few years ago Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roark demonstrated the usefulness of family papers in tracing the experience of free African Americans in the antebellum South. A reconstruction of the history of the Wright family indicates the wealth of information available in legislative petition collections and legal files squirreled away in state archives and county courthouses.
Thomas Wright, a white man from a large family in Prince Edward County, bought an extensive plantation in Bedford County from Charles and Sarah Caffrey in July 1779 for 1,500 pounds of tobacco. Amounting to 3891/2 acres of prime farmland, the property straddled Beaver Creek just a few miles before the stream flows into the James River. Two years later that section of Bedford became part of newly established Campbell County, and in 1784 the town of Lynchburg was founded up the James River, a few miles southwest of Wright's plantation.11 While struggling to establish himself financially during these years, Wright became es-tranged from his brothers and sisters. Shortly before he purchased the farm, his father, John Wright, had died, leaving a wife and at least seven children. His will details an extensive estate with bequests of varying sizes. Thomas was assigned one of the smallest portions, a monetary gift of £30 to be paid by his brother James within five years. This legacy was only a pittance, given the financial outlay required to purchase the land on Beaver Creek, but evidently he never received it. Later, in "his drinking fits," a resentful Thomas Wright swore that none of his relatives would ever inherit his property and vowed that he would rather give it to one of his neighbors or the county poor.12
Instead of these potential beneficiaries, however, Wright ultimately switched his attention and affection to the mulatto family he established along Beaver Creek. To his new home, Wright had brought several slaves, including a young woman, Sylvia, and her two children, Pru-dence and Anna, whom he had purchased from the Cabell estate four or five years before.13 Sylvia was apparently of full African descent,
Table: The Descendants of Sylvia Wright
because someone who knew her well later described her as "very black." At the time of her purchase, she was pregnant again and in 1775 gave birth to a son, James. Sometime during the following years, Thomas Wright began to cohabitate with her. On 30 June 1780, almost a year after they moved to the Beaver Creek plantation, she bore a mulatto son, Robert, and over the next decade and a half came three mulatto daughters: Betsy, Mary, and Eliza. Although Thomas Wright never formally married the mother of his children, they "lived together as man and wife." They also prospered. Within the economic ranks of Campbell County, Wright could be considered at least a modest planter. Nor did his miscegenous relationship with Sylvia injure his standing in the community. Rather than censuring or fining him, the county court periodically assigned him to survey roads and serve on juries, and he numbered among his friends some of the most important men in the community.
As the years passed, Thomas Wright took increasing interest in his family and particularly his son. On 1 September 1791, when Robert was
eleven years old, Thomas escorted the boy he called "his Robin" to the Campbell courthouse and recorded his manumission, which was to become effective on his twenty-first birthday in 1801. The timing of this civil declaration was crucial in Robert's development. He was old enough to grasp the importance of the status being conferred on him, and the public nature of the announcement must have reinforced his own feelings of self-worth while giving him a keen appreciation of the value of his freedom and a profound gratitude toward his father, qualities that would mark his adult life. About this time, Thomas Wright began telling his friends that Robert would be his heir. Thus, the boy grew up with the sense of entitlement that came from being the only son of a well-to-do and doting father. Far from treating him as a slave, Thomas kept Robert in his home, carefully saw to his education in business as well as academic subjects, and gave him a horse to ride to school. His classroom companions and playmates at home were white boys such as William Hawkins and Stephen and William Perrow, whose fathers also possessed good-sized farms and slaves. Described variously as "light" and as a "bright" mulatto, Robert basked in the approval of a father who proudly pointed him out as one of the "strongest negro fellows" in the county.
Eventually, Thomas Wright also provided for the freedom of his other children. On 14 April 1800 he filed papers for the manumission of his three daughters: Betsy, sixteen, Mary, fourteen, and Eliza, seven, as well as for Maria, three, the daughter of Anna, who was part of Sylvia's first family. Each girl would become free at the age of eighteen. The next February, Wright also manumitted Anna, twenty-eight, and James, twenty-six, "being fully persuaded that freedom is the natural right of all mankind." His belief in natural rights, however, did not induce him to liberate all his slaves. At his death Wright still owned at least five.
In reality, he may well have freed Anna, James, and Maria because of his devotion to Sylvia and her influence over him. The provisions of his will indicate the nature of their relationship as well as his love for both Sylvia and their son. According to reliable witnesses, Wright originally planned to leave the bulk of his estate to Sylvia for the rest of her life. Robert and several of the senior Wright's friends, however, persuaded him that Sylvia would be incapable of managing the property and was not interested in the land. It would be far better, they argued, to leave most of the estate in Robert's hands with the understanding that he would provide financially for his mother's comfort as well as for the rest of the family. Thomas Wright concurred with this paternalism. As one of his closest associates and neighbors, Colonel Daniel B. Perrow, later attested, although Wright was "much attached" to Sylvia and extremely solicitous for her care, he also "had great Confidence in Robert before and at the time of his Death."
When Thomas Wright died in late 1805, he left "the sole and exclusive use and enjoyment" of his plantation house and two acres around it to "Sylvee a woman of colour formerly my slave but since emancipated and with whom I have had children." She also received as her "absolute property forever" all furniture in the house, two milk cows of her own choosing, and whatever money Thomas possessed at the time of his death. The will further specified that Anna's daughter, Maria, should serve Sylvia until she became free at the age of eighteen. To his "natural son Robert Wright," Thomas gave the plantation land, slaves, stock, and equipment, as well as any other real estate or personal property he owned. Moreover, the house and acres in Sylvia's posses-sion would revert to Robert after his mother's death. Apart from the land, the personal estate in the house and on the farm was appraised at almost £500. Wright chose his executors carefully. Undoubtedly, he realized the unusual nature of his will, and he knew his white brothers and sisters and their descendants expected to claim his property. Three "trusty friends," Daniel B. Perrow, Charles Gilliam, and Lawrence McGeorge, served as his executors. Perrow was especially prominent in the county that he represented for eleven terms in the state assembly and later served as sheriff. He and the other executors ensured that Sylvia and Robert took uncontested possession of the estate.
Thus, with his father's considerable assistance and the approval of the white elite, Robert Wright gained entry into Campbell County society and acquired an identity constructed by economic class rather than race. Almost a year later he displayed and reinforced his position when he married Mary Godsey, a white woman. Because Mary was underage, her mother gave her consent for the marriage license in October 1806, though the county clerk never recorded the marriage. It is not difficult to imagine the minister arriving for the wedding only to discover that the bride and groom were an interracial couple, performing the ceremony under the social constraints of the occasion, and then covering himself with the law by destroying the certificate. If miscegenation under any circumstances had been unacceptable in Campbell County, Wright's neighbors should have demonstrated their disapproval by haling the couple before the county court for violating the law, or at least shunned them. In all the abundant legal records, however, no evidence exists that either then or later anyone publicly objected to their marriage.
Robert brought his wife to a house located close by his mother's, and the next seven or eight years were probably the happiest of his life. An energetic worker like his father, he was adept at farming. Judging from the tax assessments and the comments of overseers, his acreage ranked among the best in the county. The plantation produced substantial crops of wheat, tobacco, oats, hay, and com, along with burnt lime. The work was sufficient for seven laborers, most of whom were apparently slaves. Wright fitted easily into the slaveholding ranks and seemingly was not troubled by owning slaves or purchasing them as he thought necessary. His tastes were those of his class and age. In his free time he hunted in the nearby hills or gambled at cards with his friends. Like his father and many other Virginians of the day, he had a penchant for the bottle and drank freely and often. George MacKey, a white stonemason who boarded with him, considered Wright "industrious" around the farm but also noted that he indulged in "frequent Frolicks."
Fulfilling the promises he had made to his father, Robert assumed responsibility for the care of his mother and siblings. Sylvia Wright provided the most difficult challenge. When she discovered that Thomas had altered his original will and given the plantation directly to Robert, she was upset. Evidently, she wanted her economic independence and resented his intervention in the matter of the will and subsequent financial control, which effectively undercut the identity she had con-structed as the "wife" of the deceased Thomas. Neighbors noticed that mother and son had "frequent misunderstandings," but Sylvia later admitted that Robert had "honestly fulfilled his agreement" with his father and given her a "decent Support."
Another change in the will may also have displeased Sylvia. At one time Thomas Wright had considered leaving fifty acres of his plantation to James, her elder son, whom he had also freed. But Robert dissuaded his father from breaking up the tract on Beaver Creek and promised that he would purchase land elsewhere for James. A few months after his father's death, he bought fifty-six acres in neighboring Bedford County for his half brother to farm but retained the deed himself to ensure that no one would "cheet [James] out of the land." Robert's half sister Anna had died some time earlier, and when her daughter Maria received her freedom at the age of eighteen, Robert sent her to live with her uncle James in Bedford and provided money for her support. Robert also took responsibility for his mulatto sisters and met their needs as best he could. Betsy, the eldest, was raised in Lynchburg, mainly under the supervision of Sarah Winston Cabell, and later had two children, Latitia and William, without benefit of marriage. Although accused of being a
In July 1779, Thomas Wright purchased a 389.5-acre plantation in Bedford County from Charles and Sarah Caffrey. This plat of the property on Beaver Creek is derived from the Campbell County Surveyor's Book, 1827-1924.
drunkard and a "notorious prostitute," Betsy Wright would be a force to be reckoned with in the family and the courts for years to come. Betsy's reputation for loose conduct may have been the reason Sylvia kept her two youngest daughters at home. Mary died unmarried before her mother, while Eliza married James Turner, a free black shoemaker.
By all accounts, Robert Wright played the role of gentleman farmer and paterfamilias well. His father had trained him for that position, and apparently he enjoyed it. After eight years of marriage, his wife gave birth in December 1814. Robert proudly named his son Thomas Pryor Wright, thus identifying him with his own father and his father's family. Within a few weeks, however, Mary rejected both her husband and their mulatto child and ran away with William Arthur. Though she initially returned home in response to her husband's pleading, Mary's elopement at the end of 1815 left Robert "very much exasperated against her" and plunged him into a bitterness from which he never recovered. The cuckolded husband acted out his anger and humiliation. Convinced that his neighbors had assisted in the escape, he confronted Catherine Stockton, who deposed that Wright had threatened her "with a gun to make me talk and drew his fist to break my head." She finally went to court to make Wright "keep the peace." His suspicions were confirmed, however, when he discovered that James Wiley, one of his old gambling companions, had helped the couple elope. Robert cursed him soundly and repeatedly.
The mulatto farmer soon formed a liaison with another white woman. In the fall of 1816, Polly Davidson moved into his home with the cordial approval of her father and other members of her family. George MacKey, who "lifted her off of her horse" the night she arrived, testified later that her father on his visits "never" expressed any reservations about the relationship his daughter had formed. Robert Wright himself told Catherine Stockton "that all the relatives of. . . Polly were pleased at her living with him." For the Davidsons, who owned no slaves and little property, this association meant an economic boost. To facilitate the new relationship, Wright also used raw economic power. On the day Polly moved into his house, Robert gave her a bond for $1,000 and, according to some sources, promised her half of his property if she bore his children. Her brother William became Wright's overseer on the plantation, and her clergyman brother may even have performed an informal marriage ceremony without benefit of license.
Although Wright's divorce petition did not mention Polly Davidson, it indicates the depth of his feelings and the need to reassert his own self-worth and the identity constructed through bonding with his father and affiliation with the white, landowning, slaveholding class in the county. Wright presented himself to the General Assembly as "a free man of color," his wife as "a free white woman," and Arthur as "a free white man." In stressing the eloping couple's free status, Wright emphasized the importance of his own. Freedom was the common denominator that made him their equal, while his wife's desertion and adultery without provocation on his part made Wright more sinned against than sinning. The Wrights had obtained a proper marriage license, and an authorized clergyman, William Heath, had officiated at the ceremony. Although admitting that the minister who performed an interracial marriage and the white party who contracted it could be punished under the law, Wright argued confidently that the wedding had been "to all intents and purposes valid and binding between the parties," because such penalties did not render it null and void. Given these circumstances, he wanted a divorce.
The request in itself was unusual, for legislative divorces were extremely rare. Few Virginians applied, and far fewer had their appeals granted. Out of 107 divorce petitions between 1786 and 1815, the assembly acted affirmatively on only fifteen. Ironically in the case of Robert Wright, the most compelling reason a white husband could offer for a divorce in 1816 was proof through the birth of a mulatto child that his wife had been sexually involved with a Negro. By acknowledging that his marriage had been interracial, Wright may have hoped to assure a divorce.
In a ringing endorsement of his request, the local white community rallied behind Wright and testified to his honorable position in their society. Lewis Franklin, Charles Gilliam, and Stephen Perrow, respect-able farmers and slaveholders, signed their names at the bottom of his petition and, in a separate affidavit, asserted that as Wright's neigh-
bors they had known him well for a long time. He behaved "with propriety," they told the legislature. Vouching for the accuracy of his statements, they asserted that he had "allways treated his wife with kindness." In still another petition, more than fifty other men testified to the General Assembly that they "have been well acquainted with Robert Wright ... for many years past, and do with pleasure certify that we consider him an honest, upright man, and good citizen." From the "information" they had gathered about his marital problems, they believed that his petition was a truthful account. Most of these men were middling farmers, but a few possessed extensive plantations of more than a thousand acres. About half owned slaves, and at least two were justices of the county court. In short, they were broadly representative of the local community that regarded Wright as one of its own.
The scene is easily imagined. The men gathered outside the buildings at the county seat on one of the autumn court days. Franklin, Gilliam, and Perrow were well-known, respected members of the community. Perhaps one of them read Wright's petition aloud, noted their own endorsements, and encouraged the other men to sign the briefer state-ment. They could explain to those who were unfamiliar with his marital situation what his wife had done. The three were credible witnesses. Wright himself may well have appeared, as he did at court days. His economic status in the community, his capable management of the property he had inherited from his father, and the way he conducted himself in their society had helped the mulatto farmer forge strong relationships with his white neighbors. They gave him and his cause their public support.
Despite the widespread local approval, however, the House of Delegates rejected Wright's divorce petition out of hand without even referring it to committee. Affidavits and testimonials from western Campbell County counted for little in Richmond. Although Wright could be married to a white woman in his community, he could not be married to her in law.
Neither of the supporting documents that accompanied the petition mentioned race, yet both Wright and the local community were fully aware of his racial identity. All the legal documents drafted after his death repeatedly labeled him "coloured" or "black" or "negro." County records do not indicate that he ever held any civil position or served on a jury. When he traveled outside Virginia, he was careful to carry on his person a certified copy of his emancipation papers. Yet Robert Wright was in fact a split subject. For many if not most important purposes, class and economic condition, rather than race, constructed his identity. The tax records provide one significant index. The personal property tax list from his section of the county in 1816 counted 2,171 slaves over twelve years of age and seventy-two free Negroes over sixteen. Wright was not included, however, as either a free black or a mulatto in 1816 or in any preceding year. For tax purposes, he was considered to be white. Only in 1817 and 1818, after the divorce petition and during the last two years of his life, did the tax assessor write an "M," for mulatto, next to his name.
That change may have occurred because a new person filled the assessor's office; but it also may represent Wright's altered position in the neighborhood. When he and Mary Godsey had married, the local community had ignored their violation of the law against miscegenation. At least some in the county, however, disapproved of his public adultery with Polly Davidson. One of Wright's boarders recounted that the couple lived together "as though they had been man & wife in the utmost harmony." Polly was in full charge of the "Domestick affairs" in the home. Although certain neighbors were sympathetic to Robert's plight and accepted this relationship, referring to Polly as his "wife" and as "Polly Wright," others condemned her character and insisted that her position as Robert's "concubine" rendered her "notorious in the neigh-bourhood." Wright's strained relations at this time with his father's old friend and executor, Daniel Perrow, probably resulted from the latter's open disapproval of such "cohabitation." Though Robert had once sought the elderly colonel's advice and consulted with him on business, he no longer did so. Indeed, Robert may well have expected the assembly to reject his petition but hoped that a good-faith attempt to obtain a divorce would gain community acceptance for the relationship he and Polly had formed. Polly may also have wanted the divorce in order to legitimize her position as Robert's wife.
In this uneasy atmosphere created by both Robert's continuing bitterness over Mary's desertion and the hostility of at least a portion of the community, a misunderstanding arose in the spring of 1818 between Robert and his closest friend, Stephen Perrow. Raised on neighboring farms, the two had played and gone to school together and had inherited their fathers' plantations about the same time. Though Robert was older by perhaps as much as seven years, one of the boarders in his home thought that the two men "appeared as greate as Broth-ers.'' Perrow had strongly supported the divorce petition and, after Robert's death, would serve as Polly's closest adviser; but in early 1818 a slave told him and Fleming Duncan that Robert had cursed them for letting their hogs run wild in the woods and called them "no better than theives." Duncan wanted to confront Wright, but Perrow persuaded him that because this tale was simply "negro's news, Robin would deny it-that he knew Robin better than he did, & to let him alone.'' The incident, however, was repeated around the neighborhood. Ultimately someone informed an "astonished, and distressed" Wright during the April court days that Stephen Perrow and others among his peers no longer considered him a friend. Although Robert acknowledged the "dispute" between himself and Daniel Perrow, he was unaware of any other hostile neighbors and was particularly upset by the report that Stephen Perrow was "unfriendly to him." Unwilling to believe it, Wright immediately sought out Perrow and happily reported to Gilliam the next day "that everything was perfectly explained,. . . and they were on the most friendly terms."
Yet Wright's emotional distress was evident to his friends. Lewis Franklin witnessed Robert's crying when he and Perrow were discussing Robert's affairs at the courthouse in September. The reason for Wright's unhappiness was probably not a business matter, because his economic status at this time was excellent. Stephen Perrow may havebeen warning his friend that he was in danger of being presented to the county court for adultery. Evidently Colonel Daniel Perrow, Campbell's recently retired sheriff, had seriously considered such an action. He later testified that Stephen Perrow had told him he might do so himself, but the colonel thought the younger man had made this statement just to keep him from taking that step. The emotional pressure intensified. Although his neighbors thought Wright was in good health, he began to have premonitions of approaching death. While staying overnight with Frank-lin, he remarked on the sickness in his family and stated "that he should die before long." He expressed the same belief to another old family friend, John Gardner. Both men later testified that Wright had also told them he had made his will, and Gardner added that Wright had named Stephen Perrow and Arthur Litchfield as his executors.
Less than a month later, on 14 October 1818, Robert Wright died. He left a sizable estate in land, slaves, and crops with a promise of another plantation home, farm animals, and additional property to go to his heirs after the death of his mother. A series of legal battles and appeals to the General Assembly ensued that embroiled the entire Wright family- white, black, and mulatto-involved the conflicting testimony of numer-ous friends, neighbors, and acquaintances, and employed a flock of lawyers off and on for more than fifty years. These conflicts revolving around the Wrights further demonstrate the status and treatment of a free black family and the way in which its members asserted their rights, used the law, and interacted with one another and the white members of an antebellum Virginia community.
On the evening before Wright died, his home was crowded with family members and friends. As Robert lay unconscious in his bedroom, Stephen Perrow showed a will in Robert's handwriting to several people who later said they had read it. According to most versions of the testimony, Wright had planned to divide his property. His infant son, Thomas P. Wright, would receive the larger section of land on the north side of Beaver Creek; the property on the south side, where his home was located, would go to Polly during her lifetime and then to any child she might have within nine months of his death. If she did not bear his child, then when she died the house and land would revert to his son. After Robert's death, however, the will could not be located, and Polly Davidson maintained that Robert's sister Betsy had destroyed it. She explained that while Robert was dying, Betsy had come to her in another room and "asked for the keys to the Beaureau where the will & other Papers were Kept in the Room in which Robert lay & went directly & opened or unlocked the same.'' Later, Polly discovered "the will & one hundred Dollars in money were missing & she thought Betsy Wright had taken them." In support of Polly's story, Catherine Stockton swore that shortly after Robert's death, she had been on a road outside Lynchburg and heard Betsy boast to several other blacks that she "had stolen . . . Robert's will, and all the money he had and had conquered all the white folks." A month after Robert's death, the county court sent Betsy, her daughter Latitia, and brother-in-law James Turner to jail until they produced the will but later ordered their release.
In the spring of 1819, Robert's putative will became the subject of a lawsuit filed by Polly Davidson against Samuel Fleming, whom the county court had appointed temporary curator of Wright's estate until the will was settled. For more than a year both sides gathered affidavits from family members and neighbors. Stephen Perrow led the struggle to establish Polly Davidson's claim, while Fleming assembled witnesses who tried to throw doubt on Polly's credibility and Stephen Perrow's friendship with Robert Wright. As accusations of lying and deceit were hurled back and forth, the neighborhood along Beaver Creek became badly fractured. Members of the Perrow family, for example, wound up on opposing sides. Daniel Perrow, whose wife was Elizabeth Fleming, supported Samuel Fleming's case against his cousin Stephen Perrow. Sylvia, Betsy, and the rest of Robert's black and mulatto family supported Fleming. Certainly they stood to gain if Thomas P. Wright inherited all of his father's property immediately. Betsy in particular took a hand in guiding affairs. Fleming and "Relatives Interested" paid their lawyer, James B. Risque, $50 in advance and promised him another $300 if he won the suit.
Before the case could be settled, however, the white members of the Wright family filed a cross suit in April 1820 charging that Robert Wright had never been legally emancipated and was therefore a slave and incapable of inheriting any property from his father in 1805. Because Thomas Wright had never married, they asserted that his legal heirs were his brothers and sisters and their descendants. They asked the court to set aside Thomas Wright's will and give them his property. Even though the county clerk maintained that he could not find any evidence of Robert Wright's manumission, the court decided the statement in Thomas Wright's will that "he had 'duly emancipated' him" was sufficient evidence of Robert's freedom and therefore his capacity to inherit his father's property. His white cousins wound up paying court costs. They then appealed twice to the legislature to award them the property on the grounds that Robert had died "Intestate and unmar-ried." Both times the assembly turned them down.
While these appeals were still in process, Polly Davidson lost her lawsuit. In Davidson v. Wright, a Bedford County court ruled "that Robert Wright did not make or execute such will as alleged," and the Lynchburg Superior Court of Chancery then awarded the entire estate to
Thomas P. Wright. After almost seven years of litigation, Samuel Fleming and Robert Wright's mother and siblings had emerged trium-phant. Meanwhile, Fleming had been systematically robbing the estate and adding to his own personal wealth. Wright had left extensive holdings in land, slaves, horses, stock, plantation equipment, and "a most excellent crop" in his fields and barns, as well as money and bonds worth as much as $500. As Stephen Perrow later testified, Wright had been a capable manager with few debts. Soon after taking over the property, however, Fleming told Perrow that even though the estate had ''a Balance of upwards of $500, ... it made no difference as the estate was going to hell and he might as well have it as any one else."
As curator, Fleming hired a succession of overseers to manage the Wright plantation. Their affidavits testify both to the excellent quality of the farm and its yield as well as the various ways in which the curator bilked the estate. Fleming regularly sold or took home for himself crops, lamb, pork, wool, cows, horses, beds, and other movable property, but revenues rarely appeared on the balance sheet. He also charged the estate $1 for each trip he made to the plantation, while bragging to the overseer that he made such charges even when he did not appear. Although Sylvia and Betsy Wright would later prove keen enough to defend their own interests in court, no complaints came either from them or from any other member of the Wright family. Fleming may well have been buying them off. Certainly he used estate funds to support Sylvia and the other Wrights, including Betsy's daughter, Latitia, who took care of young Thomas. They continued living in the old plantation house.
Fleming's temporary curatorship ended with the conclusion of the suits over the will in 1825. In what was later proven to be an extraordi-nary fraud, he drew up a claim against the estate of $726.72, which he transferred jointly to German Jordan, a local tavern keeper, and Richard G. Haden, a deputy sheriff. Then, after selling his own plantation on Beaver
Creek, Fleming pocketed his gains both legal and criminal and moved to Tennessee. The county court next designated William Thompson, Jr., as curator, but when he discovered that Betsy Wright objected to his appointment, Thompson did not apply for the papers. Instead, toward the end of 1825, Jordan had himself appointed first the estate's admin-istrator and then Thomas P. Wright's guardian. The boy was eleven years old.
If Fleming had swindled the estate, Jordan wasted it. After renting out the land and the slaves, he auctioned off the stock, crops, and other movable property. He also accepted without challenge several claims against the estate, including one by Haden of $600. Asserting insufficient funds to settle the estate's debts, Jordan then sold the slaves over a three-year period between 1826 and 1829, some for a price far below market value.
Complaints from his securities eventually spuired the court to relieve Jordan of his control over the estate. At young Thomas Wright's request, William Gough, who had recently purchased a large plantation next to the Wright property, became the boy's guardian. Gough retained Samuel and Maurice H. Garland, two prominent Lynchburg attorneys, and the next year brought suit in Lynchburg's Superior Court of Law and Chancery against Fleming, Jordan, and their securities. The inventory made shortly after Jordan became administrator had listed eleven slaves, horses, stock, crops, plantation utensils, and furniture worth $3,667. With the exception of Suckey, an old slave woman valued at nothing, it was "all gone." The attorneys blistered Jordan and Haden for their "high handed frauds & speculations." Jordan, they asserted, had "cheated the child out of all his estate but the land, and it's God mercy" that had not been sold also.
Courtesy of the author
When Robert Wright died on 14 October 1818, he left extensive holdings in land, slaves, horses, stock, plantation equipment, and "a most excellent crop" in his fields and barns, as well as money and bonds worth as much as $500. His estate was subsequently squandered by curators and eaten up in lawsuits. This modern photograph shows Campbell County farmland once owned by the Wrights. Beaver Creek runs along the line of trees in the background.
After detailing the defendants' misdeeds, the Garland brothers sug-gested that "perhaps" Sylvia Wright and Jordan had shared "a secret understanding." In proposing that Sylvia had a hand in looting her grandson's property, the two lawyers spoke from firsthand knowledge, for they had represented her in two successful claims against the estate after Jordan became administrator. Sylvia had first sued Jordan in March 1826, demanding that he support her out of the estate. She claimed an annuity on the basis of her relationship with Thomas Wright and promises made after his death. Without mentioning that she had been a slave and that no marriage had taken place, Sylvia asserted that "in early life she associated herself with Thomas Wright . . . and until his death they lived together in harmony as man and Wife." Sylvia depicted their relationship as a partnership. Although initially "they were both porre, having no property," by their own "industry and economy they had acquired a considerable real and personal estate." After Thomas's death, first Robert Wright and then Samuel Fleming had fulfilled her expectations, but Jordan had reduced her to "a helpless and distressed Condition for the Ordinary Comfort of life and dependant upon Chari-ty." She asked for "support for life" and threatened that without it "she must become chargeable upon the county."
In his response as defendant, Jordan did not appeal to the provisions of Thomas Wright's will, challenge Sylvia's interpretation of events, or note her original status as Wright's slave. Nor did he mention that just a few months earlier, she had purchased furniture and stock at the estate auction. In short, Sylvia was no pauper; but because Jordan offered no contest, the court ordered him to pay her from estate revenues $100 a year in quarterly installments. She took him to court the following year, charging that Robert had borrowed a sizable sum in 1806 and never repaid it, "altho' often required." Jordan did not even appear, and an estate slave was sold to satisfy her claim.
Jordan's failure to defend his ward's estate was not the result of incompetence. In caring for his own interests, he was extremely astute and fast becoming a wealthy man. The case against him proceeded through several sessions until, after evaluating the commissioner's reports on the estate and the affidavits, the court held Jordan responsible "for the fair cash value of the slaves" who had been "improperly sold." This sum, together with the claims against his guardian accounts, amounted to $2,340.41, which he paid to the estate in March 1833. Even this sizable amount, however, did not seriously cut into his holdings.
Meanwhile, Thomas P. Wright approached his majority. Although his early education had been intermittent, he later attended a school conducted by Thomas and Bartlett Baugh. The boy had bills for books as well as "slate, paper and inkpowder" and pocket money "to buy [a] Knife" and "sundries for Christmas." Sometimes he boarded at school, but his guardian also paid Sylvia "for boarding, washing and mending" and Latitia for "making Clothes." When he became twenty-one on 17 December 1835, Gough paid him in cash $2,540.17, a hefty sum, which with the farmland he inherited might be expected to offer bright pros-pects. Unfortunately, the young man was enmeshed in debts as well as in another lawsuit, brought by his grandmother against the estate for the annuities that Gough had ceased paying. His guardian had been fending her off for several years, and it must have been with great relief that Gough signed off that responsibility and removed himself from the Wright family affairs. In order to gain his inheritance, however, the grandson had to assume the lawsuit. He made a deed of trust with Charles Mosby and Maurice Garland, selling them the land he had inherited on the understanding that he could continue to reside there and take the profits as long as he paid his grandmother's past and current annuities. If they were not forthcoming, then the trustees could seize and sell his land.
There were other debts, both large and small, so Wright formed a series of eight more deeds of trust with Mosby and Garland to pay a total of $2,361.91. Finally, he agreed that the trustees could auction the land, and Edward Hunter purchased the Wright plantation in 1836 for almost $4,000. Hunter's deed stipulated "that Sylvia Wright the grand mother of Thomas P. is to retain the house" together with the lot and rights to water from the spring and "sufficient wood to burn and timber to repair the house and keep up her fences." After she died, Hunter would receive the house and acres around it.
Thomas Wright had other problems as well. Evidently he was something of a hell-raiser. In August 1835, before he turned twenty-one, he was presented in the Lynchburg Hustings Court for "swearing Twenty profane oaths" and fined $16.60. The next month he appeared before the same court for a breach of the peace, and in November the Campbell court prosecuted him for "beating" another man. Mean-while, he continued to pile up debts of various sizes, possibly from gambling. In June 1836 the county authorities jailed him as an "insolvent debtor."
Sylvia Wright died in January 1838. Despite the years she had spent with lawyers and lawsuits, she left no will. Betsy and Thomas both filed deeds turning over their share of her estate to Betsy's daughter Latitia. Thomas Wright explained that his cousin had "rendered . . . important services in his infancy and childhood which have never been paid to her, and which [he] is now desirous to make good." He also may have been trying to keep his creditors from swallowing up whatever he inherited from Sylvia's estate. The court named Allen L. Wyllie as administrator, but before the estate could be divided, Latitia died. Because Thomas had already yielded his claim, Betsy and her son William filed a lawsuit maintaining that they and Emmeline Turner, the daughter of Betsy's deceased sister Eliza, were the only three living descendants entitled to Sylvia Wright's estate. They asked the court to order a sale of Sylvia's slaves and a tripartite division of her property. Wyllie and the court concurred, and the three shares each amounted to about $600.
During the following summer, however, in neighboring Bedford County, James and Maria Wright, another son and granddaughter of Sylvia Wright, learned of Sylvia's death and came forward to assert their rights. When Betsy denied any relationship to them, James and Maria explained the existence of Sylvia's first family before her sale to Thomas Wright and the provision that Robert Wright had made for them. Betsy's son William took exception to James Wright's affidavit in the case not only because James was "a party to the suit" but also because he was "a negro." Affidavits by white men in Bedford County, however, supported James and Maria's story. John Overstreet, for example, recalled how Robert had called James his ''half Brother" and remembered ''too yallow women at James Wrights on visits & said James was their brother." More witnesses came forward, including Stephen Perrow, who supported James and Maria's claims. A court commissioner ultimately concluded that Sylvia had seven children: the first three were "of a black complection," while the last four possessed "a light complection, born whilst she and her master Thomas Wright, cohabited as man & wife, and recognized by him as his children." In 1852 the court eventually ordered a division of Sylvia's estate into five equal shares for Betsy, James, Maria, and William Wright and Emmeline Turner.
Responding to this decree, Betsy reappeared in court. The previous decade and a half had been traumatic for the almost seventy-year- old woman. According to several neighbors, she had been badly burned in a fire in the early 1840s and spent almost two years confined to a rented, unfurnished home in Lynchburg, where her bed was "a parcel of rags." Frequently freezing in the winter's cold without wood for a fire and lacking even basic necessities, she existed on whatever food her friends and son William brought her. Then William had died, leaving her even more alone. By the end of the decade, Betsy resided in Lynch-burg's poorhouse. Despite her problems, however, Betsy's amended bill of complaint showed an extraordinary capacity for deception. Although still denying that James and Maria were her half brother and niece, she accepted the court's verdict that they were her relatives and thus claimed their estates. According to her story, they had both died unmarried and childless, as had her son William and niece Emmeline Turner. Thomas P. Wright had died as well. Announcing that she was "the sole survivor of the whole family, and sole heir of all the rest," Betsy demanded "full and complete justice." Moreover, she hounded the court to act "speedily (for she is a tenant of the Poor house and with her just rights involved in this case, could be made comfortable, if not happy, the remnant of her days)." Her persistence paid off. Although not entitled to the legacies of either James or Maria-James had lived with a woman he acknowledged as his wife, and Maria had five living children-Betsy received $450 from Wyllie in 1853 and several lesser amounts in later years. Although probably never finding either com-fort or happiness and evidently remaining a "pauper," she certainly enjoyed longevity. When the last case was settled and the court accepted the final report of its commissioner in 1873, Betsy was almost ninety years old.
The saga of the Wright family, however pathetic in its denouement, provides a valuable opportunity to examine the personal, social, and economic changes within an interracial family over three generations; the interaction of white, mulatto, and black relatives; and their relation-ships with the local white community. The most immediately arresting reality is that race did not fix identities. Indeed, the incidence of miscegenation on the part of men and women of both races met a tolerant, even supportive, reaction from one slaveholding Virginia community. Neither white father nor mulatto son felt compelled to disguise or deny the intimate liaisons they formed across the color line. For more than a quarter century, Thomas Wright lived with Sylvia out of wedlock; yet in conversation with friends and through his will, he made clear his love for the mother of his children and the happiness their union had brought him. As best he could, he constructed for her the identity of a wife. In her later years Sylvia treated their relationship as if it had been in fact a legitimate marriage and an economic partnership. For both, it obviously meant much more than the mating of a white master and a black slave.
Nor did Thomas Wright's open concubinage with Sylvia diminish his stature in the local community. Moreover, he successfully transferred his respected position in society to his son, who then reached beyond his parents to marry a white woman and live with her as his wife for ten years. So integral was this marriage to his identity that neither in his reported exchanges with his neighbors nor in his petition to the General Assembly did he ever apologize for his conduct, display embarrassment, or express remorse for violating a supposed taboo. Mary Godsey and Polly Davidson also crossed the racial line publicly and did so with the consent and even approval of their families. Moreover, all evidence indicates that the local community accepted the match between Robert and Mary. In short, everyone immediately concerned and their white neighbors behaved as if interracial marriage was normal and that the legislation prohibiting miscegenation in Virginia did not or should not exist.
Why did this happen-both for father and son? Most obviously, the respectable positions both men occupied in Campbell County were related to their economic standing as prosperous slaveholding farmers as well as to their public behavior. Class status was directly related to wealth in land and slaves. For this place and time in the culture of patriarchy, money counted far more than race in fixing social position. As a member of the planter class and the beneficiary of his father's transference of power, Robert Wright could openly defy even such a potentially explosive prohibition as that against interracial sexual inter-course and still find acceptance in his local community. Although his neighbors clearly knew Robert was a mulatto, they chose not to construct his identity primarily on that basis.
The role he assumed within the family after his father's death fit the patriarchal model he undoubtedly imbibed from Thomas Wright's exam-ple and tutelage and reinforced his identity. He fulfilled what was expected of the male head of the household. He supported his mother and provided for his black and mulatto siblings and their children. Thomas Wright also trained his son for the position he would fill in the neighborhood. He bequeathed to him not only his estate but also the patronage of powerful friends in the white community. They ensured that Robert inherited the property without challenge. White men of similar social and economic standing became his closest friends and associates. Slaveholders and lesser planters like himself, some had been schoolmates and boyhood companions. In addition to doing business with one another, they hunted, gambled, and drank together. As he shared their values, the mulatto farmer moved easily and naturally in their society. He ate at their tables and spent nights in their homes, and when his wife abandoned him, he turned to them for the assistance and support they readily provided. Only when he openly introduced Polly Davidson into his home and began living with her as his wife did a portion of the community recoil in disapproval. But the opprobrium resulted from the couple's public adultery, not from their miscegena-tion. Even then, Stephen Perrow and other close friends continued to sustain him.
Robert Wright's sense of entitlement to move freely and openly in white society was not unique in his family. Nor perhaps was it entirely a result of his father's training or genes. As the legal records make evident, both black and mulatto members of his family displayed a tough assertiveness in confronting members of the white community as well as one another. Undeterred by considerations of race or gender, Sylvia and her daughter Betsy did not hesitate to use the court system to demand what they claimed as their rights. Their legal opponents were usually white males. In case after case throughout the antebellum period, the two women pushed and shoved to advance their interests. Hiring the best lawyers in Lynchburg, they won more often than they lost. Indeed, they sometimes appear greedy. In the struggle to enhance her own economic security after Robert's death, Sylvia played into the hands of Samuel Fleming and German Jordan and thus jeopardized the inheritance of her grandson. Then again, watching the young Thomas P. Wright grow to maturity, she may have recognized his weaknesses and foreseen his inability to maintain his affairs.
Together with her son William, Betsy turned repeatedly to the courts to secure her claims. Described by one of their securities as "idle, dissolute, & extravagant as far as they could obtain either credit or means to be so,'' the mother and son were continually in debt despite the money they received. Even with her later physical and financial prob-lems, Betsy emerges as the least appealing family member, particularly in her attempt to deny her free black relatives their right to share in Sylvia's estate. Her defeat in that case was a result of the sturdy resistance offered by James and Maria Wright in concert with their white supporters. But that was the only court fight Betsy lost. In substantial measure, her frequent successes depended on her determined persis-tence. An exhausted Allen Wyllie, appointed by the court in 1838 to administer Sylvia's estate, wrote twenty years later that he had paid more money than he should have to settle the matter and satisfy "my anxiety to be cleared of the Wrightfs]."
The legal battles of Sylvia and Betsy Wright reinforce the inescapable conclusions drawn from Robert Wright's life: that emancipated slaves and free blacks did not necessarily live circumspectly on the margins of
southern society, and that identities for southern blacks before Emanci-pation could be constructed on bases other than race. Indeed, the story of the Wright family exemplifies the variety and complexity that underlay the status and position of free blacks in the South in the generations before the Civil War.
General Notes: Wife - Polly Davidson
------------------------------------------------------------
Marriages of Campbell County, Virginia,
Name:
Gender:
Marriage Date:
Marriage Place:
Spouse:
FHL Film Number:
--------------------------------------------------------------
Right next to Robert Wrights estate
1820 census, Campbell County, Va
Davidson, Polly 000100 - 01011
1 male age age 16-26 (William?)
1 female age under 10
1 female age 16-25 (Polly?)
1 female age >45 (Jane?)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Virginia Marriages, 1740-1850
about POLLY DAVIDSON
Groom Name:
Bride Name:
Marriage Date:
County:
State:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Possibility:
1860 Southern Revenue District, Bedford, Virginia (next to a Wright H Wright)
Mary Turner
L A Turner
M Turner
or:
Name:
Age in 1860:
Birth Year:
Birthplace:
Home in 1860:
Gender:
Post Office:
Household Members:
Name
Mary Turner
Name:
Age in 1870:
Birth Year:
Birthplace:
Home in 1870:
Race:
Gender:
Post Office:
Value of real estate:
Household Members:
Name
Leroy A Turner
Amanda Turner
Florence A Turner
Mary Turner
Alice Crouch
Virginia Deaths
Name:
Birth Date:
Birth Place:
Death Date:
Death Place:
Death Age:
Race:
Marital Status:
Gender:
FHL Film Number:
Husband William C Watkins
Born:
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
Marriage: 29 Feb 1844 - Montgomery County, Illinois
Wife Polly Davidson
Born: 1827 - Indiana
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
Father: James Henry Davidson
Mother: Unknown
Children
1 M Henry Watkins
Born: 26 Mar 1845 - Illinois
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
2 F Emily Watkins
Born: 1849 - Illinois
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
3 M James A. Watkins
Born: 25 Jun 1852 - Illinois
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
4 F Sarah Watkins
Born: 1855 - Illinois
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
5 M William Lafayette Watkins
Born: 14 Oct 1860 - Illinois
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
General Notes: Husband - William C Watkins
Name: William Watkins
State: IL
County: Shelby County
Township: No Township Listed
Year: 1855
Record Type: State or colonial census
Page: 066
Database: IL 1855 State Census Index
James died on 26 August 1875 (Montgomery Co., IL Estate Records, Bk. E, p. 20). According to a recorded deposition, James was survived by seven children - Thomas, Nicholas W., and Nancy A.Davidson of Montgomery County; Allen of Fayette County; Polly Watkins of Shelby County; and Eli and Robert of Sangamon County. In a noncupative will delivered to Levi Davidson and John Osborne, James left all his personal property to Nicholas W. A J.T. Alexander was appointed Administrator of the estate. No mention is made of a surviving wife.
From Federal Census records, Polly Davidson Watkins was born in 1827 in Indiana, Allen was born in 1830 in Indiana, Thomas was born in 1838 in Illinois, and Nicholas W. was born in 1846 in Illinois. The birth dates and places for Nancy A., Eli, and Robert are unknown. The 1835 State Census for Fayette County lists James's household with six children - four boys and two girls. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that Allen, Eli, and Robert were three of the four sons, and Polly and Nancy A. were the two daughters. Their mother must have been James's first wife. Thomas's mother must have been Sarah Prater and Nicholas W's mother must have been Jerussa Morris.
A receipt for ten dollars, dated 23 October 1878, for a coffin for Nicholas Davidson was found in James's estate papers. Polly married William C. Watkins, son of Absalom C. Watkins, on 29 February 1844 (Montgomery Co IL Marriage Records 1821-1850, transcribed by Margaret Rambo, et al., Montgomery County Genealogical Society, Litchfield, IL). From census and family records their children were Henry born 26 March 1845, Emily born ea. 1849, James A. born 25 June 1852, Sarah born ca. 1855, and William Lafayette born 14 October 1860.
Husband Possible Davidson
Born:
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
Father: Davidson
Mother:
Marriage:
Wife
Born:
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
Children
1 M John Henry Davidson
Born: 1800 - Virginia
Christened:
Died: 24 Jun 1878 - Appomattox County, Virginia
Buried:
Spouse: Demarius Abbitt
General Notes: Husband - Possible Davidson
Name:
Age:
Birth Year:
Birthplace:
Home in 1880:
Race:
Gender:
Relation to Head of House:
Marital Status:
Father's Birthplace:
Household Members:
Name
L. W. Davidson
John W. Davidson
Emma Sinclaer
1870 Hill, Appomattox, Virginia
Below: A JOHN HENRY DAVIDSON b 1801 Va Name Age J H Davidson <http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=1870usfedcen&indiv=try&h=39089603>
69 Demaris Davidson <http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=1870usfedcen&indiv=try&h=37194714>
50 John W Davidson <http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=1870usfedcen&indiv=try&h=37194715>
11 James Henry Davidson <http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=1870usfedcen&indiv=try&h=37654043>
20 (James Henry --probably not son, at least by this wife, he is also black) Family in 1860: Close to Judith Davidson, Edward Davidson (Jm Name:John H DavidsonAge:59Birth Year:abt 1801Gender:MaleBirth Place:VirginiaHome in 1860:Appomattox, VirginiaPost Office:Tower HillFamily Number:524Value of real estate: View image <http://search.ancestry.com/iexec?htx=View&r=an&dbid=7667&iid=4297361_00501&fn=John+H&ln=Davidson&st=r&ssrc=&pid=33660278> Household Members:
Name Age John H Davidson <http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=1860usfedcenancestry&indiv=try&h=33660278>
59 Damauas Davidson <http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=1860usfedcenancestry&indiv=try&h=33660279>
40 John Wm Davidson <http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=1860usfedcenancestry&indiv=try&h=34224972>
1 Mildred Davidson <http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=1860usfedcenancestry&indiv=try&h=34224973>
ntbl 55
Family in 1850: Name:
Age:
Birth Year:
Birthplace:
John H Davidson
Janeth Davidson
Mildred Davidson
Most Likely spouse(same page in 1850):
Husband Prentis C. Davidson
Born: 1 Sep 1902 - Pickett County, Tennessee
Christened:
Died: 31 Jul 1981 - Kentucky
Buried: - Maupin Cemetery, Clinton County, Kentucky
Father: Sanford Davidson
Mother: Frances Elizabeth Russell
Marriage:
Wife Maudie Poore
Born: 1 Sep 1908
Christened:
Died: 23 Oct 1975 - Kentucky
Buried:
Children
General Notes: Husband - Prentis C. Davidson
Birth and death from Find a Grave:
C. Prentis Davidson
Birth: Sep. 4, 1902
Death: Jul. 31, 1981
Maupin Cemetery
Clinton County
Kentucky, USA
General Notes: Wife - Maudie Poore
Birth and Death from Find a Grave:
Maude Mae Poore Davidson
Birth: Sep. 1, 1908
Death: Oct. 23, 1975
Burial:
Maupin Cemetery
Clinton County
Kentucky, USA
Husband Preston Ely Davidson
Born: 22 Sep 1859 - Illinois
Christened:
Died: 2 Jun 1931 - Springfield, Sangamon County, Illinois
Buried: 5 Jun 1931 - Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield, Sangamon County, Illinois
Father: Micajah C Davidson
Mother: Sarah Alta Hooten
Marriage: 6 May 1880 - Effingham County Illinois
Wife Ella M Parks
Born: 1 Jul 1865 - Effingham County Illinois
Christened:
Died: 27 Jan 1932 - Springfield, Sangamon County, Illinois
Buried: - Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield, Sangamon County, Illinois
Father: Lafayette Parks
Mother: Cerilla Brockel
Children
1 M Lee Davidson
Born: Oct 1884 - Illlinois
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
2 M J B Davidson
Born: Jan 1887 - Illlinois
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
3 F Nola D Davidson
Born: Feb 1892 - Illlinois
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
4 M Joseph P Davidson
Born: 28 Feb 1894 - Strausberg, Shelby County, Illinois
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
5 F Mabel L Davidson
Born: Oct 1895 - Illlinois
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
General Notes: Husband - Preston Ely Davidson
Illinois Death Index
Name:
Birth Date:
Birth Place:
Death Date:
Death Place:
Burial Date:
Burial Place:
Cemetery Name:
Death Age:
Occupation:
Race:
Marital Status:
Gender:
Street Address:
Residence:
Father Name:
Father Birth Place:
Mother Name:
Mother Birth Place:
Spouse Name:
FHL Film Number:
1880 Effingham Co Il
Anc.com Image-11/p444d/Sh12/Ed141/Dw68/Mason
Davidson, M C. (Michael C. Davidson) w m 72 Farmer Virginia Virginia Virginia
Davidson, Sarah w f 59 wife Keeping House Tennessee -0- -0-
Davidson, P. (William P. Davidson) w m 26 son Farmer Illinois Virginia Tennessee
Davidson, C. D. (Charles D. Davidson) w m 25 son Farmer Illinois Virginia Tennessee
Davidson, Preston (Preston E. Davidson) w m 20 son Farmer Illinois Virginia Tennessee
Davidson, Ettie (Ella M. Parks) w f 15 daughter-in-law Illinois Illinois Illinois
1900 Sangamon Co Il
Anc.com Image-12/p227/Sh7b/Ed99/Dw133/Ward 6/Springfield Davidson, P. E. (Preston E. Davidson) w m Sep 1859 40 m19yrs Illinois Illinois Illinois
Davidson, Etter M. wife w f Jul 1863 36 m19yrs 5ch 5li Illinois Illinois Illinois
Davidson, Lee son w m Oct 1874 15 Illinois Illinois Illinois
Davidson, J. B. son w m Jan 1887 13 Illinois Illinois Illinois
Davidson, Nola D. dau? w f Feb 1892 8 Illinois Illinois Illinois
Davidson, J. P. (Joseph P. Davidson) son w m Feb 1894 6 Illinois Illinois Illinois
Davidson, Mable L. dau w f Oct 1895 4 Illinois Illinois Illinois
Parks, J. H. boarder w m Jan 1873 27 Illinois Illinois Illinois
1910 Sangamon Co Il
Anc.com Image-23/p54b/Sh12b/Ed125/Dw255/Ward 2/Springfield
Davidson, Preston E. m w 50 m1 m29yrs Illinois Virginia Tennessee
Davidson, Ettie M. wife f w 45 m1 m29yrs 5ch 4li Illinois Illinois Illinois
Davidson, Nolte D. son m w 18 Illinois Illinois Illinois
Davidson, Joseph P. son m w 16 Illinois Illinois Illinois
Davidson, Mabel L. dau f w 13 Illinois Illinois Illinois
1920 Sangamon Co Il
Anc.com Image-6/p110b/Sh3b/Ed128/Dw51/Springfield/Capital Township
Davidson, Preston E. m w 60 Illinois Virginia Virginia
Davidson, Etta M. wife f w 54 Illinois Illinois Illinois
Davidson, Mabel dau f w 23 Illinois Illinois Illinois
1930 Springfield, Sangamon, Illinois
Preston E Davidson
Etta M Davidson
General Notes: Wife - Ella M Parks
Illinois Death Index
Name: Etta May Davidson
[Etta May Parks]
Birth Date: 1 Jul 1865
Birth Place: Effingham, Ill
Death Date: 27 Jan 1932
Death Place: Springfield, Sangamon, Illinois
Burial Date: 29 Jan 1932
Burial Place: Springfield, Sangamon, Ill.
Cemetery Name: Oak Ridge
Death Age: 66
Occupation: Housewife
Race: White
Marital Status: W
Gender: Female
Residence: Springfield, Sangamon, Ill.
Father Name: Lafayette Parks
Father Birth Place: Illinois
Mother Name: Cerilla Brockel
Mother Birth Place: Ill.
Spouse Name: Preston Ely Davidson
Comments: res. 30 yrs.
FHL Film Number: 1684326
Husband Even D. Frogge
Born:
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
Marriage:
Wife Prudence Davidson
Born: 26 Dec 1811 - Tennessee
Christened:
Died: 21 Jan 1908 - Metcalf County, Kentucky
Buried:
Father: Alexander Davidson
Mother: Martha Smith
Children
General Notes: Wife - Prudence Davidson
Husband Atley Stone
Born: Oct 1890 - Virginia
Christened:
Died: 3 Dec 1927 - Switchback, McDowell County, West Virginia
Buried: - Shorts Creek
Father: C.F. Stone
Mother: Eliza J. Fowler
Marriage:
Wife Rachel E Davidson
Born: 11 Feb 1889 - Virginia
Christened:
Died: 31 Jul 1968 - Virginia
Buried: - Highland Memory Gardens, Dublin, Pulaski County, Virginia
Father: Robert Davidson
Mother: Carena Bryant
Children
1 F Dorothy Stone
Born: 1913 - West Virginia
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
2 M Howard Samuel Stone
Born: 8 Oct 1916 - West Virginia
Christened:
Died: 30 Oct 1996 - Virginia
Buried: - Highland Memory Gardens Mausoleum, Dublin, Pulaski County, Virginia
3 M French Stone
Born: 16 Jan 1919 - McDowell County, West Virginia
Christened:
Died: 3 Dec 2010 - Manchester, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire
Buried: - Mount Calvary Cemetery, Manchester, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire
Spouse: Ida B. Daneault
Marr: 22 Aug 1942 - Allenstown, Merrimack County, New Hampshire
4 F Lena Stone
Born: 3 Mar 1921 - West Virginia
Christened:
Died: 2 Apr 1973 - Durham, Durham County, North Carolina
Buried:
Spouse: Frank Thomas Bullock
5 F Hazel Stone
Born: 1924 - West Virginia
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
6 M Atley Stone Jr
Born: 24 Jun 1928 - West Virginia
Christened:
Died: 20 Mar 1981 - Durham, Durham County, North Carolina
Buried:
General Notes: Husband - Atley Stone
Name:
Birth Date:
Birth Place:
Death Date:
Death Place:
Burial Date:
Burial Place:
Death Age:
Occupation:
Race:
Marital Status:
Gender:
Father Name:
Father Birth Place:
Mother Name:
Mother Birth Place:
FHL Film Number:
1920 Elkhorn, McDowell, West Virginia
Atley Stone
Rachel Stone
Dorthy Stone
Howard Stone
French Stone
1930 Pulaski, Pulaski, Virginia
Rachel Stone
Howard Stone
French Stone
Lena Stone
Hazel Stone
Junior Stone
Lee Benschader 25,son-in-law, GA,GA,GA
Dotte Benschader 17, WV, VA, VA
1940
119 1th St SN Cliff Street
Rachal Stone
Howard Stone
Lena Stone
Hazel Stone
Atney Stone
General Notes: Wife - Rachel E Davidson
Rachel Davidson Stone
Birth:
Death: