Our Cousins of African-American Descent

During Thomas Jefferson's lifetime, a visitor to his Monticello plantation in Virginia observed a youth of about twelve, light-skinned and red-haired. "Who is that boy?" he asked. The answer was that he was a "child of the plantation." For generations, Jefferson's descendants by his slave, Sally Hemings, half-sister to his late wife Martha, knew Jefferson was their ancestor, but his white descendants denied the relationship . . . until along came DNA. If you've a mind to, you can read about that controversy HERE  
It's through DNA that I've come across two of our cousins of African-American descent. I don't mean my son Donovan.

Donovan 1994 before he went bald and entered middle age.

And I don't mean our cousin Erin's and her husband's adopted son Quinn.  

Quinn and the Windy Day

I mean that until James Rainey (1814-c1870) and Milla (Roberts) Rainey (c1808 - c1880) moved their family from Pulaski County, Kentucky, to the free state of Indiana in the early 1850s, our ancestors and their kin resided in the South. Some, although not all, possessed enslaved men, women and children. This blog is about a branch of Milla Roberts' family and their African-American descendants. 

Milla's father was John Roberts (1771 Virginia - 1857 Pulaski Co. Kentucky). And John's father was William Roberts, likely born about 1735 in Virginia and settled in Hawkins County, Tennessee. 

Hawkins County, Tennessee

After living a short time in Pulaski County, Kentucky, William Roberts got it into his head to join his cousin George Roberts down in what was then called West Florida (a part of Spanish Florida), and died in St. Tammany Parish in 1810. That same year President Madison annexed West Florida to Louisiana Territory.

St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana

Now this cousin George Roberts was born in 1745, probably in Virginia, and died about 1810 in Washington Parish, Louisiana.

Washington Parish, Louisiana

He had nine sons and two daughters with his wife Rhoda Payne (1750-1811). Oddly, Rhoda was allegedly reared a Quaker, a religious group that abhorred slavery. 

George made out his will in 1804, claiming citizenship in Hawkins County, Tennessee, so perhaps creating it before departing for Louisiana. He deposited the will with the local commandant in Washington Parish where he settled.  We know he was a slave-owner because after naming his "beloved wife Rhoda Roberts" and his children, and making bequests, he states:

. . and as for my negro woman Lettis and her child Catherine to Belong to my wife as long as she lives and at her death Both to be free. If my wife should dy [sic] before the child is twenty seven years of age she may give it to one of the children to have tel [sic] she is of that age and to be free.

The usual reason for a slave-owner to free a female slave and her child was because he had sired that child. However, it's possible he did so out of consideration for his wife's views.

Of George's and Rhoda's many children, we'll focus on Elisha Roberts, born in 1775 in the Watauga Settlement on the Holston River, in what became Hawkins County, Tennessee. I earlier wrote about the killings by Indians of some of the Roberts family there. HERE

Elisha Roberts left Tennessee for Kentucky, where he married Martha "Patsy" Gill in Green County in 1800. He remained there about ten years, even purchasing land from his father-in-law in 1803. His father and some brothers and sisters having already removed to Louisiana, Elisha and his young family, including three slaves, finally did, also, in 1811, settling in the southern part of Washington Parish. After participating in the War of 1812 as a 1st lieutenant, he purchased more slaves and established a large cotton plantation. His daughter Mahala allegedly was born in this plantation house in 1816.

Elisha Roberts Washington Parish plantation house

In the 1820 census he possessed two adult male slaves, two adult female slaves, six male slaves under age 14 and six female slaves under age 14. 

The family story is that while running down an escaped slave whose wife had been carried to Texas by another master, Elisha rode into east Texas. The land looked good to him and, in January, 1824, he settled his family and his slaves on a large piece of land in what would become San Augustine County in east Texas, on the road to San Antonio. He'd traded a slave to a Spaniard for that land.

San Augustine County, Texas

Race is difficult to write about. I've puzzled over how I would tell the story of our distant cousins' white ancestors. Do we abhor the sin, but love the sinner? I suppose Elisha Roberts would be the first to protest that he was no sinner, but a good businessman, who took advantage of the economic and social conditions of the time. Slavery is wrong at any time, in any place.

Elisha's descendants on Ancestry.com, both black and white, appear to honor his accomplishments. His 30 slaves dredged out a creek in San Augustine County and erected a cotton gin there in 1825. Elisha was an alcalde for the Ayish Bayou District in 1831, holding court on his broad front gallery. You'll recall that Texas was still governed by Mexico. He was a delegate to the 2nd convention of Texas in 1833. He gave hospitality to Davy Crockett, Stephen Austin, Sam Houston and others who fought for Texas independence. A Texas Centennial marker with a bronze plaque was placed at Elisha and Patsy's grave-site in 1936. His descendants decided not to clear the site, hidden from the highway, in order to protect it from vandals.

Grave-sites of Elisha (left foreground) and Martha "Patsy" Gill Roberts (right) near their home-site.

When he died in 1844, Elisha possessed 51 enslaved people. In his will he desired that his land be divided into small tracts so that his eight children could draw lots for them. As for the enslaved: 

It is my Will and desire that all the slaves of which I may be posses[s]ed of at my death . . . shall be divided into lots or parcels as nearly equal in value as possible and that all of my children . . . shall cast lots in a manner to be prescribed by my said Executors . . . for the first, second and third choices and so on of said lots or parcels of slaves . . . so as to make as equal distribution of my negroes according to their value among my children as named in the Will as can conveniently be done without disposing any of said negroes to public sale.

Did wanting to avoid the selling of these people at public auction show benevolence, or was it a practical solution to avoid breaking up families, resulting in possible retaliation?

Elisha's daughter Anna Roberts, born  in 1800, married Bryant Daughtrey from North Carolina in Washington Parish in 1818. 

Bryant Daughtrey

Anna and Bryant, their children and four slaves, accompanied Elisha and Patsy Roberts, their family, and 30 slaves to Texas. They appear on Stephen Austin's 1829 Register of Families.

It is Bryant and Anna Daughtrey's son Edward (1825-1904), who in 1855 had a daughter by the enslaved girl Peggy, age 21. Their daughter was named Cynthia. Peggy died about 1860, but Cynthia, known as "Balmer" because her mother allegedly was born in Alabama, appears that year as a five-year-old female on Edward Daughtrey's1860 slave census. She was emancipated in 1865 in Austin County, Texas, where the Daughtreys lived. In 1872 Cynthia Daughtrey married Brister Fedford, a farmer.  They had nine children. Both were literate, as were their children. She is described as "mulatto" on the 1880 census. Cynthia died in 1940 in Washington County, Texas. She is our 4th cousin, 3x removed.

Cynthia Daughtrey Fedford holding her Bible with daughter Ida Ellie

Her descendant Roy, a lawyer in Hartford, Connecticut, claims Edward Daughtrey as his great-great grandfather, and Anna Roberts Daughtrey as his 3rd great-grandmother. I don't doubt him. DNA is seldom wrong. That makes Roy our 7th cousin.                       

We aren't finished with Elisha Roberts' family down there in Texas. Among his many children, Elisha had a daughter Mahala Roberts, born 1816 in Washington County, Louisiana.  

Mahala Roberts Sharp

 Mahala married John Sharp in San Augustine, Texas, in 1838. They had Samuel Houston Sharp in 1839. John Sharp died in 1846, and Mahala remarried a man named Hall, but he died in 1871. In the 1880 census in Crockett, Houston County, Texas, Mahala, now 63, is living with her son Samuel Houston Sharp who, at age 41, is a bookkeeper and a widower. His six children are in the household. Also listed is Fannie Bass, a 25-year-old black servant, and her one-year-old daughter Florence. We don't know what became of Fannie's husband, but we know from the census that she was illiterate. The following year, 1881, Maounzie "Andy" Sharp was born to Fannie. Fannie, Maounzie and their descendants claimed Sam Houston Sharp was his father and DNA now proves it so.

Maounzie "Andy" Sharp (1881-1955)

 Maounzie, who also is our 4th cousin, 3x removed, attended school, married, had children and died in 1955 in Texas.

Descended from Maounzie, Dorothy, a retired human resources professional in Texas, claims Mahala Roberts as her great-great-great grandmother and is our 6th cousin 1x removed (7th cousin, I suppose). It was Dorothy, in an email to me, who described her great-grandmother Fannie as an "enslaved girl." Not that she was still legally enslaved, but found herself in a difficult situation, having to maintain her employment with Mahala Sharp and stay in the good graces of Mahala's son Samuel, in order to care for herself and her child Florence.

If I'm to make a point, I think it must be that we, who have ancestral lines trailing back into the South, shouldn't be surprised to discover that we have ancestors, direct and collateral who, out of a greed for wealth, kept men, women and children enslaved and powerless, used and misused them, and that we are related to their descendants by blood and genes.

DNA matches allowed me locate Roy and Dorothy. I want to thank them for permitting me to post their photos and tell these episodes from their family histories. For me, and I hope for you, DNA is demonstrating how we Americans really are one large extended family