Black Tongue - Plague of the South

Bohemian Manor, Maryland, birthplace of George Julian (although probably a different house)

In my previous blog, I wrote about our southern ancestors relying on corn to nourish and preserve them through the first few years of resettlement across the Appalachians in Tennessee and Kentucky. It seems, however, if not supplemented with beans or meat, the southerners' reliance on corn as the mainstay of their diet could have dire consequences.  A kinsman claims that our ancestors, George Julian (1706-1781) and his wife Martha Denton Julian (1708-1781), died of black tongue within weeks of each other. Although I have my doubts as to their causes of deaths, here is the article posted:

                                                             Black Tongue
                                                                                    by Whitmel M. Joyner, 2006

Black Tongue is the familiar name for the often fatal effects of a deficiency of the vitamin niacin (once designated Vitamin B₃, now B₅), found chiefly in liver, lean meat, poultry, fish, and beans. The term, seldom used since the mid-twentieth century, is generally synonymous with pellagra in humans; it was sometimes, although imprecisely, identified as anthrax in livestock. Recorded as early as 1820, Black Tongue became a serious problem in North Carolina and other southern states around the beginning of the twentieth century with the spread of rural poverty that accompanied tenant and sharecrop farming and low-wage employment in cotton mills. Economic slumps increased the incidence.

Black Tongue, which occurred anywhere that diets consisted almost entirely of corn, was perhaps the most acute vitamin deficiency the United States has known. The affliction caused diarrhea, mental confusion, loss of weight and strength, irritation inside the mouth and stomach lining, and painful lesions of the skin, especially areas exposed to sunlight. The affected tissue would darken, thicken, and become scaly; cases were sometimes misdiagnosed as leprosy. Symptoms could progress to depression, stupor, and an irrational violence. Until foods containing niacin were determined a cure, as many as two of every three Black Tongue patients died of its effects.

By 1914, Black Tongue was epidemic in the South and Congress legislated an investigation. That year, 551 deaths from the disease were recorded in North Carolina; in 1915 the state's death toll rose to 831. Wide experimentation in 1915, typically on prison and asylum inmates and orphan children, revealed to federal public health professional Joseph Goldberger that certain foods cured pellagra, although the simple niacin compound was not identified as the agent until 1937. Annual deaths in the state peaked at 1,015 in 1930. The yearly total stayed well into the hundreds through the Depression and beyond; it did not fall to double digits until 1944. The first year that the state recorded no Black Tongue deaths was 1960. The discovery of vitamins and their nutritional roles began the disease's rapid decline; in modern times it has been almost unknown in the United States. [I omitted the citations]

A victim of pellagra or black tongue

Although, I doubt this happened to our 6th great-grandparents because, despite their deaths occurring during the hardships of the Revolutionary War, and being Tories, and being old, they owned a large amount of land and probably had slaves. Their land was not confiscated by the new American government, but passed on to their heirs, so I doubt they had lived in poverty. To refresh your memory about the Julian family, my blog on them is HERE

                                                                   *     *     *

White County, Tennessee

Moving on, I am still trying to connect our newly-discovered 4th great-grandfather James Rainey, (c1778 - c1840 White Co., TN) to our Southside Virginia Rainey family and to discover the surname of his wife. As mentioned in an earlier blog, I know some of our 3rd great-grandfather James Rainey's siblings through DNA matches to their descendants.  You remember James (1814 probably Kentucky - c1868 Indiana), father of Everett? James had an older brother, possibly a half-brother, named William Rainey (1805-1885), our 4th great-uncle. He's of some interest because, even though illiterate, instead of a farmer, he became a silversmith. He was born in either North Carolina or Kentucky - he waffled on the censuses. He married his first wife, Elizabeth LeFever (LeFevre), in 1828 in White County, Tennessee, and it's possible one of his LeFever in-laws taught him the craft of silversmithing, for the LeFevers appear to have been a family of craftsmen, some of them potters. He apprenticed his nephew Isaac LeFever (b.1837) and Isaac is in William's household on the Dekalb County, Tennessee, 1860 census (I fear he was lost in the Civil War).  William and Isaac appear in the book, Tennessee Silversmiths, by B. H. Caldwell, Jr., 1989, University of North Carolina Press. I would love to acquire spoons by either or both of them and will search eBay for their products. I expect they worked in coin silver, rather than sterling, as that was common during the period. Sterling is 92.5% silver and 7.5% copper. Coin silver is an alloy of 90% silver and 10% copper. Therefore its millesimal fineness is 900, also known as one nine fine.

William had six children with Elizabeth, who died about 1848. Oldest son Stephen Rainey (1828 White Co, TN - 1878, Lawrence Co, IN) was a farmer and possibly moved to Indiana before the Civil War. Son John W. Rainey (1832, White Co. TN - 1893, Polk Co, MO) became a blacksmith and served in the Civil War, probably for the Confederacy.  Son Elias "Eli" Rainey (1837 Wilson Co., TN - 1912 Bates Co, MO) also served during the Civil War in a cavalry unit, but in the 6th Illinois for the Union. At the end of hostilities, he was discharged for having been disabled by chronic diarrhea for 6 months, which was no laughing matter -he could easily have died from it.  He must have regained his health, for he became a jeweler and dropped dead on his way to bed in 1912.

Elias Rainey's disability dishcharge

Son William Rainey, Jr. (1840, Maury Co., TN - 1912, Nashville, Davidson, Co, TN) served in the Confederacy in the 2nd Regiment of the Tennessee Cavalry, and was a farmer and a carpenter.  Youngest son James Henry Rainey (1850 DeKalb Co., TN - 1931, Grayson Co., KY)  by William's second wife, Keziah Wilson, styled himself in the 1880 Lawrence County, Indiana, census as a "fixer of clocks and jewelry." There were also daughters Mary and Martha Rainey.

Dekalb County, Tennessee

William and Keziah must have traveled by railroad from Dekalb County to Pleasant Run Township, Lawrence County, Indiana, in June,1880 to visit or to live with the youngest son William Henry Rainey, for they appear in his household on the 1880 census there, dated June 10th, described as William Henry's parents. The older William's occupation isn't listed, which makes me think they were visiting, but he or his son stated that William's parents (James and unknown wife) were born in North Carolina.

Lawrence County, Indiana

 Here's the strange part. A week earlier in Liberty, Civil District 2, Dekalb County, Tennessee, census taker G. W. Gurrentine, signed his form on June 6, in which he'd listed William Rainey, age 74, who described himself as a silversmith, born in North Carolina, his parents both born in Virginia. Keziah is listed as "Katie D." Surprisingly, three days earlier, on June 3, census taker D. O. Williams signed his form for Alexandria, District 1, Dekalb County, 7.1 miles away, having entered William, age 74 and Keziah, called K.D. age 65, in his census, in which William described himself as a "clock tinker," stating he was born in Kentucky, and so were his parents. I suspect he had a workshop in one district and a home in the other, for his neighbors aren't the same. Hard to imagine a seven mile commute in 1880 unless there was a local train he caught.

Keziah and William didn't stay long in Lawrence County, Indiana. His oldest son Stephen had died there two years earlier, so perhaps they went to see his family and William Henry's family.  William Rainey died in Sumner County, Tennessee, in 1885. We don't know when Keziah died. She may have lived longer, but the 1890 census was totally destroyed in a fire at the census bureau.

Sumner County, Tennessee

 Here is a photograph of William and Keziah's son James Henry Rainey, our 5th cousin, taken about 1890, which would make him about 40 years old.