When I was growing up, I never knew the my aunts and uncles on my father’s side and only sporadically saw those on my mother’s, so it is no great surprise, that I know next to nothing about my parents’ aunts and uncles – my great aunts and uncles. Yet, of course, they had them, as surely my grandson Owen has them in my own brother and sister, Ed and Judi for whom they are shadowy figures.
While it seems as though it should be a simple enough thing for me to be able to set out a simple schematic showing the members of my paternal grandfather’s family, it is actually more like an archaeological endeavor. The records conflict and many omit information. Census records, for example, will include only those children born up to that year. For example, I was born in 1946, my brother Steve in 1948 and Dave in 1950. My remaining brothers and sisters were born later. A 1950 census would probably have shown my parents as having only two children, Steve and me. Censuses are generally taken in spring or early summer and Dave was not born until August. An amateur researcher in the future coming across this 1950 census as a first piece of evidence might conclude that my parents had only two children. This being on the cusp of a decade actually affects records for my father (born in 1920) and his Uncle Riley (born in 1900), both of whom missed the cutoff for that census year and so were not recorded until ten years later.
In any event, here is a list of my father’s paternal grandparents, aunts and uncles as it seems to me now. ( My grandfather – my father’s father – was the oldest child, Marcellus Crocker Northen.)
William Fitzhugh Lee Northen and Mary Elizabeth Cook (parents)
- Marcellus Crocker Northen (1889)
Ruth Myrtle Northen (1889)
Norman Northen (1891)
Robert Bernard Northen (1894)
William Riley Northen (1900)
Clara May Northen (1903)
I’ve crossed out the second member of the family to show some of the complications of sorting out information. Ruth Myrtle is buried near William and Mary Northen who are also buried near Norman and Clara. Marcellus Crocker is buried elsewhere in Mila Cemetery, even though the name on his grave is Crocker M. Northern. If the date on the grave is correct for Ruth, then she could not be Mary’s daughter, since Crocker is clearly their son and they both could not have been born in 1889. A complicating factor is that these are not the original tombstones, but are modern replacements. Thus, Ruth could have been born in 1890 between Crocker and Norman and the date merely added from local memory. One could ask, why not just go to the 1890 census to see if she is listed there. If you’ve been following these blogs, you’ll remember that in 1890, fires destroyed nearly all of the national census records for that year and, even if they had been available, Ruth would only be on it if she were born early in the year. The E.E. Northen history of the family, though, lists only Marcellus Crocker, Norman and Robert as children. Finally, the 1910 census says that Mary had born seven children and only four were alive in 1910. We know Norman was one of those who did not live and it is possible that Ruth was another, but gaps between Robert and William and the space after Clara, suggest that this is where the other children were lost. Since no graves seem to exist for them, they must have died shortly after birth. Thus, my dad, growing up must have had an aunt and two uncles on his fathers side, probably all of whom he knew: Clara, Robert and William (who, I believe, Dad called Uncle Riley).
Some time between 1900 and 1910, the Northen family moved from the old homestead in Richmond County to the Wicomico Church area in Northumberland County. It’s at this time that the spelling Northen seemed to become Northern. Crocker either stayed behind in Richmond County or returned there after he was married in 1908, but the other three children moved with their parents.
The next oldest living child was Robert, who apparently went by his middle name, Bernard. When Woodrow Wilson opened up the draft in preparation for World War I, Robert appears to have registered right away. He is described as being short with blue eyes, brown hair and a medium build. He must have married shortly thereafter because according to the 1920 census, where he lists his name as Bernard Northan, he is married to Lola George and has a two year old daughter, Mary. Lola was two years younger than he was; they’d been married when they were 21 and 19. One can gather that they were probably not that well off economically. When younger, Bernard had completed a total of four hears of school and Loa only one. They were renting, he was listed as a farmer but was employed, so perhaps he was a farm laborer for someone else. The closest neighbors on one side were black and, this being a pretty prejudiced area and a very prejudiced time, the odds are that they were not living in the higher priced end of town.
By 1930, though, he appears to have moved again because the neighbors all have different names. He is still going by Bernard. Though he is listed as a farmer, he makes his living by fishing. This accords with what Dad said that about the family supplementing its income by crabbing. My dad’s father, Bernard’s brother, was supposedly a carpenter, but Dad always said that he made some of his money by fishing and Dad’s older brother John went into fishing as well, so perhaps they were all working together.
The 1930’s were rough for the Northen family. Crocker and his wife both died, and the head of the clan, William passed away as well. (Bernard’s mother had been dead for a while.) Dad had joined the Navy and was no longer around. By 1940, much of the family appears to have broken up and Bernard is back up in Richmond County. Apparently, education was not a big family value. Despite being roughly contemporary with Dad, their daughter Mary completed only four years of school. By 1940 she is listed as living with her parents under the name Mary V. Lewis. Next door is a man named Lawrence Lewis. He is who is listed as head of household, but, oddly enough, his status is crossed out and rewritten as son-in-law. Both Mary and Lawrence are listed as married, but then “married” is crossed out and a 7 is put next to their names. One can only guess what that means. Perhaps the marriage was common law.
In 1942 Bernard once again registered for the draft, no doubt as a result of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and a mandatory draft registration, but at age 48 it is not likely that he went into the service. At the time he registered he was working at a sawmill, called Jones and Lewis in Mulch, Richmond County, Virginia. The is the last we know of him until his death in 1954. He is buried at Gibeon Baptist Church in Village. Lola survived him by about twenty years.
Dad’s youngest uncle, William Riley, also appears to have had an up and down life, though somewhat less local. Like his older two brothers, he went by his middle name, Riley. Most likely, in Riley’s case, it was because he had the same first name as his father. Like his older brothers he also registered for the World War 1 draft. This was in 1918, two months after he turned 18. His occupation is listed as “schoolboy,” so, unlike his brother Bernard, he must have succeeded as a student. He is described in the draft registration as medium height and build with dark hair and brown eyes. (We know that both Crocker and his father had red hair and blue eyes, so it appears that both Bernard and Riley must have taken after the Cook side of the family.) Interestingly, he is listed as one of 11 members of the 1920 graduating class of Wicomico School, which would have made him 20 years old A note on the history of Wicomico School, which was founded in 1908 says that all entering members of the new school were treated as “freshman” regardless of their age unless they had had private schooling, so perhaps Riley did not begin school until 1908. There is a picture reproduced on a copier that shows him as one of two men in the graduating class. Unfortunately, the lack of detail make it difficult to see much about what he really looked like.
A census of 1930 reveals him to be living in the City of Richmond (not Richmond County); he is not living in his own place but with a sister-in-law Mary C. Harrison, who was divorced. Riley himself is listed as divorced. A nephew of Mary’s, Blair Northern lives with them.
Riley did apparently marry again. His wife, Genevieve Greene, was 6 years older than he was and they were living in Washington, D.C. with Genevieve’s two adult children, Thelma and Edwin, presumably from a previous marriage. Riley is working as a bus driver. How he ended up in D.C. is an interesting question, but Genevieve was born in D. C. so he must have met her there. The address in 1940 was 215 N. E. 2nd St. which means that it was close to the Library of Congress. He never returned to Virginia, dying in Washington, D. C. in February 1978.
Dad’s only aunt on his father’s side was Clara, born in 1903. Clara was the only member of the family actually born in Richmond County and she seems to have had the most stable home life of all the Northens of that generation. She followed her brother Riley into Wicomico School. Without any letters or personal writing that she may have done herself, it is hard to guess at what she may have been like, but she does appear to have been popular. In the 1921 edition of “The Liberty,” the school’s annual, there are pictures of two clubs in which she appears. Unfortunately, the names are listed alphabetically rather than in modern day captions, but it does give some sense of her. One picture is of “The Wicomico Club,” a large group of students who were from the Wicomico Church area. The group also included John, Peyton, and Robert Northern – Dad’s brothers and her cousins – but Clara is listed as the club president. The other picture is called the Jazzbowian Club. This may have been a group that like to play or listen to music, but the girls are all wearing berets and sitting in poses as if to look fashionable. One can almost see the influence of the jazz age – which was new then – creeping in on them.
Clara did graduate from Wicomico High School in 1922, and in 1928 married Livingston Monroe Bryant. In 1930 she was living in Lancaster in Lancaster County but in 1940 she was up living in the Farnham area of Richmond County where her husband was a farmer. She had a six month old daughter, Joyce Ann. That is as much as we know of her except that both she and her husband are buried in the Calvary Methodist Cemetery in Farnham with her parents in a section labeled Northen Bryant Families.
What strikes me most about Clara is that given the little we know of her from high school, she seemed the type of girl that if she were alive today would have had a great potential probably going on to college and a career, but in a time and place where none of these were options for young women. She eventually married and settled down to life as a farmer’s wife. It makes you wonder what she could have become.
There it is, then, my father’s uncles and aunts on his father’s side of the family. He certainly knew some of them since his grandfather, Uncle Riley and Aunt Clara were living in Wicomico, and his Aunt Clara was in the same school club as his oldest brothers. Still, he rarely mentioned them. The only records we have of them now is what we can reconstruct.
Northen History 