Sarah A. Johnson, widow

In the previous post, I sketched the life of Sarah A. Johnson, filling in some speculations about what he life might have been like. There is one more event to be added to that life. Sarah’s husband, Alexander Cook, died in November of 1887. This means that Sarah would have been 46 years old. Her oldest son William would have been 27 and Mary would have been 15. Perhaps, her father’s death was the reason that the next year at 16 years of age Mary married Willie Northen, in December of 1888. Sarah Cook, being a widow and probably still having her mother in the house and more than likely had a couple kids in the children younger than Mary since the past census, was probably glad to be able to see her daughter married off. In any event, my paternal grandfather, Marcellus Crocker, was born to Willie and Mary in 1889. That their economic circumstances were less than optimal can be gleaned from the fact that they living next to Willie’s brother George’s family and the two of them together comprised two of the only three white families listed on their 1900 census page. Mary’s mother Sarah, is not listed as living with them.

For those doing genealogical research, the destruction of the 1890 federal census by fire is a huge impediment, and it particularly affects constructing the story of Sarah Johnson. Some of the hole it left in understanding her life can be filled by taking a look at her children, even though, other than Mary, they are not direct ancestors. As we noted, in the previous post, though she gave birth to eighth children, only three were living by 1910. Mary was one, Robert (with whose family she was living in that year) was another, and William, who was listed as James W. in 1870 census is the other. One can guess that James W.’s middle name was William and that he went by that in order not to be confused with his grandfather. This means that Mary’s older sister Adelaide, who would have been 17 years old at her father’s death, if still alive then, did not survive until the age of 40. Possibly like her younger sister, she married when her father died, as well.

William, at any rate, followed in his father’s footsteps and became a carpenter. He married Anna Fidler in 1897 at the age of 34 and by 1900 had an infant son, William. Robert, the son with whom Sarah was living in 1910, was married in December of 1893 – earlier than his young brother – to Emma Fiddler. Though there is some difference in the spelling of their last names, chances are that the two brothers were married to sisters – making for an interesting family dynamic. In the 1830 census, Robert and his wife are still living, and he is listed as a mechanic, so he appears to have inherited his mothers longevity. While we may not know where Sarah was living or her exact circumstances in 1890, we know that the decade after her husband died, she was in a community where she was surrounded by her children’s family – Mary and her husband Willie, Robert and his wife Emma, William and his wife Anna, and possibly even Adelaide.

The Cooks and Johnsons

I’ve written about my father’s grandfather William Lee Fitzhugh Northen, the man who moved his family from Richmond County, Virginia where it had been for almost 225 years to Northumberland County where my father was born, but I’ve mentioned almost nothing about Willie’s wife, Mary Elizabeth Cook – or her side of the family. Ursula Bysshe, about whom I wrote about in the previous blog, was an exception. Like most women of humble origins, Mary Elizabeth Cook is a blip in documented history. Before women had legal status, could join the military or vote, records of them independent of a husband or father are scarce. What I know of Mary Cook is pretty much limited to what appears on her grave marker at Calvary Church Cemetery in Farnham, Richmond County, Virginia.

My father would have been ten years old when she died and probably had little memory of her, especially since both of his own parents died a year later.

Until just recently, I have been unable to learn anything about Mary’s father, Alexander B. Cook, either, but a slim outline is beginning to emerge and with it something about the insular relationships among rural people of modest means. Alexander B. Cook was born in Kings and Queens County Virginia sometime in 1830. His father’s name was Baylor, his mother may have been called Patsy. Alex first showed up in documented history in 1851 at age 21 where he is working as a laborer in the family of James Longest, but on Nov. 7, 1858 he is married to Sarah A. Johnson in Richmond County, Virginia.

One can only guess at what kinds of conditions compelled Alex Cook to wind up in Richmond County, but the 1860 census, confirms this to be true, and the lines from the 1860 census, the last U. S. census before the Civil War shows some interesting social relationships.

James Johnson      49    M   W   Shoemaker
Mary Johnson        38    F
Jas. E. Johnson      17    M          Farm
E. H. Johnson         65    F
Alex Cook                30    M   W  House Carpenter
Sarah A. Johnson 19    F
Anna Vesey            21    F     B   Domestic
Thos. Vesey             14   M

Alex and everyone else on this list was living at the residence of James Johnson, Sarah’s father, a shoemaker in Richmond County. Since Sarah is nineteen here, we know that she was married at about seventeen years of age, just about average for that time. As of yet they had no children, but Alex was working as a carpenter. Also in the house are James Jr., presumably James’s son and Sarah’s brother, and a 65 year old female E. H. Johnson, who one might reasonably guess is probably James Johnson Sr.’s widowed mother. So three generations were living under one roof. What is also surprising is that also at this address are two individuals, Anna and Thomas Vesey who are listed as black. From prior reading, I knew that the Vesey’s were one of the free black families in Richmond County, but this is made obvious from the very fact that they are listed at all, since prior to the Civil War, slaves were not listed as persons on the U.S. census, but were instead itemized on a slave schedule.

Anna, at any rate, is listed as a domestic, not a slave or even a servant. What makes this picture even more interesting is that on June 4, 1861, Alex Cook enlisted as a private in army, serving in company D of the Virginia 47th infantry so, whatever his views on race and slavery might have been, he supported the confederacy. The enlistment paper also gives the one physical clue that we know about him, that his height was 5 ft, 11 inches – fairly tall for a man of that generation. So the Northens have not always been short.
The next census takes place in 1970 after the Civil War and, in terms of family history is equally interesting. I’ve copied out much of this census page and highlighted a couple of individuals to make things a bit easier to follow. Alex Cook is now 40 years old and still a carpenter, so he obviously made it through the Civil War. He and Sarah now have two children and are no longer living with Sarah’s parents but are living next door. James and Mary Johnson, Sarah’s parents, no longer have any children living at home. Mary Elizabeth Cook, the great great grandmother that I began this piece with, has not been born yet, not appearing on the scene until two years later in 1872.

54     Northern, George   67       M     W    Farmer
Elizabeth                   49        F              Keeping House
James                         10       M
Alonzo                        14        M             At home
Henrietta                  12        F
William F.  *               5        M

55    Vesey, Hymphrey  56        M     B      Farmer
Elizabeth                   47        F
Mary Jane                 21        F
Victor (?)                   12       M
Frances (?)                 7         F
George H.                   14      M

56     Northern, George    28      M    W     Farmer
Mary E.                       30       F
Brenda (?)                     4       F
Alice                               2       F
Luther (?)                     5/12 F
Grammick, Albert   16       M    W     Laborer
Conaway, Richard     7       M     B     N?

57     Johnson, James*       60      M    W     Shoemaker
Mary                             53      F

58     Cook, Alexander*      40     M     W    Carpenter
Sarah A. *                   28     F              Keeping House
James W.                       7     M
Robert H.                       2    M

[Each number at the beginning indicates a difference residence.]

Even though Mary is not listed, her future husband, William F. L. Northen is. (I’ve highlighted him in red.) It is difficult to know whether the Cooks and Johnsons moved in the ten years since the previous census because redistricting occurred and they were now organized by districts rather than by post office. However, the neighbors are all different. As the page above indicates, they were now surrounded by Northerns and – yes – Veseys.

William Northen, the youngest of a large brood of Northens, was born when his father was 69 years old. This means that his father was of the same generation as Mary’s grandfather and William’s brother George, whose family is listed on this sheet as well, is the same age as Mary’s mother. The situation of Willie and Mary does make it easy to see, though, how in rural areas, you ended up marrying someone in your neighborhood and that you probably ran in to off and on through your growing up. One other remark about this “neighborhood.” According to E. E. Northen’s history of the Northen family, which ended around 1900, William was still living at the “Old Northen Homestead’ even though it was in bad repair, so there is a chance that this is where they were living when this census was taken. Since there are no addresses, though, just where that might be is unclear.

But, back to Mary’s side of the family. By 1880, Alex and Sarah Cook have four children, the youngest of whom is Mary, now 8 years old. Alex is still a carpenter. In addition to the children,  Sarah’s mother Mary Johnson (after whom their daughter Mary was probably named) is now living with them, so one might guess that James Johnson has died. The 1880 census page is extremely difficult to read because of the light writing, but the Cooks now live next to Charles Northern and other Northern families, Alonzo and George’s (William’s brother) live close enough that they are listed on the next page of the census.

The next time records of the Cook family turn up is in 1910. They are still in Richmond County, but Sarah, now 66 years old is living with her son Robert, his wife Emma and their son Robert M. Her husband, who was eleven years older than her has no doubt died, but Robert is listed as a carpenter and seems to be carrying on his father’s trade. The 1910 census is the first to list how many children a woman has birthed and it tells us that Sarah had eight children but only three are still living. Sarah herself died Dec. 4, 1913. Her occupation listed as a housekeeper.

Looking back over this stretch of the family, what especially strikes me is how, though the bare facts of Sarah A. Johnson’s life, a portrait of what it must have been like to be woman in living in the nineteenth century was like. She was married at seventeen but even after marriage lived with her husband in the house of her father, so really was subject to the authority of two men. Finally, she and her husband had their own place, but much of her early life was spent in childbirth and of the eight children who were born, only three survived her. Because she lived a long life, she outlived her husband and living in a time when the only skills most women had were domestic ones, she ended up having to move in with her son. By the standards of the time, for a poor, rural woman, she seems to had a good life, but just how limited those possibilities were is worth reflecting on.

Ursula Bysshe

In the previous post, I described the life of Richard Thompson, perhaps the first of our ancestors to come to what is now the United States. He also played an important, if minor role in this history of Maryland, since if Thompson and his commander William Claiborne had prevailed, Kent Island would still be part of Virginia today and not Maryland.
Richard Thompson’s wife Ursula, however, had an interesting life of her own of which her marriage to Richard and role as mother to line that we are heirs to was just one part. Ursula, whose last name is variously spelled Bysshe, Bishe and Bish, was the daughter of William Bysshe of Surrey in Sussex, England. Ursula was born in born Fen Place, Turners Hill, Sussex, England and baptized Worth Parish Church April 12, 1621.
She emigrated from Sussex England to the island of Kent and married Richard Thompson or about June 24, 1641. It appears that Ursula was the only member of her family to have left England and one wonders why she would have done so at twenty years of age. Virginia at that time was still essentially a wilderness. Although about 24,000 men and women immigrated to Virginia between the founding of Virginia in 1607 and 1640, in 1640 the population stood at only 8,100. Most of the inhabitants fell victim to disease. If, as one researcher suspects, she was a niece of Claiborne, quite possibly Claiborne, knowing that Thompson’s wife had died, on a return trip to England for supplies brought Ursula back with him, knowing that Thompson was a man with status in Virginia, but that is sheer speculation.
Ursula’s husband Richard Thompson was expelled from Kent Island and declared an enemy of the Province, Ursula, no doubt, went with him. They probably first went to St, Mary’s City, Maryland. (See the map on the previous post.) Two things make this likely. The first is that St. Mary’s was the original capital of Maryland and one of its busiest settlements. The second is that it is directly across the Potomac River from Chicacoan in Northumberland, where her family eventually settled. While many of the first settlers in Virginia spread out from Jamestown or York, a number of the people who settled in Chicacoan, the first major in Northumberland County were refugees from St. Mary’s. Under the rule of the Catholic Lord Calvert, many Protestants fled across the river.
Richard and Ursula had three children, Richard Jr., Elizabeth (our ancestor), and Sara. As previously mentioned, Richard Sr. died sometime before March of 1949. At the time of Richard’s death she appears to have been living in Kiquohtan (later named Elizabeth City County), but by 1651 married Col. John Mottrom, whose wife had died recently, and moved back to Chicacoan – in all likelihood living in Coan Hall. As mentioned in the previous post, Mottrom was the first white man to have permanently settled in Northumberland County and the original settler of Chicacoan. He was probably among the wealthiest and certainly one of the most influential members of that region of Virginia which, even for Virginia was a real outpost. He built Coan Hall which, for years, the hub of political, social and economic activity in that part of Virginia. Mottrom was the first to represent Northumberland in the Virginia House of Burgesses. A woman with three children living on her own in Virginia at that times was in a very precarious position, so her marriage to Mottrom was a stroke of good fortune for her – and for Mottrom as well.
In a book called The Stronghold, a history of Northumberland County, the author , Miriam Haynie has a short chapter called “Ursula” in which she imagines what life was like for Ursula once she married John Mottrom. Its not exactly Noble prize-winning fiction, but I think it is very useful for reconstruction what life must have been like for a Ursula, living as one of the most prominent citizens in the Virginia of the 1650’s. I’m including a few paragraphs here. (By the way, our relatives go back to the Haynie’s so we are probably some distant relation to the author.)

     As the wife of a prominent man of the colony it was Ursula’s duty to hold to the high standard of living that had been transferred from England to this wilderness, and to maintain this high standard it was necessary for all to work from morning until night.
     We can imagine Ursula hustling about at Coan Hall, her clothes a blur of brightness, as she supervised the servants, disciplined the children, twirled the roast of venison on the spit in passing, or lower her candle or betty-lamp into the cooking pot to see if the stew was ready.
     The rooms of Coan Hall were probably “wainscot” and part of “daubed and whitelimed” the latter plaster being made from the plentiful oyster shells. The woodwork may have been painted “deep blued olive green” or “dragon’s blood.”
     The rooms of the seventeenth century houses were usually identified by names such as “the outward,” “the lodging,” “the chamber,’ and so on.
     The kitchen and pantry were probably detached or in a wing. This was the busiest and coziest spot in all early homes, and the hearth was its glowing heart. There were the fire-dogs holding the big logs and the little andirons used with them called “creepers.” On pothooks and trammels hu8ng the brass and copper kettles, some with a fifteen gallon capacity, and that most beloved pot of iron, which sometimes weighed as much as forty pounds. In summer when a large part of the cooking was done out-of –doors this iron kettle was the main utensil used.

John Mottrom died on June 30, 1655 and there is no record of their having had any children together. During the time that John and Ursula lived in Coan Hall, their house appears to have been looked upon as a safe-haven for refugees and rebels from St. Mary’s City in Maryland and they were looked upon with much suspicion by the Maryland authorities.
A year after Mottrom’s death, Ursula married George Colclough. Colclough was a prominent landowner, businessman and eventually also serve one term in the House of Burgesses. She did not outlast this marriage, however, and died by July 23, 1661. She was forty years old. While young by our standards, it was a fairly long life for a woman on the Virginia frontier and she apparently packed a lot into it. ( In a little bit of speculation, it is interesting to note that the Bysshe family of Sussex England lived in the same area of England where the poet Percy Bysshe Shelly was born a hundred years after Ursula, so there is a good chance that there is some relationship there.)