Diving Into Secondary Sources

Craven County in 1853
Sitting and staring at page after page of digital newspaper entries of a search of <1853 "New Bern> which results in only two sources: The Fayetteville Observer and the New York Times, is getting me nowhere fast. Not much of interest appears in pages for the amount of time spent.

Pack Memorial Library, in
Modern Asheville,
by Troy Winterrowd

When we first moved to Asheville, NC in February 2007 I began an intensive dive into every known book and document available for Craven County and Eastern North Carolina at Pack Memorial Library. It was a sort of frenzied find-all-you-can-as-quick-as-you-can adventure in research. Sometimes the genealogist instinct tells us to absorb it all now because tomorrow is not promised. After several years of scouring the North Carolina Collection, my favorite local history librarian asked me if I hadn't read every book by now. Almost, I replied, almost. And so it was...

I started out taking handwritten notes in Composition notebooks and photocopying pages of books...making notations of ones for future purchase. Then, after the last Bush Tax Rebate, I purchased my first laptop computer and entered notes in MSWord 2007. (I haven't held that much money in my hand at one time since then when I handed it over to the salesman at BestBuy.)

The notebooks and photocopies were then filed away in clear, plastic file boxes, and labeled. The first of three boxes holds the following files: NC-Free Negroes, NC-Trades, Church History, Timber, NC-Civil War and NC-Physiocs. (Perhaps now might be a good time to print out those Word docs as well...)

Somewhere in all these records

must be the available data for 1853 Craven County.

I'll start here with a Bibliography of my sources and then report here on any information which might be of help in recreating the time period of the Carters' trek from North Harlowe to the Craven County Courthouse in New Bern in December 1853 and the life of an apprentice which followed.

Bibliography:

Box No. 1

File No. 1: NC-Free Negroes

Franklin, John Hope. The Free Negro in North Carolina: 1790-1860. Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1943.
Watson, Alan D. African Americans in Early North Carolina: A Documentary History. Raleigh: Office of Archives and History, North Carolina Dept. of Cultural Resources, 2005.
Farlow, Gale. "Black Craftsmen in North Carolina," in North Carolina Genealogical Society Journal, Feb. 1985: Bound Volume 11.
Taylor, Rosser Howard. "The Free Negro in North Carolina," in The James Sprunt Historical Publications, Vol. 17, No. 1. Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1920.
Woodson, Carter G. Free Negro Owners of Slaves in the United States in 1830. Washington, D.C.: The Assoc. for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1924.
Mabry, William Alexander. "Negro Suffrage and Fusion Rule in North Carolina," in The North Carolina Historical Review, Volume XII, Number 2, April 1935.
Browning, James Blackwell. "The Free Negro in Ante-Bellum North Carolina," in The North Carolina Historical Review, Volume XV, Number 1, January 1938.
Franklin, John Hope. "The Free Negro in the Economic Life of Ante-Bellum North Carolina, Part 1," in The North Carolina Historical Review, Volume XIX, Number 3, July 1942.
Nelson, B.H. "Some Aspects of Negro Life in North Carolina During the Civil War," in The North Carolina Historical Review, Volume XXV, Number 2, April 1948.
The Proposed Suffrage Amendment: The Platform and Resolutions of the People's Party. [Available online, 2 Jan 2008] http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/populist/populist.html

The Estate of Isaac Dove (1826): Transcription of Summons, Image 5

Summons: ....14 November 1825 "North Carolina, Estate Files, 1663-1979," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/VKJM-FYZ : accessed 08 Aug 2013), Isaac Dove, 1826. Image 5/45 [As you can see here, the Summons referred to in the transcription of Image 3/45 was attached to the description and plat.] STATE OF NORTH-CAROLINA. To the Sheriff of Craven County, GREETING: YOU are hereby commanded to summon Hardy L. Jones, James T. Jones Esquire, Gideon Jones, Joseph Davis & Benjamin Borden ------------- to me at such place and at some time before the next Court, to be held for your County, on the second Monday of February next, as to [scratched out] you shall seem fit, then and there to make partition of that part of the lands (which were formerly held in common between Isaac Dove and Anthony Brown) which belongs to the heirs of Isaac Dove and are situated in Craven County on the east side of Spring Branch. ---------------- -------

Honoring our Ancestors: Free Black Patriots of the Revolutionary War

When I was first contacted last October to assist in some research for a member of the DAR who was looking for the burial ground of her ancestor, Isaac Carter, I had no idea it would lead to such a wonderful tribute--with full honors--to our free black ancestors of Craven County, North Carolina. Nor would I have guessed that I would be meeting together with Ms. Maria William Cole, National Vice Chairman Insignia, of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, and a host of other dignitaries, from the highest officials of the SAR to state and local political and community service leaders, to pay tribute to these patriots. The turnout exceeded my expectation when this event proceeded on a cold and rainy Sunday afternoon, with close to a hundred and fifty people or more, seated on folding chairs under three canopy tents. The microphone cable lay along the wet grass and soon died out, and we, the speakers, were asked to use our "mother's voices" to make o

Using Estate Files to Document Family Relationships on FamilySearch.org

FamilySearch The other day I had a Facebook exchange with a fellow genealogist regarding the valuable resource of FamilySearch.org. This researcher was looking for estate records for South Carolina, and since my husband's maternal line descends from Horry County, I continued to tell her about the records on FamilySearch.org, until I rediscovered why I had chosen to work on my husband's paternal line from North Carolina: not all states' records are represented equally on the site, by far! Browsing records by location In case you've never searched using the "browse the records" method, here is the process: After signing in and clicking on the "Search" option, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the country file you would like to explore. For this purpose, I'll be clicking on "United States." On the left side of the screen you will find a listing of states to select from. I'll be clicking on "South Ca

In Black and White: Cross-Cultural Genealogy

Search This Blog