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CORRECTION AND ADDENDUM
TO
THE FATE OF BONES
by
Wayne Pounds
Tokyo, Japan
2016
website: http://www.ueno-wayne.org/
email: poundsway@gmail.com
Part I: Correction and Addition
Samuel Pounds (1755-1856)
[These two sections correct the sections of the same name in Fate of Bones, Chapter 5, pp. 148-60.]
1. Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois
Samuel Pounds is a patriarchal figure in the northern branch of the Pound/s line that begins with the immigrant John Pound’s arrival in Richmond County Virginia in 1663. Dying in Illinois in 1856 at the age of 101 years, Samuel had at least two wives (there may have been a third) and two families (possibly a third) with a total of fourteen known children. For half a century it was thought that he was the son of William Pound, a Revolutionary War Soldier born in Halifax County who died in Chatham County, North Carolina, in 1814 and that his mother was Elizabeth Tune (William's wife), who died in 1846. However, now that at long last we have solid evidence about his birth and death years, a radical revision is demanded.
The traditional dates of Samuel Pounds were based on Alexander Cooper's 1941 essay "The Pound Family," where they are given as 1778 to 1878. In November 2014, however, the cemetery book was found for Mount Zion, where Samuel is buried. It gives his death date as December 30, 1856, and below that "Age 101 y 6 m 24 d." At about the same time, the stone was cleaned and new photos posted. The inscription, faintly legible, says "Age 101 y 6 m 24 d," making Samuel born in 1755.
This means that Samuel Pounds's mother was not Elizabeth Tune (born 1756) nor his father William Pound (born 1749). Samuel had doubtlessly lived with William and his family, since Cooper’s great-aunt Naomi (hereafter Aunt Naomi) knew a lot about them, but his biological father may have been one of William's three brothers, Solomon, Thomas, or John, who had remained in Halifax County Virginia after William's departure about 1773. Given his name, Samuel may also have been the son of the Samuel Pounds of Orange County who died in 1778 at Valley Forge while serving with the 7th Virginia Regiment. Finally, he could have actually been William’s son, but we would have to revise William’s birth year from 1749 to 1740 at least and imagine a mother of whom we have no record. The revision is possible, but it’s painful to have to abandon a long-held tradition.
The original error stems from Alexander Cooper, who wrote that Samuel Pounds was born in 1778 and died in 1878. In Samuel’s old family Bible shown below, Cooper could read the day and month of birth but he could not read the year. He thought he found the year on the 1850 census for Guernsey County Ohio, the only census record for Samuel to show his age, which mistakenly gives it as 72. Cooper subtracted 72 from 1850 to arrive at the birth year 1778, and then added 100 to it to arrive at the death date 1878. Although the gravestone was probably legible in the period when Cooper was writing, he never saw it because he thought that Samuel Pounds was buried in Hancock County Illinois rather than Mason County.
5.4 Family history page in Samuel Pounds’ Bible
A hint about Samuel's true age is on the 1855 Illinois census for his daughter Naomi (whom I’m calling Aunt Naomi) which shows the presence of a white male 80 to 90 years old. Beside the vertical mark for this person, the enumerator wrote 87 and circled it. The “87” is wrong for Samuel’s age, which would have made him born in 1768, but it could have given Cooper a hint, had he seen it. Clearly, he did not.
Apart from the question of his origins--that is, his birth place and parentage--Samuel Pounds is well attested once he shows up on the 1800 census for Beaver County Pennsylvania, in extreme southwestern Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. The name Samuel Pounds appears on some records in Washington County Pennsylvania in the 1780s and 1790s, but there is no way to identify him, as it is known that other men of the same name existed in Pennsylvania about this time. Cooper had no document on Samuel Pounds before the 1850 census in Guernsey County Ohio, so what follows opens new ground, first plowed by my sister Gerry Robideaux and myself in The Fate of Bones.
Before turning our attention to Samuel’s place of origin in Halifax County, we would do well to consider the possibility mentioned at the outset that Samuel had three families. This third family, if it existed, is chronologically the first. The name Samuel Pound appears on the 1790 Federal Census for Washington County, Pennsylvania, where he is shown with a wife and six children. Washington County was formed in 1781 from part of Westmoreland County, which originally included the present-day counties of Fayette,Washington, Greene, and parts of Beaver and other counties. Beaver County itself, where our Halifax-County Samuel is first located with certainty, was created from Washington County in 1800. It takes it’s name from the Beaver River, part of the influx of rivers that made nearby Pittsburg so important. It was also a very easy place to go down river from. Around Pittsburg, “Down river” meant westward, into the Ohio Country.
A hint about this first family comes from a teaser in the 1904 History of Beaver County, Pennsylvania by Joseph H. Bausman. It first mentions a Benjamin Pounds who was a ferryman on the river: “Down at the point, near the water’s edge, was another log cabin where Benjamin Pounds dwelt. He was a ferryman and carried people across the river in his boat.” Then in another passage, the author mentions a ferryman named Samuel Pounds who worked another part of the river and comments, “It is said the father of the above Samuel to be a Benjamin Pounds.” “The phrase “it is said” is a writer’s honest admission that he doesn’t know, and I don’t know either. This is speculation. But the ferryman Benjamin Pounds could well have been Halifax Samuel’s son. A Samuel Pounds on the 1790 census for Washington County shows a household with 2 males over 16 and 4 women. If this is Halifax Samuel, he has a son who is a least sixteen, born by 1774. This could well be Benjamin, who shows up under his own name on the 1810 and 1820 censuses, with a birth year between 1775 and 1784. This range of years corresponds to Samuel’s 20th to 29th, a perfect fit.
The name Benjamin itself may be relevant, for it is not a traditional family name at all, and the fact of his being a boatman may also be a clue. It doesn’t occur in the Virginia Pound/s line until Samuel uses it to name a son by his last wife, Susanna Williams. He didn’t hesitate to repeat other male names. He would probably have called more than one son Benjamin if the sons were by different wives. It is also noteworthy that Benjamin Pounds’ censuses between 1810 and 1830 place him in New Sewickley Township of Beaver County, the same township where Elizabeth Pounds is living. A generation later, still in the same township, there are three orphan children named William, Mary, and Elizabeth Pounds staying with a family named Lozier. On the 1860 census young William has been adopted by a family named Payne, and the father of the family is a boatman. This is the occupation William follows as well.
The inference made here has little more than the shifting river system to support it, part of the murkiness that marks the first fifty years of Samuel Pounds’ life, before he settles in Ohio. Though the 2012 discovery of his true birth year made it impossible for William Pounds to be his father, it still remains likely that Sam was born in or near Halifax County, since that is where William Pounds the Revolutionary War soldier came from, and he and William are closely connected by family tradition. Thus, he would be the son of one of William’s older brothers. However, as I said earlier, he could also be the son of the Samuel Pound of Orange County who died at Valley Forge in 1778.
We will turn now to the first decades of our centenarian Samuel Pounds’s life.
2. Halifax County, Virginia
Only one public document links Samuel to Halifax County, and that is a property sale which he witnessed in 1774, a document I cite earlier. In 1761, as shown in the Abstracts of Granville County Deeds, one John Pound bought land in Granville County NC from Benjamin Thompson and his wife Elizabeth: “100 acres at Thompson’s lower corner on Simmons’ line to mouth of Spring branch.” (Shifting county divisions complicate things here. In 1764, Bute County was created from Granville County. In 1779 Bute would be divided into Franklin and Warren counties and disappear.) In a deed book entry for 7 November 1774, we read:
John Pound of Shocco, in Bute Co., to Joseph Montfort, of Halifax. 200 Pds Va. money for 100 A. in Bute Co. on SS Great Shocco Creek, bought from Benjamin Thompson by John Pound, Sr., father of John Pound who now lives on this tract. Wit: Thomas Robertson, Saml. Pound. Ack: by John Pound, Bute November Court 1774. Ben McCulloch, C. C.
The reference to John Pound, son of John Pound, helps enormously. The older man can only be the man whose dates are 1738-1809, who was born and who died in Halifax County. His mother was the land-owning widow Jane Pounds mentioned above. His second oldest son was named John, born 1753, and it is he who appears above. The evidence could be taken to suggest that whether a son or nephew our Samuel Pounds was a witness. Born in 1755, Samuel was a year or so too young to witness a deed, but he probably reached physical maturity early and passed for twenty-one. The possibility also exists that John Pound Sr. is his father.
What this deed also does for us is to usher back on stage Samuel’s uncle, the Revolutionary War soldier William Pound, whom family traditional will later assert (wrongly) to be his father. The relationship between the two men, uncle and nephew as I suspect, must have been close, with but six years difference in their ages, and along Shocco Creek in Bute County is a good place for it to start. After the war, William will be living in this vicinity, which came to be called the Nutbush area. This very probably was the area where Samuel Pounds was living during the time referred to when Samuel’s daughter, Alex Cooper’s Aunt Naomi, that the families visited back and forth between Virginia and North Carolina.
Another important chapter in the history of these two men comes to light when the records of the War of Independence are examined. Born in 1755, Sam was twenty-one, a prime age to fight when the War broke out in 1775. It is not difficult to find a War record for Samuel Pound of Virginia, for seventeen muster and pay rolls are available, but the problem remains how to know which Samuel Pound a given record pertains to. A pension application would help but there is none. He had a cousin or uncle of the same name who left records, but he was from Anson County, North Carolina, and led a well documented life there.
Upon close examination, however, these problems disappear in a surprising way. The Anson County Samuel Pound fought with North Carolina and Georgia units and has a pension application, so no confusion arises. And of even greater help, the Virginia Samuel Pounds turns out to be one and the same man through sixteen of the seventeen records, covering a period of twenty-three months, a fact which is easily established by examining not the digitalized records in the databases but the raw, handwritten rolls. With one exception, they are all for the company of Capt. William Moseley, 7th Virginia Regiment, Commanded by Col. Alexander McClenachan. The only exception record is an undated one that gives him the rank of “Sgt.”
A roll for this company dated November 1777, shows Private Pound, and in the remarks column it says “sick, hosp[ital].” The next month’s muster roll shows him still in the hospital. And then the surprise: the next roll bears the remark “died 11 Jan. 1778.”
Now the speculation. The Samuel who died in the hospital in 1778 could well have been the father of our ancestral Samuel, whose origins are otherwise unknown. One thing we do know about him is that he was very close to William and his family. Sam knew the names of William’s children and when they were born, we can be almost certain, because his daughter, whom we are calling Aunt Naomi, couldn’t have gotten the detailed information she supplied to Alexander Cooper anywhere else. She was born in Illinois in 1823 and never knew the Virginia family. She may well have thought that William was her grandfather because her father could talk about William’s family in detail, in much greater detail perhaps than he could speak of his own immediate family. Indeed, if it was Sam’s father who died in 1778 he may have had no other family. He had no known siblings, and his mother may have been dead already. It seems very possible that by the end of the War he was an orphan.
The muster rolls have other surprises in store for the researcher, and they support the speculation above. The history of the Virginia 7th regiment reveals that they were one of the fifteen Virginia regiments at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-1778. Over the last two decades, a lot of research has been done to identify the men at that winter camp, and a specialized site (http://valleyforgemusterroll.org) gives a thumbnail history of the 7th Regiment: “Organized February-May 76 at Gloucester County Courthouse from Halifax, Albemarle, Botetourt, Gloucester, King William, Essex, Middlesex, Cumberland, King and Queen, Orange and Fincastle Counties. Entered Valley Forge with 427 assigned, 46 fit for duty. Left Valley Forge with 376 assigned, 226 fit for duty.” The same site, which is devoted to itemizing the rosters, reveals Samuel Pound’s name among the dead, with the same date as above.
This was the more surprising to me since the company rosters I had studied never state the location at the time the roster is made. “Take off your shoes,” I said to myself, because in the reigning patriotic myth of the U.S.A. Valley Forge is holy ground. And there was one more surprise waiting me at valleyforgemusterroll.org. The same search module in which I had entered the surname Pound and found Samuel showed a second entry, and that was for William Pound, Corporal, 1st Virginia Regiment.
I already knew that William served with the 1st Regiment, since his pension-application record is on file: three years with the 1st Virginia, released Philadelphia, exit rank corporal. No surprise there. The surprise rather was that his unit was at Valley Forge along with Samuel’s. During the five-month camp, the cabins and tents were organized by military units: state, brigade, regiment. If the two Pounds men hadn’t known each other before, they would have certainly become acquainted during the long snow-bound months of tedium. But they had known each other before. For one month at least, in May of 1777, they were on the roster together in Capt. Moseley’s company. (It may have been more than one month since the rosters for the preceding March and April are missing.)
This is no longer mere speculation but a very strong inference as the story shapes itself before our eyes. Two soldiers named Pound in winter camp, one of them dying, the other nursing and comforting him. Samuel, the dying man, asked his kinsman William to take care of his family, and William agreed that he would. Discharged from active duty in Philadelphia, 23 December 1779, William went back to Virginia, located the orphan (or orphans--there may have been a sister named Lucy), and took him into his family. This orphan was the patriarch of our family line, Samuel Pounds (1755-1856).
If that was the case, it would not be strange if in later life Sam spoke of William as he would have a father. The period of their close companionship in Halifax and Mecklenburg counties along the North Carolina border would probably have been the 1780s, inferring from what Aunt Naomi told Alex Cooper. Sam may have gone to Pennsylvania by 1790, and he’s certainly there by 1800. Further, the record saith not.
That’s not much for Samuel Pounds’s origins, but to date it’s all that circumstances have allowed: a family tradition, a land transfer, and a batch of Revolutionary War rosters. How little I knew about Samuel Pounds’ origins, and what such ignorance could mean, only gradually became clear to me as I came to study the mulatto Poundses of Halifax County.
End of Part I
Part II: Addendum
Mulatto Poundses of Halifax County VA
The original Fate of Bones had three sections dealing with Halifax County, the first an unripe narrative of the events of the journey by car, the second a story about meeting a gracious and helpful librarian in South Boston named Julia Carrington, and the third a tale about looking for the family of Aunt Nan Pounds that Mrs. Carrington told me about. She remembered Aunt Nan well, she said, because Aunt Nan had told her fortune when she was young. “She was very old, quiet and neat,“ Mrs. Carrington said, “and she had the most beautiful blue eyes. Now you’re going to hate me for saying this but she was colored. Though they were really light. Some of her family went north and passed."
Aunt Nan had lived about ten miles west of Halifax toward Vernon Hill, Mrs. Carrington said, and kindly marked the place on my map. The sun was going down when I left the Library, and by the time I got to Halifax and turned west it was dropping in front of me like a hammer. That journey took me through deepening darkness along narrowing gravel roads and the gravel turning to dirt, the upshot of which was that I gave up, saying to myself, “Aunt Nan, I’ll look for you some other day.” That was in 1993. Twenty-three years later, I kept my promise--though in fact by then Aunt Nan was the last thing on my mind.
Twenty-three years later was February of the present year, Anno Domini 2016, in the full bloom of the world wide web and its database delirium, with the memories of the days when I drove from county seat to county seat to find records in the courthouses and libraries grown so distant in my mind as to seem like another lifetime. Then I came across a photograph of an elderly woman I didn’t recognize right away until I had studied her name and considered her residence in Halifax County Virginia. It was Aunt Nan.
I’d been trawling for an image of a great-great-aunt named Amanda Pounds who was born in 1860 and died there in 1916. I found myself looking at the photo of an elderly woman named Amanda Pounds who was born in Halifax County Virginia in 1865 and died there in 1955. My first response was blank confusion. The face was right. The name was right. She certainly looked like a Pounds. But how could she have been born in Virginia in 1865 and lived until 1955? Then I looked again at the nickname given her in parentheses: “Aunt Nan.” Slowly a rushlight of memory began to glow in the darkness. This has to be the Aunt Nan that Mrs. Carrington told me about in 1993. It had to be! And it was. What was it she had said to me? (I knew because I had written it down.) “Aunt Nan had a boy named Wilson, and you know he favors you. Kind of high in the forehead and with those sunken eyes.”
Two hundred years and more had passed since the Poundses I knew about lived in Halifax County, and in the last fifteen years the pursuit of genealogy had come to be informed by genetic science, but no science was needed here. When you meet a blood-kin member of your family for the first time, you recognize them by a lifting of the heart even before you learn their name. I recognized Aunt Nan, and I would recognize others as I came across their photos: her son Wilson, her father Felix, and above all her nephew Moses Belt Pounds II (1904-1993), who looked enough like my father to be his brother. Mrs. Carrington had said they were “colored” though “very light.” That would mean mulatto, but the word never occurred to me as I looked at Aunt Nan’s photo and the others that I found. When the next day it did occur to me, it meant nothing. People are just people, and family is family.
I wrote Mrs. Carrington a letter and sent it to the South Boston Library. After twenty-three years, she would be either retired or gone to her final rest, but someone there would put me in touch either with her or her kin. I was quite sure of this, because this was rural Virginia, I was from rural Oklahoma, and folkways don’t change, except with the slowness of mountains and rivers.
Within little more than a week, I had an email from Cary Perkins, Mrs. Carrington’s daughter, dated 10 February 2016:
When I talked to my mother yesterday about your email she was pleased to hear from you and recounted again the story about getting her fortune told and how it all came true. I have to say how very dear it was for Mrs. Pounds to forecast such positive things for my mother; whether she was a bona fide fortune teller or just a wise woman, I think of her as a dear woman and think of her, at this moment, very fondly.
May I suggest that you contact my mother if you want any additional recollections. She is 88 years old. I will happily pass your request on to her and make arrangements to email you or have you call her.
I recognized the light of grace that sometimes shines on us from above to encourage our endeavors when we persevere. Cary and I have since carried on a correspondence, in which she has been as helpful and gracious as her mother. Much of what follows below is either the fruit of that correspondence or was inspired by it.
In March 2016 I received a letter from Mrs. Carrington that added some details to her story about Aunt Nan.
She told my fortune when I was teaching third grade at Wilson Memorial High School. I was about 20 or 21 years old. Everything she predicted for me came true, except one thing. She said I would live a long time, be very close always to my mother and my church, and be very wealthy. All came true, except I am not wealthy at all!, except in things that matter, like family and loved ones still with me, and memories. I have eight children and many grandchildren.
Aunt Nan’s own story begins with her grandmother, Priscilla “Silla” Pounds, 1791-1893. The substance of what is known for sure about Silla comes from her death record, which gives the date as 30 October 1893 and her age as 102. She was born and died in Halifax County, and the information was provided by her son Felix. This data is supplemented by the 1880 census, the only one on which Priscilla appears. In 1880 she was living alone next door to Felix and his family in the Birch Creek District, near Oak Level and not far from Sinai, giving her occupation as “Sewing & Knitting.” Since Felix is listed in the same district in 1870, it is reasonable to think that Priscilla was there also. Priscilla is probably buried in the Pounds-Hamilton Cemetery nearby (Find-a-Grave calls it the Pounds Cemetery, but local residents seem to prefer the compound name), though no marker is known.
It is also known that Priscilla had two sons, Meshack and Felix, but before looking at them it is best to consider the one place name provided by the records--Birch Creek. Located about ten miles west of Halifax, it was the name of the census district that included Felix’s branch of the family between 1870 and 1930, and just as significantly the district included part of the sprawling and wealthy Berry Hill Plantation, which adjoined Sinai. At least that is the first response one hears today, conscious as everyone is of the famous plantation. Covering 3,600 acres in its heyday, it was one of the largest in Virginia. It was originally owned by Isaac Coles, who began using slaves in 1803. Twice the plantation changed owners, finally ending up under the control of James Coles Bruce in 1832. Bruce is credited with transforming the existing 18th-century brick plantation house then standing into the Greek Revival mansion seen today. The main house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1969 and today is used as a conference site. The curious reader may view it at Wikipedia.
There is an earlier history of the area, however, one we should be aware of. In 1775 Champness Terry owned all this land and more--some 20,000 acres, and that was 50 years and more before James Coles Bruce bought Berry Hill. Terry received a 20,000 acre land grant in October 1765 on the branches of Sandy, Polecat, Miry, and Birches Creeks. The significance of this fact is two-fold. This area was near or possibly even surrounded the 400 acres along Peters Creek belonging to Jane Pound, as shown on the land surveys of 1773 and 1775. And in Illinois in 1817, our patriarch Samuel Pounds married Susanna Williams, a daughter of the Revolutionary War soldier Joseph Terry Williams (1756-1834) of Halifax County. He in turn was a nephew of Champness Terry, the landowner. Adequate research on this matter has not yet been done, but it seems possible that the land on which the mulatto Poundses lived for so long may have originally belonged to Champness Terry. Aunt Nan’s son Wilson, whom Mrs. Carrington told me so long ago that I resembled, is buried is on this property too at the New Vernon Church.
Reduced to 650 acres today, the plantation still contains two slave graveyards, one (Diamond Hill) holding the graves of more than two hundred people, making it one of the largest slave cemeteries in Virginia. Closed to the public, these cemeteries have never been accessed, though Diamond Hill was recently cleaned and it appears to have no legible markers. Notable too are the old slave quarters with their stone houses. None of the Poundses were ever slaves there; they were designated Freemen (free persons, that is) of Color and were probably skilled in useful crafts. Some of them may have lived on the plantation as retainers, and we know that some of their kin did, for an 1845 “list of Negroes at Berry Hill Plantation” contains the names of Darby Duncan, Lucy Alderson, and their children. One of Lucy’s daughters would marry a Pounds, and Felix Pounds (son of Priscilla) may have lived in one of the stone houses that comprise the slave quarters, for the 1860 census lists him as living two houses away from the mansion house.
Stone slave quarters, Berry Hill Plantation
In 2012 an internet magazine called SoVaNow.com published an article called “When Sinai Was Young,” giving the memories of two cousins, Blondine Duncan and Elizabeth Palmer. “The couple they consider the patriarch and matriarch of their family met when both were working at Berry Hill: Henderson Duncan had been an enslaved man there, the son of the famed Darby Duncan, the chef at Berry Hill who learned his culinary skills in New Orleans; the modern-day tavern at Berry Hill Resort is named for him. In 1872, Henderson Duncan married Anna Alderson, a free woman, who may have been white, who was working at Berry Hill. Anna died in 1954 at the age of 106.”
Henderson Duncan and Anna Alderson
They offered other memories of Sinai as well. The magazine reports:
They agree that the village was settled after the Civil War as formerly enslaved African-Americans left the sprawling Berry Hill plantation and looked for their own land about two miles away.
And is the name Biblical in origin — a reference to the holy mountain where Moses was given the Ten Commandments?
They’re not sure, nor is South Boston’s Patricia Jennings, who says the lore in her family is that a relative, P. B. Ragland, actually gave Sinai its name.
As for the pronunciation: locally the three-syllable “Sigh-nee-eye,” as opposed to “Sigh-nigh” — the women don’t know.
I have also received a current description of Sinai’s location from Brittaney Hamilton, a Pounds relation, whose great-aunt still lives there:
So first off, the Pounds-Hamilton Cemetery is located in the area that used to be called Sinai . . . a few miles north of South Boston. If you do a google maps search for Sinai Elementary School in Halifax, that's essentially where the cemetery is. The cemetery is actually on the land owned by my great aunt behind her house. Slightly north of Sinai Elementary, you'll see Banister Lake on the google maps page. My family lived near a creek that runs off that lake, but I'm not sure of the exact section. I'm assuming it's one of the creek branches that leads into the Sinai area because that's where I've always understood the Pounds side of my grandfather's family to have come from.
The village of Sinai and the Berry Hill Plantation are juxtaposed here as a reminder, if any were needed, of the institution of chattel slavery along racial lines, which is the great historical divide in American history. In terms my own attempt to write a continuous family history, it is an immense jagged tear across the fabric. One half of our Halifax County history is is the history of the white Poundses who lived in this area between 1770 and 1820, and the other half is that of the mulatto Poundses who lived here from 1770 and probably earlier under different hames, and some of whom remained to the present day. The two halves cannot be joined. To change the metaphor, we have two halves of a jigsaw puzzle. The pieces in each half fit together neatly, but the pieces that would join the two halves are missing. Where documents should be, there is only silence. It’s across that historical gap that I recognized my face in Aunt Nan’s. Faces constitute visible dna, and they don’t lie anymore than the science of genetics lies (though both are open to coincidence, what the geneticists call “false positives”). But the paper trail to tell us what happened before 1850 is largely missing. Thus, in what follows I’ll be forced to speculate, but I’ll mark the speculation as such to keep it separated from what can be known from the records.
We’re looking at two families named Pounds, resident in Halifax County from the 1750s to about 1850, but the heart of the matter is the period 1780-1820. The question is simple enough: to learn where these two lines meet or cross. Children spring from a sexual crossing of a man and a woman, but what we’re presented with here is matriarchy: we know the names of the women but not the names of their mates. Priscilla Pounds, one matriarch of the Halifax County mulatto clan, and a second matriarch, Harriet Pounds, whom we can guess was either the sister of the first or her cousin. The most important difference between them is that Harriet’s children went to Metcalf County in southern Kentucky, while of Priscilla’s two sons, the elder (Meshack) went to neighboring Pittsylvania County, while the younger (Felix) stayed in Halifax.
Matriarchy means that unmarried women most often gave their own surname to their children, so we don’t know the men’s names, and crossing racial lines means we don’t know the names of the white men because they didn’t formally marry their mates. The unions that produced the children left no records. Born in the 1790s about four years apart, Priscilla and Harriet, as I said, are most likely sisters, but no parents or spouses are known in either case. Six children are known in the next generation, two of them certainly Pricilla’s, three of them probably Harriet’s, and one an orphan who could belong to either of them or to a third party.
Priscilla Pounds (1791-1893):
Priscilla two known sons are Meshack Pounds (1822-1901) and Felix Pounds (1827-1909), who were both born in Halifax County, the former spending his adult life in Pittsylvania County and dying there, and the latter living and dying in Halifax. Both of these sons’ origin is remembered and upheld by strong family traditions among their descendants in and from Halifax County. Five of Felix’s descendants migrated to Philadelphia Pennsylvania (Mrs. Carrington said they went north and “passed”) and environs, or to Ohio and Michigan. They maintain standards of education and family pride, they know who they are, and they keep records, easing the genealogist’s labors.
The two children of Priscilla Pounds (1791-1893) were Meshack and Felix. It seems clear that in naming then she was not honoring their father but concealing him. There are no white males in the Virginia Pound/s line carrying either of those names. The common pattern is John, Thomas, and William, and more rarely Samuel. In the period we’re concerned with, middle names are not used.
1. Meshack “Shack” Pounds, 1822-1901; married Martha “Lilly” James, 1852, Halifax County. They spent most of their lives in Pittsylvania County though by 1877 (according to Meshack’s son Sandy’s marriage record) they were living in Caswell County NC. Meshack died there sometime after the 1900 census.
Thirteen children are known, all born in Pittsylvania County.
1. John Pounds, 1847- ; no data.
2. William Pounds, 1849- ; no data
3. Sandy Pounds, 1853- ; m. (1) Margaret Gunn; (2) Bell Wilson
4. Meshack Pounds II, 1858-1934: m. Maria Eliza James
5. Sarah Pounds, 1860- ; m. John J. Sutherlin
6. Joseph L. Pounds, 1864-1944; m. Annie unknown
7. Jacob Pounds, 1865-1948; m. Henrietta Stamps
8. Martha A. “Fanny” Pounds, 1868-1936; m. Rainey Valentine
9. Jackson S. Pounds, 1871-1957; m. Annie Williamson
10. Peter Pounds, 1871-1936; m. Edna Brandon
11. George Washington Pounds, 1876-1949; m. (1) Cora Hatchett; (2) Jennie Bell
Walton
12 Daniel Pounds, 1876-1933; m. Minnie Peters
13. Edmund Pounds, 1879-
2. Felix Pounds, 1827-1909, married Henrietta Long in 1856, Halifax County. Though the matter is not clear because of shifting family names, it is thought that Henrietta may have been the granddaughter of Lucy Alderson, whose name appears on the 18450 “list of negroes” from Berry Hill plantation, where she appears as the wife of Darby Duncan (some of their children are listed). All the 12 known children of Felix and Henrietta were born in Halifax County. The 1860 census shows them first in the Southern District; then on Birch Creek in 1870, 1880, 1900, and 1910. The change of place names probably followed a renaming of the census districts and did not involve a change in the locale where the families lived.
In their adulthood, three of these children moved to suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After the Civil War Philadelphia, known as the city of brotherly love, became a mecca for southern mulattos. Two other children went to Ohio, and one to Michigan.
1. Moses Pounds, 1857-1933, m. Emily Frances Bowman: d. Sinai, Halifax VA
2. Mary F. Pounds, 1858-1948, m. William Thomas Daniel Jr.; d. Jefferson OH
3. Susan A. Pounds, 1860-1922, m. Lazarus James; d. Philadelphia PA
4. William Morton Pounds, 1861-1942, m. Julia Marable; d. Philadelphia PA
5. Amanda “Nan” Pounds, 1865-1955, m. (1) William T. Cunningham and (2)
Clayborn Scott; d. Sinai, Halifax VA
6. Henrietta Pounds, 1866-1925, m. Lazarus James (James married 2 sisters.); d.
Halifax Co. VA
7. Sallie Bet Pounds, 1869-1926, m. James Cabell Walton; d. Halifax Co. VA
8. Ethel T. Pounds, 1872-1924, m. James H. Long; d. Halifax Co. VA
9. Robert Felix Pounds, 1873-1942, m. Roberta Logan; d. Halifax Co. VA
10. Minnie E. Pounds, 1875-bef. 1840, m. William Oscar Palmer; d. Danville VA
11. Jennie Pounds, 1877-1910, m. John A. Graves; d. Detroit MI
12. Emma Franklin Pounds, 1879-1942, m. King Solomon Long; d. Lynchburg
VA
Harriet Pounds (about 1795 to after 1824):
Harriet had four known children, two sons and two daughters. In addition, I attribute a probable son to her--the oldest son, child number 2 below. The next son, the most important is child number 3, Thomas Pounds, who went to Kentucky at age 21 and stayed there permanently. His family in Kentucky is well documented. That Harriet is Thomas’s mother is established by the oral document cited below from Thomas’s daughter, in which she names Thomas’s mother and his siblings.
1. Rachel Pounds/Hiser, b. 1810 Halifax County. May have married John Faulkner (1805- ) in Kentucky in 1825. She was a retainer in the family of Benjamin Hiser (1844-1907) in Metcalf County, thus the alternative family name. Benjamin Hiser was born in Tennessee to John William Hiser and Mary Jane Faulkner. I once thought the Hiser family may have had roots in Halifax County, but this does not appear to be the case.
2. Harrison Pounds was born in Halifax County about 1811, and may have lived some years in Ohio. In terms of his birth year, he could be the son of either Priscilla or Harriet. The name Harrison suggests that his mother was Harriet. I’ve found no other evidence. Harrison is not a well attested figure, appearing only on one census, the 1880 census for Spotsylvania County Virginia. He married Priscilla Smith about 1830, possibly in Ohio. Their son Jacob is well documented.
3. Thomas “Tom” Pounds, b. 1815 Halifax County, d. 1895 Meltcalfe County KY. Married Phyllis Hiser about 1849 in KY. One of their children was Mary Marietta “Polly” Pounds (1849-1939), whose narrative was collected by the WPA in 1937 and provides the story of her father’s antecedents, told below. The short of it is that when Tom had served his indenture in Halifax County and was declared a freeman, he went to Metcalfe County to save his three siblings from being sold as slaves.
4. Ann Pounds / Cook, b. Halifax County abt 1820. A retainer in the family of Richard Cook of Green County KY, who was originally from Halifax County.
5. Edmund “Edd” Edward Pounds/Cook, b. abt 1830, Halifax County, died bef 1910 in KY. Married Nancy Edwards.
Notes for child 2, Harrison Pounds:
In contrast to the scarcity of records for Harrison himself, his son by Priscilla Smith is very well attested. Jacob Pounds (1830-1909) was born in Virginia and died in Gallia County Ohio, where he is recorded on the census for 1860, 1870, and 1900. He had two wives and ten recorded children. In addition, he has a Civil War record, and his grave is known. He is buried in Shiloh Cemetery, Huntington Township, along with at least four of his kinfolk, and perhaps many others. The Find-a-Grave website shows 18 memorials at Shiloh and mentions another 50 unrecorded graves.
Gravestone of Jacob Pounds
Harrison Pounds had a second wife, Catherine or Katy (born 1815 in Virginia), by whom one child is known: Christiana A. Pounds (born 1844 in Virginia). When he appears on the 1880 census for Spotsylvania County, he is shown with Christiana and a two-year-old grandchild named Fannie. It would appear then that by 1880 Harrison had returned to Virginia--if indeed he had ever left. His year and place of death are unknown.
Notes for child no. 3, Thomas Pounds:
Thomas’s daughter Polly (1849-1939) married Milton Breeding, and her story was collected by the WPA in Metcalf County Kentucky in 1937. The story is told in the third person but sometimes borrows the interviewee’s language.
Aunt Polly Breeding is the oldest and most noted slave near Edmonton [Metcalfe County], Kentucky. She was born on New Year’s Day 1834 at Lafayette one mile this side of Center in the northern part of what is now Metcalfe County. She was held as a slave by Ben Hiser, a relative of A. B. Hiser, history teacher in Edmonton High School. Her mother, Phyllis, was born and owned as a slave by Mike Shufett in the Blue Grass Region. Mike Shuffett became heavily in debt and was afraid that Phyllis would be sold for the debt. He had his brother, Tom Shuffett who lived near Lafayette to take her down there for safe keeping. Mr. Ben Hiser bought Phyllis at the age of seven years for $700. Aunt Polly’s pap was Thomas Pounds, a free born Mulatto. He was born in Halifax County, Virginia. His grandmother was a white woman and slave holder. Her name was Polly Pounds and after her husband died, she had an illegitimate child by a Negro slave. This half-white and half-colored child was Thomas Pound’s mother. Thomas’s mother grew up as a free born and had four children: Thomas, Edd, Rachel and Ann. This half-colored child, Harrett, could not sell her own children and they were bound out until they became 21 years old. Edd, Rachel, and Ann were bound out to Dick Cook, a white man of Halifax County and he later moved to Lafayette near Ben Hiser’s. Thomas, Aunt Polly’s pap, was bound out to a man in Virginia and lived there until after he was 21 years old, when he got his free papers.
The following is a copy of his free papers. Aunt Polly holds the original copy.
Virginia to wit, No. 379:
Thomas Pounds, a free born man of color was this day registered in my
office according to law. This said Thomas is a mulatto about 22 years
of age, five feet 8 inches high, has a large scar on his left arm between
his wrist and elbow occasioned by a burn and was born free.
William Hold, Clerk, November 28, 1837. At a court held for Halifax
County, the 28th day of November 1837. The court doth certify that the
the foregoing register of Thomas Pounds is only made by clerk of this
Court, Virginia, towit: I, William Hold, Clerk of the County Court of
Halifax do hereby Register and Certificate truly transcribed from the
records of my office. In testimony where of I have herewith set my
hand and affixed the seal of said County this day 28th of November,
1837. /s/ William Hold, Clerk
Thomas Pounds in Virginia heard that Dick Cook had sold his brother Edd, and sisters, Rachel and Ann. Knowing that he did not have any right lawfully to do so, he was very anxious to come to see and investigate the matter. The day that Thomas got his free papers, he put his old fiddle under his arm and walked to Lafayette County, and on arriving he learned that Cooks still held the children.
Aunt Polly’s mother, Phyllis, and pap fell in love with each other and were married at Ben Hiser’s home under the old slave law, in which “they just stood up beside each other in Mr. Hiser’s house and a preacher said the ceremony without any license.” Phyllis continued to live at Mr. Hiser’s and Thomas being a carpenter by trade hired himself out to various people. Her mother was always treated good by her “Missie”, for Mr. and Mrs. Hiser were “powerful good people.” Phyllis and her family would attend church with the white people. Not all masters would let their servants go to church with them to worship. Mr. Hiser never whipped any of them.
Aunt Polly said that some people called them by the name of Pounds, while others would call them Hisers. They lived with the Hisers as long as the Hisers lived, but they died about 15 months before the slaves were freed. No one wanted to buy them under the uncertain conditions of how the war would end. Everything else that belonged to the Hisers was sold at Public auction. Mr. and Mrs. Hiser died one day apart and were buried in the same graveyard. Aunt Polly said that it just broke their hearts for they knew that they would never have another “Missie” like them.
They hired out to Willis Whitlow of Good Luck in southern end of the county and stayed there for several months. Then they were bound out to Dr. Dickinson at Lafayette and lived there until they were set free, but she did not remember the year.
After they had been freed, they hardly knew what to do, but as her Pap had been a free man, he had been used to depending on himself for his own judgment. The law required her pap and mother to marry again after they were set free. Aunt Polly holds the original certificate and the following is a copy of it:
State of Kentucky, Metcalfe County: I, E. R. Beauchamp, Clerk of the County
Court for said County, do certify that Thomas and wife this day appeared before
me and united into declaration of marriage as required by law. Given under my
Hand.” (September 19th, 1868), s/s E. R. Beauchamp
After her pap and mother remarried, her mother took the children to Louisville to put the children in school, and left her and Pap at Edmonton to work. Five northern women were hired to teach the colored people, but to Aunt Polly’s regret she says that she did not study, just looked out the window and watched the people pass up and down the streets. They moved back to Edmonton to live as her pap had bought a place near the jail and they lived there. They were also living there when she fell in love with Mike Breeding and they went to New Albany to be married. They lived there for some time while Mike worked in a glass factory. Nine children were born to Mike and Aunt Polly. Only two served in the World War. Edd died one day before the ship reached New York. Aunt Polly now lives with her daughter Lou Richardson near Edmonton, Ky.
Finally, among the mulatto Pounds children born in Halifax County before 1820, there is the orphan Mary Pounds who appears only on the 1830 census. Nothing can be inferred from the absence of her name on earlier censuses, because the censuses for Halifax County between 1790 and 1810 were lost and the 1820 is defective. The 1830 shows her as a mulatto between the age of 24 and 35 with two boys under 10. This puts her birth year between 1795 and 1806. She could have been Silla’s child, though that would leave a large gap between her birth and that of the two known children. Or she could have been Harriet’s child, for Harriet had her first son in 1811, and it is easy to imagine Mary as her first chid, born in 1810. Harriet would have been 15 or 16, which was childbearing age for poor people in rural Virginia. Nothing, however, is documented. Mary’s mother could have been either Priscilla or Harriet.
Origins: Possible Fathers for Priscilla and Harriet
To come to the question of origins--that is, the names of the men that Priscilla and Harriet took as mates--after long thought the best I can do is to offer a chart of the male Poundses in Halifax County living there as adults between 1790 and 1827, when the two women and their children were born. John, Thomas, and Solomon are brothers, sons of Jane Pound, all linked to the 400 acres of land which she owned on Peters Creek in the Bannister area of the county, a few miles from the traditional home of the mulatto family. Samuel was Jane’s grandson.
All four of these men would have had opportunity, and any of them could be the father of either Priscilla, Harriet, or both.
1. John Pounds
1738-1809
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2. Thomas Pounds
1750-1822
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3. Samuel Pounds
1755-1856
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4. Solomon Pounds
1760-1803
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1. As the oldest candidate, John’s age could tell against him. In 1791 he would have been 53, so he wasn’t driven by the mad sap of youth. On the other hand, in his fifties his social
prestige as a white male property owner would have been at its highest and made it easy for him to dominate a retainer. No census exists to tell us of the presence or absence of slaves, “negroes,” or retainers. It should be noted that both Priscilla and Harriet had descendants named John, though none is recorded in the first generation. The middle name of Felix’s daughter Amanda (my Aunt Nan) was John, as shown on her death certificate. He’s a strong candidate.
2. By 1790 Thomas had left Halifax County and was living in Rockingham County, North Carolina, where he appears on the census from 1790 to 1820. Given that Rockingham was just across the Dan River south and east of Halifax, he could well have made the journey back home any number of times. Alexander Cooper reports that his great-aunt Naomi Pounds had heard that in this period there was frequent “visiting” back and forth between the Virginia and the North Carolina branches of the family. On the other hand, it is to be noted that none of Thomas’s censuses show a slave or “black” retainer in the household. Underscoring the possibility of Thomas being the father of Harriet is that she named her second son Thomas.
3. Samuel Pounds is a man whose origins and early manhood are surrounded by a great deal of murk (witness the first section of this addendum). His own parentage is completely undocumented except for family traditions and dna. Alex Cooper’s account provides the traditions; and the dna is that shared by descendants of our immigrant ancestor John Pound (born England about 1650, immigrated 1663, died 1717, Richmond County VA) and by the mulatto Poundses of Halifax County. In Part 1 we noticed a 1774 deed which mentioned Samuel as a witness to land bought by John Pound (1738-1809), a son of Thomas and Jane Pound, who was born and who died in Halifax County. The land was in Bute County, just south of the state line from Halifax County, where the seller was from.
As mentioned in Part 1 above, Samuel’s daughter Naomi refers to the Samuel Pounds and Joseph Terry Williams families visiting back and forth across the state border, which on the Virginia side could only mean Halifax or Mecklenburg County. The period is probably the 1780s. As to when Samuel went north, he witnessed a deed in 1774, and there are no more reliable documents until 1803, when he turns up in Pennsylvania. It’s only a guess, but I believe he was in Pennsylvania by 1800, and possibly by 1790.
What can be said about Samuel to advance his candidacy is a word about his character. I believe he was a Sly Boots, a trickster, and a prevaricator. We know he abandoned his wife Elizabeth and four girls in Beaver County Pennsylvania about 1807, went down the river, and started another family. There are suggestions that this may have been the second family he deserted. Given his character, it would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to abandon a mulatto partner and two girls back in Halifax County. He wouldn’t have looked back. The major difficulty with this theory is that neither Priscilla nor Harriet had any descendants named Samuel.
4. Solomon Pound was born and died in Halifax County, making him a good candidate to have fathered either Harriet or Priscilla. Again, there are no documents, not even a census. Nor are any offspring named Solomon. There is only an 1800 deed to show that he inherited half his mother’s remaining estate.
5. There is no number 5 in the chart above because this is the surprise entry. We have been looking for a white male parent, because that is the common pattern for crossing the color line, but it did also happen sometimes that a white female stepped across. Unlike her male counterpart, there was no acceptance for her. It would have been considered a highly shameful transgression and hushed up as much as possible. Yet, that this is what happened has already been stated in the narrative from Metcalf County Kentucky. There Aunt Polly Breeding, a daughter of Harriet’s son Thomas, attributed this story to her father. The WPA interviewer reported:
Aunt Polly’s pap was Thomas Pounds, a free born Mulatto. He was born in Halifax County, Virginia. His grandmother was a white woman and slave holder. Her name was Polly Pounds and after her husband died, she had an illegitimate child by a Negro slave. This half-white and half-colored child was Thomas Pound’s mother.
In other words, Thomas’s mother was Harriet Pounds. And who was her mother, the merry widow who stepped across the line?
Here we have only one candidate: Mary “Polly” Pound, born in 1748 or before, daughter of Thomas and Jane Pounds--that is, a sister of three of the men discussed above. Her existence is documented by her witnessing her father’s will in 1769 and by deeds referencing her property. To witness the will, she would have had to be 21, making her born in 1748 or earlier. The mulatto Thomas Pounds remembered her when he called his only daughter Mary “Polly.” Was she in fact a widow? No marriage record for her has been found, and if she was indeed married she had either resumed her maiden name or her daughters Priscilla and Harriet kept it for reasons of their own.
Origins: Possible Mates for Priscilla and Harriet
1. John Pounds
1738-1809
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2. Thomas Pounds
1750-1822
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3. Thomas Pounds
1794-1848
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The first two names on the chart are the same as on the previous one, but now the question is who fathered the children of Priscilla and Harriet. Samuel Pounds of the first chart could not have fathered any of the children, since after 1803 he was in Pennsylvania. Nor could Solomon Pounds, who died in 1803. Again, in theory at least, any of the three men could have fathered any of the children not born after his death.
1. John Pounds could have fathered Harriet’s daughter Rachel, born 1810, or her son Harrison, born 1811. He would have been past sixty, but he may still have been vigorous. Again, it should be noted that both Priscilla and Harriet had descendants named John, though none is recorded in the first generation.
2. Thomas Pounds could have fathered any of Harriet’s and Rachel’s children, though he would have had to do a lot of traveling between Halifax and Rockingham County, North Carolina. His stays in Halifax could have been prolonged ones. Harriet named her second son Thomas.
3. This Thomas Pounds was born 1794 in either Mecklenburg County or Halifax, possibly near the county line. He was a son of William Pound (1749-1814) and a grandson of Jane Pound, the widow who left her Halifax County property to her sons. What is notable about this Thomas is his name, given to Harriet’s second son, and the fact that he is not known to have ever married. The census from 1810 to 1840 shows him in Chatham County NC, where his father is living. The distance would not have been insuperable for a roving bachelor. Perhaps it is worth mentioning that when I began this genealogical research eight months ago, several public trees showed the spouse of Priscilla as someone named David Thomas Pounds. David Thomas?
In parting, let me say a word about forenames. It is common knowledge that, when documents are absent, the pattern of forenames repeated from generation to generation can be an important clue or indeed the only clue. In the case of male names, these usually come from the father’s side. In the case of the fathers of Priscilla and Harriet’s children, we don’t have much else to go on, apart from chronology and physical proximity. When I first started working on the mulatto Poundses of Halifax County, I saw several public trees at Ancestry.com that gave Priscilla’s mate’s name as David Thomas Pounds. I knew that wasn’t possible because in 1800 no Pound/s male--all of them farmers--was saddled with the solemn weight of three names, and there was no one called David. Still, I do respect the power of traditions to carry information down the corridors of time, and I hope that if there is a family tradition about a man called David or David Thomas that some kind soul will tell me about it. I can be reached at the addresses below.
Wayne Pounds
Tokyo, Japan
17 October 2016
website: http://www.ueno-wayne.org/
email: poundsway@gmail.com
End of Part II
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