Ueno Wayne: From Okla. to N. Calif. to Tokyo Japan: Halifax Co: Berry Hill Plantation

1. AFRICAN-AMERICAN GENEALOGY (a)

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2011/10/africanamerican_genealogy_the_best_nocost_websites.html

Freedmen Links

http://www.freeafricanamericans.com/

This link has many references to Halifax Co., though some are to Halifax Co North Carolina

http://www.freeafricanamericans.com/revolution.htm

"Unknown No Longer," VA Lib. http://unknownnolonger.vahistorical.org/

Russell, John Henderson. The Free Negro in Virginia 1619-1865. Dissertation, Johns Hopkins Univ., 1913. Online.

Berry Hill links

http://www.aahistoricsitesva.org/items/show/44#.Vup2W2R97r8

James Coles Bruce, A Guide to the Bruce Family Papers, 1746-1905

http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=uva-sc/viu02762.xml

Bruce Family Papers, Accession # 2692, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Box 11, List and Inventory of the Negroes on the Plantation of Messrs. Bruce, Seddon and Williams November 22, 1849

Box 12, List and Inventory of the Negroes on the Plantation of Messrs. Bruce, Seddon and Williams 1849

Box 13, Registers of Negroes 1852

Henry Bruce has a will, 1855

Bruce Family

Source: The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Jan., 1904), pp. 328-332 Published by: Virginia Historical Society

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4242622

The Bruce Family (Continued)

Source: The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Apr., 1904), pp. 441-443

Published by: Virginia Historical Society

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4242640

Col. Isaac Cole 1747-1813, a cousin of Patrick Henry http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Coles&GSfn=Isaac&GSbyrel=all&GSdyrel=all&GSst=48&GScntry=4&GSob=n&GRid=47208052&df=all&

meeting with Geo Washington on Banister Creek at Halifax Old Town http://mv.ancestry.com/viewer/654163a0-a8c4-4ff5-821b-067876fdd34a/12985910/12787109150

old slave cemetery at Berry Hill http://www.newsadvance.com/rockingham_now/news/old-slave-cemetery-found-at-proposed-berry-hill-mega-park/article_aa605bd2-d6cc-52b3-b90e-cfcc87f540d6.html

African-American historical sites http://www.aahistoricsitesva.org/

SoVaNow.com on PBS episode

http://www.sovanow.com/index.php?/news/article/pbs_finds_local_story_of_black_heritage/

http://www.aahistoricsitesva.org/items/show/44#.VszmOox94Us

The Berry Hill Estate was originally part of a 105,000-acre tract granted by the English Crown in 1728 to William Byrd II and was one of Virginia's largest and most prosperous plantations. Enslaved African Americans worked the land as early as 1803 when the property was owned by Isaac Coles. In 1814, Coles gave the Berry Hill property, then referred to as the Dan River plantation, to his nephew Edward C. Carrington. In 1841, the land was purchased by James Coles Bruce (1806-1865, bur. Berry Hill Family Graveyard). Bruce had additional buildings erected on the land including stone slave quarters, some of which are still standing today. Bruce hired free black craftsman Thomas Day to construct a grand floating staircase inspired by the Second Bank of the United States in Philadelphia. The staircase remains intact.

The Berry Hill slave cemetery, referred to as the Diamond Hill Slave Cemetery, is one of the largest recorded in Virginia. The cemetery contains over two hundred graves, each with an uninscribed headstone and/or footstone carved from locally available fieldstones.

The late Dr. Kathleen Bruce, family historian and a noted writer, made an exhaustive study of her great-grandfather's papers, and revealed that between the years 1802 and 1837, James was the owner or dominant partner in, among other enterprises, twelve country stores, several flour mills, a fertilizer-plaster manufactory, a commercial blacksmith shop, several lumber yards, a cotton factory and two taverns. He was also the owner of sixteen plantations comprising many tens of thousands of acres, and nearly a thousand slaves.

http://www.oldhalifax.com/county/berry6.htm

A word here in regard to the emancipation of the slaves. It speaks well for the treatment they had received at the hands of the Bruces that, after the war, none of them left the estate. All elected to remain and work for wages.

In 1830 James Bruce had purchased from General Edward Carrington, nephew of his first wife Sally Coles, the old Coles-Carrington estate, Berry Hill, situated near the court house.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/08/AR2005110801634.html

But behind the moonlight and magnolias romanticism is another story. At one point, Bruce reportedly owned some 3,000 slaves. You can't look at the house and grounds without thinking of their sweat and toil. It's something Berry Hill has committed not only never to forget but to actively honor. On June 19, 2005, it invited the descendants of slave families in Southside to a "Juneteenth" picnic commemorating the emancipation of the slaves; more than 450 people showed up. It plans to make the celebration annual and to promote itself as an African American heritage destination with black history-themed tours, special educational programs and more events on significant holidays, such as Martin Luther King Day, and during Black History Month.

Bibliography

Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-Slaves, 1976, ed. Charles L. Perdue et al. Assembles what is left of the WPA narratives, half of which were lost or destroyed.

Scott Christianson, Freeing Charles: The Struggle to Free a Slave on the Eve of the Civil War.

T. O. Madden Jr., We Were Always Free: The Maddens of Culpeper County, Virginia: A 200-Year Family History, 1992.

Henry Wiencek, The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White, 1999

Edward Ball's National Book Award-winning Slaves in the Family,

2. MORE AFRICAN-AMERICAN GENEALOGY (b)

from Africa-American Obituaries of Halifax Co:

1. Bruce, Berkley Thomas 1940-1999, s/o Paul & Bertha Mason Bruce, interred Bruce Family Cem.: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GScid=2425419&GRid=80007311&

2. Mary Chappell Bruce, 1933-1993, d/o Stephen & Mary Wynn Chappell, w/o Berkley Thomas, , - Interment Crystal Hill Baptist Church Cemetery.

3. Paul Thomas Bruce, b. 29 Aug 1918, parents were Golden Bruce and Katie Cook. Marriage record 1939. Died Cluster Springs, Halifax VA, 22 May 1991

In 1940 they were living in Black Walnut, Halifax

Bertha Mason (mother of Berkley Thomas Bruce), b. 1920, parents were Thomas Mason and Annie Boxley.

Afro-Amer obits for Halifax lists these Boxleys:

1. Rosa Lee Lester Brooks 1928-2001 w/o Tommy Lee Brooks d/o James Sanford & Eliza Boxley Lester. Interment Blue Wing Grove Baptist Church Cemetery

2. Cora Boxley Carr ?-1975, w/o Paul C. Easley & James Harry Carr d/o Wolson & Betsy Boxley. Interment St. Paul CME Church Cemetery

3. Thelma O. Stokes 1908-1993 Died Farmville Va, d/o James & Sallie Davis Boxley, , - Interment Oak Ridge Cemetery, South Boston, Va.

3. DIAMOND HILL SLAVE CEMETERY

Field stone, Diamond Hill Slave Cemetery

4. FINDING YOUR ROOTS (PBS)

Char McCargo Bah, a Stafford-based genealogist with ties here “For example, in Halifax … there were many freed people of color prior to the Civil War. The Jackson family that lived near Childrey Baptist Church in Halifax who were the early founders of Shiloh Baptist Church … were free prior to the Revolutionary War. You also had freed people of color among the people who carried the surname Freeman and Pounds.”

http://www.sovanow.com/index.php?/news/article/pbs_finds_local_story_of_black_heritage/

By Eva Cassada

SoVaNow.com / May 17, 2012

Halifax County gets a role in the latest episode of the PBS network show “Finding Your Roots” with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.

The show explains American history — indeed, sometimes world history — by investigating the ancestry of popular sports figures, actors, politicians and musicians.

(Warning: Spoiler ahead.)

In this week’s episode — still available online at the PBS website — comedian Wanda Sykes and musician John Legend are surprised to find that some of their African-American forebears were free blacks in the antebellum South. (Sykes, who is a Virginian by birth, also learns that one of her ancestors himself owned slaves.)

But Halifax comes in as 98-year-old Margarett Cooper, identified as Gates’ friend, gets help finding out how a line of her antecedents became free. Answer: In 1782, Susannah Speed sued her master, William Rowlett, for manumission in Halifax County, Va., court — and won.

All three guests reel from the revelations — and the show consults experts who say that free blacks in the American South were not uncommon. The 1790 Census, for example, shows almost 60,000 free blacks in Virginia.

Genealogists say it was a complex time.

Lawrence Martin, of Keysville, a retired auditor who works part-time in genealogy at the Halifax County Courthouse — the same site but not the same building where Speed filed suit, he believes — helped the PBS show by finding and photographing the 230-year-old documents. He doesn’t speculate on how Speed prevailed: “I would love to know, as Paul Harvey says, ‘The rest of the story.’”

“There are a lot of African-Americans that have freed ancestors prior to the Civil War,” says Char McCargo Bah, a Stafford-based genealogist with ties here. “For example, in Halifax … there were many freed people of color prior to the Civil War. The Jackson family that lived near Childrey Baptist Church in Halifax who were the early founders of Shiloh Baptist Church … were free prior to the Revolutionary War. You also had freed people of color among the people who carried the surname Freeman and Pounds.”

Martha Coates, a Halifax genealogist, says that, in 1782, laws were a bit more permissive than they would become decades later, after slave rebellions prompted crackdowns.

Coates says the popularity of Gates’ PBS show and others like it have spawned an increase in people searching for their ancestors — particularly African-Americans, who are inspired to try to break beyond the 1863-65 barrier despite the challenge of slavery and the dearth of records.

Martin says he’s seeing “a huge increase” in African-Americans looking to map their family trees, “And they’re having very good luck with it.”

Halifax County has “wonderful indexes and wonderful records,” says Martin, “If you come in, I’ll help you if I can.”

“You want to know your ancestry,” says Martin. “Good, bad or otherwise.”

Coates says that, beginning in the early 1800s, Virginia began to keep registries of free blacks — today a good source for heritage hunters.

McCargo Bah notes that more states are putting their documents online, and Virginia is now making death certificates available after 25 years, not 50.

The Virginia Historical Society has launched “Unknown No More,” a work-in-progress project devoted to putting online the collection’s millions of documents — letter, wills, court records — and the names of the enslaved people they contain.

As of last fall, the easily searchable database held 1,500 names, each linked to a digitized version of the original document.

Martin says the irony of the online databases is that they end up driving people away from their computers and into old courthouses because sometimes the information is wrong and because there’s nothing like the thrill of looking at the actual “source document” — which may be very, very old.

Most heritage hunters will find out that they have sprung from just ordinary people, Martin says. “But ordinary people built the world.”

To view the episode, visit http://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/.

Unknown No Longer is at http://www.vahistorical.org.

5. NEWSPAPERS IN VIRGINIA

virginia newspapers

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/titles/

UVA site: http://virginiachronicle.com/cgi-bin/virginia

Times Dispatch http://virginiachronicle.com/cgi-bin/virginia

Below is just a list of papers that existed, not those on line at the LOC. Cf. this

https://sites.google.com/site/onlinenewspapersite/Home/usa/va

Halifax Co.