Enslaved Families of Wiley Washington Pridgen, Sr.

 

When Wiley Washington Pridgen, Sr. of Gonzales County, Texas died on November 6, 1854, he left behind no will, one current wife, one ex-wife, seven sons, thousands of acres of Texas land – and dozens of enslaved people. When an inventory of his estate was made the month following his death, it included a list of 32 slaves – names, ages, monetary values and, in several cases, surnames of some of the enslaved families.

Wiley was far from the first enslaver ancestor I had found, and he was not a direct ancestor. He was my 3^rd great-granduncle, son of Hardy Pridgen of Nash County, North Carolina and brother to my 3^rd great-grandfather Joel Pridgen. Other ancestors owned many more slaves. But I chose to research his enslaved people first for multiple reasons.

•  There was a large amount of documentation, much of which included some surnames of the enslaved.
• The timing of records allowed me to place these enslaved people in specific locations just prior to and during the Civil War. By searching the 1870’s census in these specific locations, I was able to locate many of them past Emancipation.

I knew that Wiley and his first wife Mary had divorced in 1850 and was able to find the documentation for their divorce settlement, including slaves. For a while, this was the furthest back I was able to track many of them. It must have been an unusual situation for that time period because my first clue was a newspaper article mentioning the divorce and division of property, in which Mary received half of the couple’s property, both real and personal. A jury divided that property, including a list of slaves which, once again, included some of the surnames.

Wiley Pridgen Sr. Final Divorce Settlement

Then, while doing a name search for Wiley in court records for Harrison County, Texas, I stumbled on a deed filed in that county (his county of residence at that time) from New Orleans, Louisiana; this deed documented the 1848 purchase of 15 slaves by Wiley from a known slave trader. Every one of these slaves had a surname, approximate age and dollar value. It also gave me the name of the seller, Jonathan Means Wilson, who ran large slave depots in New Orleans and shipped many thousands of slaves into the Upper South into the Lower South; in 1860 the New Orleans census showed that he had the 2nd highest net worth of the 34 self-described slave traders in that city. More importantly, he had a known business association with other trading agents based in Baltimore, Maryland; searching their names turned up hundreds of pages of ships manifests listing enslaved people being brought to the Deep South; on these documents, I have found many of the slaves owned by Wiley Sr.

Purchase of Slaves 07 Feb 1848

The first slavery-related documents I discovered were in Wiley Sr.’s 1854 probate file, which was lengthy. These documents tracked his slaves through the several years of probate, including who was “hired out”, to whom, and for what price. When the estate was finally settled, a document specified which slaves were to go to which heir.

Then, just days after Wiley’s estate had been settled, his ex-wife Mary also died – also with no will. Again, another lengthy probate provided much information about her slaves and how they were divided up among her sons.  Additionally, several of the sons were minors, requiring court appointed guardians. These guardians were the older brothers and the court required regular guardianship reports. The younger sons were, for the most part, away at school, so the guardians likely kept their wards’ enslaved people at their own plantations. One brother in particular was meticulous in his reporting and often included information about the slaves his wards had inherited.

Although the Pridgen family members were all enslavers who thought nothing of owning other human beings, it became evident when following these records that they did, at the very least, strive to keep the enslaved families intact. In general, when a son took ownership of a slave he took the whole family, or they were divided so that one elder brother who had guardianship of a younger sibling owned one member and the younger member owned the others, so that the family stayed together on the elder brother’s property. Once free, many of these formerly enslaved families intermarried and remained in the local area, which made linking them together in my research simpler.

I am still working on identifying those who were enslaved by the Pridgen family, and trying to link them to living descendants.  To date, I have the following family groups (I have included only children born during slavery, and marriages that occurred between those who were once Pridgen slaves):

•          Abram Bryan Family

                   Father Abram born about 1805, died 1874

Mother Vine born about 1813, death unknown (it is unknown whether this couple was married)

Son Jim born about 1834

Daughter Rachel born about 1851(believed twin)

 Daughter Leah, born about 1851 (believed twin)

Son Zack, born about 1853

 Son Peter, born about 1834

§  Abt. 1860 married Married Margaret Turner, born about 1830, died 1917

•         Jim Darby Family

Father Jim born about 1830

 Mother Ellen born about 1832

Daughter Virginia (Jennie) Lind Darby born about 1851

§  About 1871 married Joseph Pleasants

Son Henry Darby born about 1853

Daughter Selina Darby, born about 1855

Daughter Minerva Darby, born about 1857

Son Alfred Darby, born 1860

Daughter Elizabeth Darby born about 1862

•     George Coats Family

Father George Coats born about 1820

Mother Lou Ann Coats born about 1830

 Daughter Virginia Coats born about 1849

Daughter Seraptha Coats, born about 1852

Son John Marshall Coats, born about 1855

Son Dennis Wade Coats, born about 1859

§  About 1869 married Amanda Mack

Daughter Nancy Ann Coats, born about 1856

•         Louis Mack Family

Father Louis Mack, born about 1829

Mother Phyllis, born about 1832

Daughter Amanda Mack, born about 1855

§  About 1869 Married Dennis Wade Coats

Son Nicholas, born about 1851 (son of Phyllis, unsure if son of Louis)

Son Levi, born about 1856

•     Zack Pridgen Family

Father Zack Pridgen, born about 1809

Mother Eliza Pridgen, born about 1820

Daughter Sarah Pridgen, born about 1850

Daughter Caroline Pridgen, born about 1854

 Daughter Ellen/Eliza Pridgen, born about 1854

 

Much of this information has been verified; some is not verified but is strongly indicated. I will continue to research and document what I can.

 

 

 

 

Reparative Genealogy - My "Why"

 

Reparations4Slavery, an organization led by Lotte Lieb Dula and Briayna Cuffie, defines reparitive genealogy as follows:  “the act of researching our heritage, acknowledging our connection so slavery, and daylighting the history of those our ancestors enslaved” . Their organization advocates for acknowledgement by making slavery-era records available online to those who descend from slaves.

When I first started to climb my family tree back in the early 1990’s, I knew very little about my dad’s line except that my paternal grandfather’s family were Irish immigrants, and my maternal grandmother was from the Deep South. My grandparents had met in the days just prior to World War I, when my grandfather, an Indiana boy, was training at Camp Shelby near Biloxi, Mississippi prior to shipping out to France.  They married after the war and spent several years living near my grandmother’s family in Wiggins, Mississippi. My dad lived there as a very young boy.

 

I grew up hearing his vague stories of a fabled plantation in Mississippi that was lost during the Civil War, although my dad, born nearly 60 years after the end of that war, never knew which branch of the family supposedly owned it.  As a young boy, he was surrounded by Southern aunts and uncles who honored their fallen heroes, grieved over the loss of homes and property, raged over perceived injustices and lost fortunes and never much discussed the institution of slavery that had allowed their grandparents to survive, if not thrive, in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Their grandparents were good people who did bad things that didn’t seem bad to them, since everyone they knew, everywhere they went, were doing the same things. Then the war came and they lost; the struggle for survival was fierce and they were of no mind set to admit to any wrongdoing.

 

I had suspected for some time that several of my ancestors were enslavers. When you’re white and have deep roots in this country, particularly Southern roots, it’s an uncomfortable truth that your people likely owned slaves, especially if they were large landowners. But I had somehow convinced myself that a) only an occasional ancestor here and there actually owned slaves, and they didn’t own very many; b) these ancestors were good, kind people who treated their slaves well; and c) they really only owned slaves because it was the only way to run a big farm back then. It’s called rationalizing and I got pretty good at it.

 

But suspecting something is quite different from coming face to face with hard evidence; as my genealogy skills increased and my family tree grew, I began to understand the depth of my family’s involvement in slavery, and I could no longer deny the truths. I actually had to set aside much of my research for a year or so while I came to terms with my own history.

 

To date, I have found proof of 138 enslavers in my family; 11 of these are my direct ancestors, and I suspect that many more will be found. Several of them owned multiple large plantations and enslaved many people; one or two were slave traders or even “breeders”. This is just on my father’s side of the family, in the Southern states; but I know that my mother’s side, who came to this country in the early 1600’s and settled in New England, also had a few enslavers amongst the branches – including esteemed members of the Coffin family.

 

Besides the common and understandable emotions of guilt, anger and shame that come when you discover enslavers among your ancestors, there is an intense sadness for all that has been lost. As genealogists, we love the thrill of tracking down an elusive great-grandparent or fascinating uncle, and each tidbit of information is another family story to add to our own; but when the trail goes cold and nothing can be found it leaves a hole in our story where branches have been pruned out. My most frustrating “brick wall” is my great-grandmother Mary Bridget Burke, who apparently sprung to life under a cabbage leaf in Alton, Illinois in 1862 with no clear indication of who her parents were other than “Burke, born in Ireland”.

 

I cannot imagine the sadness felt by those who descend from enslaved ancestors when their stories vanish beyond the nearly impenetrable wall of the 1870 census, the first that enumerated Black families. Slave births, deaths and marriages were not officially recorded before the end of the Civil War, and most slaves were only enumerated on the 1850 and 1860 census with no personally identifying information other than age, gender and name of their owner - no names or places of birth, or spouses or children. How on earth do you discover your roots when all evidence of them has been so well hidden?

 

The answer is – you turn to the enslavers’ descendants. Me. You turn to me.  My families were the property owners, the tax payers, the will writers and administrators. Probate files are full of receipts, inventories, sales records. There are court records (in areas where court houses were not burned), family letters, Bibles, tax records. It is hard work to piece together this information, but descendants of enslavers have the access to records that may unlock information for you – names, ages, births, inheritances, etc. Many of us have the research skills, experience and knowledge needed to help, and an intense desire and obligation to do so.

 

There are many rights to be wronged, many aspects of reparations that need to be addressed. I can’t begin to address them all, but my skill set may help to rebuild the erased history of the enslaved ancestors my family were responsible for. I am working to find and document as many of these enslaved families as possible and share the found information wherever possible to get it into the hands of the descendants who deserve it. In future posts, I will highlight some options for making this information available.