June 2023 – My Maryland-Louisiana Roots

Clara is not a DNA ancestor but she and husband Amos were purchased as a couple by John Palfrey on March 9, 1811 from Relf and Chew in New Orleans along with my Gibson, Morgan and Riggs family. She was twenty and he twenty-five. I don’t know if Clara and Amos left children behind before they were sold to Palfrey. Clara repeatedly caught my attention while reading letters from John Palfrey to his sons. I sensed that perhaps Palfrey did not quite know what to make of Clara.

She was first mentioned Palfrey’s Nov. 4, 1812 letter to son Henry. He wrote that a slave named Mimy “had a child three weeks since” and that “Clara will probably have another in about two months.” The implication is that Clara had previously given birth. She had only been purchased in March of 1811, so she was most likely pregnant when purchased. The likelihood of this touched me and caused me to reflect on Clara’s life and hardships she probably encountered.

I found the next mention of Clara in John’s May 16, 1832 letter to his son William. After writing about his isolation on the plantation and the weather, Palfrey recounted the birth of a slave child, Nannette, born to Harriet. He wrote, “Nannette has been too sick & Clara has been nearly in constant attendance upon it until yesterday. She now sees to its food & keeping it clean & works in the garden so as to be at hand.” Palfrey did not write if Nannette or Clara were related. In any case, Clara had been in constant attendance and had made sure she would be close by to help.

Clara was again mentioned in John’s September 7, 1833 letter. He wrote about recent strong winds that had decimated his cane crop and about the number of currently sick slaves, “I have now no less than nine on the sick list but they appear to be better, better this morning. Clara is most severely attacked and is with the exception of Robert the worst patient to gratify & to encourage I have had this year. She is evidently getting better but cannot be persuaded to think so.” He wrote that she could not be pursuaded, implying that he’d tried a number of times to convince and /or to gratify her but was unsuccessful. Clara seemingly relied on her own thoughts.

Clare was next mentioned in Palfrey’s Sep 11, 1833 letter. He wrote, “The number of sick is diminished & those still on the list are getting better, Clara, Henry & Elsey are still confined. The former has the hysterics.” Hysterics is defined as a wildly emotional and exaggerated reaction. Palfrey wrote in an earlier letter dated Aug 11, “? Isle has lost two more of his family, whether black or white, young or old, I could not learn, the report comes from Rosine through Robert… The negroes here are constantly coming with various complaints vis: fever, sore throat, cough, headache, earache, pains in back & limbs of which none are continuance except the headache & sore throat, the children are also very much troubled with worms. There are none at present seriously sick on the plan but there are several invalids.” Perhaps Clara’s fears were justified or perhaps her concern was appropriate in light of the environment in which she lived.

Palfrey wrote again of Clara on November 30, 1833. Clara intervened in the beating of a slaved named Anderson. Palfrey wrote, “On Monday evening just as I was about going to bed, Clara came to the house & told me there was terrible work going on in the sugar house & wished me to go over.” He went to the sugar house and found things as Clara described. He also wrote that “Mr. Vinson left here the same day before dinner, no longer in my employ.”

Clara, Amos and their 9 children were listed on Palfrey’s 1843 probate. The oldest was born in 1814 and the youngest in 1834. Clara, Amos and their youngest son, Amos Jr. were emancipated by John’s son John Gorham Palfrey who lived in Boston. Clara was reported to have expressed her gratitude to him and said, “that it would be hard to…ever forget that we owe you so much…for the care and education and support of our little boy…We are living here and managing to make ourselves comfortable, and trying to be respectable in the eyes of the old friends of our Master…”

Clara and Amos were recorded on the 1850 St Martin Parish census, living in St Martinville. Their ages were listed as fifty and sixty respectively. Both were most likely older as Clara was reported to have been twenty and Amos twenty five at the time of their purchase in 1811. Clara’s death was recorded as January 6. 1853 in William T Palfrey’s plantation diary. If there is a record of Amos’ death, I have not yet found it.

That is a question that I began asking when the results from my mother’s Ancestry DNA results became available. Two of her top matches had the same family tree attached–a tree that included Rev. Anderson Stallworth and his wife Flora Matilda. A descendant of Flora had included the last name of ‘Tucker’ on their tree for Flora. Her birthplace was recorded as Maryland on some census schedules. She was listed on the 1870-1910 census schedules as a part of the Stallworth family of Monroe County, Alabama. Adding to the mystery was that my mother’s other top 4 matches belonged to: 1 person who lived in the same Louisiana parish as my mother’s family, two others who lived in Calvert County, MD and 1 whose family tree was in Drew County, Arkansas.

Only my tree and the Stallworth tree included anyone from Maryland.

Perplexing right?

Yet, I was certain that that Maryland was the connecting piece of all 6 profiles. As I wrote earlier, I figured out 2 of my mother’s top matches were along the lines of my 3rd great grandmother Charlotte Phillips‘ tree through her sister Eliza Phillips Torney. About the same time, I figured out our connection to the Iberia Parish, Louisiana, Provost family profile. The Provost connection was through my 3rd great grandmother’s daughter Maria Smith who I never found after the 1870 census. Mariah’s son Addison Williams was Provost connection. Figuring out those connections took me about 2 years to piece together.

After a great deal of sleuthing around: ordering death certificates, looking up Maryland probates, searching among New York state census schedules and reading Newspaper.com stories, I was able to tie the third tree of Destinysmom12 to that same Calvert County, MD family. That Wright family connection was also through Eliza Phillips Torney, via her son Moses Torney.

So having found out that 4 of the connections were through Maryland, I stayed focused on connecting the Monroe County, Alabama, Stallworths to my known Maryland ancestors.

At my niece, Latrice’s urging, I purchased a 23AndMe DNA test kit. Latrice was on the trail of another vexingly, but close match in Louisiana. But I didn’t immediately ask my mother to take the test. Why not? Who knows! Maybe because 2022 was such a test for me.

Well, in 2023, I had my mother give me her DNA and I mailed it off on the same day. I waited anxiously for the results. As a matter of fact, I was talking to Latrice on the phone when my computer dinged to alert me that I had an e-mail message. And just like in books or the movies, the e-mail alerted me that my 23AndMe DNA analysis had been completed.

Excited was not a strong enough word to describe what I felt. Among my mother’s 23AndMe DNA matches were some people whose DNA was in Ancestry and whom I’d encouraged over the years to place their Ancestry DNA file in various other databases, FamilyTreeDNA and Gedmatch.com, so that we could see what chromosomes, and on which segments we matched. Anyway, I poked around in the new system to figure out how to best use it.

On that very first day I found 2 very interesting DNA profiles that matched my mother’s and both belonged to men!!!!!! One of the men was a descendant of Anderson Stallworth and Flora Matilda ‘Tucker’. When I compared my mother and the male Stallworth descendant, they shared DNA on 2 chromosomes. But here is where I began to scream and dance all around!

That Josephine Stallworth descendant, matched my mother on chromosome 23, beginning at about 113,000 and ending at about 121,000,000 about 11 centimorgans. Eleven of almost anything seems very insignificant, right. But the fact that a male matched my mother on chromosome 23 meant that he had inherited that DNA from his maternal line. I didn’t need to look at or try and figure out his paternal line at all. His last name was Longmire the same as one of my favorite NetFlix series. I quickly figured out his family tree. And there was Josephine Stallworth, daughter of Flora Matilda! I was ‘Happy Dancing’ all over the place now!!

And because good things often come in bunches, this Stallworth descendant also match my mom on another chromosome. He matched her along a segment that began around 21,000,000 and ended at about 41,000,000. My mother had 4 very close family members who also matched on that same chromosome with starting and ending segments also identical to Flora’s male Stallworth descendant. Men inherit maternal DNA from their mother but can not pass it on to any child. This means that most likely Flora Matilda or a female ancestor of hers was closely related to my 3rd great grandmother Charlotte Phillips or one of Charlotte’s female ancestors.

I feel that I am writing with just a little hyperbole. But the fact that a male Stallworth descendant’s 23rd chromosome segment match is also almost identical to the segment of 2 of my mother’s female DNA profile matches who lived in Drew County, Arkansas is still amazing to me. At the top of those Drew County, Arkansas trees is a woman named Chaney Fleming and her daughter Rosetta Fleming Goodwin. Both were born in Maryland.

I don’t know if the connection is through 1 or more females who were enslaved in the United States or if the connection goes back to Africa. My mother’s Stallworth matches are here 4th-6th cousins as are her Drew County, Arkansas matches. Interestingly, the Iberia Parish Provost family that matches my mother through her 3rd great grandmother Charlotte’s daughter Mariah, is also a 4th-6th cousin. So, maybe the woman or women that connect our Calvert County, MD, Monroe County, AL and Drew County, Ark families is someone who we can actually find and name.

Since 2015, the number of profile matches with the Stallworth surname and from Drew County, Arkansas has increased tremendously. More family members contributing helps to increase the success of connecting families.

So, I encourage you Stallworth families out there to take a DNA test and be sure to add the name Stallworth or Monroe County, Ala or something to your DNA result so that anyone looking doesn’t have to spend time researching what the connection might be.

As usual, there is always another tree that I am about to start to climb. And that tree has also got a Maryland connection. Henry Dorsey is the connecting person for this new family tree. He was born about 1830 in Washington, DC and shipped to California in the 1840s. Both of his parents’ birthplace was Maryland. His family is the Dorsey, Longrus, Andrews and Eiger families of Yolo County, CA. Henry may have been shipped to California by a ‘Forty Niner’ hoping to strike it rich. Who knows, or better yet, we’ll see!

So, I am still searching among the Stallworth branches for clues to solving our seemingly Maryland connected families and looking forward to starting up the tree. Yolo County, California, here I come!

Best,

Month: June 2023

Clara Marshall

Stallworth’s on My Family Tree?