Tag: Louisiana

I began trying to find all of the slaves named on John Palfrey’s St Martin Parish will of 1843. What I found were slaves who made up 4 branches on my family tree. Named on the paternal side were the Morgans, the Riggs and the Gibsons. An eighteen-year-old Elsey was included in the listing of slaves. And while I am not a direct descendant of Elsey, she was the wife of my 5th great uncle Abram Guy. Abram was a slave on the Weeks-Meade-Weightman plantation. His beating while attempting to visit his wife and children was mentioned in William T. Palfrey’s plantation journal. I have not been able to place Elsey on any of my known branches. I also have failed to trace with any certainty three others named on the will: Polly, age thirty; Terence, a 2-year-old Mulatto child and Pamela, age 10.

I did find Polly and her children: Perry, Edward and Ben on the 1870 and 1880 census pages. But after scouring death, marriage and birth records, I have not been able to determine the names of Polly’s parents.

I did not look at all from Terence. He was added to the will on October 15, 1842 and was bequeathed to John Palfrey’s grandson George Palfrey of New Orleans. Terence was born July 7, 1842, to “my Negro woman named Louise.” But there was no Louise in the listing of slaves. Perhaps she’d died prior to October 15?

What I found most curious was that Palfrey had left specific instructions that regarding the slaves, “…in case it should be necessary to effect a partition by means of sale or by division into lots, that my slaves be sold or displosed of by families so as not to separate parents from their children or children from their parents without their consent…the young people have families of their own I consider them as alienated from the parents stock & forming a new brand.”

And while the whole stock concept is interesting and worthy of post on just those phrases, what attracted my attention was that Terence and Pamela were being separated from their parents. Pamela’s birth was documented in a letter from John Palfrey to his son William. Her mother Polly as still living and included on the will with 3 sons. Just as Terence had been specifically bequeathed, so was Pamela. Palfrey wrote, “I bequeath unto Mary Gorham Palfrey, daughter of my son William T Palfrey of the Parish of St Mary a mulatto female child named Pamela born of my Negro woman named Polly on the 25th July 1834, or in case of the death of said Pamela before my decease, then the said Mary Palfrey to receive from my estate in place of said slave the sum of four hundred dollars (400 dollars).”

Who was Pamela? And where was Pamela? I looked for Pamela’s name in William Palfrey’s slave birth journal but did not find it. I did not find a likely Pamela on the 1870 or 1880 census. So, I did what I do when stuck, I moved on to other research.

And then I remembered a lady whose DNA profile was included in Gedmatch.com. She and my mother only shared a small segment on their 23rd chromosome–meaning that there was a high probability that both descended from women who were related. I’d actually met the Dolores at Clayton Genealogy Center in Houston in 2016. As we talked, I mentioned that there was another profile that she managed in Gedmatch.com whose DNA matched my mother, but not on the 23rd chromosome. She told me that the profile belonged to a person who had roots in Louisiana. She then added that she also had Louisiana roots that she had not been able to trace.

So, I began a new search for Pamela! I began to piece together Dolores’s tree, beginning with the partial tree that she’d begun and going backward. A difficult task was made more difficult by the misspelling of last and first names both by census enumerators and by those transcribing the census records. I found a woman named Pamela at the base of Dolores’ tree. Forty-year-old Pamilla Oliver was recorded on the 1870 US Census, living in St. Landry Parish with children: Philomene, eighteen; Gilbert, fourteen; Coralie, 7; and Louis, 5.

I looked for Pamilla Oliver on the 1880 census but did not find her. I then looked for a fifty-year-old Pamilla with children named Philomene, Gilbert, Coralie or Louis. I then found Pamelia David with husband Louis and fourteen-year-old stepson Louis. Also included in their household were: Joseph, 12; Nancy, 9 and Angela, 5. I later found a June 17, 1871 St Landry Parish marriage record for Louis David and Pamela James. Pamela died July 31, 1923. Her death record indicated that she was born 1825 in Lafayette, Louisiana and that her last name was Hillman. Philemone Beraud was listed as the child of Pamela and Joseph Beraud.

Was this the Pamela named on John Palfrey’s will and separated from her mother Polly? I probably have many wild goose-chases and dead-ends ahead of me before I can say with any certainty if Pamela James Oliver Hillman was indeed Polly’s daughter. And still more research to try and determine how Polly fits and on what branch of my family tree!

Best,

P.S.

I looked at my blog a few days ago and saw that I had not written in a while. And that if I did not write something today, I would not have any posts for July. I decided to blog about Pamela. I wrote the blog, corrected a few typos and was about to log off when I decided to add the details about Pamela’s death record. As I typed, I noticed that she died July 31, 1923 and here I was writing about her 100 years later! I don’t know if there is any significance in this, but I take the coincidence as a sign that there is more to Pamela’s story and hope to find something previously hidden that provides answers to some of my questions and maybe spurs me on to ask other questions!