Among the Dead I Have Known

This is a series of life sketches and is not part of the daily short stories I have been posting.

Lewis McSpadden was born into slavery in a year he could not recall, on a Tennessee farm he didn’t remember to a mother he would not know long. She was from Virginia; the documents say his father was too, but no one can say for sure—his real father might have been the master or one of his sons or the overseer for the 1870 census listed Lewis as mulatto.

Lewis went with the McSpaddens to Bibb County, Alabama, where they had a farm—more than a hundred acres of which are still in the hands of the white family today. The daughter of Master McSpadden taught Lewis to read and write. In doing so, she broke the law.

In secret, Lewis wrote his own freedom papers and headed north. He was caught several times and thrown in county jails. He was held while his papers were reviewed, then released. At last he made it to the Ohio River. All he had to do was cross. But slave catchers sicced two giant dogs on him who bounded up to him and got in his face. “Move one muscle and they will kill you,” one of the catchers said.

Lewis was returned to slavery in Bibb County. When freedom came, he already had a wife and a couple kids. He fathered ten, maybe more. He never left Bibb County, dying there around the turn of the century. He told his story to some little white kids in town who liked to hear the “old negro tell tales of his slavery days.” Fifty years later, as the Klan rode wild over Bibb County, one of those boys published Lewis’s account in the local Bibb County newspaper as a human interest piece.

Lewis’s master was my uncle, a couple generations removed. He may also have been Lewis’s father. Lewis’s descendants live all over the country now. A recent podcast is all about Bibb County and many of its residents—it’s called Shit Town.

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In the 1700s, Richard Hill was married to a woman named Sarah. In his will, he left her their home and an allowance to help her the rest of her life. However, if she ever remarried, she had to turn the house over to their daughter without anything in return. The Hills come from the same clan as my direct lineal Hill ancestors.

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Mary Ann Payne grew up in Warwick, England, and lived much of her early adult life in Leicester, England, and hence, in this house, we cheer for the Leicester football club. Mary Ann and her husband, James Mellor, joined the young Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, then heeded the direction to gather to Utah. Pregnant with twins, Mary Ann joined her husband and their young children in Liverpool where they were set to cross the Atlantic (and hence, we also cheer for the Liverpool Football Club). Mary Ann went into labor and gave birth to conjoined twins who died shortly after being born. The boat languished for a couple of days while Mary Ann recovered. Then she mustered enough strength to get on board. The tragedy took its toll physically and emotionally. She, James, and her children were part of the Martin Handcart company. Early in their journey, a worn-out Mary Ann decided she could go no further. She told the family and the company to leave her behind. She sat down on a rock with the belief that she would sit there till she died. Her daughter Louisa looped back for her, and on the trail back to her mother, she found a fresh-baked blackberry pie. She brought the pie to her mother; together they ate it, and Mary Ann joined her daughter to catch up with the company. With all the Martin Handcart survivors, she suffered great privations but made it to the Salt Lake valley. Brigham Young called them to settle Fayette, Utah. Shortly after doing so, Young called James on a mission . . . to the United Kingdom, so James left Mary Ann and their eight children behind and retraced his steps to his former home. Mary Ann ran a struggling farm for two-and-a-half years. One morning, as she prepared a pan of milk to churn for butter, she heard a knock at the door. She opened the door to find her fifty-six-year-old husband standing there with a twenty-year-old woman. James introduced her as Mary Knowles (commonly called Polly) from England, his second wife. Mary Ann silently turned around, grabbed the warm pan of milk, dumped it over the newlyweds’ heads, and slammed the door. She did not permit James to live with her for the next decade, so James settled with Polly on another farm about five miles away, though he visited his children by Mary Ann with some frequency. When the Manifesto annulled his marriage to Polly, James received permission from Mary Ann to move back in with her where he spent the remainder of his days (Polly remarried a man in Salt Lake). Mary Ann preceded her husband in death by eight years. She is my third great grandmother.

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Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, is the final resting place of presidents, Jefferson Davis, tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers, and numerous dignitaries. A plot near the middle of the cemetery seems average by comparison. It has a prominent stone for Reverend William H. Christian; surrounding the stone are smaller stones to mark his burial place and those of his second wife and his two children by her, Thomas and Mary. In the same plot is a large bush. If you pull back the bush, you can find two other small headstones, one for William Frith and the other for India Frith, most likely his daughter. After the war, William and India lived with the Christians for a while, and William most likely donated their place of rest. Next to nothing is known about them other than this one census record, and you cannot find them in the cemetery unless you look for them specifically.

Reverend Christian had a son by his first wife that they named William Edmund Christian. William Edmund Christian married Julia Laura Jackson, the only surviving child of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.

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Thomas Jonathan Jackson is tall with gangly limbs and an awkward gait. He has dark hair and blue eyes that blaze in the heat of battle or when his family is threatened. He knows his own mind and keeps his own counsel. He can convey what he is thinking simply by a look—his displeasure is quickly understood, and he need not explain himself because his piercing gaze reveals to you where you have erred. When you have corrected your mistake, he is gentle and his manner light. He laughs frequently in the presence of family and close friends and loves a good joke. His greatest victory was at Chancellorsville where he was also fatally wounded. He is my sixth cousin.

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There is no record of her birth, but Sadie Tylie Raney was almost certainly born in the Waterville, Maine, Almshouse. Her mother, Anathalie, had been betrothed to a man, but he broke their engagement when she turned up pregnant. Sadie did not live with her mother in the almshouse—she lived with her grandmother and grew up with her cousin Martin. When she was just seven years old, Martin joined the 16th Maine Regiment. He never returned home; he died from wounds suffered at the Battle of Globe Tavern and is buried in Petersburg, Virginia, under a headstone that has his last name misspelled.

Sadie eloped with James Frank Pushaw and moved to Lowell, Massachusetts. She had three sons by James: James Hiram, Frank Martin, and William Cleveland. William died in infancy. James Frank died soon after William’s birth, leading Sadie to marry William Clark, a man the family would know little about except that he was abusive and that Sadie left him. She then married a black man named Ezekiel Wallace and had two children—only Edward would live to adulthood and would later pass himself off as white. In 1913, Sadie married a Swedish man named Carl John Anderson; we don’t know how long he lived, but Sadie eventually passed away while living with her son Edward in Arlington, Massachusetts.

Sadie is French Canadian; she listed her father’s name as John Raney on a marriage document. DNA has now confirmed that he was Jean Reny who went on to marry someone else and have an entirely different family, while Anathalie spent her life in the almshouse. Sadie has white hair, tired eyes, a furrowed brow, a prominent left cheekbone, and a moderately sunken mouth. She is silently persistent with a ferocious internal fire that burns for her family, particularly those who stood by her in her life. She adores the uncle who died for the Union—she looked up to him and admired his service. She wanted her mother and father found and accounted for in family genealogy—they had not been known to the family until Sadie got involved with me and my wife’s cousins. Above all, Sadie is a survivor with an indomitable will, unafraid of the social mores of her day. She is my wife’s second great grandmother.

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Ruth McKinney is of Scotch descent. She married James Hill who served in the 2nd Maryland Regiment during the Revolution. James saw action in New York, at Trenton, Princeton, and Brandywine, among others.

Ruth gave birth to and raised twelve children. She and James lived in Taneytown, Maryland, and after the War, George Washington frequently passed through their land, often stopping to drink water from a deep well on the Hill property. The Hill children knew Washington and frequently looked out for him. One hot dusty evening, Ruth insisted that Washington and his men stop for dinner—she cooked the party “a very fine meal” and was “always proud of having served such a great man, especially after he later became president of the nation.”

James’s genealogy entry on FamilySearch has more than twenty entries under memories. This story of feeding George Washington is the only memory referencing Ruth directly as her own agent and it is found in the memories of one of her children. Her genealogy extends only two more generations back. She is my fifth great grandmother.

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Jim was born enslaved on the Mark Hall plantation in Meriwether County, Georgia. He became the personal servant and property of Crowder family heir James who brought Jim with him when he entered service in the 1st Georgia for the Confederate States Army. James returned from the war after only about a year, probably taking advantage of privileges afforded to wealthy plantation owners who were permitted to skip service to keep their enslaved people on the land working.

Jim was always at hand wherever James went; when emancipation came, Jim and his family stayed with the family on the plantation. When James died suddenly at the age of forty-two, he was buried in a family plot. Jim remained with the Crowders, raising many children, until his own passing about two decades later. Upon his passing, he was laid to rest in an unmarked plot near James. The Crowder family still owns land in Meriwether County; on their land is the family cemetery and a cemetery for enslaved people and black people who stayed on after emancipation. The cemetery is on private land, and the black cemetery is largely unmarked. The family historian advises against seeking out the black cemetery—many Crowders past and present have allegedly had ties to the Klan. James Crowder married my sixth cousin.

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When he was about six years old, Scipio’s master, Edward Rhodes Carswell, died and deeded him to James Pitts, his son-in-law, of Jefferson County, Georgia. Edward also deeded a number of his enslaved people to his son, Reuben Walker Carswell. The year was 1862, and the War raged around them. Reuben eventually became a brigadier general in Confederate service; he saw severe action around Atlanta while trying to resist Sherman’s men. When the War ended, Reuben resumed his law practice and was eventually appointed county judge. Later, a descendant of his would be appointed, but not confirmed, to the Supreme Court by Richard Nixon.

Many of the enslaved on the Carswell plantations took the Carswell surname. Scipio did not, nor did he take the Pitts name. In fact, he appears to have given himself the surname Washington; or perhaps his father took that name, for on Scipio’s death certificate, his surviving family listed his father as Wash Washington. More likely, his father was an older enslaved man owned by Edward Carswell also named Scipio.

Scipio went on to father eleven children, though his origin story is only beginning to be understood. Family members are still hesitant to discuss what they know. Scipio is a man of secrets—his original identity was forged by a white man, and his original story was outside his control. He did not appreciate that. He took his own surname. Is it a coincidence that he took the name of the man who cut the ancestral cord between the new world and the old? He went by different first names, including Seifus, Scipio, and Cip. He fathered eleven children, and his descendants today number in the thousands.

Reuben Carswell is my wife’s sixth cousin. Scipio Washington is my friend’s fourth great grandfather.

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Joel Leander Chapin joined the 16th Connecticut the summer before the Battle of Antietam. When Robert E. Lee invaded Maryland, his unit was rushed out of training and into the Army of the Potomac. Some of them had not even been issued rifles yet. At Antietam, knowing their green state, General Burnside placed them on the far left flank, anticipating that they would see little to no action. Instead, they were ambushed by Stonewall Jackson’s men and suffered thirty percent casualties; Leander (as he preferred to be called) was slightly wounded. The Unfortunate 16th was at Fredericksburg but saw little action. In 1864, they were manning a fort in North Carolina with 1500 other men when General George Pickett and ten thousand men surrounded them. The fort surrendered, and Leander was marched to the infamous Andersonville Prison in Georgia. Along the way, he contracted typhoid or yellow fever. A couple of months after his arrival, Leander succumbed to his illness and was buried in the Andersonville Cemetery along with thirteen thousand others who died in similarly wretched conditions.

Though he had a woman ten years his senior writing to him as his “special friend,” Leander never married nor had children. He is my wife’s sixth cousin.