Ancestor Talk

Margaret Ann (Jones) Ward, c. 1836-1906, lived in Martin County, North Carolina

• my maternal great-grandmother, mulatto
• wife of Abner Newsom Ward, mulatto
• birthed 10 girls, 2 boys, one set of twins
• landowner
• parents – research in progress

“How many times I got tell you to go outside and play? Stop asking me who she is. I told you already. Go on now!” Wiping her dishwater drenched hands in her apron, my mother turned from the sink with the look I knew meant business. So I quit questioning her sulking on my way out the front door of our Ralph Ave. apartment. Jumping rope with friends did not help me quit wondering about that white lady. She was seated wearing a white apron or skirt, a dark print blouse with buttoned cuffs and a white handkerchief draped around her neck. She solemnly stared. I saw myself in her, how she parted her hair, a weak eye and lips slightly drooping to one side nestled in an angular, strong face. I want to know her and her husband, these my muted, elusive ancestors from the distant past, unknown yet known.

Mom said the woman was her white (or sometimes “mixed breed”) maternal grandmother Margaret Ann Jones down south in North Carolina. And that her husband Abner Ward was an Indian. That was it. No details passed on to her from her older siblings, aunts, uncles. And from childhood, I don’t recall any relative or family friends whom we visited on road trips South from our Brooklyn home ever sharing captivating tales about the Wards and Joneses. We’d stay with Aunt ‘Liza who raised Mom after their mother passed and while Dad and Uncle Robert chased bats out of the house, I’d dutifully help snap green beans and scrape corn off the cobs, engulfed in the pungent aromas of Mom’s chewing tobacco and Aunt ‘Liza’s snuff. Perhaps the adults did discuss Abner, Annie and their 12 children but it had to have been in code for me not to remember them dropping clues to our heritage.

• Mom Effie (Worsley) Dunbar McKinney, 1919-1978, born in Tarboro, Edgecombe, North Carolina, raised in Portsmouth, Virginia and lived Brooklyn, New York
• daughter of Willie and Alice (Ward) Worsley; granddaughter of Abner and Margaret Ann (Jones) Ward
• wife of Lewis Dunbar, Sr. and Albert McKinney
• birthed 1 son, 3 daughters

Lacking family stories, I began pursuing our ancestors through a time machine: the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (it wasn’t called all that back then) in Harlem, New York City. Its microfiche and index card catalogs yielded one basic hint verifying Abner and Annie’s location in Oak City, Martin, North Carolina. Now I know that transcription was extracted from the 1860 U.S. Federal census, Martin County in which Abner’s household was enumerated as “mulatto” i.e. free people of color. But what did that actually mean?

Great-grandma Annie’s portrait jump-started my research. Another gem complemented it so I cautiously dropped both into my explorer’s backpack. That intriguing item was significant evidence of my ancestral women’s land ownership prior to 1900 in Martin county. To her credit, Mom had neatly folded two yellow, legal size sheets and filed them away in a dresser drawer. They were handwritten notes of deed records for her great-grandmother Sarah “Sallie” Jones to her daughter and son-in-law, Margaret Ann (Jones) and Abner Ward. Included were notes of Annie’s youngest daughter Alice (Ward) Worsley, who is my grandmother, transferring land to her brother Henry. Sallie and Ann were enumerated as “mulatto” in the 1830, 1840 and 1860 U.S. Federal censuses. Is this a clue to how Sallie was an antebellum owner of real estate valued at $300 in 1860?

• Grandma Alice (Ward) Worsley, 1882-1928, born in Martin County, lived in Edgecombe County, North Carolina
• daughter of Abner and Margaret Ann (Jones) Ward
• wife of William Worsley, mother of Effie, their youngest child
• birthed 1 son, 8 girls
• ex-landowner

Now you’ve met my great-grandmother Annie. But where’s her husband Abner? Why does he have two very different surnames in several records, Newsome and Ward? Was he freeborn or self-manumitted and being “mixed”, what tribe did he belong to? This obscure patriarch must be discovered.

In Carolinian Roots to Fruits, I share discoveries through standard genealogical research about my maternal free people of color on the eastern U.S. seaboard and in Ohio, pre-World War II. I share about my paternal enslaved ancestors in western North Carolina and South Carolina: the Withrows, McKinneys, Littlejohns. The search for their enslavers’ plantation records, wills, probates, bibles, etc. that could help refresh their memories continues. I’ve heard my ascended elders calling me to doggedly dig into our past, slowly but surely, from roots to fruits.

Thanks for dropping by while I dig for hidden treasures in my family’s buried pasts in the Carolinas and Virginia, their home places. I’ll show how spirit or faith inspired some relatives while the legacy of forced labor fortified others. We’ll take a botanical look at the vestiges of African and Native American traditional medicine that is still practiced today. I hope to encourage you to begin or to continue digging into your own history.

Before you go, what got you started in your searching?

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