snippets ~ chatham history BLOG

Pictured here is Amanda Jane Watson (Bynum) Headen, daughter of Sidney Bynum and Harriet Watson Bynum. Amanda was born into slavery in 1847, near Goldston (Chatham County). She was enslaved by the Watson family. Amanda, also known as Mandy Jane, married Zachariah (Zach) Headen on 8 October 1872. Zach had been enslaved by the Headen family.

A story about Amanda’s young life was related by her daughter Ida, who said her mother “had it better than most enslaved people” because she worked inside the house. However, when Mr. Watson’s daughter married, he gave Amanda to the couple as a wedding present. The couple lived in a big house across from the Sharpe Store on the Pittsboro-Goldston Road. Amanda spent most of her young life there. One day, the son-in-law became angry at Amanda and cut off all of her long black hair. When Mr. Watson heard about this event, he took Amanda back for good.

Zachariah grew corn and wheat from which the family made their own corn meal and flour. They ate year-round from their family’s garden and slaughtered all of their own meat. Zach was a well-known farmer who acquired land. Stories have been passed down through generations that he owned the land where Goldston’s present day JS Waters Elementary School and Mt. Herman AME Zion Church are located.

Zach and Amanda’s children included: Fisher, Hazy, Osker, George, Nina, Gertrude, Esther, Walter, and Ida. Zach gave all four of his daughters names of endearment--Nina was Miss, Gertrude was Babe, Esther (Easter) was Shug, and Ida was Honey. In a 1975 Chatham Record article about the life of 105-year-old George Headen, his sister Ida stated their parents taught their children “to do right, be truthful, don’t steal, and don’t meddle.”

Zachariah and Amanda made sure all of their children attended the one room school at Roberts Chapel Missionary Baptist Church where they learned to read and write and attended weekly services. The date of the photo included here of students at the school is unknown, but could include some of Zach and Mandy’s children.

The descendants of Zachariah and Amanda gather bi-annually during the third weekend in August. Five hundred descendants come to Chatham and Lee Counties from all across the United States. The Zachariah and Amanda Headen Mega Family Reunion has become the largest family gathering in the region.

Our thanks to Jace L. Cox for contributing this story about his great-great-grandmother's family.

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #FamilyHistory #WomensHistory #HerStory #BlackHistory #AfricanAmericanHistory #Headen #GoldstonNC #1800s #1900s

Martha Susan Johnson Burns was a well-known Pittsboro fixture--and an interesting character. For many years, Martha ran the Cross Hotel--which became known as the Burns Hotel. It was located across East Street from the Pittsboro Presbyterian Church. According to newspaper accounts, the hotel was a busy place, hosting visitors to Pittsboro, many hunting parties, weddings, and itinerant professionals and tradespeople such as dentists, veterinarians, and piano tuners. Martha's accommodations and cooking were praised widely. Many northerners who came to Chatham to hunt stayed in the hotel year after year.

Martha's great granddaughter, Edwina Eubanks, has shared Martha's story with us. You'll see that she preferred to travel by horseback and loved fishing--even at 83! You can read more about Martha's life on our website:

https://chathamhistory.org/.../Martha%20Susan%20Johnson...

Edwina doesn't have a lot of information about her great great grandmother Eliza Ann Brantley Burns, but has written a short piece about her as well. You can read it here:

https://chathamhistory.org/.../Elizabeth%20Ann%20Brantley...

And we've already shared Edwina's article about her grandmother, Annie Thompson Burns:

https://chathamhistory.org/.../Annie%20Thompson%20Burns...

We're grateful to Edwina for sharing the stories and photos of these Chatham women, whose stories tell us much about Chatham County's past.

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #WomensHistory #HerStory 

HALLIE BEAVERS ALLRED ~ CHATHAM COUNTY TEACHER AND ADVENTURER

Milli Hammer tells the story of her aunt, Hallie Beavers Allred, who was born in 1893 to an interesting and unusual Siler City family, and who went on to lead an unusually adventuresome life for a woman of her time.

Hallie was an accomplished pianist and athlete. She played field hockey during her four years of college. She was secretary of her sophomore class and treasurer of the Young Women’s Christian Association. Hallie was a teacher in Siler City and in the Panama Canal Zone. Later in life, she married Jesse Allred and had a rich family life.

Read Hallie's story here: https://chathamhistory.org/.../HallieBeaversAdventurer.pdf

You may remember Hallie's mother--Mattie Rogers Beavers--who was a rural mail carrier in Chatham. If you missed her story, there's a link at the bottom of Hallie's.

Thanks to Milli Hammer for sharing the stories of both of these remarkable Chatham County women!

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamHistory #ChathamNC #HallieBeavers #SilerCityNC #WomensHistory #HerStory #teacher

In 2021, the Horton School was renamed to clearly honor George Moses Horton, the first Black man to publish a book in the South. Learn more about Horton, who was enslaved on a Chatham plantation, on our website:

https://chathamhistory.org/resources/Documents/PDFs/ResearchArticles/TheWorksofGeorgeMosesHorton.pdf

and on this YouTube video on the George Moses Horton Middle School home page:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpCrv8xdZeo

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #ChathamHistory #ChathamNC #GeorgeMosesHorton #BlackHistory #AfricanAmericanHistory #EnslavedPeople #poet

What was it like to grow up "Colored" in Chatham County in the 1950s and 60s? Annie Taylor McCrimmon shares the story of her own family to provide one perspective on this question. Here's the link:

https://chathamhistory.org/resources/Documents/PDFs/ResearchArticles/GrowingUpColoredinChathamCountyAnnieMcCrimmon.pdf

Pictured here are Aubrey Bill and Beatrice Mae Goldston Taylor, Annie's parents.

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #ChathamHistory #ChathamNC #BlackHistory #AfricanAmericanHistory #Segregation #JimCrow #1950s #1960s

This photo of an unidentified family was contributed to the Chatham County Historical Association in Duane Hall's Historic Siler City collection. Commenters on earlier posts have identified them as follows:

Sitting: William and Sally Ann Headen.

Their children: Left to right: Fannie, John Walker, LouAnna and Willie (Newby).

If you have any additional information, please share!

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #SilerCityNC #BlackHistory #AfricanAmericanHistory #family

This photo of Bunn Daniel Thrailkill's store in Seaforth, Chatham County, is one of several photos in Connie McAdam's recent paper about the history of Seaforth on the CCHA website. Seaforth is one of many Chatham communities that have disappeared from our landscape. In the case of Seaforth, it was the construction of Jordan Lake that removed the community from our maps. Connie's paper reconstructs its history from newspaper articles and from interviews with folks whose families called Seaforth home for generations. You can read it here:

https://chathamhistory.org/.../Seaforth%20History...

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #Seaforth #JordanLake

What was life like for one of Chatham's wealthiest plantation families in the 1800s? The Alston name is often associated with wealth and success, but we have few details about the family or their lives. Papers discovered in the Alston-DeGraffenreidt House, which still stands between Pittsboro and Siler City, shed some light on this topic.

For forty-four years, what is now called the Alston-DeGraffenreidt House was the home of Adeline Williams Alston, widow of John Alston. John was one of the sons of Chatham Jack Alston. Adeline was widowed early and at the time of her husband's death had eight children and was pregnant with a ninth. She never remarried and managed the plantation with the help of her wealthy and well-connected family and the labor of hundreds of enslaved persons.

Adeline's story is clearly not that of the average Chatham farm widow, but it is the story of an important aspect of Chatham's history. CCHA volunteers Steven Brooks, Jim and Beverly Wiggins have researched and documented this history and provided a paper that is now available on the Chatham County Historical Association website.

In Adeline’s time, slave ownership was, to most, a measure of wealth and success. And even now, the wealth and success of families or individuals in the planter class is often remembered without acknowledgment of the inhuman practice that created and supported their privileged way of life. While narratives that focus only on the positive attributes of those who were much admired in their day are less disturbing, they are also incomplete and thus untrue. The authors have chosen to include the uncomfortable truths in this narrative.

One available document lists the family's enslaved workers by name, and is included in hopes that it might provide difficult-to-find information for descendants of those persons.

You can read the paper on our website:

https://chathamhistory.org/resources/Documents/PDFs/ResearchArticles/AAlston/AdelineAlstonChathamPlantationOwner.pdf

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #ChathamHistory #ChathamNC #AdelineAlston #Alston #plantation #AlstonDeGraffenreidtHouse #EnslavedPeople #1800s

This is the John Hooker Haughton house, which stood west of Pittsboro on what is now the Goldston Road.

John Hooker Haughton was from a prominent eastern NC family and had studied law in Edenton. He moved to Pittsboro in 1837, shortly after his marriage to Eliza Hill, the daughter of Thomas Hill (another eastern NC planter, whose Pittsboro house was called Hailbron).

Here's what the Architectural Heritage of Chatham County NC has to say about the Haughton house:

"Hoping, no doubt, to impress the family of his bride, Haughton selected a conservative style that both recalled the important residences of the late eighteenth century and satisfied the contemporary taste for columns. A five-bay, two-story structure with a hipped roof skirted by a modillion cornice, the Haughton House was fronted by a double tier portico with Tuscan columns. However impressive his effort, the builder was definitely grounded in the local tradition. The house was built on stone and clay piers and demonstrated a rather free interpretation of the Classical style. The builder clustered the three central bays under the portico and crowned the last feature with a hipped roof rather than the usual pediment. Family tradition credits the design of this stylish house to Martin Hanks."

According to John H. London's Bygones and Survivors: Old Homes and Structures in and around Pittsboro, the Haughton House was torn down in the 1960s. 

Photo from the Chatham County Historical Association Architectural Heritage collection.

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #ChathamHistory #ChathamNC #architecture #JohnHHaughton #PittsboroNC

This unique old grave marker in Bear Creek shows remarkable workmanship. The lettering is delicate and fancy, and it is likely that it was done by a local craftsperson with tools suited to leatherworking or some other craft. At that time, in our area, stone carving was not a full-time profession, but rather a sideline.

The stone is probably local, as it was unusual for stone to be brought in until much later, when rail transportation made it easier. Many--likely most--graves of the early 1800s in Chatham were marked by simple fieldstones with no inscription.

Sadly, we don't know whose initials were SDC. The name is not spelled out--though the month, October, is spelled in full.

If you are interested in helping us photograph Chatham's cemeteries and grave markers, contact us at CemeterySurvey@chathamhistory.org. There are many cemeteries not yet documented. We'd love to have your help!

More info about the cemetery in which SDC rests can be found here in CCHA's cemetery documentation: https://cemeterycensus.com/nc/chat/cem409.htm

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #ChathamHistory #ChathamNC #GraveMarkers #Cemetery #1800s