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- Is C. E. Whitehead related to Arthur Whitehead's descendants in NC?
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Is C. E. Whitehead related to Arthur Whitehead's descendants in NC?
Unfortunately, I just do not know. The genealogical information we have on
the Whitehead side of the family comes from a tree in a family bible that
belonged to my grandfather's aunt. The aunt's father's (my grandfather's
grandfather's) Bible disappeared, probably going to the son of the aunt's
stepmother who was my great grandfather's half brother. I've tried to use
census data to go further than our records go, but with no luck--my ancestors
came from Clarke County, Georgia (where Athens is), and Clarke County was not
part of the U.S. census before 1820! Even then, only the name of the head of
the household was listed and my great grandfather was just a child in 1820.
In 1823 he was enrolled in the school for poor children by his mother (or
perhaps step mother or guardian?). That's all we
know about his childhood.
But nevertheless, I found the idea of investigating the 18th century Whitehead
homestead intriquging. After reading about land use on plantations, I
realized that some of these ancient plantations were huge (people just
claimed hundreds of acres), and land use was complex--many things were going
on. Native Americans often did not feel they had ceded their hunting rights
and wanted the rights to still hunt there. African Americans living in slave
quarters on the plantations had their own community structures integrated to
some degree into the community structure of the land owners. Some African
Americans were able to secure plots of land for their use in their 'spare'
time, often choosing to grow tobacco--a cash crop--on those plots, though they
might have alsogrown extra corn to feed themselves. Various other persons,
including people trying to sell alcohol and other 'forbiddens' to slaves who
had earned some money, and runaway slaves visiting their children and
collecting food gifts, frequented the uncleared areas of the plantations. In
addition, because slaves were often barely fed, slaves sometimes looked to
opportunities to secure an extra bit of corn from the cultivated fields.
Land
land ownership was relatively high then, with half of all free White family
heads owning land; the number of households owning slaves was also around 50%
in the 18th century, but by the invention of the cotton gin, was dropping as
many plantations were 'failing' partly because the land was over-farmed, while
others were getting bigger expanding to take advantage of the new cash crop,
cotton. American Indians had somewhat different ideas about
land ownership and land use than Europeans had, and indeed native land was in
manycases held by the women. So I found it interesting and worth
exploring regardless of my connection to the Nathan Whitehead household.
(But yes, I did nevertheless hope to find as I studied the homestead through
various records at least a scrap of genealogical information that would be
relevantto my own family tree, but I have not turned up anything at this
point--of course it might help if I forked out $20.00 and purchased a copy of
'The Whitehead Family Records' from North Carolina's archives; but it might
not; I can't find anything though in the ancestry or roots web records, at
least not so far; and I can't find anything by emailing other Whiteheads).
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