Tag: Cureton

THE LAST ENSLAVERS OF JOSEPH SHerman AND MARIE YORK.

My great-great-great-grandparents, Joe Sherman (1821–1880) and Marie Sherman (1830–1915) became a couple while they were both enslaved in the 1850s in the Grove District of Greenville, South Carolina.

According to family oral tradition, Joe Sherman may have originally been from Charleston, South Carolina where he was purchased as an enslaved man. Charleston was America’s oldest and largest slave-trading port, and most African Americans are likely to have an ancestor who arrived through this gateway. After the 1807 U.S. ban on international slave trading, when the US Constitution was finally ratified by 1808, Charleston became a hub for the domestic slave trade, which forcibly relocated generations of Africans who already had lives and communities liminaly as enslaved labor on plantations in the North to the Deep South. If a planter wanted to get enslaved labor, the only place they could get it was within the boundaries of the United States. The international ban basically became a legal sanction, federally protected trade that supercharged the business of slavery in the US.

Gadsden’s Wharf, the largest slave port in Charleston, saw an estimated 100,000 West Africans land there between 1783 and 1807. More than 40% of all Africans in America first set foot on American soil at Gadsden’s Wharf, survivors of the horrific Middle Passage, one of the worst traumas in human history. After 1808, more than 40,000 more Africans were smuggled in. Today, Gadsden’s Wharf is the site of the International African American Museum dedicated to black history and genealogy – a place where all Americans can explore their African roots.

I want to believe the lore, but it’s probably most likely that Joe’s parents first stepped foot on the continent at Charleston, not him. Or that Joe’s parents were sold south through Charleston but were originally from the North. However, I have come to definitively learn so much more about Joe’s early life from about 1848 through emancipation by researching my genealogy, weaving together archival study and genetic research.

Census records are consistent that Joe’s wife, Marie, was born in Virginia, but how she arrived in South Carolina has been as equal a mystery as Joe’s life. I assumed she was sold South, perhaps taken from her family, since I could not find her parents or siblings in the records after 1870. For over twenty years, I have been researching my family history. Before me, my late cousin, Pat Mays-Thompson, spent fifty years studying the Mays and Sherman families and their origins on the record around Greenville, South Carolina. Despite all these many years of research, very little has been known or even speculated about Joseph and Marie’s origins—until now.

Just a few years after the Civil War ended on the 1870 census, Joe, 49, and Marie Sherman, 40, farmed in the Gantt District, just southeast of Greenville, while leading a large household that included six children ranging in ages from 18 to 3; Nancy, Jackson, Tanday, Felix, Henry, Charles, and John. Charles and John were the first free-born children of the family after emancipation. We know Joe and Marie met while they were enslaved because five of their seven children were born before the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 when over 3 million enslaved people were freed by the legal decree during the Civil War.

Joe and Marie’s eldest daughter Harriet, 22, is found living next door to the Shermans with her husband Jim Mays, 24, and their infant son, Benjamin Franklin “Frank” Mays. Jim and Harriet are my great-great grandparents, through their fifth son, Van Matthew Mays (1883 – 1961) who migrated to Cleveland, Ohio in the early 1900s with his wife Elvira Higdon (1890 – 1848).

Greenville in 1870 at this time was a high country community of farms, cotton mills, and textile factories, with a small downtown, but it was far from sleepy. Due to the cotton boom, and Greenville’s many creeks and rivers, the town supported one of the largest textile manufacturing areas in the country. Greenville was built on the insatiability for cotton and woolen clothing being manufactured in England and Europe. In 1860, South Carolina had an enslaved population of 400,000. The Gannt district was named for Judge Richard Grant of Maryland who settled in the area in the early 1800s. The White Horse Pike was already a major highway from North to South. Various mills and a few large factories situated on the Reedy and Enoree rivers in Greenville transformed cotton and other materials into wealth for the early planters.

Joe Sherman was born about 1821 and Marie about 1830. Marie’s 1870 and 1880 census records show she was born in Virginia, and as we’ll see, she was part of a sprawling interconnected family – by blood – of black enslaved people and white early American enslaver families that migrated from Virginia to South Carolina after the American Revolution. The heads of these slaveholding families took advantage of land patents awarded for their service as soldiers during the American Revolution, as well as large swaths of land in South Carolina purchased when they were still British subjects. They also came in search of fertile new lands to cultivate because Virginia tobacco farming had depleted the arable land. I’ve previously discussed how the families that enslaved my earliest Mays ancestors, the Moon, Few, Mays, and Gilreath families, were part of an explosion of growth in the population of Greenville that built vast intergenerational wealth for antebellum white farmers while imparting generational trauma and depredation on their enslaved. Among those Virginian families were the Curetons – who also had strong ties to the Moon family. However, they arrived in the Greenville district of Grove instead of O’Neal.

HENRY SHERMAN SELLS “JO”.

In January 1846, for the sum of $450, a white Greenville planter living in Grove District named Henry Sherman sold two enslaved men, “Jo” and “Peter” to a neighbor named William Henry Cureton (1812 – 1893). Sherman warranted them to be “sound and healthy.” This remarkable information was uncovered using the FamilySearch full-text experimental search to explore Sherman records that are currently unindexed. I came across the bill of sale by researching white farmers in the region with the same surname as my ancestors.

I set out to explore if this Jo was my ancestor, but I had never heard the name Cureton before. I imagined for many years that my ancestor may have adopted the Sherman surname of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman whose infamous army march devastated Confederate forces, and freed countless slaves across the South. I should not have been surprised to find Joe’s surname was that of a former enslaver. 

“I, Henry Sherman, have granted, bargained, and sold and by these presents do grant, bargain, and sell unto Wm H. Cureton, one negro man named Jo and one other negro man named Peter for and in consideration of the sum of Four Hundred and fifty Dollars with interest thereon from 1st of December last, which payment to be well and truly made and done by the said William H. Cureton.”

In 1840, according to US Census records, the farmer Henry Sherman family included two boys and a girl under 9, and a wife between the ages of 20 and 29. With just 3 enslaved, Henry would have been a small village farmer and not part of the wealthy planter class. He was between 30 and 39 years old when he enslaved a black male between 10 and 23, and two black females between 10 and 23 years old. Since Henry made the sale of two males in 1846, he likely acquired at least one of them, Jo or Peter, between 1840 and 1846.

Henry Sherman
To
William H. Cureton
Mortgage of Negroes

South Carolina
Greenville District

Know all men by these presents, that I, Henry Sherman, have granted, bargained, and sold and by these presents do grant, bargain, and sell unto Wm H. Cureton, one negro man named Jo and one other negro man named Peter for and in consideration of the sum of Four Hundred and fifty Dollars with interest thereon from 1st of December last, which payment to be well and truly made and done by the said William H. Cureton. I do hereby bind myself, my heirs, executors, and administrators & assigns to warrant and forever defend the rights and title of the said negro Jo and negro Peter to the said William H. Cureton, his heirs and assigns forever. And I do warrant the above-named negroes to be sound and healthy negroes to have and to hold said negroes until the conditions underwritten shall be complied with. This the 9th day of January 1846.

The condition of the above obligation is such that the above bound Henry Sherman has become indebted to Edmund Waddle on one note for four hundred and fifty Dollars with interest thereon from about the 1st of December last past, and the said William H. Cureton did assign said note with the said Henry Sherman as security and in order that the said William H. Cureton from his liability has bound himself for assigning said note with said Sherman that if the said Henry Sherman shall give the said Cureton the above obligation, and if the said Henry Sherman does pay and fulfill and discharge the above note in full, then this obligation to be void and of no effect otherwise to remain in full force, etc. And the said negroes Jo and Peter shall be applied to the payment of the above debt, and if there should be any surplus after paying said debt and the cost that may arise thereon, it shall be returned to the said Henry Sherman. Witness my hand and seal the day and date above written.

Henry Sherman [seal]

Signed, Sealed and Delivered
In the presence of us:
Pascal D. Cureton
Wm. H. Cureton

South Carolina
Greenville District

Personally came before me Wm. H. Cureton the above named, and made oath that he did see Henry Sherman sign, seal, and deliver the within instrument of writing for the uses and purposes therein mentioned and that he, Pascal Cureton, and H. Cureton, in the presence of each other, witnessed the due execution of the same.

Sworn to and subscribed
before me this 17th day of January 1846
Robt. McKay, C.C.C.
& Magt. Ex off.Recorded 17th January 1846,
By Robt. McKay, C.C.C.

With this being the only evidence of a man named Jo with the potential surname Sherman, I knew I would have to thoroughly research Henry Sherman as well as William H. Cureton independently. My Joe Sherman had a wife named Marie, but until this bill of sale, I had found no other documentation about either in Greenville records.

I speculated, if this Jo was my Joe Sherman, perhaps my great-great-great grandparents met on Cureton’s plantation or in the mill? I already knew their daughter Harriet was born before the emancipation of the enslaved and well before the Civil War. Frustratingly, I also knew William H. Cureton died after the war, so his will and probate record would not contain the names of his formerly enslaved unless he had a special relationship with them that extended beyond the freeing of the slaves. However, William H. Cureton appears to have also died intestate. I often explore the possibility of genetic relationships between myself and enslaver families and research them as thoroughly as I would my own. As is common in my reports, I often find connections. So, could genetic genealogy again shed light on the ancestral path when paper trails fade? Before delving into my own genetic story, to locate Joe and Marie, I would to first better understand who William H. Cureton and Henry Sherman were. Fortunately, there was plenty of historical documentation on the men to be found.

THE YORKS –WILLAM CURETON’S ENSLAVED FAMILY.

According to Historical Southern Families, Vol. XIX, the Cureton clan was originally from Wales and settled in Pennsyvlania and Virginia in the early to mid-1700. The Curetons were associated with plantations in several Virginia counties, including Prince George County, and Lunenberg County south of Petersburg around the Meherrin, Blackwater, and James rivers. Various Cureton family members immigrated south to North Carolina, Laurens County, Lancaster County, and Greenville County in South Carolina, as well as Alabama, Georgia, and west to Arkansas over several generations. Other early families marrying into the Curetons include the Heath and Baugh families.

Another source of Cureton family history includes a Cureton Family Bible in the collection of Bible Records at the Houston Genealogical Forum. The bible was passed down through the generations and stated that Cureton and his wife, Frances, had six children between 1717 and 1735. A note indicates that the Cureton Baugh branch of the family also lived in Prince George and Bertie Counties, Virginia. 

There were three generations of John Cureton. John Cureton Jr. was born in 1757 to John Cureton Sr. (1731-1803) and Winifred Heath (1733-1783) in Lunenburg, Virginia with land on both sides of the Meherrin river, and married Sarah Moon, daughter of Gideon Moon, in 1778. Gideon Moon, the namesake of the Moon family, traces his lineage back to British colonial Virginia. The Moon and Cureton families were close, as some of their children shared the same first names. Gideon Moon gave his son-in-law 70 acres of land in Virginia. John Cureton Jr. served as the executor of Gideon Moon’s estate, as recorded in Moon’s will exhibited in 1790.

Gideon Moon also held lands across several districts in Greenville, and evidence shows he gifted some of it to his son William. Gideon’s son John Moon also settled in Greenville and died in 1839 – his daughter married David T. Cureton, the son of John Cureton Sr. Sarah Moon (1750–1797) one of Gideon’s daughters, married John Cureton Jr. In 1790, John Jr. bought and sold land in Virginia twice, eventually selling it to another of Gideon Moon’s sons. 

John M. Cureton Sr. also purchased over 1,000 acres of land in 1805 in Greenville on the Rocky River (now Reedy River), later selling much of it to his son. Sarah Cureton (née Moon) died around 1797. By that year, John Cureton Jr. had sold his Virginia property and fully migrated south with his two sons, John “Moon” Cureton III (1779–1845) and Abner H. Cureton (1785–1850) to South Carolina on the Enoree River. In about 1820 John Cureton Jr. built a home about 5 miles south of Simpsonville. Showing how close the families were, John Moon also named one of his sons “Abner Heath” Moon.

The Greenville Century Book states, “John M. Cureton was the first of that name to settle in the county (Greenville)…He was also from Virginia and located on the Enoree river in the Clear Spring neighborhood soon after the Revolutionary war.”

Abner Heath Cureton and his brother John Cureton III later moved to Greenville to the Sandy Springs area and lived on adjoining plantations in the district of Grove. The “Cureton Mill” on the Reedy River appears on the 1850 mills map of Greenville County. John married Mary Adkins Dacus and Abner married Matilda Lester first and then Matilda Nelson second and had 13 children in all. John became a true planter – he enslaved 29 people in 1830 and by 1840 he held 59 people in bondage. Fitting with the growth of factories and textile mills spinning cotton in the area, Cureton was also enslaving on an industrial level to achieve industrial strength returns. By contrast, Abner held no slaves himself between 1820 and 1830 as he was establishing himself, and then gained just 3 people enslaved by 1840. He likely worked with his brother in an overseer capacity. Perhaps because they held adjoining plantations, Abner and John Cureton probably shared the spoils of the enslaved labor. 

Abner and Matilda’s second son was named William Henry Cureton. He was born in Greenville and grew up on the Cureton plantations with his siblings, John, Thomas, George, Sallie, and David. In 1846, William H. Cureton purchased “Jo” and “Peter” but he wasn’t particularly wealthy like his uncle. Though he lived in Fork Shoals through the early to mid-1800s farming, he was worth only about $1400 in 1850. Surprisingly, he remained a bachelor with no children according to the record (but that fact would change with more investigation). He was a slaveholder, however.

William H. Cureton’s 9 enslaved in 1850 were:

• Female 38, b. 1812
• Male 24, b. 1826 (possibly Joe Sherman – born about 1821)
• Female 20, b. 1830 (possibly Marie Sherman – born about 1830)
• Female 2, b. 1848 (possibly Harriet Sherman – born about 1848)
• Male 35, b. 1815 
• Female 14, b. 1836
• Female 5, b. 1845
• Male 1, b. 1849
• Female 2, b. 1848

Besides being a farmer, William H. Cureton was a “backcountry slave trader.” Such traders were small and largely rural, trading occasionally. Cureton partnered with a man named Elihu P. Smith of Spartanburg, another trader to sell an enslaved African. In 1841, Elihu borrowed $745 “in full pay for one Negro girl Jane and her child Caroline, which Negros I [William H. Cureton of Greenville, S.C.] warrant to be Sound in every Respect and slaves for life.” Elihu’s transaction was captured by his nephew, William James Smith, also a rural slave trader in James’ trading ledgers.

Among Smith’s papers is a receipt written by William H. Cureton from 1847 that read, “Received, Feb. 9, 1847 from Elihu P. Smith, two hundred and seventy-five dollars it being one half of the purchase money of a Negro man Stephen which we purchased jointly.” William Smith entrusted Stephen to his nephew and the “old man” was sold for $735 a year later. William Smith also conducted business with John M. Cureton Jr. according to letters directed to him.

By 1860, William H. Cureton’s personal wealth dramatically increased by three times to $15,725. Was his boost in fortune tied to profits from slave trading or perhaps exceptional productivity on the farm he worked with his younger brothers? It was probably a bit of both, as well as some fortune from an inheritance.

William H. was the executor of his father Abner’s estate around 1850. Abner and his brother, John Moon Cureton III migrated from Lunenburg to Greenville with their father over forty years before where they farmed and enslaved people on an industrial level as planters. Although Abner’s will did not leave any of his enslaved people to William, it directed that nine of them (four women and six children) be sold, while two men, Sandy and Andy, were passed to his widow, Matilda, and a girl to his daughter, Margaret. It’s likely the slave auction put money in the pockets of Abner’s sons. In comparison, Abner’s wife Matilda was only worth $2,500 according to the 1850 census.

William H.’s first cousin, Pascal Dacus Cureton, the son of John Cureton III, also inherited planting from his father and held 1,600 acres of land by 1850, valued at $15,000. This land was the remainder of his father’s estate. Pascal enslaved 76 people on his plantation next to Williams. However, by 1860, the number of people he enslaved had dropped to 32, likely due to a large sell-off. Again, I wonder if William H. was doing more extensive trading? Despite these changes, the adjoining Cureton plantations remained quite prosperous as they passed from fathers to sons.

The original home of John Moon Cureton Jr., William H.’s grandfather, today is known as the Cureton-Huff House and is on the National Register of Historic Places, and Inventory of Historical Places in South Carolina. Cureton was a prosperous farmer in Simpsonville and his house and farm are representative of the rural farmhouses and complexes of the time and region. The house in particular is representative of the vernacular building modes, construction technology, and limited stylistic awareness common to an upper-middle income farmer in a rural community. The house also retains noteworthy Federal stylistic elements in its woodwork. The plan of the house, originally a vernacular hall-and-parlor, was altered prior to the death of Cureton into a central hall plan. Both plans were common to the farmhouses of South Carolina in the antebellum era. The heavy timber-braced frame with its mortise-and-tenon joints, the beaded weatherboarding, and the small-paned window sash were representative features of such houses. Outbuildings on the property include a carriage house, a blacksmith shop, several barns and animal pens, two corn cribs, and a garage. The house was likely all built by slave labor. Most of the outbuildings date from the early twentieth century. The Cureton-Huff cemetery on site has a low stone wall. Listed in the National Register January 13, 1983, by an ancestor, the application stated that upon his death, John M. Cureton Jr. enslaved 75 people and his estate was over $28,000.

In 1851, William H. Cureton sold 250 acres of land on the south side of the Reedy River near Wilson Ferry. By 1858, Cureton had become Commissioner of the Poor in Greenville, as reported in the Charleston Mercury. By 1860, his reported wealth was largely tied to the value of his 11 enslaved people, who ranged in age from 2 to 40, many of them males. A notable detail from the slave schedule is that of the 11 people listed, 5 were categorized as ‘mulatto,’ while the rest were listed as ‘Black.’ Several of the slaves were mixed-race, black and white.

According to the 1860 slave schedule, Cureton’s 11 enslaved included:

• Male 40, black, b. 1820
• Female 38, black, b. 1822 
• Male 33, mulatto, b.1827
• Female 20, black, b. 1840 
• Female 14, mulatto, b. 1846 
• Male 11, black, b. 1849
• Male 9, mulatto, b. 1851
• Male 7, mulatto, b. 1853
• Male 3, black, b. 1859
• Male 9, black b. 1851
• Male 2, mulatto, b. 1858

About this time, William H. Cureton was still a bachelor. Given the age range of the ‘mulattos’ listed, it’s possible that one was a descendant of both Abner Heath Cureton and the other a descendant of William H. Cureton. The schedule seems to reflect only one or two enslaved families. Who were these mixed-race enslaved people and could I find out more about them after Emancipation when formerly enslaved were finally listed in the national census?

Interestingly, a Cureton ancestor shared in the book Soil Conservation, that General Sherman’s army camped on the plantation at the Cureton-Huff house where “some of his soldiers stood on the portico and shot chickens off the smokehouse.”

In 1870 after the Civil War, two households away from William H. Cureton, lived Eliza Cureton, age 49, b. 1821, a black woman born in Virginia, was head of household. Her household members according to the census were:

• James, 24
• David, 19
• John T., 16
• Ferdinand, 12
• Christopher Columbus, 11
• Emma, 6
• Alice, 9

Their ethnicity was listed as black. However subsequent censuses record the ethnicity of Eliza and her children as mulatto. Some individuals in her household are her children, as supported in later documents. They include James, David, John T., Ferdinand, Emma, Alice.

Other records show Eliza also had two more daughters Sarah Anna York and Mary Frances also known as “Mamie”, and possibly another son named William M. Cureton. On the 1880 census, Sarah Anna’s last name is listed as ‘York’ which I initially thought to be the surname of a former husband. I eventually learned her siblings referred to their mother as ‘Eliza York.’

Contemporary African American descendants of Eliza York’s family share a fascinating oral lore about their origins. The story goes that William Henry Cureton did father children with his enslaved women, and not just one, but two enslaved families. The first family was with Eliza, the second was with his own biological daughter, Sarah Anna York. In a brazen act of incest and “breeding” common throughout slavery, William H.,  fathered several Eliza York’s children, as well as Sarah Anna’s children; Columbus, Alice, Emma, Ferdinand, and Lidia Cureton. Another oral story about Sarah’s mother stated that her daughter Mary Frances “Mamie” Sizer (nee’ Cureton) was the daughter of an Apache slavetrader, though this is clearly not true. On the oral history, I have not found any documented evidence that Sarah’s children were William’s. The family lore is still held however by the black descendants of William H. Cureton and Eliza York and maintained by several family historians, including Samuel Roberts, a descendant of William M. Cureton. Samuel has been researching for over thirty years and was the first to identify an 1865 Freedmen’s Bureau contract between William H. Cureton, and Eliza York (“Cureton” on the document) that named her children and showed her family structure. 

Of course, it’s also possible members of Eliza’s family, siblings, and parents may have been enslaved nearby, perhaps the adjoining plantation of Pascal D. Cureton. Pascal was first cousin of William H. Cureton and their fathers together ran an industrial-level operation using slaves on plantations and mills. There were likely very close ties between the enslaved communities on both plantations. It’s possible these enslaved families formed one interconnected community with familial bonds. However, mixed-race children of a planter would afford that enslaved family a higher status among their peers. We know for certain that Joe Sherman was enslaved on William H. Cureton’s plantation alongside William’s concubine and several of his mixed-race children. 

On the 1880 census, it’s clear that these formerly enslaver and enslaved families remained living close to one another well after emancipation. Next door to William H. are two households headed by his mixed-race sons, their ethnicity listed as mulatto. John Cureton b. 1855 is likely the mulatto male b. 1853 in listed on the 1860 slave schedule. James Cureton, also mulatto, b. 1850 could be the other mulatto male b. 1851 according to the slave schedule. 

The surname York also appears on several related records. The first appearance of the surname is on the death certificate of Eliza’s mixed-race son, John T. Cureton (1854 –1928) which names ‘William Cureton’ as his father and ‘Eliza York’ as his mother. Here we also see the first record officially naming William H. Cureton as the progenitor of a mixed-race household that started in slavery.

Eliza’s daughter, Sarah Anna York lists her surname as York on the 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920 census records. The last instance of the name is on the death certificate of Christopher Columbus Cureton (1858–1949), except he also lists ‘William Cureton’ as his father and ‘Mary York’ as his mother. This last detail conflicts with the oral history of the mixed-race descendants that declared Christopher was the son of Sarah Anna York and Wiliam H. Cureton. It appears he was Eliza’s son instead. Descendant research of the York-Cureton family doesn’t quite settle on whether Mary and Eliza were distinct individuals or the same person, but she is often referred to as “Eliza” York in family trees consistent with census records, which I use as well.

MARIE SHERMAN AND ELIZA YORK – SISTERS.

Was my ancestor Marie Sherman, related to Eliza York, the enslaved concubine of William H. Cureton?

There is very strong evidence to support this.  A search of my maternal DNA matches produced both white and black DNA cousins with Cureton surnames from Virginia and South Carolina in their family trees. We shared enough DNA to indicate that we had a common ancestor about 5 generations back for each of us. This could be one or more parents of Eliza York, one of whom we know likely had the surname “York.” 

We have the information from census records that state Marie Sherman was born in Virginia about 1830, and the records that show her husband Joe was later sold to the Cureton plantation by a man named Henry Sherman. The Cureton, Moon, and Walker families, early Greenville pioneers, were all originally from British colonial Lunenberg and Prince George Counties in Virginia. So was Marie also descended from a line of enslaved people who were forcibly migrated from Lunenburg to Greenville with the Curetons? Cureton DNA passed through Marie to her daughter Harriet Sherman and of course to her Mays descendants, including me.

Searching Ancestry.com and MyHeritage, I found several Black Ancestry DNA matches with ancestors from Greenville with the surname Cureton and Virginia roots. The genealogy tools predict that several of these matches were third cousins—one full and two half-cousins—and their family trees indicate they were direct descendants of Eliza York and William Cureton’s mixed-race son, James T. Cureton. The evidence points to a shared common ancestor, likely a fourth great-grandparent. That ancestor is at least one parent of Eliza York.

Another of my white descendent AncestryDNA matches with Cureton ancestors from Greenville is a direct descendant of Mary Cureton (1780-1849) and Col. Henry Tandy Walker (1779-1841). Recall Mary was the daughter of John Cureton Jr. and Sarah Moon. Mary Cureton and Col. Walker were the great aunt and uncle of William H. Cureton. Both were born in Lunenburg, Virginia and also migrated to Greenville where they were wed in the early 1800s. Here was an obvious genetic and kinship network of black and white, enslaver and enslaved, associated peoples from as early as the mid-1700s in Lunenburg through the Reconstruction period in Greenville, reflected in the modern DNA of their descendants – and I was among them!

If my ancestor, Marie Sherman, was born in Virginia, likely on the Cureton plantation in Lunenburg, could John Cureton Jr. or Abner Cureton have been the biological father of Marie and Eliza? If so, that would mean Marie and Eliza were both descendants of enslaved African Americans, the Cureton and the Moon families. 

Another fourth cousin AncestryDNA match traced directly back to Richard Moon of Lunenburg, the father of Gideon Moon, the patriarch of the Moon family that migrated to Greenville around the same time as the Curetons. Recall that Gideon’s daughter, Sarah, was William H. Cureton’s grandmother.

Beyond DNA evidence, the paper trail widens during Reconstruction, when former enslavers entered into agreements with their formerly enslaved. For family historians, contracts created by the Freedmen’s Bureau are invaluable records, often serving as the first official documents to include the names of formerly enslaved individuals, and sometimes their enslavers. These records can reveal family connections, relationships with enslavers, and much more. They often document the first instances of compensation by enslavers after generations of forced and stolen labor. These agreements were a source of pride, dignity, and power that helped early freemen establish a foothold in society as farmers, landowners, and citizens. As I’ve shared, the family of Eliza York contracted with William H. Cureton in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War.

“William, Eliza and her children and Grandchildren “viz” Sarah, Mary, James and David and five small ones” on the first day of January 1866 in the consideration of their labor were to receive “board them and give them two suits and one pair of shoes each and one field to plant and cultivate in corn, supposed to be 14 acres, the said William to have one half and Eliza and her family the other half. Also one hog to William and three to Eliza and her family.”

The contract between William H. and Eliza York and her children shows that they did not remain in the concubinage relationship and likely ceased cohabiting. It may have ended after the birth of children, or even, if the stories are true after William sustained a relationship with Eliza’s daughter Sarah Anna over several years producing children. We can say the neither relationship could ever be fully consensual given the power imbalance between enslavers and their enslaved. No matter whether there was affection or love or even coupling out of convenience, Eliza and Sara Anna could never be free to make their own choices for themselves or their children. Perhaps it became untenable to Greenville society as well after the Civil War to change the status of his formerly enslaved black family through Eliza or Sarah Anna’s concubinage to something of a legal and voluntary status, or to change his status from bachelor to married to a black woman, who was formerly his enslaved. Either way, William H. made the decision not to marry Eliza, but instead his white widowed cousin. Sarah certainly never took the surname Cureton. Though Eliza did after emancipation, it’s telling that her children used the surname York in referring to her and not Cureton.

William H. Cureton ceased being a bachelor when he married Ann W. Cureton, the widowed sister of Pascal D. Cureton, his widowed neighbor sometime between 1860 and 1870. They supposedly had a daughter, Lillian, in 1867 but it’s doubtful given Ann’s age. She was probably an adopted relative. Lillian went to school in her early teens, moved away, married, and then died young in Oregon in 1897 without children.

Eliza’s and William H. Cureton’s children were listed as Wiliam Sarah, Mary, James, and David – the “five small ones” on the contract were Eliza’s grandchildren. William M. appears later in the household of William H.’s brother George Washington Cureton. After emancipation, the children of Eliza York remained in Grove District near Fork Shoals. The 1870 Agricultural census shows that Eliza and her sons farming produced 50 bushels of corn, and that they did indeed own 3 hogs. The 15 acres were worth about $720. Eliza seems to have died between 1880 and 1900, and doesn’t appear on the record after 1880.

William H. Cureton’s cousin Pascal also entered into a contract with several black freeman named to work his lands in exchange for provisions; Moses and his wife Harriet, Taylor, Albert, and William. Williams’ brother Thomas Jefferson Cureton did the same, forging a contract with Cicero Cureton and his wife Silva and daughter Hannah, also Isham Stokes and his wife Julia. William’s other brother George Washington entered into a contract with a freeman named Dale Johnson. While such contracts were hardly fair by today’s standards, the formerly enslaved were basically bartering for basic provisions, room and board, for continuing to farm or manage a kitchen, at least former enslavers for the first time in American history, had to deal with their former bondsmen in federally enforced labor contracts.

It is striking to see how the same people who enslaved blacks had to eventually negotiate with them to develop agreements to work their farms during Reconstruction, this after renouncing the Confederate States of America and several long years of bitter war. Most whites found it galling and an attack on their worldview of white supremacy to see blacks armed and marching in their streets, demanding education, pay and wages; this call for suffrage happened whilst newly freed blacks were also daily sharing complaints of abuse to the Freedmen’s Bureau. As was the case with William H. Cureton and Eliza York and her family, the former slaves of white planters, who in some cases were also biological family members, witnessed the complete upheaval of their centuries-old power structure and turned once again to the violence they were so accustomed too as enslavers. White leadership historically responded to this upending of their status with beatings, attacks, murders, and other forms of racial terror, leading to coups of local integrated South Carolina county governments that appeared to destroy the hope of Reconstruction.

Oral family history suggests William H. Cureton gave his mixed-race sons land. However, a thorough examination of land deeds in Greenville County shows he did not. According to the agricultural census John T. Cureton did farm 50 acres of land in 1880 but it was as a tenant farmer. By 1920, he did become a landowner under his own volition. His brother William M. Cureton owned land earlier by 1900. William M. could read but not write. John T. could read and write by 1880. More family lore about William H. Cureton states he may have had a third enslaved family in Anderson County. However, I can find no evidence of this either, nor can I find court records or deeds suggesting he ever lived in any other county other than Greenville. There were Curetons in Anderson. John T. Cureton raised and family in Anderson and passed away there intestate (without a will) in 1928.

There are examples of enslavers heading enslaved families throughout antebellum American history. We can not know the details of Eliza York and William H. Cureton’s relationship. Was it a loving marriage of equals? Almost certainly not.

William H. could have freed Eliza and his mixed-race children outright. He did not. After emancipation and the arrival of the Freedmen’s Bureau, he could have gifted land to Eliza and his his children. He did not. In fact, he made them all sign contracts with the Freedmen’s Bureau to enforce their continued servitude on his land. William H. might have rented parcels of lands to some of his mixed-race children to farm, but there’s no evidence of that either.

Eliza York could have left Grove with her children upon gaining her freedom fully in 1865 after the war, but instead she stayed nearby. Her sons John and James were bound to the land as tenant farmers. Another son, William M. Cureton, appears to have had a tougher time. After removing to Anderson County he was arrested for larceny and spent 2 years in prison. William H. died intestate, without a will, in 1893 and is buried in the cemetery at Sandy Springs Baptist Church in Pelzer, Greenville. It’s unclear who received his estate (his white wife Ann and daughter Lillian?) or if it was simply auctioned off. I haven’t found administration records for the estate yet. His wife Ann died 7 years later.

Tragically, I don’t know where Eliza York is buried either. Joe and Marie Sherman are likely buried at Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church in Gantt, a black church co-founded by the Mays family.

The period immediately after the enslaved gained their freedom was volatile and dangerous. Complaints and reports by blacks of brutalization, beatings, and extrajudicial murders – lynchings perpetrated by their white neighbors were high. In Greenville in October of 1865, a free man named George, who was formerly enslaved by George Washington Cureton, brother to William H. Cureton, was murdered, shot in the heart. The local police, reminiscent of the slave patrols, invaded his home after midnight according to a Coroner’s inquest. George defending himself swung an axe, cutting the throat of one of the men. The others testified they shot George immediately out of self-defense. It’s unclear why the patrollers broke into George’s home seeking him to begin with, but clearly, he was afraid for his life. Defending his freedom cost him his life.

Looking for work and escape from racial terror, some of the black Curetons followed their children on the Great Migration north and west to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan, New York, and even further. Still, many remained under the brutally repressive Jim Crow era rooted to the Piedmont.

Resilience defined the relationships of the enslaved and newly freed. Eliza’s sister Marie found a partner under the crushing yoke of slavery in Joe Sherman. There’s no evidence of a wedding, but I imagine Marie and Joe “jumped the broom” as was tradition, and together they had a child, my great-great grandmother Harriet while they slaved away in a Cureton mill or field. Harriet Sherman and her parents would become eventually be freed and thus, Harriet could marry Jim Mays, on her own terms.

THE MAYS AND YORKS CONNECT.

With the insight and DNA evidence that Marie Sherman was a York, I reexamined my Sherman and Mays family trees. I soon discovered more documented ties between the York and Sherman families through blood and marriage. My great granduncle Benjamin “Frank” Mays married a York!

Eliza York’s daughter, Sarah Anna York (b.1840 – about 1920) had several children, supposedly with William H. Cureton. They were reported as Columbus, Ferdinand, Alice, and Lydia (also spelled Lidia and Lidy). Sarah York appears on the 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920 census. Sarah’s children were in her mother Eliza’s household during the 1870 census but she was missing. The 1870 census did not have a field for family relationships. 

However, in 1880, Sarah York, age 39, is found in the household of her daughter Alice, age 18, who has since married William Mattison “Matt” Garrett, age 25, in the Gantt district just north of Grove. Sarah’s youngest daughter Lydia, age 12,  is also living with her sister and brother-in-law. Columbus and Ferdinand were in their own households. Further confirming the York Sherman ties, next door to Matt and Alice lives Marie Sherman (nee’ York), Sarah’s aunt! Marie, age 50, is widowed and living with her two eldest sons Tandy, age 20, and Henry, age 17.

Around 1895, Lydia married my great-granduncle Frank Mays, and by the 1900 census can be found living in the Gantt district. Sarah is found living with Lydia and Frank! Lydia died in 1920 childless and Frank Mays remarried at which Sarah moved out of the household. Frank was also Lydia’s first half-cousin 3x removed, and the son of my great-great grandparents Jim Mays and Harriet Sherman, grandson of Marie Sherman (nee’ York), grandnephew of Eliza York.

Sarah Anna York is last found on the 1920 census at the age of 78 living in Garvin, in Anderson County near the city of Pendleton. She was living with her granddaughter Myrtle and her husband Pinkney Bruce. Myrtle was the first daughter of Emma V. Cureton. Sarah appears to have passed away sometime after 1920. I’m not surprised Sarah kept her surname York throughout her life, however, her children did use the surname Cureton, lending some credibility to the claim that they may were fathered by William H. Cureton.

With a clearer understanding of the Curetons, it was time to shift my attention to Joseph Sherman’s first enslaver, Henry Sherman.

THE Planter & Teacher.

The enslaver Henry Sherman, who sold my ancestor Joe Sherman to William Henry Cureton, first purchased a significant amount of land in Greenville in 1833 from Major George Seaborn, paying $2,500 for 500 acres stretching from Bakers Creek on the Reedy River to Golden Grove in the Grove District. Sherman may have arrived after 1830, as he does not appear in the 1830 census for the area.

Major George Seaborn, a planter born and raised in Greenville, was the son of George Seaborn Sr., who enslaved seventeen people in 1820. It is not surprising George Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a successful domestic slave trader. By 1840, he enslaved seven people on his own farm, according to census records. Around 1850, Seaborn moved to the town of Pendleton in nearby Anderson County and founded the influential journal Farmer and the Planter, which was widely advertised in South Carolina newspapers. The journal featured reprints and original articles on topics ranging from cotton farming and animal husbandry to advice on managing enslaved people. Seaborn also served as Secretary and Treasurer of the State Agricultural Society. His success in farming and the slave trade made him a wealthy man.

The land Henry Sherman acquired from Maj. Seaborn in Greenville was adjacent to property owned by David T. Cureton, who enslaved at least ten people on his plantation.

Henry Sherman probably arrived in Greenville between 1830 and 1833, purchased land from Major Seaborn, then was appointed postmaster in Sterling Grove in 1837. Sherman, Pascal Cureton, and J. Moon are signatories to a “Petition to Amend the Laws on Usury made by the Citizens of Greenville” in the 1830s further demonstrating the closeness of this planter community.

According to the 1840 census, Henry Sherman was between 30 and 39 years old, probably born between 1810 and 1819. He was married with two children under 9 in the household. Sherman owned three slaves, one man between 10 and 23, and two females between 10 and 23 years old. According to The Centennial Celebration of Northborough (Massachusetts), “George and Henry Sherman who taught school many years in Greenville, SC. were natives of this town.” I confirmed this in the 1850 census where George’s birthplace was listed as Massachusetts, and his occupation as “school teacher.” Just a few years before, the Greenville Mountaineer reported Henry Sherman of Northborough Massachusetts had married Miss Caroline M., daughter of Philip Evans of the District in April 1832.

Massachusetts ended slavery in 1783 however much of its fortune was still fueled by the importation of cotton to textile mills. Even though Worcester, the largest town close to Northborough outside of Boston became a center of industry and abolition, the Shermans were drawn south and there found farming and slave-owning a business worth pursuing.

In 1842 Henry Sherman sold 300 acres of his land on Grove Creek to James Pickett. Sherman appears in several records between 1800 and 1849, including as a witness to a neighbor’s will. In 1845 with Pascal D. Cureton, Abner Cureton’s nephew, also Henry witnessed the sale of nearby land, showing he was a contemporary and neighbor of the Cureton clan. A year later, another land deal, one that failed, further connected my enslaved maternal ancestors to Sherman.

In April 1838, George and Henry Sherman became indebted to Col. William Choice for $500. George, who was regarded as insolvent, was the principal on the note to Col. Choice, while Henry was solvent. To settle a judgment against him, Henry negotiated a second $500 loan from Laurence Lenhardt, securing it with a note and a mortgage on 250 acres of his land. The judgment against Henry remained unsatisfied. Sherman could not pay Lenhardt back and in May 1848, the Greenville sheriff levied 150 acres of Sherman’s land to collect the debt, with Lenhardt attempting to force Franklin Wynne who signed a surety on the mortgage into a payment arrangement that was rejected. Lenhardt then went on to pursue the property of Wynne, indicating a continuous effort to exploit the judgment against Sherman.

Sherman wasn’t alone in this financial struggle; George Sherman and Benjamin Franklin Wynne were also bound by the debts they owed to Laurence Lenhardt, a planter and miller. George Sherman and Franklin Wynne appeared to reside in nearby Brushy Creek in Anderson County. I found numerous court records showing his creditors were coming after him and his brother George. His guarantor Wynne felt duped by Henry Sherman’s various loan schemes and sued him.

Henry Sherman’s mounting debts forced him into a desperate gamble. To clear his portion of the debt, in 1846, Henry began liquidating his assets. He mortgaged all the land he owned, including the land he lived on, and gave a bond to Lenhardt for “all that tract of land whereon I now live, containing 250 acres more or less, situated in Greenville District in the State aforesaid, on the waters of Grove Creek.” Sherman made the bond in the presence of two prominent Greenvillians, Col. William Choice and Jesse Gilreath.

Col. Choice, Jesse Gilreath, and Laurence Lenhardt are familiar names in the Mays-Sherman family story! Through previous research, I learned that immediately after the Civil War, my eldest enslaved ancestors from Greenville, Alec Choice and Sylvia Choice (née Few), were living “in destitution” on Lenhardt’s Grove plantation, according to Freedmen’s Bureau records. The Bureau worked to identify people in urgent need of supplies, particularly the elderly, sick, or poor—both Black and white—across the South. Alec was likely enslaved on the Choice plantation, and Sylvia on the Few plantation, initially in the O’Neal District. Sylvia was the grandmother of my great-great-grandfather, Jim Mays. Jim Mays was the father of Ben Franklin Mays who married Lydia York, Sarah York’s second daughter, reputedly with William H. Cureton. As noted in The Mays: Early Origins of Mays of Greenville, the Mays family descends from the Gilreaths. Joe Sherman’s son-in-law, Jim Mays, was the grandson of Hardy Jones Gilreath.

While Henry Sherman’s enslaved people were not part of the initial deal witnessed by Col. Choice and Jesse Gilreath, Sherman was in significant debt and so mortgaged his enslaved people, using his land and property as collateral for repayment to various creditors. This indicates that Sherman was at least acquainted with other enslavers of my ancestors; many were prominent members of the Greenvillians. This shows that the kinship network between enslavers in a community like Greenville, also extended to their enslaved, from plantation to plantation.

In 1846, Sherman continued to clear his debts which included a $400 note with Edmund Waddell, then he mortgaged Jo and Peter, two of his enslaved to William H. Cureton. I do not believe he ever repaid the debt and thus Jo and Peter became permanent property of Cureton. Joseph Sherman, my 3x great-grandfather, became a Cureton asset.

In 1849, Henry Sherman sold another 250 acres on “the waters of Grove creek” for $1200 to one David McCullough. In February 1850, Sherman continued to liquidate his assets and he turned back to his enslaved. He mortgaged his enslaved woman and her child, “Sarah aged twenty-two and her infant Phillis about four months old,” to Matthew Tyler Hudson of Rocky Creek in Greenville for the sum of $400.

The enslaved woman Sarah was 6 years younger than my ancestor Joe, born about 1827. Was she related to Joe or Peter Sherman, perhaps a sister, maybe a spouse?

Matthew Tyler Hudson (1791 – 1863) was a farmer and enslaver with 15 people in bondage on his farm according to the 1850 Slave Schedule taken in November of that year. Sadly, a 22 year old woman and 1 year old infant do not appear among the anonymous hashmarks of the schedule. Did Sarah and Phillis ever arrive on the Hudson farm at all or did they remain with Henry Sherman, only mortgaged to Hudson? When Hudson passed, he directed his estate be appraised and split between his wife and children but no mention of his enslaved.

I can find no further records for Sarah or Phillis, or Peter Sherman in records. Since I learned William H. Cureton was a part-time slave trader, was Henry? Were they sold away like Jane, Caroline, and Stephen? I would like to find them.

Henry Sherman may have climbed out of debt and left the area, perhaps to Anderson County with his brother George, because he and his family no longer appear on the records in Greenville after 1850. Over nearly 20 years, Sherman’s efforts to farm with the enslaved labor, probably using Major Seaborne’s famous farming techniques based on how to be a model plantation owner, slave driver, and farmer, had utterly failed him.

THe SHERMAN STORY IS the YORK STORY.

In reviewing my theory about the origins of my great-great-great grandparents Joe and Marie Sherman, I have uncovered telltale patterns of the enslaved-enslaver relationship through genetic clusters of Black and white DNA cousins, aligning with the paper trail of associated planter families and their enslaved spanning from Virginia to South Carolina. These families, in the Grove and Gantt districts, as well as the O’Neal district, had documented interrelations across plantations through marriage, business, and migration.

I also have evidence of genetic ancestry linking my family to at least three of these antebellum Greenville families: the Choice, Walker, and Cureton families. I have shown that the black Curetons are indeed ancestors and connected to my Sherman family through the marriage of a sister, Marie, formerly unknown to the many descendants of William H. Cureton and Eliza York.

Joe Sherman and Marie York named two of their children Henry and Tandy Walker. Were they named after William M. Cureton’s sons, Henry and Tandy, or more likely after Col. Henry Tandy Walker, Abner Cureton’s brother-in-law? If Marie York first served in the Cureton household, rather than in the fields, she would have had intimate knowledge of the Cureton family and their extended relations, or she may have learned these details through her sister Eliza York, who was William H. Cureton’s concubine.

In one scenario, I imagine my ancestor Joe Sherman, once enslaved by Henry Sherman, emerging from the plantation in 1865 after working the land for the Cureton family for nearly 20 years. Joe met his wife, Marie York, who was also enslaved on the Cureton plantation. They had their first child, Harriet, on the farm in 1848. Although Joe may have been separated from his family on the Sherman plantation, it’s possible he had a sibling named Peter on the Cureton farm too. Joe was fortunate that Henry Sherman did not sell him further south to feed ‘King Cotton’ and clear his debts. Peter may not have survived, as there is no record of him after emancipation. Joe survived and maintained ties to his community in Grove. It was Joe and Marie’s hard labor, along with that of other enslaved people and families on the farm that built the wealth and success of William H. Cureton.

DNA research suggests that Marie York’s ancestor was white or mixed-race, likely a Cureton. Marie York may have been the enslaved biological daughter of Abner Cureton, whose family migrated from Lunenburg, Virginia, to Greenville, South Carolina along with the Moons’. Marie’s sister, Eliza York, became the enslaved concubine of William H. Cureton, and together they had at least four children. Marie’s grandson, Frank Mays, would later marry his cousin, Lydia York.

Eliza was not without agency. The dynamics of slavery always reveal the porosity of boundaries, especially the notion of what was a “traditional” family. William H. maintained his enslaved family and did not take a wife until the schism of the Civil War. I can only imagine the pressure the split between the North and South created on white men and enslaved African women who were in illegal relationships. This war likely threatened the ability of Eliza to keep her family together. What kind of negotiations did she have to make? When William H. finally took a white wife, a relation, how did the household dynamics shift? I am hopeful there is a Cureton history, a plantation book, diary, or bible, that William H. left behind to further shine a light on this fascinating family history.

The mixed-race children of Eliza York became a large and diverse family after emancipation spread out over Greenville and Anderson counties. Today, African American Cureton descendants still hold reunions with family traveling from over a dozen states. The Cureton family is well documented and researched, and I hope the inclusion of Joseph Sherman and Marie York in the family history will help them better understand their connection to the Mays-Sherman family of Greenville and why Eliza’s daughter Sarah York moved with her daughter Lydia Mays (nee’ York) to the Gantt District. My research revealed that William H., also known by his children as “Bocto” – the white patriarch of the Cureton family was a farmer, miller, and confirmed slave trader. I was able to document him as the father of at least one member of his enslaved family.

And what of York? Was the surname derived from Eliza’s father? York is a common male first name. A search of the South Carolina Department of Archives for the name York (slave) generates no fewer than 142 instances across a dozen counties. And of course, York was a county in South Carolina as well. For now, the name remains a mystery. Eliza was born in Virginia and the county of York was derived from Charles Rivershire and is a tidewater community bordering Williamsburg and Newport News, west of Lunenburg county where the Cureton family was settled. Was York enslaved on the John Moon Cureton’s plantation near John’s son William? We may never know.

Soon new tools fueled by AI will provide even more access to our shared history locked away in obscure archives, identifying migration patterns for entire family lines based on scans of land deeds, census, and other data. I’m particularly excited to see more databases at FamilySearch become fully searchable by their AI tool. As documents are digitized and share, our understanding of how deeply interwoven the relationships were between our antebellum ancestors – those who were born and lived before the end of slavery, enslavers and the enslaved, kith and kin. Now, with genetic genealogy, traditional research methods, and AI-enhanced full-text search, previously indecipherable documents buried in obscure archives are becoming searchable, word by word. These advances highlight the importance of researching not only our direct ancestors but their entire community—their friends and neighbors—to break down the 1870 census ‘brick wall’ for African Americans.

Many Black families, including that of my great grandfather Van Matthew Mays, left the Jim Crow South for Ohio, carrying with them traditions that connected them to their kin back on the farm. Today, we have a deeper understanding of those connections. Recovering history and unraveling the complex web of familial relationships is now more achievable thanks to the digitization of family records, where key documents can unlock an entirely new understanding of our past, like the bill of sale of ‘Jo’ by Henry Sherman to William H. Cureton.

SOURCES.

Cureton, Abner H. Of Greenville District, Will. Mss Will: Will Book C, Pages 316-319; Estate Packet: Apt 12, File 48. South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 3 Mar. 1850.

Roberts, Samuel, Snr. The History of the Cureton Family. 2018.

Thompson, Pat. “I Came By Way of Somebody.” Family history of Mays, Sherman, Ladson. 2004. 6th Edition.

“Greenville, South Carolina, United States records,” “Mortage of Negroes, William H. Cureton, Henry Sherman” Images, FamilySearch.

“A full descriptive map and sketch of Greenville Co.” Kyzer, Paul B., 1882. Library of Congress, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3913g.la000837, accessed Jul. 2024.

“Citizens Of Greenville District, Petition To Amend The Laws On Usury.” South Carolina Department of Archives, accessed Apr. 2024.

Ancestry.com. U.S., Freedmen’s Bureau Records, 1865-1878 [database online]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2021.

“Will of Abner Heath Cureton.” Ancestry.com, accessed October 2024. 

Boddie, John Bennett, ed. Historical Southern Families, Vol. XIX. Genealogical Publishing Co., 1980.

“The Mays: Early Origins of Mays of Greenville.” Struggle and Progress, 2024, https://struggleandprogress.com/2024/09/08/the-early-origins-of-the-mays-of-greenville/

Adams, John Q. Backcountry Slave Trader: William James Smith’s Enterprise, 1844–185. Louisiana State University Press, 2019.

“Bill of Sale, Henry Sherman, William H. Cureton,” Greenville, South Carolina, United States records, FamilySearch,  accessed October 2024.

Crittenden, Charles E. The Greenville Century Book: Commemorating One Hundred Years of Progress. Greenville Chamber of Commerce, 1931.

Soil Conservation. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Soil Conservation Service, 1963.

The Centennial Celebration of the Town of Northborough, 1866. Published by Order of the Town, 1866.