Information provided below is based on exciting but preliminary research and should not be considered definitive.
As noted in an earlier post, Jane Park (the presumed mother of James W Smith, Mary’s first husband) and her 4 minor children consistently reported in federal and Philadelphia census records as being born in North Carolina. General knowledge of Mrs. Pleasant’s first husband’s family has his property, a gift from his father, was in northern Virginia and that at some point he escorted his recently emancipated mother and siblings out of slavery to Philadelphia. The reason for this is due to an 1806 Virginia law requiring recently emancipated enslaved to leave the state within twelve months. Incidentally, a startling statistic, at the time of the Civil War, there were as many free people of color in Virginia as enslaved.
How does Jane Park being born in North Carolina align with the stories of James W Smith’s family narrative? First, we need to understand how did James become free given his mother was enslaved? A person’s status as free or enslaved in the US was based on their mother’s standing. Was James emancipated by his father? Who was his father? Research on this question continues. While trying to research this question, an 1848 notice in William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator was observed. A white man named James Smith was murdered in 1848 by a free man of color, a blacksmith named James Brown, outside Weldon, North Carolina. James W Smith was known to be supportive of The Liberator and friendly with Garrison. Was this Garrison’s way of informing others of Smith’s passing? Or was it simply the notice to the community a free man of color, James Brown, was named as a murderer? Or a simple coincidence that directed research to the area? Records for what became of Mr. Brown after he was arrested have not been located nor has information providing additional information on the “James Smith” that was murdered. There were many prominent Smiths in the area.
The location of the crime piqued interest as Jane Park had a son named Weldon Park and eventually a grandson named Weldon Howard. It is circumstantial but worthy of a rabbit hole dive. Due to this possible coincidence, a review of plantations in the area found two prominent Smith families with large farms with significant populations of enslaved. One of the Smith’s, William H Smith lived in northern Warren County, North Carolina along the southern bank of the Roanoke River on the state boundary to Virginia. In 1820, William H Smith died and left a sizable estate, his will and probate records, hand written, are over 130 pages. A James W Smith is mentioned within the will as receiving some land, and in probate, a handful of cash disbursements. Is this Mary’s husband or another man with an all too common name? Early research indicates this JWS would relocate to Tennessee and live out his life there. However, it is not definitive.
One of the Executors of Mr William H. Smith’s estate is Robert Park, Esq. Mr. Park’s sister-Eliza, husband was the 12th Governor of North Carolina, James William Turner. Park’s mother was Elizabeth Eaton. Additionally, one of Park’s niece’s, Sally, married a man named Mark Alexander, owner of one of the plantations MEP specifically named as being a location she visited in support of John Brown in 1858-59. Mark Alexander’s plantation was in Mecklenburg, Virginia north of the Roanoke River. Mark and Sally would retire to a different plantation called Magnolia in an area called Scotland’s Neck on the southern bank of the Roanoke River, near the location of the above noted 1848 murder of James Smith. The builder of Magnolia was one James Norfleet Smith.
In 1823, Mr. Robert Park, after his wife’s death, would move from his Warren County plantation to Mecklenburg, Virginia, not far from the earlier mentioned Mark Alexander estate. Mr. Park died in 1834. He had no children from his marriage to Sarah Clark Lewis, however, he was guardian to a niece, Maria Park Ridley. And as noted above, starting in 1814, Park became Guardian to a landed orphan and eventual U.S. Congressman, Weldon Nathanial Edwards. In Park’s last will and testament, he split his estate amongst nieces and nephews of the Baskerville, Alexander and Hall families of Virginia, and U.S. Congressman Weldon N Edwards of Warren County, North Carolina. Incidentally, Mr Edward’s father is the source of the name of Weldon, NC. In the Last Will and Testament, Mr. Park made this interesting bequest in his will:
Transcript: “I give to my friends George D Baskerville and Weldon N Edwards the following negroes, Jinny and her four children, John, Carolina, Weldon and Ann also five hundred dollars to them.”
These names align with “Jane” Park and her four enslaved children, John, Caroline, Weldon and Anna. Review of Baskerville and Weldon Edwards papers is ongoing but early review has not found the Jane Park family in their estate papers. It seems unclear who is the recipient of the $500 (equivalent to $17k today), the two white male friends or Jinny and her family? Both men elsewhere in the will were given separate bequests of land and money, so why this statement attached to Jinny? Both Baskerville and Weldon Edwards had several enslaved people on their lands between 50-70 human souls each. So the attachment of the clause “also five hundred dollars to them” one can surmise the funds were to be used as seed money for the Jane Park family to relocate out of state which they appear to have done shortly after this death. Further supportive of this supposition is that the family’s names do not appear in the Mecklenburg, VA Free People of Color Register at any time or in the Warren County, North Carolina lists.
The importance of this find is identifying the nexus of landed families named Park and Smith on the border of Virginia and North Carolina and its proximity to the Roanoke River with which Mary Ellen Pleasant had some familiarity. While Smith is an all too common name, making research almost impossible, Park is not common in North Carolina. The name in the years of interest appear in only two areas of the state; outside Charlotte and in the northern part of the State. The area where Robert Park and William H Smith and Weldon Edwards lived was known as Smith Creek in Warren County, NC. The adjacent county, Halifax, also has several prominent planters named Smith in the Scotland’s Neck area. These families are also tied to Mark Alexander across the Roanoke River in Mecklenberg, Virginia.
Jane’s family appears to have taken the last name from their enslaver Robert Park, but the presence of Weldon N Edwards in Robert Park’s household after he was orphaned in 1814 is interesting. Jane Park has a son named Weldon born in 1829 and would eventually have a grandchild named Weldon E Howard. Her two daughters were born closely following their brother Weldon in 1831 and 1832 respectively. Might this be some indication of Jane’s last three children’s paternity? All four children state they were born in North Carolina not Virginia. Robert Park’s retained land in NC where perhaps they remained, where Weldon Edwards, as an adult, resided. Within three years of Robert Park’s death this family will be living in Philadelphia on Barley Street and by 1865 they will be in Xenia and Cleveland, Ohio.
Jane Park’s eldest daughter, Caroline F would marry a man named Augustus Dunn and they would have two daughters, Jinny and Jane, echoing the two names used by the family matriarch.
It remains unclear who exactly was James W Smith’s father, which member of the various Smith families in the area and how was it that he was seen as a “free man” who passed among society as “The Cuban” while his mother remained enslaved. Research continues.