(I'm going to re-post one or two entries from the old blog. I've edited them from the original for content, but just some word changes to make them sound better. The first one, on Catharine Dunnagan, originally appeared on February 6, 2005.)
Predictable responses annoy me and I pity my friend Ernie Dollar. I can’t imagine how many people suggested he name his child Fifty Cent.
We’ve got our own. Everyone asks, “Oh, what a pretty dog. Is she a Border Collie?”
Yeah.
“Border Collies are real smart.”
If I had a Dollar… uhhh, if I had fifty ce…. Dang.
Well, yeah. Lizzie is only part Border Collie, but indeed, a pure bred genius. She’s got strong opinions on everything from Henry Clay’s American System (against it, where did I go wrong?) to Hot Jazz (likes it), but the dog is just like her daddy--less talk, more action. She’d rather be splashing through mud puddles and bounding up rocky hillsides than explaining to me in a reasoned tone why I should read less.
So we went to the Cole Mill section of the Eno River State Park and hiked around the Pea Ridge and Dunnagan trails. At the top of the later, on a wooded bluff overlooking the river, is a small cemetery with a smatter of unmarked slate headers and one engraved stone marker. It reads “P. Catharine Dunnagan/ Born/ Mch 7, 1826/ Died/ Jan. 6, 1914”.
Overcome by history geekiness, I endeavored to discover something about Mrs. Dunnagan. With the death date, I easily found her obituary. “Old Lady Dead” the editors ingloriously headlined it. The subtitle stated her claim to special notice: “Mrs. Dunnagan Said to be Nearly a Hundred Years Old.”
Mrs. Dunnagan, mother of Mr. E.D. Dunnagan, formerly of West Durham, now of Fayetteville, died at her home near the pumping station yesterday morning at 10 o’clock. Mrs. Dunnagan was a very old woman, and people in the vicinity of her home say that she was about a hundred years old. Her death was the result of complications of diseases incident to her extreme age.
She is survived by four children, all of whom live in Durham County, in the pumping station section, with the exception of E.D. Dunnagan. The other children are Foy, Roscoe and J.A. Dunnagan. The funeral services will be conducted from the home this afternoon at 3 o’clock, and the interment will be made to the in the old family burying ground.
Well, -- “Nearly a Hundred Years Old” in the broadest sense. But to reach eighty-seven is a remarkable feat in any time.
Armed with the names of her sons, finding Mrs. Dunnagan in the census records proved easy. In a fortunate string of eurekas one afternoon, I found her in seven consecutive census years. (People you are looking for have an annoying and regular tendency to skip enumeration for at least one year of their lives.)
First I noticed the variations on her given name:
(1840: names of children not listed.)
1850: Catharine
1860: Catherine
1870: Catharine
1880: Cate Donegan
1890: Census records not available
1900: Katharine
1910: Pheby C.
So that’s what the P stood for. Incorrect or varied name spellings in the census are frequent so these did not surprise me. Actually, the most useful name element in identifying someone tends to be the middle initial. With it, the search for William Smith becomes a search for William T. Smith and your chances of finding the right one improve exponentially. Similarly, completely wrong names tend to pop up in places you know another name should be. For instance, the obituary above gave the names of four sons: E.D., Foy, Roscoe, and J.A. Yet the census lists a James N. (1860), and an Alsey (1870, 1880). James N. is likely J.A. and Foy is likely Alsey because Edwin (1879, 1889) is certainly E.D. and Roscoe (1860, 1870) showed up consistently as Roscoe.
(Sidebar. James Buchanan “Buck” Duke is inexplicably named William in the 1870 census.)
Though the census records names and demographic information, when scrolling through, you get a strong sense of the community. A small number of surnames surrounded Mrs. Dunnagan her entire life: Gerrard, Holloway, Riley, Dollar, Cain, Duke, McMannen, and Mangum are still familiar families on the Northwest side of town. Especially if you drive North on Guess or Cole Mill Roads toward Person County (where a new set of names replaces them.)
Dunnagan, however, is not a very common name. Catharine married Norman R. Dunnagan on May 11, 1854. The few Dunnagans of Orange/Durham County apparently had a common ancestor in Timothy Dunnagan who lived in the first half of the Nineteenth Century somewhere near the intersection of present-day Guess and Saint Mary’s Roads. Catharine herself likely grew up on the banks of the Eno River, the youngest of Silas and Phebe Link’s four daughters. By 1850, Silas had died.
Being a widow or other type of single mother did not necessarily condemn families in the antebellum south. The Links in 1840 owned three slaves (and boarded one free black man) but by 1850, after Silas’ passing, Catharine’s rural family appears to have fallen to more modest attainments that moved the Links closer toward the fringes of society. That location somewhat released Catharine from strictly adhering to common social and behavioral expectations of the day. (See Victoria E. Bynum’s Unruly Women for more on this.)
Catharine was white. Norman R. Dunnagan was a “mulatto” and his father may have been the white man Timothy Dunnagan or one of his sons. That well-to-do farmer owned twenty-one slaves (in 1840).
The census takers interpreted the match differently over the years. The census form contained columns to record the race of the individual: W for white, B for black, and M for mulatto. (Usually, whites’ columns were left blank.) In 1860, Norman is marked M and Catharine and the two sons are unmarked (white). In 1870, after racial strictures of North Carolina had been overturned by the Civil War, both Norman and Catharine are marked M while their four children are all marked W. Catharine is white again in 1880, and in 1900 both Norman and Catharine are marked W.
Catharine witnessed in her lifetime the widest swing of social-racial definition in America since the early Eighteenth Century. Slavery had codified the customary etiquette of white-black interaction, and with the full acknowledgement and force of the law to support the system, whites comfortably overlooked the many transgressions among the poor and inconsequential. After the war, as opportunity for blacks seemed unbound, whites set to redefining the relationship. They developed circumspect laws and began to enforce new social protocols to sustain the gap between white and black. The disparity widened toward the end of the Nineteenth Century as conservative whites’ initiatives gained traction and the full apartheid of Jim Crow dawned. Bonds like Catharine and Norman’s endured increasing censure and the census taker’s shifting view of the Dunnagans may have been more than mere carelessness, but an internal dialog about an evolving public debate.
Is P. Catharine Dunnagan’s life coming into focus? Part of it, at least. I doubt she identified herself solely an exemplar of racial debate. Add these to your portrait. In the 1880 census, column 11 under Civil Condition, Catharine is marked as Widowed or Divorced and only Alsey and Edwin lived with her. Where did Norman, Roscoe and James go? I don’t know, but he hadn’t died because he was back with her in 1900. Were they separated? What drove them apart? Certainly he wasn’t simply away or she wouldn’t have claimed divorced status? The census does not indicate how long they were apart. Just the year the taker came around, or much, much longer? And why was he marked as white when he returned?
And was Norman the free black man living with the Links in 1840?
Catharine’s rural life changed around her. The Dunnagans remained farmers, but many of the poor families in their neighborhood turned to the tobacco factories in Durham for work, as indicated by the number of women and girls recorded as “stringing tobacco bags” for an occupation. Certainly the most obvious sign of her transforming landscape was the appearance in 1887 of the city’s new water pumping station across the river from her home. Was it a grimy harbinger of the Twentieth Century? Or was it just another large stone building in a visually inconvenient location between Cole’s and Guess’ mills on the industry-heavy Eno.
(In her last decade, Catharine lived next door to Kinchin Holloway, a sixty-eight year old Confederate veteran, farmer, husband, and father of twelve children. This interests me because a highly unusual photograph of him during the war has been published, here.)
Anyhow, look again at the subtitle. I wrote that because this draft is based only on seven census manuscripts, one marriage bond, the obituary, one published county record (1840 Slave Schedule), and visual reconnaissance of her home site.
I know there is more. For example, I have not looked up any deeds, estate inventories, or other legal documents. (A search for wills turned up dry.) Nor have I approached the State Parks to search their files for any historical assessments they might have done on the site. And I haven’t checked for descendants. The Rose of Sharon Baptist Church cemetery is filled with Dunnagan offspring, including Alsey. Her great-great grandchildren probably still worship there. What can they tell me?
Maybe the story will change as I learn more. And if it does, I’ll post it here.
