The most interesting document we've found was their marriage license, and here it is:
The marriage license was issued on February 8, 1892, and the bottom paragraph closes the proverbial deal: "This certifies that George Ralston and Valley Howard were DULY JOINED IN MARRIAGE on the Ninth day of February, A.D. 1892." The license is signed by Richard Bright, Rector of St. Stephen's Church. "Valley" is Valeria's nickname, by the way.
We don't yet know how Valley and George met. She was from Charleston and he was from Savannah. Valley apparently returned to Charleston for the birth of their first child, Jane's grandfather George, about six months after the ceremony ("Ohhhh, he was a preemie!" says Jane) and then returned to Charleston, apparently to stay, as their second child, Mirtle/Myrtle, was born in Savannah.
But we needed more help in interpreting the context of the marriage license: who was Rev. Richard Bright? Where was St. Stephen's Church? Who attended?
And what about the neighborhoods where George and Valeria lived?
We thought it might be helpful to find a cultural/social historian to tell us more about the setting and circumstances of Persons of Color in Savannah after the Civil War. We were fortunate to be able to spend an hour with Vaughnette Goode-Walker, Director of Cultural Diversity and Access at Savannah's Telfair Museums, who is also a Savannah tour guide who focuses on African-American history. While of course she didn't have the particulars on Jane's great-grandparents, she nevertheless gave us an overview, and what follows is my recollection: St. Stephen's Church was an Episcopal church on Savannah's Troup Square that was founded in 1855. Within the African-American community, the Episcopal Church tended to attract folks with fairly high social status (relatively speaking), including Free Persons of Color from before the Civil War.
Ms. Goode-Walker suggested, too, that the Ralston addresses on E. Broad distinguished them from the section of Savannah called Yamacraw, which was a more rough and tumble neighborhood down by the Savannah River where many former slaves had settled.
More of St. Stephen's history can be found here. The building is now Savannah's Unitarian-Universalist Church, still on Troup Square.
(As an aside, Rev. Richard Bright was a native of St. Thomas, in what was then still the Danish West Indies. After serving almost twenty years in Savannah, Rev. Bright and his wife and daughter were called to Philadelphia, where he served at St. Monica's. His daughter, Miss Nellie Rathbone Bright, was a well-known educator in Philadelphia who passed on in 1977.)
There are other intriguing clues about the mixed-race household Valeria's husband George was raised in. The head of the household was, as noted earlier, one Frederick Lapham, who is identified as a rice planter. And indeed, the Savannah Morning News from 1868 contains display ads like this one advertising the sale of "10,000 lbs of rough rice" by the firm of Tucker & Lapham. (The ad is at the bottom right hand side of the page.) It was often the case that the mixed-race children of well-off white men and African-American women (marriage between the races wasn't permitted) had access to education and other resources that wasn't available to the other black children. The extent to which great-grandfather George Ralston and Valeria and their children benefited from those privileges is not yet known.
A final note on the fate of one of Frederick Lapham's sons: the 1870 federal census shows William, age 18, at the Lapham household with Jane's great-grandfather George Ralston, who was but three years old at the time. Bearing in mind that Frederick Lapham was from Maine, there is a book about a shipwreck in 1884 off Martha's Vineyard with an intriguing but tragic anecdote. Published in 2012 and written by Thomas Dresser, the book is entitled Disaster Off Martha's Vineyard: the Sinking of the City of Columbus.
Dresser includes the following report on pp. 133-34:
"Adelaide I. Burdon of Boston on oath depose and say that I was well acquainted with William A. Lapham. Having known William for ten years. He was a temperate man. Did not use spirituous liquors. He was drowned with his two children at the wreck of the Columbus at Gay Head, January 18th, 1884. On the afternoon of January 17th, 1884, I went with him to the steamer Columbus and saw him take passage and sail on said steamer for Savannah, Georgia. He was not among the passengers saved but was drowned. His body was never recovered. Full description was sent to New Bedford and persons were sent to see if his body was recovered but it was never found. The last known of him as it appears in the testimony was that he was in the state room with his two children and a waiter knocked on his door. He was never seen on deck and doubtless went down with the steamer. His father and mother were Frederick L. Lapham and Georgia A. Lapham of Savannah, Georgia..." [emphasis added]
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