During one of Dr. Henry Louis Gates's PBS Finding Your Roots programs, he talked about his own heritage in Cumberland, MD and Piedmont, WV. He related how the accomplishments of his ancestors was borne to him when he was young: "We come from people!" —meaning that his heritage included people of the dignity and stature that comes with achievement, and that he should conduct himself in a manner that befits an heir to that heritage. Or, as my mother used to say to me "Remember who you are!"
In researching Jane's family history, it rather quickly became clear to me that she could also say "I come from people!" regarding her Cheesy Grits heritage. Furman Weston and his descendants are but one example.
Furman Weston, who was known as "Furman", "Firman", "Faman" "J. Firman" or sometimes "Furman John", was a machinist, a particularly lucrative trade in cotton-growing country: anyone who could keep the cotton gins running or make them run better was in demand. So Furman likely had as much work as he wanted.
Like many of Charleston's "colored elite", Furman Weston married within his social group: he married Louisa Potter Bonneau, the daughter of Thomas Siah Bonneau, one of Charleston's earliest educators of African-American children. Bonneau was taken into the Brown Fellowship Society on December 5, 1816, as its sixty-first member, so marrying one of his (six? seven?) daughters helped cement Furman's standing in that elite community. (Of course, Furman's father John Weston was also a member of Brown Fellowship.)
In 1935, three little girls found a box of letters under a house in upstate South Carolina. The letters turned out to be the correspondence of a wealthy family of Free Persons of Color, the Ellisons. The collection was published in 1984 under the title No Chariot Let Down: Charleston's Free People of Color on the Eve of the Civil War (UNC Press).
The first letter in the published collection (p. 23) is from our Furman Weston in Charleston to his up-state brothers-in-law Henry and Reuben Ellison, who had also married into the Bonneau family. The letter, dated 12 Oct 1848, advises the Ellison brothers that their father-in-law Thomas S. Bonneau's estate was about to be divided and sold according to the provisions of the latter's will.
The last letter in the collection (p. 152) is also to Henry Ellison, but is from Furman Weston's wife, our Louisa Potter Bonneau Weston, and was written in 1864. Among other things, it thanks Henry for the shipment of corn that had arrived.
Furman and Louisa had two daughters: Mary and Jeannette. "Mary" of course was Furman's mother's name and "Jeannette" was Louisa's mother's name. (The preservation of both given and family names in this community is a story all by itself.) Mary Weston married James Fordham, who may have been a mixed-race descendant of Richard Fordham, the executor of John Stocks Thorne's will. One of their daughters was Mary Weston Fordham, the first African American woman to have an anthology of her poetry published in the U.S. The preface to her 1897 volume Magnolia Leaves was written by Booker T. Washington. If you look through the table of contents linked from the title above, you will see poetic tributes to her family members—people whose names you have already encountered here on Cheesy Grits: Mary's mother Louisa/Louise Bonneau Weston, and her grandmother, Mary Furman Weston Byrd.
Mary Weston Fordham was also one of the first women hired to teach at the Saxon Institute in Charleston, which would become the Avery Normal School and is now the Avery Research Center.
Notable Black Women Book II, edited by Jessie Carney Smith, has a well-sourced biographical sketch of Mary Weston Fordham starting on p. 231. (You may have to scroll up a page on the link to Google Books above.)
Furman's wife Louisa died fairly young in 1864 and was buried in the Brown Fellowship Cemetery on Pitt Street. He subsequently remarried to one Rebecca Gregg and they had two sons and a daughter before Rebecca also died at a young age. Their daughter, Josephine Gregg Weston, came to Washington, DC to study at the old M Street School under Charleston's Francis Cardozo. After graduating from the M Street School in 1893, she did her teacher training at the Miner Normal School, graduating in 1894. Ms. Weston taught in the DC public school system until she retired with distinction in 1943. She passed away in March, 1950, and was buried here in the now-defunct Columbian Harmony Cemetery, which was located next to what is now the Rhode Island Avenue station of Washington's Metro system.
Jane's 3rd great-granduncle Furman Weston died in 1892 and his death certificate reports that he was buried in the Brotherly Association cemetery, near Magnolia Cemetery in North Charleston. If there is a grave marker, we have not yet found it.
Sources: Michael Johnson and James Roark, eds., No Chariot Let Down: Charleston's Free People of Color on the Eve of the Civil War (UNC Press: 1984)
Jessie Carney Smith, ed., Notable Black American Women (Book 2) (Thomson Gale: 1996)
See the poem for the Rev. Thaddeus Saltus. His parents were married by the Rev. John Cornish at St. Thaddeus Church in Aiken in 1849. At the time Cornish was a seminarian.
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ReplyDeleteIf I've read correctly, he was the first Black rector at St. Mark's Episcopal. Is there any blood connection to the Furman Weston family that you're aware of?
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