All in a Summer’s Work

By Evelyn Todd

 
When I first started writing this blog post, I didn’t know what to expect or how much I’d write. I just knew that I would be cracking my chest open and finally applying words to the head-spinning experiences of my summer. Well…Here I am sharing my summer with you in three parts:
My Thoughts, The Work I Did, and Where Am I Now?
I have found that curiosity tends to leave people discovering valuable things about themselves, others, and the world around them. I hope it leaves you with questions and the desire to find out.

The Work I Did Part Deux

The burden of the Black American historian is painful, birthing weariness and hope simultaneously.

– Evelyn Todd

I had to start using post-it notes to keep up with the major information I was finding through my research.

My Workstation at Varner-Hogg [Patton] Plantation

I had to start using post-it notes to keep up with the major information I was finding through my research.

I worked through many oral histories, researched plenty of information, and expanded family trees based on the dots I was able to connect. However, the oral histories of one specific descendant holds my heart, and I pray that her family’s history gets the light and recognition it deserves. Cora Faye Williams is the great granddaughter of Ellen (Maxey) and granddaughter of Henrietta Wines. Ellen is an enslaved indigenous woman, most likely from Virginia, and she was brought to Texas by the man who enslaved her, Elisha Maxey, in the mid to late 1830s. [For those who are shocked by this, please know that I was beyond belief to find out that indigenous folks were still being enslaved or sent to other southern states with looser or no laws for decades after the Native American Slave Trade ended.] They soon settled near the Patton Plantation where Elisha became an overseer, married a woman from a local well-to-do family, and started a family. Around the same time, Ellen gave birth to Henrietta and, possibly, one to two other children by Elisha as well. For a few years, Elisha would lease out Ellen and Henrietta to the Patton Plantation as slave labor. Up until Elisha’s death which coincided with Ellen and Henrietta’s emancipation in 1865, Ellen also held the task of taking care of Elisha’s white family as well as her own. After he died, his wife told Ellen that she and her kids needed to leave their property, and so they did. However, neither Ellen or Henrietta chose to leave the county they had come to know as home. Henrietta soon married Sandy Wines Sr. and began a family of her own near Patton Plantation.

Unfortunately, I was not able to find any further information for Ellen in my research, but I was able to find more information for Henrietta. About 40 years after emancipation, Cora Faye shared that she and her two sisters were brought back to Columbia by their father to come live with their grandmother, Henrietta. The girls’ mother had just passed away, and their dad needed to bring them back to his childhood home for support. Cora Faye, the oldest of the three, quickly became known for her quick wits and curiosity. So much so, that the town doctor asked Henrietta to let Cora Faye live with his family as he taught her to become a nurse. Henrietta refused because, understandably, she wanted to keep the girls together. The doctor pivoted and had new mothers ask for Cora Faye to come help in their postpartum recovery. As the community’s doctor, then, took Cora Faye under his wing and trained her to become a midwife, Cora Faye started to notice the differences in other families’ skin tones. Cora Faye started asking her grandmother why her family would look white, indigenous or Black, and other families would all look the same as white or Black. Henrietta was initially hesitant to share and somewhat discouraged by her brother’s outburst over Cora Faye’s curiosity.  However, with some badgering and encouragement from other family members and her close white friends, Henrietta soon sat down and told Cora Faye about her life, and why their family looked so unique.

Cora Faye 93
At this moment in this 1993 interview, Cora Faye (86 years old) is sharing how she learned about her grandmother history.
Cora Faye 93
Blog Post I Wrote for the FTHC
Internship Research Notes 1
This gem is the research of Cary Cordova about the Enslaved People of Patton Plantation in Brazoria County, Texas
This gem is the research of Cary Cordova about the Enslaved People of Patton Plantation in Brazoria County, Texas

*deep breath in* Before I move on, let’s take a second. Hearing that Cora Faye’s grandmother’s friends and knitting posse were the older white women in the town struck me as…odd. Yes, Henrietta is an indigenous and white woman through parentage, yet her lived experiences align closely with the Black folk around her. Also, this is the early 1900s to 1930s in southeast Texas in a county that, at one point, had 63 plantations! I did not expect to learn how communal and familial Columbia (now, West and East Columbia) used to be, post-slavery. Even though, Black people in the community definitely had a “place”, racial tensions and issues were minimum in Cora Faye’s retellings. She shared that if the Black and white kids got into arguments or fights, the parents made them work it out. Families had understandings, and the KKK was not as prevalent in that area based on another community member’s oral history. The Hogg family was often spoken of treating the Black people who worked for them or were sharecroppers on their land with benevolence. Personally, I believe that there was a lack of overtly racial tension in the community because many a white man also had a black family or a black child or two running around, and it was well known… *deep breath out*

Anyways, there is still so much unknown about Ellen and Henrietta. This is the disservice done for many descendants of enslaved folks, and I believe this is why I made it my personal goal for the internship to unearth as much as I could about Ellen, Henrietta, and their family. Because the Patton family was intentional to keep payment records so therefore, the names of the people they enslaved, it gave me access to gems that are uncommon in Black American genealogical research. Their records combined with my research also showed me how diabolical the origination of Texas as a state was, as well as the “domestic” slave trading that persisted decades after it was no longer legal. Sound familiar? It is quite jarring to see middle aged emancipated folks on the 1870 and 1880 census records with their birthplace as Africa.

While learning about Cora Faye’s matriarchs, she also shared an anecdote about a cousin of hers which lined up with a similar story I read about another matriarch in the community. Both of these women, as young teens, were given by their white father and owner to other white men to be with and bear children for. With this information, I dug through other oral histories until I found one by the latter woman’s grandson. In it, he shared the truth I was seeking to find; the women, Anna and Mary Jeffrey, were sisters, and I later learned that their mother was from Africa. One sister, Mary, refused to stay with that man, and after the birth of her daughter, came back home and found life and love as she saw fit. The other sister, Anna, created a family out of her situation and cultivated a life for herself and her kids. As I reflected on all of their lives, it reminded me of Maya Angelou’s poem, “Caged Bird”.

Excerpt of “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou
A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind   
and floats downstream   
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
 
But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and   
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

Through sharing her family’s history, Cora Faye, living to 106 years of age, leapt on the back of the wind and carried the song of freedom that her grandmother, great grandmother, and cousins sang. By breathing life into Ellen, Henrietta, Mary, and Anna’s journeys, it kept them important. I felt blessed to be able to honor the lives of women who lived in and survived the Patton Plantation and Brazoria County. To add their lived experiences to what’s known about the lives of the enslaved women at the Patton Plantation. There is so much I learned and will forever carry with me. However, I still have a plethora of questions that will probably never be answered: What tribe was Ellen from? Where in Africa was Anna and Mary’s mother from? What was her name? Had Ellen grown up in slavery? Did she even know her family? After emancipation, what made these ladies stay? And the question I will spend the rest of my life seeking the answer for:

I found this possible picture of Anna Jeffrey while trying to piece together her and Mary's family tree.

Picture of Anna Jeffrey

I found this possible picture of Anna Jeffrey while trying to piece together her and Mary’s family tree.

What traditions and rites were sacrificed in order for our ancestors’ bloodlines, like Ellen’s, Mary’s, and Anna’s, to survive?

Where Am I Now? – Part 3 will be published mid-October 2025.