The children of Henry and Ann Wakefield in North Carolina

Ann Haines and Henry Wakefield had eight children - five sons and three daughters - over the eighteen years between 1855 and 1873. When the Wakefields decided to relocate to North Carolina in 1871, after roughly a generation in Canada, the Civil War was still a very recent memory. Federal troops still occupied much of the former secessionist Confederacy and Reconstruction was in full swing. Outsiders, especially northerners, would have generally been looked upon with deep suspicion across much of the South.

North Carolina was no exception, and perhaps we should pause to wonder what, besides a  warmer climate, would have attracted a man like Henry Wakefield to this particular place; a section of a state that retained strong Unionist leanings throughout the Civil War.

Children of Ann Hunt Haines and Henry Wakefield, Sr.

The region around Guilford County was known as the 'Quaker Belt'. Members of the Religious Society of Friends, including some of our Coltrane ancestors, made up significant numbers of the early European settlers in the area.

Most Quakers back then were abolitionists and pacifists opposed to slavery and violence of any kind. Before the war, majorities in most of the counties of the Quaker Belt voted against secession by wide margins, and many men refused conscription and faced death rather than fight. Union sympathies ran deep across the region. Friendship, North Carolina probably looked like about the most civilized place south of the Mason-Dixon line to Henry Wakefield in 1870 and influenced his decision to bring his family to this place after military hostilities, and slavery had ceased.

All the Wakefield children, except for Ellen, were born in Canada and varied in age from toddlers to late teens when they arrived in North Carolina during the winter of 1871. Soon after arrival the younger children began attending a local school organized by the community, and most furthered themselves at New Garden Boarding School, better known since 1888 as Guilford College.

William Haines Wakefield was born in 1855. He studied at New Garden Boarding School, taught school for a couple of years, and then, with his father's backing and his brothers' help, established the W. H. Wakefield Hardware Company in Greensboro in 1879.

Between 1886 and 1890, while managing the business, William also studied medicine, first at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, and later at Louisville Medical College, where he graduated with honors.

Doctor Wakefield, practiced in several cities before he settled in Charlotte in 1895, where he helped establish what is today Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center. He was also the editor of the North Carolina Medical Journal for a time. He retired from practice about six years before his death in 1929.

Will's sister, Esther Wakefield, was born in 1857, and attended New Garden school before marrying G.W. Armfield, in 1875; the couple had eight children. She died in 1942, 85 years old.

Henry Wakefield, Jr. like most of his brothers, was a tall man, standing about 6'2". He was born in 1859 and migrated south with the family at about twelve years old. As a young man, he worked as a clerk in his brother's hardware store, until it was sold in 1893. He then moved to Danville, Virginia where he worked as a bookkeeper. He died of pneumonia in 1902, at 43 years old.

Ann Haines Wakefield was born in 1861. After studying at New Garden she moved to Greensboro and kept house for her brothers, Will and John. She married L.C. Huffines in 1888 and they made a homeplace at Pleasant Ridge. She bore seven children into the world and died of pneumonia in 1919.

Wakefields, Greensboro City Directory, 1890-91

John Wakefield was born in 1864, graduated from Davidson College in 1893, and from Union Seminary before being ordained by the Presbyterian Church in 1896. He served various congregations before being appointed superintendent of the Barium Springs Orphanage, near Statesville, where he died in 1910.

Alice Haines Wakefield was born in 1866 and married a man named Charlie Stuart in 1900. The couple settled near Guilford Station and had several children. Charlie died in 1926; Alice followed fourteen years later in 1940, from pneumonia.

Another sister, Jane Wakefield, was born in 1868, and like her siblings spent time at New Garden Boarding School. She married into the Knight family and was widowed, with four small children, in 1906, prompting her to move into town and take a job, becoming the first operator of the Guilford College telephone exchange.

Thomas Wakefield was born in 1870, the last member of the family born in Canada. He married L.S. Lindsay of Davidson County in 1895 and fathered ten children. In 1897 Thomas purchased his father's farm from the estate and became the owner of the only threshing machine in the community. At various times he worked as a brakeman for Southern Railway, a district superintendent for International Harvester, owned a store near Guilford College, and became postmaster there in 1920. He died in 1931.

Ellen Carolina Wakefield was born on August 26, 1873, the first member of the family born a U.S. citizen. Nellie, as she was called, grew up and married J.E. Brown. The couple had five children and established a boarding house in Greensboro in 1915. Unfortunately, Mr. Brown died in 1917, but Nellie ran the boarding house until her children were grown, and lived well into her eighties.

That leaves George Wakefield, the fifth child of Ann Hunt Haines and Henry Wakefield, Sr, born on September 11, 1862, near Varney, Ontario, Canada. George was my great-great-grandfather. He didn't become a doctor or a preacher or an accountant, but he did a lot of interesting things and lived a long rich life, which will be the subject of the next installment.