Vernon Coltrane's early life.

Vernon Eugene Coltrane was a pack rat. Today, we would call his behavior hoarding; he kept everything he might need or use, and he was extremely meticulous. That meticulousness now serves me well in that I inherited all that remained of his personal papers when the dust of his estate settled, not because I asked for them but because I wouldn't let them disappear. 

My grandfather Vernon grew up on a dairy farm, the fourth of eight children born between 1911 and 1925 to Pearl and Lee Coltrane. Lee was a dairy farmer, and the family home was located near the current intersection of Rehobeth Church Road and Vandalia Drive in Greensboro. Lee's last home was at 4000 Galway Drive in the Shannon Hills neighborhood. Vernon's home, built around 1965, was at 4006, down the street at the corner of Killarney Drive. 

When Vernon was a boy, that neighborhood was his father's farm or those of neighbors who were probably kin, near or distant. The world Vernon was born into on November 7, 1916, included his parents, Lee and Pearl, and older siblings; eldest brother, Bill, age 5, Lala (pronounced lay-la), whose fourth birthday came three days later, and another older brother, Solly, who'd just reached two years old.

Before Vernon's ninth birthday in 1925, he'd become an older brother to four more siblings; sister Edna and brothers Max, Lois, and Jesse Lee. According to statements on Vernon's military induction medical report, he had a tonsillectomy in 1921, the year Max was born, and suffered bouts of pneumonia in 1925 and Scarlet Fever in 1929, around 12 or 13 years of age.

Vernon graduated from Sumner School in 1933 and matriculated with a bachelor of arts degree in economics from Guilford College in the class of 1937. 

His senior thesis was a study of the then-new federal housing agencies and banking-related agencies. This work may have guided his decisions to invest in housing over the decades following his service during World War II. Vernon had access to or owned a car when he began his studies at Guilford, so he commuted to school from his father's home. 

After graduation, Vernon held a position with Duke Power Company as a clerk/bookkeeper between July 1937 and February. 1939.

During his time as a student at Guilford, Vernon met Trudy Cochran. How and when they first met is lost to history, but he fell hopelessly in love with the short-haired Pennsylvania girl with an impish grin.  By the time they married in June of 1938, they'd become inseparable. Thereafter, only war, illness, or death ever kept them apart.

War had been brewing in Europe for several years by the time Vernon and Trudy embarked on married, so on October 16, 1940, Vernon did his duty and registered for the draft. 

By then, Vernon was working for Pilot Life Insurance Company but in September of 1941 he began working as a letter carrier for the US Post Office in Greensboro. This decision played an important part in the next few years of his life.

On November 4, 1942, Vernon and Trudy welcomed a daughter, who they named Brenda Sue, but their joy was dampened by news that soon followed: Vernon was called to serve less than a month after the birth of his first child. He was inducted into the United States Army with the rank of Private on December 10, 1942. 

Brenda was just 36 days old.

Vernon's collection of military records is revealing in that fully one-third or more of the documents are receipts and correspondence regarding a clerical problem with one or more life insurance policies he obtained upon being drafted in late 1942. 

He probably understood the value of life insurance better than most people his age, 26, thanks to his time working for Pilot Life.

Vernon Coltrane was inducted into the Army at Fort Bragg (now Fort Liberty) near Fayetteville, NC; however, his 'Report of Physical Examination,' dated February 18, 1943, places Pvt. Coltrane at Camp Wallace, Texas, probably for basic training. 

We next find Pvt. Coltrane in North Carolina, stationed at Camp Davis for officer candidate and anti-aircraft artillery schools between March 27 and December 31, 1943. 

On July 22, 1943, he was commissioned 2nd Lt., the rank he would hold for the remainder of his time in uniform.

On January 10, 1944, Vernon received orders to report to Hampton Roads Port of Entry near Newport News, Virginia, by the 18th of that month.

Here, the trail gets murky, but I have several more folders of unsorted primary documents yet to unpack.

While stationed at Camp Davis, apparently Trudy and Brenda lived nearby or visited for an a few weeks, and whether they traveled with Vernon to his Newport News assignment isn't clear. 

I believe they remained at the home of Trudy's mother for most of the duration of Vernon's service, perhaps after an attempt to stay together during his first assignment in North Carolina proved too strenuous for the young family.

At some point during the next year, Vernon formally requested to be transferred from his artillery unit into the military postal system, and somehow, it worked. 

Vernon Coltrane escaped being sent to an active, frontline warzone because he was educated and had worked in the postal system before the war, at least long enough for it to count.

But there was a price to be paid for that relatively safe posting: it was on the other side if the world, in India.

 

Starting again.

It's been a few years since I added anything new to this little repository of family lore. A lot has happened; people have gone, and new people have arrived.

Of all the children and grandchildren my ancestors produced, I'm probably the least likely, and least qualified to write these stories. I'm a college dropout. I'm un-American by many standards because I embraced the theories of Karl Marx. I'm also an entrepreneur, self-employed for the last fifteen years, with no employees.

At nearly sixty years old, I'm now older than all my grandparents were when I was born in 1966; I'm beginning to gain a perspective on life that only arrives as we enter the waning acts of this thing we call living.  I'll probably commit many errors along the way.

Last week, I began moving the collection of family memorabilia and relics to my new office, where I can more easily access them and begin cataloging and putting more pieces together. My goal is to leave behind a published book for my children, grandchildren, and others to know these people I knew, whose lives and actions contributed to my own existence and who I am.

The stories here are drafts, probably out of order and definitely incomplete, but it's a convenient medium in which to write.

Grandchild

Do you remember me?

Vaguely, if at all?

Was I lucky enough to hold the infant that was you,
before I departed to the silence lying beyond this life?

It's likely that we'll never meet, so I'm leaving you these words.

I hope some day you'll find them when you go looking for
answers;to help you understand who and why you are.

Much of who we are depends on one tiny strand
of genetic code at the core of our being.

It makes your hair grow straight, or turns it
red, or your eyes blue instead of green.

DNA makes you uniquely you; a random blend of all
the people and personalities who were your ancestors.

Are you an artist?

Do you paint,
or write,
or make music?

That might be me, being part of you.

Do you have a gap between your two front teeth?
My mother's mother gave us that.
Who knows where she got it?

Are you extra tall?
Could be the Wakefield
in your blood.

Are you hot-headed?
Passionate?

Do you get a little preachy once in awhile,
or become or easily incensed at injustice?

That's my grandfathers, mingled together
in the man that is, or was once, me.

But I'm only one of your grandfathers,
a tiny fraction of all that you are;
a fourth, or an eighth, a sixteenth, even less.

There's no telling which of us got you into this mess.

-

I wrote this poem a few days ago and published it on another site, but it belongs here.

Who's that kid in the old tintype?

Is this Lee B. Coltrane?

I found this tintype portrait among the photos I've collected over the years. It came from Vernon Coltrane's family.

According to Wikipedia, "Tintypes enjoyed their widest use during the 1860s and 1870s, but lesser use of the medium persisted into the early 20th century."

I'm guessing the boy in the picture is about twelve years old. He looks to be wearing a uniform of some kind. A school uniform perhaps? Surely not a military uniform.

Solomon Hodgin Coltrane, Vernon Coltrane's grandfather, was born in 1847, so it's probably not him, but it might be one of his children. If so, could this be Vernon's father, Lee B. Coltrane? Lee was born in 1891, so it's possible.

Solomon and Emma had five sons: Shubal, Albert, Alexander, Carl, and Lee. Among their eight children Shubal was the oldest, born in 1874, and Lee the youngest son. This portrait could be any of them, or someone entirely different, but since it was in possession of Vernon's family, my gut tells me this is probably our great grandfather, Lee Beacher Coltrane.

A brief summary of the ancestry of Vernon Eugene Coltrane.

Our Coltrane ancestors have been in central North Carolina for nearly three hundred years, since long before the French and Indian Wars. The first Coltrane known to have been born in North America was William Coltrane, born sometime around 1743 in eastern North Carolina.

William Coltrane was the only son of David Coltrane and Mary Trotter and was among the earliest Europeans to settle in what is now Randolph County.

Deep River settlers, 1750s-1780s

David Coltrane was the third son of Patrick Coltrane and Elizabeth Stewart of Wigton, Scotland; born sometime in the first decade or so of the eighteenth century.  He emigrated from Scotland to North America sometime before 1738.  Colonial records indicate that David owned at least 530 acres in what was then Edgecombe County, and was appointed Justice of the Peace in 1743.

At one time it was believed that David had returned to Scotland to settle his father's estate and was lost at sea, but more recent research indicates that our David Coltrane was most likely a member of the first British military force raised entirely on American soil. Being neither regular British army nor navy, some have called these men the first American marines.

David Coltrane is believed to have been among the men mustered into Gooch's Regiment, which unsuccessfully attempted to seize Cartagena, one of Spain's principal gold-trading ports in the colony of New Granada.

Lindsay Coltrane

Mosquito-borne diseases such as Yellow Fever and Malaria were as lethal to Europeans as Old World diseases were to the aboriginal peoples of the Americas, and many men died during the long voyage from the Carolinas to Cuba and then to Cartagena.  It is believed that such was the fate of our grandfather, David Coltrane and that he was buried at sea sometime before June of 1745.

Mary Trotter married several more times in the course of her life, becoming the wife of Laws Preddy on June 27, 1745.  Additional records indicate that she later married John Messhenger, in 1752, and finally Robert Wallace, in August of 1754. Records also indicate that Mary's father, James Trotter, was appointed guardian of William Coltrane.  Mary's last will and testament, probated October 27, 1792, mentions only one son.

It is not certain when William Coltrane settled in what is today Randolph County, North Carolina. An indenture dated August 20, 1760, tells us that William purchased a 302-acre tract referred to as the Messuage Tenement from Christopher Smith of Orange County.  The property lay along Polecat Creek, in the Deep River watershed.

About that same year, William married Rachel Worthington, daughter of Jacob and Abigail Worthington. The consensus among most researchers today is that William and Rachel raised eight children (David, Abigail, Jacob, Mary, James, William, Daniel, and Rachel).

Emma and Solomon H. Coltrane.
wedding portrait?

The site of William and Rachel Coltrane's original homestead now lies beneath the waters of a man-made lake, having been submerged by the completion of the Randleman Dam project in the early 2000s. The land remained in possession of one of William's descendants until the lake was created.

William Coltrane's sixth child, also named William, was born in 1774. Sometime around 1798, Billy, as he was known, courted and married Sarah Frazier, a daughter of James Frazier and Martha Millikan. By then the Coltranes had become members of the Religious Society of Friends and were firmly rooted in the Quaker community that took root across the region. Randolph County is home to several of the oldest Quaker Meetings in the nation.

William and Sarah had nine children. Their third child, a boy they named Lindsay Coltrane, was born in 1816 and grew up to become a farmer like his father, and his grandfather before. In 1841 Lindsay Coltrane married Margaret Hodgin, a daughter of Solomon Hodgin and Tamar Dicks. In time Lindsay and Margaret brought eleven children into the world.

Lee and Pearl Coltrane

Solomon Hodgin Coltrane, the fourth child of Lindsay and Margaret Coltrane, was born in 1847. Solomon married Emma Osborn, a daughter of Thomas Osborn and Mary Kersey. Among their eight children was a boy they named Lee Beacher(or Beecher) Coltrane.

Lee was a summer baby, born June 28, 1891, and like most of his ancestors, Lee scratched his living from the red clay under his feet. Upon retirement from the dairy farming business, Lee sold most of his farm to developers who built the Shannon Hills neighborhood, near Vandalia Road and Rehobeth Church Road.

Lee outlived two of his three wives, but his eight children all came from his first wife, Pearl Wakefield. My grandfather, Vernon Eugene Coltrane, was their fourth child, born just over a century ago on November 7, 1916.

Vernon grew up on his father's farm. He graduated from Sumner School in 1933 and obtained a degree in economics from Guilford College in 1937. While at Guilford, Vernon met our grandmother, Trudy Cochran, daughter of Luella Farmer and the late Dr. Ira Cochran of Kernersville; they were married in 1938.

Vernon E Coltrane (1916-2004)

Shortly after the birth of their first child, Brenda, Vernon was drafted to serve in World War II.  After basic and officer training, 2nd Lt. Vernon Coltrane was stationed at Ledo, Assam, India. His company worked on what came to be known as the Stillwell Highway, which ran from the station at Ledo to Kunming, Yunnan, China.

The road was built so that Western Allies could supply the Chinese after the Burma Road was cut off by the Japanese in 1942. Originally called Ledo Road, the highway was renamed Stilwell Road, after General Joseph Stilwell, in early 1945. The road fell into disrepair after the war, but efforts have been made to rehabilitate the highway.

After the war, Vernon found employment with the United States Postal Service and retired after more than thirty-one years in 1973.  He and Trudy raised a total of four children, (all still living as of this writing) and lived out their days traveling the world as long as their health allowed. Trudy died in early 2000; Vernon followed in 2004.

The remarkable children of George and Alice Wakefield.

George Wakefield married Alice in 1888. I've never been clear on whether George was Alice's first husband or not because I've seen her name in several combinations of Alice Letcher Hayes Reid. It wasn't unheard of in the late nineteenth century, for a person to marry and lose a spouse within the first few years. As we've seen previously with Len and Sallie Bryant, it does happen.

Greensboro Record, April 1900

At any rate, by 1890 Alice had given birth to the first of eight children she would bear between then and 1903. The oldest child was my great grandmother, Mary Pearl Wakefield (sometimes mislabelled Pearl Margaret).

Pearl grew up to be a remarkable woman in her own right, and I look forward to writing her story someday. A newspaper item from 1900 will suffice to foreshadow the strong woman grandma Pearl would become. Click on the clipping to make it bigger.

Apparently, longevity is a genetic trait among the Wakefields, because two of Alice and George's daughters, Lillian and Hallie, outlived even their nonagenarian father. Each lived about three months beyond their one-hundredth birthday. George, Jr., also lived a very long life, reaching ninety-two years old.

Not all the siblings were so lucky. Pearl died in 1953, at only sixty-three years old, and another sister, Edna, died in 1940 at forty-one. Hallie's twin sister, Beulah, died in infancy.

Perhaps the luckiest of all of George and Alice Wakefield's children was their youngest son.

A few weeks before Thanksgiving, in 1914, Thomas and his older brother, George, Jr., were out hunting; Thomas was accidentally shot in the head with a .22 caliber rifle. The story, published in the Greensboro Daily News, was picked up by newspapers across the region, and perhaps was carried even further.

Miraculously, Thomas Wakefield survived and lived an otherwise long and unremarkable life. When he died in May of 1983 he was eighty years old, and I suppose, still carried that bullet in his head.

A Coltrane family reunion, circa 1960.

Lee B. Coltrane threw a party at his home every year to celebrate his birthday, 28 June, 1891.
This event evolved into a reunion, held each year on the Sunday following Father's Day.
This photo was taken a year or two either side of 1960, at Lee's final home on Galway Drive.

How Robert Morehead died on George Wakefield's farm.

Greensboro Telegram, 06 July 1900

On Friday, July 6, 1900, a man named Robert Morehead, an employee on George Wakefield's dairy farm south of Greensboro, was gored by a bull and died that afternoon.

Robert Morehead was a black man. He had a wife and small children. He lived in a place then outside the city limits called Warnerville.

Published Monday, 09 July 1900

In those days, there was no Occupational Safety and Health Administration coming to investigate. There were no Workmen's Compensation laws, and likely no life insurance to provide for surviving spouses and children. The social safety net was still decades away.

George Wakefield placed a statement in the newspaper a few days after the accident, essentially washing his hands of any responsibility, and it's likely that his account of the event is factual and complete, but we will never know.

A black man, born into slavery in 1849, was still valued little more than a horse, a bull, or a good dog to most white people 117 years ago, even in progressive Greensboro, North Carolina.

Had the farmhand involved in this accident been a white man, or a family member, we would probably have a much more detailed record of what happened. The investigation would have been much more thorough, and the newspaper items more detailed. Charges; criminal, or civil, or both, might even have been filed.

I wish I knew more about what happened to Robert Morehead, and his widow, and their children. I am sorry he lost his life that way.

Greensboro City Directory, 1896-97,  listing Robert Morehead and his wife, Clara.

George Wakefield, 1862-1956

My maternal grandfather was Vernon Eugene Coltrane; his maternal grandfather was George Wakefield, the fifth child of Ann Haines and Henry Wakefield. George was the middle child of nine, born September 11, 1862, near present-day Varney, Ontario, Canada.

George Wakefield, seated

When George was still a boy the family immigrated to the United States, settling in the Friendship community a few miles west of Greensboro.

The Wakefields prospered in the warmer southern climate, and their integrity earned them the respect and friendship of their new neighbors. It is known that Henry Wakefield, Sr., and at least one of his sons, William, became naturalized citizens in 1880. Whether Ann or the other children ever became citizens I have not yet been able to determine.

As a young man, George attended the New Garden Boarding School, a few miles east of the family farm. The Religious Society of Friends, better known as Quakers, founded New Garden in 1837. It became the four-year liberal arts institution known today as Guilford College in 1888.

George has been painted, perhaps unfairly, for much of the last seventy years or more, as a wanderer, based on a passage in The Family of Henry Wakefield, North Carolina, 1805-1950.

"As a young man he had the wanderlust and his first work away from home was with Mr. Seymour Steel's Livery stable in Greensboro... where he earned $10 per week and his board."

Moving ten miles down the road, even in the days before automobiles, hardly seems like wanderlust. Ten dollars in 1880 was equivalent to about $223 in today's money. Add meals and a bed and George had a pretty sweet deal going on down at the stable.

Compared to his brothers, who managed a successful business while attending medical school or seminary at the same time, George may not have seemed headed for a life of distinction, but George Wakefield did something not many humans do: he lived to be almost a century old. In fact, George Wakefield outlived all but one of his siblings.

Let's start over. 

George Wakefield was born in Canada during the American Civil War, and moved to North Carolina with his family, during Reconstruction. George got an education and set about finding something useful to do.

As a farmer's son, George was no stranger to physical work, and like many of the Wakefields, he was very tall, so he was probably a powerful man in his prime. George was was neither lazy nor dull, he excelled at mathematics while at the New Garden school, but he was more physically suited to working with his hands and body than sitting behind a desk, so George went to work.

George Wakefield, in 1948, with his daughter Pearl,
grandson, Vernon Coltrane, and great-granddaughter, Brenda 

After earning a little nest egg at the livery in Greensboro, George is known to have traveled to Missouri to visit one of his uncles (perhaps the wanderlust remark noted above would be more applicable here), where he lived and worked in a sawmill camp. 

Upon returning to Greensboro, George joined Company Number One of the Greensboro Volunteer Fire Department and worked for a time with his brothers at their hardware store.  Later he worked for the Richmond and Danville Railroad as well as for J.I. Case, but George Wakefield is perhaps best remembered as a dairy farmer.

In 1888, at 26 years old, George married Alice Hayes Reid, three years his junior. The marriage produced eight children over the next fifteen years: Pearl, Lillian, Hallie and Beulah, Edna, Esther, George, and Thomas. Hallie and Beulah were twins, but Beulah died at a very young age. George and Alice had been married for fifty-one years when Alice died in 1939. George was 76. Their daughter Edna died the following year.

George lived another seventeen years, part of the time with his daughter, Pearl, and her husband, Lee B. Coltrane. George and Alice Wakefield's surviving children produced thirty-one grandchildren, the largest branch of the Henry Wakefield family tree. When he died, George Wakefield was over 93 years old.

Henry Wakefield's farm is now an airport.

The farm Henry Wakefield purchased in 1871 was probably located where Piedmont Triad International Airport is today.

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.

The Wakefields of Ontario, Canada.

The story of the Wakefield side of our family picks up around 1805, in the town of Preston, Lancashire, England, with the birth of a baby boy named George.

George's parents were Joseph and Sarah Wakefield, and little more is known about his early life, except that as a young man George Wakefield somehow made his way several hundred miles south to Swindon, Wiltshire, where he courted and married Louisa Brown.

Henry & Ann Hunt Haines Wakefield

George and Louisa Wakefield's firstborn child, Henry, came into the world on February 21, 1828, followed quickly by two sisters. In 1832, when Henry was four years old the young family immigrated to Canada. Tradition holds that the middle daughter, whose name has been lost to history, died during the crossing and was buried at sea.  Young Henry's uncle, George's brother, is reported to have died when the ship he was returning to England.

Upon arrival in North America, it is believed that the Wakefields traveled overland from Boston, Massachusetts to Ontario, Canada, where they settled near a community called Arkell, roughly 100 miles west of Toronto.

Eight more children were born to George and Louisa Wakefield on the farm they carved out of the forest roughly a mile north of Arkell, five sons, and three daughters: William, John, George, Thomas, Edward, Esther, Jane, and Louisa.

In 1833 another group of immigrants sailed from England, most likely landing in New York. From there, Henry and Ann Haines traveled to Newark, New Jersey, where, two weeks later a daughter, Ann Hunt Haines was born. The Haines family also settled in the vicinity of Arkell, where Henry Haines built a large, two-story log home, part of which was reported still standing as late as 1950.

The estimated location of George and Louisa Wakefield's farm.

Ann Hunt Haines spent much of her childhood living in the home of a prosperous uncle, William Trentfield Haines, who remained in Newark. Ann lived a lavish life by all accounts, and only returned to her parents' wilderness home for brief visits.

It was on one of these visits that Ann must have been introduced to Henry Wakefield. On February 1, 1854, the pair were married by Reverend A. Palmour at Guelph. The first of  Henry and Ann's children, William Haines Wakefield, was born November 19, 1855, and over the next eighteen years, Ann would bear nine more children into this world.

One day in the Spring of 1860, George Wakefield trekked over the hill and across a swollen stream with his black dog to Arkell. The dog returned home alone that evening, and when George failed to appear in a timely manner the dog led the party to a hole in an ice dam blocking the ford. A search was made and the body of George Wakefield was found in the stream.

Upon completing his business in town, George Wakefield had turned toward home. When he reached the stream he must have tried to cross and slipped through the ice and drowned.  According to English law, this left Henry, his oldest son, in full ownership of the house and heir to the greater part of the estate. At the ripe old age of 32, Henry Wakefield found himself in charge of his father's profitable farm and other business affairs. A significant portion of the family income at the time derived from an apple orchard said to have still been producing fruit over a century later.

Henry Wakefield's home was near Varney, Ontario

Several years after George's death the house burned and Louisa moved away to Guelph, where she lived with her daughter, Esther, until the end of her life in 1882.  At that time, Henry settled the estate and divided shares equally among his siblings.

There is no record to tell us when Henry established his home some sixty miles north of Guelph, on a farm in Garafraxa Township, County of Grey, near a place today called Varney.

According to Wikipedia, "In some small townships in Ontario, the title reeve was historically used instead of mayor. In some other municipalities, "mayor" and "reeve" were two separate offices, with the mayor retaining leadership powers while the reeve was equivalent to what other municipalities called an "at-large councilor"."

According to The Family of Henry Wakefield, North Carolina, 1805 - 1950, in 1861, Henry Wakefield was elected Deputy Reeve. In 1862 he was elected Head Reeve, an office he held until 1865, and again in 1867, 69, and 1870.  The job is said to have included chairing the local school board, handling municipal business, and occasionally settling minor legal disputes.

The text further states that the "family lived in a log house for a number of years. This land was hilly and covered with stones, many of which he collected for burning to make lime, others to build a house. Sometime after 1866 Thomas Wakefield, a brother built the house for him. He too was a skilled workman, and the house is still standing in good condition. Later he built a barn, the largest in the township."

Friendship Township, Guilford County, NC, today.

Winters in Ontario were bitterly cold, and family tradition holds that Henry wanted to move the family to a warmer climate.  The Civil War in the United States ended in 1865, and federal troops were still occupying the treasonous southern states when Henry visited Friendship, North Carolina about 1870 and purchased a farm.

He returned to Canada, sold his farm, and in 1871 moved his family to their new home in the United States.  Livestock and furnishings were loaded onto a boxcar connected to a freight train leaving Guelph. Henry and his two eldest sons would travel in the boxcar, while Ann and the remaining seven children traveled by passenger train to Baltimore.

She and the children rented a hotel room and waited for Henry and the boys to arrive. When they didn't appear as scheduled Ann began to wonder what to do; she had run out of money and had no way to continue the journey. Just as she and the children were about to give up looking for Henry and the older boys, one of the younger sons, George, recognized a box through the open door of a freight car.

The children of Henry and Ann Wakefield
front row, left to right: Will, Ellen, Esther, Henry, Ann, George
back row, left to right: John, Alice, Jane, Tom

The family, reunited, embarked by boat that afternoon for Portsmouth, Virginia. From there they continued by rail to Greensboro, North Carolina. Arriving in the middle of the night, and reportedly walking the last several miles to their new home in a predominantly Quaker community still reeling from a war they never wanted.

Henry Wakefield established himself as a man of integrity in his new community. As if to cement the bond to their new home, Henry and Ann's tenth child, Ellen Carolina, was born August 26, 1873, in Friendship, North Carolina.  Henry became a naturalized citizen in 1880 and thereafter served as postmaster and express agent of the township for several years.

After many years of progressive farming and developing one of the most modern dairy operations in the county, Henry Wakefield died of a "heart ailment" on July 28, 1897. Ann spent her final years living in the home of her youngest son, Thomas, and died on January 12, 1920.

The twisted tale of our Confederate Yankee grandfathers.

I am descended from at least three, if not more, Confederate soldiers, on both sides of my family, but from what I can gather, none were so much 'dedicated to the lost cause' as they simply did what they had to do to stay alive.

I have already written to some extent about Harry Hubbard, the Maine born mariner who settled near Fayetteville, NC on the eve of secession and fought for the Confederacy until captured, here. Today, I want to dig deeper into my mother's mother's father's family: the Cochrans.

For most of my life I was told that my great grandfather, Dr. Ira Lee Cochran, Sr., a dentist who died of a stroke at age 56, was an orphan. Several years ago, I discovered that this was not the case at all.

Dr. Ira Lee Cochran (1873-1929)

Dr. Cochran was born in Pennsylvania in 1873, the child of a former Confederate soldier from North Carolina and a daughter of a western Pennsylvania family. He was not the first generation in the family to be the result of such a geographically diverse union.

Ira's paternal great grandparents were Robert McClellan Cochran (1792-1873), a son of Irish immigrants, and Agnes Elizabeth McGinnis. They settled in what is now Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.

Joseph Lee Cochran, Ira's grandfather, was born July 21, 1820, in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. He grew up to become a farmer, a teacher, and a doctor, and somehow, in those days before mass transit and instant electronic communications, he got to know people in western Pennsylvania. How this came to be is the subject of much speculation.

On 11 October, 1842. Joseph Cochran married Elizabeth Balentine in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. The marriage produced two children, both born in North Carolina: Jane, in 1843, and Robert John, in 1846. 

Elizabeth must have died sometime in the late 1840s. The 1850 federal census finds Joseph married, to Ann Margaret Melone and living in Washington County, Pennsylvania. His occupation is listed as teacher. Sometime during the 1850s the growing extended family returned to Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.

On September 3, 1861, aged 41 years, Joseph mustered in as a sergeant in Company H, known as the 'Mecklenburg Farmers'. On September 27, Company H was assigned to the 35th Regiment, NC Troops, CSA.

 According to Official Records, Series I, Vol. IV, "This regiment was organized at Camp Crabtree, three miles west of Raleigh. Regimental officers were elected on November 8, 1861, and the regiment was mustered in for twelve months' state service. The Reverend James Sinclair, former chaplain of the 5th Regiment N.C. State Troops, was elected colonel. The regiment remained in camp near Raleigh for the remainder of 1861. Early in January, 1862, the regiment was transferred to Confederate service effective January 1, 1862. The regiment departed for New Bern on January 8; the men were reported to be 'fully and well armed' although their number was 'reduced...by sickness, principally measles and mumps."

On February 6, 1862, Joseph Cochran was discharged from duty for "defective vision". Joseph's health must have been deteriorating, because on September 11, 1863, he wrote his last will and testament. On November 26, 1863, at Davidson, North Carolina, he died.

Shortly after his father's death my great-great grandfather, Robert John Cochran, "enlisted for the war" on December 28, 1863, in Mecklenburg County. He was seventeen years old and orphaned. Some would speculate here that young Robert Cochran volunteered to fight for the Confederacy, but given passage of the Conscription Acts of 1862, in his grief he may have simply accepted his fate and seen no reason to forestall the inevitable. No records exist to tell us why either of these men enlisted to fight for the Confederacy. No evidence exists that Joseph Cochran owned any slaves. There were none mentioned in his will.

According to North Carolina Troops 1861-1865, A Roster, Volume: IX, Robert Cochran was, "wounded in the head at or near Bermuda Hundred, Virginia, May 20, 1864," during the battle of Ware Bottom Church. He returned to duty prior to June 17, 1864, when he was captured during the second battle of Petersburg. Taken prisoner, Robert was listed among those confined at Elmira, New York, July 30, 1864."

On May 15, 1865, Robert Cochran was released upon taking the oath of allegiance, and by 1872 was married and living in Pittsburgh with his wife, Angie Fleming. The couple had two children, Ira Lee, born in 1873, and a daughter, Edna Jesse, in 1875. Some have questioned why both Robert and his sister settled in Pennsylvania after the war. My theory holds that with their parents and their paternal, grandparents no longer living, and the South in ruins, neither had any reason to stay. It's also a fair indication that the family sympathies overall were with the Union.

Trudy Cochran Coltrane
Luella Farmer Cochran

Ira Lee Cochran, Sr. must have been inspired by stories of his polymath grandfather, Joseph Lee, because he followed a similar path in life, first becoming a school teacher, and later returning to school to study dentistry.

Dr. Cochran  was a graduate of what was then called Slippery Rock College, and established what must have been a fairly successful dental practice in Irwin, Pennsylvania for a time. On March 24, 1904, he married Luella Farmer (Frank A. Farmer, Martha Ann Bankert). Their third surviving child was my grandmother, Trudy Cochran Coltrane.

Why did Ira's family - his children, his wife, perhaps even himself - maintain that he was an orphan? Was it an active attempt to shield the family the embarrassment of being the descendants of traitors, or was it simply a case of facts becoming so muddied across generations that misfortune visited upon one was mistakenly attributed to another generation? We may never know with certainty.

I'm fortunate to know who I am, where my people came from, and to a small degree the kind of people my ancestors were. Many of my friends, especially those who are descended from former African slaves, often are not so fortunate, and must work much harder to discover their heritage.

I am not proud of my ancestors' participation in a war to maintain the institution of chattel slavery, whether voluntary or coerced, nor can I judge them too harshly, because the world in which I have existed for fifty plus years is far different from the world they had to navigate. We are all just humans trying to survive in a world that rarely makes perfect sense.

That said, Marcus Tullius Cicero said, “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?” 

To remain wilfully ignorant of what happened before you were born, in order to prop up a comforting delusion, especially one involving slavery and civil war, is a crime against one's ancestors.

Last Will & Testament of Joseph Lee Cochran

    State of N.C. Mecklenburg County, Sept 11th 1863. Know all men by these presents that I, J. L. Cochran, being of sound & disposing mind & memory, but in a public state of bodily health & mindful of the uncertainty of life do make publish & declare this my last will & testament hereby revoking all other wills heretofore made by me

Four of Joseph Lee Cochran's great-grandchildren. (l-r)
Aline Cochran Murphy
Ira Lee Cochran, Jr.
Jean Cochran
Trudy Cochran Coltrane

    Item first I devise & bequeath to my beloved wife Ann Margaret all my household & kitchen furniture, my mule & stock of all kinds farming utensils and all the grain & provisions which may be on hand at my decease & also my Rockaway & harness & my repeater and all the personal property of which I may be possessed or entitled to at my decease except my shot-gun & buggy and the debts due me & the money I may have on hand.

    Item 2nd I devise & bequeath to my son Robert John my shot gun.

    Item 3rd. My will is that my executor hereinafter named shall apply all the money I may have on hand and which may be due my estate & which may arise from the sale of my buggy by my executor after paying therefrom all charges against my estate to the purchase of land for the use of my wife during her widowhood and after her decease or marriage for the use of all my children equally to be divided between them share & share alike.

    Item 4th I hereby nominate & appoint my trusty friend & brother Wm. L. Cochran my executor to execute this my last will & testament & every part thereof made published signed & declared in the presence of

    A. M Iver

    James E. Andrews

    J L. Cochran

 SOURCE:  NC Wills, filed in Will Book J 177, and in state archives.

A too brief outline of the life of our uncle, Ira Lee Cochran, Jr.

Ira Lee Cochran, Jr

One of the most interesting characters in my family tree is my mother's uncle, Lee.  Ira and Luella Cochran's youngest child was their only son, Ira Lee, Jr.

Uncle Lee was born November 15, 1920, in Westmoreland County Pennsylvania, just a few months ahead of the passing of the last of his grandparents, Frank Anson Farmer, the following January.

Sometime before 1929 the extended Cochran family - Ira, Luella, their four children, Aline, Jean, Trudy, and Lee; Aline's two young children, and Dr. Cochran's sister, Jessie and her husband James McCorkle - packed up and moved to Kernersville, North Carolina.  They lived in a chicken house for a time, while a home was constructed.

Tragedy struck on May 4, 1929, about six months before Lee's ninth birthday, when his father died of a stroke.

Lee Cochran spent roughly half his life a bachelor.  He married briefly at a young age, but the marriage ended quickly in divorce or annulment.

Lee enlisted in the US Navy sometime in 1942. Correspondence from the period indicates that he may have been stationed in New Orleans for a time, perhaps for training, but by late November he was apparently recuperating in a naval hospital in San Diego.

His injuries were apparently serious enough to merit a medical discharge, upon which Lee re-enlisted in the United States Merchant Marine, serving in both the Atlantic and Mediterranean theaters.

After the war, Lee entered the trucking business. Sometime in the early years of his driving career Lee was injured in an accident in Virginia, where he was hospitalized for a time.

By the late fifties, if not before, Lee was operating his own truck, and remained an independent driver for the rest of his career.

At one point, probably the late fifties or nineteen-sixties, Lee owned a small airplane and undertook training for his pilot's license.  The story is told that a man approached Lee and wanted to buy the airplane. Lee didn't want to part with the plane, but the man offered a very good price, so Lee accepted the offer.  Not long afterward, the new owner overloaded the plane and died attempting to take off.

Lee met Catherine Farrow through a neighbor when she shared a house in the Ardmore neighborhood of Winston-Salem after graduating from college.  The neighbor was one of Lee's best childhood friends.  The friend originally set Lee up to date another woman in the house, Maxine, but soon turned hi attention to Catherine.  They dated for about twenty years before marrying on January 19, 1973, in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Lee purchased land in Stokes County, North Carolina, in the Quaker Gap community.  Lee and Catherine intended to retire to a house they never built, up on Saddle mountain. Catherine eventually sold the farm and the house on Patria Street, where they lived together until Lee's death on January 22, 1997.