After all that research in Alabama, I had to take a
breather, but I’m easing back into organizing and writing things up. If you
read
my last post, you know that the
greatest find of my trip was actual living family members, but I also found
some pretty neat documents. Here’s one of them:
This is the marriage record for my
paternal great-great-grandparents, Solomon Harris and Ardenia Jackson (written
here as Adelia). They are the parents of my dad’s mom’s mom, Beatrice
Harris. If their names sound familiar, it’s because last August
I posted that a basic record about their
marriage had been placed online at FamilySearch.org. Well, I used that
information on my trip to find their marriage application, license and return
at the Montgomery County Probate Office in Alabama. That’s what you see above.
After I visited the Probate Court,
I spent some time at the Alabama Department of Archives and History, also in Montgomery, and something
told me to look up marriage records there, too. Thank goodness for that
feeling, because look what they had that the Probate Office didn't!
This
beautiful baby right here is a copy of the certificate that apparently would
have been given directly to the couple to take to their pastor of choice, who
would sign and return it to them upon completing the ceremony. They would then
have taken it back to the courthouse to be officially registered.
Solomon and Ardenia were married on
the 3rd of December in 1914. While the first record above states
Solomon was 21 and Ardenia was 18 when they married, other records that state
that both Solomon and Ardenia were born in the summer of 1897, making them each
actually just 17. The ceremony took place in Madison Park, in Montgomery, AL
and was conducted by a Reverend P.J Minefield. According to the marriage
license application (in the first document above), Ardenia was Baptist, while
Solomon has no religion listed, so it’s likely Rev. Minefield was a Baptist
minister. However, I haven’t yet been able to find anything on him.
Something did come up when
I looked up Madison Park in Montgomery
County, Alabama: the
History page for the Madison Park Community Reunion. If this is in fact the
Madison Park where they were married, then they celebrated their union in a
town that had been founded about 30 years earlier by former slaves in order to
“have a future for themselves and their families.” According to the website,
“They worked their own land;
built houses, established a school and houses of worship…. [T]he community
established farms and produces row crops and table vegetables. They built grist
mills, saw mills, two syrup mills, a cotton gin, grocery stores, a park and a
gravel pit. The community for all practical purposes was a self-sufficient
community.”
This was a place designed so that
African Americans, so recently out of slavery and facing hostility and abuse
from a region not willing to give up the racism or economics of slavery, could
feel safe and make their own way in the world. I don’t know if Solomon and
Ardenia actually lived in this community or had some other tie that led them to
be married there, or if this is even the same Madison Park (though I couldn’t
find any others) but if they did live there, how cool! (And yes, I sent the
group an email to see if I can find anything more!)
Solomon and Ardenia brought two
daughters into the world together, Beatrice in 1915 and Lillian in 1917. In
fact, another of my cool finds from the trip to Alabama were Beatrice and Lillian’s listings
in the Montgomery County Register of Births. (This was a real case of
serendipity, because there are only 2 registers and 10 years worth of birth
records available at the Probate Office, 1908-1912 and 1913-1917. I found 4
people!)
Here’s Beatrice:
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| (Left Side) |
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| (Right Side) |
And here’s Lillian:
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| (Left Side) |
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| (Right Side) |
Among other things, these records
tell us that this was the first marriage for both Ardenia and Solomon, that
they are living in Beat 18 of Montgomery County in 1915, and that both are
working as farm laborers in 1915 and 1917. But by 1918, Solomon is working for
the Winter Loeb Grocery Company, and it looks like they are living in the city
of Montgomery
itself, instead of on the farmland surrounding it. This may have been due to a
devastating infestation of boll weevils that hit Alabama's cotton crops starting in 1892 and
covering the entire state by 1916. Crops were destroyed year after year,
farmers were forced to sell land, and sharecroppers and tenant farmers were
pushed off or left the land in search of better opportunities. But through that
challenge, or whatever caused them to move, Solomon and Ardenia were still
together.
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| Solomon Harris' World War I Draft Registration Card, 1918 |
Unfortunately, this is the last
record that I have been able to find for Solomon. We know from Ardenia’s
obituary that Solomon passes away before her, and we know that by 1930 Ardenia
and her teenage daughters are
living together in Jefferson County,
where Ardenia makes her living operating a boarding house. Finally, we know
that she remarries in 1935 and moves north to Kewanee, Illinois
in the 1940s. I can’t find anyone in this family in the 1920 census, so that
gap between 1918 and 1930 unfortunately can’t be filled right now.
But at least we're able to capture
a few snapshots of their life together - their union, hard work, children,
change. Perhaps with time, luck, and more research, we'll be able to flesh this
out further.
Do you know something I don't
about Solomon and Ardenia? Please share!
