The William and Betsey Thornton Family

William and Betsey Thornton

William (born circa 1826) and Betsy Thornton (born circa 1830) are thought to have settled in the Reservation before the Civil War. According to family oral history, as a young girl, Betsey lived with the family of a white lawyer names Mr. Henley on what is now Scotland Street in Williamsburg. In an oral history given by their great-granddaughter, Mrs. Fannie (Pierce) Epps recalled:

"My mother told me that my great grandmother stayed with the Henley's...Evidently she must have been a maid there, but she wasn't a slave... She lived there."

Source: Fannie Epps (1987:52)

Mrs. Fannie Epps recalls that her great-grandparents Mr. and Mrs. Thornton “never were slaves.” They had one child named Fanny Thornton.

According to the 1865 Freedmen's Bureau Census, William and Betsey were living on the Tinsley farm, and William was a carpenter. Federal Census records suggest that by 1880, they owned their own home, and William was a farmer while Betsey kept the home. The couple were married for over 55 years.

Courtesy: Bernie Vaughan
Source: Ancestry.com. U.S., Freedmen's Bureau Records, 1865-1878 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2021.

In this excerpt from a 1987 oral history, Mrs. Fannie Epps recalls her great-grandparents’ home, giving a glimpse of the life they forged on this land before and after the Civil War:

Mrs. Fannie (Pierce) Epps and her husband Fred Epps Sr.
Photo Courtesy: Fredi Epps Jackson

"It was a log cabin…log house, I guess you could call it a cabin…’cause it had one big room with a big fireplace. And the walls were of clay…because they used to paper them—not with wall paper but with newspaper. And when I was a child—the reason I remember it was newspaper was I had just learned how to read—I was learning how to read. And I’d go around and read the newspapers. And she thought that was just grand...

They just had the one big room downstairs...The bed was in that room. Well, this and that was there. The bedroom, the sitting room and everything in that log cabin, ‘cause that little kitchen was in the back...

One thing that I remember, too, about it was that it had a bed…and they didn’t have mattresses like we have now. It was a quilted mattress. And so we had a little stool and the bed was up high like this. And I being a little child, I had to step up on the stool. And then I’d fall over on the bed. And the bed was made of feathers....And I used to like to get up on that stool and fall over in that bed because it was all soft and everything...that was one of the highlights of my young life."

Source: Fannie Epps (1987:51-52)

Great-granddaughter, Fannie Epps, remembers her great-grandfather, William, in his later years as:

"a heavy-set man. And he would just sit out in front of his cabin and smoke his pipe...whittling."

Source: Fannie Epps (1987:53)

George and Fannie (Thornton) Howard

William and Betsy Thornton's only daughter, Fanny, married George Howard (born circa 1841). In 1863, Mr. Howard appears to have enlisted in the U.S. Colored Troops at the age of 17 during the Civil War.

Ancestry.com. U.S., Colored Troops Military Service Records, 1863-1865[database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007. Original data:Compiled Military Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers. The National Archives at Washington, D.C.

George and Fanny Howard were listed as living on the Tinsley Farm alongside Fanny's parents in an 1865 Census record. George was farming at the time.

Courtesy: Bernie Vaughan
Source: Ancestry.com. U.S., Freedmen's Bureau Records, 1865-1878 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2021.

As granddaughter Fannie Epps recalled, in later years George and Fanny Howard owned land up the road from Fanny's parents, William and Betsey Thornton, and farmed their land together. Mr. Howard also worked as an oysterman and did plastering for homes in the Reservation community, according to Fannie Epps' oral history and 1880 Federal Census records.

Mrs. Fanny Howard served the community as a midwife, as Fannie Epps remembered:

“My grandmother was a midwife…And she used to go to people when they had these babies.”

George and Fanny Howard attended St. John Baptist Church, which was located on a hill above a little swamp called Black Swamp.

Source: Fannie Epps (1987:61)

Mrs. Fannie Epps describes George and Fannie Howard’s home from her memories of visiting her grandparents as a young girl:

“Their house was just a frame house…with a porch that was in the front. It came around a little bit on the side. And I remember there used to be, well, they used to call it the sitting room. And then they had a long dining room…The door was in the center and the sitting room was on one side and the dining room was on the other and that was the only rooms in that part downstairs. Upstairs they had bedrooms…over the sitting room and one over the dining room. And then we had to go out the back door on a little stoop and go out to the kitchen. The kitchen—it was close to the house… but not joining the house.”

Source: Fannie Epps (1987:54)

Mrs. Fannie Epps explains that her grandparents were self-sufficient:

"They had hogs, cows, horses, and chickens, guineas, ducks, turkeys, all of those things...They used to buy cloth, you know, material...to make because everybody had to sew then. And they'd make a lot of things..."

George and Fannie Howard also shared their farm produce with their daugther's family, Sarah and Henry Pierce, as Mrs. Epps remembered, "My grandparents had cows and naturally we had all the milk we wanted."

The Howards would travel from the Reservation to Williamsburg to purchase some staple goods, as Fannie Epps recalls:

"They'd come into Harris' Store and get their sugar and tea and things like that...They'd get flour. Eggs and meal and butter and shortening and all those things, you see, they used to have their own..."

Source: Fannie Epps (1987:55, 44, 55)

Scroll through these slides to read Mrs. Fannie Epps' memories of her grandparents' farm and the fun she had there when visiting from her home in Williamsburg:

Their home was surrounded by open land but near other families in the area, as Fannie Epps describes:

"The place called Halstead's Point was just down the road from them. Well, there would be a house there…and then you go maybe another half mile before you’d get to another house. And there was a store down there…All that I knew were Black families [living there] …with the exception of Mr. Howard. He lived up the road from them. What they really used to call Grove..."

Source: Fannie Epps (1987:56)

Based on 1880 and 1900 Federal Census records, George and Fannie Howard appear to have had 9 children: Sarah, Mary, George, William, Alice, Jo Anna, Frances, Lemuel, and Mamie. They also adopted a daughter named Florence Howard.

When she was about eleven years old, their eldest daughter, Sarah, went to live with Samuel and Joanna Harris, the Black entrepreneurs who owned The Cheap Store on Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg. Fannie Epps explains:

"My mother came up to stay with them [Samuel and Joanna Harris] when she was a little girl…because they had children—they were young people at that time, and were having children...The Harris’s, I might as well just say, raised my mother….They took her in as a child…and she used to tend to the babies…because I think they had one or two children when she came with her…and the others were born when she was a young woman."

After Sarah grew up and married Henry Pierce, the families continued a lasting connection. The Harris' gifted Sarah and Henry a deed to a home on Francis Street in Williamsburg as a wedding gift. Sarah's daugther, Fannie Epps, spent much of her time in the Harris household and considered herself one of the Harris family, referring to Samuel and Joanna as Grandma and Grandpa Harris.

Source: Fannie Epps (1987:66-67)

Samuel Harris' Cheap Store located at the corner of Botetourt and Duke of Gloucester Streets, Williamsburg, Virginia, circa 1900

Courtesy: Visual Resources, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

Samuel Harris' Cheap Store located at the corner of Botetourt and Duke of Gloucester Streets, Williamsburg, Virginia, circa 1900

Courtesy: Visual Resources, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

After William and Betsy Thornton and Fanny Howard, passed away, George Howard moved to Williamsburg shortly after the turn of the century and lived with his daughter and her husband, Sarah and Henry Pierce. Sarah's siblings had also moved away from the Reservation, going as far as Massachusetts, Maryland, and New York; however, they still returned to visit the property. Fannie Epps believes the family home was sold to the U.S. government and was torn down to build what is now known as the Naval Weapons Station, Yorktown.

Source: Fannie Epps (1987:161)

Sources:

Ancestry.com. U.S., Colored Troops Military Service Records, 1863-1865[database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007. Original data:Compiled Military Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers. The National Archives at Washington, D.C.
Ancestry.com, 1880 Federal Census Records.
Ancestry.com. U.S., Freedmen's Bureau Records, 1865-1878 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2021.
Epps, Fannie. 1987. Series of Oral Histories compiled by Kathleen Bragdon. John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

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