52
Weeks 52 Ancestors Week 23– Peter Bailey
How
did I meet Peter Bailey and are the documents found really for my 3rd great
grandfather? Last week I wrote about my
2nd great grandfather, Prince Albert Bailey. Prince fit the verbal history past down in our
family as the father of Mary Bailey, my great grandmother who married Wesley
Watkins in Alabama.
This
family historian through the Alabama Deaths, 1908-1974 index on
FamilySearch.org, met Peter Bailey. The
record for Prince Bailey of Demopolis, Marengo, Alabama list his death 04 Jan
1930 and in that record his wife is Adiline (Adeline) and his father is Peter
Bailey, born in Virginia. There was no
information about his mother. So now the
journey begins to learn as much as documents will yield on Peter Bailey.
Peter
appears to have married Ella Carter on 31 Dec 1870 in Marengo County according
to Alabama Marriages on familysearch.org and on prairebluff.com, Marengo County
Alabama Marriage Index, colored, 1866-1871, Black Families of Alabama Black belt. It was necessary to pause at this finding
for Ella is not listed as Prince’s mother and this marriage took place years
after Prince was born about 1851 or 1852.
Was this because of the slavery period when Alabama didn’t permit
enslaved people to marry or was Prince the child of another woman? In searching
line by line in the 1870 US Census, Spring Hill, Marengo County with a P.O. Box
Demopolis, there is a Peter Bailey on page 4, line 15, household 33 who is a 60
year old black male born in South Carolina working as a farm laborer. This
Peter was born about 1810 and living with him is Martha Bailey, age 39 keeping
house. Prince, age 20, in 1870 was
living in Clarke County, Mississippi, a few counties west of Marengo. A record of one Peter Bailey, married to Ella
was found in the 1880 US Census, Demopolis, Marengo with a birthdate of around
1839.
If
this is Prince’s father one must question Peter’s birth year for Prince’s is
listed as 1851 or 1852. Could this Peter
be a brother of Prince for the birth state is listed as Alabama and in Prince’s
death record, his father Peter’s place of birth is Virginia?
Fast
forward to 01 Sep 1930, the date Lue Bailey age 90 died. Her spouse in the Alabama, Deaths, 1908-1974
(familysearch.org) Demopolis, Marengo is listed as Peter Bailey. Lue estimated birth year is 1840 and appears
to be too young to be mother of Prince, born 1851 or 1852. Next in Alabama Deaths, 1908-1974 Merriett
Bailey, male, colored, age 75 (estimated birth year 1839) died on 25 Jun 1914
in Old Spring Hill, Marengo. The record
lists Peter Bailey as his father without any listing under mother same as
Prince Albert Bailey’s record.
Bailey
slave owners settled in the Faunsdale/Baileyton Lands during the 1800s. Further
research shows there were Bailey slaveholders in Amelia and Halifax Counties,
Virginia as well as Halifax County, North Carolina and there was the “Bailey
Plantation” in Edisto Island, SC. In pondering and reviewing the documents
found there are many miles to go in attempt to find out more about Peter Bailey
and most of all to sort it all out on my Journey.
