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John Howcott & Mary Jane Garrett
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John, son of
William Howcott and Axie Beasley, was christened at Grace Church, Plymouth NC
on 3 April 1859. The church record described William as “servant of Ch[arles] Howcott” and Axie as “servant of Mrs M Beasley”;
it stated that the sponsors were Mrs Mary Beasley [1] and Mrs H A Littlejohn. John married
Mary Jane Garrett at the Colored Baptist church, Plymouth on 5 February 1880,
their respective ages being recorded as 22 and 17. [2] When the census was
held in June of the same year, the couple were living at Plymouth and John
was working as a shingle hand. At that stage of their lives, neither John nor
Mary could read or write. Records differ
as to whether John and Mary Jane had six or seven children. [3] It has only
been possible to establish the names of the four of them who survived
infancy:
All four children were born in North Carolina. [5] At some stage
between 1892 and 1900 John and Mary moved north to Boston, Massachusetts,
where they remained for the rest of their lives. At the time of the 1900
census they were living at 137 Northampton Street, along with their four
children and John was working as a machinist. In contrast to the position
twenty years before, both Mary and he could read and write. In 1910, John and Mary along with their sons were living at 52
East Lennox Street. John was working as a switchman on the railroad and Mary
as a laundress. By 1920, John, Mary and Martin had moved back to Northampton
Street, where they lived at number 48, with their daughter Axie and her
family residing in the same house. John died at Boston on 28 May 1928. At the time of the 1930
census, Mary and her youngest son, whose name was recorded on that occasion
as “Luther”, were living at 140 Harrishof Street, along with her daughter
Lulu and her husband Charles A Henry. Mary Jane died on 1 January, probably
in the year 1932, and was buried at Fairview Cemetery, Hyde Park. Notes [1] Mary Alexander Beasley
(1811-1892) was the second wife of John Baptist Beasley (1796-1855), whom she
had married in 1828. Mary Beasley held 30 slaves in Washington county at the
time of the 1860 census. [2] The
most precise records of John’s and Mary’s dates of birth are found in the
1900 census, which say that he was born in March 1860 and she in March 1863.
Other sources vary by a few years and John’s baptism date rules out 1860,
unless he were the younger brother of a child christened in 1859 and that
child did not survive infancy. As they are earlier records, which would have
rested on information provided by John and Mary and probably also older
family members, the ages given for their marriage in February 1880 are
probably more reliable than the censuses; they indicate that John was born in
1857-8 and Mary Jane in 1862-3. The June 1880 census gives their ages as 23
and 18, which taken along with those stated at their marriage narrows their
birth dates down to the earlier parts of 1857 and 1862 respectively. However,
the 1870 census – when John’s mother was the head of the household - gives
John’s age as “15”, pointing to him having been born in 1854-5. On balance,
the strongest evidence is that John was born in 1857 and Mary Jane in 1862. [3] The 1900 census reports that
Mary Jane was the mother of seven children, but the 1910 census gives the total
number of her children as six. Both sources confirm that only four of the
children were still alive at the time. [4] Martin Luther Howcott was
described as single in 1920 but as a widower in the 1930 census. [5] In the 1920 census, the
birthplace recorded for Axie and Martin was more precisely recorded as
Plymouth. |
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