Frances Elizabeth Daniel (1844-1911)

My Paternal 2nd Great Grandmother, married Thomas Hatton Langley

Francis Elizabeth (“Fannie”) Daniel, the daughter of Benjamin Lanier Daniel and Margaret Little, was born on January 29, 1844 and lived with her parents until she married 30 year old Thomas Hatton Langley in September of 1865. They settled down together to farming life in Pitt County, North Carolina where both of their parents had lived.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861 her husband enlisted, along with his father and brother. All eight of her brothers also enlisted in the Confederate army. The family suffered heart wrenching losses.

[Photo: This Wheat Field Captures the Beauty but not the Hardships of Farming]

The end of the war would certainly have been a welcome relief for the newlyweds, but the couple had to face the economic hardships and upheaval brought on by post war reconstruction in the south. Whatever wealth their families had enjoyed before the war was gone. Still, they were lucky to have each other. There were tens-of-thousands of widows and fatherless children all over the south; tens-of-thousands of morphine addicts from war related injuries, and homeless veterans and disabled veterans whose injuries prevented them from tending to life's basic tasks.  The most chilling statistic of the era – Mississippi spent 20% of its entire state budget on artificial limbs. As a rule, Civil War soldiers were more religious than Americans today, more imbued with notions of honor and glory, and less inclined to share their pain or seek help for it. The mental health profession was in its infancy in those days and without a support system in place, those that suffered from PTSD or other war related afflictions had to struggle alone.

[Photo: this photo of young boy with a double amputation is a chilling reminder of the horrors of war ]

Fannie gave birth to their first son, David Sydney, in 1867. David was named for Fannie’s oldest brother who had been killed in the war. David dropped out of elementary school after 3 years of education. He married Virginia Laura Woolard, fathered at least nine children and in the 1940 census at the age of 73 was still working 50 hours a week as a farmer. He died 3 years later of breast cancer.

Fannie gave birth to her second son, Benjamin Daniel, in 1869.  He was named for Fannie’s youngest brother who also lost his life during the War. In 1895 Benjamin married 17 year old Sarah Electa Teel and together they had eight children.  Benjamin never attended school and, in the family tradition, made a living farming. He died of heart disease in 1937. 

Fannie gave birth to her first daughter, Penelope Elizabeth, in 1872. Penelope married Edgar Hatton in 1889 and gave birth to four children the oldest of whom was nine when her husband died. She married a second time to George Washington Griffin in 1899 and added five more children to the family. Both George and Penelope could read and write but neither of them had ever attended school, and not surprisingly the family lived by farming. Interestingly, Penelope died in 1953 of the same disease as her brother David, of breast cancer.

Fannie’s second daughter Margaret Little was born in 1876. Margaret, named after her grandmother, is my ancestor. Her story is told in a separate blog.

[Photo: Farming in America in 1880s and 1890s]

Fannie’s third daughter, Fannie Corinne (born 1879) escaped farm life and lived a colorful albeit tragic existence. There is evidence that at age fifteen Corinne gave birth out of wedlock in 1895 to a son named Walter Raleigh who was taken care of by her parents.  At age nineteen Corinne married a man, John Powell, who had had three other wives in previous marriages.  Corrine and John had a daughter, Belle Francis, and Corrine was 8 months pregnant with their second child (Corinne “Johnnie”) when John was killed in a horrific fire on the steamship S.V. Luckenback in March of 1903. The ship was loaded with 26,000 barrels of crude oil. All members of the crew perished. All that remained was a message in a bottle found on a beach in Virginia that said:

“This is thrown overboard from the steamship SV Luckenbach bound from Sabine pass to Philadelphia with a cargo full of oil on fire.…..been working two days and nights to extinguish the flames. Signed JS Flint, Fireman….”

{Photo: Corrine’s children, Johnnie and Belle Francis]

Corinne moved with her two children into a boardinghouse in Phoebus, Virginia. In those days, Phoebus had a reputation as a “wild village with the most dangerous port on the Atlantic seaboard.” In 1900 it housed 52 saloons and was home to an abundance of prostitutes that catered to lonely veterans and sailors. While there in 1906 Corrine met and married husband number two, Benjamin Holland. Benjamin had previously been married to a woman named Irene Davis who had been arrested for “frequenting houses of ill fame” the day before the couple tied their nuptial knot. The newspaper reported the “bride wore a comfortable shirt of light material and a sailor hat which crowned a profusion of auburn hair” and the groom was attired in “rags regimental.”  Benjamin and Irene couple divorced in 1906 and soon thereafter Corrine became Benjamin’s wife. The 1910 census reported Benjamin’s occupation as saloon proprietor. Corrine gave birth to their son Raymond a year after they were married. Raymond dropped out of high school and married three times. His first marriage in 1932 lasted one year and the divorce degree not surprisingly reported adultery as the cause. The second marriage produced a child three months later. The 1940 census reported a divorced Raymond was in the Hampton city jail.

[Photo: Phoebus. Virginia in early 1900s]

In 1911 poor Corrine suffered the loss of her mother, followed by her father’s death in 1912, and then her husband succumbed to tuberculosis in 1914. And if that wasn’t enough her sister Deborah died in 1915 and soon after her sister Margaret in 1916.

Not to be discouraged, Corinne dusted herself off and tried again. In 1920 at the age of forty-one she was married for the third time to Albert Martin, who worked for the Coal Glen coal mine in North Carolina. In May of 1925, he was killed in a gas explosion at the mine. Rescue crews were not able to save any of the forty-seven men in the mine at the time of the explosion. Corinne received $1,000 in insurance proceeds from his estate and used half of it to pay for funeral costs.

[Photo: The Cole Glen Mine Explosion in May 1925 which killed Fannie Corrine’s third husband.]

A year later in July of 1926, Corinne married husband number four, John Wesley Ward, but according to her death certificate she was divorced. A sad note in a life of tragedy -- poor Corinne died of liver cancer in Phoebus in 1935 at the age of 55.  Her headstone recorded her last name as Ward, despite her divorce, and she was buried in the same plot in Oakland Cemetery in Hampton City, Virginia with her second and third husbands, Benjamin Holland and Alfred Martin.

[Photo: Oakland Cemetery In Hampton, Virginia where Corrine and two of her four husbands are buried]

Fannie’s third son, Thomas Pollard was born in 1882. In 1908 he married 16 year old Nettie Evans and she gave birth to four children for him before dying in 1913. He then married Allie Virginia Pilgreen who was twenty years younger than he was and she gave birth to a full dozen of his children. Based on his photo, the guy looked like quite the catch. Thomas worked in a sawmill for a while but then turned to farming to make a living. Thomas dropped dead of a heart attack in his yard at age 70 in 1952. His wife, Allie, looks pretty regal (and pregnant) in the picture that follows. She outlived him by 36 years and died in 1988.

[Photo: Thomas Pollard Daniel]

Fannie’s fourth daughter, Mary Perkins, was born in 1884. At the age of 18 in 1901 she married John “Jack” Tilghman and had four children. In the 1910 census Jack was no longer in her life and she and her four children had moved into her brother Benjamin’s household. Another son, Sam was born in 1912 so she must have had a marital reconciliation, but it was short lived - Jack died in 1913. In the 1950 census, Mary lived with one of her sons, Ernest, who made a living driving a bread truck. Mary died of a heart attack in 1956.

Fannie’s fifth daughter, Deborah Estelle, was born in 1886. She married a farmer, William J Paramore in 1909 and gave birth to two sons. One son, Edgar, earned his living as a foreman in a fertilizer factory, and served in the navy during World War II.  The other son, Joseph, had an eighth grade education, worked as a stock keeper in a furniture store and later as a farmer, and served as a private in the army during World War II.  Deborah died in 1915.

[Photo: Allie Pilgreen, wife of Thomas Pollard Daniel]

 By the 1900 census, Fannie’s husband Thomas had given up farming and at the age of 60 was a “car builder”. Their seventeen-year-old son Thomas worked as a sawmill laborer. Their daughters Mary and Deborah at 15 and 12 were still at home and so was their grandson Walter Raleigh, the illegitimate child of their tragic daughter Corinne.

When the 1910 census rolled around Thomas and Fannie with grandson Walter in tow, had moved in with their son, Benjamin, who had also taken in his sister Mary and her five children. It must have been a very crowded household because Benjamin and his wife had five children of their own living at home at the time. Fannie died in August of 1911, followed by her husband a year later in November 1912.

[Photo: The Remembrance Book for Francis Elizabeth Daniel 1911]