Thomas Linton Roberts & Elizabeth Morrisette Roberts of Camden, North Carolina were my 2nd great grandparents on my maternal side. Thomas was a farmer and they married in 1855. The couple had 9 children, their daughter, Jane, was my great grandmother, and I was named after her.
Thomas was only 50 years old when he died in a sad and unusual incident. The family was having a picnic meal under a large oak tree in their yard one summer afternoon and Thomas was struck by lightning and killed. It is said that it had thundered only one time and the lightning struck a pine tree and then jumped and came over to the oak tree that the family was under. Thomas had just said the blessing and had taken up his knife and fork when he was struck. He died along with the family dog that was at his feet. Everyone else was knocked away from the table.
Some details about Thomas and Elizabeth’s life are known from handwritten notes written by their granddaughter, Ida Ophelia Roberts Robertson. And a distant Morrisette cousin has taken those shared facts, and written the story of Elizabeth and Thomas’ life in the form of an open letter from Elizabeth to her family, and uploaded it online at Ancestry. This is longer than my usual blog post, but I think you will enjoy reading about Elizabeth and Tom in the following narrative:
Were
It Not For Stories Passed Down
By Stephen M.
Morrisette
5 Jun 2011
The heart of
this story, the very core facts, were recorded by Ida Roberts Robertson. She was the daughter of James Monroe Roberts,
the youngest child mentioned in this story.
The handwritten notes eventually fell into the hands of Monica who is
the great grandchild of Jestine, also mentioned in this story. Thanks to Monica for transcribing the
original handwritten letter into readable bullet statements and posting them on
Ancestry.
I took
Monica’s bullet statements and converted the story into a narrative
format. This required me to suppose
certain facts. For instance I state that
at the time of the incident Elizabeth had to leave Tom lying in the rain. That fact was not passed down to us but we
were told Tom was a large man and we were told Elizabeth was a slight
woman. It was also supposed that it was
raining.
[I wrote this
story because I am a Morrisette, not a Roberts.
Elizabeth is very distantly related to me, so it is my family history
too.]
Dear Cousins,
My name was…. well let’s see…. for the last 15 years of my life I
was known as the Widow Roberts. For 26
years before that I was known as Mrs. T.L. Roberts and before that I was just
plain Elizabeth Morrisette. I suppose
some of my family called me Lizzie or Beth or even Bettie but why don’t you
just call me Elizabeth?
I was born in Camden County, North Carolina about 1834; nobody
seems to remember exactly when. I was
always a small girl. I had black hair
and black eyes like the Indians but my skin was fair, like regular folks. When I was young they used to tease me that
they were going to give me back to the Indians.
That threat always scared me even though nobody was serious and there
wasn’t any Indians left to give me back to.
I used to have nightmares about it.
I had lots of nightmares when I was little.
My father was Phillip Morrisette.
I had no memory of him because he died when I was quite small. He died some time after my baby sister
Harriet was born, in 1837. My mama, died
when I was little bit older. I had some
memories of her, but not many.
I was put up with any number of relatives until my half-brother
William Jones Morrisette took me in, permanent.
He was 16 years my elder and by the time I moved in he was married to
Julia Burfoot. William and Julia had a
big home in Camden. They were some of
the sophisticates in the county. This
was the closest thing I had to a real home, when I was young. I was raised right along with my cousins;
Henry Clay, Mary and the babies Willy and Cornelia.
My father’s estate was pretty big and each of his children was to
receive a large amount of land, but I never received my share. But William received his. He was well educated and had plenty of
money. He was always into politics of
one sort or another. William eventually
became a Representative of the North Carolina Government. I was given a proper primary education. I was taught to walk erect and sit straight,
never letting my back touch the chair. I
had become something of a lady and William and Julia saw something in me that I
never caught site of.
When I was of courting age I was attracted to a big man with Sandy
hair and blue eyes. His name was Thomas
Linton Roberts. He was a local
farmer. But William and Julia kept
introducing me to some of the more gentile men in the county. Most of them were nice enough but none of
them held a candle to that big farmer Tom.
William would not have it and I had to wait until I was at the age of
majority to finally stand my ground and announce that I was going to marry
Thomas.
Still, my brother objected and refused to allow the wedding to
take place in his home. But my half-sister
Chloe and her husband Jeremiah offered their home for the purpose. I guess you could say it was my home too
because it was the home of my father and mother. Some folks said Jeremiah and Chloe got my
share of my Father’s estate.
In any event, on Thursday, the 22nd of February, 1855,
Justice of the Peace Thomas Palmer performed Tom and my nuptials, in the parlor
of the home I was born in. We didn’t use
a church or preacher because Tom was not much of a church going man.
It seems like everyone wants to start their stories by stating
they had the worst winter ever recorded.
Well, I don’t know about that but within days of our marriage Camden was
hit by a terrible storm. The snow was as
high as a four-rail fence and a lot of folks lost a lot of livestock that
February.
But Tom and I had moved into a home in Camden in a part of town
they called Dog Corner. Tom’s aged
mother moved in with us. She stayed with
us until she died, 17 years later. We
had two children before the war. Nancy
was born in 1855 and Mary came along in 1858.
Oh, that damned old war.
There was conflict between the North and the South as long as I could
remember. We just each did things
different ways. Nothing much seemed to
happen but talk; always the talk. My
brother, William was always talking up the Confederacy in his high faluting
meetings. But it all came to a head when
Mr. Lincoln was elected President. The
Confederacy was created and war was declared.
Damn you, Mr. Lincoln. So
many boys went off to war and never came back.
So many boys went off to war and came back missing arms and legs or
worse. I was so afraid Tom would get
called up. There were always recruiters
coming through the county.
In 1862, our little Jane came along. We named her after Tom’s older sister.
There seemed to be no end to the war and it was going badly. We didn’t have a lot of battles in North
Carolina but we gave more boys to the war than any other state. It was time for me to realize the war was
going to take Tom too. In preparation
for his departure he bought a little farm just outside of Riddle on the south
side of Sanderlin Swamp. We grew cotton
for a cash crop. We had a vegetable
garden and a nice orchard.
We had a large house made of juniper logs. It was 30 feet by 15 feet. It was a one story affair with a loft. The house even had a ceiling. It had a separate kitchen. The outbuildings included a barn, a stable, a
cow shelter, a hen house and a crib.
Our fourth child, another daughter, came in the spring of
1863. I named this little girl after
myself; Elizabeth Morrisette Roberts.
I was a member of the Shiloh Baptist Church but I could not get
Tom to attend. He was a good Christian
man but he had differences with the people of the church and the pastor,
Charlie Williams. He did however get
along famously with Pastor Williams’ father, Sim. In fact, when Sim went off to war, Tom loaned
him his muzzle loading shot gun and asked Sim to bring himself and the gun back
in one piece. Sim obliged him. Sim and the gun returned and were both a
little worse for wear and the gun had the name S.W. Williams carved on the
stock.
In April of 1865, Richmond fell and we burned the city
ourselves. Can you imagine we burned our
own capital! Tom was finally called up
and he answered the call. We got the
crops into the ground. It was so hard
watching Tom work the fields not knowing how I would harvest the crops, in the
fall. I experienced the terror that so
many women had faced before me.
The day finally came. My
heart was in my throat. The kids that
were old enough cried and begged their father not to go. But Tom was called and he marched off to
Elizabeth City to then be taken to Roanoke Island by boat. I had no idea if I would ever see him again.
Perhaps all of that praying I had done at church paid off. Shortly after Tom left us, a neighbor woke me
in the night by pounding on the door. He
said General Lee had surrendered to General Grant and the war was lost. I held my breath for his next sentence. He said he had seen Tom in Elizabeth City and
that Tom would be home later that very night.
Tom came back home without firing a shot. His only injury was the loss of his rifle
which he had to surrender to the Union Army.
This was most grievous to him especially considering he had never fired
it at a Union soldier. We celebrated as
only a husband and wife could.
Our cash crop came in that fall and another season of life
unfolded on our little farm. The
following year little Martha was born.
She was also named after Tom’s sister, Martha Jane. Then, three more seasons before our little
Jestine came into our lives. She was
named after another of Tom’s sisters.
Then in 1872, after giving birth to six daughters, as a tool in
God’s hands, I finally gave Tom a son.
He was named Thomas, after his father.
Next came a season of tears.
God took back Mary and Martha.
They were just 17 and 9 years of age.
Our grief was lightened with the birth of our second son, George. Then in 1876, we lost our oldest child
Nancy. She was in her prime and just 21
years old. None of the girls we lost
were able to fulfill the full measure of their creation. Tom, not being a church going man, had an
especially hard time with the loss of three of his girls.
But I took Tom back to our marriage bed and despite my age God
blessed us with one more child. In 1878,
James Monroe Roberts arrived in our home making for three sons to carry on the
family name. Tom was pleased and for the
first time in a number of years, at peace.
Then, three years later, my life was forever changed. The date was 8 July, 1881, about 4:00 in the
afternoon. All of the family that was
still at home had gathered at the watermelon table, under the big Oak, in our
gate yard. My daughter Elizabeth was
married and at her own home. My darling
Jane was visiting Elizabeth.
I had set dinner out and Tom had just finished saying grace. I saw a lightning bolt strike a pine tree in
the swamp but I did not see that the bolt had split and also struck the Oak we
were sitting under. I was knocked
unconscious. When I woke up, I could see
that we had all been knocked away from the table. Tom and Jestine were lying, motionless, on
the ground. The three boys were not
seriously hurt but were terrified. I
crawled over to Tom and saw that he was dead.
I then crawled over to Jestine.
She was alive but I could not wake her.
I gathered the boys around me.
Tom was 9 years old, George was 6 and Jim was just 3. I sent Tom to get help. I somehow got the little boys into the house
and managed to carry Jestine to her bed.
We had to leave Tom lying out in the rain. Before long, Ambroze Dozier and Neil Riggs
showed up and tended to Tom’s body.
We nursed Jestine all that night and she finally came around the
next day. Another neighbor, Dorsey
Knight from over to Indiantown built Tom’s coffin. It had to be a big coffin for a big man. We buried him in the Camden cemetery.
There was nothing to do but carry on. Jestine and I recovered from our injuries and
we all slowly got used to life without Tom.
The brothers from the church helped bring in the crops that Tom had
planted.
It was hard but we got by.
I stayed there on that farm for another 8 years mostly raising my
surviving children. The Oak tree that
changed our lives still bore the scar the day we drove off of the farm.
We moved to the Luke Lamb place about one mile outside of Shiloh.
We stayed there for four years. During
that time, Little Tom married one of the Sanderlin girls. In 1893, we moved again. We rented the Will Shaw place, over in Shawboro
in Currituck County. The following year,
we moved to the Margaret Baxter place, renting it from Joe Bell.
I stayed there until pneumonia took me in 1896. Mr. Charles Lewis Perkins took me back to Camden and buried me next to Tom.
* * * * *
Key Individuals:
Thomas Linton Roberts (1830 – 1881)
Elizabeth Morrisette Roberts (1834 – 1896)
Nancy Roberts (1855 – 1876)
Polly Roberts (1858 – 1875)
Jane Roberts (1861 – 1933)
Elizabeth Morrisette Roberts (1863-1941)
Martha P Roberts (1866 – 1875)
Jestine Morrisette Roberts (1869 – 1940)
Thomas Marcellus Roberts (1872 – 1945)
George Lewis Roberts (1875 – 1950)
James Monroe Roberts (1878 – 1962)
