More tales of North Carolina's 19th-century African American legislators
Part 2: More members of the first General Assembly, 1868-1870
In previous posts, I introduced readers to a handful of African American legislators elected to the North Carolina General Assembly during the nineteenth century, among more than 125 black state legislators, all Republicans, who held office between 1868 and 1900.
This week, I continue my occasional series on North Carolina’s black public servants during the period, many of whom I have written about in previous articles for the North Carolina Historical Review and in other publications. Today’s post explores the lives of another group of the two dozen legislators who served in the first session of the General Assembly elected under provisions of the new 1868 state constitution:
Ivey E. Hudgins/Hutchins (1823-1896?), of Halifax County, served one term in the N.C. House from Halifax County as a Republican, elected in 1868. He was born around 1823, probably in Halifax County; his name is variantly spelled as Hutchings. He may have been born free, but little is known of his early life or education; his occupation is unknown.
During the Civil War, he apparently served in Company K, 42nd U.S. Colored Infantry; he applied for a Union Army disability pension in 1888. After the War, he returned to live in Halifax County, where he became active in the Republican party, and was selected as a Halifax County nominee for a seat in the N. C. House of Representatives in the spring of 1868.
Elected to the House in 1868, he served one term in the 1868-1870 session of the General Assembly, where he served as a member of the Committees on Corporations and Engrossed Bills. He was one of 14 black legislators signing a public statement congratulating Ulysses S. Grant on his election to the U.S. presidency, published December 2, 1868, in the North Carolina Standard. He did not seek reelection in 1870.
After leaving the legislature, Hudgins held no further public office, although he was reportedly an unsuccessful candidate for the party’s nomination to the House in 1882.
Hudgins married Sarah Jones (b. 1826) in Halifax County on January 18, 1851. His wife Sarah Hudgins was granted free papers for free persons of color in 1854, according to Halifax County minutes. The names of their children, if any, are not recorded.
Hudgins’ death date and place of interment are unknown. He is presumed to have died in Halifax County in late 1896 or before March 1897, when legal notices began appearing in local newspapers concerning his estate.
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Cuffee Mayo (1802-1896), of Oxford, served one term in the N.C. House as a Republican from Granville County, elected in 1868. Mayo was a native of Mecklenburg County, Virginia, born free around 1802/1803; another report puts his birth date later, around 1826. By 1835, he appears to have moved to North Carolina’s Granville County, where he became a painter.
After the War, Mayo became active in the county’s new Republican party. He was a Granville delegate to the State Equal Rights League Convention of Freedmen in Raleigh in October 1866, and then served as the county’s delegate to the 1868 state constitutional convention. In 1870, he owned $600 in real estate, $200 in property, according to the U.S. census.
In 1868, he was nominated by the Republican Party for one of Granville’s two seats in the N.C. House of Representatives. Elected that spring, in the first election held under the state’s new Constitution, he served in the 1868-1870 session of the General Assembly. In the House, he served on the Committee on Claims.
He did not seek reelection in 1870, and does not appear to have held another public office after leaving the General Assembly.
Mayo was married at least three times: (1) to Glathy Hawkins Mayo, whose daughter, Isabella Mayo Boone, is listed in one record; (2) to Martha Boon of Granville County, 1849; and (3) to Julia Ann Hawley of Granville County, in either 1851 or 1857.
Mayo died in Granville County in 1896, and is buried in a Mayo family cemetery in Granville County.
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George Washington Price Jr. (1843/1844-1901), of Wilmington, served one term in N.C. House of Representatives as a Republican from New Hanover County and one term in the N.C. Senate as a Republican from 13th District (New Hanover and Brunswick counties). He was born in 1843/44 in North Carolina, the son of a Methodist minister, George W. Price Sr., but else is known of his early life or education.
Apparently born enslaved, Price was said to have escaped slavery in September 1862 by rowing a small boat down the Cape Fear River to the Atlantic Ocean, with seven other men—including William Benjamin Gould, whose account was posthumously published in 2002 as Diary of a Contraband: The Civil War Passage of a Black Sailor. The men were rescued as contraband by a Union blockade warship, the USS Cambridge. Price, Gould, and others reportedly enlisted in the U.S. Navy onboard the Cambridge.
After the War, Price returned to Wilmington, where he became a merchant and a minister in the “Zion Methodist Episcopal church.” An organizer of the N.C. Colored Convention, 1865, he was employed as a speaker in 1867 by the Republican Congressional Committee. In the spring of 1868, he was selected as one of several New Hanover County Republican nominees for the N.C. House of Representatives, the first election held under provisions of the state’s new Constitution.
Elected to the House that spring, Price was appointed to the House Committee on Military Affairs during the 1868-1870 session of the General Assembly. He was one of 14 black legislators who signed a public statement congratulating Ulysses S. Grant on his election to the U.S. presidency, published December 2, 1868, in the North Carolina Standard.
In 1870, Price was elected to the N.C. Senate from the 13th District (New Hanover and Brunswick Counties), and served in the 1870-1872 session of the General Assembly. Price was also among 17 black legislators who signed “An Address to the Colored People of North Carolina,” opposing the impeachment of Gov. William W. Holden, dated December 19, 1870, and published that month in the North Carolina Standard.
Among his local offices, Price served as a Wilmington city alderman in 1868, and again from 1889 to 1890; as justice of the peace and county assessor, 1868; and as a school committeeman for Federal Point Township in 1870. In 1889 and 1896, he was appointed as a magistrate for Wilmington Township. Active in the statewide party, Price was chosen a delegate from the Third Congressional District to the GOP national conventions of 1880 and 1884.
In the spring of 1881, Price also headed a delegation of black Republicans who met with newly-inaugurated President James A. Garfield in Washington, D.C.
Price operated a real estate business in Wilmington. In 1870, he owned $300 in real estate, $200 property, according to the U.S. census. In 1887, he was appointed as a U.S. customs inspector in Wilmington. He also worked professionally in the trade of plasterwork and as an auctioneer, and later penned a detailed bibliography for a grand master in the Grand Lodge of Colored Masons in North Carolina.
He was first married to Amelia Sawyer Price in 1869; they had no children. His second wife was Sophia A. Sadgwar (1847–1898); their son William was born in 1875 and their daughter Fanny was born in 1878. Both died at a young age.
Price died in Wilmington on October 22, 1901, from injuries received after being struck by a train, and is buried in Pine Forest Cemetery, Wilmington.
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Parker David Robbins (1834-1917), of Colerain, served two terms in the N.C. House of Representatives from Bertie County as a Republican, elected in 1868 and 1870. Born into a free, mixed-race family with Chowanoke Indian ancestry free on July 5, 1834, in Bertie County, he was the oldest son of John A. Robbins, a Bertie County farmer, and an unknown mother.
Parker D. Robbins of Bertie County served in the N.C. General Assembly from 1868 to 1872.
Photo courtesy N.C. Museum, Division of Archives and History.
Parker and his younger brother Augustus—also elected as a state legislator—were apparently educated privately, perhaps at a Gates County school for Indians, according to one family account. Listed as a free mechanic in the 1860 U.S. census, Parker owned $250 real estate, $415 in property. After serving as sergeant-major in the 2nd U.S. Colored Cavalry during the Civil War, he was mustered out in Texas in 1866 due to illness, and returned to Bertie County.
By 1868, he became active in the Republican Party, and was appointed a justice of the peace there by Gov. William W. Holden. According to the 1870 census, he owned $500 in real estate, and another $500 in personal property.
He was elected as a delegate to the 1868 constitutional convention from Windsor. He was then selected as a Bertie County Republican nominee for the state House, and was subsequently elected, in the first election held under the state’s 1868 Constitution. In the 1869-1870 session of the General Assembly, he was appointed to the House Committee on Corporations.
Parker Robbins was reelected to his House seat in 1870, and completed his second term in the 1870-1872 session of the General Assembly. After leaving the legislature, he was appointed as U.S. postmaster at Harrellsville in Hertford County in September 1875, during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant, and served until October 1877.
In 1877, Robbins moved to Magnolia in Duplin County, where he established a sawmill and a cotton gin. He reportedly received U.S. federal patents for a new kind of cotton cultivator, and a device to sharpen saws.
Parker Robbins was first married to Elizabeth (Betsy) Collins Robbins, according to the 1870 census. No children’s names are recorded. After their divorce, he was married in 1898 to his much younger second wife, Elisabeth (Bettie) Florence Miller, who bore him his only known son, Leo Parker Robbins, in about 1900, when Robbins was about 65 years old.
Robbins died on November 1, 1917, and is buried in Parker Robbins cemetery in Magnolia. His widow lived until 1965.
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Isham H. Sweat (1833-1897), of Fayetteville, served one term in the N. C. House of Representatives from Cumberland County as a Republican, elected in 1868. Sweat was born free in Wilmington in 1833. Little is known of his early life or education, except that he was literate, and became a barber. During the Civil War, he was a servant in the Confederate Army, attached to the First Confederate Volunteers of North Carolina.
At the end of the War, he settled in Fayetteville, where he was chosen as a delegate to the 1865 N.C. Colored Convention, and a Cumberland delegate to the State Equal Rights Convention of Freedmen in October 1866; he was also corresponding secretary of the Equal Rights League. After becoming active in the Republican party, and was chosen as the Cumberland County nominee for a seat in the N.C. House of Representatives in the spring of 1868, the first election held under provisions of the state’s new Constitution.
Elected in April 1868, he was appointed to the House Committee on Propositions and Grievances, as well as to the Joint House-Senate Committee on Finance. He was one of 14 black legislators to sign a public statement congratulating Ulysses S. Grant on his election to the presidency, printed December 2, 1868, in the North Carolina Standard.
Sweat was a moderate who “hoped that Congress would declare that no state had a Republican form of government if every man in it was not equal before the law.” He did not seek reelection in 1870, and after completing his term, moved back to Wilmington, where he worked as a barber for the rest of his life. He was elected as a city alderman there in March 1883, and served one term.
He married his wife, Amelia Williams, on February 5, 1872. The names of their children, if any, are not recorded.
Sweat died in Wilmington on August 12, 1897. His place of interment is not known.
Next time: More tales of North Carolina’s 19th-century African American legsialtors