All Things Cherokee

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Wingate’s from Harrisburg , NC/Lincoln/Catawba Springs

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I am trying to find my Great-Grandmother, my mom’s grandfather’s mother. Her name was Milly Wingate her husband’s name was Freeman Wingate children’s names were Mamie/Mary, Hoyle/Hall, Arthur, Aleitha, Nannie, Milly & Freeman married May 10, 1879 N.C. Don’t have much on Milly, maiden name, where she came from. Where is she buried? We do not know. Freeman died in NC August 1933 Hall said that they were from Harrisburg. The reservation that was there.

Comments

  1. Here is the marriage record for Milly and Freeman Wingate:

    Name: Camilla Wingate
    Gender: Female
    Race: Col
    Age: 20
    Birth Year: abt 1859
    Marriage Date: 10 May 1879
    Marriage Place: Lincoln, North Carolina, USA
    Father: Peter Wingate
    Mother: Janey Wingate
    Spouse: Freeman Wingate
    Spouse Gender: Male
    Spouse Race: Col
    Spouse Age: 21
    Spouse Father: Freeman Wingate
    Spouse Mother: Lucinda Wingate
    Event Type: Marriage

    The couple shows up on the 1880 Census in Lincoln County, with Mamie listed as two years old. Milly is listed as “mulatto” (while Freeman is listed as Black) and her age is listed as 22. Unfortunately, the 1890 Census was lost, so we have a gap until 1900. By that time, Milly had passed away (Freeman listed as widower). The family unit was still in Lincoln County then. By the 1910 enumeration, they could be found in Gaston county, then back down to Forsythe in 1930, and Freeman died in Mecklenburg County in 1933.

    The context here is that this family did not live in a Cherokee community. There was no reservation in Harrisburg or in that vicinity. This territory had been ceded by the tribe, or taken from them by force, and settled by Americans around the 1770s. The county in which Milly and Freeman were married and first made a household in the late 1800s and early 1900s was shaped by White settlement and slavery. Native Americans, and Cherokees specifically, were simply not in the picture there. The Catawbas were a little futher south, and there were pockets of remnant tribes and descendant groups scattered in different locations in the state. But, the only Cherokee groups at that time would be found in the mountains in the extreme western part of the state.

    There were few free Blacks living in Lincoln County, NC prior to Emancipation. The fact that Camilla Wingate married a Freeman Wingate (notice the same surname?) would tend to suggest a former slave status, likely they had been owned by the White Wingate family.

    Here is the total free Black population in Lincoln county over the decades:

    http://thomaslegion.net/northcarolinatotalfreeblacksineachcounty18201860.html

    LINCOLN
    1820 – 27
    1830 – 67
    1840 – 116
    1850 – 36
    1860 – 81

    I would recommend looking at Dr. Henry Louis Gates’ research into African American genealogy. He points out that a lot of family lore of Native American or “Cherokee” blood is often incorrect. And it often covers for the more unsavory reality that “mulatto” features that might be described as “Indian” were actually a results of White admixture. It is easier to romanticize an ancestor was an Indian, or part Indian, than to acknowledge sexual abuse and exploitation of slaves (usually by White slave masters).

    http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2014/12/why_most_black_people_aren_t_part_indian/

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