***This is one of the longest pension applications I’ve examined. Today’s post includes research notes for documents dated February 5-19, 1886. Previous posts included research notes for documents dated 1866-1885 and February 4, 1886. Research notes for documents dated 1890-1911 will be published next week.
This soldier was killed in a skirmish in Fort Powhatan, Virginia on January 25, 1865. Action on his mother’s pension application continued for more than 30 years. Her application was complicated by conflicting information about a second marriage which was further complicated by the fact that two men shared the same name. Witnesses in support of the mother’s application included childhood friends, neighbors, and former enslavers. They reported names of those enslaved with her as well as the names of enslavers and their relatives. They described the mother’s efforts to remain independent and details about her church membership. Dates for specific events were framed within the 1855 Yellow Fever Epidemic and President Lincoln’s assassination.
Mother — 119, 679 / 94,739, Fannie Wilson
Deposition, Zachariah T. Cutchings, 5 February 1886
39 years old; occupation, laborer; residence, cor Pine & Griffin Sts, suburbs of Portsmouth, Va.; post-office address, Portsmouth, Norfolk Co., Va.
“That he is son-in-law to the clt Fannie Wilson whom he has known intimately since December 1865 at which time he began to visit her daughter. She was then living on Dinwiddie st bet Crab & South st., Portsmouth, Va. He had however known her personally as early as 1862 before he entered the army and she has lived with him and in his house since his marriage to her daughter now about nineteen years ago ….
Q. Did you know the claimant when she lived on the Wood Wharf here in Portsmouth.
A. In 1862 my mother kept a stand in the market which is just across the street from where the claimant lived and I became acquainted with clt’s daughter and I was at or about her cook shop. In 1863 I went to school with her daughter, now my wife, and I was often ….
Q. Who else eat at her table on the occasions when you eat there
A. Myself clt and two daughters, Joe Wheeler and a girl named Mary. Joe Wheeler was visiting. Mary Kee is dead (Mary is somewhere in the northeast …
Q. Was it usual for young men to visit their sweethearts 3 or 4 times a week.
A. I was employed in the U.S. Navy Yard and I was attending the same night school with my wife and I would call and take her to school & bring her back and on Sundays I took her to church and brought her home. Her mother, the clt, went with us to church as she was a member of the church we attended.
Q. When the clt kept her cook shop on the Wood Wharf did she have regular boarders or or did she keep a stand for public use.
A. It was almost wholly transient, just like any small house, she sold to anyone who applied.”
Deposition, Thomas Peden, 5 February 1886
45 years old; residence, “South St. near Pine in the suburbs of Portsmouth, Va.”; post-office address, Portsmouth, Norfolk Co., Va.;
“That he has known the claimant intimately since July 1863. That about the 1st day of August 1863 while at work in the U.S. Commissary Department at Portsmouth, he began to board at the clt’s snack house on the Wood Wharf in Portsmouth and he continued to take his dinners and suppers at her eating stand for four months following. Then he transferred across the river to Norfolk to work in the warehouse there but was frequently sent back & forth to Portsmouth and where in Portsmouth he always took his meals at clt’s house.
“Q. Did she keep lodgers as well as boarders?
“A. No, sir.
Q. Have you ever known a man by the name of Samuel Wilson?
A. No, sir.
“[Peden] for the past 17 years I have lived as a neighbor to her.”
Deposition, James Copeland, 5 February 1886
38 years old; occupation, insurance agent; residence, suburbs of Portsmouth, Va.; post-office address, Portsmouth, Norfolk Co., Va.
“That he has known the claimant Frances Wilson, since in 1868, he was an intimate friend of her son-in-law J.T. Hudgins, and with him he frequently visited clt’s house where she now resides. Subsequently he knew her (1870) as a member of Zion Baptist Church of Portsmouth of which he was church clerk five years and also as a deacon in said church. According to the rules of the church, it was a part of his duty to visit the members in case of absence from church etc.”
Deposition, Polly McPherson, 5 February 1886
55 years old; occupation, housekeeper; residence and post-office address, London between Green & Effingham st, Portsmouth, Norfolk Co., Va. That she became acquainted with the clt Fannie Wilson about a year and a half ago after the Yankees took Norfolk, Va.) (May 1862). The way I became acquainted with her was by renting a room in her house … and I moved with her and lived with her on Dinwiddie St between Crab & South and I lived with her until she moved to Newtown, a suburb of Portsmouth. This was in the year 1866 as near as I can remember. While we lived at the Wood Wharf I took in and done washing and she (clt) kept a snack house….It was a small two story brick house containing three rooms. I rented and occupied the back room on the ground floor & the claimant and myself cooked in the front room and her & her two daughters slept upstairs. The stairway leading to clt sleeping room ran from the cook house…there was an old wood house back of my room.”
Deposition, John W. Dowdy, 6 February 1886
35 years old; occupation, carpenter; residence and post-office address, 315 Harrison St., Portsmouth, Norfolk Co., Va.
“That he has known Fannie Wilson since the clt since in 1862 or 63. She having been a customer at his father’s grocery and that he remembers very distinctly that a man by the name of Ragsdale brought this claimant to his father’s store.”
Deposition, Sarah Barrington, 6 February 1886
41 years old; occupation, housekeeper; residence and post-office address, Griffin Street extended just outside the city limits, Portsmouth, Norfolk County, Va.
“I have known the clt Fannie Wilson for the past 25 years while she was yet a slave and I knew her very intimately while she resided on the Wood Wharf in Portsmouth, Va. I lived in the adjoining house and saw her almost every day while she lived there. I was not living there at the time the clt left the wharf but was still intimate with her. … I have lived within speaking distance of her for nearly since. She left Newtown which has been now 20 years.”
Deposition, Mary White, 13 February 1886
50 years old; occupation, housekeeper; residence, cor Queen & Court sts, Portsmouth, Norfolk Co., Va.; post-office address, Portsmouth, Norfolk Co., Va.
“That I have known the claimant since in the second [sic] of late war, soon after the federal forces took Norfolk, Va.
“My husband, now dead, and I occupied a room which my husband rented from her in the house on the Wood Wharf, Portsmouth, Va. I occupied that room 18 months. My room was the front room upstairs. There was two other rooms upstairs occupied by the claimant & these two rooms were used by the claimant’s sister … Her sister’s name is Lavinia but I have forgotten her last name and I don’t know where she is. Downstairs of the house on Wood Wharf was occupied in the front by Hon. C.V. [illegiblea]Wilson and the back room was occupied by Polly McPherson.”
Deposition, Lester Brown, 15 February 1886
50 years old; occupation, laborer; residence, 126 Hawk St., Norfolk, Norfolk Co., Va.
“That I am one of the former slaves of Dr. Samuel Brown who owned land in Norfolk Co., Va. about 20 miles south of the city of Norfolk and he was a fellow servant … she was the wife of Americus Wilson who was sold from her six or seven years before the war. Fannie Wilson took up and lived with one Lamb Billie Wilson as his wife for about two years and then he died in about 1860. … Her youngest child was named Paldo Wilson.”
“I have known Fannie Wilson since she came to live at Portsmouth, Va.”
“I also knew another Lamb Wilson but I do not know what he done for a living. I come home from the navy in 1864 and I never saw him about Fannie Wilson’s cookshop. …This Lamb Billie Wilson died about as I have stated in 1860 out at Bear Quarters in this Co. about 20 miles from here. He has a daughter by a former wife now living in Norfolk who can tell when he died.
“I came here [to Norfolk] that year after the place was taken over by the Yankees. I must be mistaken as to when I heard of his death. I know I left him up there when I left. I presume his old master Geo. B. Wilson could tell us when he died.”
Deposition, Eliza Hopper, 15 February 1886
40 years old; occupation, housekeeper; residence and post-office address, 28 Wilson Ave., Norfolk, Va.;
“I am the daughter of Lamb Billie Wilson who belonged to George & Billie Wilson at Great Bridge, Norfolk Co., Va. I belonged to the Foreman family and lived about 15 miles from where my father lived and I do not know whether he and Fannie Wilson ever lived together or not. I was present at the death of my father but I do not know when it was, whether before or since the war. I remember this — that I was then living out at my old house where I lived before and since the war and I am unable to to say when he died.”
“Q. You were present at the funeral of your father?
A. I was living on David Foreman‘s place at the time he died and he died on David Foreman’s place.
Q. At which place was David Foreman living when your father died.
A. He lived at that time on a part of the old horse farm right across the road from the old horse house.”
“Q. Did your father Lamb Billie Wilson ever live in Norfolk or Portsmouth, Va.?
A. Not to my knowledge. He always staid [sic] up about where he was raised.”
Deposition, Letitia Hutcheson, 15 February 1886
34 years old; post-office address, Portsmouth, Norfolk Co., Va.;
“I am the daughter of Fannie Wilson, the claimant … I have lived with my mother … all my life was raised here in this house 19 years ago and I have lived here ever since. I was a small child when my mother brought me away our old home in Norfolk Co. and I have but a limited recollection of of the place and the people we left behind. My first distinct recollection dates from our residence on the Wood Wharf at Portsmouth. I remember when my brother Paldo went into the army.”
Deposition, Sophia Nichols, 18 February 1886
65 years old; post-office address, Wallaceton, Norfolk Co., Va.
“I knew Fannie Wilson long before the war and I knew Lamb Billy Wilson before the war and I know they lived together and husband and wife.”
Deposition, Reuben Saunders, 18 February 1886
65 years old; post-office address, Wallaceton, Norfolk Co., Va.
“I became acquainted with Lamb Billy Wilson and his wife Fannie during the late war… After the war Lamb Billy Wilson came back here and did not return to his wife. I think I must have been back here two or three years before he came back. I also helped bury him when he died … [Fannie] often came to see him when aboarding his lighter.”
“Q. Have you known another colored man who went by the name of Lamb Wilson?
A. Yes. I knew one who sometimes went by that name but his right name was Lamb Williams. He was also a lighterman and was down about Portsmouth at the same time Lamb Billy Wilson was there with his wife. He is also dead.”
Deposition, Alexander Foreman, 18 February 1886
60 years old; occupation, farmer; post-office address, Wallaceton, Norfolk Co., Va.
“I have known [claimant] about all her life. I knew her when she was the wife of Americus Wilson and when she lived with Lamb Billy Wilson…Soon after the Yankees took Norfolk, Va. in 1862 (May) [the couple] went to Portsmouth, Va. to live and I often visited them there where they lived in a brick house on the Wood Wharf”
“During the war my white folks were afraid to go inside the Yankee lines so I done their marketing and trading for them and in doing this was in Portsmouth very often”
“Lamb Billy and I were like brothers. We had worked together at lighting long before the war.”
“Q. Was there another Lamb Wilson?
A. No, sir. His name was Lamb Williams. He was also a lighterman He died right here in this house where you are now.”
Deposition, John Nichols, 18 February 1886
67 years old; post-office address, Wallaceton, Norfolk Co., Va.
“I have known Fannie Wilson … a former slave of Dr. Samuel Brown for the past 35 years.”
Deposition, Geo. A. Wilson, 18 February 1886
63 years old; occupation, farmer; post-office address, Great Bridge, Norfolk Co., Va.
“I was the owner of a colored man by the name of Lamb Billy. I also knew Fannie Wilson who formerly belonged to Dr. Samuel Brown … the man Lamb Billy died several years ago at Bear Quarter, Va.”
Deposition, Lavinia Webb, 19 February 1886
50 years old; occupation, housekeeper; residence, Dinwiddie St bet County and Crabb sts., Portsmouth, Va.
“I have worked [at this address] about two months. I live in the suburbs of Portsmouth, Va. … I am [the claimant’s] sister … I lived at house on Dr. Brown’s place (my owner) and Fannie was hired out and lived about two miles from us….[Fannie] lived in Bear Quarter before the war.”
Q. Who came with you when you came to Portsmouth?
A. My husband Joe Webb, Ben Lee & Levi Foreman.”
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1st U.S. Colored Cavalry 