Just a little history: The six carpenter slaves who built our house

As I write this, both of our sons are working on the windows in our 1838 house, scraping off old paint to repaint in a color matching the storm windows that will be installed later this week and restoring several windows, removing the heart pine sections that have rotted and replacing them with newer heart pine. The whole family has been involved in painting and washing the windows.

We are doing all this labor for the storm windows and also, as one son said, doing it in a way to honor the six carpenter slaves who built the house and very likely designed it. I wrote the following several years ago.

On Oct. 13, 1843, when Foster Fort wrote his will, he owned a substantial house near Horse Creek in what was then called the Forest District, 826 acres along and near the creek, mills, horses, cows, pigs, sheep, farming tools, guns, bank stock, railroad stock and 24 slaves.

Fort played an important part in the early history of Wake Forest College when it began as literary and manual labor institute. He was one of the men named in 1832, along with John Purefoy, William Crenshaw and George Thompson, as caretakers for the 615-acre farm just purchased from Dr. Calvin Jones. He also gave 10 bushels of wheat seed for the institute’s first crop, built a shed, and was one of the first trustees.

Fort certainly had mills on Horse Creek and at least one more on Kemp’s Spring Branch, now just Spring Branch, that was operated by his heirs, Junius and John Fort, in the 1870s. Its remnants can still be found just south of the intersection of South Franklin Street with the Dr. Calvin Jones Highway.

Fort obviously highly valued his wife, Elizabeth, and her judgment because he left all his property – with some exceptions – to her to be divided equally among their eight children on her death. When she died in 1850 from cancer she left $300, a sizable sum then, to Wake Forest College. There is no information about when Foster Fort died or where he was buried.

Elizabeth was left “the tract of land whereon I now reside including my Mills all the appurtenances also my stock of provisions on hand of every description, my stock of horses, cows, sheep, hogs with all my farming tools and every description of tools, also my household and kitchen furniture of every kind and also the following negros [sic] (to wit) my carpenters Sam, Jim, Nelson, Henderson, Joshua, Harry, my old man Isaac and Si, Collen, my negro women Sis and Laura, Clara, and his child Lucy, Charity and his child Mely and Jinny.” Elizabeth and a grown son, Junius, were the executors of Fort’s will.

Fort instructed Elizabeth to keep the family together and educate John, apparently the youngest child, and give each child “one bed and stead and furniture, one bureau, cow and calf, one sow and pigs” when those who had not married before 1853 were married “or chose to settle to themselves.”

He had given each previously married child the furniture named – the bed would be a feather mattress and the stead the bed frame – as well as two slaves each along with the livestock. For those still at home he devised the following: to Eliza, “one negro Boy named Neal and one girl by the name of Helen;” to Junius, “a tract of land known as the Lowry tract on the waters of horse creek [sic]. Also one negro man named Lewis and a negro Girl by the name of Tabby;” to Henrietta, “one negro boy named Starlin (?) and a negro girl by the name of Harriet;” and to John “the tract of land whereon I now reside including my mills and all the appurtenances after the death of my wife” and “one negro boy by the name of Watkins and one girl named Rachel.” John received his small shotgun, Junius received his large gun and brace of pistols, and each daughter received one-sixth part of his bank stock.

I looked for and found Foster Fort’s will in the North Carolina State Archives because one of his daughters, Mary, married James S. Purefoy in 1831 when they were both 18, and in 1838 built (had constructed) part of the house where we have lived since 1970. James paid $50 for the one acre.

Three of James and Mary’s eventual six children were born before 1838 – and since James was never listed on the Wake County tax rolls until 1838 – my guess is the family lived with his father, John, in what is now called the Purefoy-Dunn House. It would been a tight fit since the house was then about half its later size.

And again it is my guess that Sam, Jim, Nelson, Henderson, Joshua and Harry were the men who cut and fashioned the enormous sills, placed them on the piles of rock, built the chimneys, framed the walls, hoisted the rafters and laid the heart pine floors. I thank all six for the workmanship that has endured; I often contemplate the oddities such as the second-story window frames that poke into the barge boards and the three fireplaces whose mantels project into the left-hand window frames.

And I wonder often what happened to them – and Neal, Helen, Watkins, Rachel and all the others – in the years after 1843. After they were freed, did they remain near Wake Forest and Horse Creek? Are their great-great-grandchildren still living here?

One thing I noted while looking at the Census and tax rolls: Foster Fort consistently misreported the number of slaves he owned on the county tax rolls, but gave what appear to be the correct figures for the U.S. Census. It appears other nearby landowners did the same, John Purefoy for one, saving on the property taxes for the unreported slaves but giving the correct number for the Census because slaves were then counted at three-fifths of a white person and added to the numbers for redistricting and other laws and procedures based on Census figures.

For example, in the 1830 Census Fort reported 15 slaves but listed only seven on the county tax roll for that year. In 1840, the figure for the Census was 24 but he reported only 11 to Wake County. William Alston reported nine slaves to the county in 1837 and 1838 but told the Census in 1840 he owned 43 female slaves.

Or, perhaps, they fudged the figures in both directions – less for the county, more for the Census, though that seems unlikely in view of Foster Fort’s naming all 24 slaves in his will. He would have needed a large workforce for his several mills and his farming operations, and the farming operations on other large plantations would have required a lot of hands.

And if you think there were no large landowners and slave owners in the area, the Alston family, four people who were listed separately on the tax rolls, may dissuade you. William Alston did the listing for Thomas and Sarah Alston (his parents?) in the late 1820s and early 1830s and listed nothing for himself. But in 1832 William listed 444 acres and six slaves as his property while his parents owned 4,767 acres and 62 slaves – 960 acres and 20 slaves for Sarah, 3,807 acres and 42 slaves for Thomas. In 1833 what was apparently another brother, Samuel, joined the first three in reporting, but it was for only three slaves. By 1835 he had 69 ½ acres to report and seven slaves; 1,117 acres and 10 slaves in 1836; 1,045 acres and 10 slaves in 1837; and 1,029 acres and 11 slaves in 1838. Altogether, the family owned 6,497 acres and 109 slaves in 1838.

The Alstons’ land was in the vicinity of Forestville and Wake Forest. The first area post office after Dr. Calvin Jones established one in 1823 in his home was called Alston’s Store, later renamed to Forestville, and William Alston was the postmaster named in 1838. James Purefoy became the postmaster in 1839 and the post office was in what is now our house. The Alston Store-Forestville area was already a busy community with several stores and businesses before 1838 and would have a bustling commercial area with hotels, general stores and blacksmiths until 1874 when the depot was relocated in what is now Wake Forest.

The depot for the Raleigh & Gaston Railroad was located at Alston’s Store-Forestville because of the post office –and because the early small engines needed frequent stops to take on more wood and water. Also the area was on a slightly higher level than tracks to the north and south so the engines could get a running start before a hill.