The Question of When Ezekiel S. Green Was Born

From the outset, there are recurrent mysteries in Ezekiel’s biography. They begin with the question of when he was born. In his 5 March 1856 complaint initiating his Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, lawsuit against his father Samuel Kerr Green, he states clearly that he was born in 1824 or 1825:[1] 

The petition of Ezekiel S. Green, a citizen and resident of the parish of Avoyelles in said state respectfully represents to your Honorable Court, that in the year 1823 or thereabouts in said state of Louisiana that his mother whose maiden name your petitioner does not now remember as he was very young when he was taken from her and placed under the charge of other persons, was living with one Samuel K. Green now a resident of said parish, and to whom your petitioner believes the said Samuel K. Green was married, that at all events your petitioner knows, having been informed of the fact and which he is ready to prove to this Court that has said mother, at the time she was living with the said Samuel K. Green was known to all persons as Mrs. Green, that she had assumed the name of the defendant and that he the said defendant recognized her by that name and passed her off as his wife in the different parishes and communities in this state in which they happened to be living in at the time, your petitioner further charges that they both lived in the same dwelling and in all respects deported themselves as married persons, your petitioner further shows that during this period of time (1824 or 1825)  he was born….

Despite this clear statement of Ezekiel’s year of birth, his birth year varies on federal censuses from 1840 to 1900, presumably with Ezekiel himself reporting the information after he married in 1853:

1840 federal census: if Ezekiel is the male aged 15-20 living in the household of Samuel Kerr Green in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, in 1840, then he would have been born 1820-1825.[2] The household has only one other family member, a man aged 40-50 who is clearly Samuel. I think it’s safe to conclude that the younger man is Samuel’s son Ezekiel.

1860 federal census: as noted previously, I don’t find Ezekiel S. Green on the 1850 federal census. In 1860, he’s in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, but with a wife and children who do not match his wife Camilla and daughter Rosa, who was born in 1854.[3] Neither Camilla nor Rosa appear on the 1860 federal census. This census listing gives E.S. Green’s age as 28, placing his birth in 1822. The census lists Ezekiel as a lumbering keeper.

1870 federal census: as discussed previously, the 1870 federal census enumerates Ezekiel Green, his second wife Hannah, and their family at Coushatta Chute in Natchitoches Parish, with Ezekiel’s name given as Edward and his age as 52.[4] This would give Ezekiel a birth year of 1818. Ezekiel’s occupation is given here as farmer.

1880 federal census: in 1880, E.S. Green, his third wife Mary Ann, and their children are found in Red River Parish, with E.S. Green’s age given as 61 and his occupation as lumber.[5] This census assigns Ezekiel a birth year of 1819.

1900 federal census: as stated previously, this census, the last on which I find Ezekiel S. Green, lists him with wife Mary Ann and their family at Provencal in Natchitoches Parish.[6] E.S. Green’s birthdate is given as September 1819 and his occupation as farmer.

There’s a big problem with all the censuses placing Ezekiel S. Green’s birth prior to 1820. This problem is that Samuel K. Green, Ezekiel’s father, is found on the 1820 federal census in Nashville, Davidson County, Tennessee, with a household consisting of only himself and no other family members.[7] This census suggests that Samuel was not yet married in 1820. As I’ll discuss in more detail in postings down the road, Samuel left Nashville and went to south Louisiana after the steamboat he co-owned and co-piloted in Nashville, the General Jackson, sank at Harpeth Shoals on the Cumberland River on 30 May 1821 and was then sold at public auction on 12 September 1821. The General Jackson had been plying trade between Nashville and New Orleans after Samuel and his business partner John Young acquired it in 1819, the first steamboat to come to Nashville. With Joseph Smith co-piloting along with Samuel, it brought goods from the Cumberland region of Tennessee down the Mississippi River to New Orleans and goods like coffee, sugar, rum and wine, and imported cloth upriver from Louisiana.

The testimony of several deponents in the 1856 Green v. Green lawsuit in Pointe Coupee Parish suggests that Samuel came to Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, in or around 1822 and began working as an overseer on sugarcane plantations there around that date, marrying or cohabiting with Eliza Jane Smith in 1823, as Ezekiel’s complaint initiating the lawsuit claims. And Ezekiel was born in 1824 or 1825, as the complaint states, in Louisiana and not Tennessee, which would have been his birthplace if he had been born prior to 1820. All federal censuses give Louisiana as Ezekiel’s birthplace.

Among those providing depositions for the 1856 Green v. Green lawsuit were Joseph Biddle Wilkinson and his wife Catherine (Andrews), who were briefly mentioned in a previous posting and whom I’ll discuss in more detail in a later posting. The Wilkinsons owned Pointe Celeste plantation in Plaquemines Parish. Catherine Andrews Wilkinson testified on 6 March 1857 that Samuel Kerr Green worked as an overseer on her husband’s plantation from 1822-1825. The Wilkinsons also deposed that Samuel married (or, as they later heard, cohabited with) Ezekiel S. Green’s mother, who is named in the Louisiana Supreme Court ruling in the Green v. Green case as Eliza Jane Smith, around 1823, and by her had a son born in 1824 or 1825. The Wilkinsons deposed that they continued interacting with Samuel and Eliza, who made social visits to them, in the latter half of the 1820s when Samuel was working as an overseer on the Magnolia plantation of Captain George Bradish in Plaquemines Parish. Note that the 1823 marriage date and the 1824-5 birthdate for Ezekiel stated in the Wilkinsons’ testimony corroborate what he himself states in his complaint initiating the lawsuit. So it’s strange that he kept reporting a pre-1820 birthdate on a number of federal censuses over the years….

Also arguing for the 1824-5 birthdate for Ezekiel, it seems to me, is the fact that, when Eliza Jane died at Samuel’s house in Natchitoches Parish in March 1843, he appears not yet to have been living separately from his father Samuel as an independent adult. As I state above, it’s apparent to me that Ezekiel is the younger male aged 15-20 enumerated in his father’s household in Natchitoches Parish in 1840.

Depositions in the Green v. Green case file indicate that following the dissolution of her marriage to Samuel Kerr Green around 1830-1, Eliza Jane then married a Connecticut-born seaman, Captain Samuel Ives, in New Orleans, and lived with him in New Orleans, St. Martinville, and finally Iberville Parish, where Samuel owned a sawmill. I’ve told this story and the story of Eliza Jane’s life up to her death in 1843 in some detail in this previous posting. In 1834-5, Eliza Jane then ended her marriage to Samuel Ives, who continued operating his sawmill on Bayou Sorrel in Iberville Parish until he was murdered there on 2 June 1850 by his business partner Alden Piper. (A question that occurs to me as I think about Eliza Jane and Samuel Ives: did Ezekiel S. Green get his interest in sawmilling, which seems to have run through much of his adult life, from his mother’s second husband Samuel Ives?)

Meanwhile, Eliza Jane had remained in Iberville Parish until, on 23 November 1841, she sold her land and other property in Iberville Parish and rejoined Samuel K. Green in Natchitoches Parish, bringing with her eight or nine enslaved people who became the point of dispute between Ezekiel and Samuel that led to Ezekiel’s 1856 lawsuit against his father. Ezekiel’s complaint inaugurating his 1856 lawsuit against his father says that Eliza Jane went to live with Samuel K. Green because she was “in bad and feeble health.” She died testate at Samuel’s house in Natchitoches Parish, with a will dated 5 March 1843 and probated 18 March 1843.[8]

Curiously, this will is mentioned only glancingly in the court documents of the Green v. Green case when Daniel B. Smethers and Joseph Clark both deposed that Eliza Jane had made a will leaving her property to Samuel K. Green before she died at his house around or on 13 March 1843. The will does not even mention Ezekiel. The will leaves to Samuel, not specifying Eliza Jane’s connection to him, the enslaved people Eliza Jane owned, and states that after his lifetime, the enslaved people were to go to Jackson and Minerva Smith of Kentucky, whose relationship to Eliza Jane is not indicated:

I Eliza Jane Smith of the Parish of Natchitoches and State of Louisiana do make & publish this my Last will and Testament thereby revoking and making void all former wills by me at any Time heretofore made, and first I direct that my body be decently Interred and that my funeral be conducted, in a manner corresponding with my Estate and situation in Life and as to such Estate as it hath pleased God to interest me with, I dispose of the same as follows first I direct that the following described Slaves Is to belong to Samuel K. Green during his life & not to be Separated and after his death said Slaves is to fall to Jackson Smith & Manerva Smith of the state of Kentucky, the following, is the names of the above mentioned Slaves Amey, John Hetty Batt Maria Charles Lady.

As Ezekiel’s complaint setting his Pointe Coupee Parish suit against his father into motion notes, in any case, he was Eliza Jane’s legal heir, because he was her only child and legitimate heir. Eliza Jane’s will names seven enslaved persons. In his March 1856 complaint inaugurating his Pointe Coupee Parish lawsuit against his father, Ezekiel states that his mother had left him eight or nine enslaved persons, of whom his father had taken possession and whom Samuel was refusing to relinquish to Ezekiel after Ezekiel had requested ownership of them in 1852. In his 1856 complaint in the Green v. Green lawsuit, Ezekiel’s list of the enslaved persons Eliza Jane brought to Samuel K. Green’s household in 1841 as follows: John, 14; Bat, 12-13; Mariah, 8-9; Lace, 5-6; Charles, 5-6; Amy, about 36; and Hetty, who grew up in possession of Samuel though she belonged to Eliza Jane. The ages given here are their ages in 1843. Lace is evidently the enslaved female named Lady in Eliza Jane’s will. The complaint states that after Samuel took possession of these enslaved persons and moved with his wife Elvira Birdwell to Pointe Coupee Parish and when Hetty had grown to womanhood, Samuel then sold her along with two children that had been born to her, Eliza and Alfred. It also states that by March 1856, Mariah had children Ellen, about 9, Alfred, about 5, Caroline, about 2, and George, about 1. And Amy had a son Henry, 10.

Eliza Jane had purchased Amey, 29, and her children Baptiste/Batt, 10, Hetty, 7, and John, 4, from Samuel Martin Woolfolk in New Orleans on 10 May 1829.[9] Woolfolk was a slave trader from a Maryland family who had a slave-selling business on Chartres Street in New Orleans.[10]

As a previous posting indicates, Samuel appears on the 1850 slave schedule in Pointe Coupee Parish holding eleven people in bondage.[11] I think these are the enslaved persons discussed above, those previously owned by Eliza Jane with the children born after 1843, who are named above.

After Samuel’s wife Elvira Birdwell Green died in Pointe Coupee Parish sometime before 13 December 1855, at the sale of her estate held on 10 March 1856, Samuel purchased enslaved persons Amie, 50, and Lace, 18, with the sale account indicating that these enslaved persons had belonged to Elvira, or why else would they have been sold as part of her succession?[12] But it’s clear to me that Amie/Amey is the same person whom Eliza Jane purchased in New Orleans in May 1829 and who is named in Eliza’s will along with Amey’s children Hetty, John, and Batt. Since Samuel and his son Ezekiel were engaged in a dispute over the ownership of the enslaved persons formerly belonging to Eliza Jane by the time Elvira’s estate was sold, I have to suspect that Samuel created a legal fiction regarding Amie’s/Amey’s provenance to justify trying to continue claiming her.

When Pointe Coupee’s district court handed down its ruling in favor of Ezekiel on 31 December 1857, it found that evidence admitted by Ezekiel “makes prima facie proof of a marriage having taken place between the mother of plaintiff and the defendant.” After Samuel appealed the district court ruling to Louisiana’s Supreme Court in January 1858, the brief presented by Ezekiel’s attorneys U.B. and E. Phillips and John Yoist to the Supreme Court stated,

Before going into the trial, defendant filed a motion requiring plaintiff to elect whether he claimed as the legitimate or illegitimate child of his mother. This was exceedingly cool. A father requiring his son to say whether he was legitimate or illegitimate, a fact which no one now living probably knows, except the defendant. The motion was correctly overruled by the court.[13]

And:[14]

…[T]he defendant is the father of plaintiff. He has introduced the mother of plaintiff to the world as his wife; can he now be permitted to deny that fact, and bastardize his own offspring, for the purpose of getting his property; to take advantage of his own wrong, and to enrich himself at the expense of the good name and reputation of his son?  …

Whether plaintiff be the legitimate son of his mother or not, is a matter which, as we have said before, lies exclusively within the knowledge of defendant. If he is not, the defendant has inflicted upon him a grievous wrong from which he is now seeking to derive profit, and cause loss to his son.

If such proceedings as this be sanctioned, it will lead to terrible results. All that need be done by husbands to secure to themselves the property of their deceased wives, will be to deny that they were ever married, and turn their children out as illegitimate. It would be rewarding the foulest crimes.

The Supreme Court ruling upheld the ruling of the Pointe Coupee court, noting,[15]

It is sometimes impossible for a child to know with certainty, whether he be legitimately begotten or not: besides, the motion [by Samuel to force his son to prove that he was legitimate] came with ill grace from the one presumed to be the father, who was perhaps better able to give information upon the subject, than any other person.

We are of opinion that the introduction to the world by defendant of M^rs Green, as his wife, and plaintiff as his child, joined with the recognition of plaintiff by M^rs Green as her child, prevent defendant from now succeʃsfully seeking to bastardize plaintiff in order to enjoy the poʃsession of property which never belonged to him and for which he has no title whatever.

And the point this long excursus about the final part of Eliza Jane’s life in Natchitoches Parish and the disposal of her property that included human beings held in bondage is winding around to: that Eliza Jane’s enslaved persons ended up in the hands of Samuel K. Green in March 1843 had much to do, I suspect, with the fact that Ezekiel was still a minor at the time his mother died — and this supports the 1824-5 birthdate given by Ezekiel in his complaint in the Green v. Green case.

What’s Known of Ezekiel’s Early Years

What we know of Ezekiel’s life leading up to his marriage to Camilla Birdwell in Pointe Coupee Parish on 2 January 1853, we know from documents found in the case file of the 1856 Green v. Green lawsuit. As we saw earlier, Ezekiel’s complaint setting the suit in motion states that “he was very young when he was taken from her [i.e., Eliza Jane] and placed under the charge of other persons.”[16] The complaint states that the separation of his parents occurred when he was five or six years old — that is, in the period 1828-1830. Various affidavits in the case trial suggest that it was primarily Samuel who raised Ezekiel after his marriage to Eliza Jane Smith ended. Ezekiel’s 5 March 1856 complaint says that after Samuel and Eliza Jane ended their marriage,

The said Samuel K. Green then took possession of your petitioner as his child, giving him his name, and acting in all other respects as a father would towards his child and continued exercising parental control over him until he reached his majority which has been some 10 years since or thereabouts….

On 10 September 1856 and 5 December 1857, Dr. Augustus H. Mears of Assumption or Ascension Parish (both places are given in the trial documents), deposed in Green v. Green that Ezekiel had boarded with his mother in Iberville Parish in 1831, after she had asked Mears to accompany her to Plaquemines Parish, where Samuel K. Green was then living, to get her son. Eliza Jane then brought Ezekiel to her residence at Plaquemine in Iberville Parish. Dr. Mears testified that Eliza Jane “seemed to be very fond of her son and supported and maintained him as it is costummary for a parent to do for his child…”

Another witness, Mrs. Mary Ann Texada (who signed her affidavit as Mary Ann Green and challenged Samuel K. Green to recognize her as such — and what’s that about?), testified on 12 September 1856 that Eliza Jane had brought Ezekiel to her residence on Bayou Sorrel in Iberville Parish and had presented him to the community as her son. Mrs. Texada also noted that Ezekiel bore a strong resemblance to his mother. The testimony of Captain Francis Duplessis of Iberville Parish on 11 September 1856 also noted this resemblance.

According to the 12 September 1856 affidavit of William B. Savary of Iberville Parish, Ezekiel stayed for an extended period of time with Eliza Jane in Iberville Parish in 1832 or 1835.  The 13 September 1856 testimony of Peter Millette of East Baton Rouge Parish, with whose mother Eliza Jane boarded at Plaquemine in 1830, also noted that Ezekiel had visited his mother at the Millette residence around 1830.[17]

Both Ezekiel’s March 1856 complaint and William B. Savary’s deposition note that Eliza Jane had sent Ezekiel away to school. The complaint states that Ezekiel was educated at the shared expense of Eliza Jane and Samuel K. Green after their divorce, and that the two had sent their son to St. Louis for his schooling. This would appear to have been sometime in the 1830s.

According to a 13 March 1857 affidavit of James Hopkins Sr. of New Orleans, who employed Samuel as an overseer on the recommendation of J.M. Reynolds of New Orleans around 1837, Ezekiel was in the charge of his father around 1835.[18] The 5 March and 23 April 1857 affidavits of Mrs. Julia Ann Walsh or Welch and Mrs. Eliza A. Dockery state that Ezekiel was living with or visiting his father in Natchitoches Parish in 1847-8.

In my next posting, I’ll pick up the account of Ezekiel S. Green’s life from the point at which he comes of age, marries, and begins his adult life separate from his father.

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[1] Ezekiel S. Green vs. Samuel K. Green, Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, 9th District Court, file #1525. The phrases “in this state” and “(1824 or 1825)” are written in above the line in the original.

[2] 1840 federal census, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, p. 167.

[3] 1860 federal census, Marksville, Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, p. 142, (dwelling/family 987, 30 November).

[4] 1870 federal census, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, Coushatta Chute, ward 1, p. 307 (dwelling 97/family 93, 16 June).

[5] 1880 federal census, Red River Parish, Louisiana, 1^st and 2^nd ward, p. 6D (ED 42; dwelling/family 107; June).

[6] 1900 federal census, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, Provencal, ward 7, p. 216A (ED 77; dwelling 25/family 26; 2 June).

[7] 1820 federal census, Davidson County, Tennessee, Nashville, p. 79.

[8] Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, Record Bk. 34, p. 130 (#3422).

[9] Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, Notarial Bk. 4, #714, p. 276 (Register 17, #4, p. 714).

[10] See Steven Deyle, Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life (New York: Oxford UP, 2005), p. 99; and Calvin Schermerhorn, The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860 (New Haven: Yale UP, 2015), pp. 54-68. According to Schermerhorn and Edward Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 2014), Austin Woolfolk of the Eastern Shore of Maryland established this business with his brothers John and Samuel, buying enslaved people in Maryland in agricultural areas no longer thriving to send them to New Orleans for sale (p. 179).

[11] 1850 federal slave schedule, Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, unpaginated, 6 September.

[12] Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, Succession Record #1476, 9th District Court.

[13] Ezekiel S. Green, Appellee, vs. Samuel K. Green, Louisiana Supreme Court Docket #5483, pp. 3-4.

[14] Ibid., pp. 7, 11.

[15] E.S. Green v. S.K. Green, Louisiana Supreme Court #1521, ruling 15 February 1859; and A.N. Ogden, Louisiana Reports, Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Louisiana, vol. 65: For the Year 1859 (New Orleans: West, 1860), p. 39.

[16] See supra, n. 1.

[17] On Augustine Françoise Verret, a woman of French-Canadian and Acadian roots, who married 1) Pierre Alexandre Maximilian Millet, a native of Bordeaux, France, and 2) Walter H. Mears, see Katherine Bentley Jeffrey, ed., Two Civil Wars: The Curious Shared Journal of a Baton Rouge Schoolgirl and a Union Sailor on the USS Essex (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2016), pp. 2-3. Dr. Augustus H. Mears was a son of Mrs. Peter Milette (i.e., Augustine Françoise Verret) and her second husband Walter H. Mears.

[18] Betty Swanson, et al., indicate that, in partnership with John Hagan, James Hopkins acquired lots from 131-141 on Decatur Street in New Orleans from the widow of Eugene Dorsiere and others about 1816: “Architectural Inventory,” in New Orleans Architecture, vol. 1: The Lower Garden District, ed. Samuel Wilson and Bernard Lemann (Gretna: Pelican, 1971), p. 161. On the lots, Hopkins had five four-story brick stores fronting on Decatur and Droopier built after 1829. These Decatur St. stores were bounded by Canal, Iberville, and Dorsiere Streets.

According to Samuel Wilson Jr., James Maxwell Reynolds owned warehouses at 501 Magazine Street in New Orleans, on the corner of Poydras, bounded by Camp and Lafayette Streets: “Julia Street’s Thirteen Sisters,” in New Orleans Architecture, vol. 2: The American Sector, ed. Mary Louise Christovich, et al. (Gretna: Pelican, 1978), p. 185.  The warehouses were built for Reynolds in 1830 by William Brand.