BEGATS AND BEQUEATHALS

Marriage to Camilla Birdwell, Her Sister Hannah (Harville), Then to Mary Ann Wester

As these postings note, after marrying Camilla, a sister of his father’s then wife Elvira Birdwell (Grammer), and starting his family with her, Ezekiel settled in Avoyelles Parish contiguous to Pointe Coupee, where he bought an interest in a ferry. While living in Avoyelles Parish or briefly in Catahoula Parish, he also bought land there. By 1863, he had moved his family to Angelina County, Texas, where I last find records of Camilla and where Ezekiel bought a sawmill and may have operated it with the labor of some of the enslaved people left to him by his mother. Camilla evidently died between 4 September 1865, possibly in Angelina County, and 11 December 1867, when Ezekiel married her sister Hannah Birdwell, widow of Hardin Harville, in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana.

At some point after 1870, it appears that Hannah divorced Ezekiel, and on 13 January 1876, Ezekiel married a third time to Mary Ann Wester, daughter of Daniel Campbell Wester and Mary Ann Nobles, in Red River Parish, which was formed in 1871 from Natchitoches and several other parishes. Ezekiel and Mary Ann lived in Red River Parish for some years following their marriage. In a previous posting, I told in some detail the story of Mary Ann’s brother Zachary Taylor Wester (abt. 1846 – after 1877), who testified in September 1874 before a Congressional committee investigating violence in northwest Louisiana during Reconstruction.[1] As the posting I’ve just linked notes, Z.T. Wester served as a Confederate soldier during the Civil War, then following the war, he became a Republican and taught in a school for Black children at Sparta in Bienville Parish while living in Red River Parish, where he was elected tax collector and assessor. In his testimony before the Congressional committee, he stated that the White League, which was behind the violence in the region during Reconstruction, had threatened to murder him and arrested him, and his life was spared only when some of his former comrades in the CSA intervened and saved his life.

The linked posting provides a digital copy of an article the Shreveport Times published on 6 September 1876, reporting that Z.T. Wester had been waylaid and shot at as he rode his horse from his plantation to that of his brother-in-law in Red River Parish the preceding Sunday (3 September).[2] Wester’s horse was shot and killed, and a bullet passed through his coat. That brother-in-law who was living in September 1876 on a plantation in Red River Parish was Ezekiel Samuel Green.

As the linked posting I’ve been discussing also notes, there was a complex web of relationships between the Wester, Green, and Lindsey families of Red River Parish. As I’ve noted previously, ten months after her father Ezekiel married Mary Ann Wester, Ezekiel and Camilla’s daughter Mary Ann (1861-1942) married Alexander Cobb Lindsey in Red River Parish. As the linked posting above states, on 15 December 1878, Alec Lindsey’s uncle John Wesley Lindsey married Mary Ann Wester’s widowed mother Mary Ann Nobles (Wester) in Red River Parish. And as another previous posting indicates, Alexander Cobb Lindsey’s sister Emma married Daniel Campbell Wester (1852-1901) in Red River Parish on 14 November 1875. Daniel was a nephew of the Daniel Campbell Wester (abt. 1830 – 1870/4) whose wife was Mary Ann Nobles. The younger Daniel was the son of William Wester and Jane Edna Bryant.

Ezekiel Returns to Lumber Business by 1880

To return to my chronicle of the life of Ezekiel Samuel Green: the 1880 federal census shows Ezekiel, wife Mary Ann, and their children Carrie and Willie living in Red River Parish, with Ezekiel’s occupation given as lumber.[3] Willie is listed as a son, but no other document shows Ezekiel and Mary Ann with a son named Willie. Willie’s age on this census, two months, matches the age of a daughter of Ezekiel and Mary Ann whose name was Willie Leslia Green.

Ezekiel’s occupation in 1880 as a lumberman indicates that he had returned to the business that drew him in 1863 from Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, to Angelina County, Texas. Family stories passed down to me about Zeke Green state that he owned sawmills in a number of places in Louisiana, including at Campti in Natchitoches Parish. On 29 May 1881, Ezekiel bought from Benjamin E. Jones, both of Red River Parish, 300 acres in township 12, range 9, with a saw- and grist mill on the land.[4] This land lay east of Coushatta, the parish seat, and not far from the Natchitoches Parish border. As he bought this property, Ezekiel produced a 30 July 1872 letter showing that T.E. Paxton, deceased, had owned the land, and that the deed was in his succession. J.D. Roach and A. Benjamin Broughton witnessed the sale.

The 1880 federal census enumerates the family of Benjamin E. Jones (1822-1903) on the same page on which Alec and Mollie Green Lindsey are listed.[5] A history of this Jones family by Glen Jones says that Benjamin lived near Martin in Red River Parish and owned two sawmills in the period 1870-1880.[6] Martin is about 11 miles northeast of Coushatta and is close to the borders of Natchitoches and Bienville Parishes.

Thomas Edwards Paxton (1821-1874), who had owned this land prior to Benjamin E. Jones, was the first clerk of Red River Parish and was appointed the parish’s first district attorney at its formation.[7] The 1850 federal census shows Thomas living with his family at Coushatta Chute in Natchitoches Parish (i.e., at the town that would become Coushatta in Red River Parish in 1871).[8] As a previous posting notes, Arthur Benjamin Broughton, who was one of the witnesses to this conveyance, was a Red River Parish judge who solemnized the marriage of Alexander Cobb Lindsey and Mary Ann Green in November 1876.

Ezekiel did not hold onto the land and mill operation he bought in May 1881 for very long. A 14 December 1882 Red River Parish conveyance record shows him losing the property (the acreage is now given as 320 acres) to Hugh R. Jones for failure to pay taxes on it.[9] It’s possible that Hugh Robertson Jones was related to the Benjamin E. Jones from whom Ezekiel bought this property in May 1881. The 1880 federal census shows Benjamin born in Wales, and Wales was also the birthplace of Hugh R. Jones’s father John Hugh Jones, who settled in Coushatta.

Ezekiel Moves His Family to St. Landry (Later Evangeline) Parish by 1883

Between December 1882 and July 1885, Ezekiel S. Green moved his family from Red River Parish to St. Landry Parish. The death certificate of Ezekiel and Mary Ann’s daughter Mary Catherine Green, who married Thomas Jackson Mace and died at Overton in Rusk County, Texas, states that Mary Catherine was born 22 July 1883 at Turkey Creek, Louisiana.[10] Turkey Creek is now in Evangeline Parish after that parish was formed in 1910 from St. Landry, but in 1883, it was in St. Landry Parish. Turkey Creek is some 120 miles southeast of Coushatta. Evangeline Parish borders Avoyelles, where Ezekiel and his family lived in the late 1850s and early 1860s, on the southwest. St. Landry Parish is directly south of and also borders Avoyelles.

In moving from Red River Parish to St. Landry Parish after 1880, Ezekiel and Mary Ann were following Mary Ann’s mother Mary Ann Nobles (Wester) (Lindsey) and her second husband John Wesley Lindsey, who had settled in St. Landry by 1880, following their marriage in Red River Parish on 15 December 1878. As this previous posting notes, the 1880 federal census shows John W. and Mary Ann Lindsey in St. Landry Parish with Mary Ann’s Wester daughters Virginia, Dora, and Sallie, and with John’s son by his first wife Margaret Gibson, William Oscar Lindsey, living nearby.[11] As Ezekiel and his wife Mary Ann did, John W. and Mary Ann Lindsey moved back to Natchitoches Parish from St. Landry by 1900.

A notice in St. Landry’s Opelousas Courier on 25 July 1885 confirms that Ezekiel and his family were living in St. Landry Parish by 7 July 1885: the Courier shows E.S. Green being paid $32.50 on the 7^th for supplying lumber to the parish.[12] So Ezekiel had continued his lumber business in a new location after having moved from Red River Parish, though I have not yet been able to locate a conveyance record in St. Landry Parish showing him buying property there. As we’ll see in a moment, he sold a sawmill and land in St. Landry in March 1888, so he had obviously bought this property at some point prior to then. Opelousas is the parish seat of St. Landry. Turkey Creek, where it appears Ezekiel and his family were living after their move to St. Landry and where he evidently had his lumber business, is some 35 miles northwest of Opelousas.

That Turkey Creek was likely where the family lived after its move to St. Landry Parish is suggested by the fact that Ezekiel’s daughter Olive Ethel Green, who was born 3 August 1891, reported on a corrected birth certificate for her daughter Gloria Devore filed on 14 October 1941 in Potter County, Texas, that she (i.e., Olive) was born at Turkey Creek, Louisiana.[13] Gloria was born 15 October 1920 at Fort Worth, Texas. Her original birth certificate had accidentally omitted her given name, and this is why a corrected document was filed in 1941. Olive married Fred Earnest Devore. Turkey Creek was definitely a sawmilling center: a November 1912 article in Lumber Trade Journal reports on a large lumber company called the Arkansas Mill Company that was operating at Turkey Creek, where both yellow pine timber and hardwood timber were abundant, in 1912.[14]

Sale of the Llano County, Texas, Land

By April 1886, it seems Ezekiel was making plans to sell the 640 acres in Llano County, Texas, that his father Samuel Kerr Green had bought in New Orleans on 10 January 1837.[15] A digital copy of the original conveyance for this land from Hansford Cophendolpher to Samuel K. Green is at the posting I’ve just linked — and see here and here. When Samuel died in March 1860, Ezekiel inherited this land as Samuel’s sole heir; he had held onto the property over the years. Though Cophendolpher deeded the land to him on 10 January 1837, on 10 August 1857, it was officially granted to Samuel by a Bexar County land grant in Llano County, with Cophendolpher assigning the 640 acres to Samuel.[16] The tract was on the south side of the Llano River about thirty miles northeast of Fredericksburg.

On 31 April 1886 in St. Landry Parish, Ezekiel recorded proof of his heirship of the land from Samuel K. Green. On that date Baylis W. Swofford and Edward P. Harmanson testified in St. Landry Parish that E.S. Green was the only son and heir of Samuel K. Green. This affidavit was filed 28 May 1886 in Llano Co., Texas.[17] Federal censuses from 1850-1900 show Bayliss Swofford moving after 1850 from Pointe Coupee Parish to Avoyelles Parish, and then between 1880-1900 to St. Landry Parish, moves paralleling the moves of Ezekiel himself.

On 7 May 1886 in St. Landry Parish, Ezekiel gave power of attorney to R.M. Thomson and John K. Donnon of Travis County, Texas, to represent him in proving his title to the Llano County, Texas, tract and to file suit if necessary. This power of attorney was recorded in Llano County on 28 May.[18]

The reason Ezekiel gave two Texas men power of attorney to represent him in proving his title to the Llano County land and to file suit if necessary is that litigation was brewing regarding the ownership of the 640 acres. At some point prior to 1894, a case ­— White et al. v. Rosser — had been filed in Llano County district court regarding the ownership of the land. In 1894, this case ended up in the Texas Supreme Court.[19] The Whites were claiming that Samuel K. Green had deeded the land to them in 1870 or 1871. The court found that Samuel K. Green could not have effected this deed, since evidence proved he died in 1860.

An announcement on 24 March 1888 in Opelousas Courier suggests what may have been the backdrop to Ezekiel’s preparations to sell his Texas land: on 24 March 1888, the Courier announced a sale for taxes of a tract of land in St. Landry Parish belonging to E.S. Green, with pine woods, improvements on public land, and a small sawmill with fixtures.[20] This announcement appeared again in the same paper on 31 March 1888.[21]

On 16 February 1891, with the deed noting that he resided in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, Ezekiel sold the 640 acres in Llano County, Texas for $550 to Calvin M. Rosser of McCulloch County, Texas.[22] The deed provides a sketch of the history of the tract, noting that Hansford Cophendolpher had assigned 640 acres, survey 628, bounty warrant 275, to  Samuel K. Green on 19 August 1857 by patent 351, and that the land had then come to Ezekiel from his father Samuel K. Green. The deed states that Ezekiel was Samuel’s sole surviving heir. E.S. Green signed the deed at Bayou Chicot, Louisiana, on 16 February 1891, with W.E. Hawkins and J. Runnell as witnesses. He proved the deed the same day in St. Landry Parish, and it was filed in Llano County on 8 May 1891 and recorded there the following day.

On 3 September 1892, The St. Landry Clarion published a notice that E.S. Green was a delinquent taxpayer with land in the parish on Bayou Chicot.[23] A community named Bayou Chicot is some six miles south of Turkey Creek in present-day Evangeline Parish. It appears that the town is named for a bayou that I do not find on current maps, though Clare D’Artois Leeper states that the village of Bayou Chicot is “near the banks of the bayou” from which it takes its name.[24] The reason the bayou is not on current maps, I think, is that Lake Chicot was created in 1943 by the impoundment of this bayou.

Return to Natchitoches Parish by 1900

As the previous posting notes, by 1900, Ezekiel and Mary Ann Green had returned to Natchitoches Parish from St. Landry Parish, and are enumerated on the 1900 federal census at Provencal in Natchitoches Parish.[25] The census entry, recorded on 29 June, shows the family living in a rented house at Provencal, with Ezekiel farming. In addition to Ezekiel and Mary Ann, the household contains their daughters Mary Catherine, Olive, and Leslia/Leslie, along with their sons Cam (Campbell Ezekiel) and Ivy. Willie Leslie’s name is given as Davion, since her husband Louis Felix Davion had died. Her daughters by Louis, Elvena and Felix Ann, are found in the household along with her.

Final Records of Ezekiel’s Life

The last record I’ve found showing Ezekiel still living dates from soon after this census: on 29 June 1900, Ezekiel’s daughter Leslia Davion sold her father, both living in Natchitoches Parish, 40 acres in section 32, township 11, range 8 of Natchitoches Parish.[26] The land was bordered north by Amos Ellis, east and south by the railroad, and west by J.H. McKnight. Ezekiel paid $100 for the land. This deed was recorded 3 July 1900.

I do find a 1 April 1905 notice in the St. Landry Clarion of land in St. Landry Parish belonging to Ezekiel being sold for non-payment of taxes.[27] This notice does not contain any indicator of whether Ezekiel was still living at that date. The notice states that the land being sold was 120 acres in section 14, township 2. This announcement was printed again in the same newspaper on 8, 15, and 29 April, and 6 May. This land would have been on Turkey Creek just outside the village of Turkey Creek.

Neither Ezekiel nor his wife Mary Ann Wester Green is to be found on the 1910 federal census, so it appears both died between 1900-1910. I have been unable to locate any death or burial record for either Ezekiel or Mary Ann. It’s possible that Mary Ann is the Mary A. Green buried at Oakdale cemetery at Oakdale in Allen Parish, with a tombstone giving her name as Mary A. Green and stating that she was born 30 December 1857 and died 25 February 1909.[28] The tombstone header reads, “Our Mother.”

Allen Parish borders Evangeline Parish on the west. Oakdale is some twenty miles west of Turkey Creek, where I think Ezekiel and Mary Ann lived in the 1880s and 1890s in what became Evangeline Parish in 1910 when Evangeline was formed from St. Landry. Ezekiel and Mary Ann’s oldest daughter Carrie is buried with her husband Sherwood L. Smith in Science Hill cemetery about ten miles from both Oakdale and Turkey Creek. Science Hill is about equidistant between Oakdale and Turkey Creek. If Ezekiel predeceased Mary Ann, then it’s possible, I think, that Mary Ann spent her final years living with her daughter Carrie, who appears in St. Landry Parish with her husband Sherwood L. Smith in 1900 and 1910.

One of the big ironies of the rather sad story of Ezekiel Samuel Green is that the father who sought to deny paternity of him in order to claim his son’s property, Samuel Kerr Green, gave his son his own name — Samuel. And in naming their son Ezekiel, Samuel K. Green and Eliza Jane Smith were giving him a name that ran for generations through the Calhoun family of Abbeville County, South Carolina, from which Samuel K. Green descended.

Samuel’s mother Jane Kerr was the daughter of Samuel Kerr (1741-1781) and Mary Calhoun (abt. 1743 – 1805) of Abbeville County. Mary was the daughter of Ezekiel Calhoun (abt. 1720 – 1762), who came with his parents Patrick Calhoun and Catherine Montgomery from Northern Ireland as a teen, then moved with his mother and siblings to Augusta (later Wythe) County, Virginia, before settling in the Long Cane settlement of Abbeville County, South Carolina.

Samuel Kerr Green had a brother whose name was Ezekiel Calhoun Green (1795-1851). In giving his son the name Ezekiel, Samuel was carrying on a long tradition in his family of honoring his progenitor Ezekiel Calhoun. This makes it all the more incomprehensible and tragic that Samuel decided to try to bastardize his son Ezekiel in order to claim the enslaved human beings that Ezekiel had inherited from his mother Eliza Jane.

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[1] See “Report of the Select Committee on that Portion of the President’s Message Relating to the Condition of the South” in Report of the Select Committee on That Portion of the President’s Message Relating to the Condition of the South (Washington, DC: Govt. Printing Office, 1875), pp. 320-1, 777-8; and Executive Documents for the 2nd Session of the 44th Congress (Washington, D.C.: Govt. Printing Office, 1877), p. 252.

[2] “Clerk of Red River Parish Waylaid,” Shreveport Times (6 September 1876), p. 1, col. 1.

[3] 1880 federal census, Red River Parish, Louisiana, 1^st and 2^nd ward, p. 6D (ED 42; dwelling/family 107; June).

[4] Red River Parish, Louisiana, Conveyance Bk. C, p. 230, #253.

[5] 1880 federal census, Red River Parish, Louisiana, ward 2, p. 65D (ED 44; dwelling 74/family 75; 9 June).

[6] Glen Jones, “The Benjamin Oswald Jones Family,” in Red River Parish: Our Heritage, ed. Red River Parish Heritage Society (Bossier City: Everett, 1989), pp. 275-6.

[7] Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northwest Louisiana (Nashville and Chicago: Southern, 1890), pp. 213-5.

[8] 1850 federal census, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, Coushatta Chute, p. 306A (dwelling 80/family 77; 16 June).

[9] Red River Parish, Louisiana, Conveyance Bk. C, p. 418, #469.

[10] Texas Department of Health, Death Certificates, Rusk County, 1967, January-March, #5245. The informant was Mary Catherine’s daughter Hazel Davis.

[11] 1880 federal census, St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, 6th ward, p. 379C (dwelling 167, family 171, 16 June).

[12] The Opelousas Courier (25 July 1885), p. 1, col. 5, citing minutes of the parish police jury for 7 July.

[13] Texas Department of Health, Texas Birth Certificates, 1920, #57424.

[14] “Turkey Creek, La.,” Lumber Trade Journal 62,9 (November 1912), p. 23. See also Federal Writers’ Project, Louisiana, a Guide to the State (New York: Hastings House, 1941), p. 618.

[15] The land’s history is traced in Llano County, Texas, Deed Bk. T, pp. 53-4. There is not a comprehensive index to conveyances in Orleans Parish for 1839; the index for each individual conveyance volume in this time range has to be searched. I’ve done a partial, but not thorough, search of the index of Orleans Parish conveyance books in this period, without locating the original deed — though I actually have a copy of the original conveyance record from the Texas state land file for this tract of land, as the image of the document at this posting shows you.

[16] Bexar County, Texas, Bounty Land file #1217.

[17] Llano County, Texas, Deed Bk H, pp. 372-3.

[18] Ibid., pp. 373-4.

[19] See The Southwestern Reporter, vol. 27: Containing All the Current Decisions of the Supreme Courts of Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee, Court of appeals of Kentucky, and Supreme Court, Court of Criminal Appeals, and Courts of Civil Appeals of Texas (St. Paul: West, 1894), pp. 1062-3.

[20] St. Landry Courier (24 March 1888), p. 4, col. 7.

[21] Ibid. (31 March 1888), p. 2, col. 5.

[22] Llano County, Texas, Deed Bk. T, pp. 53-4. 

[23] The St. Landry Clarion (3 September 1892), p. 4, col. 3.

[24] Clare D’Artois Leeper, Louisiana Place Names (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2012), p. 32.

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

[26] Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, Conveyances Bk. 120, p. 653. 

[27] St. Landry Clarion (1 April 1905), p. 3, col. 3. The notice gives Ezekiel’s name as E.S. Greene.

[28] See Find a Grave memorial page of Mary A. Green, Oakdale cemetery, Allen Parish, Louisiana, created by Herald, maintained by Laura Savoie-Hanchey Hall, with a tombstone photo by Charles T. Baggett.