Jarrett

Among early Stanly County records, even beyond Stanly, into the days she was part of Montgomery, I had come across men with the first name, Jarrett. There was Jarrett Russell and Jarrett Carter, and of course, both would spawn younger Jarretts in their wake.

Jarrett Carter is well researched and has many living descendants. Born on Valentines Day, 1800, in the Palestine area of Stanly County, Jarrett was the son of Clement and Annice Arnold Carter. Jarrett had grown to be a man along the banks of Mountain Creek. The Carter clan, as a whole, seem to have prospered along Mountain Creek,  between the Yadkin River and what is now Albemarle, in a beautiful area of quiet rolling hills and plentiful streams. 

There was another Jarrett Carter, just five years younger than this one, born in Halifax County, who was the son of a Harris Carter and wife, Sarah Tuttle, who left North Carolina and settled in Tennesee. Our Stanly County Jarrett married a Sarah Holt and they had about 7 children. One daugther married into my Marks family, another married a Laton, and a third didn't marry, but left her name afixed to the cemetery wherein most of her family was buried, the 'Tishie Carter Cemetery", Tishie being a nickname of Letisha.

Jarrett Carter died and was buried there in 1882. Then there was Jarrett Russell.

Jarrett Russell ties more directly into my family tree. He was born in what is now Stanly County on October 4, 1793, just seven years older than Jarrett Carter. The son of Aaron Russell and wife "Lizla" (MNU), Jarrett would marry my third Great Aunt, Frances "Fanny" Solomon, daughter of Bennett Solomon, Sr. and Ava McGregor Solomon, my fourth Great Grandparents. I descend from her brother, William.

The Russells lived very near the Carters, just a tad northeast of "Carterland" in what we now call the "Harris" area, in an area between Badin and New London. Jarrett and Fanny had nine children, although one is in debate and is a post of his own, which I had attempted to tackle some time ago, but now, as they stand, the list is:

1810 George W. Russell (Jane MNU) 

1819 McGlemery "Mack" Russell (Araminta Morton)

1820 Arena Russell Carter (Allen A. Carter)

1820 William Washington Russell (Priscilla or Prissy)

1827 Farlinda Russell (Thomas Franklin Hopkins)

1827 Ava Ann "Avy" Russell (John L. Pennington)

1827 James Solomon Russell (Lucinda McLester and Holly Hudson)

1832 Bennett Lee Russell (Emaline Sell)

1833 Carolina Russell (Samuel D. Austin and Lewis Carter)

Jarrett Russell died in 1856, and is buried in the Labon Carter Cemetery, this is how close the Russell/Carter connection was. Fanny Solomon Russell survived him by a few decades and lived until 1875. She and her brother, Rev. William S. Solomon, were the only two children of Bennett and Ava McGregor Solomon who remained in Stanly County. The others, including their mother, migrated to Tennesee. 

I hadn't given a flung handkerchief of a thought to the connection between the Carters and the Russells, or even their connection to the Solomons until I dove back into the mysterious triad of three Stanly County Solomons who married three Iredell County Dancy siblings. Lucinda Solomon married Willliam Edward Dancy in 1848. In age, she was the middle of the three. The eldest of the three, John E. Solomon, married William's younger sister, Eliza, in 1849. The youngest of the three was Jarrett Thomas Solomon, and he married Margaret Dancy, a sister of the other two, in 1855. Now, I do not have any document or proof that John, Lucinda or Jarrett were themselves siblings, but the further and longer I look into them, the stronger the belief that they were becomes. 

Then when I start back at the Solomon origins in Franklin County, North Carolina, I come across a large family with the surname of "Jarrett" and begin to wonder if there is a Solomon, Russell and Carter connection back to this Eastern North Carolina Jarrett family. Also, I had not really researched the Russell and Carter families in reference to any possible connection to each other, besides the obvious 19th century marriages.

For now, I am only at the tips of the grasslands. I've not ventured into those roots. I've covered the lives and families of John E and Eliza and that of W. E. and Lucinda. With this post, I wanted to look a little closer at Jarrett and Margaret.

Jarrett begins, and ends, with question marks. To begin with him, I must first repeat a little information about John E. Solomon, because it was through John that I found that Jarrett even existed. 

In some of the earliest court records in  Stanly County, North Carolina in 1841, the year of it's inception, John E Solomon, a teenager at the time, was ordered to be brought to court to be bound out. It was also noted that he was, or had been, living with Edmund Lilly. 

Edmund Lilly was a wealthy man. It was not explained why he was living with Edmund Lilly, or why that arrangement was being changed. The practice of bonding out was a type of apprenticeship reserved for illegitimate children or orphans. Considering John's age, about 17, he was most likely an orphan. 

Around this time, in the 1840 census, John Dancy is living in Wilkes County, NC. Within the decade, John Dancy would become the father-in-law of John E Solomon. John E Solomon would buy and sell a tract of land in Stanly County in the later years of the 1840's and in 1849, he would marry Eliza, the daughter of John Dancy and in the summer of 1850, John and Eliza are living in the mining town of Gold Hill, in Rowan County. 

John Dancy, sometime between 1840 and 1850, would move from Wilkes County to Iredell County. Both Wilkes and Rowan border Iredell, on different sides. 

It's in the household of John Dancy that we first encounter Jarrett Thomas Solomon. He's a 15 year old boy, appearing to help the 60 year old Dancy on the farm. Also in the home is John's wife, Frances, his second, and not the mother of his children, and his 17 year old daughter, Margaret. Two of John's sons, William and Enos, are living next door, and William was married to Lucinda Solomon, known as Lucy. Those were the three Solomons who married the three Dancy's. In five years, Jarrett would marry Margaret Dancy.

Next, in the 1860 census, Jarrett and his bride, Margaret, are living in Rowan County, but in Deep Well, not Gold Hill, where John and Eliza Solomon were. Jarrett, or J.T., was a laborer, at 26, Margaret was now 28, and they had a 4 year old son, John Frank. 

In August of 1862, Jerry, as he was called, enlisted in the 5th Regiment, NC Infantry, Johnston's Brigade, for the Confederate Army and term of the War. He roported that he was a farmer and had been born in Stanly County, NC and at the time of his enlistment, he was living in Iredell County. He had enlisted in Northhampton County, and I wondered why he had enlisted so far away, but in his petition for a pension, it was noted that he had been recruited by a Captain J C McRae of Statesville, so he had followed the Captain there, most likely.

J. T. Solomon had been wounded severly at Chancelorville on May 3, 1863. Three Surgeons signed a statement that he had fractured the tibia and dislocated the fibula of his left leg, rendering him severly handicapped. He had spent time in two hospitals and a prisoner of war camp.

The papers also gave a general description of him as being five foot six and a half inches tall, of a light complexion, with blue eyes and sandy hair.

Between 1862 and 1870, Jerry and Margaret had added another child to the family, a girl named Ida. The 1870 census finds the family together in Deep Well still, a community on the border of Iredell and Rowan, as the 1860 census had declared that they lived in the same community, but in Rowan County. This would place them in Mount Ulla and close to Prospect Presbyterian Church, where many of the Dancy and Solomon family is buried. At this time, Jerry was 35, Margaret was 37, John Frank was 15 and Ida was 3.

In October of 1874, Jerry and Margaret are named in a suit involving the esate of Margaret's father, John Dancy, as he had passed away.

By 1880, Jerry and Margaret were now in their 40's and still living in Mount Ulla, whether on the Rowan or Iredell side of the county line, I'm not sure. I suppose it depended on which census taker was working. I believe their property lay right upon the line.

Two more children have joined the family, Agnes and Leonidas, and John Frank, now an adult, was on his own. They spaced their family rather far apart, and despite their age, they were not finished.

1900 census 

Twenty years later, not much has changed. Jerry and Margaret are still farming in Mount Ulla. They are living with their two youngest sons, Leondias, now 24 and Robert, 17, the last and final Solomon. In this record, Robert is recorded as a grandson, in others, he lists Jerry and Margaret as his parents. He was probably a biological grandson, raised by his grandparensts.

Oldest of their two daughters, Ida E. Solomon, married on February 8, 1892 to William Edgar Thompson. She was 14 years old. On April 9, 1883, she gave birth to two children, a  son, Walter Eugene Thompson and a daughter Katherine Marian Thompson. I discovered from a descendant of Katherine Thompson White that she was named for her Aunt, E. C. Solomon, who left her an inheritance in her will. This would have been Eliza, the wife of John E. Solomon, as they were a childless couple. This adds a middle name for Eliza. Her full name was then Elizabeth Catherine Solomon, and Ida just changed the C to a K for her daughter's name, 'Katherine'.

Ida died on August 17, 1887, in Kannapolis, NC. She was 20 years old and buried at the Christ Episcopal Church Cemetery in Cleveland, Rowan County.

The turn of the century was something both Jerry and Margaret got to experience, but not for long. The next loss was that of Margaret. Evidence suggests that the couple left Mount Ulla for Kannapolis in Cabarrus County, where some of their children had settled, a Textile Industry town. 

Margaret Dancy Solomon passed away on May 23, 1907, according to Dancy family records, in Cabarrus County. She was 74.

Jarrett Thomas Solomon had appeared in the newspapers of Iredell, Rowan and Cabarrus Counties for nominal issues; taxes, tags, newpapers subscriptions, Civil War Veterans reunions between the years of1880 and the early 1900's.

His last mention was in 1909.

He seems to have become a cantankerous old Vet. 

Neither Jarrett T. Solomon or his son, Leonidas M. Solomon are found in the 1910 census or any records afterwards. It's unknown when either of them died or are buried.

The children of Jarrette T. Solomon and Margaret Dancy Soloman were:

     Married 1st Mary Laura Erwin : Three Children: 

     A) 1875-1913  Julie Blanche Solomon Belk

     B) 1878-1930  Minnie Laura Solomon Hudson

     C) 1882-1978  Robert Thomas Solomon (who was raised by his grandparents and commonly accepted as theirs.

    Married 2nd: Maggie Levi Foil (1869-1955) Two daughters:

    D) 1894-1964 Margaret Evelyn "EvieLou" Solomon Howell

    E) 1897-1974 Ida Estelle Solomon 

    Married William Edgar Thompson (1861-1939) Buncombe County, N.C., Two children:

    1883-1940 Walter Eugene Thompson

    1884-1977 Katherine Marion Thompson White

   

     Married John Henry May (1871-1922) Four Children:

     1895-1979 Leila Ida May Graham

     1899-1903 Laura Ola May

     1901-1986 Mary Ethel May Beaver

     1906-1986 Pearl Marie May Holt

Leonidas M. Solomon (1876- Unknown) Leonidas made it to adulthood as he is last shown at age 24. No more infromation.