part of the Pickens Genealogy Information Group
FINDING MIMA PICKENS
(1763 - 1868)
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First: I need to apologize to Mr. Whitney for taking so long to get Jemima included in the dB and for not figuring a way or finding more information on Jemima.
Secondly, despite all possible researching I have accomplished, I have not yet been able to find any information from Pickens Co. or Anderson Co. S.C on this family. This disturbs me. I am probably going to get into some kind of trouble for presenting this. However, I do think that it does need to be available, and hopefully by making available Kenneth will be able to locate more information about this family line. This is presented here without permission of Kenneth as RESEARCH MATERIAL. It's purpose is to document a section of the family that has long been ignored. The Copyright belongs to Kenneth A. Whitney, any use of this material for any purpose must have permission from Mr. Whitney. This is for RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY! You may contact Mr. Kenneth Whitney's by clicking on his name.
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I received this material several years ago from another researcher. It is galleys of an article that Kenneth submitted to South Carolina Historical Magazine. I do not know if it was published. What you are going to see presented is the manuscript as the editor suggested and as Kenneth presented it. The transcription is the way it was suggested, In italics is the material that was presented by Kenneth. Personally, I prefer his version. At the side is a link and scan of each page of the manuscript. If you click on the icon it will give you a view of the whole page as it was received. |
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Kenneth's cover letter to the South Carolina Historical Magazine, dated September 30, 1992 |
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FINDING MIMA PICKENS
(1763 - 1868)
____I am an African-American descendant of South Carolina slaves and this is a story about my continuing search for my ancestors. While it is a search which has surely had its ups and downs, it has also been a search which has presented a number of unexpected and pleasant surprises, such as the actual locating of the grave site of my oldest known ancestor, Mima Pickens. Going backwards in time, Mima represents the earliest of those three known generations of "Pickens" slaves in my lineage. Based upon available records and other information, it is believed that Mima was born sometime between 1763 - 1775 and that she died in 1868.1/
I am a seventh generation descendant of Mima Pickens, a person whom neither I nor any other living member of the "Pickens family" even knew existed until a few years ago. You see, for about twenty-five years or so, one of the African-American Pickens families of the Greenville, South Carolina area has held an annual family reunion. The reunion, which is scheduled around the third Sunday of each August, was initially designed to bring together the descendants of the then oldest known ancestors o the clan, Carey Pickens (1840 - 1910) and Mary Hallums Pickens (1851 - 1905), his wife.
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1/_____Both the 1850 and 1860 U.S. Census Slave Schedules for Robert Pickens of Anderson County, SC (former slave owner), indicate that among his seven or so slaves was a Black female born around 1775. The 1823 Will of the same Robert Pickens makes reference to his "old" Negro woman, Mima. If we assume that "old" was the equivalent of 58 years of age, her date of birth would have been around 1765. Finally, the grave marker for one "Aunt... Jemima Pickens" in the Pickens family Cemetery, Easley, South Carolina, reads in pertinent part "...Died 1868 ...Age 105". This would place Mima's date of birth around 1763. |
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_____Since learning I was a descendant of Carey and Mary in 1978, I have regularly attended the annual family reunion and indulged in the tedious process of researching and documenting my ancestry on the Pickens side. In 1988, upon discovering the identity of Mima (who was Carey Pickens' paternal grandmother), I took advantage of this milestone, collected all of my research material gathered over the years and self published: A DOCUMENTED AFRO-AMRICAN FAMILY HISTORY, CAREY PICKENS AND MARY HALLUMS (1765 - 1910). My search did not stop there however. My burning desire to one day walk the very land where my ancestors toiled and my belief that I could find it's general location motivated me to continue. Having obtained a fair amount of information about the white Pickens family and its prominence in the local area, I had a high degree of confidence that we could at the very least, eventually locate the general area of the family's original homestead. After all, both a local county and town had been named after one or more prominent members of the Pickens family and references to the old family homestead were contained in a number of sources. By no stretch of the imagination however, did I expect to actually locate the grave site of my oldest known slave ancestor, Mima. Indeed, I wasn't looking for it. But, I'm now certain that that's exactly what I did on Sunday, August 16, 1992 when I found the grave marker of "AUNT... JEMIMA PICKENS" (1763 - 1868). This then is the story about how that unexpected discovery was made.
//_____As noted, the search for my Pickens family ancestors began in the Fall of 1978. It was at that time that certain older "cousins" from New York attending the wedding |
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of my only sister. These cousins were the first to educate me about my ancestry on my maternal grandmother's side (i.e. Pickens/Hallums), the "Pickens" name, and the Pickens' family reunion. Prior to that occasion, I had heard of the "Hallums" name, but never the "Pickens."
_____A few weeks after receiving this information, from cousins Maude Coleman and her daughter Velma Emanuel, I commenced my research. I started my research by perusing the Federal Census Records at the Federal Archives and Records Center in Chicago, near my hometown of Evanston, Illinois. Because of my prior experience in researching other branches of my family tree, it did not take long to locate Carey Pickens and Mary Hallums, His wife, and other pertinent information which would subsequently loom significant. with time. By this time, I had become a pretty decent researcher -- this being accomplished after having learned the hard way. That is, by making almost every conceivable mistake in the book and wasting untold hours because of impatience.
_____Starting with the then latest available Federal Census records for 1900 (the 1910 records had not yet been made available) and eventually working my way back to 1870,2/ I was able to locate and follow Carey Pickens and Mary Hallums and their
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2/_____The 1870 Census was the first U.S. Government Census conducted after the Civil War and the July 1, 1863 Emancipation of the slaves. Accordingly, it was the first Census which generally identified living African-Americans by name. The Census records for 1860 and prior years only identified persons who were "free". Since most African-Americans living in the South prior to Emancipation were not free, they were identified on the pre-1870 Census records at most, by age, sex and race (not by name) under the names of their owners. |
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descendants over the approximately thirty year period between 1870 and 1900. More significantly however, information was gleaned from these records which suggested among other things, the possible identity of Carey and Mary's parents, as well as the former slave master(s) of their parents. Moreover, in the case of Carey Pickens, these records would eventually make it possible to identify Carey's paternal grandmother, Mima from other public records. but first we had to identify Carey's parents; and particularly, Carey's father "Abraham" or Abram", as well as Abraham's former master, Robert Pickens.
_____This is how it was done. From the 1870 Census (Brushy Creek Township, Anderson County), we could identify certain Black Pickens families living in close vicinity to Carey (age 26){1844}, Mary (age 20){1850} and their then only child Eliza (age 1){1869}. Elliza was my great grandmother. Unfortunately however, the 1870 Census does not reveal how any of these families might be related. One of those Black families (virtually living next door to Carey and Mary) consisted of an Abraham 9age 70){1800}, Mariah (age 60){1810} and a child, Ann (age 8){1862}. It was during 1982 that Cousins Bernice Pegg and Velma Emanuel provided me with information which allowed me to conclude that Abraham and Mariah Pickens were Carey Pickens' parents. From information Cousins Bernice and Velma obtained over the years from our Cousin Ruth Pickens (deceased 1/6/81), it was learned that Ruth's grandfather was one Norris Pickens and that Norris was "Papa Carey's brother". Because of the passage of time, no one was really certain about the identity of Carey and Norris' parents. were but only as noted, that Carey and Norris were brothers. By closely scrutinizing both the 1870 |
