LINDSEY FAMILY

THE STORY OF THE JACOB LINDSEY FAMILIY, as told from family recollections and genealogical Research. This is a compilation of the stories told to me. I have listed at the end a few of the individual stories as biographies of some of the persons listed. This is the story, my grandfather told me about the Lindsey - Watts families.

Jacob Lindsey was a free black man from Maryland. He met and fell in love with a white member of the family of a doctor in Jamestown, NC in 1839. My grandfather said that his grandfather’s name was Dr. Coffin and that he was a Quaker. The only Doctor with that name in Jamestown, NC was Dr. Shubal Coffin. I cannot confirm whether Mary was Dr. Coffin’s daughter or related some other way, all I know is that and he cared for this family at his home and kept them together as a family unit for at least 25 years (1840-1865).

In order to protect Mary and her children, Dr. Coffin listed them as his slaves and until after the Civil War the children's surnames were Coffin. Comparison of the slave census schedules of 1850 and 1860 showed Dr. Coffin's slaves as the exact same sex and ages of Mary and her children, and they are the only slaves owned by Dr. Coffin, no adult male slave is present and Junius Coffin’s military records list him as William Junius Coffin of Jamestown, NC.

Mary Coffin Lindsey is listed as mulatto on the census of 1870. I consulted with Dr. Willard Hess, a Quaker historian, in Indianapolis, IN, he stated the mixed marriages were illegal in Indiana at that time and in order to avoid prosecution, she would have listed herself as mulatto. He also stated that people who were listed as mulatto up North, had to be light enough to look white and more than likely my family story was correct and that Mary Coffin Lindsey was white.

Jacob and Mary Lindsey had ten children; Mary Ermiline, William Junius, Eliza, Amanda, John Calvin, Sarah, Alexander (Sandy), Franklin Albert, Henry Harrison and Arthur (Arthur was born in Peru, IN).

Doctor Shubal Coffin started the first medical school in North Carolina at Jamestown, Guilford County, NC, with a Dr. Lindsay and Dr. Robbins. He was a member of the famous Coffin family, which started the Underground Railroad and had such notable abolitionists as Levi Coffin and Lucretia Mott. The story of the split between the Coffin family and the Jacob Lindsey family occurred during the Civil War.

The oldest son William Junius Coffin (Lindsey) ran away from Jamestown and enlisted in the Union Army at Harrisburg, Pa. At the same time William Coffin, the oldest of the Coffin sons, was sent to Peru, Indiana to escape having to serve in the Confederate Army.

After serving in the War Junius Coffin went back to Jamestown and brought his family with the exception of his older sister Ermiline, to Peru, Indiana. While in Peru, Jacob farmed and his family grew, his children married and raised families of their own. (See family groups on attached outline descendant tree) His oldest son Junius, was a very popular member of the Indiana GAR (Grand Army of the Republic). His daughter Sarah was beloved by all that knew her.

Some of the family moved but not too far away. Some moved to Frankfort, IN., Eliza, Frank and John. Amanda's family moved to Indianapolis, IN. and later to Troy, OH. Not all of the family stories are happy.

Amanda, Eliza, Alexander and Arthur died young. The family of Jacob's son Henry Harrison did not have a happy life. Henry was of foul temperament and miserly. He was trained as a barber and married, Frances Louise Porter, an orphan Indian girl, who had been adopted by Archie and Gertrude Porter in Cairo, 11, where she was born.

Although grandfather and his brothers I talked to said that their mother was from the Blackfeet Indian tribe, (This tribe is not associated with the Blackfoot Tribe of Montana) and I have come to the conclusion from various other sources that she probably was Cherokee and Black. This term Blackfeet seems to be used with this combination of races.

The infamous Trail of Tears, which was the removal to the Cherokee Indians from the Carolina's to the Oklahoma Territory, went right through Cairo, IL and there were instances where some Indians were sold into slavery during this move. In the various documents I have searched there are several mentions made about her being eligible for Indian lands, and the only land that was being given away at that time were the Cherokee claims in Oklahoma. They were married in 1886 in Evansville, IN They had eight children. The oldest, Polly, was killed when the children were playing at a railroad crossing and a railroad tie fell on her.

Because of Henry's bad temper he was always getting into razor fights and the family had to constantly be on the go. Henry did not want to pay full fare on the train so the family would travel with circuses traveling along the Illinois railways. (Six of the children were born along the Illinois Central Railways, Charleston, Mattoon, Carbondale, Galesburg and Peoria, IL.)

Traveling with the circus is not as odd as it would seem. Peru, IN was the home of the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus, one of the most famous circuses in the United States, and before the Ringling Brothers became so famous and had winter camp in Saratoga, Fl or their home town of Baraboo, WI., Peru, Indiana was the winter home of traveling Circuses. (Peru, IN has an annual circus parade and celebration in honor of this distinction) The family traveled with the circus as Indians.Frances had taught them how to weave baskets and make moccasins.

After the birth of their last son, Henry took his family back to the home of his sister, Sarah Lindsey Artis, in Peru, IN According to his sister's granddaughter Helen, her grandmother told this story. Henry walked out of the front door one day stating that he was going to look for work at the local bagging factory. Sarah asked him wasn't he going the wrong direction, and he stated he knew where he was going, and he was never seen again.

There have been many different speculations as to what happened to Henry Harrison Lindsey. One story was that he went to cash in on the free Cherokee land in Oklahoma. Another was that he went to Bakersfield, Ca. and remarried (of course without a legal divorce), another was that as had been his usual practice, that this time he had been killed in a razor fight somewhere.

While doing my own research I came across yet another possibility. Shortly after his disappearance the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus train was involved in a major train disaster. Many people were killed and most were not identified. In fact there were numerous unidentified black men who were killed. The Showmen of America, buried the dead from this crash and they are buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, in North Riverside, IL. The lot in the cemetery where the circus performers are buried have elephant markers and numbers and sex listed on tombstones.

His wife Frances was devastated, for she was left with eight children to look after alone. She went to work as a laundress for Kate Porter, mother of songwriter Cole Porter in Peru, IN She later fell in love with a Mr. Jefferson of Wabash, IN and they had a daughter Frances. But they could not marry, because he was already married and had children by his wife.

In 1910, with her oldest son Harry and his new wife and son, and her daughter Esther and her new husband and family, living near by, she became ill and was unable to care for the younger children. The court decided that the older boys could not live with their siblings, and they were sent to White's Institute for Indian Children. The court gave the young Frances, first to her aunt Sarah, and then to her sister Esther and later into the White's Institute for Indian Children to be cared for.

Frances, was asked if she wanted to send the children to live with her people, the Cherokee Tribe, but she said they were fighting among themselves and it would be bad for her children. Frances died at the age of 43 in 1911. Her grandson Harry said it was from a broken heart.

Harry's brothers Benjamin and Otha had remarkable lives. Benjamin followed in the family tradition and joined the Main Circus which was later sold to the Miller Brother's 100 1 Wild West show (the show that Bill Picket, the famous black cowboy, was in). Ben performed as a cowboy, and where he was inspired to seek his fortune in California. At that time the Westerns were cast with real cowboys. All of Ben's brothers and sisters remembered him as a great guy with a touch of larceny.

Otha, served in WWI, was gassed, but this did not stop him, he learned several foreign languages, and worked as an interpreter for the US State Department.

Esther and son Ralph's lives were not so happy. Esther, after having to raise her children on her own, her brother Ben talked her into moving to California where he said he had a house and a job for her, when she got there, there was nothing. Esther was undaunted and used her own skills to get a house and live with her children happily, until just before Christmas in 1956, while traveling by car with her daughter Theodora and Theodora’s fiancée they were killed in a train accident.

Ralph met and married a beautiful girl from Panama, named Dorothy Augusta Reid. They had a daughter Alfrieda but Dorothy was frail and died shortly after Alfrieda was born, Ralph unable to cope with the loss of his wife and raising of their daughter, left her in the hands of his mother-in -law and sister-in-law, who raised her with love. He joined the Merchant Marines and died at an early age.

Junius and Theodore married and lived long lives.

Last was his sister Frances, she was born shortly before their mother died, and was living in California. Frances lived one heck of a life. She remembered upon her graduation from school, Kate Cole Porter asked to see her because she had a present for her. Mrs. Porter said that this was because she had been so fond of Frances's mother - Frances. She married three times and worked as a governess for several important families in Indianapolis, Chicago and Beverly Hills, California. I have copies of reference letters from several studio heads of motion picture companies. She never had any children of her own and she died in LA in 1990.

Harry went on to raise a large family of his own, with his wife Edith Watts.

At this time Harry then told me a little about my grandmother Edith Watt's family. Edith and Harry met while working as domestics. They married and raised six children. Edith died in 1960 in Niles, Mi.

DANIEL BOONE AND THE MENDENHALLS

Daniel Boone's Diary tells of the death of this William Hill, an old militia friend from Culpeper County, Virginia, when they were in service together in Washington's army. (Twenty years later another Captain William Hill, perhaps the son of Boone's early travel companion, had arrived in Highland County, Kentucky and was leading settlers into Ohio with Boone and the famous scout, Simon Keaton.)

In 1773 Boone led a party of defeated Regulators and discontented farmers toward Kentucky.1 On another trip west In September of 1778 part of Boone's group was attacked by Shawnee Indians in Powell's Valley, Tennessee. James and Richard Mendenhall were killed by Indian arrows in the battle that followed, while Boone's oldest son, James, and another companion were tortured to death by the Indians.2

As Guilford County continued to grow as a base for the migration west (Fig. 36). James Mendenhall's business thrived by servicing the needs of the pioneers, and Greensboro became a resource and supply center for the frontier.

The Mendenhall Family

In Guilford County the children of William and Mary Smith Hill became closely associated with members of the Mendenhall families of Jamestown and Randolph County.

The first Mendenhalls in America were emigrants to William Penn's colony and lived in the Philadelphia area for many years. In the 1750's two cousins, James and Mordecai, joined the stream of emigrants on the trail down the Shenandoah Valley with their families. As young men they married sisters, the daughters of Thomas Pearson. On reaching Guilford County, North Carolina, James Mendenhall purchased land on Deep River where he built a mill. A little community sprang up around the mill which came to be called Jamestown. It was a Quaker community, and a meeting house was built there to serve their religious and educational needs.

As Guilford County continued to grow as a base for the migration west (Fig. 37), James Mendenhall’s mill on Deep River thrived by servicing the needs of the pioneers, and Greensboro became a resource and supply center for the frontier.

Mordecai Mendenhall and his family settled on lands in Randolph County about twelve miles southwest of Asheboro, NC., in an area being taken up by other Quaker families including William and Aaron Hill. This was virgin land on the edge of the frontier on which only Indians and animals had lived before. The children of these families learned the ways of nature from the Indians first-hand. This was the outpost of civilization, the place where the explorers and pioneers left behind their countrymen and entered Indian territory.

Richard, the son of James Mendenhall of Deep River, operated a large tannery at Jamestown, NC. His family included Richard Junius, Elihu, Nereus, Eliza, and Judith. Judith Mendenhall had attended school in Germantown, Pennsylvania, and returned to Jamestown sometime after 1816 to start a Female Boarding School. She also served as Clerk of the New Carolina Yearly Meeting of Friends. Her home and school were later incorporated into the campus of Guilford College, the successor of New Garden Boarding School. It is also interesting to note that Trinity College, then at Trinity in Randolph County, was built on Mendenhall land. Trinity was the beginning of Duke University, now located at Durham, NC.

For many years Judith's brother, Elihu, was Chairman of the Board of Trustees of New Garden School and of Guilford College. Nereus, another brother, was a teacher and principal of New Garden School for nine years. As a young man he had worked as a surveyor on the North Carolina Railroad. At that time the railroads were a major new factor in expansion of the country. Many young men, looking for adventure and opportunity, were attracted to railroading as they are today to the space industry. Nereus' health suffered, however, from the rigors of that life style, and he returned to teaching as a career. Nereus Mendenhall remained in North Carolina during and after the Civil War, providing the guidance and support for the survival of the school through the difficult post-war years. (It is doubtful if the school would have survived without his support as so many residents were emigrating to the west). Under his direction New Garden supplied the leaders, ministers, teachers, and staunch settlers for the new communities being founded in the western territories of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and even further, Iowa, and Kansas. His daughter, Mary, was the wife of a later president of Guilford college, President Lewis Lyndon Hobbs.

Through the establishment of the new Boarding School at New Garden, new bonds were forged with the Quaker families in Greensboro and the Hills. It is not surprising then, to find that Samuel Hill's daughter, Ann Daugh Hill, married Elihu Mendenhall of Randolph County, a son of James Mendenhall of Deep River. On the death of Ann Daugh Hill Mendenhall, Elihu married as his second wife, Abigail Hill, daughter of Aaron Hill, Samuel's brother.

Richard Junius, the oldest son of Richard Mendenhall, went to work on the railroad in Ohio after finishing school and a year of teaching in Massachusetts. This work took him west into Iowa, where he spent a year before going north to Minneapolis, Minnesota, at the age of 28. With Cyrus Beede, an old friend from his days of teaching in Massachusetts, he became associated in the land, loan, and banking business in the firm of Beede and Mendenhall. Having arrived in Minneapolis in 1856, he became President of the State Bank of Minnesota in November, 1862. This bank merged into the State National Bank of Minnesota, for which he served as President until 1871. He was also President of the State Savings Association which was forced to suspend operations in the Panic of 1873. At much personal sacrifice Mendenhall satisfied nearly all the claims growing out of this failure. In 1862 he served as Town Treasurer and for several years as Secretary and Treasurer of the Board of Education in Minneapolis. With his banking career at an end, Mendenhall made his favorite hobby, the growing of flowers and fruit, his full-time occupation, creating an extensive nursery business.

Richard Mendenhall was joined in Minneapolis by his sister and brother-in-law, Eliza Mendenhall Hill and Dr. Nathan Branson Hill who left the Deep River area in North Carolina shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War. Nathan Branson Hill, a doctor, was the brother of Ann Daugh Hill, first wife of Elihu Mendenhall, and a cousin of Abigail Hill Mendenhall, Elihu's second wife. Nathan Branson Hill's sister, Eliza, had married Alfred

H. Lindley, another doctor and fellow student at New Garden Boarding School with Nathan Branson Hill. Together they had attended Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and Ohio Medical College, before leaving the south to settle in Minneapolis.

The Underground Railroad
The Lindsey - Watts' Legacy Begins

Jacob Lindsey was a free black man from Maryland. He met and fell in love with a white member of the family of a doctor in Jamestown, NC in 1839. My grandfather said that his grandfather’s name was Dr. Coffin and that he was a Quaker. The only Doctor with that name in Jamestown, NC was Dr. Shubal Coffin. I cannot confirm whether Mary was Dr. Coffin’s daughter or related some other way, all I know is that and he cared for this family at his home and kept them together as a family unit for at least 25 years (1840-1865).

This is the house where they lived in Jamestown. <!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

In order to protect Mary and her children, Dr. Coffin listed them as his slaves and until after the Civil War the children's surnames were Coffin. Comparison of the slave census schedules of 1850 and 1860 showed Dr. Coffin's slaves as the exact same sex and ages of Mary and her children, and they are the only slaves owned by Dr. Coffin, no adult male slave is present and Junius Coffin&#8217;s military records list him as William Junius Coffin of Jamestown, NC. Mary Coffin Lindsey is listed as mulatto on the census of 1870. I consulted with Dr. Willard Hess, a Quaker historian, in Indianapolis, IN, he stated the mixed marriages were illegal in Indiana at that time and in order to avoid prosecution, she would have listed herself as mulatto. He also stated that people who were listed as mulatto up North, had to be light enough to look white and more than likely my family story was correct and that Mary Coffin Lindsey was white.

Doctor Shubal Coffin started the first medical school in North Carolina at Jamestown, Guilford County, NC, with a Dr. Lindsay and Dr. Robbins. He was a member of the famous Coffin family, which started the Underground Railroad and had such notable abolitionists as Levi Coffin and Lucretia Mott.

The Underground Railroad was started in 1819 by Vestal Coffin at New Garden in Guilford County, N.C.3 Coffin had joined the Manumission Society begun by Benjamin Lundy in 1816. The Friends in North Carolina had mostly freed their slaves in 1772, but many of these freed slaves stayed with their owners rather than run the risk of capture by other southerners. Such was the case with Aaron and Samuel Henley of Randolph County, both of whom had freed slaves living on their property in 1840. These slaves had been inherited through their wives&#8217; families.

The leader of the Underground Railroad in Indiana was Levi Coffin, an uncle of Vestal Coffin who had emigrated west to Newport, Indiana, near the border of Ohio and Indiana. For twenty years Levi and Catherine Coffin opened their home as a way-station for more than 2000 escaped slaves. On the escape route were homes of relatives of the Coffins. The way-stations and routes were kept secret and never put in writing to protect the lives of the home-owners and the slaves. However, it is known that some of the stops or overnight refuges were at homes of relatives of the Coffins and their fellow Friends. In Carthage, the homes of Joseph Henley and Bethuel Coffin White were such havens.

In Newport the railroad operated out of the home of Levi Coffin and his wife, Catherine (White), and was referred to as &#8220;Grand Central Station&#8221; (Fig. 49). In Indianapolis, Charles F. Coffin was the head of the operation. The railroad operated from 1819 to 1852 and transported over 2000 slaves to freedom in the north.

Carthage was a station on the Underground Railroad before, during, and after the Civil War (Figs. 47 and 48). The Underground Railroad stretched from Deep River, North Carolina, to Newport (or Fountain City), Indiana (Fig. 48) and then on to Indianapolis.

Underground Railroad routes between stations in Indiana were varied and were kept very secret to protect those giving sanctuary to the slaves on their escape routes. Joseph Henley and Bethuel Coffin White opened their homes in Carthage to escaping slaves.

Underground Railroad routes in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. Quakers in North Carolina sent freed slaves into Ohio and Indiana through Cincinnati, Ohio, and Madison and Jeffersonville, Indiana, to Underground stations at the homes of relatives and friends on their way to freedom in the North.

Called the Grand Central Station of the Underground Railroad, Levi Coffin&#8217;s home in Newport or Fountain City, Indiana, was the center of rescue operations for freed slaves and stands today as an historic site.

Southern Friends had taken an early stand against slavery and freed their slaves. To their chagrin, they found that many manumitted slaves were being recaptured and resold into slavery. Under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, slave owners could repossess runaway slaves by presenting proof of ownership in front of a magistrate. Slaves had no right to a trial or to give evidence on their own behalf. Most runaway slaves were abused by their owners. The Quakers did not want to see the slaves they had freed captured and resold into slavery.

The Levi Coffins and their neighbors in Newport used ingenious methods of hiding the slaves who sometimes stayed over for weeks at a time. The Friends made every effort to prepare the slaves for freedom by teaching them to read and do sums while they were in their homes, to provide clothing, and a few necessities to take along with them on the escape route.

When the slaves were being transported from one way-station to another, they were often hidden beneath farm goods in the false bottom of a wagon. Special hidden rooms were devised in the homes on the route where they could hide while hunters were searching a house. Sometimes they hid between mattresses on a bed.


Many times the slaves were in poor health and needed medical care before being able to continue on the escape route. At Deep River, N.C., Dr. Nathan B. Hill and his wife, Eliza (Mendenhall) provided care, schooling and clothing at their home. In Newport, Indiana, the whole Quaker community worked to sew clothes and other necessities for the slaves.

The Friends never solicited or advised a slave to leave his master. They only looked after those who came seeking help. If a fugitive had not the mind or judgment to understand the secret of the business, he or she was sent back to their master; this was because failure and recapture meant "Georgia and Rice Swamps" and endangered the lives of both escapee and the member of the Underground Railroad. White fathers of slaves often brought their slave children to the Underground Railroad operators to ask for transportation to the safe northern states for their children to save them from a life of slavery which was inevitable if they remained in the south.4

Ingenious methods were used to disguise the health of slaves so that they would not sell on the market. Dropsy was brought on by bandaging the limbs until they were swollen and purple--quite painful, but slaves were willing to take pain over being resold to the south. Rheumatism was produced by bandaging above and below a joint on an arm or leg and erysipelas by rubbing any part of the body a few times with hot budock root boiled down to very strong tea. This last method was the most severe but deceptive and effectual.5

The papers of one freed slave, Arch Curry, who died, were given by his widow to other slaves fitting his description to be sent through as a "free man" with families going west. The papers were then returned and used again.6

In their flight to freedom, slaves used three principal crossing points--Cincinnati, Ohio, and Madison and Jeffersonville, Indiana.

One of the many slaves who was given sanctuary at the Levi Coffin's home was "Eliza" whose story is told in Uncle Tom's Cabin. In his diary, Levi Coffin wrote that it was generally believed that Simeon and Rachel Halliday, the Quaker couple alluded to in the book, were he and his wife.

The Underground Railroad operated from 1819 to 1852 transporting over 2000 slaves to freedom in the north.

Follow the Drinking Gourd*

Follow the Drinking Gourd

Follow the Drinking Gourd

Follow the Drinking Gourd

Follow the Drinking Gourd

The riverbank makes a very good road

The dead trees will show you the way

Left foot, peg foot, traveling on

The river ends between two hills

There&#8217;s another river on the other side

When the great big river meets

the little river

Follow the Drinking Gourd

For the old man is

A-waiting for to carry you to freedom

If you follow the

Drinking Gourd

*This was a song slaves sang about escaping to the North by following the Drinking Gourd, which is the the Big Dipper constellation.