Paul Heinegg, Free African Americans of North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina from the Colonial Period to About 1820, 6th ed., 3 vols. (Clearfield, 2021)
Record
- Date
- 2021
- Reference
- Reed family entry (Pettiford-Riley section; page scans in the project as REED_FAMILY.pdf); Collins family entry (Church-Cotanch section). Research file sources S2, S52, OL2, OL3
- Seen as
- originalimagetranscriptabstractindex
What it says
A compiled genealogy of free families of color, abstracting court, tax, deed and census records.
Reed entry. William Reed, born about 1673, a mixed-race child born to a white servant woman in the Charles City County household of Robert Jones. Jones bequeathed him a cow, a gun and his freedom from indenture at twenty-one; Jones’s executors refused, and William sued them in Charles City County court and won on 3 September 1694 [Charles City Orders 1687-95, p. 522]. A taxable in James Ellis’s household, Southwarke Parish, Surry County, 1699-1703, called “Wm Read a Malatta” in 1699. In May 1708 he began a suit against William Edwards in Surry County and was awarded 1,285 pounds of tobacco on 21 September 1715. He “may have been” the William Read who with his wife Mary sold 100 acres on the north side of the Nottoway River and both sides of Sappony Creek in 1729 [Surry Deeds, Wills &c. 8:22].
Heinegg treats William as the founder of the free colored Reed family. At the end of the entry, under “Other members of the Reed family in North Carolina,” he lists:
“i. James, head of an Ashe County household of 6 ‘other free’ in 1800 [NC:87].” “ii. Stephen, head of an Ashe County household of 6 ‘other free’ in 1800 [NC:86].”
He does not trace their parents, so the Ashe County Reeds are not connected to William in his book.
Collins entry. Traces the Collins family from Thomas Collins, taxed as “Molata” in Orange County, North Carolina, in 1755; Ambrose Collins head of 4 “other free” in Ashe County in 1800.