By Sara E. Lewis, Development Officer
About 1930 at the age of 81, Mary Armistead Burwell Catlett Jones wrote an essay about her family history and memories of Timberneck. “When I look back through the dim vista of my early life, I see a lovely home, kept in beautiful order by accomplished servants, with my mother and father presiding . . .” One of those “accomplished servants” was likely George Wesley Catlett, born enslaved at Timberneck in 1844 or 1845, the property of John Walker Carter Catlett, her “presiding” father.
Mary Armistead Burwell Catlett Jones (1850-1933)
He may be the person she called Uncle George. “He cooked for us after the war, when all the women had left the place,” Mary said, suggesting that he was perhaps the only formerly enslaved person to stay on or come back after the Civil War. Many of the enslaved people of Gloucester left for Union-occupied Gloucester Point, Yorktown, Hampton, Williamsburg, and other places where they could self-emancipate. In a letter dated September 30, 1862, John W. C. Catlett lamented, “29 of my servants have gone to the Yankees leaving me so few particularly about the house, that we find it difficult to get along at all, much less with comfort . . .” The 1860 U.S. Census Slave Schedule listed Catlett as the enslaver of 45 people, whom he kept in eight houses.
In her memoir, Mary Jones continued, “Such a fine cook he was, and no one knew it ‘til necessity proved it. When I became 16 years of age [in 1866], my Mother gave me a party. ‘Uncle’ George caught the finest oysters I have ever seen. He prepared them most deliciously and served them to all the company. Many compliments were lavished upon him.” In the 1870 U.S. Census, George Catlett listed his occupation as “oysters.”
George Wesley Catlett (1844/5-1905)
He had, “very polished manners, but he was gifted in coining words,” she said in a double-edged complement referencing his dialect and malapropisms. She recalled one of her favorite stories in which George teased her father and poked a bit of fun at a neighbor. He said Mr. Catlett understood the law as well as Mr. John Seawell but lacked Seawell’s tendency toward lying. “We really loved this faithful old man who lived and died at T. Neck.”
Analysis of John W.C. Catlett’s ledgers from the 1850s indicates that George, then barely a teenager, was one of his owner’s favorites because he referred to him by name, rather than simply as a “hand” or “servant,” and, apparently, he did not use him for labor like weeding or work in the fields.
John W. C. Catlett ledger entry, August 15, 1855 – “To send the brick moulds down but disappointed me & today I had to send George after them. He has to go about 12 miles.”
George Wesley Catlett’s grandson, the Rev. George Catlett, had his photograph taken with a portrait of his grandfather to go with an article published in Glo-Quips on February 28, 1973. Rev. Catlett of First Baptist Church in Ordinary said his grandfather lived from 1845 to 1905, and was buried in Gloucester Field Cemetery. His marriage record lists his birth year as 1844 and his parents as Wesley and Molly Catlett.
The grandson was also proud to explain that his grandmother Frances Ann Tabb Catlett, who was born at White Marsh, then owned by John Prosser Tabb, was the first person to take his grandfather to church. George and Frances would have 10 children together, five boys and five girls. At the time of the 1973 article, there were six grandchildren still living in Gloucester: Rev. Catlett, John R. Catlett, Richard L. Catlett, Josephine Garnett, Archie Cooke, and Rachel Goldman.
Rev. Catlett was also proud to show his grandfather’s military discharge document. George Wesley Catlett served in the U.S. Calvary from May 9, 1864 to October 31, 1865, when he was discharged in Clarksville, Texas. He was a private in Capt. George H. Teague’s Company B, 5th Regiment of Massachusetts Cavalry Volunteers. When he enlisted, he was “20 years of age, 5 feet 6 inches high, copper complexion, brown eyes, black hair, and by occupation, when enrolled, a laborer.”
If this was Uncle George and he returned to Timberneck after the war, did the family know, when he prepared oysters for Mary’s 16th birthday, that he had just returned from fighting with the Union Cavalry? Did they know he would be married the next year? Did they know that he considered himself to be an oysterman, a laborer, and a farmer when he declared his occupation, and not a cook or, as Mary referred to him in her essay, the Catlett’s “dining-room servant?” Did they know where he lived with his growing family? He lived at a distance on the east side of Timberneck Creek, and owned a 14-acre farm valued at $250 in 1880. Perhaps most personally, how much did they know about his status as a mulatto, or man of mixed race, and about the European American ancestry they may have shared?
As an enslaved person, George didn’t have a life outside of servitude. Once emancipated and free to have a full life, his former enslavers probably didn’t recognize this, as revealed by the statement that he was a “faithful old man who lived and died at T.neck.” After he was free and relatively prosperous, he still seemed one-dimensional, without a life beyond the farm where he catered to them. Even if ‘Uncle George’ and George Wesley Catlett aren’t the same person, this situation provides food for thought.
As we study history, such as this story with two sides, we learn more and more about the complex layers and interrelationships of people and events in the past. Black History Month allows us to examine our roots, once nurtured in slavery on plantations and farms like Timberneck, that have outgrown those early pots. Thankfully, there is new growth and a flowering of understanding across the races. May it thrive.
Sources
Jones Family Papers, Fairfield Foundation Collection.
Glo-Quips, February 28, 1973.
Virginia, U.S., Select Marriages, 1785-1940, FHL #2048451, Gloucester County Image 436.
U.S. Census and Slave Schedule 1850, 1860.
U.S. Census 1870, 1880.
Sara Lewis is Fairfield Foundation’s Development Officer. She co-leads the Fairfield Foundation Family Circle that meets on most second Tuesday nights monthly, where the sons and daughters of the enslaved and enslavers share conversations around the table. They are also interested in genealogy and have an Ancestor Project in GEDmatch, which includes white and Black descendants of the Catlett family who share DNA. The Family Circle is an affiliate of Coming to the Table.
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