So our people owned land.....


I just loved seeing that little "O" listed after Frank Bryant's description of being head of the household. That means they owned their home. This is a copy of the 1930 census showing the family at the Fisher St address. Now, they owned land---how did that happen? Well, that would be due to this pretty lady.


Rosa Mitchell Jones
(July 17, 1860--Oct. 3, 1931)

The house that the family resided in was inherited by Rosa's daughter Ophelia. Rosa Mitchell Jones and her husband were early landowners in Morehead City and of not just one property but several. Here's a copy of the old Morehead City grid with locations of those properties. This was an amazing find and I have to thank the wonderful people at the Carteret County Register of Deeds for sending me deed information and The History Place Museum for scanning me a copy of this old grid.




The properties highlighted in aqua were all owned by Alexander Hamilton Jones (Mar 5, 1852--May 22, 1915) and his wife Rosa.  Notice on this same image I have marked the home of Jonas Bryant (Mar 15, 1868--Oct 18, 1927) Guess who's mother that is? That would be Frank Bryant. Looks like Ophelia and Frank were childhood sweethearts from the same neighborhood. You know when I received this map and plotted this information...it was a real gift. It is just wonderful to get a sense of what a neighborhood looked like back in the day. There is a different school now where block 68 is but back then there was a school for the colored there. The pink X's are the locations of for St Stephen's AMEZ church, the one with the dot in the center of the X is the original building. Around the corner from the Fisher St. home lived William Bryant. Jonas Bryant, Frank's mother, had a sister, Rose who died before 1900. William was Rose's son. Jonas raised William and Frank together.

Must make lunch for sick daughter. Son was thankfully well enough to go back to school today.  Maybe I'll write some more later if I can get her down for a nap.

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