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African American Avents | |||||||||||||
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As stated in the main page of the website,
this site is mainly concerned with the descendants of Col. Thomas Avent
of VA. I've spent my entire life in SE VA and NE
NC, and there are many more black Avents in these parts than white
ones, but the fact that a person's last name is 'Avent' does not mean
that they are necessarily descended from Col. Thomas, since after the War
Between the States many freed slaves took the name of the family that
"owned" them. Human nature being what it is, though, there can be little doubt that there were white descendants of
Col. Thomas Avent who fathered children with a black mother,
and therefore these
children and their descendants are just as much descendants of Col.
Thomas as his white descendants, and so their story should also be told
on this website. The difficulty comes in proving it. I've tried, as much as possible, on this site to use only what can be proven through solid documentation, but solid documentation is extremely hard to come by when it comes to African American genealogy, especially before the War Between the States, and particularly when it comes to any children produced as a result of black/white liaisons during this period.
Many
white Avents were certainly slaveowners. The estate
accounting of Col. Thomas Avent (proved 1757) contained
references to 44 slaves. By the time of the War Between the States many
Avents "owned" slaves, particularly in the deep South. Looking at only
one county, Lafayette Co., MS, we see the following:
Only about 25% of southerners lived in a family where anyone "owned" slaves, and the southern Avents were pretty typical. The 1850 US census shows 327 names of Avents or Avants., and the 1860 census shows 460. This number included children, though, so for a rough ballpark count of Avent/Avant households you could reduce those numbers by a third, which gives approximately 216 Avent/Avant households in 1850 and 304 in 1860. The 1850 Slave Schedule shows 42 slaveowners named Avent or Avant, and the 1860 shows 48. That tells us that - very approximately - about 20% of Avent/Avant families owned slaves in 1850 and about 16% in 1860. The webmaster's great- great- grandfather, Henry Evans Avent of Chatham Co., NC, is a good example. In 1860 there were seven slaves in his household - three who "belonged'" to him, and four to his wife Mary Ann. (Henry: one female 29 years old, two males, 1 and 2 years old; Mary Ann: one female 29 years old, one 19 years old, and two females 1 and 3 years old). Interestingly, Henry (who was a Confederate soldier) was likely named after a black man. Many Avent genealogists have speculated about his middle name of 'Evans', since it was not a common one in Chatham Co., and there are no known Avent/Evans marriages. Henry was born in 1829, the son of a Methodist minister, and during the 1820's there was a very well known black Methodist preacher in NC named Henry Evans. The book "The History of Evans Metropolitan AME Church: A Chronicle of Events" (Dr. Annette C. Billie, ACB Publishing, 2006) states: "...Henry Evans was a free black cobbler and minister and built the first Methodist Church in Fayetteville...". This church, founded in 1796, still exists in Fayetteville - for more information look here. One website describes the church as follows:
Ms Billie's book also says that "...this great man...swam across the icy Cape Fear River three times to preach the Gospel...".Given the fact that Henry Evans Avent's father, William, was a Methodist minister, it seems likely that he took this preacher as his son's namesake, which gives an idea of the complicated state of black/white relations in the antebellum South. The webmaster recently found a fascinating narrative written by a Dempsey Pitts (it can be read or downloaded from here), who had been a slave in the household of Benjamin Ward Avent, of NC and Yalobusha Co., MS. Did white Avent slaveowners father any children from their slaves? Very likely so, though this is difficult to prove. We
recently received an inquiry from a Rickie Austin, from MS, which is
also along those lines and is very interesting. Rickie tells me
that the tradition in his family has always been that they
were descended from a slave child of Benjamin Edward Avent (1799-1878,
Lafayette Co., MS). My research seems to indicate that it is
possible that Rickie's ancestor, a Tempy Avent, may in fact have been
fathered not by Benjamin, but by his son Thomas Londe Avent (1833-1910). |