Most of the court cases I've came across, while perusing the Superior Court records of the reconstruction years of Stanly County, involving the birth of a child outside the bonds of Holy Matrimony, have fallen into a set number of categories. First there are the cohabitating couples, who just hadn't bothered to get married. Second, there were the mistresses of a married man, who sometimes had multiple children over a lengthy period of time, and depended on this man for roof and survival, despite his having a legal wife and family with whom he lived. Third, and perhaps the most common were the careless teens, giving way to adolescent overdrive. Fourth were the desperate lasses, who surrendered their virtual for the promise of a ring. Fifth were the situations, that would be a criminal act this day and time, of the young and innocent, who were beguiled and seduced into a situation or relationship they knew nothing about aforehand, by an older and more experienced man. Sixth were the women who ran a 'bawdy house', a place of alcohol, carousing and sin, that would sometimes result in children.
The experience of one Miss Blanch Carpenter was one that I haven't came across very often, and thankful for that.
Blanch Carpenter vs Fred Lilly
On October 10, 1892, Miss Blanch Carpenter, a single woman of about 23 years old, was brought to court on charges of Bastardy. She named one Fred Lilly as the father of her child, and this is where the story begins.
Blanche Carpenter was born in Anson County, North Carolina, on the southside of the Rock River. She was the daughter of Henry Franklin Carpenter and his wife Harriett Cauble, who both came from Stanly County families. Blanche Isabell Carpenter was their oldest child. Franklin Carpenter was the son of Williamson Carpenter and wife, Sarah McIntyre, from old Tyson area Rocky River families and her mother was the daughter of Franklin Cauble and Elizabeth Milton, daughter of John Milton II, solidly Stanly County families. Her family is shown in Wadesboro, in Gulledge District in 1860, when she was two, and in Ansonville, Anson County, in 1870, after her father, and her grandfather, returned from the War.
They must have moved back up to Norwood, where her parents were from, around 1890. In 1880, Blanche is shown with three younger siblings. She was 12. In 1890, she would have been around 22, and a young woman looking for socialization and romance.
I had never heard of a "Cotton-Picking" as a social event, but apparently, it was a thing. From what I can gather from newspapers of the time, the Victorian era through the turn-of-the-century, a Cotton Picking was an event similar to what I have heard of, a "Barn-Raising", where neighbors would come together and get a chore done or a barn built, for an individual, and afterwards have a celebration with music, dancing, food and fun. It was an all-out social event, probably one of the few ways young people got to carouse and fellowship with other singles.
As late as 1938, a cotton-picking event was reported to been had at the home of Martin Tucker, complete with music and dancing.
In the community of "Lowder", there were so many going on in October, a scarcity of workers was noted.
One particular event, held at the home of Harris Mauldin, had more than a passing significance in the life of Blanche Carpenter.
Harris Mauldin's part in the event, from what I can tell, was just the fact that he was the host and the benefactor of the Cotton-picking event. Harris was further known as Ervin Harris Mauldin and being a Mauldin, was of course a member of my family tree. The son of Marion Patterson Mauldin and Martha Rummage Mauldin, Harris was a contemporary of the parties involved, born in 1866, all that generation that were born in the years of reconstruction and devastation after the War. He would have been a young father with a fledging farm and family, with a scattering of very young children in 1892. He had married his wife, Mary Arannah Brown on February 28, 1889 and by the date of the cotton-picking, in a very rapid succession had welcomed Ida Doskie, Phronie Esther and John Caldwell, a newborn, they called "Carlie".
To envision the scenario, the community of younger people must have come together, and helped Harris, who had no children or others old enough to help, and harvested his cotton crop as a large group. Afterwards, they had a party with music and dancing, and moonshiine, no doubt. There was a young man of the neighborhood there, yet unmarried, of the generation of Harris and Blanche. I will mention him only by his last name, although it was easy to identify who he was by name, age and location. I am not protecting the guilty, but his descendants, as they most likely have no idea of the charactor of their ancestor, but just his statistics and deeds of later life, if that.
Mr. Lilly, who would later have a foggy recall of the night, suggesting a deep inebriation, caught young Blanche, unawares, away from the crowd, behind a corn crib and had "with force and malice", overcame her and "begat child" upon her body. Blanche does not state what she did after that, but it seems like she made it home to her family and must have informed them. Her father would pull up stakes just a few weeks later, perhaps in shame or possbily considered the area unsafe for his family as Blanche testified that it was "two or three weeks before we moved."
There doesn't appear to have been any charges brought against Mr. Lilly for rape, only for bastardy, later, when it was known that the event had created a child and Blanche was pregnant. Blanche had known ,"no man before or since" that night. She had been a virgin and in one instance, a drunken man had overpowered her and impregnated her. In the society of the time, it was on her to bear the burden and shame of the attack.
The perpetrator of this terrible deed was made to simply make small payments of $25 each to her over the course of the first few years of the childs life.
What happened to the parties after that? The man, as many I've seen did, didn't marry the woman he "ruilned", as was the terminology of the day. He went to a county a significant distance away, where he met and married a different girl around Christmastime just one year after he was taken to court. He would acquire the career of saleman and his wife would have a moderate-sized family for the time. He became a respected member of the community and lived to be a septigenarian. I wonder if his night of drunkened sinfulness would ever cross his mind. Did he ever do anything like that again? Was he overprotective of his own daughter?
The child born of the cotton-picking attack was a boy. Blanche named him Grover Cleveland, for the President. He was born February 15, 1893.
In the beginning, it appears as if Mr. Lilly had accepted the lad as his own, as he bore the name. In the above 1900 cenus record, Cleveland's first, his grandparents are the heads of household, followed by his aunt, Sarah, his uncles, Enoch S. and Dr. Franklin, still minors. Gilliam, an older son and uncle, is listed next, followed by Mary, who was his wife, not a sister, as he married Mary Honeycutt in 1894. Next, barely legible, is Blanche, ending the page.
On the following page, in the same household, is 6 year old Cleve F. Lilly, grandson, who would turn out to be Grover Cleveland Carpenter.
Henry Franklin Carpenter, Blanche's father, would pass away sometime in the next decade, as her mother is found living with her brother, Gilliam, and his family, in the 1910 census, as a widow. It is unknown where he was buried. After this, it appears as if the Blanche and her son split ways, at least for the sake of finances.
Blanche had moved to Albemarle and was boarding with a Thompson family while working in the Cotton Mill as a cone winder.
Cleve, who also bore the name Frederick Cleveland in his earlier years and later stuck with Grover Cleveland, was still in the company of his grandmother, Henrietta, or "Hettie" Carpenter, who was living in the home with her younger son, Dock Franklin Carpenter. In this year, 1910, Hettie reported being the mother of 7 children, with 4 living, those four being Gilliam, Dock, Blanche and Winny, who married F. Crump Duke. Of the three deceased, one would have been Sallie, and another Enoch S. Carpenter, and perhaps an Aaron. Cleve is seen as Fred C. Carpenter in this document.
On August 31, 1912, 21-year-old Cleve, whose name is shown as "C. C. Carpenter", in another of its many renditions, in the document, married 18-year-old Beulah Luther. Cleve gave his grandparents, Frank and Harriett Carpenter, as his parents. Beulah was the daughter of John and Dora Luther of Stanly County.
By 1920, Cleve and Beulah had started their family with a passion, having 4 children in eight years. Blanche was now living with her only child, and they were living in Norwood, Stanly County, working in a textile mill, which, other than farming, was the premier occupation of the majority of persons in this region, avoiding only the professionals, merchants and clergy.
Blanche's life had been hard and deleterious to her health.
She left her earthly body on December 30. 1922, just two years after the above census. She died of Apoplexy at the age of 53 and was buried in the Norwood Cemetery. Her son was the informant on her death certificate. Was she a broken woman, or had she just been overworked?
Cleveland Carpenter, the child of the unfortunate event at the Cotton-picking at Harris Mauldins, moved his family to the town of Thomasville, in Davidson County, NC, after he buried his mother. Oddly, in 1930, Cleve is seen with no occupation, while his wife Beulah, worked in a Cotton Mill and his oldest son, James, 16, worked in a furniture plant, an industry Thomasville would become known for. Cleve must have stayed with the younger children, who ranged in age from 5 to 14.
Tragedy was not finished with the Carpenter family, when in 1935, Cleve lost his first wife to a brain tumor at age 38. He brought her home to Norwood to bury with family, although she died in Thomasville.
Cleve remained in Davidson County and did eventually remarry, on April 22, 1947, twelve years after Beulah died. His wife was a younger woman named Rosalie Martin, originally from Virginia.
Grover Cleveland Frederick Carpenter would remain in Thomasville, Davidson County, NC for the rest of his life. He worked in textiles until his premature death at age 60 from an illness. His wife was the informant on his death certificate and did not know the names of his parents. The date was August 19th, 1953. He was returned home to Norwood for burial.
Cleve left seven children: James Cleveland, Henry Franklin (for his grandfather), Margaret Esther, Macie Blanch (for Cleve's mother, Carrie Beulah (for her mother), Walter Gray and Charles Richard, and several step-children. There were many grandchildren as well. Perhaps one day one of them will take a DNA test trying to solve a mystery and this will help them to discover a lost branch of their family tree.
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