Madame Hodnett: The Irish Daughter of the American Revolution.
There’s a common name on both sides of my family: Carey.
My great-grandmother, Estelle Carey Johnson-Bolden, inherited the name Carey and her red hair from Ireland.
The mention of “free people of color” in Victoria E. Bynum’s article “Free People of Color” in Old Virginia: The Morris Family of Gloucester County, a Case Study,” may indeed reflect the historical reality of Irish slavery in America, a lesser-known chapter in the nation’s past.
During colonial and pre-Revolutionary periods, many Irish men and women were forcibly transported to the American colonies as indentured servants, and or social slaves. “Social slavery” typically refers to systems or practices in which individuals or groups are subordinated, oppressed, or exploited within a society, even if they are not legally classified as slaves. This can encompass a wide range of social, economic, and cultural phenomena, where the individuals or groups are denied basic rights, freedoms, and opportunities.
While the term “free people of color” traditionally refers to individuals of African descent who were not enslaved, it is possible that the free Morris families mentioned in Bynum’s research may have been of mixed Irish and Monacan ancestry.
They were categorized as Mulattos which was, at the time, Virginian for mixed with something. The name Morris means dark-skinned in Welsh. Indigenous Virginians had very dark skin. And, Monacans were nicknamed Welsh Indians because of how close the Welsh and the Monacan languages sounded to ears of the British.
The Morris surname may be the case of bastardy — the giving of a surname to hold a bastard apart from their higher born parent. In this case, used to group stray, hungry Native Americans whose numbers dwindled too low to be able to properly represent themselves as a tribe. It also appears the colonists were enslaving the Indigenous Americans who were mixed with African runaways and passing them off as mulattoes.
My family comes from Powhatan, Virginia. Technically, Monacan country, which eventually became “Macon”. The Monacans are famously known as the WIN tribe: White-Indian-Negro.
THIS study of a group of Indian-white-negro crosses is a sociological and eugenic study of a group which has lived in the same locality in Virginia for more than a hundred years. It originated from a white-Indian union, with later introductions of ‘mean-white’ and negro strains. The group consists of about five hundred individuals in an area approximately eight miles long by four miles broad. They are mostly living on the land. The original white family, judging from its social and economic position, was probably above the average. The descendants are almost without exception below the low white in average ability. — Mongrel Virginians: The Win Tribe. Nature.
The writer, stalker, declined to identify the families he was studying. And therefore, declined to identify the white men that started these families and seemingly abandoned them without, at the very least, teaching them how to organize and represent themselves to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Note the phrase “the original white family” as this could have been an attempt by the Monacans to formally preserve their tribe by working with stray groups of hungry European immigrants. Or, it was the Monacans who were starving or risked potential illegal enslavement if they mixed with African-Virginians and had no choice but to integrate into white society, even as a servant.
This conflicts with the theory of this side of my family in particular being descended from indentured Irishmen, but aligns closely with my 23andMe locations featuring England more than Scotland; and not Ireland at all.
Why Dublin? Let’s go to Cork.
My mother, Belinda Craighead-Coleman (Snow), inherits her last name, Craighead, from Scotland. However, her third great-grandfather was a man named John “Jack” Hodnett (b. 1827), a name that has been in Cork, Ireland since the 17th century.
He had two families. As John he was married to a white woman named Mary. As Jack he was married to my Black fourth great-grandmother, Lucy.
Jack was unfortunately mislabelled as a mulatto instead of white when he was married to my grandmother. Although, some of their children were white enough to be classified as white.
His son Asa (born 1870; listed in the above picture) was named after his uncle (born 1831). He married his mulatto niece, Jennie Craft, a redhead that used to be spotted bopping around in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.
Jack’s daughter, my third great-grandmother, Eliza (born 1877, pictured above in the 1880 census) had nine children. She died in childbirth with her last, my second great-grandmother, Carrie Craft. Dan later remarried to a Black woman.
Carrie and Jennie were bleach-white redheads.
Whereas their brother, Waverly Craft, was Black passing.
Carrie’s extended family, the Crafts:
Jack married again in his 70s to a 55 year-old white woman.
Jack’s second great-grandfather was a man named John Eryes Hodnett. Born in 1709 Cork, Ireland, was described by a Capt Abner Baker as a “dyed-in-the-wool” Presbyterian.
His wife, also Lucy, lost her hand to a British soldier during the American Revolution. This gave her the monicker Madam Hodnett, inspiring the creation of the Madame Hodnett Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Records show that John Hodnett, probably serving as a captain of cavalry in the Revolutionary War, furnished for his troops the following: thirty-six pounds of bacon; eighty pounds of pork; one barrel of corn; two bushels of peas, 850pounds of beef, and one side of sole leather. This made him the largest supplier in that area of meat to the troops.
John’s wife, Lucy, who was living in Charlottesville during the war, lost a hand during the occupation by British soldiers; the particulars of the incident are subject to several interpretations. One story goes that, when the British took over her house to use as a headquarters, she moved with her children into the cellar to avoid contact with the soldiers. One morning, when she came upstairs to get milk for her little child, a British soldier called her “Madam,” and asked where her husband was. She retorted, “In the Army, where he ought to be.” The soldier drew his sword, intending to frighten rather than hurt her, but she threw her arm up and cut her hand off. Another story says she lost her hand when she refused admittance to British soldiers, and one of them threatened to cut off her hand if she did not stand aside. She did not stand aside, and the hand was severed. One thing known for sure is that she became “Madam Hodnett,” and there is a Madam Hodnett chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution named for her in Mississippi.
John Hodnett died in 1798, three years after executing a will that conveyed his slaves to his daughter, Esther Anderson, whom she was to hire out as a means of income. On Esther’s death without children, the slaves were to be divided among Hodnett’s three other daughters, Catherine Baker, Jane McGehee, Mary Baker, and a granddaughter, Elizabeth Findley. Submitted by Mrs. George Mark Wood, Jr. — The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the State of Alabama
John and his wife fought and lived to see British Colonial America become the United States of America. And thanks to his second great-grandson, and namesake, for atoning for his grandfather’s sins of owning African people by marrying a Black woman, I’m 1/64th Irish on paper.
“Plural marriage families are not excluded from SAR membership.” — Sons of the American Revolution
However, according to Derek Brown at the Thomas Jefferson Chapter, y-DNA testing is hilariously excluded from what they deem “DNA testing.”
Genetic Analysis
I am a quarter British & Irish by DNA.
My 23andMe results show that I’m indigenous to Scotland.
I uploaded my raw DNA to GEDMatch. They have a free tool that enables to compare your DNA against archaic DNA samples open to the public.
I matched with four ancient Irishmen: F999800 Rathlin1, Ireland; F999801 Rathlin3, Ireland; F999802 Rathlin2, Ireland; and F999805 Ballynahatty, Ireland.
The males from Rathlin Island, lived not long after metallurgy was introduced. A third of their ancestry came from ancient sources in the Pontic Steppe — a region now spread across Russia and Ukraine.
The Neolithic woman from Ballynahatty, near Belfast, reveals that she was most similar to modern people from Spain and Sardinia. But her ancestors ultimately came to Europe from the Middle East. — Ancient DNA sheds light on Irish origins. Paul Rincon.
Phenotype
The contrast between my mother’s Irish heritage and my father’s is staggering. On my father’s side, we have currently nameless indentured servants that would have lived through the 1700s. And on my father’s side, we have a colonial slave-owner born on the other side of the pond. In the old country.
So, on paper, I’m only 1/64th Irish despite what 23andMe says. However, my phenotype basically begged me to do the research as I was blessed to be somewhat visibly Irish.
I have red hair in my beard. A ring around my pupil that turns blue or gray in sunlight. Freckles on my hands and shoulders; and bright blue veins that show as light green with a tan.
