Counted corpse, p.6
Counted Corpse, page 6
While I waited for him, I decided to follow the trail of paper back from Elijah Morris and Nicholas Benfer, and by the time Santiago arrived and received a dispensation from the women at the front desk to bring me a coffee if we promised to sit away from the books, I had tied both pieces of land to a plantation named BelAirre and once owned by Benfer’s ancestor, also a Nicholas Benfer.
Santiago and I slid into the back room of the research area and spread out with our coffee and my notes, leaving all the irreplaceable books on the reading stands out front. I showed him what I’d found and then explained what it meant. “All of that land was once part of Benfer’s plantation. I have to keep digging, but I expect we’re going to find two things – that Benfer sold a lot of pieces of his property in the years after the Civil War and that, maybe, Elijah Morris was connected to BelAirre somehow.”
“Connected?” Santiago asked.
“It’s likely that he was either a business associate of Benfer or, just maybe, he was enslaved by Benfer. It wasn’t uncommon for former enslavers to gift or sell land to the people they enslaved because it meant those people would stay close and keep working for them.”
Santiago studied the page of notes in front of him and then looked up at me. “You know the Benfers?”
I shook my head. “Benfer Road, yes, but I didn’t know the family was still around.”
“Yeah. Still around. Good folks. They live in that big white house on Benfer Road. You know it, I bet – huge black walnuts around it, set off with the mountains in the background,” he said.
I did know the house because I ogled it every time I drove by. It was gorgeous, and the setting was perfect. It showed off the house but still gave the occupants privacy. I’d often wondered if it had been the big house on a plantation, and it seemed so. “Do you know them well enough for us to visit?” I asked, hope making my voice a little high.
“Yep. They’ve offered to show me around before, but I hadn’t ever taken them up on it. Clearly, I need to give them a call.” He smiled at me and reached over and squeezed my hand. “I love how excited you get about historic places, Paisley.”
I blushed because of the softness of his words and the weight behind them. He got me, and everything about that made me heart race. “Thanks. Thanks for knowing how much I love this stuff.”
He smiled. “I’ll go out and call them right now. Are you okay telling them what you’re researching? Leaving out the burial ground and murder part, of course.”
“Absolutely. I don’t like asking for things without having something to give, so you can tell them that I’ll work up the full history of this land we’re researching and share it with them if you want.” I was careful not to say I’d look at the whole plantation history because that was a month’s long undertaking. But I could trace this chain of custody for these particular plats easily enough, especially since I was almost there.
“Be back in a minute,” Santiago said and kissed my hand before taking our empty cups and heading back out.
I followed him back to my workspace and quickly learned that the Benfers had gotten all their land – over five thousand acres – from a land grant in the late 1700s. They sold a number of small parcels of five to ten acres to various people in the 1890s and on into the twentieth century, but it seemed like they still owned a sizable swath of property right around their house.
A quick look at the will index showed that Nicholas Benfer had died in 1932, and when I looked for other Benfers, I found a long line of Nicholas Benfers including the father, grandfather, and back to the first of seven Nicholas’s, Nicholas I. The first three Nicholas’s had died in 1904, 1888, and 1829, respectively. I pulled out the will book of the Nicholas who died in 1932 first and scanned past the legal jargon to see if anything was left to people outside the family.
Sure enough, six acres was given to Elijah Morris “and his heirs” at Benfer’s death. All of the other property passed, per the usual, to Benfer’s children, so I knew there was something significant happening with this gift.
Santiago came back and said the Benfers were happy to see us in an hour if we could make it that soon, and the smile that broke across my face must have been enough confirmation because Santiago took out his phone and texted a quick message.
Then, I realized I needed to figure out how Elijah Morris was connected to the Benfers before we went, and I put Santiago to work looking at census records online while I dug back into the will books.
My boyfriend was a quick study on the database and soon had located Elijah Morris in every census available from 1870 on. He had been born, it seemed in about 1825, which made him a contemporary of the father of the Nicholas Benfer who died in 1932. But interestingly enough, he was identified on the 1870 census as black. “So he and Benfer couldn’t have been friends,” Santiago stated.
I shook my head. “It’s more complicated than that. If, as I suspect, Morris was enslaved by Benfer’s family, then the men probably grew up together. It wasn’t an equal friendship by any means, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t friends in some sense.” I stared at the will where Nicholas gifted Morris land, “especially given this.” I tapped the page.
Santiago nodded. “So somehow, maybe, slavery didn’t destroy their relationship.”
I shrugged. “Maybe. I need to look into that more. Do we have a few more minutes before we have to leave?”
“Sure. We’ll put on my lights and siren if need be,” he said with a laugh.
I pulled the will index over again and scanned for the Benfer name, jotting down book and page numbers quickly and sending Santiago to pull all three books. Soon, he and I were scanning the wispy handwriting to see if we could find any mention of Elijah or, more magically, the Morris family. Since slaves didn’t carry surnames legally, most of them were simply called by first names, but I was hopeful that someone would actually acknowledge the surname they used (because they did use surnames) in a legal document. I’d only seen it once or twice, but those two unicorns of history kept my hopes up.
This time, though, we didn’t see the name Morris. But we did find Elijah’s name in the will of the first Nicholas’s great-grandfather, who died in 1829 and bequeathed his grandson a woman named Anna and her son Elijah, age four. I leaned back and stared at the page. Elijah and Nicholas the Fifth were the same age, and so they had, indeed, been raised together, likely in part by Elijah’s mother since enslaved women were often expected to mind the master’s children, too.
Every part of me wanted to see what I could find out about Elijah Morris’s descendants so that I could share this information with them if they didn’t have it already, but we were out of time . . . and if we didn’t rush now, we would need those sirens and lights.
Quickly, we put all the books back, said a rushed thank you to the helpful women up front, and sprinted to Santiago’s car. We would have made it right on time even without, but Santiago spun his lights into action and whizzed us down the road fast enough to make me grin.
As we pulled up to the white house with two-story wooden columns, I suddenly felt nervous. A lot of plantation owners in this area resented the history of their family, even if they still lived off the wealth. I’d had some really good conversations with people who had bought old plantations, but the “old money,” so to speak, wasn’t usually as amenable to these chats. I hoped that their quick invitation indicated that the Benfers were interested, at least, if not actually willing to be helpful.
A beautiful woman with long brown hair tied back with a scarf greeted us. She looked to be just a bit older than me, and she wasn’t all done up, no make-up on her pink cheeks as best I can tell. “Mrs. Benfer, it’s nice to see you,” Santiago said.
“Sheriff Shifflett, how many times have I asked you to call me Veronica?” She smiled as her blue eyes flashed. “You must be Paisley? I’ve been following your newsletter for some time. So nice to meet you.”
I felt a blush wash over my face. “You read what I write?”
“Every week,” she said. “I’m an amateur history buff. Comes with marrying into this beautiful old place, I suppose.” She waved her hand and gestured for us to precede her through the front door.
The entry hall was gorgeous. A wooden staircase with a stunning mahogany railing led up to the second floor and a hallway moved behind it to what, it seemed, might have been an addition onto the original house. The floors were wide pine and it looked like the original wainscotting and original decorative crown molding against the plaster ceiling. It was understated and beautiful, and I told her so.
“Well, that’s a high compliment coming from someone with your knowledge, Paisley. Would you like a tour?” she asked with a smile.
I resisted the urge to jump up and down and put my hands in the air and instead responded with a simple, “Yes,” before following her through the door to the right and into a lovely dining room set with a round table. As we moved through the rooms, I noticed the thin slits in the ceilings for the HVAC system to do its work. The bathrooms that had been added over the years were spacious but tucked away so as not to disrupt the original layout of the house overly much. It was a gorgeous home, historical and comfortable.
“I’ve seen a lot of houses of this period, and yours is, by far, the most homey,” I said as she led us into a light-filled kitchen addition on the back of the house beyond a formal library. “It feels like people live here.”
Veronica smiled. “That’s good, because we do,” she said. “It’s our home, and we want people who visit to feel welcome.”
I smiled and decided to make myself comfortable in one of the padded seats at the rustic farm table. I pulled out my notes and took a minute, as Veronica prepared iced tea, to gather my thoughts into a cogent pattern that would make sense to someone other than me.
Given her congeniality, I decided to get the hard stuff out of the way and begin by talking about Nicholas Benfer and Elijah Morris. I asked her how much she knew about her husband’s family, and she grinned. “You mean the long line of Nicholases?” she asked.
“Well, yes,” I said. “Is your husband a Nicholas, too?”
“Nick, but yes. He’s the eighth. Talk about a bear for genealogy work.”
I laughed. “Yep, I’m always telling people they should name their children things like popsicle so that historians can differentiate them later in life.”
Santiago laughed. “Your children aren’t named potato and peach pie, are they?”
“Nope, but I did end the line of Nicholas. We have a Diane and a Milo.” She smiled and gestured toward a picture of two young adults on a window sill nearby. “They’re both off at college, and I miss them terribly.” She sighed and looked back at me. “But while I know the Nicholases, I don’t know much more. None of us do, I’m afraid. Too busy with work and kids to dig in, I guess.”
I nodded. It was a familiar refrain. Most people cared about their family, but the people they knew or had known, not generations back. It was hard to carry around the stories of people we did know much less the generations of stories behind us. “I get it. Someday I’m going to get around to researching more of my own family stories,” I said with a smile.
I cleared my throat. “And I expect you know that your husband’s family got this land as part of a land grant and that then,” I paused and took a breath, “they built their wealth through slavery.”
She nodded without hesitation. “We don’t pretend that’s not the base of what we have here, the base of everything really. But we don’t know much. I’d like to know more, though, much more.” She put her hand over mine. “Can you tell me more?”
I swallowed and smiled. “I can tell you a bit, and if you want, I can help you find out more about that part of your family’s history.”
“Oh, that would be amazing. I’d like to hire you, if I could.” She studied my face. “I hope that’s not offensive. I just like to pay people for their work.”
“Not offensive at all. I’m in the midst of something right now, but how about we set a date to talk more about that in a couple of weeks?” My heart was dancing. I had been hoping to land some work in research to complement my salvaging projects, and here was my first opportunity, and a big one at that.
“Great,” she said with a huge smile. “Now, what did you want to talk about today?”
I handed her a sheet of paper where I’d jotted down the information about Nicholas the Original and Elijah and explained what it meant. Then I told her I was researching the history of Bethel Church and that both Elijah and Nicholas the Fifth had basically gifted land to the congregation over a twenty-year period. “I know it’s a long shot, but do you know anything about a friendship between Nicholas and Elijah?”
She shook her head. “This is literally the first time I’ve heard Elijah Morris’s name.” She stared at the piece of paper in her hand, “But do you have a minute? I do have something that might help.”
I nodded, and she hurried off into the library.
“That’s exciting, Pais,” Santiago said. “A research gig.”
I laughed. “It is, and for one of the biggest landholding plantations in Octonia. Exciting.”
Veronica came back in the room and handed me a framed photograph. In it, two boys – one white and one black – had their arms around each other as they held fishing poles by what looked like it might be the Fleur River. “Whoa,” I said as I studied the image.
I didn’t know much about historical clothing, but it looked like the black boy was wearing a pair of short breeches made from some sort of rough cloth. And the white boy had on suspenders and a shirt that looked much finer than his friend’s. I would definitely have to research the date of the photo more, but my heart was racing with possibility.
“Do you have any idea who these boys are?” I asked Veronica as I passed the photo to Santiago.
She shook her head. “It’s been hanging on the wall in the living room as far back as Nick can remember. And when you mentioned Nicholas and Elijah . . .”
“Right,” I said. “Do you mind if I take a picture of it?”
“Just take the photograph itself. You might need it for research, and photos of photos get all grainy.” She smiled, and I found myself liking this woman more and more. I was eager to get working on her project, but I needed to find out what I could about the church and the burial ground first.
“Thanks so much. I’ll let you know what I find out, okay?”
She smiled. “I’d love that.” She turned to Santiago. “Do you mind if I ask you a question that you can simply not answer if you prefer?”
“Sure,” he said.
“The police tape at Bethel – does that have anything to do with all of this?” She looked sincere and interested, and I was curious what Santiago would tell her.
“In a way, yes,” he said. “You’ll read about it in tomorrow’s paper, I think,” he said with a glance at me. “Chief Stephenson is releasing a statement later today,” he said.
I nodded and found I was glad. It was always easier to work when everything was out in the open, and I didn’t have to withhold information from the people I needed to talk to.
“We believe there may be a Monacan burial ground under the church,” he said. “In her research, Paisley found some records that indicate that, and the chief of the Monacan nation has confirmed that’s a very strong possibility.” He said everything in his efficient sheriff’s voice, but I could see the emotion in his tight jaw. “We’re beginning a formal investigation into that possibility.”
Veronica looked down at the table. “And my husband’s family gave the land for the church.” She looked over at me. “So they donated a burial ground?”
I sighed. “Technically, yes, but maybe they didn’t know.”
Veronica stood and began to pace around the kitchen. “How could they not know something like that?”
I wanted to explain to her that cemeteries and graveyards were lost to history all the time, but I didn’t think that would be a comfort to this compassionate, open woman. “I don’t know,” I said instead.
She turned to Santiago. “Would you be willing to introduce me to the chief? I’d like to see how we might help make reparations for this.”
I held in my gasp. In all the years I’d been researching history and the way one group of people had hurt other people, I had never once heard someone who was benefitting from the harm outright offer to repair it. Usually that step only came with years of work and effort. I felt tears well up in my eyes.
“I will call her right now, if that’s okay,” Santiago said.’
Veronica nodded, and while Santiago dialed, I asked if I might walk around outside. I wanted to give them privacy for this conversation, and I also needed a minute to myself to gather my emotions.
“Make yourself at home,” she said.
I smiled and headed out the back door to look out from the small rise that gave the house a gorgeous view of the Blue Ridge beyond. I could easily see the barn down below closer to the pasture and what looked like a smoke house and maybe a kitchen just a few steps away. Down the hill toward the other side, two standing chimneys faced each other like sentinels, and I knew immediately that was probably a slave quarter for the house servants. I took out my notebook and made a few notes before snapping a couple of pictures.
Then, I walked around to the front of the building and looked out over the rolling hills toward town. There, just beyond the next small rise, I could see the church’s white steeple. Between the church building itself, the manse looked like a small cottage, but it was very clear, from this angle, that it sat at a slightly higher elevation than the church itself.
It was possible that Nicholas the Fifth hadn’t known about the burial ground, but from this angle, it certainly didn’t seem likely.
6
On the ride back downtown, Santiago gave me the details about Veronica’s call with Chief Stephenson, after getting their permission to share. They’d both wanted me to know so that when I wrote about the story, I could share what they’d agreed.
