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Caswell County Genealogy
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 1841 - 1940 (98 years)
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| Name |
Lea, Anne Wright [1] |
| Born |
1 Nov 1841 |
Caswell County, North Carolina  |
| Gender |
Female |
| Reference Number |
2282 |
| Died |
15 Oct 1940 |
Delila, Halifax County, Virginia |
| Buried |
First Baptist Church of Yanceyville, Yanceyville, Caswell County, North Carolina |
| Person ID |
I2253 |
Caswell County |
| Last Modified |
17 Mar 2023 |
| Father |
Lea, Thomas L., b. Abt 1806, North Carolina , d. 1867 (Age ~ 61 years) |
| Relationship |
natural |
| Mother |
Wright, Ann Blount, b. Abt 1815, North Carolina , d. 1874 (Age ~ 59 years) |
| Relationship |
natural |
| Married |
16 Apr 1833 |
Caswell County, North Carolina |
| Reference Number |
18674 |
| Notes |
- North Carolina Marriage Bonds
Name: Ann B Wright
Gender: Female
Spouse: Thomas L Lea
Spouse Gender: Male
Bond date: 16 Apr 1833
Bond #: 000016499
Level Info: North Carolina Marriage Bonds, 1741-1868
ImageNum: 008926
County: Caswell
Record #: 01 172
Bondsman: Willia Lea
Witness: Paul A Haralson
Household Members
Name Age
Thomas L Lea
Ann B Wright
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| Family ID |
F1231 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
| Family |
Graves, Captain William Griffin, b. 6 May 1838, d. 7 Nov 1927, Halifax County, Virginia (Age 89 years) |
| Married |
11 Dec 1865 |
Caswell County, North Carolina |
| Reference Number |
18580 |
| Notes |
- Source: Heritage of Caswell County at 354 (Article No. 441). The marriage was performed by the Reverend Solomon Lea.
North Carolina Marriage Records
Name: Anna R. Lea
Gender: Female
Spouse: William Graves
Spouse Gender: Male
Marriage Date: 11 Dec 1865
Marriage County: Caswell
Marriage State: North Carolina
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| Children |
| + | 1. Graves, Betty Lea, b. 1 Oct 1866, North Carolina , d. 2 Jan 1956 (Age 89 years) [natural] |
| | 2. Graves, Graham, b. Abt 1869, North Carolina , d. 22 Dec 1893, Danville, Virginia (Age ~ 24 years) [natural] |
| + | 3. Graves, Ann Wright, b. 1872, d. 1963 (Age 91 years) [natural] |
| | 4. Graves, Mary Eliza, b. 27 Apr 1873, Caswell County, North Carolina , d. 3 Nov 1968, South Boston, Virginia (Age 95 years) [natural] |
| + | 5. Graves, Felix Williamson, b. 5 Jan 1879, Hamer, Caswell County, North Carolina , d. 21 Jan 1965 (Age 86 years) [natural] |
| | 6. Graves, Rufus Y., b. 7 Jul 1880, d. 10 Jul 1880 (Age 0 years) [natural] |
| | 7. Graves, Irene Yancey, b. 1882, Caswell County, North Carolina , d. Mar 1972 (Age 90 years) [natural] |
| | 8. Graves, Nannie Thomas, b. 1884, Caswell County, North Carolina [natural] |
| | 9. Graves, W. Pinckney, b. Jan 1884, North Carolina [natural] |
| + | 10. Graves, Tallulah, b. 22 Aug 1886, d. 17 Mar 1971 (Age 84 years) [natural] |
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| Last Modified |
17 Mar 2023 |
| Family ID |
F1230 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
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| Notes |
- Anne Wright Lea (1841-1940)
(click on photograph for larger image)
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Note that her name is spelled Anne on her grave marker. Also note that her death day is a bit uncertain due to the erosion of the gravestone. It could be 15 October or 18 October. Family records use 15 October, and that is the date shown here. Name also seen as Ann Wright Lea and Rebecca Anne Lea.
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The only daughter in a family of eleven children. Ann Wright Lea married William Griffin (Billy Griffin) Graves, and they lived just west of Leahurst and west of Route 62 near Rattlesnake Creek. The home had been built about 1840 by General William Lea an Uncle of William Griffin Graves. In the 1850 US Census the nephew was residing with his aunt and uncle who had no children. After the death of William Griffin Graves the home was sold to Thomas Jones. Ann Graves lastly resided with her daughter Irene Brandon at "Brandon on the Dan." Ann was an accomplished pianist and her piano solos were a delight to visitors. She is believed to have been the only female member of the Caswell County Ku Klux Klan, which her brother John G. Lea headed.
References
Ann of the Ku Klux Klan by Thomas Henderson.
The Heritage of Caswell County, North Carolina, Jeannine D. Whitlow, Editor (1985) at 354 (Article #441 "Thomas L. Lea" by Katharine Kerr Kendall).
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The owners of the homes in which Thomas Day's architectural woodwork is found constituted some of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in the Dan River region: physician John Tab Garland, M.D., at one time the richest man in Caswell County (1850s and 1860s); banker and civic leader Thomas Donoho Johnston; machine shop, foundry, and sawmill owner Caleb Richmond; state senator James Kerr; merchant and tobacco factory owner John Wilson; planters William Long (also the owner of a sawmill and gristmill), Sidney Lea, George Williamson, Haywood Williams, Thomas Mumford McGehee, and William H. Holderness.
Family relationships among the planters enhanced the demand for Thomas-Day-made architectural trimwork. Thomas Donoho Johnston built Clarendon Hall in 1842 and tapped Day to embellish the interior; when his sister and brother-in-law, Sarah and William Long, built the Long House in 1856, they, too, turned to Day. Day provided the architectural woodwork for the house of Captain Carter Powell around 1848 and that of his son Henry Alexander Powell less than a decade later. Thomas L. Lea and his siblings Sidney S. Lea and Rebecca Lea (Mrs. George Williamson), his niece Elizabeth Lea (Mrs. Calvin Graves), and his daughter Ann Lea (Mrs. William Griffin Graves) provided Day the opportunity to do the woodwork on a law office and four of their five houses between 1840 and 1850.
The woodwork suggests the Carter Powell house was built around 1848 rather than the more often cited 1850. Day's machine-cut newels with tendrils date Henry Powell's house to 1853-1855. Day's work for Elizabeth Lea and Calvin Graves was not on their house, as it was built several years earlier, but on Calvin's law office, for which Day supplied the mantel. For a discussion of this family, see Whitlow, "Thomas L. Lea," in Heritage of Caswell County, 354.
Source: Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color, Patricia Phillips Marshall and Jo Ramsay Leimenstoll (2010) at 134-135 and 246 (footnote 10).
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"Ann of the Ku Klux Klan" Held the Secret of the Yanceyville Incident Even to Death"
By Elizabeth L. Farmer
When several years ago, the magazine section of a newspaper carried these headlines: "Danville Man, 91, May Be Last Survivor of Reconstruction Epic," an aged lady of Halifax County, living peacefully at her countryside home, knew that he was not the last survivor, but kept her story -- a story in which she was the real "Ann of the Ku Klux Klan," as she was once called.
Just 15 days before November 1, which would have been her 100th birthday, Mrs. Ann Lea Graves of Brandon-On-Dan, went quietly into her last sleep. She had outlived the "Danville Man, 91" who was her own brother, Captain John G. Lea, but she had no desire to share in the glamor which surrounded him as organizer and leader of the Klan.
It was true that she had made the hooded white robes that covered the forms of the Klansmen on a certain dark night, when oaths were sealed with a fiery cross, burning late before a morning when tragedy walked the streets of Yanceyville and demanded the life of John Walter Stephens, viewed a public enemy and so-called spy in the service of Governor Holden. As a close companion of her brothers, who were members of the Klan, Ann Lea shared the secrets unrevealed to others and is said to have known who killed Stephens when all others were guessing. Whatever she knew was guarded closely for three-quarters of a century.
Only Girl in Family of Nine
Mrs. Graves, who was 20 years old when the War Between the States began, grew to womanhood at Leahurst, the family estate near Leasburg in Caswell County, N. C. She was the only girl in a family of eight boys, four of whom were in the Confederate Army, two having the rank of captain. They were Captain John G. Lea, Captain Thomas Lea, Dr. Calvin Lea and Sid, Nat, Billie and George Lea, four of the boys having been too young to enlist in the Confederate service.
Shortly after the war ended Ann Lea married Captain William Griffin Graves, an officer in the Confederate Army who died a few years ago in his ninety-second year. When Caswell County was declared by Governor Holden to be in a state of insurrection, after that memorable date, May 21, 1897, 100 Democrats were arrested and imprisoned for a week in Yanceyville courthouse and finally removed to Raleigh for trial. Among these were he husband and brother, Captain Graves and Captain John Lea. Ann Lea Graves, then a young mother with babies, was left at Leahurst without protection save that of two faithful servants, Jeff McGhee and his wife, Liney. The two are said to have slept at night outside the young mother's door with an ax beside them. With that same ax Jeff quelled an uprising of the Negroes about to make a raid on the smokehouse. But Jeff brandishing aloft his ax, left no uncertainty of his threat to "kill the fust nigger to put his foot on dat do' step."
At Brandon live two daughters of Mrs. Graves, Mrs. Irene G. Brandon, owner of the estate, and Miss Mamie Graves. Other children are Mrs. Bettie Lee Powell of Blanch, Mrs. James A. Seegar of Danville, Felix Graves of Mebane and Mrs. George A. Clarke of Vicar's Hill, Lymington, England. Another daughter, Nannie, died in girlhood and a son, Pinkney, was drowned in the waters of the Dan when crossing the river in a boat at Brandon-on-Dan.
In her late nineties, Mrs. Graves, still retaining the lines of early beauty, was keenly alive to all life about her. She played the piano and sang old Southern songs that many a ballad lover would be eager to know. Even to the end of her life she would claim no rendezvous with death and her last spoken words were: "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of life. It was life, she said, and not death."
Grandsons in England
Gallantly is that spirit shown in the lives of three grandsons in England: William Graves Clarke, oldest instructor in the Royal Flying Corps; Thomas Graves Clarke, on a destroyer, and George Lea Clarke, a graduate of Cambridge with highest honors, speaking nine languages, and employed abroad in the secret intelligence diplomatic service.
Mrs. Graves was the oldest citizen of Halifax County, the last alumnae of the old Greensboro Female College, now North Carolina College for Women, and the last intimate associate of that band of men in old Yanceyville organized for a desperate need, in times when men seemed to have lost all reason, and protection for the helpless had to be found at any cost.
Richmond Times-Dispatch (Richmond, VA), 29 December 1940.
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1850 United States Federal Census
Name: Rebecca A Lea
Age: 9
Birth Year: abt 1841
Birthplace: North Carolina
Home in 1850: Milton, Caswell, North Carolina, USA
Gender: Female
Family Number: 324
Household Members:
Name Age
Thomas Lea 44
Ann B Lea 35
Calvin G Lea 16
James W Lea 14
Sarah J Lea 11
Rebecca A Lea 9
John G Lea 6
Thos S Lea 3
Nathl Lea 1
1860 US Census
Name: R A Lea
Age in 1860: 19
Birth Year: abt 1841
Birthplace: North Carolina
Home in 1860: Yanceyville, Caswell, North Carolina
Gender: Female
Post Office: Yanceyville
Household Members: Name Age
Thos L Lea 54
A B Lea 45
J W Lea 24
R A Lea 19
A G Lea 16
T L Lea 13
M P Lea 11
Sidney Lea 8
Wm Lea 6
Geo A Lea 3
1870 US Census
Name: Ann Graves
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1844
Age in 1870: 26
Birthplace: North Carolina
Home in 1870: Milton, Caswell, North Carolina
Race: White
Gender: Female
Post Office: Milton
1870 United States Federal Census
Name: Ann Graves
Age in 1870: 26
Birth Year: abt 1844
Birthplace: North Carolina
Dwelling Number: 245
Home in 1870: Milton, Caswell, North Carolina
Race: White
Gender: Female
Post Office: Milton
Occupation: Keeping House
Inferred Spouse: Griffin Graves
Inferred Children: Bettie Graves, Graham Graves
Household Members:
Name Age
Griffin Graves 32
Ann Graves 26
Bettie Graves 3
Graham Graves 1
John Lea 25
George Lea 13
U.S., Confederate Pensions, 1884-1958
Name: Cabb [Capt.] William Griffin Graves
Application Date: 31 Dec 1928
Application Place: Halifax, Virginia
Spouse: Mrs Annie Lea Graves
Marriage Date: 1866
Married By: Reverend Solomon Graves
Marriage Place: Caswell Co W Carolina
Death Date: 7 Nov 1927
Military Service: 13th North Carolina Regiment
Superior Officer: Colonel John A. Graves
Death Place: Halifax Co Delila, VA
Application Type: Widow
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| Sources |
- Details: The Heritage of Caswell County, North Carolina, Jeannine D. Whitlow, Editor (1985) at 354 (Article #441 "Thomas L. Lea" by Katharine Kerr Kendall).
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: City/Town
: County/Shire
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