The “52 Cousins” series of biographical sketches are Artificial Intelligence (AI) compiled narratives of selected individuals from my Genealogical database. The selected AI will used documents and data from my RootsMagic Genealogical Software. All genealogical data is my research material acquired over the past 46+ years of research. Today's Biography of Mary Elizabeth Wadsworth Martin(1835 - 1808) was compiled with the assistance of Claude Sonnett 5 Median.
Mary Elizabeth Wadsworth Martin
about 1835 – after 1898
| Born | About 1835, Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, South Carolina |
| Died | After 25 February 1898, Red River Parish, Louisiana (exact date & place undocumented) |
| Parents | John H. Wadsworth (1793–1880) and Susannah Davis (1794–1875) |
| Spouse | Alexander Martin (abt. 1834–1898), married about 1857 |
| Children | John C. Martin (1858–bef. 1886), Susannah "Susan" Martin (b. 1859), Margaret Martin (b. 1867) |
| Residence | Chesterfield County, SC → Lincoln, Darlington County, SC → McMillans, Marion County, SC → Red River Parish, Louisiana |
Mary Elizabeth Wadsworth was born about 1835 in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, the daughter of John H. Wadsworth and Susannah Davis. She spent her entire recorded life as a farm wife and mother in the rolling sandhills and pine country of the South Carolina Pee Dee, before an unexpected move in her later years carried her far from the county where she was born. Her story, pieced together from census schedules and two deed books nearly forty years apart, follows a South Carolina farm family through the upheavals of the mid-nineteenth century and into the postwar migration that reshaped so many Southern households.
Early Life in Chesterfield County
Mary was born about 1835 to John H. Wadsworth (1793–1880) and Susannah Davis (1794–1875), members of a farming family established in Chesterfield County, South Carolina. By the time Mary was about five years old, the 1840 federal census recorded her in her parents' household in Chesterfield County — she does not appear by name, as was standard for the 1840 census, but is counted among the household's free white females under age five.
Ten years later, the 1850 census gives us Mary's first appearance by name. Enumerated in the household of John H. Wadsworth, age 57, and Susannah Wadsworth, age 51, in Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, fifteen-year-old Mary E. Wadsworth was still living at home. It is from this record — the earliest to give her an exact age — that her birth year of about 1835 is calculated.
A Note on Mistaken Identity
Charlie's research specifically distinguishes this Mary E. Wadsworth from another woman of the same name who married Amaniah Lee in Chesterfield District in 1845. In the 1850 census, Mary E. Wadsworth (age 15) is found living with her parents in Family 488, while Amaniah Lee and his wife Elizabeth (age 21) appear separately in Family 820 — confirming they are two different women who happened to share a common name.
Marriage to Alexander Martin
About 1857, Mary married Alexander Martin, a young farmer born about 1834. The marriage year is estimated from the reported age of the couple's first child, John C. Martin, who was about two years old at the time of the 1860 census. By 1860, the young family was established in Chesterfield County, South Carolina: Alex Martin, age 26, was head of a household that included Mary E. Martin, age 23, along with two-year-old John and one-year-old Susan.
Mary would have been in her mid-twenties as the sectional crisis that led to the Civil War unfolded around her. South Carolina — the first state to secede from the Union, in December 1860 — sent tens of thousands of men to Confederate service in the years that followed, and Chesterfield County's farm families, the Martins and Wadsworths among them, lived through four years of war, blockade, and, in early 1865, the march of Sherman's army through the Carolinas. No wartime record for Alexander Martin survives among the documents gathered for this biography, so his personal experience of the war years is not part of the documented record — but the broader disruption to Southern agriculture and family life during this period forms the backdrop against which Mary raised her young children.
A Growing Family
Mary and Alexander's family grew to include three known children, all born in Chesterfield County, South Carolina:
Name | Born | Died | Notes |
John C. Martin | About 1858, Chesterfield Co., SC | Before 4 Jan 1886, Chesterfield Co., SC | Received grandfather's homeplace, 1875 |
Susannah "Susan" Martin | About 1859, Chesterfield Co., SC | Not documented | Last appears, 1880 census |
Margaret Martin | About 1867, Chesterfield Co., SC | Not documented | Last appears, 1880 census |
By 1870, the family had relocated a short distance to Lincoln Township in neighboring Darlington County, South Carolina. The census taken that year found Alex Martin, now 35 and working as a farm laborer, with Mary, 25 — though a second transcription of the same household oddly records Mary's age as 55, almost certainly a transcription or enumeration error, since it is inconsistent with every other record of her age before and after. Twelve-year-old Susan and six-year-old Margaret were both still at home and attending to the work of a farm household.
Research Note:
Two separate 1870 census entries for this household appear in the source records, one giving Mary's age as 25 and the other as 55. The age of 25 aligns with her documented birth year of about 1835 and is treated as correct; the age of 55 is noted here as a discrepancy in the original transcription rather than resolved by assumption.
A Grandfather's Provision, 1875
On 13 October 1875, Mary's father John H. Wadsworth — by then in his early eighties and, in his own words, "getting old and infirm and unable to support" himself and his wife Susannah — made a remarkable arrangement with his grandson, Mary's eldest son John C. Martin. In exchange for John C.'s promise to "comfortably support, protect and take care of" John H. and Susannah for the remainder of their lives, John H. Wadsworth conveyed to his grandson 173 acres of land in Chesterfield County, together with his livestock, household goods, farming implements, wagons, and that year's crop of corn, cotton, peas, and potatoes.
Arrangements of this kind — an aging landowner trading real and personal property for a promise of lifelong care — were a common feature of nineteenth-century Southern family life, especially before pensions or old-age assistance existed in any organized form. That John H. Wadsworth chose his grandson, rather than one of his own children, to be his caretaker speaks to the closeness of the extended Wadsworth-Martin household in this period. The deed was recorded in Chesterfield County Deed Book 4, pages 738–739, on 25 October 1875.
John C. Martin did not live to see old age himself. He died sometime before 4 January 1886 — his death is inferred from a deed of that date in which the land passed not to him but to two other Wadsworth women, suggesting he had died in the intervening decade.
The Family in 1880
The 1880 census found Mary and her family further west, in the McMillans area of Marion County, South Carolina. Alexander, now 61, headed a household that included Mary, 45, twenty-year-old Susannah, and thirteen-year-old Margaret. This placed the family in a third South Carolina county in as many census enumerations — Chesterfield in 1860, Darlington in 1870, and now Marion in 1880 — a pattern consistent with a farming family moving in search of better land or tenancy arrangements in the difficult economic years that followed the Civil War and the end of the antebellum cotton economy.
The 1886 Land Sale
On 4 January 1886, Alexander Martin sold 97 acres of Chesterfield County land to Sarah C. Wadsworth and Susannah Wadsworth for $500 — a transaction recorded in Deed Book 8, pages 536–537. This land appears to be connected to the tract John H. Wadsworth had conveyed to his grandson John C. Martin eleven years earlier; with John C. now deceased, Alexander (as his father) evidently held or inherited an interest in the property, which he then sold onward. The exact relationship of Sarah C. Wadsworth and Susannah Wadsworth to the family is not established in the documents gathered here.
Removal to Louisiana
By the final years of the 1890s, Mary and Alexander had left South Carolina altogether and were living in Red River Parish, in northwestern Louisiana along the Red River. Theirs was one of countless Southern farm families drawn westward in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s by the promise of cheaper, more fertile land — Louisiana's Red River valley, with its rich alluvial soil, was an especially strong draw for cotton farmers from the depleted, sandy soils of the Carolina Pee Dee.
Despite their new home in Louisiana, the couple retained their old South Carolina property. On 25 February 1898, "Alexander Martin and Mary Martin of the State of Louisiana" sold their remaining interest in a tract of land in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, to J. B. C. Hunt for $152. The land was described as bounded by the properties of Sallie Wadsworth to the north, Mrs. J. C. Evans and Lawrence Parker to the east, Alexander MacFarland and the former Howard Hay lands to the south, and the Moss lands (by then owned by Ed Jones) and lands of Mary Pigg to the west.
Both Alexander and Mary signed the deed with an "X," their mark — a common practice among the many Southerners of their generation, of either race, who had not learned to write, and no indication of their standing in the community. The document was witnessed by W. H. Schein and Keith Lockett and sworn before T. E. Paxton, Clerk of Court for Red River Parish, Louisiana, before being sent back to South Carolina for recording.
A Note on "Dower" Rights
As part of the 1898 sale, Mary was required to appear privately and separately before the Clerk of Court and declare, free of any pressure from her husband, that she willingly relinquished her "right and claim of dower" in the land being sold. This private examination — standard practice across the South at the time — existed to protect a married woman's inherited property interest, ensuring she was not coerced by her husband into signing away land she had a legal claim to. Mary's declaration, like her signature, was made by her mark.
Final Years
Mary Elizabeth Wadsworth Martin is last documented alive on 25 February 1898, the date of the Chesterfield County land sale executed in Red River Parish, Louisiana. No death record, obituary, or burial record has yet been located for her, so both her exact date of death and her final resting place remain undocumented beyond the certainty that she survived at least until that February day in 1898, by then a woman of about sixty-three who had journeyed, in her lifetime, from a Carolina farmhouse to the banks of the Red River.
Mary Elizabeth Wadsworth Martin is my 1st Cousin 4X Removed.
Timeline of Significant Events, 1839–1898
abt. 1835 — Born in Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, South Carolina
1840 — Enumerated as a young child in the household of John H. Wadsworth
1850 — Age 15, living with parents John H. and Susannah Wadsworth
abt. 1857 — Marries Alexander Martin
abt. 1858 — Son John C. Martin born
abt. 1859 — Daughter Susannah "Susan" Martin born
1860 — Recorded with husband and two young children in Chesterfield County
1861–1865 — South Carolina and the Wadsworth-Martin families live through the Civil War
abt. 1867 — Daughter Margaret Martin born
1870 — Family recorded in Lincoln, Darlington County, South Carolina
13 Oct 1875 — Mary's father, John H. Wadsworth, deeds his homeplace to grandson John C. Martin in exchange for lifelong support
1880 — Family recorded in McMillans, Marion County, South Carolina
bef. 4 Jan 1886 — Son John C. Martin dies
4 Jan 1886 — Alexander Martin sells 97 acres in Chesterfield County to Sarah C. and Susannah Wadsworth
by 1898 — Mary and Alexander have relocated to Red River Parish, Louisiana
25 Feb 1898 — Mary and Alexander sell their remaining Chesterfield County land to J. B. C. Hunt; last documented date of Mary's life
Sources
1840 U.S. Census, Chesterfield County, South Carolina, population schedule, page 372, line 15, household of John Wadsworth; NARA microfilm M740, roll 510.
1850 U.S. Census, Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, South Carolina, population schedule, page 130A, dwelling/family 488, household of John H. Wadsworth; NARA microfilm M432, roll 851.
1860 U.S. Census, Chesterfield County, South Carolina, population schedule, page 115, dwelling 302, family 303, household of Alex Martin; NARA microfilm M653, roll 1217.
1870 U.S. Census, Lincoln, Darlington County, South Carolina, population schedule, page 516A, dwelling 82/83, family 85/86, household of Alex Martin; NARA microfilm M593, roll 1493.
1880 U.S. Census, McMillans, Marion County, South Carolina, population schedule, ED 097, page 249A, dwelling/family 208, household of Alexander Martin; NARA microfilm T9, roll 1235.
Chesterfield County, South Carolina, Deed Book 4, pages 738–739, John H. Wadsworth to John C. Martin, 13 October 1875, recorded 25 October 1875, Register of Deeds.
Chesterfield County, South Carolina, Deed Book 8, pages 536–537, Alexander Martin to Sarah C. Wadsworth & Susannah Wadsworth, 4 January 1886, Register of Deeds.
Chesterfield County, South Carolina, Deed Book 15, pages 95–97, Alexander Martin & Mary Martin to J. B. C. Hunt, 25 February 1898, Register of Deeds.
Prepared by
Charles Purvis
