Author: Olivia Dorsey Peacock

Retracing Alden’s Steps

The mystery of Alden Lawrence’s disappearance has haunted the family for over 80 years. Robert Alden Lawrence was the son of Clifford and Callie Lawrence. He went missing at the age of 2 on August 4, 1942. He, along with his siblings and parents, had travelled down from New York to visit his grandparents, Carrie and Joe Stewart. Despite an FBI case being opened into the incident and a multi-day search involving over a hundred Franklin residents, Alden was never found.

You can learn more about his disappearance here.

Needless to say, I had been trying for quite some time to locate the area where he was last seen, but could never pinpoint the exact location.

Based on a local newspaper clipping at the time, Carrie and Joe lived “off of Murphy Road, at “the back of the Crawford farm about a mile out of town.” The 1940 Census¹ shows Carrie and Joe living on “R.F.D #1.” But how was I supposed to know what that meant? Back in those days, there weren’t any street numbers for the houses. All I knew from the 1940 Census was that they lived in enumeration district 57-7.

If you take a look at the census below, you’ll notice Carrie and Joe living around some familiar people. I’ve highlighted their names in the screenshot below for emphasis. Below, Carrie and Joe are highlighted in green (lines 24 and 25) and couples who lived close to them are boxed in green. Relationships noted are based on their relation to Carrie.

Their neighbors, some of which consisted of family and friends (including the Martain, Greenwood, Chavis, Harshaw, Thomas, and Ledford families, among others), also included the Crawfords, who appear two census pages later: ²

During my visit with Emory, he verified not only where Carrie and Joe’s home was, but also where Clifford Lawrence parked his car on that fateful day. Below, I’ve tried to illustrate where those landmarks are based on the video and my recollection of the visit.

(Please note: I’ve blurred out the names of the streets to protect the privacy of those who currently live there. If you’d like to know more about where these sites are located, just let me know.)

Based on the order in which the 1940 Census was taken, I’d venture to guess that Canara Stewart and his family, as well as Aline and John Mingus and their family lived somewhere up the road from Carrie and Joe, heading towards that dead end.

You can also view a short video below, where Emory shows me these locations. He mentions where Clifford’s car was parked at the 3:44 timestamp.

A Tour of the Crawford Farm

It wasn’t until I rode around Franklin with one of the Crawford descendants, Emory, that I finally figured out where the Crawford homestead was located. As it turns out, it was right down the street from New Hope Cemetery.

During my visit, Emory was kind enough to show me around the old Crawford property. While the home and its surrounding land are owned by a new family now, many of the old buildings and equipment were still there. The wooded trails around the property are also still visible.

The home was surrounded by a cluster of hemlock trees and most if not all of them, were there during Emory’s childhood. The house was built on land obtained by Emory’s great-grandfather, Captain James Gilmer Crawford (1832-1889). He mentioned that in total, the family had owned over 300 acres of land in that area. The land surrounding the Crawford homestead has shrunken considerably since his mother sold the land. Today, a neighborhood of modest one-story homes have sprung up since then.

My great-great grandfather, Joseph Elexander Stewart (1873-1951), worked for Emory’s grandfather, Lee Crawford (1867-1930). Among Joe’s tasks included delivering milk, farming, gardening, and stacking hay (and likely more).¹ His wife, Carrie (1878-1986), also occasionally worked for the Crawfords, cleaning their laundry, cooking, and caring for their family members when they were ill.

In the Foxfire 5 book, Carrie recalls a conversation that Joe and Lee Crawford had once.²

(As you’ll see, she refers to a “Mr. Crawford.” Based on how Lee Crawford is referenced in photographs (usually as “Mr. Crawford”) and Lee, Joe, and Carrie’s ages, I have concluded that “Mr. Crawford” and “Lee Crawford” are the same person. Notably, Gilmer Crawford is usually referred to as “Gilmer.”)

My husband, Joe, worked on a farm for a man named Mr. Crawford. [There were several black men] working for him, and he asked one of them to fill in on a different job one day and this man said, “No, I ain’t going to do it. I’ll go home first.”

Joe said, “I hate to see anybody be so contrary.”

Mr. Crawford said, “Well, I was trying to favor him and give him a job, but he won’t accept it. If he had lived way back yonder during slavery time, why from what they tell me, he’d got in there and worked or he’d a’got his back torn up. I’m glad that it isn’t like that now.”

Joe said, “Well, if it was like that now, these men that done that to people wouldn’t have a place to lay their head, ’cause I’d burn up everything they had.”

Mr. Crawford said, “I’d be ashamed.”

And Joe said, “I would. Before I’d be drove around and knocked like they done then…”

When I asked Emory how Grandpa Joe began working for Lee Crawford, he said that Joe may have worked for the family since Captain James Gilmer Crawford owned the farm. That might be possible, but I haven’t been able to verify that yet.

The Crawfords and the Stewarts seemed relatively close. Lee Crawford often brought his son, Gilmer (1902-1950), to Joseph and Carrie’s home to hear the music their family would play. Gilmer and Joseph Canara Stewart loved to dance and play the fiddle together. ³ Carrie also kept several photos of the Crawford children in her photo albums. However, these relationships can be quite complex.

Emory has often told me how important Carrie and Joe were to his upbringing, emphasizing that they taught him much about life. He once told me that when he learned his first curse word, he said it in front of Carrie. She subsequently gave him a scathing look and provided quite the witty response. As for Joe, the Crawford children would often follow him around the farm, hoping to try a morsel of his tasty looking lunches.

As we continued along the property, he pointed out an area near the house where Joe kept a small garden. He also brought my attention to the Crawford’s root cellar, where the family would store preserved foods, potatoes, and other hardy vegetables. I imagined Joe and the other Black men who worked on the farm regularly helped store crops in there for the colder seasons.

Behind the house were the farm buildings. A barn dedicated to milking cows was where the Crawford men and Grandpa Joe often worked. The old stanchions, which held the cows in place, were still there, even if buried under piles of equipment and an assortment of random objects. A narrow trough in the bottom of the floor collected the cow manure, which would be washed away and used as fertilizer elsewhere on the farm.

“It really was ahead of its time,” my tour guide mused as he looked around.

As we approached the central barn, he gestured at the large building, noting that the grain siloes were now gone. Then the memories started flooding back. He reminisced about playing in the hay lofts with one of Carrie’s grandchildren. He pointed out a trails that people would take to various places on and off the property. He recounted once finding a big black snake among the hen roosts and finding Native American artifacts on a mound not far from the barn.

To learn more and “take the tour” for yourself, check out the video below. Thanks again to Emory for his willingness to show me around!

Day and Night: A New Hope Cemetery Update

A couple of months back, I visited New Hope Cemetery, a historically Black cemetery in Franklin, North Carolina. An estimated 41 people are buried in the cemetery, perhaps even more. As I approached the cemetery, I was met with a field of ferns, whose leaves tickled my calves and whose branches were high enough to swallow several of the taller headstones. Fieldstones, which denoted the unmarked graves, were hidden under clusters of vegetation and threatened to trip me at every step.

Out of the marked graves, the earliest burial was in 1904. However, burials likely began far earlier. The oldest documented individual in the cemetery is Jency McAfee (1835-1907). According to Josephine Greenwood Burgess (1920-2014), the last known member of New Hope Methodist Church, the last burial in the cemetery occurred in the 1940s. ¹

Horace J. Hurst, a worker who conducted cemetery surveys for the Works Progress Administration, noted that the cemetery was already in a dilapidated condition by 1940: ²

The cemetery, which was previously abandoned, was restored in 2013.³ That same year, a board of trustees was established to ensure that it was maintained after the restoration.

So much history resides in this seemingly unassuming plot of land. I was disheartened to see that the cemetery was beginning to deteriorate again.

This was what the cemetery looked like back in August:

Shortly after my visit, I reached out to multiple local individuals to see if any efforts were underway to clean up the cemetery and if not, what could be done to make it happen. I scoured resources, learning about cemetery care and preservation. If nothing was going to get done, I would come up with something myself.

Eventually, I got ahold of some county officials, who said they’d look into it. I can’t lie, I was doubtful.

A couple of weeks ago, I went back to New Hope Cemetery and noticed a remarkable difference. The vegetation in the clearing had been trimmed down and tree branches had been cleared out.

Like day and night.

It’s a promising start, but I hope that the county continues to keep the cemetery looking presentable in order to respect that the people who were buried there.

While I was learning about cemetery preservation and care, I discovered that North Carolina has a Historic Cemetery program through its Office of State Archeology. Their program aims to document all historic cemeteries in North Carolina to preserve information about these sites for “descendants, researchers, and interested North Carolinians.” They encourage both the public and archeological investigators to submit information about local historic cemeteries.

The program also provides resources and assists the public by answering their questions about cemeteries. If you are looking to care for a cemetery in North Carolina or generally want to learn more about cemetery care, I highly recommend checking out their webinars and other resources.

I’ve since submitted a “Citizen’s Cemetery Form” for New Hope. At the very least, it’ll be documented that this cemetery exists. I’m hoping it will be a step towards ensuring the cemetery stays protected. In the meantime, I’ll be keeping an eye on the cemetery and taking a deeper look into the lives of the individuals who are buried there.