Nancy Epps Gordon
(1845-1923)
Silhouette by Joseph Cranston Jones from The Tree Named John by John B. Sale, The University of North Carolina Press, 1929.
Nancy was born in Charlotte county, Virginia around 1845. Soon after her birth, she was sold to slave trader Goodman Davis of Richmond, Virginia, along with her parents Lewis and Phoebe. The family boarded the ship Phoenix and sailed from Virginia on November 10, 1845. They arrived in New Orleans on December 4th and were received by Davis’s partner, George Davis. He was one of the largest slave traders in New Orleans, the biggest slave market in North America.
According to Louisiana law, children under ten years of age could not be sold away from their mothers, so Nancy and Phoebe would stay together. However, slave marriages were not recognized under the law. Husbands and wives were usually separated through sale once they left Virginia. Remarkably Lezin Becnel purchased Lewis, Phoebe, and their daughter Nancy, and the family remained intact. Nancy and her parents were American slaves from the upper South. They spoke English, practiced a Protestant faith, and were unfamiliar with the Creole culture of Louisiana. Their arrival on a Creole plantation in rural St. John the Baptist parish would have been akin to entering a whole new world.
Registered to Vote, Le Meschacébé, May 25, 1867
Though his parents could neither read nor write and signed by mark, Adam Gordon Jr. received an education and was able to sign his name.
Part of her introduction into the Creole world involved religious conversion. When she was three years old, Nancy was baptized into the Catholic faith at St. John the Baptist Church, just a few miles downriver from the plantation. Her six siblings were also baptized there.
Shortly before the Civil War, Nancy married Adam Gordon, a Creole slave of mixed race. He was the son of Maria, a domestic slave of Lezin Becnel. When the Union army arrived in the parish, Adam enlisted in the 80th United States Colored Infantry. After serving his country, he returned to the plantation and continued to work as a laborer. Adam and Nancy would live their whole lives on Evergreen Plantation.
Just two months after being mustered out of the army, he registered to vote and exercised his new rights of citizenship by electing new government officials and serving on a jury. The Gordons legally wed in 1868 in a ceremony performed by the local Baptist minister.
Nancy and Adam Gordon had sixteen children. Only seven lived to adulthood. In 1891, Adam received a pension from the federal government for his service. He qualified due to a hernia that initially appeared when he was working on the levee at Camp Parapet during his service. The hernia went untreated for decades. He spent the last years of his life suffering from poor health and died on April 14, 1893. He was buried in St. John the Baptist Catholic cemetery, adjacent to the church where he had been baptized.
After his death in 1893, Nancy was provided benefits as his widow. Crippled in both feet and sickly, she struggled to provide for her two young children, Olivia and James. Because they were under the age of 16, they received pensions as the minor children of a veteran. Nancy died on August 17, 1923.
Page from Nancy Gordon’s application for a Widow’s Pension, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.
“I am the widow of Adam Gordon & has been from since our marriage the first of January 1868 and has been from since his death up to this present. We were married by the Rev. Charles Ash pastor in Charge of the St. Martin Baptist Church in the Parish of St. John. We were together before the war. After his return from the U.S. Army in 1867 by my conversion in the Baptist I were compell[sic] to comply with the rules of the Church. I am the mother of 16 children Eight is dead & Eight is alive. The two youngest James Gordon born May 2, 1884 Olivia Gordon August 25, 1886. My husband died April the 14 1893. Buried at the Catholic Church in St. John the Baptist from the same disease he became a pensioner by the government. He was attended by Doctor Elmore. He was lingering sick for 3 months of[f] 7 on. And died sudenly[sic] My present age is 55 years of age I am yet single. Suffering from the Rheumatism before the death of my Husband and since his death I have to strive very hard to support the 2 youngest children. I am Poor & has nothing as a support. I am living on the Michel Becnel Plantation w[h]ere My Husband Died. I has no Property of my Own. Sometimes I can scarcely get along. ”