Clara of Covey

The 1826 return of births and deaths among the enslaved people on John Tharp's Covey estate recorded the birth of two children to a mother whose name appears to be Clara. The children were Daniel (b. 1824), whose mother's name is shown to the left and Isabella Meagby (b. 1826), whose mother's name is shown below, to the right. I've included the names above and below for clarity and comparison.


I couldn't clip out Clara's name without the tail of the g from Agnes obscuring the form of the first letter, which might otherwise have been taken for an E.

The name below, Eliza Eccleston, shows that this writer's capital E and C could not be confused with one another. This discounts the possibility that what I've read as Clara is actually Elana or some similar name.

Information about Clara, ought to have been recorded in the 1817 slave register for the estate, but no Clara was listed in that document.



I can think of three possible explanations:

  1. Clara was moved to the estate between 1817 and when Daniel was born in 1824. This is unlikely, because movement between estates was also recorded in the slave register and later returns.
  2. Clara was listed in the 1817 register under a completely different name. This is possible, but impossible to prove
  3. Clara was listed in the 1817 register using a different form of her name. 
Because the third explanation was my only way of moving forward, I looked at similar names in the 1817 register, which listed a 60-year-old called Claret (b. 1757), a fourteen-year-old called Claire (b. 1803) and a seven-year-old called Clarey (b. 1810). 

Claret was too old to be the mother, but Claire would have been between 21 and 23 when these children were  born, and Clarey between 14 and 16. 

If Claire was their mother, these children belong in the family tree discussed in 'Two Roses of Covey'; if Clarey, they belong in the family tree discussed in 'Four Besses of Covey'.  As is evident from the titles of these posts, neither possibility is straightforward.


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