Samuel Patrick and Ella McGuire Family Papers, PC.2061

[Identification of item] in PC.2061, Samuel Patrick and Ella McGuire Family Papers, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, NC, USA.

These are papers concerning Samuel Patrick and Ella McGuire, an African-American family of Raleigh, Wake County, with family in other locales, ca. 1872-1933. Includes personal and business letters; business receipts and Raleigh schools and city tax receipts; promissory notes; bills and statements of dues; summons for Raleigh public road work; wedding invitations; certificate of church membership; insurance policies; World War I naval commendation for son, Wilbert Henrick McGuire, for role in saving the ship, U.S.S. Mount Vernon, following its torpedoing by enemy; a small quantity of photographs; and miscellaneous materials. Of particular interest are the letters in the collection that span the years (not continuous, however) of 1872 to the early 1930s. The earliest one is a love letter to Patrick from Alice Brooks, Chapel Hill. There are a number of letters during the 1880s and 1890s to Patrick and Ella from Patrick's brother, Fred, who moved from North Carolina, to Virginia, and whose last letter in 1896 was posted in Baltimore. Letters to Ella in the late 1920s and early 1930s refer to jobs obtained and jobs lost, difficult economic times, politics, illnesses, including polio, delicious packages from home containing butter cakes, rabbits, ham, etc. One letter from W. H. [Wilbert ] McGuire writes in one letter of the almost even presidential race in which he will vote for Hoover, his purchase of two radios, one of which he will send home, his luck to work five days a week after being laid off for two weeks in August, George Graves losing his house, and his (Wilbert) being in an automobile accident with Frank Hinton.

Chronological.

Samuel Patrick McGuire (April 15, 1856- May 11 1906) The 1870 U.S. Federal Census enumerates a McGuire family, including Patrick, a farm worker, age sixteen, living with the white family of Frank Smith, M.D., and Mary R. Smith in Chapel Hill, Orange County. Also in the household is Patrick's mother, named Sallie McGuire, and listed as a domestic, born about 1819. The other McGuire children were Parthenia (b. ca. 1856-1857), Maria (b. ca. 1858), and Tippo (b. ca. 1861). Correspondence in the collection does show that Patrick had a brother named Fred McGuire, whose first son, Leonard/Leon was born 1887.) Patrick McGuire is listed in the Raleigh City Directory of 1883 as a laborer at the cotton platform, and residing at 512 Williams Alley. Four years later he was working at the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad Freight depot. A 1901 directory shows him working at the S.A.L. (Southern Air Line?) freight depot and living on Oberlin Road, West Raleigh. When Patrick died in 1906, his wife Ella ordered a marble tombstone to mark his gravesite at Oberlin Cemetery, Oberlin Road, Raleigh. Eleanor (Ella) Buffaloe McGuire (1861-1946). Ella was born in slavery in Wake County, circa 1861, a child of James [or Henderson?] and Martha Buffaloe (b. ca. 1830). Her siblings may have included Richard, George, Mary (Polly), Henry, and James. Her sister Mary's later married name was Debnam. It is not known when Ella and Patrick married, but it was probably in the early 1880s. (A letter in the collection dated 15 October 1883 from Ella's sister, Mary refers affectionately also to Patrick. The 1900 U.S. Federal Census shows the family in Raleigh, married nineteen-years, and Patrick (Samuel P.) employed as a depot freight deliverer, Eleanor as a "wash woman," and the mother of John P., an errand boy, age 16; Gertrude, age 11; Wilbert, age 9, and James, age 6. During the years after her husband's death in 1906, Ella managed her family and her financial affairs. The Raleigh city directory, 1910-1910 shows her still on Oberlin Road, employed as a laundress. living with her was John P., employed in a lab and Wilbert as a porter. Also in the household was Menzena [Gertrude?] McGuire. Later, Ella continued to be involved with her adult children through letters and other means, and also with extended family, and friends. After her death 21 May 1946, Ella was buried beside her husband at Oberlin Cemetery. Children of Samuel Patrick and Eleanor (Ella) Buffaloe McGuire The living children named in Ella McGuire's will of 20 March 1929 are John, Gertrude, and Wilbert McGuire. According to John's death certificate, he was born 3 Febuary 1887 and died 25 August 1953, Raleigh. His occupation was janitor at State College. Little is known at this time about Gertrude except that her married name may have been Haywood. Wilbert, born 15 August 1892, had the middle name of Henrick or Hendrick. He served during World War I in the U.S. Navy and survived the German torpedoeing (5 September 1918) of the U.S.S. Mount Vernon. Married and living in Raleigh in his later years and employed as a laborer, he died 11 June 1955 at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Durham and is buried at the Raleigh National Cemetery, Section 9, Site 616.

McGuire, Eleanor Buffaloe

McGuire, Samuel Patrick

McGuire, Wilbert Hendrick

Buffaloe family

McGuire family

Ella McGuire

African Americans--North Carolina

African Americans--North Carolina--Wake County.

Manners and customs--History--19th century.

World War, 1914-1918

Orange County (N.C.)

Raleigh (N.C.)

Wake County (N.C)

Love letters

Manners and customs--History--20th century

Gift of Stephen E. Massengill, Cary, N.C., 2013.

Processed by and finding aid by Fran Tracy-Walls