The Nugents: The Second Generation

The one who left for Texas

In my previous posts, I introduced the Nugent line of my husband's family: his great-great-great grandfather John Pratt Nugent, who came to the United States from Ireland and who eventually made his way south to Louisiana, where he married Anne Lavinia Lewis, a daughter of Seth Lewis, who had been the chief justice of the Mississippi Territory. John Pratt Nugent and Anne Lavinia Lewis had nine children, and at the beginning of this year, I searched online for any internet information on these children, avoiding at this time signing up for genealogy sites that require payment. As I have mentioned before, we have quite a lot of material--photos, letters, other ephemera--related to Tom's ancestors, but the people in so many of these photographs have never been identified. At the end of a few days of careful searching, I had found a photograph of one of John's and Anne's sons in the Flickr album of the University of Texas at Arlington, and, scrabbling through the boxes of photos that we owned, I found a photograph of the same man and thus was able to identify that photo as that of Thomas Lewis Nugent, one of the younger sons who had gone to Texas and settled there. Some time later, I came across a photo of William Lewis Nugent, in an online archive of Harvard. The search continues, but here is a summary of a few details--and links to sources--that I found online.

A very useful online source is the Find A Grave website. While the information loaded on this site is all done by volunteers, I have cross-referenced family information we have with information on this site and found that, usually, the web site information is fairly accurate. One does have to be careful, though, as I have discovered some errors. A little family background on Anne Lavinia Lewis and a photo of her cemetery marker can be found on that website:  link. A photo of John Pratt Nugent's cemetery marker can be found here: link. In a letter we have, written to my husband's great aunt Mary (Mimi) Armstrong, dated March 25, 1932, another descendent of John and Anne, Annie Nugent Gibbs, writes: 

Grandfather Nugent died in our home in Feb. 1872, and Papa bought a lot in which to bury him; in August of the same year grandmother Nugent died in Christiansburg, Va., where she and Aunt Nannie had gone because of the ill health of the former, and, on account of the heat of the Summer. Papa could not have her body brought here so had to wait until the cool weather and he then laid them side by side and buried them in a cradle style monument, with small slabs at their heads and just their names on the stones.

Aphra Pratt Nugent [married, Boyle], the oldest child of John and Anne: The lives of most women in the nineteenth century revolved around their families, and only through letters or remembrances are we likely to discover any details beyond a photograph. Online I found record of the births of a couple of Aphra's children, in the 1849 and the 1856 New Orleans Parish Birth Index, and a record of her marriage to Francis Boyle in the "New Orleans Marriage Index, Daily Picayune, 1837-1857, Surnames Beginning with Letter 'B'." According to these sources, Aphra Pratt Nugent married Francis Boyle on July 20, 1848 [Ref. Daily Picayne 7/25/1848 P2C6]. Birth records reveal that a daughter, Anne Nugent Boyle, was born to Francis A. Boyle and Aphra Pratt Nugent on June 8, 1849, and that another daughter, Aphra Francis Boyle, was born on November 24, 1856.

family photograph--"Aunt Aphra Boyle" written on back

 Perry Nugent, oldest son of John Pratt Nugent and Anne Lavinia Lewis Nugent: Because Perry is Tom's great-great grandfather, we have quite a lot of information about him and many letters written by him. Perry's story is a somewhat tragic one, as he rose to some wealth and prominence in New Orleans, the highlight of which was his tenure as the President of the New Orleans Cotton Exchange, but then he lost most of his money in his later years and spent the remaining years of his life working to repay debts. Letters from his old age reveal that he felt that God had abandoned him; they make very melancholy reading. I have written of Perry in other posts (see "Perry Nugent--'The Loss of Wealth was his Trial.") and will return to him in future ones, so I will not elaborate here on Perry's long and interesting life. We have a family Bible in which births and marriages were recorded. Perry Nugent married Amanda Maria Keep Cook on December 1, 1853. They had seven children, one of whom, Catherine, died while still a baby. Of the six children who lived late into adulthood, only two married, my husband's great-grandmother Mary Ophelia Nugent [married, Armstrong] and the youngest son, Paul Cook Nugent. I did find online, however, a very interesting letter written by a nephew of Perry's--James E. Edmonds, the son of the youngest daughter of John Pratt Nugent and Anne Lavinia Lewis Nugent. The letter is in the James E. Edmonds Collection in the University of Mississippi Libraries Digital Collections. In this letter, James tries to comfort his mother on the death of her oldest brother Perry Nugent. The letter was written May 22, 1900. What follows is a partial quote:

My dear Mother, I have not heard from you since Uncle Perry's death but of course I did not expect to do so.

I should have written you sooner--and I have tried to do so a dozen times, but a letter of sympathy was so hard to write and any other kind seemed almost heartless. Your anxiety and hope in Greenville [Mississippi, where Perry Nugent had been living] touched me more than I have been in a long time.

For Uncle Perry--his life seems a failure to the world that does not know him. To them he should have died twenty years ago President of the New Orleans Cotton Exchange and the wealthy commission merchant. Far happier he would have been also--had this been the case. But in such event the most heroic part of his career would never have been played. A man who is brave, and loyal to himself and his ideals in the midst of defeat has double the heroism of any other part. Uncle Perry certainly was not the least of those who noble battled an adverse fate. His life should be [unreadable] and an example for emulation and a warning of dangers to avoid."

family photograph--Perry Nugent

William Lewis Nugent, third child of John Pratt Nugent and Anne Lavinia Lewis Nugent: Information on William Lewis Nugent is readily available online, as he became a prominent lawyer in Mississippi; his letters to his first wife, Eleanor Fulkerson Smith, were collected, edited and published; his and Eleanor's only daughter, Eleanor (Nellie) Nugent [married Robert Somerville] served as vice-president of the National Women's Suffrage Association and was the first woman elected to the Mississippi legislature in 1923; and his granddaughter Lucy Somerville Howorth, was a prominent lawyer and feminist in Mississippi in the 20th century.  What interests me the most about the William Nugent family is this progression--from a generation of slave owners (well, William didn't own slaves, but his father did, and his father-in-law did, and a slave accompanied William when he fought for the Confederate Army) to descendents who worked for women's rights as well as for the rights of African Americans. As chairwoman of the American Association of University Women, Lucy Somerville Howorth (William Lewis Nugent's granddaughter), successfully led that organization to open its membership to African American women in 1949. After the death of his first wife, William married again, to Mary Catherine Montgomery, who died a year or so after their marriage. He married a third time, to Aimee Webb, with whom he fathered five more children. The Mississippi Department of Archives and History has the papers of William Lewis Nugent in its archives. Information about William Lewis Nugent can also be found online in Google Books, one being Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi: Volume II, Part I, published by Firebird Press; another being Soldiers of the Cross: Confederate Soldier-Christians and the Impact of War on Their Faith, by Kent T. Dollar.

A copy of a photograph of William Lewis Nugent can be found online in Harvard University Library's Visual Information Access website: Engraved Portrait of William Lewis Nugent.

Richard James Nugent, the fourth child of John Pratt Nugent and Anne Lewis Nugent: Richard Nugent married a grand-niece of the President of the Confederacy and is mentioned in the letters of Jefferson Davis. A collection of those letters includes the following note:

Richard James Nugent (Nov. 14, 1834 - Aug. 8, 1891) was born in St. Landry Parish, the son of John Pratt and Anne Lewis Nugent, and lived in New Orleans before the war. On December 15, 1859, he married Mary Coralie Smith (1839-67) eldest child of Davis' nephew Dr. Joseph Davis Smith; the Nugents had three children. Entering service in 1862 as a lieutenant in the Confederate Guards, Louisiana militia, he was appointed a quartermaster officer (1862-65), working mainly in Opelousas and Alexandria. At war's end he returned to New Orleans, but after his wife died in the 1867 yellow fever epidemic, he settled at Reveille plantation in Bolivar County, Mississippi, where he was also a magistrate and levee commissioner. In 1884, Davis contacted Nugent about supervision of Brierfield. [The Papers of Jefferson Davis, vol. 8, 1862, Lynda Lasswell Crist, editor, Mary Seaton Dix, co-editor; 1995, Louisiana State University Press]

On August 9, 1891, The New Orleans Times-Picayune published the following obituary:

Death of Major Richard J Nugent

 Major Richard J. Nugent, who died in this city yesterday, is of the Nugent family of St. Landry parish, where he was born in 1835. He came to New Orleans while quite young, and married Miss Cora Smith, a grand niece of Jefferson Davis.

After the war, in which Major Nugent served gallantly, he lived here until 1868, when on the death of his wife, he moved to Bolivar County, Miss., and engaged in planting. Major Nugent was the brother of Perry Nugent, formerly president of the Cotton Exchange, and of W. L. Nugent of Jackson, Miss.

He leaves a son and two daughters, all married, to share in the grief for a parent with that of a friend.

We also have a letter written by one of Richard's daughters, Coralie Nugent Lobdell, dated January 14, 1944, in which the daughter mentions her mother and the family's moving to the Mississippi Delta:

I had the pleasure of knowing all of my uncles and aunts and cousins except Uncle Tom's family [Thomas Nugent] who moved to Texas before I was born. Your Grandmother (my Aunt Amanda) had me in her keeping after my Mother's death in New Orleans of yellow fever, when I was seven months old. When the scourge was over my Grandmother, Anne Nugent, came to live with my Father. He moved to Bolivar County, Mississippi, and here in the Delta I have spent my life.  [heading on the letter: The John V. Lobdell Agency, Rosedale, Mississippi. An archive of the Lobdell family papers can be found in the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Coralie Nugent married John V. Lobdell, Jr.; John V. Lobdell, Sr., died just before the Civil War began; John V. Lobdell, Jr., was born in 1859. The Lobdell family papers include correspondence to other Nugent family members. ]

More information on Richard James Nugent can be found in Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi: Volume II, Part I, by Firebird Press, Pelican Publishing, Nov. 30, 1999, p. 517. Richard Nugent and his wife Mary Coralie Smith Nugent are buried in Metairie Cemetery, Orleans Parish, Louisiana. Information about their grave sites can also be found online at the Find a Grave website, but I have noted errors in the information.

family photo--Richard James Nugent

John Pratt Nugent, Jr., fifth child of John Pratt Nugent and Anne Lavinia Lewis Nugent: John, Jr., is the offspring for whom I have the least information at this time. His name appears in the index of An Evening When Alone: Four Journals of Single Women in the South: 1827-67, edited by Michael O'Brien and published by the University Press of Virginia (Southern Texts Society), where it is noted that John Pratt Nugent, Jr., was born in 1836. I could access only portions of the book online; the Nugents are mentioned in Anne Lewis Hardeman's journals. Anne Lewis Hardeman was a cousin of Anne Lavinia Lewis Nugent. (Nancy Hardeman had married Seth Lewis--Anne Lewis Nugent was a daughter.) He is also mentioned in a letter that one of Richard Nugent's daughters (Coralie Nugent Lobdell) wrote to my husband's great-aunt Mary (Mimi) Ophelia Nugent Armstrong, dated January 14, 1944:

The children of John Pratt Nugent and Anne Lavinia Lewis Nugent were Aphra (an Irish name), Perry, named for a brother of Grandfather's, William, Richard, Amelia, Thomas, John and Clarance (sic) [notice that Anne Maria Nugent Edmonds is missing from this list]. All the boys except Tom were in the Confederate Army [a contradiction of other sources], John being the only one who was wounded.

 John Pratt Nugent, Jr., died in 1888.

Amelia Thompson Nugent Vairin, sixth child of John Pratt Nugent and Anne Lavinia Lewis Nugent: Some day I will have gone through all the family letters and perhaps have found more information on Aunt Amelia. Online, I found a record of her death in the 1908 Orleans Parish Death Index: March 4, 1908, at the age of 69 years. According to other records, she was born January 1, 1839. We also have a number of letters written by various Vairin descendents, among whom there was some ill feeling, as the letters reveal--but that's for another day, another post, perhaps. Amelia married Julius Vairin, with whom she had several children; family letters refer to a Julius Vairin and Nugent Beverly Vairin, as well as to the Baldwins who married into the family. (Nugent Beverly Vairin married Alice Baldwin; Sarah Vairin married Harry F. Baldwin). For now, the most we have personally on Amelia Thomson Nugent Vairin is the photo below, identified as "Aunt Amelia."

family photo--Amelia Thompson Nugent Vairin

Thomas Lewis Nugent, seventh child of John Pratt Nugent and Anne Lavinia Lewis Nugent: Thomas Lewis Nugent was born in 1841 and died in 1895. Among all his siblings, he made the smartest move after the Civil War and moved to Texas (my home state), where he taught school for a while before becoming a lawyer. Late in his life, he entered politics and was the populist candidate for governor of Texas in 1892.  The Handbook of Texas Online has an entry on Thomas, here: "Nugent, Thomas Lewis". Google Books also has the full contents of a book of his life available online, edited by his third wife: Life Work of Thomas L. Nugent, by Mrs. Catharine Nugent. According to the Handbook of Texas entry, Thomas Nugent married Clara Hardeman (his second cousin) in the 1860s, and they had five children, three sons and two daughters. One of those sons, Clarence, also became a leader in the Populist party in Texas, and in the 20th century, he was a leader of the Socialist party. Thomas Nugent's second wife was a Miss Chamberlain, who "survived only a short time," and then Thomas married for the third and last time to Catharine C. Earl, who edited the book about his life. Many reminiscences of Thomas Nugent's old friends are included in Life and Work of Thomas L. Nugent, but my favorites are a couple by Thomas B. King. King writes about Thomas Nugent's campaign for governor in 1892:

In the great canvas of 1892, all of the Gubernatorial candidates, Hogg, Clark and Nugent, on different days came to Stephenville [Texas]. Both Gov. Hogg and Gen. Clark were received at the depot with brass bands and conducted to the best hotels in carriages. Nugent came, walked leisurely along, shook hands, as was his custom, even with many of his old colored neighbors, as friendly as if they were princes of royal blood. I know this was not for any effect, but his simple, natural way. He could not help it any more than a child could help being glad to see home people on getting home.

Speaking of the colored people, some months before the Judge [Thomas Nugent] died, and the last time he was ever in my office he and a well dressed and seemingly well-to-do gentleman were in a friendly conversation which became somewhat animated at a point in which there is generally a good deal of animus. Both were southern born, the Judge coming from an old Louisiana family of slave-holders and having himself seen service in the Confederate army. The gentleman remarked that if the slave-holders had been paid for their slaves it would have been nothing but justice. The Judge replied that it appeared to him that having had the services of the slaves for several generations for nothing, justice rather demanded that the slaves, rather than their owners, ought to have been paid at least enough to start them in life.

Of course, Thomas Lewis Nugent was still a son of the Old South, and while he was enlightened in many ways, other stories of Nugent and his campaign for governor reflect the divide between whites and blacks in the South following the Civil War.

 I found a portrait of Thomas Lewis Nugent in a Flickr account of the University of Texas at Arlington and so was able to identify a photo in our collection as a photo of Uncle Thomas. Our photo was not in good shape, but I include here a copy of it.

family photo--Thomas Lewis Nugent

Clarence Jewell Nugent, eighth child of John Pratt Nugent and Anne Lavinia Lewis Nugent: On a website maintained by the Oldham County [Kentucky] Historical Society, I accessed in March of this year the cemetery records of Clarence Nugent and his wife Addie May Alexander Nugent. According to these records, Clarence was born December 7, 1843, and died on October 5, 1915. His wife Addie was born February 6, 1852, and died on December 2, 1912. We have among our records a letter written by Clarence to his niece Mary Ophelia Nugent [married Baker Armstrong] in which he mourns the many years that had passed since he had last seen his brothers and sisters and their children. He and his brother Thomas, however, kept in touch over the years, and Clarence wrote a reminiscence of his brother that was included in Life and Work of Thomas L. Nugent. I also accessed a couple of obituaries online, through the Library of Congress' Chronicling America site. The following was originally published in The Daily Public Ledger, Maysville, Kentucky, Thursday, October 7, 1915:

Former Pastor of the First M. E. Church, South, Here, Died at Deaconess Hospital in Louisville

Rev. Dr. Clarence J. Nugent, retired minister of the Methodist Episcopal church, died Tuesday morning at the Deaconess Hospital at Louisville. He had been ill of nephritis a month and last week was removed from the home of his son, C. J. Nugent, divisional Sunday school secretary for the Methodist Episcopal church.

He was 72 years old and a native of Alabama. He was a member of the Mississippi Conference before coming to Kentucky, and had held charges at Brooksville, Carrolton, Lagrange, Maysville and other Kentucky towns.

His last service was with a church near Harrods Creek. He resigned from the Kentucky Conference at its session last month. His son and two grandchildren survive. The body was taken to his old home in Lagrange for burial.

While pastor of the First M. E. church, South, here, Dr. Nugent made many friends who will regret to learn of his death. He was very popular with all denominations in this city and was a strong preacher.

I don't know why this obituary claimed that Clarence was a native of Alabama, since he was born in Opelousas, Louisiana, but perhaps it's because he lived and pastored in Alabama, too.

family photo--Clarence J. Nugent, 1891

Anna Maria Nugent Edmonds, ninth child of John Pratt Nugent and Anne Lavinia Lewis Nugent: The last of John's and Anne's children, Anna (or Aunt Nannie, as she was called by some of her nieces and nephews) was born August 8, 1850. The online site of the Orleans Parish Brides' Marriage Index, 1800-1899, records that she married James E. Edmonds, December 15, 1875. While searching for more information on Anna Maria in March of this year, I came across Ira and Larry Goldberg Auctioneers, through which a collection of Anna M. Nugent Edmonds' original typescripts and manuscripts had been auctioned for $690 (with an estimated value of $1000-1500). Although I have provided a link to the description of the manuscripts, I have copied below the information included at that link, as I'm not sure how long that link will be active:

Lot 1176--Archive of Anna M. (Nugent) Edmonds, 1870s-1919.  Archive of the original typescripts and manuscripts by Anna M. (Nugent) Edmonds, approximately 100 pages, c.1870s-1910, New Orleans, Louisiana. Anna Nugent was reared in an old Louisiana family that settled in St. Landry Parish after 1690. Seven sons served in the Confederate Army and the family fled from advancing Federal troops in 1862. Ironically, in 1875, Miss Nugent married a Yankee entrepreneur, Captain James E. Edmonds of Ohio, who served in the 94th Ohio Volunteers. During Reconstruction he bought "Buck Ridge," a 1,000 acre cotton plantation in the Delta region of Mississippi. Here, with his Southern belle bride, Edmonds proceeded to live like the planters' sons he had recently helped vanquish. Anna Edmonds began writing short stories under the pseudonym Nathaniel Neugent. Her pieces were of that once-popular sentimental genre that relied heavily on Negro dialect for a sense of place and mythologized the finer aspects of life in the Old South. Quite often the tales were based upon her own experiences before, during, and after the Civil War. This archive includes two manuscripts, most likely written while the Edmonds lived in Mississippi. The stories are "Hazards of New Fortunes" and "A Successful Runaway"; the former is penned on thin, tissue-like paper, while the latter is penciled on lined ledger paper. Also included are four typescripts for "The Banshee of the Stoddards," "How Elder Bolivar Elected Himself," "Aunt Sally's Victory," and "Uncle Bill as a Labor Agent"; these stories are written for submission to a publisher, giving word count and return address. There is also a typed excerpt from "Reminiscence 1832 on a Louisiana Plantation"; this centers around the author's grandfather, Judge Seth Lewis, and gives some family history, as well as an examination of local customs. Some of the material is quite fragile.

  Of course, I wonder who the successful bidder was and where these manuscripts are now.

Anna and James had one son, named after his father, James E. Edmonds. Both father and son attended the University of Mississippi, the son entering in the fall of 1896. The son's letters are in the James E. Edmonds Collection, of the University of Mississippi Libraries Digital Collections.  The son of Anna M. Nugent and James Edmonds would go on to work as a newspaper correspondent/artist in New Orleans, Louisiana, during which time he married Rosa Warfield, of Natchez, MS. He worked for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Many years ago, someone in Tom's family cut out a newspaper article about "Major General James E. Edmonds" being given the "Legion of Merit." Unfortunately, the newspaper clipping does not include a date, but this has to be the son of Anna Nugent and James Edmonds, for the information included in the clipping corresponds to some of the information in the biographical note accompanying the James E. Edmonds Collection at the University of Mississippi. James and his wife Rosa had one son, James Edmonds, Jr.

As for Anna Maria Nugent Edmonds, so far I have not been able to identify a photograph among the family's collections, but that does not mean one does not exist.

A lot of work remains to be done in sifting through the family archives of letters and other ephemera.