John Pratt Nugent: "Should a boat come..."

One of the oldest letters I've discovered in the hundreds of my husband's family letters is one written by John Pratt Nugent, the Irish immigrant from Ireland who married Anne Lavinia Lewis, daughter of Seth Lewis, prominent judge in Opelousas, Louisiana. John Pratt Nugent is my husband's great-great-great grandfather. The children of John Pratt Nugent and Anne Lavinia Lewis Nugent were:

• Aphra Nugent
• Perry Nugent
• William Nugent
• Richard Nugent
• Thomas Nugent
• Amelia Nugent
• John Nugent
• Anne Nugent
• Clarence Nugent.

The letter reproduced here in these images was written to John Pratt Nugent's son Perry, my husband's great-great grandfather. [Click on the image for a larger version.] Many of the envelopes to these family letters are missing--or the letters were separated from their envelopes by an uncle who had hoped to make money from the stamps. This is one of those free-floating letters, divorced from its envelope and stored with letters unrelated in time.

Some of the handwriting is difficult for me to read, but I have translated the handwriting as best I can below. I have regularized some of the punctuation.

Atchafalaya, October 3rd, 1856

Dear Perry,

Your letter of 20th [undecipherable] came to hand yesterday since, and as I expect to take Tom to Bayou Sara tomorrow I thought it best to drop you a few lines--I am sorry to say that your uncle William has failed to sell his place. Mr. Norwood is sick. I believe he wished to buy the place for himself & a Brother in law by the name, I think, of [Hutchens?], or some such name. The latter lives at or near Clinton, east Feliciana. Tom was sent over there by his Father but Mr. H back (sic) out by saying the place was too [small?] for the hands Mr. Norwood wished to add to his force. It will be proper for you to write to President Miller. Tom wishes to board in the college or with Miller. I have very little money to give him. I had bought some cattle from Harry Juvell last year. I had to pay him & I bought another cow out of a drove and a [undecipherable]. It all put together swept my money. The Captain of the Effort was to bring me a barrel of pork and take pay in wood but he did not return. I have heard he has gone to Red River, the Atchafalaya has risen three feet, and the snag boat is pulling out the snags--and has got up to Bayou Boeuf or higher--inform some of the officers of the Opelousas or get Dick to do it. I am on my last barrel pork. Should a boat come, send me a barrel best [undecipherable] or should no boat come send one [to] Morganza care [of] Mr. Josep Strother (or Strawther) by Bella Donna or Capitol and write by mail to me. You know I only get letters once a week, the state owes me $44--When Caldwell comes along I will get a check and sent it to you. They are going to make a new [undecipherable] Cowhead [Bayou?] on the upper side of the old one. I will not bid. The others were bought 21 cents the cubic yard--it is thought nothing will be made at those works. The earth is to be carried [undecipherable]. I deadened nearly one hundred acres over Cowhead & mean to do more this dark moon. I am gathering my corn now over the River, when that is done I will go at cutting woods--the deadening will only take a few days--Your mother will write to Richard--Say to him he must not think hard of me for not writing--best to him and all and kisses to your Lady love [undecipherable]. I find it hard to get at writing--
as ever your
affectionate
Father
John Nugent

P. S. You had better burn my scrawls of letters--J. N.

The letter is rather disjointed, as the infrequent letter-writer--by his own admission--hits the high spots of news for his son, who will understand the references to place names and steamboats. I was stumped for a while by the references to "Bella Donna and Capitol" until I thought to do a Google search on boats on the Mississippi and found in Google Books a text titled "Fifty Years on the Mississippi: or, Gould's History of River Navigation, by Emerson W. Gould. The book includes the names of steamboats and their captains. In the section titled "Steamboats on the Bayou Sara Trade," the steamer Bella Donna is listed for 1853, along with her captain, Captain I. H. Morrison. The steamer Capital is listed for 1856, and her captain, Captain Baranco. Also, I puzzled over the word "deadened" for a while until I guessed that it had something to do with killing trees in preparation for clearing land for cultivation. Another search in Google Books provided support for my guess in "Southern Cultivator, vol. 5 (p. 319), in which the editors answer a query about the best time for "deadening" timber for bringing land into cultivation. John Nugent's letter does give the reader a pretty good idea of what was most on the man's mind as he wrote his son, and I am glad that son did not follow his father's advice to burn the letters.

The Nugents: Origins

For now we will leave Mary Ophelia Nugent and Baker White Armstrong in September, 1887, at which time Baker professed his love for Mary. Yes, they eventually married, and Mary followed Baker from Virginia to Texas, where one consequence of their union is the existence of my husband, Thomas Alexander Greene, born 1958. I will return to the details of the Nugent-Armstrong alliance, but I am now going to pick up threads of Mary Ophelia Nugent's family background. Mary's father was Perry Nugent, still living in 1887; Mary's mother, Amanda Maria Keep Cook Nugent had died months earlier, on January 3, 1887. I will provide details that we have of the other threads of family history (Cook, Lewis, Hardeman), but first I will concentrate on what we know about the Nugents.

Perform a Google web search on the phrase "Nugent origins," and you will find web sites devoted to the Nugent family. The "Old World" Nugents, according to those websites as well as from information copied by my husband's relatives, describe the Nugents' traveling from France to England with William the Conqueror. They assisted William of Normandy in the Battle of Hastings of 1066. According to one website, the Nugent

surname is of Norman origin, and was introduced into Britain and Ireland after the Conquest of 1066. It is a locational name from any of the several places in Northern France, such as Nogent-sur-Oise, named with the Latin "Novientum", apparently an altered form of a Gaulish name meaning "new settlement". The Anglo-Norman family of this name are descended from Fulke de Bellesme, lord of Nogent in Normandy, who was granted large estates around Winchester after the Conquest. His great-grandson was Hugh de Nugent (died 1213), who went to Ireland with Hugh de Lacy, and was granted lands in Bracklyn in Westmeath. The family formed themselves into a clan in the Irish model, of which the chief bore the hereditary title of Uinsheadun, from their original seat at Winchester. They have been Earls of Westmeath since 1621, and the name is now widespread in Ireland. The surname dates back to the early 13th Century.

This information coincides with information from other sources, so it seems to be fairly accurate. My husband's family, through Mary Ophelia Nugent, is descended from those Nugents who went to Ireland with Hugh de Lacy. Mary's grandfather, John Pratt Nugent (born 1792; died 1873), emigrated from Ireland to the United States, where he eventually married (1827) Anne Lewis (born 1807; died Aug. 23, 1873). In the papers of Mary Ophelia Nugent Armstrong ("Mimi"), daughter of Mary Ophelia Nugent and Baker White Armstrong, are papers about the Nugent family. Included among those papers are hand-written notes titled "Nugent Family: From notes--Mrs. Anne Nugent Edmonds." Anne was one of the children of John Pratt Nugent and Anne Lewis--and sister to Perry Nugent. Here are the words from that document:

John Pratt Nugent came of Anglo-Norman ancestry, the descendent of one of the knights who were associated with Hugo de Lacy in a grant of land made by Henry II in what is now known as Queens Co., Ireland. James Nugent, his father, was in the British Army at the time he ran away and married Aphra Pratt, who was attending boarding school in Dublin. After his marriage with Aphra Pratt, whose father seems to have been a wealthy man, he left the soldiers (sic) life and went to live on an estate in Queens County near the town of Rothdowny (sic)  where all his children were born. They were members of the Church of England in which communion, John, was confirmed before coming to America. Aphra Pratt's (Nugent) brothers held office under the British government but nature of positions is not known. James Nugent's family suffered severely in the Catholic riots, during one of which the home was burned to the ground, the baby in the family having made a narrow escape with his life.

Notes from John Pratt Nugent
"I arrived from Philadelphia, Nov. 16, 1816. Sailed from Dublin. I was in the employ of Thos. P. & Sons while there. They were tobacco commission merchants. Thos. Kirkman of the house of Kirkman and Jackman, sent me to Natchez in the fall of 1818. They had a branch at Nashville and one at Natchez."

James E. Edmonds (Maj. Gen. N. G. U S.-Retired), Anne Nugent Edmond's grandson, most probably, corresponded with Mary ("Mimi") Ophelia Nugent Armstrong and provided her with a lot of information on the Nugents. In a letter dated March 25, 1957, and addressed from 29 Colonial Place, Asheville, N. C., cousin James wrote the following:

Dear Mary Nugent Armstrong
Cousin Mary
Years ago I picked up in a Washington second hand book store, a biography of one ROBERT LORD NUGENT; a brilliant, fortune-hunting, politician and place-hunter of the 18th Century. I did so, more or less to tease my straight-laced mother. I only glanced at the book, by a man named Claude Nugent.

But the other day, re-ordering my older books, I found in the volume--unread by me hitherto--an account of the Nugent tribe from the first comer from England in the long ago, down to the mid-18th century; and, a singularly interesting lot of chronic rebels, adventurers, and turbulent country gentlemen.

The names Richard, Robert, William recur and recur...

Of course, over more than 700 years there were many split-offs and there are Nugents of all sorts and kinds in Ireland and here in the United States, of other lines than ours.

But, I feel sure that the 18th Century gap between our known ancestor, James Nugent of the 19th Regiment of Foot, who married Aphra Pratt and settled down at Rathdowney in the 1770s or '80s--and the Nugents of the senior line of Westmeath, could be filled in by any competent genealogist in Dublin.

If you like, I'll send you a copy of the material in the old book

By the way: Have you any trace of any Nugent descendents (sic) of Judge Thomas H. Nugent, your-great-uncle who flourished in Texas about 60 years ago and lived (I believe) in Palestine?

Cordially, James

Cousin James Edmonds evidently followed through with his promise to send some of that material from the book by Claude Nugent, for in Mimi's papers are several typed pages of information on the Nugents. I will not reproduce all the information James Edmonds includes about the Nugents (beginning with Hugh de Lacy and his Nugent companions in Ireland). Instead, I will pick up here:

All these Nugents plainly shifted from the Royalist Catholic Nugents of Westmeath when William and Mary won the Irish wars in the 1690s and Queen Anne succeeded, and the Stuarts went into final eclipse. So;;;;: we come to:

Lieutenant JAMES NUGENT, who served in His Majesty's 19th Regiment of Foot, during the Seven Years War and was captured by the French at the fighting over some channel (Belle Isle) islands. By family legend, he persuaded schoolgirl Aphra Pratt, daughter of a well-to-do Protestant landowner of near Rathdowney, to elope with him from her boarding school in Dublin. He quit the army in 1771 after serving since 1775, and went to the family estate, in what is Queen's County. The Pratts were office-holders under the English government and Rathdowney was the site of a considerable Protestant community. By family legend, the Nugent-Pratt family suffered severely during the Catholic riots in the late 1700s; one of the homes was burned, and a baby in that family was saved by his nurse who climbed out of a window with him.

James Nugent, the ex-soldier, sired:

• James Nugent, the eldest, date of birth not noted, married 1804, and "lived and died in Ireland." His emigrant younger brother long later wrote, "my last letter from him in 1852." Probably born circa 1773 or 5. (When Cynthia and I visited Rathdowney in 1936, no Nugent trace remained nor could we, on our brief visit, locate the site of the Pratt-Nugent homestead in the country)...
• Robert Nugent, born 1777, "came to America when old"...
• George Nugent, about whom no statistic or word...
• Perry Nugent, who came to the United States, married, left a son who never married... and then...
• John Pratt Nugent, youngest and son of his father's later years, born 1792, and the ancestor of the Nugents who were my maternal uncles, aunts, and cousins in my boyhood and young manhood... and some of the cousins my dearest kin into my maturity and middle and old age... He sailed from Dublin in 1816, spent seven weeks at sea, arrived in Philadelphia, November 16, 1816. Two years later he was sent, as he relates, by "Thomas Kirkman of the house of Kirkman and Jackson" to their branch at Natchez, Mississippi. There, the young Irishman seems to have prospered. He removed to the then territorial capital of Washington, married a Miss Forman, fathered a daughter, Katherine. This wife died young and soon. Eight years after his arrival... the lovely Anne Lavinia Lewis, daughter of Judge Seth Lewis of Opelousas, Louisiana, was attending the Elizabeth Academy for Young Ladies--the first chartered institution of higher learning for women in the United States!---She saw the handsome young widower riding by on his handsome horse, and he saw the lovely girl, fifteen years his junior. They met...and in 1827 they married...Later, probably with the encouragement of Judge Seth Lewis...the couple re[settled in] St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, became planters instead of merchants and reared the family there until the tragedy of the Civil War."

And so we have the history of the Nugents from whom Mary Ophelia Nugent was descended, and from her, my husband and his sister. We have in the family papers letters written by John Pratt Nugent to his sons and a few letters written by Anne Lavinia Lewis Nugent. With those, I will pick up the story of the Nugents in Louisiana.

The Armstrongs and Nugents: Through the Mists of Time

I have now introduced my husband's great-grandfather, Baker White Armstrong, Sr., who left Virginia for Texas in the 1880s, his wife, Mary Ophelia Nugent Armstrong (Sr.), and the four children. We are going to leave those Armstrongs in the early 1900s for a while and wander through the misty past, to where these ancestors first stepped foot onto the shores of America. At the left of this post is a photo of a man identified as Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr. So many of the family photographs have no identifying marks beyond the photographer and the city in which the photograph was taken. In the few months before her untimely death, caused by cancer, my husband's mother, Mary Nugent Robb Greene, directed her daughter and me in identifying some of the people in the photographs. The handwriting on the back of this photograph is in a script I recognize from the family letters of the late-1800s, someone who would know best how to identify this particular person.

And so we have here at the upper left, I am rather sure, Baker's father,  Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr.. At the upper right is Perry Nugent, the father of Mary Ophelia Nugent Armstrong and father-in-law of Baker White Armstrong. Anchor these two men here, in the Old South--before Baker left for Texas. They were men whose fathers had arrived from another country, and who, within a generation, found themselves firmly woven into the fabric of their new home. Edward McCarty Armstrong's father, William Armstrong, came with his family from Ireland when he was a boy of about ten years old, around 1790. [More in another post on father and son] Perry Nugent's father, John Pratt Nugent, emigrated from Ireland in 1792. Both the Nugents and the Armstrongs prospered (though Perry suffered financial setbacks late in life), and the families became united in the marriage of their son and daughter, Baker White Armstrong (Sr.) and Mary Ophelia Nugent. I will turn my attention to the Nugents later. For a while we will walk with the Armstrongs.

Here is an obituary for Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr.. Click on the image to read the print.

Additional Note added 22 October 2009: Edward McCarty Armstrong is mentioned several times on a West Virginia Genealogy page. Although undocumented information on the Internet should be treated with extreme caution, the information contained there matches with what I have read in the letters that Edward McCarty Armstrong and his wife Louisa wrote to their sons Baker and Robert Armstrong during the 1880s. Edward Armstrong was looking for someone to buy his farm near Salem, Virginia, and evidently the boys weren't thrilled with the idea. But in a letter dated December 10, 1885, Louisa cautions her son Baker not to complain to his father about the possibility:

You urge your Father not to sell his farm. Do not urge him too much, for if you could see things as Robt [Robert] did last winter; you might think differently. I believe the health of my girls will all be broken down, if they have to live here much longer. It is true God can take or give health & life anywhere but looking from a human standpoint I fear it. Then your Father never can make money here, but I fear sinks it. Do not tell him I say this--he thinks differently. But we trust God will do what is best for us every way. It does not look much like it; but I try to do so & leave it with Him. But after my Katie (who was thought so strong & well) was taken so suddenly, my fears are always on the alert.

According to the West Virginia Genealogy page:

Col. Edward McCarty ARMSTRONG was the largest land owner & most prominent businessman at New Creek Station in 1858. He was elected delegate from Hampshire Co to the VA convention held at Richmond 2-12-1861, which was to consider Va's secession from the Union. Mr. Armstrong voted against the Ordinance of Secession; however, his first loyalty was to his state, he therefore wholeheartedly supported the Confederacy. He joined the Confederate army & went into eastern VA. His store was taken over by Col. James H. DAYTON, who became postmaster here on 4-28-1862.

When Edward M. Armstrong (Sr.) returned after the war, he sold his land and moved to Salem, Virginia:

As for Edward MCCARTY, he went from New Creek to Salem VA. He expected the Norfolk & Western RR to install yards, shops and a roundhouse there. Relying on this, he bought much land there in Salem. The RR did not build at Salem. The colonel spent the rest of his life in "genteel poverty" in Salem.

Indeed, as I will share from some of the family letters later, there is much talk of money. Edward McCarty Armstrong's sons, Baker and Robert were later to go to Texas, where they prospered. Before their prosperity, however, and while they were still single, they were able to send money back home to Virginia in response to the needs of their family. In fact, much later family letters indicate that Baker continued to support various members of his family in times of trouble. I have come across letters from the sisters who never married thanking Baker for his generosity.  But that's for later. Now, we're still in the 1800s--walking with the Armstrongs.

Perry Nugent--"The Loss of Wealth was his Trial"

Below is a memorial to Perry Nugent, my husband's great-great grandfather. Perry was the father of Mary Ophelia Nugent, my husband's great-grandmother. He married Amanda Mariah Keep Cook, daughter of Paul Cook and Elizabeth Simmons.

From the obituaries of the Christian Advocate, Thursday, November 1, 1900 

Perry Nugent

It is never to late to remember the dead.  What does “In Memoriam” say?

        “O sorrow, then can sorrow wane?

        O grief, can grief be changed to less?

        O last regret—regret can die?

        No, mixed with all this mystic frame,

        Her deep relations are the same,

        But with long use her tears are dry.”

And Washington Irving?  “Sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced.”  This introduction is suggested by the fact that the man, brother, and friend of whom this paper shall treat, passed away from earth as much as five months since, and only now have the request and certain material together reached the writer, finding a ready response in his own heart.

Brief funeral services have their reason, but yet, on the other hand, reverence and affection do often want to linger about the dust in sight; and when we are gone ourselves we do not want ever to be forgotten.  I have never forgotten Perry Nugent, the subject of whom I write, since I was his pastor in New Orleans from 1871 to 1874, although while yet he lived, I had not seen him more than one time; and now that he has gone still farther away, I still remember him.  “Who is it puts that twenty-dollar gold piece in the basket?” I asked at last, when at each separate collection for missions, for Conference Fund, for education, and so on, there was the regular gold piece.  Perry Nugent, they told me.  I marked him for the man to call and count on for a contribution in case of any distress, private or public, a poor widow, or a Galveston flood, and the twenty-dollar gold piece or its just proportion was produced.  I called on him to pray in the congregation, but after one or two trials concluded to relieve his evidently great embarrassment.  No doubt if he had thought of it he would have come to me as Stonewall Jackson went to his pastor, who had similarly excused him for his difficult and halting speech; “Pastor,” said Jackson, “it is your duty to call on me; it is mine to do the best I can.”

Perry Nugent was born in Washington, Miss., January 20, 1831, and died in Greenville, Miss., May 14, 1900, in the seventieth year of his age.  One great-grandfather was Thomas Hardeman, for whom Hardeman County, Tenn., was named; his mother’s father was Seth Lewis, for twenty-seven years Circuit Judge of the Opelousas District, Louisiana.  His Methodism came through two generations of Methodists.  His boyhood was amiable, singularly without reproof or punishment.  He advanced rapidly in learning, and early developed the ability which made him afterwards a successful merchant.  He grew up a praying and Bible-reading man, and I found him a member and steward of the Carondelet Street M. E. Church, South, New Orleans—a worthy member, a faithful steward.  He was married December 1, 1853, to Amanda Keep Cook; the children were seven—Elizabeth, Anne, Helen, Perry Hardeman, Mary, Catherine, and Paul Cook, the last a man of letters.  The mother, now deceased, was a worthy companion for so good a man, and the reverence the sons and daughters had for their parents was as beautiful as it was just.  It is worth recording what the son, Paul C., says of his father in a letter to me, as follows—viz.: “I can express only a small part of the admiration which I have always felt for my father’s character.  To me he has seemed the perfect ideal of strength, of integrity, and of truthfulness.  I would as soon have thought of the reversal of every law of nature as I would of doubting his word in any matter.  To the strength and beauty of his nature were added a sweet affection and a noble liberality.  He was possessed of intelligence in a high degree, and I have many times been struck with the force and clearness of his conclusions.  Add to these qualities a love of nature that made communion with it a delight, and a deep appreciation of all that was beautiful in art, and you have my father as I knew him.  His whole life was a sermon on the stirring words of the text, ‘Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, . . . . . think on these things!’”

I found Perry Nugent a member of the firm of T. H. & J. M. Allen & Co, New Orleans, to which position he had arisen from being bookkeeper in the same house.  The following tribute was paid him by Mr. Ashton Phelps, in the New Orleans Times-Democrat:  ‘A dispatch from Greenville, Miss., brings intelligence of the death of Perry Nugent, sometime President of the New Orleans Cotton Exchange, and one of the most prominent merchants in the South.  The house of T. H. & J. M. Allen & Co. stood in the very front rank.  Mr. Nugent was noted for the strict integrity with which he safeguarded the interests of his firm’s correspondents.  A Christian who carried his religion into every relation, a citizen without fear and without reproach, a man of the most refined manners and the kindliest sympathies, Perry Nugent was a living illustration of the fact that the loftiest code of morality may be practiced to the letter amid all the storm and stress of the commercial life.  Although the deceased merchant’s declining years were spent in the shadow of impaired fortunes and absence from the scene of his early activities, time had no power to touch the pure gold of his nature.’

Another friend, Rev. J. A. B. Scherer, pastor of St. Andrews Lutheran Church, Charleston, S. C., writes of him: “I think the first thing about Perry Nugent was his soldierliness, a quality deeper than bravery.  I saw him during the bitterest battles a man ever can fight, and the sight was an inspiration.  I think the next thing was his sweet kindliness.  He saw the foibles of men as keenly as anybody, but he had that charity which covers the multitude of sins, and was a true gentleman.  Altogether, the impression he made upon me was most profound.  To sum it all in a word, he was the knightliest man I ever knew.’

So also another man, far from New Orleans, and in the presence of strangers, said of a certain other man, Perry Nugent: ‘Why, sir, he was the most honorable man I ever knew, the only one who would unhesitatingly sacrifice his best business interests for a principle.’

There are such men, as others have known, but Nugent was one, by above testimony.  A case in point may be quoted here: He was an assignee in a case in Greenville.  The head of the firm that assigned said: ‘Mr. Nugent, you have made a mistake.  You have not taken out all that was due you.’  He answered: “I took out all I was entitled to.’  The other: ‘No, you have not.  The law allows you so much.  It is yours and nobody else’s; you must have it.’  He said: ‘No; I know the law allows it; but I have taken enough to pay me a reasonable amount for my work.  If I had taken any more, I would have felt like I was robbing the creditors.’ 

Having lost an ample fortune, in the later years of his life he was employed by others.  His last employer made him a present of money, saying that it was a tribute to his fidelity and given so that he might visit his children in Salem, Va., whom he had not seen for some time.  Instead of spending the money in that way, however, he denied himself the pleasure of the trip, and paid the sum to a creditor to whom he had been in debt for some time.  Such actions speak louder than words of affectionate eulogy.

The loss of wealth was his trial, and the fire was hot; but eventually the gold of his faith came out refined and precious.  He died in great peace, and this paper is written con amore by the pastor who enjoyed his friendship and often admired his gentle spirit.

  W. V. TUDOR

Note: Perry Nugent's parents were John Pratt Nugent (1792-1873) and Anne Lewis Nugent (1807-1873). John Pratt Nugent married Anne Lewis in 1827.