The Legacy of John T. Baldridge, born in Orange County, NC

John T. Baldridge, a veteran of the War of 1812, was born on February 8, 1780, in Orange County, North Carolina, the son of Francis Baldridge, who served in the Revolutionary War, and his wife, Elizabeth Turrentine. One of the ten children born to his parents, John migrated with his family to the Mississippi Territory circa 1802, in what later became known as Jefferson County, and was shown on the Petitioners List in that same year. On September 20, 1804, John T. Baldridge married Nancy Jane Owens, born September 1, 1788. John and Nancy Jane would become parents to eleven children.

Still a young man, John served in the War of 1812, and when lands opened up in the area that later became Carroll County, Mississippi, John moved his large family there. Along the way, on May 15, 1830, less than a year after the birth of their youngest child, Nancy Jane Owens Baldridge, died in Yazoo County, Mississippi. The names of the children born in Jefferson County, Mississippi, to John and Nancy Jane are shown below:

1. Mary "Polly" Baldridge, b. April 22, 1806
2. Tabitha Baldridge, b. May 23 1809
3. Rev. James Wesley Baldridge, b. March 18, 1811
4. Sarah "Sally" Baldridge, b. April 5, 1813
5. Jane Baldridge, b. May 6, 1815
6. John T. Baldridge, Jr., b. April 12, 1817
7. Thomas Alexander Baldridge, b. May 10, 1819
8. Elizabeth Baldridge, b. March 22, 1823
9. Francis Baldridge, b. April 10, 1824
10. William Baldridge, b. December 23, 1825
11. Jane Adaline Baldridge, b. August 28, 1829

John Baldridge remained a widower for 6 years. On June 1, 1836, he married his second wife, Nancy Cheek Marble, the young widow of Stephen Marble, in Grenada, Mississippi. Nancy, who was born in Kentucky on December 28, 1812, not yet 24 years old, already had two young sons, Thomas Marble and James Marble. Although there was a large difference in the ages of John and Nancy Baldridge, in addition to the fact that John aldready had eleven children from his previous marriage, theirs was a union that would continue until John's death and would produce nine more living children.

According to the U. S. Mortality Index of 1860, John died on February 18, 1860, just 10 days after his 78th birthday. The cause of death was shown to have been "palsy."

John T. Baldridge, son of a Revolutionary War veteran and a veteran himself of the War of 1812, was laid to rest in Enon Church Cemetery, south of Carrollton, Mississippi, near where he had lived for more than two decades.

Names of the children born to John T. and Nancy Baldridge, including my paternal great-great-grandfather, William M. Baldridge, are listed below.

1. Calvin W. Baldridge, b. February 7, 1837
2. Wesley C. Baldridge, February 25, 1839
3. Martha Ann Baldridge, b. February 4, 1841
4. Ira Byrd Baldridge, b. February 8, 1843
5. William Martin Baldridge, b. December 25, 1844
6. George W. Baldridge, b. February 7, 1847
7. Benjamin L. Baldridge, b. March 21, 1849
8. Mary Frances Baldridge, b. March 21, 1851
9. Elizabeth, b. September 5, 1854

For over a decade prior to her death on March 7, 1908, Nancy Cheek Marble Baldridge would live with her daughter, Martha and her German-born husband Conrad Smith and their children in Beat 5, Camden, Mississippi. According to the U. S. Census of 1900, my great-great-grandfather, William Martin Baldridge, and his wife, Huldah Catharine Smith Baldridge, lived next door, and other Baldridge relatives also lived nearby.

In neighboring Attala County, in the community of Newport, Mississippi, William's daughter, Claudia Mae Baldridge and her husband, Edward Arthur Branch, lived with their five children, a son and four daughters. Their son would later become my paternal grandfather, Clark Commander Branch.

Goodbye Delta, Hello Big City

This post is dedicated to my grandparents, pictured below. They were among the many survivors of life in the Mississippi Delta during the Great Depression in Mississippi.

Clark and Lelia Branch, circa 1945 In 1955, my life, along with the lives of my grandparents, parents, and two siblings would change forever. It was the year they "sold the family farm." In July of that year, we left the only home I could remember and moved to the big city, at least it was a big city to a nine-year old child born on a farm in the Mississippi Delta. We had always lived with my grandparents, or my grandparents lived with my parents. Which of these two situations was true was not really important to me as a child, and since my father was an only child, it seemed logical to me at the time.

As I look back on my parents and my grandparents living arrangement, my parents must have moved into my grandparent's house in the Mississippi Delta the year that I was born. They had married in Mississippi but had lived out-of-state during the first few months of their marriage. Although I was too young to remember specific details about any division of household duties, it is likely that my mother was not the "mistress of her own domain" or the "only cook in the kitchen" until I was in sixth grade, when my grandparents moved into a different house. For the first time since late in the year they were married, my parents were alone in their own home with only their children.

The move from the farm to the "big city" was precipitated by my grandfather's age and health, along with the simple fact that farming was not making the kind of living that it once had. My grandfather raised cotton in the Mississippi Delta, beginning after his move from Attala County in the depression years and continuing until the move to the city in 1955. Cotton was "king," and the entire Delta economy around 1950 revolved around planting, "hoeing" or "chopping" and the fall "picking." We could see the cotton gin in the distance from our yard.

My grandfather also raised soybeans that he sold to the local farmers' coop and corn and sugar cane. The corn was taken to the gristmill for milling into cornmeal, and the sugar cane was used for making syrup. We also had a number of animals that were raised for milk and butter and for meat. And the large vegetable garden and small fruit orchard cared for by my mother and grandmother produced enough fresh vegetables, fruits, and potatoes for our family all year. My mother became a "canning" expert. This farm had enabled my grandparents to make it through the depression years.

The fact that my father did not become a farmer, but opted for a job in a small town nearby, allowed our family to live modestly, but comfortably, in the post World War II years. Their lifestyle was dramatically improved from the depression years my grandparents saw as a young married couple raising a child and what my parents experienced as children growing up during that time in Mississippi. My father's job "in town" enabled our family to have some of the comfort items they did not have during the depression years, including a newly remodeled house with electricity and running water, along with a new car, and later one of the first television sets.

My father's job move from the small town near where we lived to the big city was actually the final decision maker to leave the Delta in 1955. Farm life for my grandparents, as well as my parents, quickly became a thing of the past, leaving behind memories of some difficult years, but taking with them pleasant memories of family and longtime business and personal friendships.

An era had come to an end, and all our lives, particularly the lives of my grandparents, would never be the same.