Death Record Found for Hester Downing
When doing research, there are certain people you just fall in love with for no explicable reason. Their names may just appear in a record once, but something speaks to you and you want to know them better. For me, it has been people like Temperance Coker, Elizabeth Bagley, Rebecca Meharg Kuykendall, and Nancy Morris.
Add Hester Downing—as well as her family—to this list.
Hester was a slave in the household of Thomas Jefferson Downing. I found her name—along with her husband, Joseph, and their children—listed in the property appraisal of his estate in 1860 [in the Anniston Library but also available online at FamilySearch.org. However, it’s on microfilm, and you have to go page by page to find it]. From there, I followed her and her children as far as I could, all the way to the 1940s for her daughter, Sarah Downing Reid. [For more information on my research on Hester Downing and her family, please see the blog post on this site, “Downing Slaves and Former Slaves.”]
While searching for something completely unrelated through “St. Clair County, Alabama, Death Registers, 1881-1895” [a microfilm available online at FamilySearch.org], I found Hester’s name.
Hester “Douning”, black, female, widow, age “70,” died of heart disease in Beat 1 on 24 October 1889. She was buried in Beat 1. The informant was “H. S. Garlington,” probably Henry S. Garlington, who is listed in the 1900 US Census for St. Clair County as a “medical doctor.”
Given that Hester was listed as a widow in the land records of 1884, we know Joseph had died before that date. Now, as his name was not found in the St. Clair County death registers, we know he died in 1880 [when he appeared in the census] or in 1881.
Hester’s age of “70”—which would give her a birth year of 1819—should be taken with a grain of salt [it means she gave birth to her youngest child at age 50]. The 1880 census lists her as 47—which would give her a birth year of 1833. The appraisal from Thomas Jefferson Downing’s estate lists her age as 30—giving her a birth year of 1830. I suspect all of these are wrong to varying degrees. But when we take into consideration her children, we find they were born from the 1840s to as late as 1869. It’s unlikely Hester would’ve given birth after the age of 45 [although not impossible], so that limits her birth year to no earlier than approximately 1824.
Unfortunately, her eldest probable child, Caroline Downing Mattison, has a birth year ranging from 1840 to 1846. If Hester were born in 1833 and Caroline was born in 1840, then Hester gave birth at age 7. The math doesn’t work. [There is the other possibility that Caroline was Joseph’s daughter but not Hester’s]. The other date for Caroline’s birth, 1846, seems more probable, as Hester’s next known child, Sarah Downing Reid, was born c1848.
Still, if Hester was born in 1833 and Caroline was born in 1846, that means Hester gave birth to Caroline at age 13—not unheard of, but unlikely. Taking into account the birth of Hester’s youngest child c1869, we would end with the age of 36, which seems an awfully young age to cease childbearing prior to modern medicine. But it’s possible, regardless of how unlikely I find it.
Without more information, the only conclusion for the date of Hester’s birth would be a range of c1824 to c1833. It is unlikely we will ever be able to narrow that range down, but I am inclined to believe she was born in the late 1820s.
A final thought:
By 1884, less than 20 years after emancipation, Hester Downing owned 80 acres in St. Clair County, Alabama. She was born a slave but died a landowner, in a time when the average person in Europe could never even hope to own land. She is a stunning example of the extraordinary nature of ordinary people.