1860 US Census - John and Mary Averett Family

David Averett lived in Tallapoosa County, Alabama at the time of the 1860 U.S. Federal Census with his mother and father, along with his younger brothers and sisters. The census page shown below was completed on 22 June 1860, several months before the election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States. That fateful electoral result led directly to the attempted secession of the southern states and life as he knew it must surely have been destroyed over the next five years, even if he hadn't enlisted in the Confederate Army. See my blog posts from 20 August 2011 and 3 September 2011 for more information about that.

I have three real purposes for the documentation represented by this posting. The first is to establish the names and ages of David's brothers and sisters living with the family in 1860. The second is to infer the time when the family moved from Georgia to Alabama based on the listed birth places of his siblings. And the third is to establish a baseline of names of his brothers and sisters to better evaluate a particular 1850 US Census sheet that I recently found. In other words, I'm trying to decide if this John and Mary Averett family in 1860 is the same John and Mary Averett family shown in that 1850 Census form. The name of his 14-year-old brother, Alvis E. Averett, should be particularly useful for this, owing to its relative uniqueness among census records that I have read over time. I will write more about the 1850 US Census in a subsequent blog post.

(Click graphic to enlarge.)

Here is a transcription of the 1860 information relevant to David's family:

Page 13. SCHEDULE 1. -- Free Inhabitants in Western Division ([unreadable] 8) in the County of Tallapoosa, State of Alabama, enumerated by me, on the 22nd day of June 1860, Y.T. [?] Strickland, Ass't Marshal. Post Office: Realtown. 

• Line 16: John Averett, age 37 years, male; his occupation was farmer; the value of his real estate was $500, the value of his personal estate was $400; he was born in Georgia; he was able to read and write.
• Line 17: Mary Averett, age 45 years, female, she was born in Georgia, she was able to read and write.
• Line 18: David F. Averett, age 22 years, male; his occupation was mechanic; he was born in Georgia; he had not attended school within the year; he was able to read and write.
• Line 19: John L. Averett, age 17 years, male; his occupation was farmer; he was born in Georgia; he had not attended school within the year.
• Line 20: Alvis E. Averett, age 14 years, male; he was born in Georgia; he had not attended school within the year.
• Line 21: Nancy L. Averett, age 12 years, female; she was born in Georgia; she had not attended school within the year.
• Line 22: Willson W. Averett, age 10 years, male; he was born in Georgia; he had not attended school within the year.
• Line 23: Romulus Averett, age 8 years, male; he was born in Alabama; he had not attended school within the year.
• Line 24: Rebecca Averett, age 6 years, female; she was born in Alabama; she had not attended school within the year.
• Line 25: Charles Averett, age 2 years, male; he was born in Alabama; he had not attended school within the year. 

Since Willson, age 10 years, was born in Georgia, and his younger brother, Romulus, age 8 years, was born in Alabama (as were Rebecca and Charles), it seems straightforward to conclude that the family moved from Georgia to Alabama sometime between 1850 and 1852, inclusive, assuming that Willson was born in 1850 and that Romulus was born in 1852. The reason for their move is currently unknown to me.

David's apparently worked as a mechanic, although both his father and his brother John L. Averett were farmers. I do not currently know what a mechanic did in 1860, decades before the appearance of the first automobiles. This is a question that I will investigate later. If newspapers from the area could be located, advertisements or simply "goings-on about town" news might be useful in further characterizing how David contributed to the family livelihood. They might also give further clues about what the political and social climates were with respect to the upcoming 1860 election. I have read that Lincoln's name did not even appear on the ballot of many southern states and I wonder if that implies a widespread condition of regional patriotism among the general population or merely a sense of disquiet among what we would today call "the elite".

Finally, where was Realtown, Alabama, the site of the closest Post Office to the farm owned by John Averett in 1860?  A Google search indicates that the spelling was probably "Reeltown" instead of "Realtown", which is in Tallapoosa County.  Here is where Reeltown is in Alabama, according to Google Maps. (Click to enlarge.)

Note the proximity of Reeltown to Tallassee. The name of Tallassee is familiar to me, being the place where:

• Alvis E. Averett enlisted in Company A, the Cantey Rifles, of the 15th Alabama Volunteer Infantry Regiment on 5 February 1864.
• A muster Roll dated 19 Jul 1861 for the "Tallassee Guards", The 13th Alabama Infantry, Company F, shows that a Private “Averett, John L. [died during the war]”. Is this the John L. Averett who was the brother of David?
• Was listed as the nearest Post Office for David Averett when he enlisted in the Army on 3 July 1861 (see again my blog post from 3 September 2011).

This may not be all. I seem to remember "Tallassee" among some of my other genealogy materials but cannot put my hands on them at this time. If I do find more, I will write again about this town. In any event, here is where Tallapoosa County is located in the state of Alabama, according to Wikipedia, viewed 16 November 2011.  Information and graphics found in Wikipedia are licensed for general use under the Creative Commons license, so I believe it is okay to reproduce this graphic here.