My great-great grandparents Edward Biggs and Florence Cumbo were both listed as Colored on their 1890 marriage license.
So why am I classifying their union as a mixed marriage?
It is because Edward Biggs was born to an enslaved family and Florence Cumbo was born to a free family of color.
Both were born mixed race people but due to different circumstances. Based on a family photo, Edward Biggs appears white. Based on research he was likely a quarter black, a product of successive generations of offspring between white men and enslaved women. Edward Bigg’s father, based on his death certificate was a man named Kader Biggs, one of the larger slave owners in Bertie County, North Carolina. His mother Sarah Peele was a bi racial woman born into slavery around 1848 in Bertie.
Florence Cumbo was born to a free family of color from Northampton County, North Carolina. Her paternal Cumbo ancestors represented one of the core families who’d been multi-racial and free for many generations and traced its ancestry back to the first Africans to arrive in 17th century Colonial Virginia. Her maternal Pope ancestry traced back to Elias Pope born free in 1793 to white Jonas Pope and a mother of African descent in Northampton, North Carolina.
Throughout the South after the Civil War, new communities of formerly enslaved persons formed building new lives together as free people. Many of these communities grew side by side with established free communities of color, creating opportunities for intermarriage. This was the case for my family.
According to their marriage certificate Edward Biggs and Florence Cumbo were married in January 15, 1890 in Northampton, North Carolina. The circumstances of Edward’s birth to a slave owner are alluded to in his marriage license which lists his mother as Sarah Peele and his father as “unknown”. Florence Cumbo’s parents are listed as Matthias and Louisa Cumbo. The marriage certificate lists Edward Biggs as being of Northampton County, North Carolina, which means he was living there at the time. Given where his parents had lived, he was likely born in Martin or Bertie County, North Carolina between 1867 and 1870. I’ve found very little documentation on him prior to 1890 so it’s unclear how he found his way to Northampton County, but it was likely in search for work.
Between 1890 and 1900 Edward and Florence Biggs moved to Suffolk, Virginia, the largest city in the area, likely so Edward could search for work. My grand uncle Otis told me he worked as a night watchman for a peanut factory. According to the 1900 census for Suffolk, they had 4 children Lucy, Louisa, Clara and Edward. Also living with them was Cicero Pope cousin to Florence through her mother. Shortly after the 1900 census was collected, they had another child Annie Biggs who was my great grandmother.
Their youngest daughter Annie would marry a man James Lee Richards who was born out of a similar mixed marriage. His paternal Richards ancestors had been enslaved in Garysburg, Northampton County, North Carolina while his maternal [surname] White ancestors had lived as free blacks in Suffolk, Virginia since the late 1700s, likely freed by the Quakers close to 100 years before the civil war.
My grandfather James Edward “Doc” Richards was the son of Annie Biggs and James Lee Richards of Suffolk, Virginia. He shared stories with us about growing up in segregated Suffolk and remembering white [looking] people coming to visit him as a child and being a bit confused about exactly who they were and exactly why they were visiting. I can’t help but wonder whether they were really his Cumbo ancestors from Northampton or his Biggs & Peele ancestors from Bertie.
Feel free to share your family stories in the comments section of this blog.
My Pendleton ancestors of VA stopped in NC near Rich Square en route to Arkansas. My grandfather Grover C. Pendleton’s fther was white, mother Laura Bangley mixed. Family was listed as mulatto then colored then black. Boston kin cut ties with southern Pendleton family telling my fair skinned uncle never “to darken their doorstep again.” Todate we do not have location/names of Mass kinfolk.
We have an Angolan Cumbo ancestor via your “Kader” Thomas Biggs and my William Biggs, SC (per 4th dna cousin matching says so to Katherine West to Biggs and 4th cousin to Bobby Cumbee (a Lumbee Native) to the name Cumbee. I think I found my Cumbo because I went searching for my Cumbee in your fb page. After reading the inventories of all the Georgetown Plantations, the earliest and only Cumbo I found and that plantation had connections Lewis Burrell and I think THAT Cumbo is my CUMBO via my Angolan named Mozingo in my Louisiana Williams’ dna family, all of which is from cousin matching triangulation.
Thanks for sharing Rachelle!