Minnie Lee

Topic: Early Versions - Performers
Minnie Lee was the most important performer in Alliance, North Carolina, and not just because she knew a variant of "Come By Here."

Her repertoire included more genres than Julian Boyd collected from his students in the local high school. She gave him lyrics for play parties and lullabies, as well as a folk tale. She later recorded three of the songs attributed to her by Boyd, while Alexander Price performed another two of her lyrics for Frank Brown. Two more of her songs were included in the Brown tune collection. [1]

Boyd identified her as Minnie Lee, [2] while Brown identified her as Mrs. Minnie Lee. [3] The most likely person buried in Pamlico County was born Minnie Parsons in 1898. [4] She married Timothy Lee in 1915. [5]

The 1920 census reported Minnie Lee was a widow with two children living next to Ludie Parsons. Ten years later her sons, Leston and Duval, were living with Ludie in Arapahoe. Their ages indicated they were born in 1917 and 1919. [6]

How Timothy died so young is guess work. If he’d been killed in World War I, his name probably would have appeared in some list of casualties on the internet. He may have died in the flu epidemic that swept the country in 1918, [7] or died on the job, or from any of the other causes that affected young men.

By 1940 Minnie had married Herbert Dixon and was living in Grantsboro with his children, Duval, and Bernice Broughton. [8] Dixon died in 1955, [9] and sometime after that she married Hymric Brown. He died in 1974, [10] and she was buried next to Dixon in 1974. [11]

Minnie’s parentage is unclear. John James Parsons married Ludie Price in 1905, seven years after Minnie was born. In 1900, he was listed as a farm laborer boarding with John M. Ipock in Vanceboro, more than twenty miles north of New Bern in Craven County. Minnie was not listed as a resident in their household in 1910. [12]

John’s brother Lenard and his two sons were living with the family in Vanceboro in 1910. After John died that year, Ludie married Lenard in 1914. [13] Minnie may have been a daughter of Lenard who was sent to live with another relative when his wife died, or she may have been the daughter of another family member. The Lee Minnie married probably was from that part of Craven County. [14]

Ludie and one of her husbands moved to Pamlico County after the railroad was completed in 1906. [15] The sawmills may have needed more men.

Grantsboro did not exist in 1900. It was then a settlement at the intersection of the road from New Bern and Scott’s Store Road that went south through Arapahoe. A peddler from New York passed through around 1900 and saw possibilities. William Grant married a local woman and opened a store. [16]

There were few places where the young, unmarried Boyd could have collected songs from a comparatively young widow in the small community of Alliance without exciting gossip in 1926. He would have been expected to go to church, and, since his grandfather was a Methodist minister, [17] he probably went to the local Methodist one. Lee was buried in a Free Will Baptist cemetery in Grantsboro.

More than likely Boyd boarded with some family. If that family hired someone to help with the cooking, cleaning, or laundry, Boyd could have talked with an outside woman inside the house. One would guess this was how he met Lee.

Almost nothing can be deduced about her cultural heritage, beyond membership in the Free Baptist Church. The Ipock with whom her father boarded in 1900 was the descendant of one of the first Anabaptist settlers in New Bern, [18] but Parsons, Price, Dixon, Brown, and Lee were all English names that appeared without antecedents.

They appeared where land was available, and were invisible in areas where it was not. They intermarried, but the kinship connections were not recorded in online genealogies.

Few left any paper trails. Jonathan Butcher tried to trace Leven Lee, the progenitor of the Pamlico County Lees. He found more than one person with that name at the time, and none appeared in wills or other legal records. The one time Leven’s name did appear, it was related to a fence that probably was on land he was renting in 1823. Butcher concluded this Lee was a "rather poor man, at least in terms of landholding, the sort who is difficult to trace in early 19th century records." [19]

Not many even left material remains. Few headstones existed anywhere in Pamlico County before 1900, and most of those probably were erected years later by descendants. The area lacked the necessary raw materials. Any tombstone would have had to have been brought by small boat, and then hauled overland in a cart or wagon. The wooden crosses and piles of stone that sufficed would have decayed or been disturbed by animals or farmers.

For instance, the earliest known burial in the Ganus Cemetery south of Arapahoe was 1903. However, "there are two graves marked with wood stakes. There are several graves with cement slabs but no inscriptions. One probable grave marked with flowers. There may be other unmarked graves." [20]

Map
United States Department of the Interior. Geological Survey. Selection from "Bayboro Quadrangle North Carolina 7.5 Minute Series." 1968.

End Notes
1. Frank Brown’s recording session in Alliance was discussed in the post for 1 December 2019. Julian Boyd’s work was discussed in the post for 6 February 2019. Minnie Lee’s contributions were included in the following volumes of Brown’s collection.

The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. Durham: Duke University Press. Volume 1. Section on Folk Tales and Legends edited by Stith Thompson. 1952.

___. Volume 2. Folk Ballads from North Carolina. Edited by Henry M. Belden and Arthur Palmer Hudson. 1952.

___. Volume 3. Folk Songs from North Carolina. Edited by Henry M. Belden and Arthur Palmer Hudson. 1952.

___. Volume 4. The Music of the Ballads. Edited by Jan Philip Schinhan. 1957.

___. Volume 5. The Music of the Folk Songs. Edited by Jan Philip Schinhan. 1962.

2. Brown. Volumes 1–3.
3. Brown. Volumes 4–5.
4. John47. "Minnie Parsons Lee Dixon Brown." Find a Grave website. 4 July 2011.
5. "Minnie Parsons." Ancestors website.

6. J.D. Larimore. "Ira Nelson Parsons." Find a Grave website. 30 January 2013. He was the son of Ludie Price and John James Parsons.

7. The influenza epidemic reached Wilmington, North Carolina, in September 1919 and spread west along the railroads. It affected urban areas more than isolated rural ones. [21] The worst was past by the end of the year, but a mild resurgence occurred in the spring. [22] This was when at least two African-American children died in Pamlico County. [23]

8. "Herbert Dixon in the 1940 Census." Archives website.
9. John47. "L Herbert Dixon." Find a Grave website. 4 July 2011.
10. Larimore, Ira Parsons.
11. John47, Minnie Lee.
12. Larimore, Ira Parsons.
13. Larimore, Ira Parsons.

14. Lees have lived in Pamlico County since Leven Lee moved there from Bath, North Carolina, before the Revolution, [24] but Timothy was not mentioned among his descendants. One son, Asa, was buried in a cemetery now on the grounds of Camp Don Lee. [25] Joseph Bryan Lee, the son of another of Asa’s sons, Robert, [26] was buried in the Lee Family cemetery. [27] Bernice Broughton, who was described as someone’s niece in the Dixon household in 1940, was descended from Asa’s son John Riley Lee. [28] Ludie’s son Ira later married Bessie Lee. [29] She was descended from Robert [30] and a Free Will Baptist. [31]

15. Joe A. Mobley. Pamlico County. Raleigh: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1991. 78–79.

16. "Welcome to beautiful Grantsboro, North Carolina!" Grantsboro website.
17. For more about Boyd’s family, see the post for 6 February 2019.
18. Donald E. Collins. "Swiss and Palatine Settlers." NC Pedia website. 2006.

19. Jonathan B. Butcher. "Levin Leigh Ancestry and the James Leigh Family." May 1988. Copy available from "Judge James Leigh of Bath Precinct, North Carolina." Roots Web website.

20. "Ganus Cemetery." Find a Grave website.

21. David L. Cockrell. "‘A Blessing in Disguise’: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and North Carolina’s Medical and Public Health Communities." The North Carolina Historical Review 73:309–327:1996. 311.

22. Cockrell. 320.

23. Grace Smith, the daughter of John Smith and Fanny Kenyan, died in 1919. [32] Sadie Ollison McGlone’s sister died in Mesic while their father was in the military in Kentucky. [33]

24. Suzy Dixon Bennett. "Re: Lee,Leven 1755 Va." Genealogy website. 26 March 2001.

Floyd Bryan Mack. "Leven Lee." Geni website. 9 November 92014.

25. Floyd Bryan Mack. "Asa Lee." Geni website. 9 November 2014.
26. Bennett identified all, or at least many, of Leven’s children.

27. Christina Carlton. "Joseph Bryan Lee." Find a Grave website. 16 April 2009. Last updated by J.D. Larimore.

28. Her father was Golden Cephas Broughton. [34] His mother, her grandmother, was Rhoda Lee Belangia. [35] She was the daughter of Riley Lee, [36] who then was Bernice’s great-grandfather.

29. Larimore, Ira Parsons.
30. Her father was Eric Lee, [37] the son of Joseph Bryan Lee. [38]
31. J.D. Larimore. "Bessie Lee Parsons." Find a Grave website. 30 January 2013.

32. Sonny William Smith. "In Search Of Rodger 1710-2004." Genealogy website. 28 July 2004. Page 6.

33. Sadie Ollison McGlone. Interview, 23 April 2007. University of North Carolina. Southern Oral History Project website.

34. J.D. Larimore. "Bernice Broughton Murray." Find a Grave website. 27 August 2014.
35. J.D. Larimore. "Golden Cephas Broughton." Find a Grave website. 27 August 2014.
36. J.D. Larimore. "Rhoda Lee Belangia." Find a Grave website. 27 August 2014.
37. Larimore, Bessie Parsons.
38. J.D. Larimore. "Eric Lee." Find a Grave website. 30 January 2013.