Black History Month: Hairston legacy continues
The Hairston family has one of the most colorful stories in Black History. Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Hairston Clan, Robert Hairston, previously taught African American history at Lexington Senior High School. The course was temporarily halted along with the well-known reunions of the nationwide group descendent of Cooleemee plantation. Hairston doesn’t need a title to teach Black History. He says the legacy and learning continues.
Robert passes by the gravesite where his father and the community trailblazer known as Squire was laid to rest. He pauses to pay his respects. It’s a reminder of the family lessons passed down through generations. “Actually, most of my family is buried there,” said the junior Hairston as he pointed to a modest graveyard nestled next to Buncombe Baptist Church. The small country church located on Hairston Road in Davidson County could hardly hold the 300-plus visitors in 1998 who showed up to pay their final respects to the co-founder of the nationally renowned Hairston Clan.
After the Civil War, the land had been amassed by slaveholders during a thriving Hairston Empire and later was sold or rented to freed slaves for the purpose of sharecropping. Currently, Robert, along with the Hairston Clan living in the two-block community named Petersville, hold tightly to stories passed down by Squire and those old enough to remember a family history in terms beyond black and white.
Most know that the name Petersville came from the Hairston lineage. A number of notable Peters are scattered throughout the Hairston’s history in America, which began with the arrival of Peter Hairston and his young family in Pennsylvania. The Scotsman fled from Ireland during the bloody 1715 rebellion against English rule. The young refugee married Ruth Stovall and started a family. When the couple arrived in the Americas around 1729, they stayed in Pennsylvania briefly before ambition led them south to Virginia where they purchased slaves and established their first tobacco plantation.
After extensively interviewing family members, Henry Wiencek, author of The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White, wrote, “The Hairstons did not know it when they came here, but by an extraordinary stroke of good fortune they had settled on the best tobacco-growing land in the world.” Over a 200-year period, the immigrant’s heirs developed a network of 42 plantations that spanned three states and more than $10,000 worth of enslaved people. Their notable wealth and influence have been the topic of a CBS 60 Minutes documentary titled A Family in Black and White. “At one time the Hairstons -- or ‘Harstons’ as the white side of the family pronounces it -- were the Rockefellers of the old South.” Their empire was decimated during the Civil War.
The Cooleemee Plantation is one of the few surviving reminders of the empire is the expansive 4,200-acre tracts were purchased in 1814 from General Jesse Pearson by Captain Peter Hairston, a tobacco planter of southwestern Virginia and north central North Carolina, Confederate soldier, and commission merchant. Plantations documented include Sauratown Hill in Stokes County and Cooleemee Hill in Davie County, N.C., and other plantations in Surry and Davidson counties, N.C.; Henry and Patrick counties, Va.; and in Columbus. Captain Peter never actually lived on Cooleemee Hill. According to the nomination made by the National Register of Historic Places: “When he died in 1832 he willed the estate to his great-grandson, Peter Wilson Hairston, the builder of the present house at Cooleemee Plantation.” In 1849, Peter Wilson Hairston married Columbia Stuart, a sister of J. E. B. Stuart, later a famous Confederate general. Construction on a hill overlooking the Yadkin began in 1850 and finished in 1854. Drawings on an "Anglo-Grecian Villa" published in W.H. Ranlett's The Architect and also in Godey's Lady's Book were used to build the house. Travel records indicate that was made possible by slave labor.
Peter Wilson and his family then came to live at Cooleemee, and by 1860, he had expanded the locality to 4,200 acres with approximately 300 slaves.
Judge Peter Wilson Hairston, the latest Hairston to own the property at the end of the 20th century, published a book in 1986 accounting the history of the family's slaves, which helped other research into the family and the property. Hairston died in February 2007 in the same bed in which he was born. The last time Robert saw him was at his father’s funeral in 1998 when he was wheeled in to pay his last respects to his friend Squire. The judge’s sentiments were echoed in his obituary.
“Always a scholar and conscientious historian, Mr. Hairston wrote articles for historical journals, magazines and newspapers, and sections of other books. Much of his writing was about Cooleemee and other plantations that had been owned by members of the Hairston family. When descendants of former slaves at Cooleemee established the Hairston Clan, Judge Hairston was one of their strongest advocates. For many years, he attended the annual meetings of the Hairston Clan and on occasion was the keynote speaker. He spent countless hours compiling genealogical records which he shared with Hairston Clan members. The Hairston Clan honored both him and Lucy [wife] for their contributions to humankind.”
The plantation house, which still stands, made the site more significant for antebellum history and those who seek to honor African American heritage. Although they still owned the property, the Hairston family moved to Baltimore, Maryland after the Civil War, leaving the farm work to overseers. The home was passed down from generation to generation to men bearing the name of Peter.
In November 2015, Spurgeon Foster purchased the property for farming purposes, and for the first time since 1817, the name “Hairston” does not appear on a deed as an owner of the Cooleemee Plantation. Foster opened the home for a Slave Dwelling Project overnight stay at Cooleemee. According to its website, “The Slave Dwelling Project serves as a conduit for the identification of preservation resources for owners of slave dwellings that have a desire to save these dwellings. We also seek to assist in the acquisition of slave dwellings within a community in order to mitigate the possibility of demolition.” They hosted educational aspects and visited the one remaining “slave barn” on the property.
The efforts to preserve the complex history of Cooleemee continue as indicated on the National Registry designation. “Efforts by historians and the Hairston family to document the history of the Cooleemee plantation have resulted in insightful works that analyze the family and its deep connections between descendants of the white and enslaved members of the Hairston family. Many freed Hairston slaves remained on the property and worked as hired hands after the Civil War, and their descendants are often welcome guests at home. Additionally, the Hairston family has established a land trust for the house and surrounding property to protect it for future generations.”
When dedicating Cooleemee as a National Historic Landmark, Squire Hairston called Cooleemee “the altar that represents the result of the struggle of your race and mine.”
Squire Hairston’s Legacy
Contributed Photo: Credit Ottis L. Hairston Jr.
“As a child, Squire Hairston had worked in the fields with his father, who owned thirty-five acres and rented additional land from the judge’s father…Sometime Marse Peter was slow in coming. Squire’s father had a hernia and was unable to stand for long periods. He could not leave or stroll around the grounds, and it was unthinkable for him to sit; so he would get down on his knees to wait. Squire never forgot the image of his father on his knees in the doorway of the mansion. When Squire reached manhood, he was determined to force a change in his part of the world.” And force change he did indeed. When he turned 21 and was legally allowed to vote, he challenged local leaders who tried to deny his access.
The town formed by emancipated slaves called Petersville was an accomplishment for the Hairston Empire---black and white. There was once an ambition for the empire to form Hairstonburg that never materialized. Squire Hairston lived in Petersville until his death in 1998. His wife Elnora remains in the community. They had five children, Robert, Wilford (deceased), Betty, Anita, and Patsy. The Davidson County chapter of the Hairston Clan formed a scholarship named in honor of Squire Hairston and $500 awarded to an African American male. The national organization provides annual scholarships to decendants.
“He did not mind speaking up,” Robert said of his father who was heavily involved with and served as president of NAACP and worked diligently to register voters in Davidson County. “He was brave. There were some nights he would come home panting to catch his breath,” Robert recalled. “I was pretty young at the time and I didn’t understand why he was running.” His family recalls that his time as a janitor at the courthouse included meeting a lot of the political figures from that era. Robert’s three sisters, Patsy, Betty, and Jackline Hairston, share unique lessons. Robert remembers his father’s focus on education.
During his life, he was very active in the community, politics, and his church, Buncombe Baptist, where he was a deacon. Hairston was a president of the Davidson County chapter of the NAACP and former leader in the Acacia Lodge.
Squire and his cousin Collie Hairston started an annual reunion in 1973. As Squire and another cousin sat contemplating the other family losses that year, they realized that family deaths were about the only time most of the relatives gathered in one place. They wanted to meet more regularly on a happy occasion, not to mourn another death, so the national group was born. They have been deemed the largest family in the United States. With gatherings that include descendants of slaveholders and slaves. They are governed by a board of directors, 30 plus members plan their reunions year-round. Committees oversee the clan's finances, banquets, and T-shirt and souvenir book printings. Talks of a Hairston cookbook and film are in the making.
Diana Roman, a descendant whose mother Sallie Hairston Bullock grew up on the Oak Hill plantation, explained the unique aspect of the Hairston story. “People never thought loving relationships would be born in such toxic relationships. The white family that inherited the plantation and most of the slaves stayed and sharecropped,” said Roman. “My mother never knew anything but color. It wasn’t until she went into the city that she had white friends. She grew up with sharecroppers’ kids. She and her brother used to joke that all babies were born black and they turned white.”
{The last Hairston Reunion took place in 2019 in Winston Salem. Pictured at the ribbon cutting and welcome from left to right: Robert Hairston, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Councilwoman Vivian Burke, Winston-Salem City Council Lawrence Bethea, President of National Hairston Clan. Contributed Photo/Robert Hairston}
A decade ago, Roman was deeply moved after watching Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates. “He kept saying when he gets to the 1870s there are no more records. It kept nagging at me,” Roman admitted. “The Hairstons kept very detailed records of the 10,000 slaves.” Those records were donated to Wilson Library Southern Historical Collection in Chapel Hill. “There are basically 15 leather-bound ledgers that they kept an accounting of the property. The front third are jewelry, crystal and china; the next third, livestock, and the back of every ledger are hundreds of pages of names all of the slaves. It’s the holy grail of African American genealogy. I felt very inspired.” Roman created a website to cross reference county names, plantation names with surnames for Hairstons and others. This knowledge compelled Roman to co-create an online site titled Our Black Ancestry. “They weren’t just some names on the page. They said, ‘Honor me, help people find me.’ It spoke to a side of me. I felt compelled to do something right about a part of the past that was very wrong.”
For Robert Hairston, National Hairston serving as an educator and high school basketball coach honors the family legacy. The lessons from Squire and elders of the Clan are constant reminders of his responsibilities. “Family is first,” he said. “But you really have to help other people and pass on some knowledge.” The Hairston Clan is rich in this legacy and going strong in Hollywood, the NFL, politics and education. And no matter how you pronounce it, they are still embracing past and present--- in full color.
The National Hairston Clan, Inc. has had to cancel the past few reunions. Due to COVID the 2020 National Hairston Clan 47th Annual Meeting/Reunion in Las Vegas, NV has been postponed. “Not cancelled,” said Robert. The group is planning to reschedule and reconvene in Las Vegas in over the Labor Day Weekend 2022.
*Editor’s Note: Portions of this article were republished with permission.
