Ancestors

Clabe Goodwin

Clabe Goodwin was born Henry C. Goodwin, in Alabama, about 1825. In 1850, aged 24, he was living in Lowndes County in the house of William Goodwin, a planter of 68 born in North Carolina, and Mary Goodwin, 58, born in South Carolina, with Nancy, 26, Lucinda, 20, and William R. Goodwin, 16. A Goodwin family history printed in 1998 names William and Mary as his parents, and him as their son Henry C., born in Alabama. Two doors away lived Elvira Howard, 22, and on 29 January 1852 Henry C. Goodwin married her.

In 1860 he was the head of a household in the Southern Division of Lowndes County, Alabama, when the census taker came. He was written down as H. C. Goodwin, aged 35, born in Alabama. With him were his wife Elvira, 28, born in South Carolina, and three sons: T. L., 8, H. L., 6, and G. A., a baby not yet a year old. That baby was George Albert Goodwin, born on 22 July 1859.

Seventy-seven years later George's death certificate named his father as Clabe Goodwin and his mother as Elvira Goodwin. The 1860 household holds the same Elvira and the same infant son, so H. C. Goodwin and Clabe are one man, the Henry C. Goodwin who married Elvira Howard in 1852. Clabe was a common short form of Claiborne, and it was probably his middle name, but the C. is never written out in full.

In July 1867 H. C. Goodwin enrolled as a voter in Precinct 7 of Lowndes County. That summer Congress required every former Confederate state to register its voters again before it could return to the Union, and each man had to swear an oath to be enrolled. Black men voted in Alabama for the first time under the same law, and the Precinct 7 pages list white and colored voters side by side. William A. Shanks, whose daughter Mollie would one day marry George, signed the same rolls in the same precinct that month.

Two more children were born after the war: Mathew, about 1868, and Frances C., about 1871. By 1880 Clabe was no longer in the household. Elvira, then 49, was living at Hopewell in Lowndes County with George, who was 20 and farming as head of the house, and with Mathew and Frances. When and where Clabe died is not known.

If Clabe Goodwin is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Clabe Goodwin (b. 1825)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/clabe-goodwin-1825-f441cf.