In 1850, Christian County had 8,140 enslaved people of color and over 150 free people of color. By 1860, as the country was on the verge of the Civil War that would break out a few months later, the number of enslaved had risen to 9,934, while the number of free people of color appeared to have decreased.
Elisha Wiggins’ descendants, who lived in the Flat Lick area of southwestern Christian County, were one such free family.
Elisha Wiggins first appears in Christian County records in November 1842, when James Landrum filed a lawsuit on Wiggins’ behalf against “G. Corbin” to collect the $57 Corbin owed him, which is nearly $2,500 in 2025 dollars.
One month later, on December 28, 1842, “Elisha a man of color” from Trigg County signed a deed in Christian County, purchasing 50 acres from James Landrum for $200.
Elisha Wiggins was born around 1790 in North Carolina, according to his entries in the 1850 and 1860 censuses. Although it is unclear whether Elisha was born free or emancipated, he is most likely the man named Elisha mentioned in Trigg County court minutes and deeds as being emancipated on May 13, 1833, by Sackfield Lindsey.
Lindsey was the son of James A. Lindsey, who moved from North Carolina to Little River near the Trigg-Christian County line, south of modern-day Pee Dee, and built an early mill there.
Sackfield’s eldest brother was arguably Christian County’s first and most vocal leader in the Disciples of Christ Church, which held strong abolitionist beliefs, in the early 1830s. There were no records of Lindsey’s other emancipations, however. Lindsey was one of the witnesses to Elisha’s 1842 land purchase, and the other two lived in the same neighborhood.
Wiggins clearly performed well for himself. He is most likely the same “Elisha” — no surname given — who returned to Trigg County Court on November 13, 1837, just four years after his own emancipation to free his wife, Patsey, from bondage.
This implies that he had saved money to buy her, as well as the bond required to free an enslaved person. He was listed on the 1841 Trigg County tax rolls as paying no land tax but tax on two horses.
The following year, he purchased the first parcel of land in Christian County, not far from Pee Dee. Three years later, on April 7, 1845, Elisha went back to court, this time in Christian County, to emancipate his 23-year-old son Benjamin. This required a $300 bond, which John T. Stevenson signed as surety.
John T. Stevenson was a well-known Herndon farmer who freed his own enslaved people a few years later, and his son Adlai became the United States’ vice president under President Grover Cleveland in the 1890s.
On January 24, 1849, Elisha recorded another deed in Christian County court records, purchasing 58 acres from William Nance for $250. In just over 15 years since gaining his own freedom, Elisha had purchased and emancipated both his wife and son, as well as 108 acres of land.
Elisha and Patsy were included in the 1850 Christian County census alongside Benjamin. Patsy appears to have died soon after the census enumeration, as a marriage contract involving their property was recorded in Christian County court records on March 7, 1855, between Elisha and Susanna Allen, a widowed free woman of color.
They were married on the same day by Judge William W. McKenzie, a well-known southern Christian magistrate, judge, and senator in the Kentucky legislature who was also a Wiggins family neighbor.
Susanna was the widow of Joseph Allen, a Fruit Hill free man of color, and on March 27, 1856, their daughter, also named Susanna Allen, married Benjamin Wiggins.
Judge McKenzie also officiated the wedding. Elisha died around May 1867, and his will was presented for probate in the June session of court that year. By that time, he had amassed 200 acres of land in “Flat Lick,” between Bennettstown and Pee Dee.
His will was witnessed by four of his neighbors. Unfortunately, Benjamin did not live very long after his father died. He died in February 1873, leaving behind his wife and six children: three sons born before and during the Civil War, and three daughters born later.
Benjamin died intestate (that is, without a will), and his estate inventory demonstrates the family’s material success: in addition to a Bank of Hopkinsville certificate of deposit worth $1,080, over $400 cash on hand, and notes of loans to neighbors and others worth nearly $3,400; the personal possessions included a number of items of furniture, a silver watch, school books, a “looking glass,” buggy and harness, farm wagons, rifle and shotgun, various pieces of farm The total value of his personal estate, excluding the value of the land, was nearly $6,500, or roughly $170,000 in 2025 dollars.
Judge McKenzie was involved in the appraisal of Benjamin’s estate, which included several decades of interactions with the Wiggins family.
Benjamin’s wife, Susanna, died in April 1880, leaving their six children orphaned. Only her two eldest sons, Joseph and Elisha, were adults when she died.
Charles H. Bush, a white neighbor and later Christian Circuit Court judge who was orphaned as a child, was named guardian of the four younger children—John, Martha, Ella, and Emma—with Joseph and Elisha listed as sureties.
“Guardian,” as used in court records at the time, did not refer to adults taking physical responsibility for the care and rearing of children, but rather to a caretaker of property reserved for a minor. This typically involved a minor inheriting property or money from a parent or grandparent’s estate.
Joe and John later (1883 and 1884) sold Bush their one-sixth undivided interest in the 200 acres of land inherited from their father and grandfather, which he held and sold to their brother Elisha in 1888.
Judge Bush also had business dealings with the family, particularly the younger Elisha, for decades. Elisha purchased his sister Emma’s portion from her and her husband, Lewis Gee, in 1896, after the remaining sections of the original property were divided in 1892.
In the end, Elisha received four of the six equal shares of the original estate, referred to in the deeds as “the landed estate of Elisha Wiggins Sr., dec[eased],” and one of the deeds involving Emma’s portion specifically mentions the family cemetery.
Many, if not all, of Benjamin and Susanna’s six children remained in Christian County. The eldest, Joseph, married Katherine Averitt; Elisha married Joyce Williams; John’s marriage record was not found; Martha married Morris Sanders; Ella married Zach Steger; and Emma, the youngest of Benjamin’s six children, married Louis Gee, later Jake Quarles. There are few records about Martha and John, and they may have died young.
Elisha bought an additional 69 acres from a neighbor in 1906, bringing his total land holdings to approximately 214 acres. He and Joyce, or “Joicy,” had one daughter, Edna Lee, who married Robert Fulton Blair, the son of possibly formerly enslaved neighbors, and the couple had two daughters, Elizabeth (born 1908) and Rosie Lee (born 1911).
Fulton’s 1969 obituary describes him as “a widely-known farmer of south Christian.” Both his and his wife’s (1977) funerals, as well as those of both daughters, were held at the Church Hill Baptist Church in Pee Dee.
Indeed, several family events have been associated with this church, which is about two miles from the Wiggins home. These family members, as well as the earlier ones — Elisha Sr., Patsy, Susanna, Benjamin, the younger Susanna, and possibly others — were buried in the Wiggins family cemetery on the property.
After Elisha Jr. died in 1938, the land was passed down to his daughter Edna, who died in 1977, and then to her only surviving daughter, Elizabeth Blair McGee, who died in 2003 at the age of 95. A few months before her death, she deeded the land to a cousin and nephew, and it passed through family hands a few years later.
At the time, the land had been in direct descendant ownership for more than 160 years, making it one of the county’s oldest single-family-owned properties.
On a sunny afternoon in March, clusters of daffodils in brilliant yellow bloom marked the house’s likely location in a small patch of woods.
The nearby cemetery, which has a few marked headstones and several fieldstones, quietly observes the passing decades from the shade of the woods and has fallen into disrepair.
Elizabeth Blair McGee, great-great-granddaughter of the elder Elisha Wiggins, is one of the last family members buried there, and there is no marker to mark her final resting place in addition to her parents’.
Her nephew was the last interment there in 2008, and his grave is only marked by a small funeral home marker.
The cemetery did not appear on Find-A-Grave or any other cemetery database, implying that very few living people are aware of its existence, and even fewer, if any, are aware of the history of the family it contains.
Their story should be shared and preserved.
