Before we start to address individual members of the vast Forehand family tree, let us take a moment to explore a particular branch. I have two distinct privledges in regards to researching the Forehand surname.  First, my last name is “Forehand” and I am of direct descent.  Second, a member of my mother’s family actually married a Forehand female during the early 1900’s.  Though some will snicker and conjure thoughts of southern inbreeding, the later Forehand marriage is fortunately of a distant lineage and did not produce any children of blood relation (what a relief).  The last part of this equation that gives me an advantage is the fact a male child produced by this Forehand marriage wrote a book outlining his life in great detail.

Through research, we can ascertain that most Perquimans and Chowan county North Carolina “Forehands” were of descent from Jarvis Forehand and his children.  Some research suggest this to not be the case, but a quick review of the section of this blog on Thomas Forehand (son of Jarvis) and Jarvis Forehand will quickly dismiss those inaccuracies.  I will concede there is a possibility that Daniel Forehand (brother of Jarvis may also have produced the Perquimans lineage).

The marriage mentioned above was between Joseph Esberry Jordan and Margaret Forehand, both of Perquimans County North Carolina.  Joseph Jordan was born in Bagley Swamp, Perquimans County, North Carolina on October 15, 1869 and died on August 15, 1949 in Camden County, North Carolina.  Joseph Jordan was the son of Brinkley Jordan and Elizabeth Davis.  Brinkley Jordan was born in Bagley Swamp in 1831 and died in 1883 age the age of 53.  His wife, Elizabeth, was also born in Bagley Swamp in 1834 and died 1909 or 1910.

Margaret Jane Forehand was born in Piney Woods, Perquimans County, North Carolina on December 17, 1885 and died in Boston, Massachucetes October 2, 1962 at the age of 87 years old.  Margaret was the daughter of Calvin Forehand and Lydia Copeland.  Calvin Forehand was born in Piney Woods in March of 1832 and died in 1906 at 73 years of age.  Calvin was the son of Willis Forehand and Mary Ward.  Lydia Copeland was the daughter of Joseph Copeland and Lydia Chappell and was born in Ryland, North Carolina August 7, 1837 and died August 23, 1917.  Calvin Forehand and Lydia Copeland were married on January 24, 1861 in Chowan County, North Carolina by Drew Welch, Justice of the Peace.

It is interesting to note the marriage of Calvin Forehand and Lydia Copeland produced many daughters but only one son, Alfonzo Forehand.  Alfonzo Forehand was born on October 29, 1863 and unfortunately, Alfonzo died of typhoid fever on October 28, 1869.

The relative and book I speak of is “Adrian’s Fact and Fables” by Adrian Alfonso Jordan.  Uncle Adrian (as we called him) was born on December 16, 1899 and passed away on November 22, 1996 in Dakota, Minnesota.  I always remember though he was full of fables (as the title suggests), his recollection of his past was very sharp and reasonably accurate.  Though the information told to him may not have been absolute fact, he absolutely remembered what he was told and what he saw.  So sharp was his memory that he actually remember portions of his life around his fifth birthday.

His book recalls a few facts regarding his “papa”, Joseph Jordan, and his “mamma”, Margaret Forehand.  He recalls, “Papa was twenty five, mamma was nineteen when they were married.  Papa told us children that after paying the preacher 50 cents, which was a big fee, he only had 7 cents left.  He rented a farm as a share-cropper.  Papa’s father and his oldest brother were killed by lightning.  Papa was three years old at the time.   It was in the afternoon.  His father had just opened the front door in the house after a rainstorm.  The thunder and lightning were very heavy.  My grandmother was ill.  She was lying on the bed.  Papa said he remember that he was sitting on the foot of his mother’s bed when my grandfather went to the back door, opened it, to get some breeze and draft thought the house.”

The story proceeds to tell of the lightning strike that killed the members of the Jordan family.  In fact, the house caught on fire and burned to the ground.  All escaped with their lives except for those killed by lightning.  The community built Adrian’s grandmother a new home though they continued to struggle to make ends meet.  In fact, he recalls, “Grandma said she made bed mattresses with cornhusk and grass stuffed in burlap bags sewn together.”  Times were obviously hard after the Civil War.

As mentioned previously, Uncle Adrian possessed a sharp memory.  He recalls, “Some things are so vivid in my mind.  One day, all we children were sitting around Grandma Forehand (Lydia Copeland) just before her youngest daughter, Aunt Georgia, was married.  She and Mama (Margaret Forehand) were talking about wedding dresses.  One of us children asked Grandma why didn’t Aunt Georgia get married in your wedding dress.  After a while, Grandma said, “Well, I don’t see any reason why two girls should be punished in the same dress.”  We were too young to know what she meant.  She just smiled with her dry sense of humor she always had.  She liked dry jokes.  One day at the table at her house she asked my brother Leon, “Do you know how many legs a horse has?”  Leon said “four”.  She asked, “If you turn him on his back, how many legs would have have?”  Leon said, “Not any.”  She asked, “Why not?”  “Because the horse cant walk like that”, Leon said.  Then Grandma just smiled and said, “I like your joke better than mine Leon!”.  Grandma liked nothing better than sitting in a group of little children and carrying on.  Grandpa (Calvin Forehand), her husband, was just the opposite.  He was congenial with some people, hide off with others.”

Old Blanchard Home Perquimans County, NC

Uncle Adrian obviously held a special place in his heart for his grandmother Lydia Forehand.  He continues, “Our wonderful little Grandma Forehand, with her loving arms, was never too busy to give us a great big hug, including my Father (Joseph Jordan).  I remember as we jumped out of the surrey at her house, we would see who could get to her first for a hug and a kiss, and many more before the Sunday was over.  Grandma would sit down on a bench or swing in the yard to be sure none of us missed that hug and kiss.  With seven children rushing at her, I bet she thought it was better sitting.  Besides, they had other Grandchildren there every Sunday.  When we left for home, she would stand at the road gate and wave to us until our Surry went around the bend of the road out of sight.”

He continues about his grandmother, “I so wish I could had an adult mind and heart  so that we could have let her know how much we loved her.  Guess love is generated through childhood.  Now, I feel so bad that we couldn’t show it in a different way towards wonderful people.  Grandma standing by the gate in the yard with her little silver glasses, hair parted in the middle, fixed with a knot back of her head and with that little bit of skin under her chin.  There was never a more typical Grandmother type than we had, no more than a hundred pounds.  I wish there was a statue of her on a thousand foot tall gold flag pole right in the middle of America.  That would be just a small honor for all the wonderful Grandmas and Grandpas in the world.

There is so much I could say about her.  The last thing I will say is she has given me so many beautiful thoughts all through my life.  There is only one material thing left of her, the grapevine she gave me when I was six years old.  It stands in the field where I grew up. “

 As true to form, Uncle Adrian recalled the past with striking detail.  In next few paragraphs, Uncle Adrian describes what life was like during the early part of the 20th century with a rare view into the lives of a Forehand family.  In addition, Uncle Adrian even gives a brief account of Forehand history as he knew it… though not entirely correct.

Grapevine given by Lydia Copeland Forehand as it is today

 “We children always looked forward to the Sunday that we were going to visit grandma and grandpa Forehand.  They were Quakers.  They came to this country from England in the 16th century and many of them settled in a part of North Carolina called the Piney Woods.  The name came from that part because there were so many blueberries, it was named Piney Woods.  My mother and her six sisters picked blueberries while my grandfather hauled them to Norfolk, Virginia.  IT was forty or fifty miles on a dirt road.  It took four days for the round trip.  They had another laod ready when he got back.  He never gave anyone a dime.  He died with his trunk keys in his hand in 1906.  No one knew how much money was in that trunk.  Two of his daughters were sitting by his bedside when he died.  They took most of the money.  It was alleged that they put it in the bank in Edenton, North Carolina, about fifteen miles away.  The bank failed though and they lost all the money.  Some said it was about eight thousand.  There was only three hundred in grandpas trunk.”

“My grandma had about the most wonderful place in the world.  Not because it was grandma, but because it was real old and antique.  Grandfather built it.  House, barns and all the other buildings were log cabins.  Grandma made all the things for living and grandpa made all the furniture and plenty of it.   They had six daughters.  One boy died with typhoid fever.  Grandpa built all those buildings, also a corn crib, a smoke house and a house for his weaving and spinning machines for wool and cotton.  Also made the family clothes of cotton and wool.  Dyed all the cotton and wool.  All around that house were nice shade trees, fruit trees, and grape vines.  There was an old split rail fence all around the place.  All kinds of herbs and shrubs.  The house and barn were on about a two acre lots that was mostly sand.  They always had two nice dogs, geese, chickens, ducks, hogs, two cows, sheep, and two large Belgium draft horses.  There were nice swings under the trees.  It was like heaven on earth there.  Papa would hitch our two pretty black horses to the surrey every Sunday morning and we would go the church, then to Grandma’s.  Sometimes we didn’t get to church if there was a special occasion at Grandma’s.”

“About six am, Papa, Leon and I hitched the horses to our pretty surrey.  That was a big job.  Papa, mama, and the two babies on the front seat, we five all squeezed on the back seat.  What a load!  Papa with his derby hat and Mama with one of those big hats of hers.  Off we would go.  It was about seven miles.  When we arrived, grandma would be standing in the old log cabin’s kitchen door with her apron and her silver glasses and her hair parted in the middle and tied in a knot at the back of her head.  A typical Quaker.  She weighed about one hundred pounds and was a neat as a doll.  When we drove up to the gate and stopped, Grandma would always say the same thing, “Upon my word, if it isn’t Joe.”  She always sounded as though she were surprised to see us.  Everybody would rush out to the barn fate, open it, and the two dogs would bounce out barking their heads off.  Grandma would say to us children, “Come right in this house, I got something good for you.”  We never knew what we were going to get but we knew we were going to get something good.  She was an excellent cook.  In the back seat of the surrey, we five kids would talk about what Grandma had for us today.”

“My grandpa would take Papa out and they would have a nice glass of cold cider that was put down the well to get it cold.  All the children would pile around Grandma and Aunt Nan, Aunt Priscilla, Aunt Mattie, and Aunt Georgie.  They would all be there on Sunday too with all their children.  What a dinner table there was!  About thirty feet long and built to the floor with long benches on each side.  There were no chairs except one at each end.  They were for Grandma and Grandpa.  When we all got seated at the table, Grandpa would stand and ask a blessing.  Poor Grandma had a large fan.  It was large and it hung down a long was from the ceiling.  It would fan that table from one end to the other.  Heavy, hot food in August.  We children didn’t reach, we asked.  If one did reach, he or she was sent from the table and had no dinner.”

“In cool weather, Grandma would go out and get the black walnuts and crack them with us to make candy.  We would have candy pulling and then she would give some of it to us to take home.  What a beautiful Grandma!  She died at the age of 80.  I was living in Connecticut then.”

“We would leave there about 5:00pm, go home, change clothes and start feeding for the night.  Fill up the wood boxes, milk the cows, and by nightfall the whole family would be in bed.  But what a day had been had!”

Even as important as life was death.  Uncle Adrian continues with a rare account of the death of his grandfather, Calvin Forehand.  He states, “I can remember my Grandpa when I could barely walk.  He would take my on his arm and go out in the grapevine and pop grapes in my mouth.  I remember the day he died from a stroke.  We went to the funeral, I was only six years old.  I was put in a room to sleep.  They had the funeral at the house.  I was trying to peek under the door and fell asleep right there on the floor.”

“At the grave in the woods, I was sitting in the buggy and it was raining very gently and everybody was crying.  There was an old woman there, about seven feet tall, standing in her door with a snuff brush in her mouth and wearing a black bonnet.  Her house was about fifty feet from the family grave yard.”

“I sure missed Grandpa.  I will always remember him with his corncob pipe, carrying me from place to place, showing me things.  He showed me the cotton and wool weaving and carding, dying, stitching and so on.  He was great and I was just a little boy of six.  That day grandpa was buried, I remember seeing Grandma slap Mary Stafford because Mary wanted to wear her other dress.  Girls had only three dresses and one was for Sunday.  Mary was about fifteen then.  She was an adopted girl.  There were two adopted boys also, Jim and Albert Dale.  That made ten children.  Children were a good investment then. All the farm work was done by hand.”

Continuing onward, Uncle Adrian offers us an account of even earlier life in Perquimans County.  This time he recalls what life was like before and after the Civil War for the Forehand family.  He states, “Beginning of the Civil War, 1861, Grandpa Forehand was twenty one years old and just married.  He was a Quaker and didn’t believe in fighting or any other hostility.  He was a farmer.  He and grandma were building their log cabin and all the other things necessary for living.  Nothing was ready made.  There were no businesses of that kind around then.  When he built there log cabin, in one bedroom he built a trap door.  It led out under the house and then into the back yard.  If any army, North or South, Confederate or Federal, came along in the night looking for men, Grandpa would roll out of the bed and out that trap door and go out the back way to the woods to keep from being captured.  It got to the point that all the able bodied men had to hide in the woods by day and come out at night to do their farming by lantern light.  Their wives would hold a light with one hand and lead the horse with the other.  The husband was doing the plowing with another lantern hanging around the plow.  Before daylight, they would go back to the woods to hide.  There were sentries posted and if anyone approached, the women would blow their fox hunt horn to warn the men and the women in the fields.  All the lights in the field were extinguished until the dangers were over.  All the women would run into the house and get in  bed.  If the army knocked on the door, the would answer.  They would be asked where their husbands were.  “Gone to the army”, would be their answer.   To get their meals, the women would cook the food early in the morning and put it in a feed basket and put corn over it.  Then she would go out to the hog lot and the hogs would follow the woman to be fed.  After the woman reached the woods, she would feed the hogs, and then go on to the camp and take the day’s food to their husbands.  They would go a different route so not to make a path.  Some of the women had a long way to go to reach the camp.  There were many camps.  That was the way of life for four very long years.  Some wanted to secede from the Union.  He didn’t believe in Slavery.  The rest of his life he was treated as a nobody.  He had two brothers but after the war, they never spoke again.  Uncle got a pension for the rest of his life.  Those soldiers were known as buffaloes.  I don’t have any idea why.  It must have been a great and hard struggle to live that life.”

“One day, my grandmother baked some pies to take to the camp.  It was a Saturday morning.  She put them out on the window sill to cool.  Along came the Yankee soldiers.  They stopped as always to see what they could take.  Grandma said one started rubbing his hands together and said, “Look boys, what I have found.”  Grandma walked out of the log cabin door and said, “I thought you Yankees might be along, so I cooked them especially for you.”  The soldiers looked at each other and said, “I be she is trying to poison us.”  They went away and never touched the pies.   Sunday morning she took the pies to the camp with a pot of hot chicken and sweet potatoes.  I heard her tell that story many times.  She was real proud that she out-foxed those Yankess that day.”

“On Sundays, the Quakers preacher would go from camp to camp to hold services for those men.  I think they were the only preachers that tramped the woods preaching all day every Sunday.  Preside at the funeral and Baptisms on horseback, but no horseback to the men’s camps.  They had to walk in case they would have to hide from the Yankee soldiers.  I think it was exciting.  I wish I could have been living then and to be living with Daniel Boone.  Many wonderful stories have come from it.”

Before he closes the section of the book completed in January of 1979, Uncle Adrian offers the following, “I am glad my memory is still quite good and clear.  In my poor way of presenting some of these things, I only hope my children and their grandchildren will carry some of this along in their lives and preserve of this for those who might be along later.  Yes, I am just one hard working American in a small way.  I believe that I produced as much or more than I consumed during my lifetime and I am glad that I did.  I think we should strive to do so.  No matter how little or how much we have, we have to trade it for six foot of this beautiful world.  Some do and some don’t earn that.  Now I will say goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa Forehand.  They were two of the greatest fighters with thousands like them making America what it is today.”

In closing, I will let Uncle Adrian say it as he says best.  I don’t believe I have ever read an account by an author that has come close to matching what it was like and is like living in rural America.  I suggest you read the following paragraphs and digest them as it will be good for your soul.  God Bless You Uncle Adrian as your memory lives on in these words.

“It’s damp and cold out there, but you feel real good after having fried ham, country sausage, corn pone, hot country biscuits, coffee with cream and a good quiet country sleeping with no noise except the old hoot owls.  Once in a while a horse in the stable still chewing some hay or an old milk cow mooing for the calf that had been weened.  Where we lived, the wild cats would come up around the fence down by the swamp and let our a screech or two.  There was a beautiful old burying ground out in the field behind our farmhouse.  Later, while visiting, it was gone, plowed under. It was down by the swamp on a hill that overlooked the peaceful river.  The river was so calm in the morning, it just rolls along so quiet.  As the wind started to blow, the ripples would being moving so slowly and gently.”

“My mother died in Boston at age 86.  The tall black walnut trees were gone, wild red and yellow plums were gone.  All of the gooseberry was gone, wild apples were gone.  All of our trapping woods were in cultivation.  The cemetery plowed over.  That made me good and mad.  The grapevine that I sat in when I was six years old, my grandmother gave it to me, was still there.  She gave me a black puppy on the same day. I am happy to say the grapevine is still living and the grapes are delicious.  Sorry to say, I didn’t see my black puppy. He would have been 76 now.  I went for a walk down by the river where I buried him when I was a boy.  His name was Rover… one of the best rabbit dogs I ever had.”