The Rift: a sad story of the Bryants of Virginia

Something happened long ago that tore the Bryant family apart. My father told of a mysterious "rift" between his maternal grandmother, Ida Rene, and her twin sister Addie, but he had no idea what it was about. This legacy was passed down through the next three generations, though no one remembered the original cause. When I asked, the grownups would just shrug and claim not to know. No one could explain. It was just an accepted thing. We rarely associated with our cousins in Virginia Beach. 

This was an anomaly in our family. We had a close, warm relationship with other distant relatives. We dutifully made the annual trek to Richmond from Virginia Beach to visit my father's large, extended family - great grandparents, great aunts and uncles, and cousins two and three times removed. I remember thinking it was strange that we never visited cousins who lived in our own city. 

To give some background, the twins, Ida and Addie, grew up in Southampton County, Virginia. There were born in 1868 to Eley and Margaret Bryant, who were poor, illiterate farmers. Margaret and Eley had ten children, five of whom lived to adulthood. 

• Charles became a piano dealer in New Jersey and married a wealthy widow, Maria Harper. 
• William married Bonnie Abbott from Fort Lee, New Jersey. 
• Ida Rene married George Abbott from Fort Lee, New Jersey (Bonnie's half-brother). 
• Addie, Ida's twin, married Blucher Fletcher from Moyock, NC. 
• Gattie Jane married John F. Chappell from Princess Anne County, and then Dr. Edwin Stanton Davis from Manhattan, NY. 

All of Margaret and Eley's children and their spouses played a part in "the rift." But I'll get to that... 

Three generations later, in the 1990's, something serendipitous occurred. My sister Holly and her husband befriended a couple (Jim and Terry) in their Sunday School class. The couples were friends for months without knowing their true relationship. One day, by chance, Terry mentioned that her father was a dentist in Kempsville for many years. Holly, surprised, asked her if her father was Charlie Fletcher - why yes, he is! Holly immediately recognized how much Terry resembled our little red-haired grandmother Jacqueline Abbott. 3rd cousins! They lived in the same city all their lives and had never met. 

The twins, Ida and Addie, were finally reunited through their great-grandchildren after 100 years! In another miraculous turn, Matt, the great-grandson of William Bryant from New Jersey, recently joined his 3rd cousins in Virginia, bringing the Bryant-Abbott family full circle. 

So what caused this mysterious rift? 

Digging into the Bryant family history, I discovered some other surprises and baffling mysteries. Some of them involve Ida Rene and her many marriages and children which are written about in another post.

How did some of the Bryants - poor farmers from rural southside Virginia - end up in New Jersey? How did they merge with the Abbotts, a successful piano making family? A possible explanation has to do with the railroad, which was extended to Southampton County in 1888. William Bryant went to NJ in the 1890's looking for work. He met Bonnie Abbott, a coworker in a hat factory. Bonnie became pregnant in late 1899, and she traveled by railroad to Norfolk where she and William had a quick marriage in January 1900 performed by a preacher in the church parsonage. In 1904, Ida married George, Bonnie's half-brother. Charles Bryant moved to NJ around 1911 and sold pianos (perhaps made by the Abbotts?). 

In 1886, Margaret and Eley sold their farm Southampton County, where both of their families had lived since Colonial days, and moved to the Blackwater area of Princess Anne County. Addie and "Bluke" bought a nearby farm in 1890. Then Eley died unexpectedly in 1895. William and Bonnie lived with Margaret for a time, but then moved back to New Jersey around 1900 (their child did not survive). Margaret rented out the farm in Princess Anne County and moved to Richmond to live with Ida. Why did she live with Ida and not Addie who lived just down the road? Perhaps there were already the beginnings of some hard feelings between Addie and Margaret.

Here’s what happened. 

When Eley died intestate in 1895, Margaret deliberately failed to notify authorities so that she could keep the farm. Otherwise, by law, it would have gone through probate and would have had to be sold, with half the proceeds divided among her four living adult children. Margaret collected rent from the farm after she moved to Richmond to live with Ida, and continued to earn income by selling lumber from the property. It seems Addie resented this financial arrangement. 

In April 1908, 13 years after her father died, Addie Fletcher sued her mother over her rightful inheritance. The legal proceedings included depositions from her children and their spouses, including Ida and George Abbott. In a potentially disastrous complication, their recently deceased sibling, Gattie Jane, had held the note on the farm. When she died in early 1908 in Manhattan, her will left the note to her husband, Dr. Stanton. In gracious assent, upon request from Charles Bryant, Dr. Stanton sent the deed, not to Margaret or Charles, but directly to a lawyer in Norfolk. 

The next month, Margaret boarded a train in Richmond, bound for Norfolk. We will never be sure of her purpose, but it’s reasonable to believe it had to do with the lawsuit. Sadly, she never quite made it. She had "apoplexy" on the train and was rushed to the house of D. W. Godwin at 914 Greene Street in Portsmouth, where she died three days later (May 8, 1908 at 5:30 p.m.), with her four living children gathered at her bedside, Charles, William, Addie, and Ida. Did she have a stroke brought on by the extreme stress of getting sued by her own daughter? The timing seems more than coincidence. If so, it is no wonder the family fell apart. The fact that Margaret’s daughter Gattie Jane died earlier that same year may have just been too much heartbreak to handle.

Did the siblings ever reconcile? In a letter to Bluke Jr. in September 1909, Ida sent love through Bluke to her sister and expressed sorrow at their broken relationship. She told Bluke how she tried to connect with Addie on a visit to Norfolk, but Addie would not see her. 

There is a photo of the sisters with Charles and Maria, who married in 1911 in New Jersey. If the photo was taken near that date, they may have made some kind of truce. 

In a 1924 letter to Bluke Jr., Charles wrote, "how's your Mother and Father [Addie and Bluke Sr.] give my love to them when you write again. I thought your mother and Ida were coming to see us 2 years ago." Did that visit ever happen?

Charlie Fletcher, born in 1926, lived in the same house with Addie and his parents. He remembers that suddenly his family did not go to Richmond to visit family anymore. He didn’t understand why at the time, but this was probably due to Ida’s death in 1933. However, Charlie remembers his Uncle “Billie” coming to visit them from New Jersey. He also remembers visits from his namesake, Uncle Charlie Bryant. The Bryant siblings, it seems, worked through their issues regarding the lawsuit and Margaret’s untimely death.

After Ida died, her children, except for Jacqueline, remained in Richmond. “Jack” and Ernie moved to Norfolk after the Depression. Ernie lived with Addie in Norfolk until he could find a job and a place to live for his young family. After Addie died in 1948, and maybe even before that, the two families drifted apart again. 

Now, a century after “the rift,” the great-grandchildren of Ida, Addie, and William have joyfully rediscovered each other. They are working together to find the stories in their mutual family history. 

Full circle.

The remaining mystery now is the location of Eley and Margaret's graves. In 1924, Charles Bryant writes to Bluke Jr., "I must see if I can't get someone to look after Father and Mother's graves," implying that they are buried together. Since Eley died in 1895 and Margaret in 1908, their graves could be on the property in Blackwater which had not yet been sold. However, by 1924, the land was long out of their hands. The property is a 42-acre field today, totally cleared of trees and plowed under. The original house is gone. There is no sign or indication of a possible burial site. There are no records of their graves in any church cemeteries. The funeral home that handled the transportation and burial of Margaret's body was sold long ago, and the records of her burial lost in the transfer.