Cloann Calcote Smith
A Strong, Courageous, and Industrious
Black Woman
(Great Grandmother of Woodrow Smith, Sr.)
Picture credit: modernfarmer.com [article]
How Did African-American Farmers Lose 90 Percent of their Land?
Cloann, Cloeann, Cloammi, or Clara Ann depending on which document you’re reading; was born in Kentucky about 1830. Her mother and father are unknown. She was sold south separated from most of her family and bought by the Calcote family in Franklin County, MS most likely from the Natchez, MS. slave markets.
Willis Middleton Calcote Sr. was becoming prosperous as a farmer in Franklin County and needed labor. According to the 1820 census he had no slaves. By 1830 he owned four. In 1840 he owned 17 slaves and by 1850 a total of 37. At his death in 1851 a will inventory listed Cloann with a child, Willis and his siblings Allen and Lydia (Lidia). They were left to his son Willis Middleton Calcote, Jr as part of the property he inherited
On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed The Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared, "all persons held as slaves within any States, or designated part of the State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." The EmancipationProclamation did not free all slaves in the United States
By 1865, all but a few states in rebellion recognized the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery and was ratified in 1865. But a few, like Mississippi rejected it. Lawmakers finally voted to ratify the amendment in 1995 but didn’t notify the U.S. Archivist to make it official. They only formally ratified this amendment in 2013, “148” years later. The 13th Amendment was the first of three amendments adopted between 1865-1870. The 14thAmendment granted citizenship and civil and legal rights to former slaves and the 15th Amendment, the right to vote.
Freedom from servitude did not guarantee former slaves equal opportunities to work and support themselves. Cloann, like many were forced into pseudo-slavery through the sharecropping system. To provide some sort of protection the Freedmen’s Bureau facilitated labor contract with landowners. A 1865 or 1866 contract under the name Cloammi shows Cloann was under contract with her former slave owner, Willis Middleton, Jr. to work his farm.
On the 1870 census Black people appeared for the first time as humans rather than property of slaveowners. Cloann is listed with son Willis, and his siblings in the household of his brother-in-law, James Cain (sister Lydia’s husband). Cloann’s other children are Allen 18 yrs; *Willis 12 yrs; S.(daughter), 11 yrs; Cloann, Jr. 8 yrs; and Jim, 5 yrs.
Ten years later, in 1880, Willis is 22 years old and married to wife, Roxie, living next door to his sister, Cloann, Jr. and her husband Warren. Several houses above in this census is Cloann, Sr., now listed as Clara A. She is married to Henry Smith, her daughter’s father in-law after a divorce or separation from Warren’s mother. The elder Cloann had been married previously to another Smith – Caleb (Clabe) Smith who had either died or was sold off before the war. Caleb was listed as the father of two of elder Cloann’s children’s death certificate.
One of the remarkable things about Cloann is that she was never satisfied working someone else’s land. After the death of her husband, Henry she applied for a patent on 40 acres of government land. It was rare for women to apply for a land patent and unheard of for a black woman to do so. Before she could receive title to the land she had to build a home and make improvements to the land which she did and was granted the land. A patent certificate was granted to her around 1892. However, later she was forced off of it by the white local government.
We do not have a death date for Clara Ann Smith. It was almost as if she disappeared in history but all of her descendants should be very proud of her. She overcame obstacles that we can only imagine. Clara Ann was the great grandmother of Woodrow Smith, Sr., Her son Willis was Woodrow’s grandfather, the father of Joseph Smith who married Louvenia Wells. According to the 1930 census Joseph and Louvenia had 14 children. She was the 2nd great grandmother of Woodrow, Jr., Loretta, Clareon, Cheri, Craig, Duncan, Desmond, and Dwight.
Gravesite of Joseph (Joe Smith) Mt. Olive CemeteryBrookhaven, MS
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