thomas atkins

1812-1896

Life Story

Early Life and Origins

Thomas “Tom” Atkins, whose surname also appears in later family records as Adkins, was born in 1812, according to the date inscribed on his headstone. The 1870 Federal Census identified his birthplace as South Carolina.

Tom was born more than half a century before emancipation, during an era when slavery shaped the lives of African Americans throughout South Carolina and the Deep South. If the 1812 birth year recorded on his headstone is correct, he was approximately fifty-three years old when slavery ended in 1865.

The surviving records presently available do not document the circumstances of Tom’s early life or identify the person or family who may have enslaved him. For that reason, although he was born during the slavery era, the details of his status and whereabouts before emancipation remain subjects for further research.

By 1870, however, Tom emerges clearly in the federal record as a free man, husband, father, farmer, and head of his own household.

Freedom and a New Life in Mississippi

The 1870 Federal Census found Tom and his family living in Beat 4 of Neshoba County, Mississippi.

Tom was recorded as working as a farmer. He was also unable to read or write, a circumstance common among African Americans of his generation who had grown up with little or no access to formal education.

Only five years had passed since the end of the Civil War and emancipation. Tom was now supporting a large household with his wife, Frances “Fannie” Lewis Atkins, and their children during the uncertain years of Reconstruction.

The census gives us only a brief description of his circumstances, but it provides the first clear federal snapshot of the Atkins family as they began building their lives in postwar Mississippi.

Marriage and Family

Tom was married to Frances “Fannie” Lewis Atkins, who was born around 1840.

Together, Tom and Fannie raised a large family during the years surrounding emancipation and Reconstruction. Census and school records identify children associated with their household including:

The surviving records contain variations in the children’s names, ages, and spellings. Such inconsistencies were common in nineteenth-century records, particularly when information was recorded by different census enumerators, clerks, and school officials.

The family surname likewise appears as both Atkins and Adkins. In later generations, Adkins became increasingly common among Tom’s descendants.

Establishing Roots in Newton County

By 1880, Tom and Fannie had relocated their family to Beat 4 of Newton County, Mississippi.

The census recorded him as Tom Atkins, working as a farm laborer. Many of the couple’s children were still living at home, ranging from younger children to sons and daughters approaching adulthood.

The family’s appearance in Newton County marks an important transition because this was where many of Tom and Fannie’s children and descendants would establish lasting roots.

Over the following decades, members of the Atkins/Adkins family formed households of their own throughout the Lawrence area. Their names would increasingly appear in local census records, school records, church communities, and other sources documenting African American life in Newton County.

The Children Enter the Lawrence School

One of the most revealing records of the family appears in 1885, when several children associated with Tom Atkins were recorded in the Lawrence School District.

The school record listed:

Student	Age
Annie Atkins (Amy)	20
Johnson Atkins	19
Alford Atkins	17
Willie Atkins	15
Grant Atkins	13
Lizzie Jane Atkins	12
Jesse Atkins	10
Columbus Atkins	8

This record adds an important dimension to the family’s history.

Tom himself was recorded in the federal censuses as unable to read or write. His children, however, were growing up during the first decades after emancipation, when African American communities across Mississippi were seeking educational opportunities that had previously been severely restricted or unavailable.

Only twenty years after slavery ended, members of the next generation of the Atkins family were appearing on a school roll in Lawrence.

The ages of the students are also noteworthy. They ranged from eight-year-old Columbus to twenty-year-old Annie. Educational opportunities for African Americans were still developing during this period, and students could enter or continue schooling at ages that would seem unusual by later standards.

For the Atkins family, the school record captures a significant generational transition:

Tom could not read or write. His children were entering the classroom.

A Family Shaped by Reconstruction

Tom’s household bridged two very different periods of African American history.

Some of his older children were born before the abolition of slavery, while younger children were born during the years following emancipation. They came of age during Reconstruction, when African American families throughout Mississippi were attempting to transform freedom into lasting opportunities for themselves and their children.

The Atkins family’s experience reflects part of that broader transformation.

Tom worked as a farmer and later as a farm laborer. His children gained access to schooling, reached adulthood, established households of their own, and became part of the growing African American community surrounding Lawrence.

Those advances occurred during increasingly difficult circumstances. By the 1880s and 1890s, many of the political gains of Reconstruction were being dismantled throughout Mississippi, while racial segregation and disfranchisement were becoming increasingly entrenched.

Yet within Tom’s own family, change from one generation to the next was already visible.

Names From an Era of Change

Two names among Tom and Fannie’s children are particularly interesting: Andrew Johnson and Grant.

Both correspond to presidents whose administrations were closely associated with the Reconstruction period—Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant.

It is tempting to wonder whether Tom and Fannie deliberately chose these names because of the national political events unfolding around them. However, no surviving family account or documentary evidence presently establishes why the names were chosen.

The connection should therefore be treated as an intriguing possibility rather than a historical fact.

Death and Burial

Thomas “Tom” Atkins passed away on November 10, 1896.

His headstone records his birth year as 1812, indicating a lifespan of approximately eighty-four years.

Tom was laid to rest in the Union Chapel church graveyard in Lawrence, Newton County, Mississippi, preserving a physical connection between one of the family’s earliest documented generations and the community where his descendants established their roots.

By the time of his death, Tom had witnessed extraordinary changes in American and Mississippi history. His lifetime stretched from the early nineteenth-century slavery era through the Civil War, emancipation, Reconstruction, and into the emerging Jim Crow era.

Legacy

Thomas “Tom” Atkins belonged to a pivotal generation in the history of the Atkins/Adkins family.

Born in South Carolina in 1812, he lived through more than half a century of the slavery era before appearing in the surviving post-emancipation record as a farmer, husband, father, and head of a large household.

The historical record tells us frustratingly little about the first decades of his life. His documented story becomes much clearer after emancipation, first in Neshoba County and then in Newton County, where Tom and Fannie established a family whose descendants would remain connected to the Lawrence community for generations.

Perhaps the clearest symbol of the change Tom witnessed appears in the 1885 Lawrence School District record.

Tom was unable to read or write.

His children were sitting in classrooms.

That generational transition is an important part of his legacy. The freedom experienced by Tom’s generation after the Civil War was incomplete and increasingly threatened, but his children were beginning to gain access to opportunities that had not been available to their father.

When Tom died in 1896, he left behind more than a large family. He left the beginnings of an Atkins/Adkins family network whose names would continue to appear in the schools, farms, churches, cemeteries, and communities of Newton County for generations to come.

Resting Place

Union Chapel United Methodist Church Graveyard

Photos/Albums

Sources

1870 Federal Census
1880 Federal Census
U.S., Find a Grave® Index, 1600s-Current
Indiana, U.S., Death Certificates, Andrew Johnson Atkins, 1899-2011
U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007

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