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manerva barks

1832-1915

Life Story

A Life Across Slavery, Freedom, and Generations

Manerva Barks was a woman whose life spanned the most transformative eras of American history. Born around 1832 in Alabama, she entered the world during the height of the antebellum South, when slavery defined the social and economic order of the region. Both of her parents were also Alabama natives, rooting her heritage deeply in the Deep South.

Though the details of her early life remain largely unrecorded—as is often the case for people born into slavery—Manerva lived long enough to witness emancipation, Reconstruction, and the rise of a new generation born into freedom.

Family Life in Reconstruction-Era Mississippi

By 1870, only five years after the Civil War ended, Manerva was living in Newton County, Mississippi (Township 5, Range 10). She was working as a farm laborer in the demanding agricultural economy of the Reconstruction-era South.

She shared her home with her husband, Louis Barth (also recorded as Barks), who was about ten years older than she was. Together they raised a growing family during a period when Black families were rebuilding their lives after slavery.

By 1870, their household included:

Like many Black families of the era, their livelihood depended on hard physical labor in the fields, often under economic conditions that remained difficult even after emancipation.

A Mother’s Legacy

Manerva’s life was defined by both growth and loss. Over the course of her lifetime, she gave birth to ten children. Yet the harsh realities of nineteenth-century life meant that not all survived.

By the 1910 census, records show that only four of her ten children were still living—a sobering reminder of the high mortality rates that families faced during that period.

Despite these hardships, Manerva remained the center of an extended family network that stretched across Newton County.

Widowhood and Later Years

By the turn of the twentieth century, Manerva had become a widow. The 1900 census records her living with her daughter Crossa (Crossey) Billingsley and son-in-law Henry Tab Billingsley in Newton County.

Even in her later years, she remained surrounded by family. In the Billingsley household she lived among seven grandchildren, ranging in age from infants to teenagers, reinforcing her role as a grandmother and family elder.

Later, she relocated to Lauderdale County, Mississippi, where she lived with another daughter, Martha A. McDonald, and Martha’s husband, Alex McDonald.

Although Manerva could not read or write—a common circumstance for many Black Americans born before the Civil War—she carried something just as powerful: memory. For her children and grandchildren, she represented a living link to the world before freedom.

Final Years and Resting Place

Manerva Barks passed away in 1915 at approximately 83 years of age. Though she spent her final years in Lauderdale County, she was returned to Newton County for burial.

She was laid to rest at Union Chapel Methodist Church Cemetery in Lawrence, Mississippi.

Her life journey—from an Alabama birth in the era of slavery to burial in a community shaped by her descendants—reflects the enduring strength of families who survived one of the most turbulent periods in American history.

Legacy

Manerva Barks left behind more than a long life.

She left a multi-generational family rooted in Newton County, a legacy carried forward by children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who continued to build lives in Mississippi and beyond.

Her story reminds us that the foundations of many communities were built not by famous names, but by women like Manerva—who endured slavery, labored through Reconstruction, and held their families together across decades of change.

Through her descendants, her story continues.

Resting Place

Union Chapel United Methodist Church

Photos/Albums

Manerva Barks

Sources

  • 1870, 1900, 1910 Federal Censuses
  • U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current

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