I have made a very important breakthrough in the genealogy.  My  ggGrandmother, Octavia Young (aka Dixie) from my mother's side is mentioned in a deed by her slave owner, FF Calmes, giving power of attorney to his son, WW Calmes.  I have transcribed the contents of this deed.  It is an exact transcription using the language and spelling and punctuation I found in the deed.  Where I couldn't understand a word I put it in the word file in blue. 

DeedSC_Calmes2 appoints Sarah's brother-in-law, John B. Carwile, as her trustee since she is not married. 

DeedSC_Calmes3 shows the transfer of Sarah's assets (including Dixie) from John B. Carwile to her now husband, William F. Nance.

This is how I made the connection:

Octavia Young was born around 1842.  She is listed as a mulatto in most records.  We know that she was very fair.

I obtained her death certificate about three years ago.  On it her son, Simeon Young (our Uncle Sims) says that her parents were Alec Calmes and Nellie I started searching the white Calmeses since I assumed that her father had been white.  There were no Alec Calmeses at all in the records at this time so it was put on hold.

Within the last year Ancestry.com and the Mormons have updated their records.  A search pulled up two Alec Calmeses - one born in 1814 and living in Mississippi in 1880 and the other born in 1840 and living in Kentucky in 1870.  Both men are mulattos and say that they were born in South Carolina.  One could be her brother and the other her father.  Her lightness could come from mulatto parents as well as from a white parent. 
There were white Calmeses in both Kentucky and Mississippi.  These men could have been given as "gifts" to children marrying and moving to these places.  If so Deeds of Gift should be filed in South Carolina.  There was also a mention in the slave naratives by Interviewee: Fordon Bluford,  who said, "I stayed away two years 'till after Dr. Calmes and his family moved to Mississippi."  This was in reference to FF Calmes who was a doctor.

The 1850 Slave Schedule show FF Calmes lived in Laurens County, SC and had 12 slaves.  Among these were three mulatto females - ages 40, 28 and 6.  The 6 year old was the correct age for our relative.

I started searching through the Calmes deeds to see it there was any mention of Dixie.  At the Mormons I had two tapes listing indexes of the deeds and one listing the actual deeds from  Books. GG-II, KK 1856-1866.  From the index I knew that there were six Calmes deeds on this tape.  The last one was a transfer of Power of Attorney.  I glanced through this before copying because I did not think it was worth doing.  When I saw Dixie's name I knew we has struck gold.

The work is just starting.   We know from the deed that FF Calmes gave Dixie to his daughter Sarah in 1855.  In the 1860 Census, Sarah's husband has no slaves at all.  However he has a lot of money.  A second slave Isabel was given to Calmes' daughter Cornelia.  In 1860 Census, Cornelia's husband has only one male slave who is a mulatto of 23 years.  What happened to Dixie?  Did Sarah sell her or set her free?  Our oral history says that Dixie was set free since her owners knew that slavery was going to end.  She was a favorite of her mistress and allowed to pick her own husband and was given a house.  All this can be true.  I must now search the deeds of Sarah and William Nance to see what happened to Dixie and also the deeds of Cornelia and William Pratt to see what happened to Isabel.  It is interesting that Dixie named one of he daughters Cornelia.  Cornelia was Grandma's mother.

With the help of the Young family bible (which I believe came from the Todds) I tracked down the death certificate of Henrietta's brother, James Todd.  It identifies his mother as Fannie Todd and his father as Thomas Kitt.  Further searching showed that this was probably Thomas Keitt.  I picked up the search again because I was contacted by the white descendants of the Todd family, who were aware that Fannie had had two biracial children and wanted information on Fannie.

By doing a Google search rather than searchs in genealogy data bases I found that Thomas Keitt was very active in Reconstruction politics and held office.  He is listed in the 1868-1990 Office Holders - House of Representatives.  I found a story of a lawsuit against the NY Times newspaper in which Thomas Keith is mentioned.  Thomas Keitt is also mentioned several times in Thomas H. Pope's The History of NEWBERRY COUNTY South Carolina - Volume Two 1860 - 1900.

The story is:
Thomas Keith was a blood relative of the white Keith family.  His mother had been owned by them and he had been a body servant to one of the sons, a Colonel Ellison S. Keitt.  Thomas Keitt became a very successful politician during Reconstruction and was elected over opposition from prominent whites.   His style seemed to be that of the early fiery Malcolm X and his career was doomed - especially as Reconstruction was ending. 

"Representative Thomas Keitt was rather ingeniously removed from office in 1977.  First he was convicted of bigamy at the September term of General Sessions Court.  In December the House expelled him because of his conviction.  Governor Hampton then pardoned Keitt.  While this restored his civil rights, it of course had no effect upon his expulsion from the House.  The New York Times, after gleefully and erroneously reporting that Colonel E.S. Keitt, former master of the black representative, had been convicted of bigamy, was sued for libel by Colonel Keitt; he sought $50,000 in damages." (From  Thomas H. Pope's The History of NEWBERRY COUNTY South Carolina - Volume Two 1860 - 1900  Page 74 )

I am trying to get information on the bigamy charge against Thomas Keitt.  I understand that it was covered  in the local Newberry papers.  This is the information I am searching for in pursuing this line:

.....Who is mentioned in the bigamy charge?
.....How did Thomas Keitt live after this association with a white woman that produced not one but two children.  Was this a closely guarded secret in the Black community?  How did Fannie's family help?  If they know about it now, they knew about it then - what exactly did they know?
.....Who paid to send Henrietta to college? 
.....Who raised Henrietta (b. 1874) and her brother James (b. 1876) ?   No sign of them in the 1880 Federal Census? 

Horretta Wilkins