CHATHAM 250
The Taylor family at their homeplace circa mid1930s. These are the descendants of Thomas Jefferson Taylor and Alice Gertrude Horton Taylor (pictured in center). Thomas J. Taylor was the grandson of Thomas and Rachael Taylor, the original buyers of the land.
relocated to Durham for part of her childhood, but Cloyce graduated from Northwood High School in 1972, the second class to do so after Chatham County Schools were desegregated. Today, she lives on part of the same 40 acres her grandmother Josephine, who was enslaved prior to the end of the Civil War, was given, near what is now the northeast edge of Jordan Lake. Cloyce, her cousins and other relatives, many of whom still live nearby, celebrated
their 125th consecutive Williams family reunion last year (though it was their first virtual one due to the pandemic). The tradition began in 1895 with Josephine’s 10 children; now, in a typical year, the gatherings draw up to 300 of her descendants to Chatham County. “The second Sunday in May, Mother’s Day, we keep the tradition alive,” Cloyce says. “It means a lot to have so many people you can count on.” Mary Jo Austin Gilmore’s family has lived near Chatham Forest for more than 130 years, on land purchased in December 1865 and January 1867 by her fourth great-grandfather Thomas Taylor (180758
CHATHAM MAGAZINE
FEBRUARY / MARCH 2021
1881), likely with funds earned through his skill as a mason. “We believe that he may be one of the first formerly enslaved people to purchase land after slavery ended,” Mary Jo says. The original house built there for the family stood until a fire in the mid 2000s. “A lot of history was lost in the house,” Mary Jo says. Her paternal grandparents and great-grandparents left Chatham County for Mississippi in the early 1900s to pursue better opportunities. “They were limited to sharecropping in the Mississippi Delta and returned to Pittsboro around 1941.” Mary Jo, like Cloyce, graduated from Northwood in 1972 and stayed in Pittsboro because of her family’s history, raising her children, Victoria and Felicia, here. “I like country living, plus this is the home of my parents and grandparents and ancestors,” she says. “Both of my parents left school without completing their high school education, but they worked hard and bought land off Fire Tower Road and made a home for us. It is important to me to see their hard work and efforts preserved for generations to come, and I think Pittsboro is a good place to live, to raise your children with a feeling of belonging to a community.” Cloyce and Mary Jo’s Northwood classmate Mary Nettles grew up with strong female role models, and many of her earliest memories are of hours spent in a pew next to her mother at Mitchell Chapel AME Zion Church. “My mother