Williamsport, West Virginia · A Family History

Fortune Stewart
& Rebecca Payne

From enslavement to freedom, from oral tradition to documented history—this is the recovered story of the ancestors at the beginning of the Stewart family line.

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1849 deed of trust naming Fortune — **1849** · The earliest known record naming Fortune

The family’s beginning

Two lives recovered from the record

Fortune Stewart and Rebecca Payne are the earliest ancestors this family can name. They married near the close of the Civil War and made their home at Williamsport, in the part of Hardy County that became Grant County in 1866.

Sixteen of their children reached adulthood. Five Stewart daughters married five Hilliard brothers, creating a remarkable network of descendants across West Virginia and beyond.

Family memory preserved two central traditions: Rebecca had been enslaved on a Cunningham property in the Trough near Old Fields, and Fortune was born outside the United States—possibly in the Caribbean—speaking French or Spanish and keeping foreign coins. The surviving records and DNA evidence now allow parts of that memory to be tested, confirmed, and refined.

“Where oral tradition, documentary evidence, and DNA agree, they confirm one another. Where they differ, the research states plainly what is established and what remains open.”

Documented chronology

A life traced across a century

1803

An earlier Fortune appears

George Lee’s will names an enslaved person called Fortune. This may be an earlier man of the same name and could represent a possible family connection, but it is not yet proven to be Fortune Stewart.

1809

The Harness estate

George Harness’s will and codicil document transfers of enslaved people to his daughter Fanny and son-in-law Charles A. Turley, opening a possible path into the Turley household.

1849

Fortune is named

A deed of trust executed by Charles A. Turley pledges five enslaved men—Dawson, George, Fortune, Henry, and Nelson—to secure a debt to Elijah Cunningham. This is the strongest antebellum document identifying Fortune.

1865–66

Freedom and family

Fortune and Rebecca formed a household near the end of the Civil War. The family’s older children had been born during slavery.

1870

Together in freedom

The first federal census after emancipation records Fortune, Rebecca, and their children together in Grant Township, West Virginia.

1888

Fortune’s estate

At Fortune’s death, Rebecca opened his estate. Probate records name family heirs and connect the Stewarts to the long-established free Black Bruce and Redman families.

1910

Rebecca’s legacy

Rebecca died on July 4, 1910, after helping establish a large free family whose descendants carried the Stewart story forward.

1943

A remembered birthplace

A descendant’s death certificate reports that Fortune was born in Cuba, preserving the family’s Caribbean-origin tradition in a later official record.

The evidence

What the research establishes

Fortune was enslaved by 1849

The Turley deed names Fortune as property pledged alongside four other enslaved men. His absence from antebellum free-person registers supports the conclusion that he was not free before emancipation.

The Turley–Cunningham circle matters

Charles A. Turley, Elijah Cunningham, George W. Turley, the Harness family, and shared court officials formed an interconnected network through which enslaved people and property moved.

Rebecca’s Cunningham tradition is credible

Multiple Cunningham households enslaved women matching Rebecca’s age. The strongest 1860 numerical match is in Catharine Cunningham’s household, although anonymous slave schedules cannot prove identity by themselves.

The Caribbean tradition remains viable

Family memory, a later death record naming Cuba, and the pattern of DNA evidence support continued investigation of a Caribbean origin. No surviving document yet identifies Fortune’s precise birthplace or arrival.

Freedom already had roots here

The Bruce and Redman families

Fortune and Rebecca built their postwar life beside families of color who had lived free in Hardy County for decades. Members of the Bruce family appear in court records as emancipated people in the 1830s. The Redmans owned land, conducted business, and appear in deeds before the Civil War.

In 1888, W. H. Bruce and Joseph Redman helped appraise Fortune’s estate. Their presence shows that the Stewart family’s freedom story was connected to an older free Black community.

1842 deed involving members of the free Redman family — 1842 deed documenting the free and landed Redman family

Selected original records

The documentary archive

Open any image to study the original record. These documents are presented as historical evidence and may contain dehumanizing language used by the record creators.

1849 deed of trustNames Fortune, Dawson, George, Henry, and Nelson

1870 U.S. censusFortune and Rebecca’s household in freedom

1888 probateOpening of Fortune Stewart’s estate

1850 slave scheduleA Cunningham household examined for Rebecca

1860 slave scheduleAge patterns tested against Rebecca and her children

1943 death certificateRecords Cuba as Fortune’s birthplace

Research documents

Download the comprehensive report DOCX Download the origins assessment DOCX

Genealogical proof and transparency

Established, supported, and still open

Established

Fortune appears by name as an enslaved man in Charles A. Turley’s 1849 deed.
Fortune and Rebecca lived together with their children in Grant Township by 1870.
Fortune died in 1888; his probate names and confirms family relationships.
The family lived in close community with the free Bruce and Redman families.

Strongly supported

Rebecca was connected to one of the Cunningham households in the Old Fields area.
Catharine Cunningham’s 1860 household is the strongest age-pattern candidate for Rebecca and young children.
Fortune may have entered Turley ownership through the Harness family inheritance network.
Fortune’s origins may lie in Cuba or elsewhere in the Caribbean.

Still open

The exact identities of Fortune’s parents.
The precise Cunningham enslaver who held Rebecca.
The relationship, if any, between Fortune Stewart and the Fortune named in George Lee’s estate.
The date, place, and circumstances of Fortune’s arrival in the United States.

A living inheritance

The records do more than document bondage. They recover family, community, endurance, and freedom.

This website is dedicated to the descendants of Fortune Stewart and Rebecca Payne—and to every generation that kept their names alive long enough for the records to find them again.

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Fortune Stewart& Rebecca Payne