August Anne “Gustanna” Collins and James Lemit Cabarrus
August Anne was born enslaved around 1846 at Somerset Place in Creswell, North Carolina. She was emancipated in June 1865 and soon after, she married James Lemit Cabarrus, who was also once enslaved at Somerset Plantation.
They lived and worked on Weston Farm for Arthur Collins and started a family there.
By the 1890's, itinerant tintypists arriving in Creswell just after the crops were sold for the year found an economic bonanza with Black and white families alike, especially landowners.
James Lemit Cabarrus Sr. (1839-1929) and Augusta Anna "Gustanna" Carter Cabarrus (1846-c. 1909), owned a tract of land in a section of Creswell folks still called "Gusstown" after Gustanna.
James's tract was large enough for a family compound on which his siblings, adult children and 110 year old mother, Mazy Bennett Cabarrus, all lived on 1910.
James Cabarrus was a carpenter during slavery and greeted freedom with highly marketable skills.
He also often signed on as a day laborer for other farmers, leaving his own crops for Gustanna and their children to manage.
Sourced from: Images of America-Generations of Somerset Place-From Slavery To Freedom
by Dorothy Spruill Redford