Deshong Family Photo Collection

Album description
Four Glass plate negatives depicting members of the family of Nathaniel DESHONG (1790-1871) of Alamance County.

Three of the negatives are copy work in which small gem sized portrait photographs were copied eight to a plate and likely date from c.1880s-1890s.

The fourth appears to be a camera original and depicts an African American family c.1890s, possibly descendants Nathaniel DESHONG and/or Anderson DESHONG.

These glass negatives were inherited by the donor, Patricia Owen Adams, through Martha Jane “Patsy” Deshong Hurdle Williamson (1839-1875), daughter of Nathaniel Deshong and Jemimah Matthews Deshaong (1797-1858).

Nathaniel Deshong was born 10 December 1790 in Chowan County and is thought to be the elderly man depicted in the lower right corner of Plate 1.

He married Jemimah Matthews Deshaong and they lived in Haw River, Alamance County, NC.

Jemima died in 1858, and Nathaniel left North Carolina and moved with some members of his family to Carroll County, Tennessee in 1868.

From there part of the family went on to Oklahoma and elsewhere in more recent generations.

The name “Deshong” is a derivative of Deschamps from St. Martin de Re, Ile de Re, France, Nathaniel Deshong’s ancestral home.

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In May of 2017, Donor Pat Adams, wrote the following update:

I know only, for sure, that these things are true:

The glass plates were stored in the trunk brought to Tennessee in 1868 by my great-grandmother, Martha Jane ("Patsy") Deshong and her father, Nathaniel Deshong, who came by wagon driven by a former slave. I believe his name was Anderson Deshong.

My family never mentioned that he was a family member, but I believe they said they freed their slaves, who took the family Deshong name, prior to the Civil War.

Martha's brother, Lee Deshong, gave Anderson land in Carroll County, TN, for his family to live on.

There were several black Deshongs in that area when I visited there every summer for 20 years (1936-1956) and lived there during World War 2.

Nathaniel Deshong died two years after the move to Tennessee (1870), and Patsy died shortly thereafter (1875) at age 35.

I understand that they never returned to North Carolina, where their home had burned and family dispersed.
So, at least these two people wouldn't be available for photos during the 1880's or 1890's.

Most of my family information came from the handwritten autobiography of my grandfather, William J. Hurdle (son of Patsy Deshong and William J.
Hurdle, Sr.) and "The Family and Descendants of Louis DeShong" by M. Blair Autry, whom I remember coming to my grandfather's home several times to compile family information.

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Source: Deshong Family Photograph Collection, PhC.248. In the State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, NC.