Pope family.

M. T. (Manassa Thomas) Pope, physician, businessman, and politician, was born near Rich Square in Northampton County, N.C., on 24 August 1858. Both of his parents were free people of color. Pope's father, Jonas Elias Pope (1827-1900?), was a carpenter, farmer, and landowner. Jonas Elias Pope remarried late in life and had another son, Jonas Elias Pope II, who was born in 1898 and died in 1977.

M. T. Pope went to Raleigh, N.C., in 1874 to attend Shaw University. He finished his undergraduate education in 1879 and then studied at the Leonard School of Medicine at Shaw, graduating in 1886 in its first class. On 23 February 1887, Pope married Lydia Walden, who died on 10 September 1906. Pope lived and worked for a few years in Henderson, N.C., before settling in Charlotte about 1890. In Charlotte, Pope not only practiced medicine but also was a very active businessman, helping to establish the Queen City Drug Company and the People's Benevolent and Relief Association of North Carolina, an insurance company.

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