Wootten family.

Mary Bayard Devereux, daughter of a prominent lawyer and planter from Raleigh, N.C., married the Mexican War hero, William J. Clarke in 1848. Since Mary struggled with consumption, the couple soon moved to San Antonio, Tex., hoping that the climate would improve her health. There she wrote poetry while William practiced law and became president of the San Antonio and Mexican Gulf Railroad Association. When the railroad went bankrupt several years later, William obtained a commission in the Confederate Army and Mary returned to Raleigh. William served as colonel of the 24th North Carolina Regiment until his capture at Fort Delaware. The Clarkes moved to New Bern in 1868 where Mary served as a private secretary to a North Carolina Supreme Court justice and William practiced law.

The couple had four children. Their oldest son, Francis, became a nationally known educator of the deaf. After teaching at the New York Institute for the Deaf and Dumb and attending Columbia University, Willie E. Clarke, their second son, received his law degree and practiced with his father in New Bern. Their third son, Thomas, became the superintendent of the Washington State School for the Deaf.

Their daughter, Mary Devereux, married Rufus Morgan and had two children with him, Mary Bayard and Sam. Rufus moved to California to farm in 1879, but died from eating poisonous mushrooms before he could send for Mary. Later, Mary married George Moulton, a traveling salesman from Hampton Falls, N.H.

George Moulton came from a New Hampshire-based farming family, headed by Nathan and Sarah Moulton. Along with the farm, Nathan owned a ship named the Schooner Cornelia . Nathan Andrew, their oldest son, became a schoolteacher and their daughters, Sara Elizabeth, Harriet (Hattie), and Emma, married and settled on farms in the area. Mary Josephine married the Reverend Frank Graves and lived in Hampton Falls and Exeter, N.H. George Moulton's traveling led him to New Bern, where he met and married Mary Devereux Clarke Morgan.

George and Mary lived in the Clarke family home in New Bern. George worked for several years as a traveling salesman for Duffy's Drug Store. They had three children: George C., Warren, and Celia. George kept close contact with his sister Mary Josephine, and George C. spent part of his childhood living in New Hampshire and working on her farm.

Mary's daughter from her first marriage, Bayard Morgan, became an instructor at the Georgia School for the Deaf. There she met and married Charles Wootten. The couple had two children--Charles and Rufus--but separated in 1904. Bayard moved back to New Bern and learned photography as a means of supporting herself. Her work impressed the Commanding General at Camp Glenn so much that he appointed Bayard Chief of Publicity for the North Carolina National Guard. She worked in this capacity until World War I, when she set up a studio at Fort Bragg, N.C.. In 1917, Bayard was appointed the official photographer for the Grand Central Palace in New York City and had a studio there. She soon returned to North Carolina and became the official photographer for the University of North Carolina Playmakers in 1919; this led to a contract to take all of the pictures for the University's yearbook.

Bayard's brother, George C. Moulton, and sister, Celia Moulton, helped her run the studios in New Bern and Chapel Hill from the 1920s to the 1940s, while she was taking pictures on location. George C. married Myrtle Disoway and had a daughter named Mary Louise Moulton. Celia married another photographer, Bill Lively, but they were separated in the early 1930s shortly after the birth of their daughter, Celia. Celia Moulton continued to assist Bayard in the Chapel Hill and New Bern studios. Bayard sold the Chapel Hill studio in 1954 and lived in New Bern until her death in 1959.

From: The Heritage of Craven County, North Carolina . Ed. Barbara M. Howard Thorne. New Bern: The Eastern North Carolina Genealogical Societyin Cooperation with the History Division of Hunter Publishing Company, 1984.

From the guide to the Wootten, Moulton, and Clarke Family Papers, 1766-1960, (Southern Historical Collection)