Tag Archives | DeCosta family

In Memoriam: Emily Spencer DeCosta and Janet D. Hicks

The Avery Research Center would like to celebrate the lives and accomplishments of two supporters, Emily Spencer DeCosta and Janet D. Hicks.

Emily Spencer DeCosta was born in 1923 in Washington, D.C. to James Spencer and Evie Carpenter Spencer.  In 1942, Emily received her bachelors degree from Virginia State College; in 1943, she earned a master’s degree from the University of Michigan.  She taught English at Virginia State College for three years and while there, she met Herbert A. DeCosta, Jr.

In 1946, Emily married Herbert DeCosta and began working for his construction company as the bookkeeper, office manager, and corporate secretary from 1947 until her retirement in 1985.  Emily and Herbert had two children, Gail Spencer DeCosta and Margaret Craft DeCosta.

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Craft and Crum Family Papers Link Charleston and England

Today’s post was authored by a Guest Contributor,  independent historian Jeffrey Green of England.

When I returned to Charleston in June 2010 to attend the Charleston Jazz Initiative’s weekend, I visited the Avery Research Center to investigate a postcard of Buckingham Palace. Mailed in 1914, the postcard was addressed to the son of English-born Ellen Craft Crum of Charleston.

Edmund Jenkins to Aubine Craft

Postcard from Edmund Jenkins to Aubine Craft

Prior to my South Carolina excursion, an Avery archivist had contacted me as the card seemed to be from Edmund Jenkins, whose biography I wrote in 1982.  I drove twenty miles to Ockham Park, where Ellen Craft Crum’s fugitive slave parents had lived in the 1850s, in order to visit All Saints Church and examine its baptism register.   The link between Charleston and England continued, as I discovered images of that very church in Avery’s recent acquisition, the Craft and Crum Family Papers.

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