I am glad that is your Henry....I was not sure. The child would have been enslaved if the mother was enslaved, irregardless of the status of the father. If both Henry and Sophia are free then we have a couple of possibilities:

1. Remember I am taking this information from a book and it is possible that the person doing the transcribing made an error, there are 1000's of names in this book so that is possible...which means it is always best to try to look at the original document or microfilm of the original document. It is not online.

2. The child's status was incorrectly recorded back in 1859

After reading your question I went back and looked carefully through a number of the entries....and noticed a couple of inconsistencies, so I sent a post to Hollis Gentry who is on this board. She does a lot of Norfolk County research, hopefully she will respond.

While going thru the book I noticed another entry for a Henry Watts, which was not noted in the index. The index is of surnames of the father, if known or mother if fathers name is not given, or in the period before the emancipation the slave owner, master or mistress. In this instance Henry WATTS is identified as the PGI (person giving the information):

20 Dec 1853 (no name), s,m, Western Branch, Wm Bruce - PGI HENRY WATTS

(I have no idea who Wm Bruce is..whether male or female, owner? mother?..you should take a look at 1850 census and see if you see someone listed by that name.)

Selma

P.S. The surname ARTIS in Southampton County VA is like SMITH - in otherwords everywhere......the first entry for an ARTIS in the Register is for: