Following the Descendant Trail

 

Working our way through the lines descending from my fifth great-grandfather, John Carter, one detail is apparent: he had a lot of daughters. That, as it turns out, suits my purposes just fine, as I'd like to lay out a diagram of those lines of descent from the daughters of John Carter's daughters. To be more specific, I'm seeking to outline the matrilineal descent of John Carter's wives—whether there were two wives, or three.

Right now, I'm working on those Carter daughters for whom the mother's identity was unclear. Some attribute those daughters' line to be children of Elizabeth Armistead—although I'm in plenty of company when I say I have yet to find confirmation of John Carter's marriage to anyone of that name. 

Since this is the last week of the month and time is running short for this first selection of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026, I am "speed dating" my way through the remainder of John's daughters. Yesterday, we discussed Martha Carter, wife of Robert Goodloe, from whose story—and legal documents—we deduced that she was survived by no descendants, male or female. Today, we'll touch briefly on the next youngest daughter, Frances.

For Frances' story, I'm indebted to the advanced work done by fellow blogger Patrick Jones of Frequent Traveler Ancestry, who recently included several posts detailing legal documents outlining the descendants of this particular Carter daughter. Beginning with the will of Frances herself—by then, wife of Rice Curtis and resident of Davidson County, Tennessee—Patrick has provided links and analysis of several other legal documents enabling us to sketch out the lines of descent from Frances Carter, including, as Patrick observed, several female descendants. 

From that point, the next step is to outline in a genealogical format the lines connected back to John Carter's wives, specifically seeking those descendants following each wife's matriline. Along the way, proper documentation needs to be attached to this pedigree chart to verify the lines of descent. Since we've begun with John Carter, whose own last legal document was a codicil issued in 1783, we've got a long way to go to bring our search into the era of "modern" records. Even arriving at the 1850 census, which marked the first time each member of a household was listed by name, represents a wandering search through the document wilderness prior to that time, a stretch of nearly seventy years.

This part of a research project devolves into the tedium of genealogy. As I've said often, it's rarely something to write home about. But in Frances Carter's case, we see some changes. Though her father and his subsequent wife, Hannah Chew, remained until his death in his home in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, Frances and her husband moved to Tennessee, to a location near current day Nashville. From there, some of John Carter's grandchildren and great-grandchildren began migrating westward, some of them toward the northern portion of the midwest, others toward the south.

And there were daughters. Several daughters. This branch of the Carter descendants will surely keep us busy behind the scenes for some time to come.

Probably Not

The Goodloes were a family of excellent standing in Spotsylvania and Middlesex, and later in Kentucky, where a Mr. Carter Goodloe was quite prominent, and from his name was probably a descendant of Martha Carter and Robert Goodloe, of Spotsylvania.         ~Joseph Lyon Miller, The Descendants of Capt. Thomas Carter of "Barford," Lancaster County, Virginia

There's one thing about seeing the word "probably" in a recounting of family history: more likely, we should rather take that word to read, "probably not."

In the case of the descendants of John Carter of Spotsylvania, Virginia, I'm learning to become far more wary of such squishy estimates. Take that statement above, from the 1912 Carter family history regarding Robert Goodloe, husband of one of John's daughters, Martha. For Martha to have had a descendant—whether he was called Carter Goodloe or another less beguiling name—we would have needed to see the stipulation stand in her own father's will regarding the inheritance of the Carter property.

In John Carter's will, drawn up in May of 1778, after granting legacies to specific named children, he designated the rest of his estate to be equally divided among all his children, with one additional stipulation: that, if his "daughter Martha should die without issue," then her equal portion of the inheritance would then revert to all the other surviving Carter children.

John Carter apparently died shortly after drawing up a codicil to his will on October 13, 1883. The one stipulation of that codicil was to add the name of the newest arrival to the Carter family, so that she, too, would receive her part of the inheritance as one of the children of John's surviving wife, Hannah. No further mention was made concerning Martha, leaving those stipulations of the original will intact.

Taking the question of Martha and Robert Goodloe to FamilySearch's Full Text Search, I was once again directed to the genealogical research of George Harrison Sanford King, who noted—unfortunately without mentioning a date—that Martha Carter Goodloe died "shortly after her father." 

In addition, the King papers observed that, based on the Carter will's stipulations, Martha's portion of the inheritance was then to revert to the other members of the Carter family. Furthermore, the author referred to a deed drawn up by the surviving Carter children on August 22, 1786, in which they conveyed the property to a William Duerson.

Still, there was that odd reference to a "probable" descendant of Martha Carter and Robert Goodloe in the Joseph Lyon Miller genealogy of the Carter family. Where could that idea have originated? 

I wondered whether Robert Goodloe had had children by a previous marriage—or even by a subsequent marriage, as sometimes a deceased spouse could be memorialized by the tradition of a namesake child of the next marriage. 

An abstract of Robert Goodloe's 1790 will in Spotsylvania County provided the answer. He listed his heirs as his sons George, Henry, and John, along with the daughter of a nephew. Should any of those three sons have been descendants of Martha Carter, he (or they) would have become party to the division of property stipulated in John Carter's own will. Apparently, based on the deed drawn up in 1786, they were not named as part of that inheritance, inferring their descent from a different mother.

A curious side note: the very person to whom that property went in that 1786 deed drawn up by the surviving Carter descendants—a William Duerson—may have been the "W. Duerson" listed as a witness in Robert Goodloe's own will.

But what about the question that started this whole exploration? Who was that Mr. Carter Goodloe who was "probably" a descendant of Martha Carter Goodloe?

Because we can now do such speedy searches, I took my question to Ancestry.com, looking for someone by that name in Kentucky, the state identified in the Carter genealogy book. While I could find one possible person, "Carter Goodlow," born in Kentucky in 1845, at the time of the 1900 census, he was living in nearby Cincinnati. The variance in geography isn't the problem, though. There is, though, one detail: this Carter was of African descent.

Trying again, I did find mention of others with that name—even with the more specific spelling. One was in mentions for someone associated with a family living in Nashville, Tennessee, and near El Paso, Texas—not Kentucky. The other was in advertisement for books written by an author of that same name. I doubt any of these discoveries would lead to connections to the "probable" ancestor of this Carter Goodloe. 

Now that we're mostly convinced that Martha Carter left no descendants, I'm eyeing the calendar and realizing how little time is left to attain my January research goal of inventorying the female descendants of my fifth great-grandfather John Carter. In the remaining days this week, we'll take a fleeting glance at the rest of John Carter's daughters. 

Permission to Copy

 

We may think little about what goes on behind the scenes regarding those wonderful, instantly-accessible historic documents we retrieve from resources such as Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org. We somehow realize that someone had to grant permission for the genealogy organizations to access and digitize records from someone else's archives. But what went into that permission-granting process seldom appears on the surface of the exchanges we conduct, every time we look for an ancestor's paper trail.

I'm not here to provide the "MEGO" (My Eyes Glaze Over) blow by blow on just how that process unfolds—a process which, I suspect, has as many variants as companies signing the behind-the-scenes contractual agreements. I can, however, give a nutshell-sized vignette of how that series of agreements impacted me in my attempt this weekend to gain access to some old Polish genealogical records.

When I went looking for documents verifying the family details of my father's ancestors in the Pomeranian regions of northern Poland last fall, I found a frustratingly high number of records for which I could only view the transcript, not a copy of the actual handwritten record. The problem with such transcriptions is in that lack of access. To not be able to see the scrawl of the handwriting and check whether it was transcribed correctly—or completely—can hamper research progress. I wanted to see a digitized copy of the actual documents, not simply a transcription.

Finding any mention of such records on FamilySearch meant getting an error message informing me that, to see the actual document, I needed to go in person to a local FamilySearch Center. As I found out this weekend at such a center, that doesn't simply mean to physically sit in the library, tap into their wifi, and pull up the document.

"It depends on the agreement," the FamilySearch volunteer informed me. "Some agreements involve copyright issues."

I am looking for documents in the mid-1800s, I thought, being the grump that I am...but bit my tongue and didn't say. Obviously, this was a matter of more than simple copyright. Contractual arrangements can reach far beyond the date at which published material would enter the public domain.

Being instructed on exactly how I could proceed to the permission point, I began my work. I had about twenty documents for which I had gleaned the URL for quick access. Oh, no, that turns out: each document had to be accessed by a new search, then pulled up on the center's own computers, the transcribed record printed, then brought up on another screen by the volunteer, who would then access and carefully cut and paste the document into another file for printing.

By the time I had to leave that day, I had about five actual documents printed up, with far more to complete than I had time to access. In the meantime, I gained a few insights. First, don't batch work in piles so high, they can't be dispatched in a matter of a couple hours; this wears out volunteers, not to mention, welcome mats. Second, leave margin for unexpected discoveries. When I finally was able to look at the actual document for one of my Zegarski ancestors in Czarnylas—a line item in a baptismal record—not only did I find the relative I was seeking, but stumbled upon names of family members in other entries included on the same page. Cousins! In a small village, that type of serendipity can happen. And third, don't assume the routine that makes the most sense from your vantage point will be the one that makes sense to the people who set up the system.

Now that I've got a clearer picture of how that system operates, I'll be making more frequent—but less lengthy—visits to my local FamilySearch Center to gain permission to access the rest of those twenty-something documents. In the meantime, I'm scouring the documents for all the details I can glean—including those surprise appearances of collateral lines in this Polish ancestry.

The Genealogy Dilemma: Online or Off?

 

I'll admit: we've been spoiled. There was a time when all complaining about brick wall ancestors occurred within the confines of local genealogical society meetings—or by placing a query in the classifieds of the Everton's Genealogical Helper. Now, we can take our family history rant online and have instant commiseration through social media.

Better yet, we can actually look for records concerning that brick wall ancestor, thanks to multiple online resources—some for a price, admittedly—and even find an answer. There are more digitized documents available online now than there have ever been. What used to be impossible can now actually be easily findable.

When it comes to continued learning, perhaps it was Covid which influenced our turn to online resources to increase our research skills. And the steepest—and most quickly mounted—learning curve was being able to acquire the knack of signing on to genealogy society events on Zoom, Google Meet, or other platforms for online meetings.

With our increased dependence on online gathering, I've noticed one thing: I miss getting together with fellow genies. Online settings may have afforded us such a broader vista of opportunities, but one thing it lacks: the spontaneity of face-to-face gatherings. 

Perhaps that's what prompted me, lately, to make the shift for an online genealogy class series I've taught for years. This spring, my co-instructor and I are switching to an in-person venue at a local community college. Yes, every class member will end up paying for parking permits and toting their laptop across campus once a week. But we'll get to collaborate weekly over our brick wall ancestors, face to face for a glorious two hour long genealogy jam session.

Perhaps, too, that's what beguiled me to drive three hours to attend a local D.A.R. chapter's day-long family history event today. It's not that I need to sit in on beginning genealogy classes; I want to go where the people are. (Truth be told, I will be shopping for possible future speakers for our own society's programs—and you can be pretty sure I'll lug my laptop into the host church's FamilySearch Center to glean all those access-onsite-only Polish documents I found last December while I'm there.)

It's all about the surprising energy we find when we gather to talk about our research passion. Yes, that can sometimes erupt spontaneously during online meetings, but I've seen more times when that hasn't been the case. But face to face, we can't help but steer towards sharing those genealogical discoveries that intrigue us and spark that excitement.

Face it, we share our research passion far easier when we gather together. I know I search for those opportunities—and want to make them a reality, too.

Scorecard: The Carter Girls' Team

 

Let's just say it's halftime—or time for the seventh inning stretch, depending on your preferred sports analogy—and it's time to cheer on the girls' team. In other words, I'm still in the process of finding daughters of daughters of daughters...et cetera...of my fifth great-grandfather John Carter of Spotsylvania County, Virginia, and I want to take a snapshot of the possibilities for pursuing a mitochondrial DNA project.

Let's review what we already know: John Carter had eleven daughters. What we don't know for sure is which daughter was born to which of John's wives. That's the hoped for big reveal if we can put together an mtDNA project for this Carter line.

If I follow the argument of George Harrison Sanford King, then John had two daughters by his first wife, Sarah Kenyon. Those two daughters would be Elizabeth, who married Owen Thomas, and Ann, wife of William Heslop.

So far, I've begun tracing the generations of Elizabeth's three daughters. As for Sarah Kenyon's second daughter, Ann, wife of William Heslop, I have only located one daughter, who apparently died unmarried and childless. Following my post on that branch of the Carter family, thanks to a comment by Patrick Jones of Frequent Traveler Ancestry, I see he has already been a way-finder for court records regarding the Heslop side of the family, so that will join my Carter to-do list for the final week of this month's Twelve Most Wanted pursuit.

That would leave four other daughters who were not children of the other documented wife of John Carter, Hannah Chew. Those four daughters—in some books, children attributed to Elizabeth Armistead—were Martha, wife of Robert Goodloe; Frances, wife of Rice Curtis; Sarah, wife of William Sutton; and Margaret, wife of John Marshall.

At this point, our girls' team scorecard wobbles. For Martha, I have no children listed yet, though I see she likely died around 1786. Frances has been more widely documented, and I look forward to tracing her five Curtis daughters. Sarah left three Sutton daughters, one of whom, also named Sarah, had three daughters of her own. And, pulling in the opposite direction, daughter Margaret's union with John Marshall produced seven sons—zip for the daughters' score there.

The remaining five daughters were documented as children of John's wife Hannah Chew. The oldest, Mary Beverley, became wife of Revolutionary War Patriot Richard Stevens, of which one daughter, Judith, is acknowledged in the D.A.R. website. John Carter's second daughter by his wife Hannah Chew, an ancestor in my direct line named Margaret Chew Carter, married Zachariah Taliaferro and raised a family of four daughters, each of whom raised two daughters of their own—with the exception of daughter Lucy, who claimed three daughters. Third daughter of Hannah Chew, Judith Carter, married Joseph Sutton, but her one daughter died young. Fourth daughter, Lucy, married Burton Taliaferro, but died childless. The youngest of Hannah Chew's daughters, Elizabeth Matilda, died young and likely unmarried, though I've seen conflicting reports concerning her.

As the generations multiply, it's apparent that I've bitten off more than I can research for one month. This, however, is a necessary start. With a triage-style approach to this final week of January, we'll see how many generations we can cover before we turn the calendar page over to a new month and a new project.

A final comment before closing today's notes. Thanks to those who have recently left helpful comments. I always like to leave a reply to comments, but it appears that Blogger is going through a technical glitch similar to what it had experienced a few years ago: I am unable to actually post a reply to your comments. I will try to acknowledge these helpful suggestions within the text of the next day's post, if possible—Kat, your suggestion yesterday about Nancy as a possible nickname for Ann is appreciated; I had wondered the same thing myself—or may try to add that reply as a new comment, if it is possible. 

Finding the Perfect Match

 

Finding verification for family relationships among our ancestors of the 1700s can be challenging. For those hearty souls willing to wade through legal documents—and ancestors also of such an intrepid bent—the ability to locate that perfect match of names in court records is facilitated by one helpful tool: the FamilySearch Full Text Search.

Puzzling over just how many women named Lucy our James Heslop may have loved—as we've seen, it was more than one but court records must have included some late filings—I took my search question to that specific tool. Of the many hits resulting from my search terms, there was one item filed in the deed books of Spotsylvania County, Virginia, which seemed a useful addition to the records.

The document was an indenture, a basic land transaction protocol used in Virginia for transferring the ownership of land when it involved more than simply two parties. This indenture, dated March 14, 1825, was between both James Heslop—one of the Carter descendants I had been following—and his brother Horace Heslop, and, for the second part, a man by the name of William Hart.

Two gifts from this deed, which I at first had considered bypassing since it wasn't a document I was expecting to outline family relationships. The first gift was realizing just how many ways the name "Horace" could be misspelled. In this case, "Horris" will now be added to my list of possibilities for future searches regarding this grandson of John Carter.

The second gift was a phrase inserted into the provisions of this court document. The brothers wanted to specify that, among other stipulations in the deed, this one unexpected provision needed to be heeded: 

...on which land Mrs. Ann Heslop the mother of the said Horris + James at present resides + the use of which she is entitled to so long as she may live....

That same Ann, wife of William Heslop, was a daughter of John Carter. However, in reviewing the death register for two of her children—Sarah Kenyon Heslop and James Heslop—the clerk had entered a disappointing "Wm + N Heslop" for the names of their parents, rather than the expected mother's name, Ann. This unexpected entry, found buried within the details of a random property exchange, provided the assurance needed that "N" of the later death reports should actually have been "Ann."

Bit by bit, I'm piecing together the documents reflecting the Carter family constellation. Some are obvious, such as the wills left by the patriarchs in each generation of the family's line. Others are unexpected gifts, worth noting and saving as additional support in tying together those family connections in an era lacking the records we've become accustomed to using for more recent relationships.

Double Checking

 

While puzzling over the will of Sarah Kenyon Heslop—and reviewing the links provided in a comment by fellow genealogy blogger Patrick Jones of Frequent Traveler Ancestry—it occurred to me to double check the hints I had found for Sarah's apparent brother James Heslop, both of whom were descendants of John Carter.

I'll admit: yes, I want to focus on the female descendants of my fifth great-grandfather John Carter, but let's just say I got sucked into a beguiling rabbit hole. Finding James Heslop's will right next to Sarah's slapped my curiosity upside the head. I had to piece together this family line of a man who, dying at age seventy nine, was still waiting to see whether his wife would bear him an heir.

The story, as I'm sure you suspected, involved a marriage later in life for James. Over at Ancestry.com, looking at hints provided ample choices for wives' names, making me wonder whether any of them referred to our James Heslop in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Fortunately, the transcription at Ancestry.com offered for the 1851 marriage of James Heslop and Lucy Ann McCalley gave a film number for the digitized record, held at FamilySearch.org. 

Sure enough, signing in at FamilySearch and heading straight to the catalog to perform that search led to an entry labeled "Marriage Books 1795-1970" for Spotsylvania County, Virginia. The bad news: the actual entry bearing that film number was a collection of "photostat copy" records. I'd have to poke my way through the thumbnails to find the right entry.

First step was to find an index, which told me that I could find James Heslop on page thirty one. Poking my way through the thumbnails once again, I located the page number and began scanning the entries to find any mention of James Heslop.

At the bottom of the righthand page, I found him. Only in this entry, James was listed as marrying someone named Lucy Brown—and the date was far from the 1851 date I had expected from the Ancestry entry. This entry was, unfortunately, undated, but it followed an entry dated January 30, 1813—not anywhere near 1851.

 

This, I'm presuming, could be James Heslop's first marriage. This first Lucy might have been the mother of William, James' heir according to his will, should the second Lucy Ann have failed to give her aging husband any children. This first Lucy may also have been the mother of the other son mentioned in James' will: Isham. Of either of those suppositions, though, I'd need more information before I can enter them as fact.

I did, after much more wandering, locate the promised marriage record for James Heslop and Lucy Ann McCalley in 1851. Let's just say the ministers in Spotsylvania County must have entered their marriage records when they got around to it. This Heslop marriage was part of a list of several line entries of such ceremonies.

There are so many gaps in the life story of James Heslop and his wives. To fill in the blanks, I'll need to locate a few more court documents—if, that is, I don't first haul myself out of this tempting rabbit hole and get back to business as promised.