Daniel and D N A

 

One use of DNA testing for genealogy is to help point us beyond brick wall ancestors to their possible parents. With my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe, I need that sort of help. Stuck as I've been with records from his birthplace in Nansemond County, Virginia, I thought this weekend might be a good time to jump to this other mode of research. After all, once the weekend is over, we do need to return to our search through early 1800s census records for the rest of the Boothe men mentioned in that federal enumeration.

One of the "helpful" tips at Ancestry.com's DNA ThruLines tool pointed me in the direction of possible parents for Alexander: a man named Daniel and his wife, the former Mary McAlexander. Sure enough, on ThruLines I had one DNA match said to have descended from their daughter Eveline. If, however, rather than looking at the matches for that daughter of Daniel Boothe, I looked at the ThruLines result for the proposed mother of my Alexander, there were actually matches from descendants of three children of Daniel and Mary: one match descending from Tamar, one from Sarah, as well as the one from Eveline.

Could any of this be correct? After all, though all DNA matches to descendants of a third great-grandparent will be slim,  they still could be viable connections if supported by reliable documentation.

I started looking for that paper trail. I began by searching for someone named Daniel Boothe with the dates provided by the trees of these DNA matches—though keeping in mind that ThruLines is a tool based not only on shared DNA but also a preponderance of subscribers' family trees which include this couple as their ancestors.

The dates for this Daniel Boothe showed a birth year in 1785, certainly nothing unreasonable. That would be an expected date for a father of a man born in 1816, like my Alexander. The date of death for Daniel was given as 1853. Again, nothing beyond a normal lifespan.

It was when I began looking more deeply into records associated with this Daniel Boothe that I ran into problems. With a given name like Daniel combined with a not-rare surname like Boothe, there were bound to be multiple possibilities. The further I looked, the more documents I pulled up, the less certain I was that my Alexander would be son of Daniel and Mary.

The bulk of the details convinced me to write up what I found, in hopes others might join in the conversation about whether we should collectively assert this as fact when the records don't seem to support the notion. Following the paper trail, though, will take more than one post—and will need to get in line behind Monday's focus on the one remaining Boothe man in Alexander's native Nansemond County. After Andrew on Monday, we'll take the requisite time to turn our attention to this other puzzle about Daniel.

Zooming Out

 

It has been a long five years since the pandemic caused our local society to abandon in-person meetings and exchange them for live online sessions. The funny thing was, though, once the restrictions were lifted and people were no longer required to remain isolated, our organization stuck to the status quo.

There were several reasons for that, first among them being that even our most tech-phobic members discovered the relative convenience of not having to drive somewhere on a blustery evening for the sheer reason of showing support to one's organization. Bunny slippers and hot chocolate or not, staying home is far easier than going anywhere.

Other reasons stood in our way as a group, as well. The onslaught of rising prices everywhere—from a cup of coffee to the gasoline to drive to the meeting—eventually conspired against us. When we used to see multiple offers of free space to use for our meetings, now we see dollar signs. And yet, our budget is constrained, too. It's far cheaper to maintain our website and host online meetings than it is to pay a rental fee for a year's worth of monthly meetings.

The down side to all that, I noticed, was perhaps something other groups might not experience: when we zoomed in to these handy online meetings, everyone sat still and listened to the speaker. Rare was the too-talkative member's interruptions (yet again) of the speaker; everyone was on mute. Even attempts at encouraging discussions among members seemed stilted, mostly a function of the technology, I suspect. The give and take of normal, everyday conversation just doesn't play well over online delivery.

For that reason, our board had been entertaining the idea of finding a way to meet again in person. If only occasionally, we wanted our talkative bunch to get together face to face once again. 

A few months ago, that reality began taking shape. One of our society's members had connections with the people who run our local FamilySearch Center, and asked about the possibility of their co-hosting one of our meetings. This week's meeting was the result of that open house gathering.

What happened at this in-person gathering, as the speaker's presentation finished, was that she recommended our members download the FamilySearch "Family Tree" app to their phone. On that app, she explained, was a section called "Relatives Around Me." Since I already knew there were several members who had already downloaded the app, I asked if we could all pull out our phones and try it during the gathering.

Almost immediately, people began calling out, "who's John?" or "who's Nancy?" We had several visitors for that meeting, so it became a time for people to meet each other—especially those people who, unbeknownst to them, might actually be distant cousins with someone else in the same room.

Of course, such calculations are only as good as the trees from which they are gleaned, but it was a great ice-breaker. Even more than that, I can't imagine any such form of interaction occurring, had we held a meeting like that online.

The electric energy level that carried through the next half hour, people sitting around computers, comparing notes on family trees, or sharing stories about research conquests or battles to overcome brick-wall ancestors—I can't imagine that happening online. Spontaneous life happens best in, well, real life. We can approximate it through technology. Make meeting easier through technology. But technology can't make life real. That comes with people reaching out to people, face to face in real life. 

The Ups and Downs of Unusual Names

 

Looking, as we have, for a given name as unusual as Kinchen might seem a positive for finding Kinchen Boothe's family history in Nansemond County. After all, when he lived there in the 1850s, the county's census record only counted twelve thousand residents. Surely there couldn't be that many Kinchens among that group.

Out of curiosity, I checked. Sure enough, there were only two men named Kinchen in the 1850 census for that county: Kinchen Boothe, and Kinchen Butler. That would seem to make my search through other records easier, just from the sheer rarity of that given name.

Think again. The difficulty with searching for what might seem like the gift of a rare name is that record keepers might not know what to do with something so novel as an unusual name. Over the records of the decades, for instance, I've seen Kinchen Boothe's name listed as "Kinchen," "Rinchen," and "Cinchen," complicating the search process with options I might otherwise never have guessed to use.

Still, emboldened by the rarity of that given name, I decided to try the FamilySearch Labs' Full Text search, in hopes of finding Kinchen Boothe's will. Remember, I'm still trying to find some indication of where, among all the Boothe families in Nansemond County, my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe might have fit in.

Did I find anything? You know I wouldn't be complaining if that search had been successful. There were very few hits for men named Kinchen—and most of them were for the Butler family, not the Boothe family. I did find a mention of Kinchen's son Abram in a Deed of Bargain and Sale, dated March 13, 1867. I had hoped that would be the indicator that Kinchen had passed, as his last appearance in a census record was in 1860. But there was no direct mention of Kinchen in the recording of the deed itself—which was to a man named James Henry Brinkley. Nor did I find Kinchen mentioned directly in the following entry on the same date, a Deed of Trust for the same sixty eight acres, this time from James Henry Brinkley to Joseph Boothe, who was listed as trustee for Abram Boothe. On second thought, perhaps this might not be Abram, son of Kinchen, after all. Hard to tell without finding more records.

Granted, searching for a more common name like Abram can have its down side, as well. However, researching the possible family trees of men named Abram Boothe in Nansemond County might help reveal reasons behind this exchange of property.

In the meantime, the trail has gone cold for Kinchen Boothe. Whether the configuration of his family in earlier census records actually indicated a spot for my Alexander, I can't say. The ages of the two sons we did find—Abram and Henry—clustered too closely to the edges of the age brackets given in those early census enumerations. There is, however, one more Boothe man we need to consider before we give up this effort to find Alexander Boothe's childhood family. We'll take a look at records for Andrew Boothe next week.  

Could Kinchen be Kin?

 

If my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe was born in Nansemond County, Virginia, then it would stand to reason that any of the other six Boothe men listed along with him in that county's 1840 census could possibly be kin—better yet, this brick wall ancestor's own father. We've already searched for records on three of those Boothe men—Nathaniel, Robert, and Henry—without finding convincing documentation, though the door is still open for possibilities with either Nathaniel or Robert.

Next, we'll consider another of the older men, in hopes that his records might indicate the possibility of a son the age of my Alexander who, according to his widow's Civil War pension application, was said to have been born in 1816. This man, Kinchen, made his appearance in the same 1840 census where I had found Alexander: in his native Nansemond County. There, Kinchen was listed as a man in his fifties, along with an unnamed wife said to be in her forties.

It was the listing of Kinchen's children which caught my eye. Kinchen reported one boy between the ages of ten and fourteen, another two in their upper teen years, and one man in his twenties. At the time of the 1840 census, my Alexander would have been twenty four years of age—if we can believe his wife's report about his date of birth—but by then, he was already married and showing in his own household. Could he have been reported in two entries?

Rewinding those census reports another ten years, though, would show a household which could have included a much younger and single Alexander. Could Kinchen's 1830 enumeration reveal a spot for Alexander? In that census, Kinchen actually reported five possible sons: one under five years of age, three between the ages of five and nine, and one between ten and fourteen years of age. At that point, Alexander would have been fourteen, putting him in the eldest age bracket for Kinchen's possible sons. Indeed, if we peek back another ten years to the 1820 census—where Kinchen was mislabeled as "Rinchin"—the only child in that household at the time was listed as a boy under the age of ten.

The catch in all this hopeful thinking is the difficulty in pinning ages within the brackets used in those pre-1850 census records. As it turns out, fast forwarding through time to the actual 1850 census, we discover the names of the two remaining sons in Kinchen's household. The younger was named Henry, who by then reported his age as twenty three, making his year of birth approximately 1827. The older remaining son was named Abram. And that is the sticking point: Abram's age was given as thirty, putting his year of birth at approximately 1820.

With a birth date in 1820, Abram could well have been that first son showing in the 1820 census as a child under ten. Thus, he would have been the one male in 1830 in the age bracket ten through fourteen—in other words, the only son in that category, the same grouping where we would expect Alexander to appear, if he were son of Kinchen.

That is a sticking point—if we could assume that year of birth were accurate. However, pushing ahead just one more decade to the 1860 census, Abram, now listed as head of the household which included his parents, gave his age as thirty nine, thus yielding a birth year of 1821, pushing him down to the second age bracket in the 1830 census.

Could Abram have been Kinchen's second-born son, and Alexander the eldest in this household? It's a moot point, seeing Alexander would have married and moved out of the household by 1840. I'm not too convinced, but it's hard to tell without further documentation. It's a vague possibility we need to keep in mind.

Finding a Missing Son

 

Questions about family composition become complicated, once our genealogical research pulls us behind the curtain of the 1850 census. Before that date, everyone but the head of each household becomes a nameless tick mark on a page in the enumeration. 

As we go through the possible Boothe men residing in Nansemond County, Virginia, during the 1840 census, we've been exploring each household's composition to see where a young man in his twenties might once have fit in before his marriage. The young man in question this month is my second great-grandfather, Alexander Boothe, who was born in Nansemond County about 1816, and lived there through the early 1840s, according to the one census record in which his name appeared.

So far, we've explored the possibility that Alexander might have been part of Nathaniel Boothe's household—but with no solid leads, thanks mostly to Nathaniel's intestate situation at the time of his death, plus a courthouse fire just as his son Joseph was appointed administrator of his estate. We've also begun working our way through the list of the other Boothe men resident in that county, according to the 1840 census, beginning with Robert Boothe.

Up through the 1830 census, it became apparent that Robert Boothe had two sons in his household. One son, as we discovered by pushing forward in time to that precedent-breaking 1850 census, was named Daniel, who was born about 1816, same as my Alexander Boothe, but who, unlike Alex, remained in Nansemond until his death in 1882.

However, Robert also had another son, according to that 1830 census—someone who would have been in his thirties by the time of the 1840 census. Could we assume, by the juxtaposition of Henry Boothe's name after Robert's own entry in the 1840 census, that Henry could have been that son? Or could it have been Alexander, with a vaguely incorrect year of birth? We'll need to take a look.

Just as I did yesterday in following Robert's own appearances in each decennial enumeration, we'll trace Henry's own census track record. Before 1840, as suspected, I couldn't find any entry specifically naming Henry in Nansemond County's results. But in 1840, Henry's household reportedly contained one male in his thirties, one girl under the age of five, and two young women between the ages of fifteen and nineteen.

That didn't paint too clear a picture of the family constellation. Even assuming the youngest girl were only one year of age, if either of the older girls were nineteen at the time—the upper limit of that age bracket—that would have meant a wife marrying at age eighteen. Granted, that was more than possible, but we don't want to assume anything here without checking for other confirmations.

That census, conveniently, was only ten years away from the record which named every member of the household. The 1850 census captured the details that the head of the household, Henry, was born in Nansemond County about 1809. Although this census did not specify relationships, the next entry was for a twenty eight year old woman named Mary J. Boothe—but she was followed by another household member also named Mary. This second Mary—Mary A.—was about fourteen years of age.

Looking to the next census in 1860 in hopes of finding clarification, we can see Henry and the elder Mary in a household which includes another Mary—but this time, the younger Mary's surname is Morgan, not Boothe. Along with this Mary was her supposed husband, Augustus Morgan, and a son, whom they named, predictably, Henry.

With this clue, I looked for any marriage confirmations, and fortunately found one helpful record. On May 24, 1858, this younger Mary from Henry's household married Augustus Morgan, son of a woman named Patsey Morgan. The record also confirmed that Mary's father was indeed Henry, although her mother was not the elder Mary in the 1850 household, but a woman named Amelia, thus calming my suspicions about the two Marys being too close in age to have been mother and daughter.

That resolved the question about the identity of the other son in Robert Boothe's earliest census records in 1820 and 1830, but what about Alexander Boothe? It seems clear that he couldn't have fit in that family grouping unless he had left the home as a young child before the 1820 census—an unlikely story.

With that question about Robert's other son resolved, it's time to move on to the rest of the Boothe men included in that 1840 enumeration. Our next focus: another Boothe man then in his fifties, Kinchen Boothe. 

About Robert — and His Sons

 

Running down the decennial census results in pre-1850 Nansemond County, Virginia, to assemble a list of Boothe households is my desperate attempt to figure out just who might be the father of Alexander Boothe. Alexander—or Alex, as he often was called after he moved to Tennessee—was my second great-grandfather, and the brick-wall end of the line for that part of my family tree.

If answers don't come easy, maybe the hard work will produce what I'm looking for. I've assembled the names of each of the Boothe heads of household listed in the 1840 census. The next step has been to see how far back I can go for each one of them, first with census records, then with tax and land records (and hopefully a will thrown in for good measure, though Nansemond County hasn't been helpful in the courthouse fire department).

In Robert Boothe's case, going through each decade's census has been informative. Granted, there are a lot of blanks to fill in and not much information to glean from the tick marks on those early census returns, but a possible story does emerge. Here's a brief tour of the findings.

Let's start with 1820, the earliest enumeration in which I could find Robert named. In that Boothe household, there was one man, aged between twenty six and forty four—I would presume that was Robert himself— plus two boys. One (presumed) son was aged between ten and fifteen, and a younger boy was under ten years of age. Rounding out the household was one girl under ten, and another young woman between sixteen and twenty five. The puzzling part was the addition of not one but two women over twenty five years of age, but below forty four—a wife and a sister, perhaps, but hard to tell without further guidance.

Moving ahead ten years, the household showed some predictable changes. The two boys had advanced by ten years for the 1830 census, with the younger one in his later teen years, the elder now a man in his twenties. There are some changes among the women from the last census: the youngest girl is now in her later teens, but in addition, there was only one other woman in her fifties. I suspect the other two girls were by now married, unless having lost their lives to the many diseases and dangers of the time. Robert himself was in the fifty to fifty nine age bracket, and extrapolating from his age bracket given in 1820, that would mean he was about fifty four or younger, possibly with a birth year on or before 1780.

By the 1840 census, this Boothe household had shrunken to three people: the younger son, now in his twenties, plus his parents, Robert and his wife.

The 1850 census provided the big reveal, at least for Robert's remaining son. Judging from Robert's given age, he was born in 1779. However, I am presuming his wife had, by this time, died, as the only woman remaining in the household, though of a right age, was named Honor Brasely. From this census, we also learn that Robert's son was named Daniel, born about 1814, making him the younger of the two male children from Robert's earlier census reports. And sure enough, finding Daniel's October 26, 1856, marriage record, we learn that his mother's given name was Christian, not Honor.

Seeing the big picture on the Robert Boothe family, I'm left wondering: who was Robert's older son, and what became of him? Perhaps that's where the next entry in the 1840 census comes in: the household of Henry Boothe.

Until the Cookie Crumbles

 

As Dennis the Menace once said, "If I can't have a horse, can I have a cookie?" If I can't find the will for Nathaniel Boothe, my second great-grandfather's possible father, can I at least uncover his family circle?

We've already run into the disappointing news that not only did Nathaniel Boothe not have a will—his son Joseph was appointed administrator of his estate—but that a courthouse fire had destroyed what records might have been in existence concerning any deeds in which he might have been named.

So what's next? I've already found a listing of five other Boothe men living in Nansemond County, Virginia, in the 1840 census. That was the last year in which my great-grandfather Alexander was listed as a resident of Virginia before moving to Tennessee. It's just a matter of going down the list to look for wills that bequeathed property to sons.

A likely next possibility might be another Boothe household in Nansemond County which seems to have the same composition as Alexander's own family in 1840: young man, young woman, and child. But when I pull up the enumeration for the first name on my Boothe list—for Robert, another household with three individuals—I immediately notice another tempting juxtaposition. Like Nathaniel and Alexander had been listed next to each other in a 1830s tax record, Robert's listing was immediately followed by the census entry for Henry Boothe.

Could this be another father and son possibility? In researching these two, even if I can't win the "horse" of my quest to discover Alexander's father, could I at least get the "cookie" of seeing a family constellation take shape?

However, rather than finding indications that Robert might be son of Henry, the details reveal a possible second narrative: that Robert and his wife might not only be the sixty-something parents of an unnamed son in his twenties shown in the census, but that he could also have been father to another son, as well. Alexander?

The next line down in the 1840 census shows Henry Boothe's household. The numbers in that enumeration show possibility of a different story than I had assumed, as well. Henry, in his thirties, has only young females in his household: two girls in their later teenage years, and a child under the age of five. Perhaps, as we had previously noted with Nathaniel's entry next to a possible brother, Andrew Boothe, Robert might be the younger brother of Henry, rather than his son, as I at first had surmised. 

Sometimes, we hope for a horse...and get a cookie. Sometimes, even the cookie crumbles. But we won't know until we take a closer look.