Family History is All About Connections

 

Family history can sometimes seem like a solitary pursuit: the lone researcher, sequestered in her office or musty archive, poring over documents long forgotten in search of that elusive brick wall ancestor. That certainly is how it feels, at times. This week, though, one instance of a person reaching out to send a message set in motion a chain of events connecting several people who had never before met each other.

It all started with a message received on my Ancestry account. A genealogist was reaching out from a family association, in hopes I could connect her to a woman I had listed in my family tree. The genealogist wanted to find this woman in order to access photographs the woman had, years ago, written the genealogist to say she'd be willing to share, if ever the genealogist got around to writing the promised book on the woman's own family line.

Well, now was the time to write that book, but obviously, if the genealogist could find that woman's name in my family tree, it meant only one thing: the woman was no longer alive.

Despite her passing years ago, I clearly remember speaking with that woman when she was still alive, because she herself had published a book on my own family's McClellan line. It was a well-researched book, and I was so excited when I had found it that I purchased not only one copy for myself, but several more to give to family members.

Apparently, I gave away one too many copies of that book. Years later, looking for my copy, I couldn't find it. Nor could my sister find her copy—who knows what happened to the other copies. Trying to purchase another copy was unsuccessful; it was long out of print. Besides, by then, the author had passed away.

But then came that message at Ancestry from this other book-writing genealogist looking for the author of my family's story. And here I was, having moved on from my Florida-based research project last month, yet still looking for the descendants of those Townsend and Charles lines—one of which happened to marry a McClellan.

This month, I was still inputting Townsend, Charles, and McClellan descendants into my tree at Ancestry.com when up popped one of those ubiquitous hints: someone else also had that McClellan ancestor in their family tree. Usually, I don't use that hint option, choosing instead to rely on my own document-based research. But hey, wait a minute: the tree's owner was someone with that same surname. I think I found a cousin!

Looking closely at that tree, I realized the Ancestry subscriber happened to descend from that same specific branch as the McClellan author. Taking a chance, I reached out to that tree owner and told my story about the genealogist from the family association wanting to get copies of those pictures for a soon-to-be-published book. Could this person help? And, oh, by the way, any idea how I could get a copy of that book I lost from the tree owner's immediate family contacts?

There is something magical about posting a message online at night, then waking up the next morning with the answer I'd never expect to receive. I usually give my email address in notes I send via Ancestry's messaging service. What had just happened overnight was that that McClellan contact sent me a digitized version of the book I had long since lost—and promised to work on gathering those family photographs for the genealogist back at the family association, the one whose initial message had gotten this whole search rolling in the first place.

Each one of us sits on a treasure trove of our own family's history: the photos, the keepsakes and memorabilia, the stories. Those details are not just ours, though; they belong to all our cousins, close as well as distant. The blank spot in our tree might be the labeled photograph in someone else's pedigree; the letter passed down to us that was saved by our great-grandparents might have come from another cousin's great-grandmother.

Just as our families intertwined in those past generations of our greats and great-greats, so we can do once again in our interconnected world now. From fun family tree apps like FamilySearch's "Relatives Around Me" or the recent "Relatives at RootsTech," we have quick and easy tools at our fingertips to reach out and touch someone else's life—or at least their family history progress. Connections with cousins can make it possible for us to know the rest of our family's story.  

When Research Hopes go up in Flames

 

There were six men who shared the surname Boothe with my second great-grandfather in the 1840 census in Nansemond County, Virginia. One by one, I'll be looking at each man's household in earlier records in the hope that I'll discover the most likely one to have been Alexander Boothe's father. Because of what may have been an anomaly in county record keeping, I decided to start with one of the six by the name of Nathaniel Boothe.

Finding Nathaniel in other records started out easily enough. A death notice in The Norfolk Virginian on Friday, January 19, 1866, carried the story of his passing.

Mr. Nathaniel Boothe, one of the oldest and wealthiest men in the county of Nansemond, died a few days since. In his death the neighborhood in which he lived and the Christian church of which he was an exemplary member, sustains a severe loss. He was seventy-six years of age.

That article gave me a few helpful signs: that he died in the earliest days of 1866, and that he was of sufficient standing and worth to have left a will. It was that will that, more than any other document, I was keenly interested in viewing, in hopes that it would name all his surviving children. Whether my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe was mentioned in that document or not, finding the record would direct the next steps in my search.

Sure enough, going to FamilySearch.org Labs Full Text search, I located documents pertaining to this Nathaniel Boothe. They weren't, however, what I had hoped to see. 

One entry in the records showed Joseph Boothe appearing in court to signify under oath that he had entered into a bond in the amount of thirty thousand dollars and thus was to be issued letters of administration for his deceased father's estate. Sure enough, double checking on the Nansemond County Fiduciary Bond Book, there was the entry for Joseph Boothe, administrator of the estate of Nathaniel Boothe.

Oh oh. No will. So much for my first hope.

Curious to see the date of this court procedure, I flipped back a page in the record to find the beginning of the entry. Apparently, Joseph Boothe's entry was part of the monthly court session dated the twelfth of February in 1866. First order of business for that day's entries: a report from the clerk of the court that on the night of February 7, a fire in his office had destroyed the court records. The court appointed several men to investigate exactly what had been lost and how complete the damage had been—and I sped over to the FamilySearch wiki for Nansemond County to see the verdict. Yep: that was indeed the case. 

I had wondered why someone of such obvious financial success as Nathaniel Boothe would have neglected the business of recording his own final wishes. Could this have simply been the case of the document, having been drawn up, subsequently being destroyed by fire? But no, witnesses to such a will would have surely had a copy or known where to obtain one, once the testator had actually passed.

I thought, too, of how some people preferred to deed their possessions to family members ahead of time, but again, perhaps hampered by that same courthouse fire, I've found no record of such transactions. I'll still look further for any records of estate sales and distribution of the estate to family members when the case is closed. For now, though, while it looked possible, through the initial census records we viewed yesterday, that Alexander could have been that boy in Nathaniel's household in earlier years, unless we find more records, it would be impossible to say.

Image above from The Norfolk Virginian, January 19, 1866, page one, column three; courtesy GenealogyBank.

Considering Some Alternatives

 

When we're staring down brick wall ancestors, in negotiating the impasse, sometimes it helps to consider possible alternatives. That's what I'm ready to explore this week, since I can't find any records revealing much more about my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe's early years in Virginia.

Last week, when we explored tax records for Nansemond County, the Virginia location where Alexander supposedly originated, there was one entry that had caught my eye. The tax list for 1836 contained a litany of names of men in the county who were considered "persons chargeable" with tax, being white males above sixteen years of age. Among the names listed was an entry for someone named Nathaniel Boothe.

Directly below Nathaniel's entry in this tax roll was a note: "Do for Boothe, Alexander." Was that "Do" an abbreviation for "ditto"? No other entry on the page had such an introductory statement—just each man's name in the format of surname followed by given name.

Could this have implied that Alexander was a young man coming of age in Nathaniel's household? Since I hadn't been able to locate Alexander in census records before 1840—when he would have been about twenty four years of age—I thought Nathaniel might be a reasonable starting point for my experiment with all the Boothe men resident in Nansemond County to determine Alexander's likely father.

I've already identified six Boothe men resident in Nansemond County: besides Nathaniel, there were Robert, Henry, Andrew, Edmond, and Kinchea. For no other reason than the hunch flowing from that unusual entry in the tax ledger, I decided to pursue Nathaniel's records first, in hopes of finding a possible place for a younger Alexander at home with Nathaniel.

With that, I did a survey of all the census years I could access online for Nathaniel, beginning with the 1830 census and moving through to the 1860 census, the last one in which I could find his name. Whether Nathaniel was kin to Alexander, I can't yet tell, but this exercise helped draw a picture about the man's own life.

Here's what the numbers looked like. In 1830, Nathaniel's household contained only two free persons: one male between the ages of ten and fourteen, and another male between thirty and thirty nine. My guess: Nathaniel has lost his wife, the mother of the boy in the household.

By 1840, that scenario was rectified. Nathaniel's household now shows him ten years older, a tick mark in the category of male, ages forty through forty nine. Along with him is a woman in that same age bracket, indicating that Nathaniel has remarried. But there are surprises. There is, for instance, another woman about twenty years older than that, in the sixty to sixty-nine age bracket—the woman's widowed mother? And now there is a boy between the ages of five and nine.

Gone by then was any possibility of our Alexander being part of this household, for we've already located him in his one cameo appearance in Nansemond County before his migration to Tennessee. By 1840, Alexander was listed as a male between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine in his own household, along with a woman of that same age range, and a boy under the age of five, a clear indication that whatever household he might previously been a part of, this was the demarcation line.

But what about moving forward? After all, by the time of the 1850 census, we move into the arena of names listed for each member of the household. I had to take a peek at what Nathaniel's household looked like following that change in documentation. 

It will come as no surprise to see that Nathaniel was then listed as sixty years of age, having been born in Virginia. His wife now had a name—Mary—and was said to be fifty five years of age. The elder woman was, by 1850, no longer in their household, but the boy who had been under nine years of age in the last census now showed up as eighteen year old Joseph, having been born about 1832. Nathaniel's household was listed next to another Boothe household—that of a man named Andrew Boothe.

Moving one more decade, Nathaniel was still in Nansemond County for the 1860 census. This time, his age was listed as sixty nine, and he was still listed as born in Virginia. Mary, however, was no longer in the household, presumably having died before reaching the age of sixty five in that census year. Joseph was still in the household, though, as well as that former neighboring Boothe man by the name of Andrew—someone I had also spotted earlier in old tax records. Perhaps this is the beginning of seeing the family constellation take shape.

Could Alexander have fit into this family scenario? Possibly, if his wife Rachel's report of his year of birth as 1816 was correct—which it likely was, given the fact that he appeared in the 1836 tax record when he would have been twenty. If, however, Alexander was that fourteen year old boy in the 1830 census in Nathaniel's home, he would have been a child who had lost his mother at an early age, not the son of Mary.

Eventually, I'll repeat this exercise for the other Boothe men found in Nansemond County. As we've already seen with the appearance of Andrew in Nathaniel's household, this exercise may help provide more detail about the extended Boothe family in Nansemond County.

First, though, I'm tempted to start using the Full Text search at FamilySearch Labs to see if I can find any further information on Nathaniel Boothe, himself. A will, for instance, would make my day.

Not Sure What to Believe

 

Sometimes, in pursuing information on our brick wall ancestor, we can end up with too much information. That may be the case with my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe. I've pulled up so many records that I've hit the spot where I'm not sure which document to believe.

Last week, it seemed a fortunate moment to locate the widow's application for pension filled out by Alexander's wife, Rachel Riley Boothe. From the several pages of that application, I saw she claimed Alexander's date of birth was February 14 of 1816. That date seemed to fit reasonably well with other records where I had found Alex mentioned.

This week, however, tells a different story. And I'm not sure which one to believe. On the one hand, last week's discovery came supposedly from the mouth of Alexander's own wife. This week I've found his own appeal for disability benefits as a soldier serving in the Civil War—which, incidentally, was rejected. Guess what: the man gave his own date of birth as a quite different answer: July of 1828.

Now, wait a minute here. We already know from previously-found documents that Alexander had a son who was born about 1838. Of course, there can be mistakes on headstones, too, my main source of his year of birth. But if Alexander were really born in 1828, then his oldest child wouldn't have been born ten years later.

That also colors the other details I've found on Alexander a suspected shade of gray. It's almost as if the statements he made were not believable. How do you search for someone like that?

On the other hand, thinking of him as an unreliable witness to his own life story doesn't serve us well, for when we review some of the many tax records I've found for someone by that same name in Nansemond County, Virginia, by 1839, he was claiming to have been over sixteen years of age. Even embedded in his own pension application was a statement vouching for Alexander's reliability and good standing in his community, signed by several of his Tennessee neighbors, including a mayor, a former mayor, and a bank president.

One other detail gleaned from Alexander's pension application was his statement that he had lived in Tennessee for fifty two years. Since the application was drawn up in October of 1893, that would yield us an arrival date in that state around 1841. We already have spotted the household of one Alexander Boothe in Nansemond County, Virginia, in the 1840 census. Possibly he left his home town shortly after that point and headed for Tennessee. In that case, it makes more credible his second son David's claim that he was born in Tennessee, not Virginia.

While reading Alexander's statements in his pension application was an interesting—though conflicting—exercise, it didn't point me in any solid direction. (It did, however, yield me a possible sample of his signature.) It's time to head back to Virginia and experiment with the names of all the other Boothe residents of that county, to see whether any of them would be of an age to claim a son of Alexander's generation.

Rewinding Time

 

If we can't find our ancestor where he last lived, our next step is to rewind time and go back through the decades in search of earlier signs. For my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe, that meant setting aside all the details I could find on him in his adopted home in Washington County, Tennessee, and move back to his native Virginia.

Since we've already discovered documents stating that Alexander was born in Nancyman—er, Nansemond County, that's where we'll explore for signs of his existence this week. Since his widow reported that Alexander was born in that county in 1816, we've got a lot of documentation to cover. True, before the 1850 census, there wasn't much record-keeping that included the names of everyone appearing in a household, but there were other sources which would at least reveal the names of adult men in the community.

Looking through the tax records for Nansemond County was one such possibility. In that document, white men over the age of sixteen were included in the tax lists. Going over those records, year by year, made me realize that this would never have been a project I'd be able to undertake ten years ago—forget that, even three years ago. It would have been far too tedious a search—and even that is taking into consideration how digitized records saved me a trip to personally access them in some Virginia archive.

Now, I just log on to FamilySearch, where I went specifically to their Full Text search at FamilySearch Labs. From that vantage point, I began whittling down the 379 hits offered up for my simple search terms. For starters, even though I knew Alexander had long since left his home in Virginia, I looked at the tax list for 1850 to see if there were any other men still there who claimed the name Alexander Boothe. Thankfully, no one showed on that tax list, though there was a Nathaniel Boothe mentioned.

Then, I began rewinding the years, checking for Alexander in the 1840s. Nothing in 1848. Ditto 1847. By 1838, however, I found an entry for one man named Alexander Boothe, with a tick mark under the column for men over sixteen years of age. There, one Alexander claimed to own six slaves over twelve years of age, and two horses. Rewinding yet another year, and there was Alexander with four slaves and the same two horses.

By the time I rewound tax history to 1836, all I could find was an entry for Nathaniel Boothe with a note underneath his entry stating "Do" ("ditto") for Boothe, Alexander. Why the listing in that fashion? Was that a hint of a connection between the two? If Alexander was indeed born in 1816, that year's entry would have been for someone over sixteen years of age, yes, but someone who had not yet reached the age of majority.

Remembering that I had found an entry for one Alexander Boothe in the 1840 census, I checked to see who else might have lived in that county then with the same surname. According to the entries for the 1840 census—and taking into consideration that some indexing processes misread the surname as "Borthe"—I now had the names of Alexander's possible kin: besides Nathaniel, the list included Robert, Henry, Andrew, Edmond, and Kinchea.

Now it's time to put that list of possible names to good use with more exploration on the Full Text Search at FamilySearch Labs.

Perfectly Clear — and Inscrutable

 

How can handwriting be so perfectly clear, and yet not communicate the information we need? That's what had me stuck last week as I puzzled over Rachel Riley Boothe's application for a widow's pension.

Granted, there were some rough spots in the several pages of her application, like the place recording her answer about her husband Alexander Boothe's place of birth. Nancyman? Perhaps that meant Nansemond, a county in Virginia at the time of her 1906 application.

But when it came to a series of questions about her own background, I was both excited to glean more information and equally stymied by the content of her response. The official completing the form used the clearest handwriting for question number three: "When and where were you born and what was your maiden name?" And yet, for the answer about her place of birth, I am at a loss to find the designated location.

While it is obvious that the answer was entered piecemeal, as each section of the information was added. The handwriting for the date of birth and Rachel's maiden name, for instance, seems different—more compressed and smaller than the handwriting that provided the beginning of the answer.

For one thing, while the state name seemed to be misspelled, it is obvious that the answer was South Carolina. However, in retrospect now that we have the resources to view each decennial census, I can't say I am confident of even that answer. For one thing, the earlier census records—1850 and 1860—reported Rachel's place of birth as North Carolina. While anyone's guess is good for the enigmatic entry in the 1870 census, the answer "South Carolina" didn't appear until the 1880 census.

Perhaps it was Alexander himself who provided the answer about his wife's place of birth for those earliest records. An answer like North Carolina would make sense for those living in the northeastern edge of Tennessee, where North Carolina was just over the mountain range. But with the answer Rachel provided on her pension application leading me to a dead end, I wondered whether perhaps even she had gotten the two states mixed up.

The handwriting was so clear on her answer. I enlarged the copy to make sure I was seeing it correctly, though I already knew what I was seeing.

The trouble was, there was no such county by that name in either South Carolina or North Carolina. Remembering that Virginia had some "extinct" counties—after all, that's the case with Alexander's own place of birth, Nansemond County in Virginia—I tried looking for historic names. Remembering "Nancyman," I tried imagining how a county's name might have been spelled phonetically. Still, no clue as to what she meant by her answer. Tobarrass County? Lobarrass? Fobarrass?

Over the weekend, I chatted back and forth with fellow blogger, Charles Purvis of Carolina Family Roots, who offered to help figure out the South Carolina location. Charlie has been experimenting with Artificial Intelligence, and offered to run a few questions through two different systems: Perplexity.AI and ChatGPT.

Based on input regarding the possibility of phonetic spelling coupled with variances in regional accents plus challenges with literacy levels, Perplexity read the entry as "Starrass" and offered a possible answer of Starr, South Carolina. ChatGPT, taking a different approach, noted that the optical character recognition result was distorted but managed to read the entry as "Spartansburg," which obviously would refer to present-day county of Spartanburg.

While further input and refinements would make AI assistance more helpful—not to mention, it's likely a tool which we all could develop skill in using—I can't help but go back to the original document and stare at that crystal clear handwriting, just wondering what the clerk meant when his impeccable handwriting penned that entry. 

Considering "Nancyman" County

 

Brick wall ancestors demand a relentless push to find additional records in the hope that perhaps finding just one more, we'll receive our answer. So it's been with searching for the roots of my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe.

Late last week, I found a document which possibly confirmed Alexander's birth in Nansemond County, Virginia—well, almost. The document actually reported that Alexander Boothe was born in "Nancyman" County, Virginia, on February 14, 1816.

That document was my wakeup call to be creative and patient with handwritten records drawn up during oral interviews. In this case, the interview was with Alexander's second wife, Rachel Riley, in her 1906 plea to receive a pension as an indigent widow on account of her husband's service during the Civil War.

According to the government record of that interview, Alexander Booth served in Captain Hugh McClung's Tennessee Light Artillery company. (Apparently, not only Alexander served, but his son David may have, also.) His service, however, was cut short—"something over one year"—due to development of a disability, according to his wife Rachel's statement in the pension application.

From the time of his discharge, Alexander apparently remained home, and died in Johnson City, possibly going there for medical assistance, as that was not his place of residence. As to when he died, the pension application, although providing space to record that information, lacked any response marking in the date. That Alexander Boothe had died before Rachel's 1906 application is assumed—and at any rate, is more than certain by this date, though his humble grave marker simply indicated his name—"Alex Boothe"—and the initials C.S.A. to designated on which side he chose to serve.

Besides such missing answers in the pension application, there were other details which I hadn't before known about the Boothe family. From each little clue harvested from a newfound document, we take tiny steps forward toward discovering more about our brick wall ancestors. This application gives me a few more points we need to consider for this month's research goal.