Who Got the Money?

 

Now that we've figured out the parents of my third great-grandfather Thomas Firth Rainey and seen him labeled as the son of Isham Rainey and Sarah Firth, it's time to revisit that pile of legal papers assembled in Monroe County, Mississippi, at the time of Isham's passing. 

Normally, a will would clearly spell out the surviving descendants, but we don't have such a convenience, as Isham apparently died intestate. What we do have is a file of court records, complete with scraps of paper containing handwritten notes by all the men who felt that Isham's estate owed them money. In other words, what we now have to sort through is a mess. And the only reason I'd be sorting through this file, page by scribbled page, is to determine just who got the money. I want to know who his children were.

There are a few clearly labeled documents in the file, thankfully—such as this letter to the court by one woman named Elizabeth Arnold. According to her letter, she was appointing Uriah Duncan as her attorney, to ensure that she received the "proportionable share" of her father's estate.

Back in Oglethorpe County in Georgia, where Isham's son Thomas once lived, three people jointly sent a letter to the court in Mississippi. They were James A. Mealer, John M. Mealer, and Mary Ann Mealer, who together were appointing George Mealer of Lowndes County, Mississippi, to serve as their attorney in representing their rights as the grandchildren of the deceased Isham Rainey.

There were, of course, numerous others sending notes to the court to make sure that money owed to them from the Rainey estate did indeed make its way to its creditors. All that takes time to follow.

Though there were many lining up to claim their due from the administrators of the estate, the ones I'm interested in will be the ones who could demonstrate their legal right to an inheritance from that same pot of money—if any was left after that long line of inquiring creditors received their due. Perhaps it is a good thing that I have a weekend ahead of me to read through all those statements.

Revisiting Virginia

 

Over fifty years after the fact, Thomas F. Rainey reported that he had been born in the state of Virginia. While the sole location of any documents I had been able to find for this third great-grandfather of mine had been the state of Georgia, where he had married his wife and raised his family, I've now been able to connect him to someone who had died in Mississippi. But Virginia? What were my chances for finding Thomas by searching through an entire state?

The 1850 census showed that Georgia resident Thomas Rainey had reported his age to have been fifty three at that time. Hence, a birth year of approximately 1797, right? At that point, Virginia's population would have been around eight hundred thousand. What were my chances of finding him in a crowd that size?

I decided to look, anyhow. But not for Thomas, himself. Instead, I tried my hand at searching for his father whose gift—at least to me—was the more unusual name Isham.

One item that stood out for me in that quixotic search was a marriage entry in a Virginia ledger preserved from Brunswick County. Dated July 31, 1794, it named Isham "Raney" as the groom. Granted, I still had my doubts that he would be the only person with that name among eight hundred thousand residents. But seeing the name of the bride made all the difference.

Her name? Sarah Firth. The very name represented by the middle initial "F" in Thomas Rainey's own name.

Image above: Line item entry from the Brunswick County, Virginia, marriage ledger as transcribed by The Virginia State Library; image courtesy of FamilySearch.org.   

Isham in Mississippi

 

If, in 1844, the Coweta County, Georgia, court appointed resident Thomas F. Rainey as administrator of the estate of a deceased man named Isham Rainey, what connection between the two would make such an appointment reasonable? Considering that this Isham Rainey had died not in Georgia but in Mississippi, there must have been a significant link between these two men.

I decided to check the records available for Mississippi during that time period to look for anyone by that same name, Isham Rainey. Whether I found the right one will apparently take quite a bit more reading, but I did locate one document regarding the administrators for the estate of one Isham Rainey in Monroe County, Mississippi.

Granted, Monroe County in the 1840s boasted a population of under ten thousand people, but its population, based on census returns, was more than doubling every ten years. The appearance of this Isham Rainey in court records could be a case of a name twin.

The trouble with this document was in the listing of the named administrators. Just like the record we had found yesterday from the Georgia county court, it named more than one man as administrator. There was, however, a problem. While the Georgia appointment named Thomas Rainey as administrator along with a man named Jonathan Lee, the Mississippi record identified someone named H. W. Allen heading up an unnamed group.

In opening up the first pages of the file, though, I barely needed to look farther before spotting one detail: the heading on the next page included the name Thomas F. Rainey. One page beyond that, complete with ink blots and crossed out letters, included the unclear entry, "Isham Rainey paid the above account for Thos. F. Rainey his son."

The complete file—which I have yet to finish reading—contained an accounting of the then-current estate of the man said to be Thomas Rainey's father. If this Isham Rainey in Mississippi was indeed the father of the Thomas F. Rainey then living in Coweta County, Georgia, this little slip of paper was indeed a fortunate find.

Still, I'm unable to quell the doubt, "What if this was a different Isham Rainey who also just happened to name his son Thomas?" Since our Thomas had, years later, reported his birthplace to have been in yet another state—Virginia—the next reasonable stop in checking out this wandering Isham would be to rewind the clock and see if he could be found listed in any records back in Virginia.

Above: Handwritten note inserted into the file including the estate records of Isham Rainey of Monroe County, Mississippi; courtesy of Ancestry.com. 

Is Isham the One?

Finding a name like Isham Rainey in the 1830 census, right in the same Georgia county where my third great-grandfather Thomas Rainey had settled, was encouraging. As rare a name as Isham might have been, though, that was no guarantee that Thomas' neighbor by the same surname was his father. I had to wonder, is this Isham the one? Or was he a brother, a cousin, or even someone totally unrelated?

Granted, Oglethorpe County in 1830 had thirteen thousand residents. I suppose there could have been a name twin in the mix of a crowd that size. But Isham was indeed a less common name. Though an infographic from Ancestry.com—not surprisingly, the genealogy company features details on many given names—attributes an Arabic origin to the name Isham, it also mentioned that according to their data, the country with the most men named Isham is the United States. But don't assume that's today's details; according to that same infographic, the year in which the U.S. had the most people born with that name was 1840—just about ten years after this census record helped me spot that Rainey name.

So, where did such a name come from? One quick detail from Wikipedia noted that Isham is actually the name of a village and civil parish in Northamptonshire, England. It apparently became a surname, also from England. Eventually, as names sometimes do, that surname became a given name; third U.S. president Thomas Jefferson, for instance, had a maternal grandfather named Isham Randolph (though his own mother's maiden name was Isham). In fact, I found a genealogy book filled with details on eight hundred years of family history for one line claiming that surname.

Does that make this Isham Rainey kin to the famous families of colonial America? I doubt it. But I did find an interesting document, filed in 1844 in the Georgia county where Thomas Rainey had, by that time, moved, naming him and another man as administrators of the estate of the late Isham Rainey, senior, of Mississippi.

While that document doesn't necessarily explain the connection between Isham Rainey and Thomas Rainey, the five hundred dollars bond posted by the two named administrators certainly infers more than a passing acquaintance in the old neighborhood.    

While We're Still in the Neighborhood

 

Last week, I had speculated that a thorough search through records from the late 1700s or early 1800s in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, might help tell the tale of just who else migrated from Virginia to Georgia after the American Revolution. That, I already knew, was the story behind my Taliaferro fourth great-grandparents' migration south to the area around the Broad River valley. I had wondered whether the same would hold true for this month's focus from my Twelve Most Wanted, my third great-grandfather Thomas F. Rainey. After all, that's where he met up with his future bride, Mary Elizabeth Taliaferro.

While working on records from this neighborhood, I thought I'd delve into this possibility further. Since the couple married in 1818, I tried my hand at the digitized copy of the subsequent 1820 census first. I could barely make out the name Thomas F. "Raney" toward the bottom of one page, but have struggled to read through the rest of the listings. No other possible family members' names have jumped out at me so far.

When I moved ahead to the 1830 census in Oglethorpe County, however, I found a different scenario.

In the same neighborhood as Thomas "Raney," I spotted a few other possibilities. One was the name of Nicholas Powers. He, you may remember, was the minister who had performed the wedding ceremony for Thomas and his bride, Mary Elizabeth Taliaferro—after having just married Mary Elizabeth's widowed mother, himself.

As my squinting eyes searched farther down the list, I spotted another name of interest. This other person, like Thomas, also was surnamed "Raney" and went by the first name Isham. That unusual name I had seen elsewhere: Thomas Rainey had given one of his younger children that same name. 

There was one problem with that discovery. Thomas' son Isham Rainey was born about 1840. And this name I had found in the 1830 census.

Something worth following up on? You bet.

Above image: excerpt from the 1830 U.S. Census for Oglethorpe County, Georgia, containing the names of heads of household for two Raney families; courtesy of Ancestry.com.

My #NotAtRootsTech Week

 

Well, it's been a week. Amend that: not only was it a week, but it was a week when I wasn't even a stay-at-home #NotAtRootsTech participant.

There are a few reasons for that. To start with, the past week has been rough. Along with a co-instructor, I've begun a new, four-part genealogy class in person—something I've long felt the need to do. Doing stuff in person takes time, effort, travel, and other logistics. No wonder people prefer the convenience of Zooming in—but I firmly believe we miss something in the bargain.

Add to that, with beautiful spring weather comes a long-awaited construction project for our home, held at bay during the rainy weather last month. Only problem: those convenient virtual meetings used to conduct genealogy society business during the week also find a way to share the hammering, sawing, and drilling occurring outside my now-demolished living room wall. If I knew this was going to be the week the demo actually happened, perhaps I would have made this my week to travel to RootsTech in person.

Not to worry; I can always go back and watch the recordings. Sure, I'll miss out on the great sales exploding out of the exhibit hall, even for those #NotAtRootsTech. But perhaps some time later in the year will be more peaceful—or at least conducive to watching reruns of RootsTech sessions.

Who am I kidding here? Truth be told, what I was doing in my "spare" time was hyper-fixating on my latest project: examining all those Rainey DNA matches to see who their matches might have been, and whether those shared matches might tie me in to the other branches of Thomas Firth Rainey's family tree.

And I think, after several iterations of that process—did I mention the word "tedious"?—I may have found one new connection. I'll keep at it next week, as well. But it's encouraging to find a match which may well lead me to other connections to my third great-grandfather in this Rainey line. I need some wiggle room to explore his possible extended family.

Not Looking for Names Alone

 

Whether names alone can provide a clue to guide me backwards in time as I research the roots of my third great-grandfather Thomas Firth Rainey, coupling that detail with DNA matches can give this search added insurance.

While behind the scenes, I've been scouring numerous court documents related to possible Rainey family members, I thought I'd pop over to check out how many DNA matches on Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool might reveal a connection.

One standout echoed what I was hoping for yesterday: a namesake who clearly was related to my Thomas Firth Rainey. No surprise with this discovery: the category with the most DNA matches in this family, according to ThruLines, belonged to the son who was named after his own father. 

The junior Thomas Firth Rainey gives me twenty out of twenty seven DNA matches linked to the Rainey surname. That far supersedes the number of DNA matches connected to my own direct line ancestor, Thomas senior's daughter with the impossibly long name, Mary Elizabeth Warren Taliaferro Rainey.

I suspect there may be more Rainey matches who have not yet been pointed out by Ancestry's ThruLines tool. One way to check will be to explore the ProTools' "Shared Matches" function to see whether I can spot any more results. After all, since Thomas and his wife had at least ten children, there should be more Rainey DNA matches out there to find. Right now, ThruLines only spotted descendants of four children—so far.

In hopes of discovering more DNA matches connected to this Rainey patriarch, I'll be adding that task to those behind-the-scenes explorations to do as this month unfolds.