Ancestor Fatigue

 

It's been back to Pitt County, North Carolina, to put FamilySearch's Full Text Search through its paces. Entering my fourth great-grandfather's surname there by each of the two spelling variants—Tison and Tyson—I had plenty of documentation to consider. It looked like Pitt County might be tipping the genealogical scales in its favor with all the records this search for Job Tyson was providing. 

No matter how convenient it might be that FamilySearch's Full Text Search not only highlights my search terms but provides a transcription of the sometimes difficult to read handwriting, reading through court records of any time period can become wearying. In addition, with the Tyson family doing no differently than any affluent southern family of that time period in the 1700s by dealing in enslaved persons, there were several deeds entailing the trading of specific, named human beings. I was reaching ancestor fatigue in my search for Job Tyson's origin.

Then came two documents which were worthy of further consideration. One was an indenture drawn up on February 4, 1790—the same year in which we had found Job Tison listed in the census in South Carolina. The indenture named the two parties: John Tyson of Lincoln in North Carolina, and Job Tison in Pitt County, where the document was recorded. The purpose of the document was to record the exchange of property from John to Job for land on the north side of Black Swamp, for which Job paid what looked like 250 "Spanish mill'd dollars." 

The record noted that the land was originally patented by a man named John May on October 8, 1754, and apparently willed to his daughter, Elizabeth May. While the indenture was drawn up in February, the record noted that it was signed "in April Court" in 1790.

This caught my attention because 1790 was supposedly the year in which Job Tison married Sidnah, daughter of West Sheffield. Perhaps it was time to make arrangements to set up housekeeping.

A second document was of even more interest. Dated November 19, 1785, once again in Pitt County, this record was initiated by John Tison, with his residence this time listed as Pitt County. The record began, "for natural love and affection I have unto my grandson John Tison, son of Job Tison...." 

This line had my attention. Was this John Tison the answer to my research question for this month?

The record went on to detail a specific tract of land, lying on the east side of Black Swamp, originally patented to a Thomas Tison in 1738. The document also mentioned a second tract of land, granted to John Tison by "the Earl Granville."

This record, though drawn up toward the end of 1785, was presented in January Court in 1786. The names of two witnesses also caught my eye: Frederick Tison and Benjamin May. I was beginning to wonder whether names of the Tison collateral lines were unfolding before my eyes with these two documents.

But wait a minute. I had to think this thing over a bit. Maybe this ancestor fatigue was getting to me. It might have been great to discover a record which mentioned Job Tison, the very ancestor I've been looking for, but was it my Job Tison?

Hauling my mind back to reality, I looked up records I already had for Job Tison. Question number one: did my Job Tison have a son named John? And question number two: was he alive by 1786?

While my Job Tison did indeed have a son named John—John Mason Berrien Tison—he was born long after that record was drawn up in court in Pitt County, North Carolina. Indeed, if Job and Sidnah were married about 1790, there would not have been any children of this couple as early as 1785, let alone a grandson old enough to gain his grandfather's favor. 

While these two documents, to bleary, search-wearied eyes, may have seemed tempting, they simply do not work with the scenario already unfolding for the family of the Tison man who spend his adult life in Glynn County, Georgia. Perhaps a better approach would be to repeat the same exercise, only this time focus on the Beaufort District in South Carolina.

Juggling and Genealogy

 

Genealogy can be a juggling act, and my current obsession with the roots of Job Tyson has put me squarely in that category. I've been searching for my fourth great-grandfather's parents and birthplace, bouncing back and forth between several resources. Behind the scenes, I'm still grinding my way through a long list of DNA matches from the Tyson line. I've tapped the supercharged capabilities of FamilySearch's Full Text Search to find legal records. And I've relinquished hopes of finding Job, as supposed by others, in Pitt County, North Carolina and I've begun looking elsewhere.

I've also been hopping between online genealogy resources. And that's where I discovered something: depending on deciphering capabilities, one company's search engine might not snag the same details from handwritten documents as another company might.

Case in point (conveniently for me, involving our Job Tyson's story): the 1790 census. As you likely presumed, any forms used by enumerators for the first-ever United States census had to be hand-drawn as well as completed by hand. So searching for details on what information was included in such a tally might make the example from the National Archives seem deceiving. You'd have to scroll to the bottom of the census form posted on their website to read, "The U.S. Government did not furnish uniform printed schedules until 1830."

More pertinent to our situation was this information provided on the FamilySearch blog, stating the main categories covered in the nation's first population survey. The most glaring detail was the very length of the list: only six categories. Put simply, the 1790 census sought to gather data on who was eligible for military duty, should the need arise again. Questions included:

• Name of head of household
• Household's count of free white males 16 years of age or older
• Household's free white males under 16
• Household's free white females
• Any other free persons in the household
• Number of enslaved persons in the household

Of course, one of the hazards of preserving historic content over the centuries has been to keep it preserved, no matter how long it has been in existence. Every family historian has encountered those groan-worthy moments when we discover that some records simply haven't made it through the ravages of time.

Such has been the case with the 1790 census with returns of some states, some of which the United States Census Bureau has noted were destroyed by fires during the War of 1812. Happily, two states of interest in our pursuit of Job Tyson were not among those listed as lost by the Census Bureau.

One of those states, of course, was North Carolina, where some researchers had posited that Job Tyson once lived in Pitt County. And while I've found mention of many men with that surname—or its variant spelling, Tison—in Pitt County records, I've recently been exploring records from a second state: South Carolina.

Remembering last week's exploration of the friends and associates of Job Tison in his later years when he lived and died in Glynn County, Georgia, I'm just now beginning to connect the dots between Job and a man whose name had appeared on the Tison will, Charles McClellan. While my McClellan line also has me stumped as to their origins, I have verified that this was the Charles McClellan who was in my direct line. And I can see that there was a good possibility that the McClellans once lived in South Carolina. Might they have met up with Job at that location before they all moved to Georgia?

While I was unable to find Job Tyson in the 1790 census when I searched for him at Ancestry.com, checking FamilySearch.org yielded a surprising result: there was a Job Tison listed in the Beaufort District of South Carolina. That was the same location I've seen attributed to my McClellan line, as well.

The census entries seemed to be roughly alphabetized, and just a few lines below Job's entry was another Tison entry for someone named Aaron. Both heads of household had the same numerical entries listed next to their name: one male sixteen or over, one female member of the household, and one enslaved person. Whether Job and Aaron were brothers or cousins, I don't yet know, but at least this gives me some guidance as to where else to seek my Tyson line in those earlier years. I now have another category to add to my genealogy juggling act. 

Image above: 1790 U.S. Census entry for two Tison households in Beaufort District, South Carolina, courtesy of FamilySearch.org.

How Young is "Young"?

 

I confess: I'm getting impatient with Job Tyson's descendants. As I go, relative by relative through my Tyson DNA matches, I am not finding any who can shed light on Job's own origin. I even got impatient enough to try tracing his father-in-law's DNA matches, since West Sheffield was also said to have originated in the same colony as Job: North Carolina. When that yielded no guidance, I turned to my last resort: a visit to FamilySearch's Full Text Search to find any sign of Job Tyson—or Tison—in Pitt County, North Carolina.

Whether you consider the result of that search a success or not depends on how you might define the term, "young."

My first search result, looking for a Job Tyson in Pitt County, was for a legal notice in a Raleigh newspaper. In fact, that 1808 report seemed helpful in that it spelled out the names of several Tison family members, as such legal battles often do. But was it my Job Tison? I couldn't be sure, so I kept looking.

Eventually the Full Text Search results pointed me to an old history book, Henry T. King's 1911 work, Sketches of Pitt County. The book explained that "Deserters and Royalists who were too active" were often confined to local jails. Such was the case with the Pitt County jail. At that point, I ran into a curious entry:

Job Tyson, a young man, who had enlisted, after the fall of Charlestown, for the defense of the State, accepted a parole from Lord Cornwallis, when he passed through. Becoming uneasy for his safety, he fled to South Carolina, and not knowing, could not avail himself of the proclamations of conditional pardon. Having never taken up arms against the State, when he returned many of the most prominent citizens of the county petitioned Governor Burke for his pardon, which was no doubt granted. 

Was that our Job Tison? I had to look further.

Full Text Search had me covered. There was another entry among my search results. In volume sixteen of the transcribed State Records of North Carolina, was a legal entry. Addressed to His Excellency, Thomas Burke, Governor of the State of North Carolina, the petition read,

The inhabitants of Pitt County humbly sheweth: That Mr. Job Tyson having taken a parole from Lord Cornwallis...and hath not acted an inimical part against it, so far as to take up arms, but he being young and apprehensive, that his conduct was sufficient to bring him to severe punishment, left this State and went into South Carolina so that he being ignorant of the several proclamations offered to delinquents could not avail himself thereof. 

The petition went on to defend this Job Tyson as someone who had "taken up an active part in defense of this State...when the British first reduced Charlestown." Besides, the petitioners continued, since this Job was "a person intirely [sic] young," if the governor were to accept him back into the fold, the petitioners assured him that Job Tyson would "become a useful member of Society."

Hmmm...the fall of Charlestown? When might that have happened? I had to look that one up. The siege, it turned out, began on March 29, and lasted through May 12, 1780. The petition itself was drawn up in 1782.

Though the petitioners kept stressing the fact that this Job Tyson was "intirely" young and "apprehensive," I wouldn't have thought they were referring to a mere boy. Admittedly, I haven't found any documentation of Job's birthdate, let alone his place of birth. However, several women who applied for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution who were descendants of Job and his wife Sidnah (whose father was a Patriot) have given his year of birth as 1770.

If that 1770 date were correct, that would put our Job into those petitioners' scenario as a ten year old boy, "intirely" young, indeed. While the connection with Pitt County, and even his escape to South Carolina, may be tempting details to fold into our narrative, I'm not sure I'm ready to accept that apprehensive Job Tyson as my ancestor quite yet. 

Onward to search for more documentation. 

 

Cheering for Team Tison

 

What a ghost town our city became yesterday as we drew closer to the evening's kickoff. Four o'clock began the pre-game ritual on this side of the football nation, and six-lane streets here, usually packed with Sunday travelers, became empty enough for us to scoot across town without any trouble. Our day? After spending a delightful, almost-spring afternoon overlooking the river delta while sharing a pre-season ice cream, we returned home—my husband to some online games of a different kind, and I to cheer on the team for my current Tison puzzle.

That meant beginning the matching game for a long string of DNA cousins. All of them share one significant detail: relationship to my fourth great-grandfather Job Tison. Along the way, I've already encountered some incognito test-taking cousins, disguised by enigmatic monikers—but I've also met up with some dedicated researchers, including one distant cousin whose ample provisions on Find A Grave provided a thorough family history of at least one branch of the Tison descendants.

I can be grateful for such efforts. This particular researcher went so far as to include footnoted reports on individual members of the family—not to mention photos of numerous family members. These may be my fifth cousins, but after reading these thorough and carefully-crafted articles, I feel like I almost know them. I'd cheer for a team like that.

With only four of the first batch of ThruLines cousins reviewed—I'm starting with Job's son Aaron, for whom there are seven more matches to go—it will be a grind to work through all thirty four Tison DNA matches. So far, it seems this family line moved to the northern part of Florida, not far from the old Tison family home in Georgia, and stayed there for generations.

Hopefully, the process will lead to helpful clues enabling me to return to this month's research question concerning Job's parents and origin. If I encounter any more researchers as thorough as the one just found among Aaron Tison's descendants, that might indeed be a possibility.

Jumping Tracks

 

When it feels like I'm pounding my head against the same brick wall over and over again, it helps to just jump tracks for a while. It's time to try another approach to the question of Job Tison's origin.

One approach may be to check the DNA matches who have descended from this same Tison family. There are plenty of them to examine. Just at Ancestry.com's ThruLines listing, there are thirty four DNA matches to consider, both for my fourth great-grandfather Job and his wife, Sidnah Sheffield. 

If that isn't enough, I could combine approaches—the ThruLines DNA approach along with the F.A.N. Club concept—by jumping back one more generation through Job's father-in-law, West Sheffield, to see whether any of Job's Sheffield in-laws followed him to Georgia.

Even that approach, however, will take time. It requires examination of the lines of descent, checking carefully and corroborating with documentation, since not all generational outlines at ThruLines have been fully vetted. They basically provide a popular vote of who everyone thinks the greats- and great-greats might have been.

Having started with Job Tison's eldest son, Aaron, I've already begun the long slide down to the present, building my family tree out, document by document, to confirm the closest of my Tison DNA matches from his line. For my first Tison DNA match, that route led me, predictably, to a fifth cousin. With that encouraging start, I'll be spending more time behind the scenes, rehearsing the generations descending, first from Aaron, then moving to Job's other children's lines, one by one. Besides my own direct line through Sidney Tison McClellan, I have DNA matches from the line of Job's daughter Melinda, and Job's son John Mason Berrien Tison.

This should keep me busy for quite some time. Hopefully, one of these lines may provide a clue linking the family back to Job's siblings, maybe even parents, from his birthplace, whether it was in North Carolina or elsewhere.

When Friends Become Family

 

While conducting a search for the friends, associates, and neighbors of a brick wall ancestor may seem rigorous, the effort doesn't seem so daunting when you realize some members of a "F.A.N. Club" eventually become family. As we explore the Georgia men behind the names appearing in Job Tyson's will—and then in the will of West Sheffield—we'll find additional intermingling with that one surname appearing in the Tyson legal documents: McClellan.

Two McClellan men in 1824 witnessed Job Tyson's will. One, whose identity I don't yet know, was named Joseph McClellan—the same name, albeit not the same middle initial, as the McClellan mentioned in West Sheffield's own will. Later in that same year of 1824, Joseph personally appeared in court in Glynn County, Georgia, to confirm that the document in question was indeed the last will of Job Tyson.

The other McClellan man whose signature was affixed to the Tyson will was Charles McClellan, who eventually became father-in-law of Job's daughter Sidnah. Charles thus was my fourth great-grandfather, whose McClellan line has been a focus of my research for years. Researching the extended McClellan family line meant discovering that Charles had a brother, Andrew, who also seemed to move in tandem with Charles over the years, helping to track them back to their supposed origin.

While it is frankly possible to be misled by reporting parties of centuries long gone, all we can do is work to corroborate the reports we find. In the McClellan case, any hopes of finding the brothers in the same pre-Georgia locations as Job Tyson were dashed. When we fast-forward to the 1850 census for the first chance to view such information, Sidnah's husband George McClellan reported his birthplace to be in South Carolina, not the North Carolina location attributed by reports to Job Tyson.

In fact, I was able to find entries in the 1800 census for two households—one for George's father Charles, the other for Charles' brother Andrew—in the Orangeburg District of South Carolina. It took a lot of exploring to find anyone related to this F.A.N. club who was connected to a North Carolina origin. That family was headed by Jacob Highsmith, who was father-in-law of Andrew McClellan. Andrew's wife Sarah was said to have been born in Pitt County, North Carolina. Indeed, turning to the 1800 census for Pitt County, there was Sarah's father Jacob Highsmith heading the top of this page in the record.

Since we're now in the neighborhood, I couldn't help but take a look at the Tison entries there. Sure enough, there were plenty of Tisons in Pitt County in 1800, including that one I had previously mentioned, for "Joab" Tison. Same as our Job? Hard to tell at this point. I'd still like to find more details on Job's origin before presuming we have found our answer.

Friends, Associates, and Matchmakers

 

What better way to determine an ancestor's origin than to discover where he met his future spouse? If puzzling over just how Job Tyson first met the good friends who witnessed his will didn't provide us any guidance, there are others in the Tyson "F.A.N. Club"—friends, associates, and neighbors—who could still help point the way for us. Perhaps they even played the role of matchmakers.

One of those other F.A.N. Club possibilities was a man named West Sheffield, father of Sidnah Sheffield, who eventually became Job Tyson's wife. Fortunately for us in this exploration, unlike Sidnah who, like most women of the early 1800s, was virtually invisible, her father West Sheffield left a paper trail of useful documents.

Since West Sheffield served in the American Revolution, there are some records concerning key points of his life. He was, for instance, recipient of both land grants for his service in the war, as well as headrights for land in Camden County, Georgia as early as 1812. While Camden County was near Job Tyson's Georgia residence in Glynn County, Job's marriage to West Sheffield's daughter about 1790 may have indicated that the two families met elsewhere, as so far, I have found no records of residence in Georgia before that early 1800s date.

Job Tyson's wife outlived him by over twenty years. Fortunately for us, Sidnah lived until 1855, leaving us a trace of her reported earlier whereabouts through her entry in the 1850 census. To find that, though, means learning that after Job's death, Sidnah quickly remarried. Thus in 1850, by then twice-widowed, Sidnah, now surnamed Peck, was living in her own household next door to her son John Tison. She reported for herself her birthplace in—wait for it—North Carolina.

The question, of course, would be whether Sidnah met her intended, Job Tyson, back in her native state, or somewhere else. Keeping in mind that her father West Sheffield was a Patriot, I checked for his record through the D.A.R. website. There, his record stated that while he served from Georgia, he was born in North Carolina in 1747. Indeed, looking at a published biographical sketch of West Sheffield, obtained from volume 3 of Folks Huxford's Pioneers of Wiregrass Georgia, the writer gave Sidnah's year of birth as 1776. Was the Sheffield family living in North Carolina then, if her father served in Georgia?

By the time of Sidnah's wedding, it's unclear where her family was located. I have so far been unable to locate a marriage record. Still, if we fast-forward to the 1850 census for each of her oldest three daughters, they were reported to have been born in the earliest years of the 1800s in Georgia, not in North Carolina.

With that possibility exhausted of finding any link to tie Job Tyson back to his parents' home in any location other than Georgia, there is one more lead to explore for this examination of the Tyson F.A.N. Club. When I reviewed West Sheffield's own will, I noticed a familiar name pop up among the witnesses: McClellan. That, as I had mentioned yesterday, was a surname appearing twice in Job Tyson's own will—first for witness Charles McClellan, and then another entry for someone listed originally as "J. H." McClellan, and then spelled out as Joseph H. McClellan.

Looking now at West Sheffield's own will from 1830, someone listed as "J. A." McClellan, then signed as Joseph McClellan, once again made an appearance. Could this Joseph be the same as the witness in the Tyson will? If so, we need to see what we can find about the origin of those McClellans.