Where There's a Will . . .

 

Succeeding with this month's research project to find the names of my third great-grandfather Thomas Rainey's parents—Isham Rainey and Sally Firth—I've since gone beyond that and found mention of Sally's name in her father's will. With wills being what they are—and since I also am using DNA to connect the dots between distant cousins—I couldn't pass up the chance to take a closer look at that earlier generation. After all, where there's a will, there's a chance I can find a mention of the entire family.

Sally Firth, wife of Isham Rainey, was apparently daughter of Thomas Firth and his wife, also named Sally. It was not hard, once the original document pointed me back to Brunswick County, Virginia, to locate Thomas Firth's 1794 will. From there, a reading of the simple will provided the names of Sally Firth Rainey's surviving siblings, something I'd like to review today.

The elder Thomas Firth first named his sons in his will, beginning with son William, then mentioning his namesake son, Thomas Firth junior. Then the document moved to the daughters, beginning with Polly B. Firth, then Betsey B. Rawlings, Sally Firth, and last, the youngest daughter, Rebekah Firth.

Since the senior Thomas Firth would have been my fifth great-grandfather, his relationship was still within range to yield some possible DNA matches—slim connections, but there, nonetheless.

Now that I have those names of the elder Thomas Firth's children, I'll be working on the lines of each of these descendants to see whether I have any DNA matches among those collateral lines. You never know when a detail discovered while exploring a sibling's line might reveal the answer to a fact about our own direct line that may have had us stumped up to this point.

Sally Firth

 

Ever since the 1980s, there has been a comic strip featuring a title I love: "Sally Forth." The title itself is a play on words, calling to mind the phrase which essentially means to launch out on an adventure. How apropos it has been to discover, in this month's research adventure, that the ancestor whose parents I've been chasing through centuries-old documents turns out to have a mother who claimed a slightly-morphed version of that same "Sally Forth" name. Only, in this case, her name was Sally Firth.

It was earlier this month, in slogging through mind-numbingly tedious court documents, that we discovered Thomas Firth Rainey's mother was named Sarah Firth. Yet, since one nickname often used for the given name Sarah has been Sally, that is exactly how I found her name documented in yet another court document. 

This time, her name appeared in an even older record, that of the will of her father, drawn up in Brunswick County, Virginia, in June of 1794. His name? Thomas Firth, providing a fuller explanation of just how my third great-grandfather received his own name. Not only did his middle name reflect his mother's maiden name, but his full name clearly linked him to his maternal grandfather, who likely died the very month that my third great-grandparent's parents were married.

So far for this month's research goal, we've discovered the names of Thomas Firth Rainey's parents—and now, the identity of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Firth. In addition, the will revealed that the elder Thomas was married to a woman also identified as Sally.

Whether the senior Sally was mother of the younger Sally, I can't tell, but the pull of the identical names lends credibility to that possibility. Since we've got quite a bit more time to pursue this research project for this month, perhaps that will become clearer before we need to move on to April's challenge. 

Advancements to the Heirs

 

In the Monroe County, Mississippi, court records assembled in the administration of the estate of Isham Rainey was one page inserted with the label, "A Bill of advancements to the heirs of the Estate of Isham Rainey, decd."

That, precisely, was what I was looking for. In the jumble, however, I couldn't be sure that the preceding scanned entry was the reverse side of that label. However, there were enough names ending in "Rainey" entered in that list to make me decide to save it for future reference.

What was recorded on that previous scanned entry was a mostly legible note reading,

The undersigned agree that they have received from Isham Rainy dec'd in his lifetime [?] the sums respectively charged to them in the above acct. 7th Jan'y 1845.

Whether that was the settlement to heirs or an exchange for a different financial transaction, I can't tell. The court records seemed to be filed in disarray, so there was no guarantee that the sequence of appearance held any significance. But the list introduces several more Rainey family members than I had previously been aware of—a good list to hold close for this month's project.

The list was headed by the signature of Thomas F. Rainey, Isham's son and one of the administrators of his estate. That known name was followed by some other Rainey family members I still need to identify, beginning with William Rainey. George W. Mealer we first encountered last Friday as the representative of some of Isham's grandchildren of the same Mealer surname. Uriah Duncan we likewise saw last Friday as a representative of one of Isham's daughters. Then came H. C. Rainey, unknown to me so far, and another Isham Rainey, possibly the deceased man's grandson, son of Thomas. An illegible signature appears to be W. R. Broo---, followed by H. W. Allen, and yet another Rainey family member whose signature appears to be W. P. Rainey.

How these names fit into the family constellation—if at all, in some cases—may help build that branch of the family tree in answer to my research question for this half-over month.

Image above from the 1845 Monroe County, Mississippi, probate file of Isham Rainey, deceased, courtesy of Ancestry.com.

Mixed Goals, Mixed Results

 

Having a research goal is good policy; focusing on one specific detail hones attention. Having multiple projects in the air all at once is good juggling practice, but it doesn't always yield the results we were hoping for. So far this month, mixing research goals has produced mixed results. And for those results, my biweekly count only reveals part of the picture.

In the past two weeks, I've mostly been focusing on my March research project: discovering the parents of my third great-grandfather, Thomas F. Rainey. Looking at this latest count, I can see I did make progress: I added eighty two additional names to my family tree. Mostly, these were collateral lines gleaned from names mentioned in court records, with their descendants also connected to the picture.

Included in that effort was a review of DNA matches uncovered either by the ThruLines tool at Ancestry.com or the ProTools option to view Shared Matches. But I also got a bit off the selected path for this month's Twelve Most Wanted, thanks to the unexpected revelation of an adoptee who turned out to be a close relative, a most welcome addition to that same family tree, which now has grown to 41,804 documented relatives.

That, however, wasn't the full tale of this multiple-goal fortnight. A welcome email from my husband's niece started me down a different family path, building out a branch on her father's tree which resulted in forty more names on my in-laws' tree. So that count gets upped to 41,793—a tree which will see regular growth come next month, when I shift my focus to my mother-in-law's branches of that tree.

Granted, trawling through pages upon pages of court-recorded family disputes can slow down progress with my count—but gives a clearer picture of family dynamics, for sure. That will be the path for next week's research on the Rainey family and related branches, and those endless pages of court records as we sort through the remains of Isham Rainey's estate in Mississippi.

A Different Kind of Surprise

 

I have a confession to make. It has to do with all those saccharine TV and magazine stories about adoptees meeting their birth family. While the stories may be sweet—even heartwarming—they almost seem to me to be just a little bit too effervescent. As in, over the top. I've always wondered whether the journalists producing the stories—not to mention the companies sponsoring such stories—put just a little bit too much icing on top of an otherwise interesting story. After all, there may be more DNA kits to sell in the process.

Well, that's what I thought until last month, when I got a message from another Ancestry.com subscriber. In a letter that couldn't have been more considerately written by "Your DNA Guide" Diahan Southard herself, a total stranger reached out to explain that we share far more centiMorgans than most other relatives could have expected.

This stranger happened to be an adoptee. And I unwittingly happened to be a close relative.

Carefully and cautiously, we bridged the gap between strangerhood and close family connection. First through the anonymous channels of Ancestry's messaging system, then gradually to email, we eventually took the next step to a phone call.

At the time of that first call, I happened to be accompanying my husband on a business trip. Far from home in a hotel room where nothing was familiar, I placed the call and made the first tentative exchanges of small talk. By this time, I had gathered enough information to figure out the possible connection between us and began explaining that theory, while the person on the other end of the line shared a review of the independent research—actually, the guessing game—that led to unsealing adoption papers and discovering the once-redacted story.

We talked for an entire hour, a surprise to me when I realized how quickly the time had passed. If it weren't for an upcoming appointment I had that next hour, I could easily have stayed on the line and chatted for much longer.

Why? Well, this is the point: no matter how cheesy those adoptee reunion news stories may sound to strangers, there is something uncanny about the experience of connecting with a close relative you never knew you had. Granted, that one phone call might have been an exception, a time shared between two people who can really keep a conversation going. But it wasn't a one-off; our next phone call easily lasted for two hours. And we both have been amazed at the unexpected sense of connection. How can that be?

The more I study genetic genealogy, the more it has always left me in awe. But this most recent discovery has reached beyond that. Much like the experiences I've mentioned years ago, when transcribing World War II letters home from my father-in-law—my husband would find himself thinking, "I would have written it that way, too," even though his father died when he was barely five years of age—this new connection between close relatives who never knew each other has been just as awe-inspiring.

We play with chromosome segments and centiMorgan counts as if we were working math equations, but those finite numbers are the measure of something far more intangible about life. Yes, it's great to find a new DNA match, but it's the mystery buried deep inside the genetic substance that holds me entranced. How does something so small as that direct such vitally expressive connections between otherwise total strangers?

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.