You’ll Need a Scorecard For This One

If you have been among those readers of A Family Tapestry who have been clamoring for a scorecard to keep all these ancestors straight, I want to let you know up front: I’ve been working on that.

I also want to cut to the chase and tell you: my idea didn’t work.

It had dawned on me that the simplest way to resolve that dilemma over presenting these various family tree details visually would be to cut and paste the information from my files at Ancestry.com. So, for today’s post, I pulled up the chart labeled “Family” and took a look at how I could copy the graphic.

Well, if you are familiar with the way Ancestry.com puts together their family charts, for families with a large number of children, the lines are sometimes displaced to make room for all those little boxes. To cut and paste the pertinent parts of my maternal grandmother’s family tree would mean a very long graphic shrunk down to fit everything in—in other words, to an unreadable level.

So, I switched to Pedigree view. Of course, that cuts out all the details on siblings for each generation. At least it will give you a sense of how the generations fit. I’ll have to fill in the rest of the detail with my own narrative. But hopefully, it will help.

Let’s go back to yesterday’s post, where my grandmother’s aunt had sent her the note about buying the book written by her relative, Montague Laffitte Boyd, M.D. Her aunt had tried to explain the relationship between the author and my grandmother:

Dr. is your Great uncle Edward Broyles grandson. He was raised in Savanna Ga.

Because the letter from her aunt mentioned the connection to the state of Georgia—the place where, incidentally, my grandmother’s own maternal grandmother was supposedly born—I thought it would be helpful to review that part of the Broyles genealogy. The idea is to search for any clues as to why my second great grandfather, Thomas Taliaferro Broyles, would have left his home in northeast Tennessee to travel to the far side of Georgia to claim his bride. After all, since the rest of his family was back home in South Carolina, why not return there? There has to be some sort of connection with the state of Georgia in this family.

So, who is this Edward Broyles who raised his family—or at least his grandson—in the state of Georgia?

Let’s start from what we know. Here’s the visual on my grandmother—whom I’ve entered here by her birth name, Rubie Broyles McClellan—and her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.

We’ve already talked about Rubie’s parents, Rupert Charles and Sarah Ann Broyles McClellan. It’s Sarah’s father, Thomas Taliaferro Broyles, who will lead us to the connection with Edward Broyles. (As a side note, you will see that I filled in a working name for Thomas’ wife, the woman from Georgia whose name is not verified. Keep in mind that that’s just there as a place holder for now; it may well change as we locate documentation.)

Thomas’ parents, in turn, were Ozey Robert Broyles and his wife, the former Sarah Ann Taliaferro. This Sarah is the one who will lead me to D.A.R. membership, eventually.

Now that we’ve got the line straight, let’s fill in the blanks on Ozey’s children. From the 1850 census, there are seven listed: Augustus, William, Margaret, O. Robert, Sarah Ann, Thomas, and John.

No Edward. Natch. That would be too simple.

Keep in mind, though, that this 1850 census—the first of the census records to name all the members of a household—represents the family of a man born at the turn of the century. In other words, by this point, O. R. Broyles was a man of at least fifty years of age. His oldest child—assuming he or she was still alive—could have been as old as thirty years of age. Taking a closer look at the 1850 census entry, it also appears there was a sizeable age gap between the first son listed (Augustus) and the second (William). Perhaps Edward was older than Augustus? Or sandwiched in between him and his younger brother?

That idea, unfortunately, did not pan out. There were at least two other children which were indeed born between those two sons: a son Richard Taliaferro Broyles, and a son Zacharias Taliaferro Broyles. These I found, thanks to entries on Find A Grave. Both the entry for Richard and for Zacharias indicate that they were children of O. R. Broyles.

Neither, of course, was named Edward.

If Job One was to locate an Edward among Thomas Taliaferro Broyles’ siblings, so far we have struck out. Save your scorecard, though, for tomorrow we’ll discuss one annoying aspect of those Ancestry.com shaky leaf hints over which so many people seem to have a love-hate relationship. I may be becoming a convert to the “hate” side of the controversy, for I did find an Edward—it’s just that the hints which led me to him will not give up all their secret details on the second review. And face it: when it comes to documenting one's ancestral lines, saying “I know I saw it” just doesn’t count.