What Others Were Saying

 

If it seems odd to us to find a centuries-old document dating the marriage of a teenager as young as Mary Elizabeth Taliaferro, I wonder what the people of that fourteen-year-old's community might have thought at the time. Apparently, we don't need to wonder for long what others were saying, for one local man was quite willing to make public his take on Mary Elizabeth Taliaferro's father—and step-father.

That man was George Rockingham Gilmer, maternal uncle to my third great-grandmother Mary Elizabeth Taliaferro. After serving two terms as governor of the state of Georgia, as well as several terms in the United States House of Representatives, George Gilmer settled down to write his recollections of several Georgia pioneers he knew personally. He published that collection in 1855 in a book he called, in typical run-on fashion of the era, Sketches of Some of the First Settlers of Upper Georgia, of the Cherokees, and the Author.

Of his sister, Mary Meriwether Gilmer, he styled her as "a woman of good capacity," but of her choices of spouses, he was less approving: "She married successively two very indolent, inefficient men, whom by her industry she saved from poverty."

The first of those two men, as we've already surmised, was Warren Taliaferro (alternately recorded in some editions of the book—as well as in other records—as Warner). Mary's second husband, according to George Gilmer, was the Reverend Nicholas Powers, "a handsome Irishman." 

While that might have seemed a curious observation—and one so public, as well—it was the author's next comment which was more to the point of my pursuit. What about their children? 

Unfortunately, Tell-All Gilmer did not provide names, though he did say that his sister had ten children, "four by her first husband, and six by her last." As to any further details, we will have to resort to the usual means to detect the specifics. With that, I resort to another report that everyone's been talking about—though it is buzz generated by a far more modern crowd.

After RootsTech, I noticed several blog posts detailing a document search development powered by AI. A "game changer," as it has been acclaimed by one blogger, Judy Russell. Longtime genealogy writer Kimberly Powell detailed the step-by-step process to use the experimental full-text search feature being tested at FamilySearch. I paid close attention, and then popped over to Randy Seaver's blog to read about his experience putting the feature through its paces.

I wanted to test this tool for myself, and looking for Warren Taliaferro's will seemed the perfect starting point. For one, despite his given name being so variable—Warren in some cases, Warner in others—I wasn't sure what result I'd find. I knew that Taliaferro was a surname unusual enough to keep me from facing the wearying possibility of multiple false leads.

Fortunately, when I tried using the FamilySearch Labs tool, I didn't limit the search to one location, for Warren Taliaferro's will was not where I expected it to be filed. Though the family lived in Georgia when I found them, Warren also had another residence in South Carolina. Now that I think it over, that makes great sense, as he was brother to another direct-line ancestor of mine, Zachariah Taliaferro, who I knew also lived in South Carolina.

The FamilySearch Labs experimental Full Text search brought me to two different copies of Warren Taliaferro's will—one handwritten, the other a later, typewritten version. Each of the wills was transcribed and that transcription appeared in a sidebar alongside the digitized image of the document itself. I chose to examine each one and compare it with its displayed original, as it seemed from the results that the AI either stuttered or had a slight case of dyslexia at times.

If I had wondered yesterday whether my Mary Elizabeth Taliaferro was really part of Warren's family, the will laid those concerns to rest. If we can believe what George Gilmer said about his sister and brother-in-law, the couple did indeed have four children—or, at least, those were all who were named in the document. Warren identified his two sons, Zacharias and Charles, as well as two daughters. Along with mention of Lucy "Gilmore" Taliaferro, we can all be relieved that the other daughter's name was listed as Mary Elizabeth Taliaferro. So she was part of this family, after all.

That, however, calls into question the Oglethorpe County, Georgia, guardianship bond we reviewed yesterday, naming all the "orphans and minors" of Warren Taliaferro, a list which went on far longer than the four named in Warren's October 1815 will in Pendleton District, South Carolina. It is observations like this which make me want to take far more literally comments in wills such as Warren's directive to divide his property "into as many equal parts as I shall have children alive at that time" of his death.

George Gilmer, incidentally, was one of two brothers of Warren's wife Mary whom Warren had appointed as executors of his will. Perhaps George wryly spoke from personal experience.