I'm looking for clues as to whether a mystery family matches the records found for my ancestor, Sarah Catherine Laws Davis. In seeking the right William Laws, my second great-grandmother's possible father, I am fortunate that he did not use the same typical names for his children. In some Catholic forebears in my mother-in-law's family, for instance, I'd see the same run of Williams and Margarets repeated, generation after generation. Not so for William Laws, the potential father of my second great-grandmother Sarah Catherine Laws Davis—and that is a relief, for today we need to take a peek at some of the DNA matches for my Laws line, to see if they provide any guidance.
Earlier this week, I had found Sarah "Catherine" Laws—by then, wife of Thomas Davis—listed on the same page of the 1870 census as a family headed by a man named William Laws. William, by then identified as a sixty six year old shoemaker from North Carolina, had four others in his household, all listed with the same surname Laws. Since the 1870 census did not give any guidance as to family relationships within the household, the wide range of ages made it difficult to determine who might be William's wife, and who might be his child—rather than grandchild.
Since I had hoped for more clarity on this William's identity, I traced his possible course back through each decennial enumeration. The previous census, drawn up in 1860, pinpointed a possible William Laws in Carter County, Tennessee. A fortunate find, because it included a list which seemed far more likely to be of William's wife and children, it was once again a listing of the household of a shoemaker from North Carolina.
A second gift from this 1860 household was its inclusion of singular given names. Besides the typical names expected in any American family—Caroline, Elizabeth, Margaret, and William—there were some more unusual names included. Names like Larkin, Wyley, and Poindexter were listed as part of that Laws family—and were unusual enough that I felt certain I could follow them back yet another decade.
I guessed right. Those names did indeed lead me back to North Carolina, where an 1850 household headed by a shoemaker named William Laws included residents named Larkin, Wiley, and—though not quite Poindexter—a supposed son named Pendexter.
The key point about these less common given names is that, in checking my ThruLines for DNA matches leading back to my second great-grandmother's Laws family, there are indeed suggested matches with descendants of Larkin Laws and another man listed as "Pine Dexter" Laws. Poindexter?
My closest match from the Larkin Laws line is a possible fourth cousin sharing 91 centiMorgans with me—with sixteen other matches also linked to that same ancestor. Pine Dexter Laws has four descendants who share DNA with me—although the closest match shares only 42 centiMorgans. ThruLines listed several other proposed ancestral lines linked to William Laws, but only one line—for daughter Elizabeth—was represented by an entry in the family's census entry for this William Laws of Yancey County, North Carolina.
Granted, Ancestry.com's ThruLines is a tool to help with guidelines and leads, not necessarily the arbiter of all ancestral connections. If enough subscribers have the wrong entries in their tree, that mistake can echo throughout their system.
Still, I have to wonder whether I've found the right father for my second great-grandmother. There is so much more to discover about her family connections. There is, possibly, one shortcut I can check out, now that I'm considering this William Laws as Sarah Catherine's father: I can see whether her name is linked with his in any legal documents, using FamilySearch's Full Text search. We'll start taking a look at that tomorrow.
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