Could Kinchen be Kin?

 

If my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe was born in Nansemond County, Virginia, then it would stand to reason that any of the other six Boothe men listed along with him in that county's 1840 census could possibly be kin—better yet, this brick wall ancestor's own father. We've already searched for records on three of those Boothe men—Nathaniel, Robert, and Henry—without finding convincing documentation, though the door is still open for possibilities with either Nathaniel or Robert.

Next, we'll consider another of the older men, in hopes that his records might indicate the possibility of a son the age of my Alexander who, according to his widow's Civil War pension application, was said to have been born in 1816. This man, Kinchen, made his appearance in the same 1840 census where I had found Alexander: in his native Nansemond County. There, Kinchen was listed as a man in his fifties, along with an unnamed wife said to be in her forties.

It was the listing of Kinchen's children which caught my eye. Kinchen reported one boy between the ages of ten and fourteen, another two in their upper teen years, and one man in his twenties. At the time of the 1840 census, my Alexander would have been twenty four years of age—if we can believe his wife's report about his date of birth—but by then, he was already married and showing in his own household. Could he have been reported in two entries?

Rewinding those census reports another ten years, though, would show a household which could have included a much younger and single Alexander. Could Kinchen's 1830 enumeration reveal a spot for Alexander? In that census, Kinchen actually reported five possible sons: one under five years of age, three between the ages of five and nine, and one between ten and fourteen years of age. At that point, Alexander would have been fourteen, putting him in the eldest age bracket for Kinchen's possible sons. Indeed, if we peek back another ten years to the 1820 census—where Kinchen was mislabeled as "Rinchin"—the only child in that household at the time was listed as a boy under the age of ten.

The catch in all this hopeful thinking is the difficulty in pinning ages within the brackets used in those pre-1850 census records. As it turns out, fast forwarding through time to the actual 1850 census, we discover the names of the two remaining sons in Kinchen's household. The younger was named Henry, who by then reported his age as twenty three, making his year of birth approximately 1827. The older remaining son was named Abram. And that is the sticking point: Abram's age was given as thirty, putting his year of birth at approximately 1820.

With a birth date in 1820, Abram could well have been that first son showing in the 1820 census as a child under ten. Thus, he would have been the one male in 1830 in the age bracket ten through fourteen—in other words, the only son in that category, the same grouping where we would expect Alexander to appear, if he were son of Kinchen.

That is a sticking point—if we could assume that year of birth were accurate. However, pushing ahead just one more decade to the 1860 census, Abram, now listed as head of the household which included his parents, gave his age as thirty nine, thus yielding a birth year of 1821, pushing him down to the second age bracket in the 1830 census.

Could Abram have been Kinchen's second-born son, and Alexander the eldest in this household? It's a moot point, seeing Alexander would have married and moved out of the household by 1840. I'm not too convinced, but it's hard to tell without further documentation. It's a vague possibility we need to keep in mind.