Finding a Missing Son

 

Questions about family composition become complicated, once our genealogical research pulls us behind the curtain of the 1850 census. Before that date, everyone but the head of each household becomes a nameless tick mark on a page in the enumeration. 

As we go through the possible Boothe men residing in Nansemond County, Virginia, during the 1840 census, we've been exploring each household's composition to see where a young man in his twenties might once have fit in before his marriage. The young man in question this month is my second great-grandfather, Alexander Boothe, who was born in Nansemond County about 1816, and lived there through the early 1840s, according to the one census record in which his name appeared.

So far, we've explored the possibility that Alexander might have been part of Nathaniel Boothe's household—but with no solid leads, thanks mostly to Nathaniel's intestate situation at the time of his death, plus a courthouse fire just as his son Joseph was appointed administrator of his estate. We've also begun working our way through the list of the other Boothe men resident in that county, according to the 1840 census, beginning with Robert Boothe.

Up through the 1830 census, it became apparent that Robert Boothe had two sons in his household. One son, as we discovered by pushing forward in time to that precedent-breaking 1850 census, was named Daniel, who was born about 1816, same as my Alexander Boothe, but who, unlike Alex, remained in Nansemond until his death in 1882.

However, Robert also had another son, according to that 1830 census—someone who would have been in his thirties by the time of the 1840 census. Could we assume, by the juxtaposition of Henry Boothe's name after Robert's own entry in the 1840 census, that Henry could have been that son? Or could it have been Alexander, with a vaguely incorrect year of birth? We'll need to take a look.

Just as I did yesterday in following Robert's own appearances in each decennial enumeration, we'll trace Henry's own census track record. Before 1840, as suspected, I couldn't find any entry specifically naming Henry in Nansemond County's results. But in 1840, Henry's household reportedly contained one male in his thirties, one girl under the age of five, and two young women between the ages of fifteen and nineteen.

That didn't paint too clear a picture of the family constellation. Even assuming the youngest girl were only one year of age, if either of the older girls were nineteen at the time—the upper limit of that age bracket—that would have meant a wife marrying at age eighteen. Granted, that was more than possible, but we don't want to assume anything here without checking for other confirmations.

That census, conveniently, was only ten years away from the record which named every member of the household. The 1850 census captured the details that the head of the household, Henry, was born in Nansemond County about 1809. Although this census did not specify relationships, the next entry was for a twenty eight year old woman named Mary J. Boothe—but she was followed by another household member also named Mary. This second Mary—Mary A.—was about fourteen years of age.

Looking to the next census in 1860 in hopes of finding clarification, we can see Henry and the elder Mary in a household which includes another Mary—but this time, the younger Mary's surname is Morgan, not Boothe. Along with this Mary was her supposed husband, Augustus Morgan, and a son, whom they named, predictably, Henry.

With this clue, I looked for any marriage confirmations, and fortunately found one helpful record. On May 24, 1858, this younger Mary from Henry's household married Augustus Morgan, son of a woman named Patsey Morgan. The record also confirmed that Mary's father was indeed Henry, although her mother was not the elder Mary in the 1850 household, but a woman named Amelia, thus calming my suspicions about the two Marys being too close in age to have been mother and daughter.

That resolved the question about the identity of the other son in Robert Boothe's earliest census records in 1820 and 1830, but what about Alexander Boothe? It seems clear that he couldn't have fit in that family grouping unless he had left the home as a young child before the 1820 census—an unlikely story.

With that question about Robert's other son resolved, it's time to move on to the rest of the Boothe men included in that 1840 enumeration. Our next focus: another Boothe man then in his fifties, Kinchen Boothe.