Rewinding Time

 

If we can't find our ancestor where he last lived, our next step is to rewind time and go back through the decades in search of earlier signs. For my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe, that meant setting aside all the details I could find on him in his adopted home in Washington County, Tennessee, and move back to his native Virginia.

Since we've already discovered documents stating that Alexander was born in Nancyman—er, Nansemond County, that's where we'll explore for signs of his existence this week. Since his widow reported that Alexander was born in that county in 1816, we've got a lot of documentation to cover. True, before the 1850 census, there wasn't much record-keeping that included the names of everyone appearing in a household, but there were other sources which would at least reveal the names of adult men in the community.

Looking through the tax records for Nansemond County was one such possibility. In that document, white men over the age of sixteen were included in the tax lists. Going over those records, year by year, made me realize that this would never have been a project I'd be able to undertake ten years ago—forget that, even three years ago. It would have been far too tedious a search—and even that is taking into consideration how digitized records saved me a trip to personally access them in some Virginia archive.

Now, I just log on to FamilySearch, where I went specifically to their Full Text search at FamilySearch Labs. From that vantage point, I began whittling down the 379 hits offered up for my simple search terms. For starters, even though I knew Alexander had long since left his home in Virginia, I looked at the tax list for 1850 to see if there were any other men still there who claimed the name Alexander Boothe. Thankfully, no one showed on that tax list, though there was a Nathaniel Boothe mentioned.

Then, I began rewinding the years, checking for Alexander in the 1840s. Nothing in 1848. Ditto 1847. By 1838, however, I found an entry for one man named Alexander Boothe, with a tick mark under the column for men over sixteen years of age. There, one Alexander claimed to own six slaves over twelve years of age, and two horses. Rewinding yet another year, and there was Alexander with four slaves and the same two horses.

By the time I rewound tax history to 1836, all I could find was an entry for Nathaniel Boothe with a note underneath his entry stating "Do" ("ditto") for Boothe, Alexander. Why the listing in that fashion? Was that a hint of a connection between the two? If Alexander was indeed born in 1816, that year's entry would have been for someone over sixteen years of age, yes, but someone who had not yet reached the age of majority.

Remembering that I had found an entry for one Alexander Boothe in the 1840 census, I checked to see who else might have lived in that county then with the same surname. According to the entries for the 1840 census—and taking into consideration that some indexing processes misread the surname as "Borthe"—I now had the names of Alexander's possible kin: besides Nathaniel, the list included Robert, Henry, Andrew, Edmond, and Kinchea.

Now it's time to put that list of possible names to good use with more exploration on the Full Text Search at FamilySearch Labs.