Until the Cookie Crumbles

 

As Dennis the Menace once said, "If I can't have a horse, can I have a cookie?" If I can't find the will for Nathaniel Boothe, my second great-grandfather's possible father, can I at least uncover his family circle?

We've already run into the disappointing news that not only did Nathaniel Boothe not have a will—his son Joseph was appointed administrator of his estate—but that a courthouse fire had destroyed what records might have been in existence concerning any deeds in which he might have been named.

So what's next? I've already found a listing of five other Boothe men living in Nansemond County, Virginia, in the 1840 census. That was the last year in which my great-grandfather Alexander was listed as a resident of Virginia before moving to Tennessee. It's just a matter of going down the list to look for wills that bequeathed property to sons.

A likely next possibility might be another Boothe household in Nansemond County which seems to have the same composition as Alexander's own family in 1840: young man, young woman, and child. But when I pull up the enumeration for the first name on my Boothe list—for Robert, another household with three individuals—I immediately notice another tempting juxtaposition. Like Nathaniel and Alexander had been listed next to each other in a 1830s tax record, Robert's listing was immediately followed by the census entry for Henry Boothe.

Could this be another father and son possibility? In researching these two, even if I can't win the "horse" of my quest to discover Alexander's father, could I at least get the "cookie" of seeing a family constellation take shape?

However, rather than finding indications that Robert might be son of Henry, the details reveal a possible second narrative: that Robert and his wife might not only be the sixty-something parents of an unnamed son in his twenties shown in the census, but that he could also have been father to another son, as well. Alexander?

The next line down in the 1840 census shows Henry Boothe's household. The numbers in that enumeration show possibility of a different story than I had assumed, as well. Henry, in his thirties, has only young females in his household: two girls in their later teenage years, and a child under the age of five. Perhaps, as we had previously noted with Nathaniel's entry next to a possible brother, Andrew Boothe, Robert might be the younger brother of Henry, rather than his son, as I at first had surmised. 

Sometimes, we hope for a horse...and get a cookie. Sometimes, even the cookie crumbles. But we won't know until we take a closer look.