A Matrilineal Mainstay

 

Though we may have struck out yesterday in our review of possible matrilineal lines of descent for the wives of John Carter of colonial Virginia, there are three Carter daughters yet to review before we close out this month's research project. Those three daughters, all born to John Carter's final wife, Hannah Chew, were: Margaret Chew Carter, Lucy Carter, and Elizabeth Matilda Carter. Our quest is to follow the lines of these Carter daughters' daughters.

Starting today with Margaret Chew Carter, we find an encouraging possibility: this Carter daughter may apparently become our matrilineal mainstay, for she had four daughters of her own. Following Margaret Chew Carter's marriage to Zachariah Taliaferro, the couple welcomed in Sarah Ann, Lucy Hannah, Mary Margaret, and Caroline Virginia.

The good news is that each of those daughters eventually went on to marry and have children of their own.  Sarah Ann married Ozey Robert Broyles and together they raised a large family, including two daughters: Margaret Cornelia and namesake daughter Sarah Ann. But the genealogy happy dance stops right there. Margaret Cornelia, wife of Samuel Maverick van Wyck, produced four children—but the one daughter in that family died before reaching five years of age. And while her sister Sarah Ann went on to marry William Dickson Williams, her three daughters appear to have all died unmarried and childless.

That, however, was the result of my search through only the first of Margaret Chew Carter's four daughters. I'm still in the process of reviewing the lines of descent for her second daughter, Lucy Hannah, who became wife of David Sloan Taylor. For Lucy, her large family included three daughters. Likewise for her sister Mary Margaret, wife of Richard Franklin Simpson, for whom at least one daughter had daughters of her own.

I'll continue working my way through this line of descent from Margaret Chew Carter. I find myself cheering, each time I discover a daughter had daughters of her own—fervently hoping that matriline continues down to the present time.

There are a lot of reasons to hope for the matriline of Margaret Chew Carter. If we look beyond her family to those of her remaining sisters, we don't see many good signs. Margaret Chew Carter's younger sister, Lucy, became second wife of Burton Taliaferro, brother to Margaret Chew Carter's husband Zachariah, but Lucy had no children at all. And the youngest Carter daughter, Elizabeth Matilda, apparently died young and unmarried.

While the hope may be to find enough Carter descendants interested in and willing to participate in a mitochondrial DNA test, charting these lines of matrilineal descent may prove to eliminate any chances of exploring just how many wives John Carter actually had, and what their identities might have been. Granted, the final node in each line of descent—the eligible mtDNA test volunteers—can be either sons or daughters, but the catch is that, from that point up the line, each generation needs to be represented by a woman who was a direct matrilineal descendant of one of John Carter's wives.

There still is a long way to go before that tree outlining the possible test candidates is complete. This weekend, reviewing my biweekly count will tell the tale on progress on this Carter line. While I keep hoping for family lines which have "daughtered out," it will certainly be helpful to have outlined the entire line of Carter descendants, both sons and daughters.