Probably Not

The Goodloes were a family of excellent standing in Spotsylvania and Middlesex, and later in Kentucky, where a Mr. Carter Goodloe was quite prominent, and from his name was probably a descendant of Martha Carter and Robert Goodloe, of Spotsylvania.         ~Joseph Lyon Miller, The Descendants of Capt. Thomas Carter of "Barford," Lancaster County, Virginia

There's one thing about seeing the word "probably" in a recounting of family history: more likely, we should rather take that word to read, "probably not."

In the case of the descendants of John Carter of Spotsylvania, Virginia, I'm learning to become far more wary of such squishy estimates. Take that statement above, from the 1912 Carter family history regarding Robert Goodloe, husband of one of John's daughters, Martha. For Martha to have had a descendant—whether he was called Carter Goodloe or another less beguiling name—we would have needed to see the stipulation stand in her own father's will regarding the inheritance of the Carter property.

In John Carter's will, drawn up in May of 1778, after granting legacies to specific named children, he designated the rest of his estate to be equally divided among all his children, with one additional stipulation: that, if his "daughter Martha should die without issue," then her equal portion of the inheritance would then revert to all the other surviving Carter children.

John Carter apparently died shortly after drawing up a codicil to his will on October 13, 1883. The one stipulation of that codicil was to add the name of the newest arrival to the Carter family, so that she, too, would receive her part of the inheritance as one of the children of John's surviving wife, Hannah. No further mention was made concerning Martha, leaving those stipulations of the original will intact.

Taking the question of Martha and Robert Goodloe to FamilySearch's Full Text Search, I was once again directed to the genealogical research of George Harrison Sanford King, who noted—unfortunately without mentioning a date—that Martha Carter Goodloe died "shortly after her father." 

In addition, the King papers observed that, based on the Carter will's stipulations, Martha's portion of the inheritance was then to revert to the other members of the Carter family. Furthermore, the author referred to a deed drawn up by the surviving Carter children on August 22, 1786, in which they conveyed the property to a William Duerson.

Still, there was that odd reference to a "probable" descendant of Martha Carter and Robert Goodloe in the Joseph Lyon Miller genealogy of the Carter family. Where could that idea have originated? 

I wondered whether Robert Goodloe had had children by a previous marriage—or even by a subsequent marriage, as sometimes a deceased spouse could be memorialized by the tradition of a namesake child of the next marriage. 

An abstract of Robert Goodloe's 1790 will in Spotsylvania County provided the answer. He listed his heirs as his sons George, Henry, and John, along with the daughter of a nephew. Should any of those three sons have been descendants of Martha Carter, he (or they) would have become party to the division of property stipulated in John Carter's own will. Apparently, based on the deed drawn up in 1786, they were not named as part of that inheritance, inferring their descent from a different mother.

A curious side note: the very person to whom that property went in that 1786 deed drawn up by the surviving Carter descendants—a William Duerson—may have been the "W. Duerson" listed as a witness in Robert Goodloe's own will.

But what about the question that started this whole exploration? Who was that Mr. Carter Goodloe who was "probably" a descendant of Martha Carter Goodloe?

Because we can now do such speedy searches, I took my question to Ancestry.com, looking for someone by that name in Kentucky, the state identified in the Carter genealogy book. While I could find one possible person, "Carter Goodlow," born in Kentucky in 1845, at the time of the 1900 census, he was living in nearby Cincinnati. The variance in geography isn't the problem, though. There is, though, one detail: this Carter was of African descent.

Trying again, I did find mention of others with that name—even with the more specific spelling. One was in mentions for someone associated with a family living in Nashville, Tennessee, and near El Paso, Texas—not Kentucky. The other was in advertisement for books written by an author of that same name. I doubt any of these discoveries would lead to connections to the "probable" ancestor of this Carter Goodloe. 

Now that we're mostly convinced that Martha Carter left no descendants, I'm eyeing the calendar and realizing how little time is left to attain my January research goal of inventorying the female descendants of my fifth great-grandfather John Carter. In the remaining days this week, we'll take a fleeting glance at the rest of John Carter's daughters.