Overextending

 

Having hopes of discovering whatever became of the siblings of a fourth great-grandfather, even if his name was as unusual as Isham, may have been a bit overextending. There is, after all, only so much that can be found about an average resident of late 1700s Virginia.

There is, however, a number of loose ends to tie up regarding this Rainey family before the month comes to a close. Grateful to have achieved my goal of discovering not only my third great-grandfather Thomas Firth Rainey's parents, but grandparents as well, I'd like to see which of his siblings may have left a genealogical paper trail. After all, though Thomas' sisters had likely married in the early 1800s, they had at least made their appearance in court documentation owing to the fact that their father had died intestate. This is a record source that could be useful to revisit.

At the time of Isham Rainey's 1843 death in Mississippi, both his daughters had spoken up to make sure they were included in the distributions of their father's estate, should there have been a residue. One daughter, Sarah, had married someone in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, by the name of George Mealer. The other daughter, Elizabeth, had identified herself in letters to the probate court in Mississippi as Elizabeth Arnold.

Returning to FamilySearch.org's Full Text Search, it may be possible to discover more about the family of George and Sarah Mealer. From that point, if any other indicators surface, we may also be able to wrap up this month's research project with information on the identity of Sarah's sister Elizabeth Arnold and her unnamed husband.

The end game here will be to identify whether either sister had children for one purpose: to locate any DNA matches for these lines that might have been descendants of this Rainey line.