Sally Firth

 

Ever since the 1980s, there has been a comic strip featuring a title I love: "Sally Forth." The title itself is a play on words, calling to mind the phrase which essentially means to launch out on an adventure. How apropos it has been to discover, in this month's research adventure, that the ancestor whose parents I've been chasing through centuries-old documents turns out to have a mother who claimed a slightly-morphed version of that same "Sally Forth" name. Only, in this case, her name was Sally Firth.

It was earlier this month, in slogging through mind-numbingly tedious court documents, that we discovered Thomas Firth Rainey's mother was named Sarah Firth. Yet, since one nickname often used for the given name Sarah has been Sally, that is exactly how I found her name documented in yet another court document. 

This time, her name appeared in an even older record, that of the will of her father, drawn up in Brunswick County, Virginia, in June of 1794. His name? Thomas Firth, providing a fuller explanation of just how my third great-grandfather received his own name. Not only did his middle name reflect his mother's maiden name, but his full name clearly linked him to his maternal grandfather, who likely died the very month that my third great-grandparent's parents were married.

So far for this month's research goal, we've discovered the names of Thomas Firth Rainey's parents—and now, the identity of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Firth. In addition, the will revealed that the elder Thomas was married to a woman also identified as Sally.

Whether the senior Sally was mother of the younger Sally, I can't tell, but the pull of the identical names lends credibility to that possibility. Since we've got quite a bit more time to pursue this research project for this month, perhaps that will become clearer before we need to move on to April's challenge.