Vanishing Into the Gap

 

As exciting as it was yesterday to find mention of the paternal grandfather of my brick wall third great grandfather Thomas Firth Rainey, it barely took one more day for me to realize that finding anything more on this Rainey family may take far longer than just another evening's research. Wills may be the go-to resource for discovering more about our distant ancestors from the 1700s, but it takes a couple more generations before widespread documentation can carry us through the ages. What's happened with that Rainey family line—poof! In just a moment—is that it has vanished into the document gap between the earliest years of our nation and the 1850 census.

So far this month, we've discovered that Thomas Firth Rainey, my third great-grandfather, was son of Isham Rainey. Isham, in turn, was son of William Rainey of Brunswick County, Virginia. Finding William Rainey's 1812 will yesterday opened up new research possibilities for me by revealing the names of Isham's siblings: Mary, Martha, Elizabeth, William, Jesse, Herbert, and Zebulon.

Now that I've found those names, you know I've begun the search for those collateral lines of descent. After all, I have potential DNA cousins to place in the right family group. But do you think I've found any actual documentation for these siblings? Sadly, no—with the exception of some marriage records from the 1790s. Other than that, it seems like the entire family, other than Isham, has disappeared.

The problem that has presented itself at this point in the research is two-fold. On the one hand, there are researchers out there who have been puzzling over this family for decades. They have not been shy about sharing their speculations. And others have been more than willing to help themselves to those theories by pasting them into their public family trees, despite lack of documentation.

On the other hand, there is that gap I mentioned. Unless I can find where the (possibly) wandering Rainey descendants moved, I can't with certainty say I've found a will for any of the brothers. If any of those siblings died before the advent of the 1850 census with its listing of every resident in a household, I'll have no way to know that those are the right descendants for my Rainey line. It's that gap between the early 1800s and the 1850 census which has suddenly brought me to a standstill.

There is, however, one encouraging sign. In William Rainey's 1812 will, he mentioned several grandchildren, providing us a token sign that there were indeed marriages and families continuing the Rainey legacy. But other than one specific grandson, there is no mention of names for any of the others among his grandchildren. 

One, however, is better than none, so it will be worth our while to learn a bit about Benjamin L. Rainey to see if information gleaned there can lead us to any others in the extended Rainey family.