When Two Families Collide

 

It was at a local genealogical society meeting when, just for fun, several of those in attendance pulled out their phones, logged in to the FamilySearch app, and fired up "Relatives Around Me." The goal was to see whether—at least, according to the universal tree at FamilySearch.org—anyone in the meeting room that day was sitting near a distant cousin. You never know when, generations past, two families' ancestral lines might have collided.

It turned out that one woman in the meeting just happened to get a result indicating that she and I were distant cousins. Her ancestor? Someone surnamed Hardee. Mine? My brick wall fourth great-grandfather, Job Tyson. Supposed shared origin for those two? Pitt County, North Carolina.

Now, I know that sometimes the universal tree at FamilySearch.org can contain mistakes. I didn't get too excited about that discovery back then—and even now, I'm struggling to find documentation to cement the connection. But I didn't ignore it, either. My newfound cousin and I have been collaborating, as time permits, to seek out the explanation for how those two lines are related.

But Hardee. And Pitt County. While I'm stuck with that designation of Pitt County, North Carolina, for the origin of my Tyson ancestors, I did remember that Relatives Around Me readout pointed to that other surname, Hardee or Hardy. I kept looking for an explanation that might make sense. This weekend's discovery of a Hardee family history manuscript, a copy of which I found posted at Ancestry.com, reminds me that this is a worthwhile route to re-examine.

Sure enough, pushing the line back far enough—starting from Job Tyson's son William Tison, to William's wife Mary Ellis Hardee—I then continued the Hardee line, according to what was written in the David Hardy manuscript. Mary's father, Thomas Ellis Hardee, was said to have been son of John Hardee and Sarah Ellis.

Following the family line upwards from there two additional generations, the Tyson surname once again popped up in this Hardee manuscript. This time, the manuscript contained a mention of the wife of another John Hardee: he had married someone named Susannah Tyson. The line entry for this couple noted they were in Pitt County, North Carolina.

With that brief outline, I now had another possible connection between the two families. More importantly, the line brought the Hardee family from Camden County in Georgia—not far from where Job Tyson lived in Glynn County, and the same county where the witness to Job's will, another ancestor named Charles McClellan, also lived at that time.

With connections seemingly pointing in the right direction, it was time to check out this assertion with actual documentation, a task on my to-do list for this week. 

Exploring the Back Stories

 

We're halfway through the month, and so far I've been unable to find any solid connection between my fourth great-grandfather Job Tyson and either possible location of his birth. Lacking any further leads—at least until yesterday's discoveries—I decided it was time to explore collateral lines for any sign of the Tyson/Tison back story.

That's essentially what has been happening behind the scenes over the past two weeks: looking for the back story. Since today was time for my biweekly count, I was surprised to see what an impact that effort could make. All during the time I was writing about not finding any documentation to connect Job Tyson to either North or South Carolina—two alternate possibilities for his roots—I've been exploring the ThruLines connections to the Tyson family and building a line of descent for each of those collateral relatives.

What was the result for this two weeks of grunt work? I actually added 263 more documented individuals to my family tree, all from this Tyson line descending from Job and his wife, Sidnah Sheffield. That pushes the tree's total to 41,574. Bringing a family's history down to the present time from a point on the timeline spanning over 225 years can add a lot of names—and I'm nowhere close to being done.

The test results blossoming from holiday DNA tests are now finally hitting my count, as well. I've gained ten more matches at Ancestry DNA, more than my usual one or two for each biweekly stretch. Though it doesn't help my focus for this month's candidate for my Twelve Most Wanted, I also found a Zegarski match to my father's side of the family tree. I'll be watching for more from the Tyson or Tison side of the story as the rest of these holiday tests keep appearing in my results. Likewise for every other company where I've tested.

Meanwhile, though I'm not researching anyone on my in-laws' side of the family, once again that tree grew by one additional name, thanks to follow up work after a phone call from a relative. It's so exciting to see younger members of the family taking interest in the details of their own family history, especially when they, too, are awaiting DNA test results and want to know how they connect to the bigger picture.  

A Detour Through the Sidelines

 

Sometimes, when I'm stumped with a collateral line, I go wandering. This time, still puzzling over the origin of my fourth great-grandfather Job Tyson, I started looking at DNA matches while exploring what became of Job's many children. Yes, I took a detour. Since I couldn't advance the record to Job's parents (or even siblings), I went exploring the sidelines of this Tyson family.

Reviewing the records I had already assembled about the children of Job Tyson and his wife, Sidnah Sheffield, my eye settled on one of their sons, William. There, I spotted one detail which stopped me: William had married a woman whose maiden name was Hardee.

That Hardee surname, I had learned when I first decided to make this Tyson project my Twelve Most Wanted focus for February, was the surname which my newly-discovered kazillionth cousin—thanks to FamilySearch's Relatives Around Me—had focused on. She was a Hardee descendant, and she knew exactly where, deep within their history, the family had once lived: in Pitt County, North Carolina, the same location where I simply cannot place our Job Tison.

Nearly holding my breath, I tried to draw up a quick and dirty sketch of that family line. Starting from William Tison, himself, his declaration for a passport provided his date and location of birth: August 6, 1812 in Glynn County, Georgia. I had already recorded that William had been married twice. As often happened in that time period, his first wife had apparently died young before 1850, making discovery of her family blurred in that time period of invisible women. However, as I spotted in a summary publication of D.A.R. members, this woman's surname was Hardee.

Hardee? In Georgia? How might she fit into the larger picture, and explain Job Tison's connection with the Hardee line—not to mention, tie him back in North Carolina? This woman, Mary Ellis Hardee, was apparently daughter of Thomas Ellis Hardee and his wife, Mary Ann Berrie.

This, though, was merely from a typewritten genealogy, The Hardy-Hardee Family, compiled by David L. Hardy (according to the source for the Ancestry.com collection from which this was drawn; but possibly David Lyddall Hardee, as noted in this manuscript collection). And how often we find errors in such collections.

No matter. Any published or unpublished genealogy can serve as a trailblazer, helping to find otherwise hidden details, if we only take a disciplined approach to verifying—or rejecting with support—the assertions made in the manuscript. That, in fact, is what I'll be doing next week, seeing what assertions can be corroborated in this case with actual documentation. If the genealogy turns out to be accurate, perhaps it will lead us to an explanation of just how our Job Tison was said to have originated in Pitt County, North Carolina, after all.

Catch Them if you Can

 

Perhaps this is just my unlucky day. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of my missing ancestor, Job Tyson, back in what was supposed to be his old stomping grounds. The tip was that he might have been seen in the old Beaufort District of South Carolina, since my attempt at snagging him in Pitt County, North Carolina, had left me empty-handed.

Granted, that last sighting would have been sometime between 1790 and the early years of the 1800s, when Job Tyson settled down in Glynn County, Georgia. But even though I could find mention of someone by that name in North Carolina, the dates and circumstances just didn't line up. I had to follow the lead of some clues, no matter how weak they might have been. When it comes to chasing brick wall ancestors, you try to catch them—wherever—if you can.

First, I tried searching for Job Tyson in Beaufort District, South Carolina. I selected as wide a date range as possible, just in case he needed to return home to clear up any legal business, long after his departure for Georgia. Though I performed my search on the FamilySearch Full Text Search, I found no results.

Yes, I also needed to try my search using the alternate spelling for his surname: Tison. Again, no results.

Then, remembering the disjointed history of the Beaufort District—first it was, then it wasn't, a geopolitical division—I tried changing the label on the specific location to see if I could get any better results. According to one website, the designation of the Beaufort District—actually, all Districts in South Carolina—was abolished in 1800, and replaced by its four underlying counties: Granville, Hilton, Lincoln, and Shrewsbury. 

Back to the Full Text Search I went, this time searching for Job Tyson—or Tison—using each of the four new county designations, just in case. Nothing.

As a last-ditch effort, I also tried searching in each of those South Carolina locations for Charles McClellan, who eventually became a witness to Job Tyson's will in Georgia. Again, nothing.

My only consolation could be that not everyone faithfully remains in the same location for over ten years, so as to ensure their appearance in the subsequent decennial census enumeration. Perhaps our Job Tyson was one of those people, continually on the road until he finally found a place he could call home.

Ancestor Fatigue

 

It's been back to Pitt County, North Carolina, to put FamilySearch's Full Text Search through its paces. Entering my fourth great-grandfather's surname there by each of the two spelling variants—Tison and Tyson—I had plenty of documentation to consider. It looked like Pitt County might be tipping the genealogical scales in its favor with all the records this search for Job Tyson was providing. 

No matter how convenient it might be that FamilySearch's Full Text Search not only highlights my search terms but provides a transcription of the sometimes difficult to read handwriting, reading through court records of any time period can become wearying. In addition, with the Tyson family doing no differently than any affluent southern family of that time period in the 1700s by dealing in enslaved persons, there were several deeds entailing the trading of specific, named human beings. I was reaching ancestor fatigue in my search for Job Tyson's origin.

Then came two documents which were worthy of further consideration. One was an indenture drawn up on February 4, 1790—the same year in which we had found Job Tison listed in the census in South Carolina. The indenture named the two parties: John Tyson of Lincoln in North Carolina, and Job Tison in Pitt County, where the document was recorded. The purpose of the document was to record the exchange of property from John to Job for land on the north side of Black Swamp, for which Job paid what looked like 250 "Spanish mill'd dollars." 

The record noted that the land was originally patented by a man named John May on October 8, 1754, and apparently willed to his daughter, Elizabeth May. While the indenture was drawn up in February, the record noted that it was signed "in April Court" in 1790.

This caught my attention because 1790 was supposedly the year in which Job Tison married Sidnah, daughter of West Sheffield. Perhaps it was time to make arrangements to set up housekeeping.

A second document was of even more interest. Dated November 19, 1785, once again in Pitt County, this record was initiated by John Tison, with his residence this time listed as Pitt County. The record began, "for natural love and affection I have unto my grandson John Tison, son of Job Tison...." 

This line had my attention. Was this John Tison the answer to my research question for this month?

The record went on to detail a specific tract of land, lying on the east side of Black Swamp, originally patented to a Thomas Tison in 1738. The document also mentioned a second tract of land, granted to John Tison by "the Earl Granville."

This record, though drawn up toward the end of 1785, was presented in January Court in 1786. The names of two witnesses also caught my eye: Frederick Tison and Benjamin May. I was beginning to wonder whether names of the Tison collateral lines were unfolding before my eyes with these two documents.

But wait a minute. I had to think this thing over a bit. Maybe this ancestor fatigue was getting to me. It might have been great to discover a record which mentioned Job Tison, the very ancestor I've been looking for, but was it my Job Tison?

Hauling my mind back to reality, I looked up records I already had for Job Tison. Question number one: did my Job Tison have a son named John? And question number two: was he alive by 1786?

While my Job Tison did indeed have a son named John—John Mason Berrien Tison—he was born long after that record was drawn up in court in Pitt County, North Carolina. Indeed, if Job and Sidnah were married about 1790, there would not have been any children of this couple as early as 1785, let alone a grandson old enough to gain his grandfather's favor. 

While these two documents, to bleary, search-wearied eyes, may have seemed tempting, they simply do not work with the scenario already unfolding for the family of the Tison man who spend his adult life in Glynn County, Georgia. Perhaps a better approach would be to repeat the same exercise, only this time focus on the Beaufort District in South Carolina.

Juggling and Genealogy

 

Genealogy can be a juggling act, and my current obsession with the roots of Job Tyson has put me squarely in that category. I've been searching for my fourth great-grandfather's parents and birthplace, bouncing back and forth between several resources. Behind the scenes, I'm still grinding my way through a long list of DNA matches from the Tyson line. I've tapped the supercharged capabilities of FamilySearch's Full Text Search to find legal records. And I've relinquished hopes of finding Job, as supposed by others, in Pitt County, North Carolina and I've begun looking elsewhere.

I've also been hopping between online genealogy resources. And that's where I discovered something: depending on deciphering capabilities, one company's search engine might not snag the same details from handwritten documents as another company might.

Case in point (conveniently for me, involving our Job Tyson's story): the 1790 census. As you likely presumed, any forms used by enumerators for the first-ever United States census had to be hand-drawn as well as completed by hand. So searching for details on what information was included in such a tally might make the example from the National Archives seem deceiving. You'd have to scroll to the bottom of the census form posted on their website to read, "The U.S. Government did not furnish uniform printed schedules until 1830."

More pertinent to our situation was this information provided on the FamilySearch blog, stating the main categories covered in the nation's first population survey. The most glaring detail was the very length of the list: only six categories. Put simply, the 1790 census sought to gather data on who was eligible for military duty, should the need arise again. Questions included:

• Name of head of household
• Household's count of free white males 16 years of age or older
• Household's free white males under 16
• Household's free white females
• Any other free persons in the household
• Number of enslaved persons in the household

Of course, one of the hazards of preserving historic content over the centuries has been to keep it preserved, no matter how long it has been in existence. Every family historian has encountered those groan-worthy moments when we discover that some records simply haven't made it through the ravages of time.

Such has been the case with the 1790 census with returns of some states, some of which the United States Census Bureau has noted were destroyed by fires during the War of 1812. Happily, two states of interest in our pursuit of Job Tyson were not among those listed as lost by the Census Bureau.

One of those states, of course, was North Carolina, where some researchers had posited that Job Tyson once lived in Pitt County. And while I've found mention of many men with that surname—or its variant spelling, Tison—in Pitt County records, I've recently been exploring records from a second state: South Carolina.

Remembering last week's exploration of the friends and associates of Job Tison in his later years when he lived and died in Glynn County, Georgia, I'm just now beginning to connect the dots between Job and a man whose name had appeared on the Tison will, Charles McClellan. While my McClellan line also has me stumped as to their origins, I have verified that this was the Charles McClellan who was in my direct line. And I can see that there was a good possibility that the McClellans once lived in South Carolina. Might they have met up with Job at that location before they all moved to Georgia?

While I was unable to find Job Tyson in the 1790 census when I searched for him at Ancestry.com, checking FamilySearch.org yielded a surprising result: there was a Job Tison listed in the Beaufort District of South Carolina. That was the same location I've seen attributed to my McClellan line, as well.

The census entries seemed to be roughly alphabetized, and just a few lines below Job's entry was another Tison entry for someone named Aaron. Both heads of household had the same numerical entries listed next to their name: one male sixteen or over, one female member of the household, and one enslaved person. Whether Job and Aaron were brothers or cousins, I don't yet know, but at least this gives me some guidance as to where else to seek my Tyson line in those earlier years. I now have another category to add to my genealogy juggling act. 

Image above: 1790 U.S. Census entry for two Tison households in Beaufort District, South Carolina, courtesy of FamilySearch.org.

How Young is "Young"?

 

I confess: I'm getting impatient with Job Tyson's descendants. As I go, relative by relative through my Tyson DNA matches, I am not finding any who can shed light on Job's own origin. I even got impatient enough to try tracing his father-in-law's DNA matches, since West Sheffield was also said to have originated in the same colony as Job: North Carolina. When that yielded no guidance, I turned to my last resort: a visit to FamilySearch's Full Text Search to find any sign of Job Tyson—or Tison—in Pitt County, North Carolina.

Whether you consider the result of that search a success or not depends on how you might define the term, "young."

My first search result, looking for a Job Tyson in Pitt County, was for a legal notice in a Raleigh newspaper. In fact, that 1808 report seemed helpful in that it spelled out the names of several Tison family members, as such legal battles often do. But was it my Job Tison? I couldn't be sure, so I kept looking.

Eventually the Full Text Search results pointed me to an old history book, Henry T. King's 1911 work, Sketches of Pitt County. The book explained that "Deserters and Royalists who were too active" were often confined to local jails. Such was the case with the Pitt County jail. At that point, I ran into a curious entry:

Job Tyson, a young man, who had enlisted, after the fall of Charlestown, for the defense of the State, accepted a parole from Lord Cornwallis, when he passed through. Becoming uneasy for his safety, he fled to South Carolina, and not knowing, could not avail himself of the proclamations of conditional pardon. Having never taken up arms against the State, when he returned many of the most prominent citizens of the county petitioned Governor Burke for his pardon, which was no doubt granted. 

Was that our Job Tison? I had to look further.

Full Text Search had me covered. There was another entry among my search results. In volume sixteen of the transcribed State Records of North Carolina, was a legal entry. Addressed to His Excellency, Thomas Burke, Governor of the State of North Carolina, the petition read,

The inhabitants of Pitt County humbly sheweth: That Mr. Job Tyson having taken a parole from Lord Cornwallis...and hath not acted an inimical part against it, so far as to take up arms, but he being young and apprehensive, that his conduct was sufficient to bring him to severe punishment, left this State and went into South Carolina so that he being ignorant of the several proclamations offered to delinquents could not avail himself thereof. 

The petition went on to defend this Job Tyson as someone who had "taken up an active part in defense of this State...when the British first reduced Charlestown." Besides, the petitioners continued, since this Job was "a person intirely [sic] young," if the governor were to accept him back into the fold, the petitioners assured him that Job Tyson would "become a useful member of Society."

Hmmm...the fall of Charlestown? When might that have happened? I had to look that one up. The siege, it turned out, began on March 29, and lasted through May 12, 1780. The petition itself was drawn up in 1782.

Though the petitioners kept stressing the fact that this Job Tyson was "intirely" young and "apprehensive," I wouldn't have thought they were referring to a mere boy. Admittedly, I haven't found any documentation of Job's birthdate, let alone his place of birth. However, several women who applied for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution who were descendants of Job and his wife Sidnah (whose father was a Patriot) have given his year of birth as 1770.

If that 1770 date were correct, that would put our Job into those petitioners' scenario as a ten year old boy, "intirely" young, indeed. While the connection with Pitt County, and even his escape to South Carolina, may be tempting details to fold into our narrative, I'm not sure I'm ready to accept that apprehensive Job Tyson as my ancestor quite yet. 

Onward to search for more documentation. 

 

Cheering for Team Tison

 

What a ghost town our city became yesterday as we drew closer to the evening's kickoff. Four o'clock began the pre-game ritual on this side of the football nation, and six-lane streets here, usually packed with Sunday travelers, became empty enough for us to scoot across town without any trouble. Our day? After spending a delightful, almost-spring afternoon overlooking the river delta while sharing a pre-season ice cream, we returned home—my husband to some online games of a different kind, and I to cheer on the team for my current Tison puzzle.

That meant beginning the matching game for a long string of DNA cousins. All of them share one significant detail: relationship to my fourth great-grandfather Job Tison. Along the way, I've already encountered some incognito test-taking cousins, disguised by enigmatic monikers—but I've also met up with some dedicated researchers, including one distant cousin whose ample provisions on Find A Grave provided a thorough family history of at least one branch of the Tison descendants.

I can be grateful for such efforts. This particular researcher went so far as to include footnoted reports on individual members of the family—not to mention photos of numerous family members. These may be my fifth cousins, but after reading these thorough and carefully-crafted articles, I feel like I almost know them. I'd cheer for a team like that.

With only four of the first batch of ThruLines cousins reviewed—I'm starting with Job's son Aaron, for whom there are seven more matches to go—it will be a grind to work through all thirty four Tison DNA matches. So far, it seems this family line moved to the northern part of Florida, not far from the old Tison family home in Georgia, and stayed there for generations.

Hopefully, the process will lead to helpful clues enabling me to return to this month's research question concerning Job's parents and origin. If I encounter any more researchers as thorough as the one just found among Aaron Tison's descendants, that might indeed be a possibility.

Jumping Tracks

 

When it feels like I'm pounding my head against the same brick wall over and over again, it helps to just jump tracks for a while. It's time to try another approach to the question of Job Tison's origin.

One approach may be to check the DNA matches who have descended from this same Tison family. There are plenty of them to examine. Just at Ancestry.com's ThruLines listing, there are thirty four DNA matches to consider, both for my fourth great-grandfather Job and his wife, Sidnah Sheffield. 

If that isn't enough, I could combine approaches—the ThruLines DNA approach along with the F.A.N. Club concept—by jumping back one more generation through Job's father-in-law, West Sheffield, to see whether any of Job's Sheffield in-laws followed him to Georgia.

Even that approach, however, will take time. It requires examination of the lines of descent, checking carefully and corroborating with documentation, since not all generational outlines at ThruLines have been fully vetted. They basically provide a popular vote of who everyone thinks the greats- and great-greats might have been.

Having started with Job Tison's eldest son, Aaron, I've already begun the long slide down to the present, building my family tree out, document by document, to confirm the closest of my Tison DNA matches from his line. For my first Tison DNA match, that route led me, predictably, to a fifth cousin. With that encouraging start, I'll be spending more time behind the scenes, rehearsing the generations descending, first from Aaron, then moving to Job's other children's lines, one by one. Besides my own direct line through Sidney Tison McClellan, I have DNA matches from the line of Job's daughter Melinda, and Job's son John Mason Berrien Tison.

This should keep me busy for quite some time. Hopefully, one of these lines may provide a clue linking the family back to Job's siblings, maybe even parents, from his birthplace, whether it was in North Carolina or elsewhere.

When Friends Become Family

 

While conducting a search for the friends, associates, and neighbors of a brick wall ancestor may seem rigorous, the effort doesn't seem so daunting when you realize some members of a "F.A.N. Club" eventually become family. As we explore the Georgia men behind the names appearing in Job Tyson's will—and then in the will of West Sheffield—we'll find additional intermingling with that one surname appearing in the Tyson legal documents: McClellan.

Two McClellan men in 1824 witnessed Job Tyson's will. One, whose identity I don't yet know, was named Joseph McClellan—the same name, albeit not the same middle initial, as the McClellan mentioned in West Sheffield's own will. Later in that same year of 1824, Joseph personally appeared in court in Glynn County, Georgia, to confirm that the document in question was indeed the last will of Job Tyson.

The other McClellan man whose signature was affixed to the Tyson will was Charles McClellan, who eventually became father-in-law of Job's daughter Sidnah. Charles thus was my fourth great-grandfather, whose McClellan line has been a focus of my research for years. Researching the extended McClellan family line meant discovering that Charles had a brother, Andrew, who also seemed to move in tandem with Charles over the years, helping to track them back to their supposed origin.

While it is frankly possible to be misled by reporting parties of centuries long gone, all we can do is work to corroborate the reports we find. In the McClellan case, any hopes of finding the brothers in the same pre-Georgia locations as Job Tyson were dashed. When we fast-forward to the 1850 census for the first chance to view such information, Sidnah's husband George McClellan reported his birthplace to be in South Carolina, not the North Carolina location attributed by reports to Job Tyson.

In fact, I was able to find entries in the 1800 census for two households—one for George's father Charles, the other for Charles' brother Andrew—in the Orangeburg District of South Carolina. It took a lot of exploring to find anyone related to this F.A.N. club who was connected to a North Carolina origin. That family was headed by Jacob Highsmith, who was father-in-law of Andrew McClellan. Andrew's wife Sarah was said to have been born in Pitt County, North Carolina. Indeed, turning to the 1800 census for Pitt County, there was Sarah's father Jacob Highsmith heading the top of this page in the record.

Since we're now in the neighborhood, I couldn't help but take a look at the Tison entries there. Sure enough, there were plenty of Tisons in Pitt County in 1800, including that one I had previously mentioned, for "Joab" Tison. Same as our Job? Hard to tell at this point. I'd still like to find more details on Job's origin before presuming we have found our answer.

Friends, Associates, and Matchmakers

 

What better way to determine an ancestor's origin than to discover where he met his future spouse? If puzzling over just how Job Tyson first met the good friends who witnessed his will didn't provide us any guidance, there are others in the Tyson "F.A.N. Club"—friends, associates, and neighbors—who could still help point the way for us. Perhaps they even played the role of matchmakers.

One of those other F.A.N. Club possibilities was a man named West Sheffield, father of Sidnah Sheffield, who eventually became Job Tyson's wife. Fortunately for us in this exploration, unlike Sidnah who, like most women of the early 1800s, was virtually invisible, her father West Sheffield left a paper trail of useful documents.

Since West Sheffield served in the American Revolution, there are some records concerning key points of his life. He was, for instance, recipient of both land grants for his service in the war, as well as headrights for land in Camden County, Georgia as early as 1812. While Camden County was near Job Tyson's Georgia residence in Glynn County, Job's marriage to West Sheffield's daughter about 1790 may have indicated that the two families met elsewhere, as so far, I have found no records of residence in Georgia before that early 1800s date.

Job Tyson's wife outlived him by over twenty years. Fortunately for us, Sidnah lived until 1855, leaving us a trace of her reported earlier whereabouts through her entry in the 1850 census. To find that, though, means learning that after Job's death, Sidnah quickly remarried. Thus in 1850, by then twice-widowed, Sidnah, now surnamed Peck, was living in her own household next door to her son John Tison. She reported for herself her birthplace in—wait for it—North Carolina.

The question, of course, would be whether Sidnah met her intended, Job Tyson, back in her native state, or somewhere else. Keeping in mind that her father West Sheffield was a Patriot, I checked for his record through the D.A.R. website. There, his record stated that while he served from Georgia, he was born in North Carolina in 1747. Indeed, looking at a published biographical sketch of West Sheffield, obtained from volume 3 of Folks Huxford's Pioneers of Wiregrass Georgia, the writer gave Sidnah's year of birth as 1776. Was the Sheffield family living in North Carolina then, if her father served in Georgia?

By the time of Sidnah's wedding, it's unclear where her family was located. I have so far been unable to locate a marriage record. Still, if we fast-forward to the 1850 census for each of her oldest three daughters, they were reported to have been born in the earliest years of the 1800s in Georgia, not in North Carolina.

With that possibility exhausted of finding any link to tie Job Tyson back to his parents' home in any location other than Georgia, there is one more lead to explore for this examination of the Tyson F.A.N. Club. When I reviewed West Sheffield's own will, I noticed a familiar name pop up among the witnesses: McClellan. That, as I had mentioned yesterday, was a surname appearing twice in Job Tyson's own will—first for witness Charles McClellan, and then another entry for someone listed originally as "J. H." McClellan, and then spelled out as Joseph H. McClellan.

Looking now at West Sheffield's own will from 1830, someone listed as "J. A." McClellan, then signed as Joseph McClellan, once again made an appearance. Could this Joseph be the same as the witness in the Tyson will? If so, we need to see what we can find about the origin of those McClellans. 

With a Little Help From his Friends

 

If we can't pinpoint the origin of a distant ancestor through the information usually provided in more modern times, perhaps we can get a little help from his friends in determining the family's history. When it comes to my fourth great-grandfather Job Tison—a.k.a. Job Tyson—I've heard stories, but I haven't been able to verify them as facts. It's time to reach out to examine a second point of view: the clues we can find through the friends, associates, and neighbors of our mystery ancestor.

In Job Tison's case, it seems he spent most of his adult life in Glynn County, Georgia. Certainly by 1820, his name appeared—as Job "Tyson"—in the Glynn County census, but that was only a few years before he drew up his will.

His will, as it turns out, provided us with two names of trusted associates: Charles McClellan and J. H. McClellan, whose name later in the document was rendered as Joseph H. McClellan. These two McClellan men became the witnesses of Job Tyson's will, with Joseph appearing in court on September 21, 1824, to testify concerning the decedent's last testament.

Conveniently for us as we research the extended family of Job Tyson, at least Charles McClellan figures in the future history of Job's descendants. Charles, it turns out, was father of George McClellan, who a few years later became husband of Job's daughter Sidnah. 

Charles McClellan, it turns out, lived one county to the south of Job Tyson's wayside inn in Glynn County.  By 1817, his name appeared in headright and bounty documents in Camden County, a Georgia county which at that time formed the southernmost international border between the United States and the Spanish claim to a territory which eventually became the state of Florida. No surprise, then, to see Charles and his family eventually migrate farther south, once that Florida territory became the possession of the United States.

How Charles McClellan became a close enough associate with Job Tyson to be asked to witness his will, I can't say. For our purposes today, though, I was curious to determine just where Charles McClellan might have originated, in case he and Job were associates from a time before their residence in Georgia.

Constructing a family tree for Charles' children—mainly to advance their story to records of a later date to reveal their own places of birth—it was easy to spot the change in the family's location. For the five McClellan children born before Charles received the 1817 authorization to survey his newly-acquired property in Georgia, each child was said to have been born in South Carolina. Even the child born after that point—son Charles in 1819—was a South Carolina native. Only with the birth in 1822 of his next son, Samuel, did the census listings of births switch to Georgia.

Granted, from that 1822 date until Job Tyson's will was drawn up in early 1824 was not much time to develop a new friendship, or even a working relationship. That might suggest that Job Tyson and Charles McClellan knew each other prior to their respective relocations to Georgia. But South Carolina? I've seen people state that Job Tyson's family came from North Carolina. This didn't seem to confirm such a F.A.N. Club notion.

There was, however, another person to turn to in seeking Job's origin. The one pointing the way might have been Job Tyson's own father-in-law, West Sheffield, a Revolutionary War Patriot we'll consider tomorrow.

With a "y" or an "i"

 

Those of us who have been researching our family's history for any time have realized how casually spelling has been treated over the centuries. While today's generations may be quite particular about whether everyone spells their given name with a "y" or an "i," clerks in past centuries spelled a surname as they saw fit, not necessarily as the subject of the document preferred.

Thus, when I first began researching my fourth great-grandfather, I discovered that the Georgia record keepers in Glynn County chose to spell his surname as Tyson. That was in 1820, but even the time-faded page made clear that Job's surname was Tyson.

Since then, compiling the few documents I could find on that ancestor revealed that his name might also be spelled Tison, as was shown in records of the long and drawn out settlement of Job's estate. By that point, though, I had already posted articles about my research of this family using the keyword prompted by my first discovery—spelling the surname as Tyson—so that set my path on the blog. But for research? Every step became a double approach, looking for each of two spellings—or inserting the handy wildcard symbol when using search engines which offered that option.

Once having set my mind to being open to such spelling variations, perhaps I chose a more liberal path than I should have followed, for when I finally found a record tying my Job Tison to his supposed roots in Pitt County, North Carolina, I just figured the record for "Joab" Tyson in the 1790 census would simply be one more example of my spelling predicament. I assumed this was someone's best attempt at phonetic spelling of a less common given name.

Having thought this over, once I decided to work on Job's puzzle for this month's Twelve Most Wanted, I realized a possible error. While people today might assume that Joab could be an alternate and phonetic variation on the name Job, its biblical source shows us that those were two different names with different pronunciations. Job, the name of the long-suffering ancient man of the Old Testament, was a name pronounced with a long "o" sound, not a short "o" for the word referring to one's work or career. The name Joab, another biblical name, was actually pronounced with two syllables, Jo - ab.

Yes, I already knew that. I just got caught up in the spelling conundrum and made an assumption. Of course the biblical characters Job and Joab were two separate individuals with different names. But that was then, and now I was working on records from the eighteenth century.

That realization now had me left with not one document at all which could connect Job Tison to North Carolina. Perhaps, I thought, a detour down a different document trail might lead me to a more helpful vantage point for finding Job's origin, whether it was in North Carolina or elsewhere. I decided to take a second look at the friends, associates, and neighbors for my Tison family in Glynn County, Georgia, to see whether any clues could be found to point the way backwards in time for this Tison family.

What Got it all Started

 

When, at the beginning of each year, I outline my research plan for breaking through ancestral brick walls, I usually take a look at where, in my family tree, I'm currently stuck. No matter how much research I tackle, there's always some place where I'm stumped about ancestors. At the end of each year, twelve of those sticking points become my research plan's Twelve Most Wanted for the subsequent year.

That wasn't exactly how it worked for February's plan this year. My goal to research Job Tison of Glynn County, Georgia, came rather from a spark of inspiration. I shared that story, back in December when I was outlining my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026.

To give you a quick recap, last fall during a local genealogical society meeting, I had asked all our members, friends, and visitors to pull out their phones and launch the "Relatives Around Me" function from the FamilySearch.org app. Just taking a few minutes to do that in the midst of such a meeting is an instant guarantee of launching multiple sets of attendees abuzz in conversation. 

One new member at the meeting came up to me, surprised that we were listed as seventh cousins, twice removed. Only a genealogist would even understand what that response meant.

Curious, I inquired which family line connected us. It was the family which included my fourth great-grandfather, Job Tison. When that happened last October, I already knew that Job Tison had been one of my brick wall ancestors. I had seen that other people stated his roots were back in Pitt County, North Carolina, but I couldn't find any documentation to tie Job Tison to both locations.

Since that day, my new-found cousin and I—and our two laptop computers—got together at a local coffee shop for a jam session on locating Tison records. That prompted her to exclaim how much she enjoyed the collaborative effort, and how she wished our group could do something like that more often.

That exchange with my fellow genealogical society member last October not only inspired me to schedule Job Tison as one of my research projects for this year, but to devise a way to gather together with others to collectively research our brick wall ancestors. That became the inspiration for a class series I and a co-instructor will facilitate later this month at a local community college.

In the meantime, the most encouraging outcome of that exchange was that my friend confirmed her family's connection back east to—yep, you guessed it—Pitt County, North Carolina. Her family didn't move on to Georgia, as my Job Tison had, but remained in North Carolina for generations after that. 

While such discoveries through "Relatives Around Me" should include a cautionary tale regarding verifying connections through documentation, the discovery of a possible nexus centered in Pitt County has encouraged me to pick up the search once again. There is definitely something to be said for the generating encouragement of collaborative effort. Sometimes, we need that encouragement to pick back up and keep going.

. . . but Where Did he Come From?

 

There are some ancestors we trace for whom we can find all sorts of data about their adult life: their family, friends, business associates, neighbors. When it comes to the early years of that ancestor's life, though, there may be a blank slate. Nothing. For ancestors like that, though I'm pleased with the ample details that can be found about their later life, I'm still left with a vacuum that begs for an answer. Yeah, I know all sorts of details about his later life—but where did that ancestor come from?

That's the question I'll be grappling with during February, when it comes to researching one of my fourth great-grandfathers, a man named Job Tison. I can find plenty about his later life, that he moved to Glynn County, Georgia, and opened up a wayside inn on a major route of travel and business. I can find that Job Tison died in 1824, but it took over thirty more years to completely settle his estate. I can find details and documents about almost all of his children, and even his wife, despite her life spanning an era in which women were virtually invisible. But to connect Job Tison back to his supposed home in Pitt County, North Carolina, I'm lacking in signs of a reliable paper trail.

I had tackled this question about Job Tison as one of my Twelve Most Wanted, back in 2022—unfortunately during the same month as I got hit with a miserable case of Covid. Despite being stuck flat on my back for over two weeks then, I managed to write my customary wrap up post, complete with suggestions for what to do the next time I tackled this ancestor's story, and an addendum to remind me that I might have not one but two different Tison lines to trace in my family's history.

For this month, we'll reach out to several resources to trace the life of Job Tison backwards from his death in Glynn County, Georgia, in 1824 towards the earliest years of his life in the 1770s in what was then colonial North Carolina. Hopefully, the technology advances we've gained since I last tackled these questions about Job Tison in 2022 will augment this year's effort. 

There is one more spark that inspired me to return to the question about Job Tison's roots, a story I've enjoyed sharing since its occurrence last fall, one which I will share with you tomorrow.

The Stated Goal — And Then Some

 

Work on last month's research plan got me thinking it was a productive month. Now that it's time for my biweekly count, we'll get to see just how busy that month actually was.

Truth be told, I wasn't solely working on my stated goal for the first of my Twelve Most Wanted in January; I had some side projects also clamoring for attention. Thanks to some open-ended questions from last year when I muddled over my father's Polish ancestry, I've still been working on all my Zegarski connections from Czarnylas in Pomerania. That is mostly due to a collaboration with a distant DNA cousin who is also pursuing those Zegarski roots.

Another side project has been thanks to a recent phone call from my husband's niece, who had several questions about specific family lines. A long talk—and an invitation sent for her to view my in-laws' family tree for herself—prompting me to revisit that work, myself. I just couldn't help myself; I ended up adding a few more details to that tree, resulting in an increased count for my in-laws' tree, despite that project not being scheduled until this spring.

The main focus in January, though, has been in building out the family line of my fifth great-grandfather, John Carter of Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Granted, as I build out those lines to the present time, some branches extend towards sixth and seventh great-grandchildren for those families whose generations aren't quite so long as my own branch has tended to be.

While that is a work still in progress—and will be for a long time to come—the numbers are encouraging. The Carter branch stretched to take in 274 additional descendants of John Carter and his (likely) three wives. My tree now has a total of 41,311 documented individuals included.

On the other side of the equation, my in-laws' tree—which should have stayed stock still until April—gained an additional fifteen people, just from that one unexpected conversation with a niece. That tree now contains documentation for 41,752 family members.

Yet to come will be the impact from another joyful announcement, this time from my own niece, who just texted me the news that her application for membership to the Mayflower Society has been accepted. Time to get busy and put in an application on my own behalf—which, of course, will find me adding more collateral lines for that branch of the family, as well.

The main focus for this new month, however, will be to stick with my plan for the second of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026. This month's research direction came through a delightful in-person discovery at our own local society meeting last fall, leading to some conversations which inspired my decision to do more in-person classes and events for our local genealogy scene. We'll talk about that tomorrow, as I introduce my brick wall ancestor from colonial North Carolina, Job Tison. 

End of Another Messy Month

 

The month is out, but not the messy project I had planned for January. Perhaps it's a rule: in genealogy, we always bite off more than we can chew, but we don't always realize that predicament at the first bite. Choosing to outline the descendancy of John Carter's two, possibly three, wives couldn't possibly be a project that would fit into thirty one days.

As this often happens for those Twelve Most Wanted projects, at the end of the month I still have far more work to do on the Carters of Virginia. At this stopping point, as usual, I'll outline what still needs to be done for the next time I pick up this research question.

The overarching goal was to seek out those lines of descent which would follow the matriline leading back to John Carter's two documented wives, Sarah Kenyon and Hannah Chew. That would mean charting the daughters of the daughters of those two Carter wives. The goal—in case this project could ever become a viable reality—would be to find eligible descendants willing to take a mitochondrial DNA test to help trace back to the specific Carter wives. I am far from done with that work, meaning that this will be a task to continue behind the scenes.

As I went through this process during January, I noticed one detail. Just as genealogist George Harrison Sanford King had observed in researching the line of descent from first Carter wife Sarah Kenyon—that the Kenyon surname kept appearing as a family name in subsequent Carter generations—I saw the same repetition for the Carter wife for whom marriage records have been elusive. That wife was said to have been named Elizabeth Armistead, and for her likely descendants, that Armistead name seems to appear quite frequently over the generations. Completing the matrilineal line of descent for the supposed Armistead offspring may help clarify that question—though it will also call for examination of the family names which may have been inherited from the other, non-Carter, side of their family.

In the future, the mainstay of this continued research will be a thorough examination of court records for generations to come, in some cases the only way to find mention of the names in each Carter child's own family. This, too, will be a process requiring much time—although the help of technology through such conveniences as FamilySearch's Full Text Search will help expedite this exercise. It will also be a project which requires us to trace some family members as they moved away from their childhood home in Virginia to settle in other states.

For now, we'll close the books on John Carter's family and our exploration of what can be found of his colonial Virginia home and neighborhood in Spotsylvania County. It's time to step into a new month, and the second of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026. 

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.

The Girls' Team Strikes Out

 

If my search for matrilineal descendants of my fifth great-grandfather John Carter's wives were a baseball game, I'd say we are about to head into the ninth inning, and the girls' team just struck out.

After reviewing the family line of Carter daughter Sarah, wife of William Sutton, I thought it might be handy to simply skip over the next daughters and head straight to the other Carter daughter who also happened to marry a Sutton family member. That would be Judith Carter, third daughter of Hannah Chew, the wife who survived John Carter.

Judith and her husband, Joseph Sutton—who, incidentally, was brother of Sarah Carter's husband William Sutton—had four children. Of those four, only one was a daughter: Maria Chew Sutton. According to the 1941 Suttons of Caroline County, Virginia, this Maria was born in 1790. By 1811, she had married her double first cousin, John Carter Sutton, son of her Carter aunt, Sarah, and her Sutton uncle, William. The marriage didn't last long. After giving birth to her only son, John Oliver Sutton, Maria apparently died within the subsequent year. Strike one.

Well, I guess I should have stuck with protocol and continued the line of Carter daughters by age ranking. So, back we go to Sarah Carter's next youngest sister, Margaret, the last of the daughters said to have been born to John Carter's wife Elizabeth Armistead, the wife whose missing documentation I've been puzzled by. At first glance, though, we can easily see that when this mom came to bat, she'd easily be strike two: to her husband, John Marshall, Margaret bore several children, all of whom were sons.

At this point, we move on to Mary Beverley Carter, the oldest child of John Carter's final wife, Hannah Chew. Mary Beverley became wife of D.A.R. Patriot Richard Stevens. At this point, I didn't quite realize I was about to face up to strike three, since Mary Beverley claimed at least three surviving daughters: Lucy Carter Stevens, Mary Chew Stevens, and Judith M. Stevens.

Of those three possibilities, though, I have yet to find confirming documentation. It appears that Lucy Carter Stevens never married. Mary Chew Stevens did marry, and bore her husband, Samuel Winston, one son and one daughter—but as far as I can find, that daughter never married. And all I can find for the third daughter, Judith, was one son. Until more research unearths the tell-all documents I've been seeking, we'll have to concede that Mary Beverley Carter's progeny did indeed represent strike three.

Not to worry, though, for there are yet three more Carter daughters to review tomorrow in the final inning of this month's project for my Twelve Most Wanted of 2026.

 

Following the Trailblazer: Trust, but Verify

When moving into new territory, it helps to have a trailblazer lead the way. That thought, however, comes with caveats. Is the trailblazer reliable? Someone who deserves our trust? Can the guide's assertions be verified? When following a trailblazer, at least of the genealogical kind, adopt the motto: "Trust, but verify."

Continuing our whirlwind tour of the daughters of John Carter, my fifth great-grandfather, our next child to consider is Sarah. For pursuit of this daughter, our efforts may be hampered by a few factors. The first is that, according to one published book on the Carter genealogy, her mother was reported to be Elizabeth Armistead, of whose marriage to John Carter I haven't yet found any record. The second detail is that Sarah's name didn't appear in a subsequent legal document regarding the Carter children from 1818, suggesting her death prior to that point.

Still, there is much to learn about Sarah Carter. She had married William Sutton sometime before 1780, bearing him several children, three of whom were daughters representing the matriline of one of John Carter's wives. As to that matrilineal founder of Sarah's line, though, the question may be whether it was Elizabeth Armistead or someone else. 

Perhaps fortunate for us—although such a plan doesn't always turn out as neatly as hoped—Sarah's marriage into the Sutton family earned her a spot in one published volume from 1941, The Suttons of Caroline County, Virginia, compiled by Trible Dix Sutton. By virtue of that report—and entries in the book of the generations to follow Sarah Carter—we now have one researcher's idea of how the generations unfolded. The plan, then, is to use this book as a trailblazer and trace Sarah's line, confirming the reports on each subsequent generation through documents available online.

Three details of interest stand out as I begin this process of tracing the line of William Sutton and Sarah Carter. The first is that, from what I've found of Sarah's three daughters so far, she was blessed with at least seven granddaughters—of keen interest to us in this matrilineal project. Secondly, among Sarah's sons was the very relative whose Carter family stories had such an influence on the Joseph Lyon Miller book on the Carter genealogy. The third detail, becoming obvious as I move through the lines of Sarah's grandchildren and beyond, is that the family name "Armistead" appears on a regular basis.

Much as was the case for the first of John Carter's wives, Sarah Kenyon—who, though forgotten in one major Carter genealogy, saw her maiden name echoed in subsequent generations—Sarah Carter Sutton's mother, if she was indeed Elizabeth Armistead as Joseph Lyon Miller asserted, may have been memorialized in the repeated use of the Armistead surname. Of course, this could be attributed to an Armistead ancestor on the Sutton side of the family equation, but it reminds me to keep watching for any further signs of that surname.

For now, with the time remaining for this research project so short, we'll continue tomorrow with another of John Carter's daughters. Behind the scenes, though, I will be confirming the suggested lines of descent of Sarah Carter and William Sutton by linking each individual to supporting documentation. This first project of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026 has become far more than could be handled in one short month. We will likely revisit this multi-generation project again in another year.

Following the Descendant Trail

 

Working our way through the lines descending from my fifth great-grandfather, John Carter, one detail is apparent: he had a lot of daughters. That, as it turns out, suits my purposes just fine, as I'd like to lay out a diagram of those lines of descent from the daughters of John Carter's daughters. To be more specific, I'm seeking to outline the matrilineal descent of John Carter's wives—whether there were two wives, or three.

Right now, I'm working on those Carter daughters for whom the mother's identity was unclear. Some attribute those daughters' line to be children of Elizabeth Armistead—although I'm in plenty of company when I say I have yet to find confirmation of John Carter's marriage to anyone of that name. 

Since this is the last week of the month and time is running short for this first selection of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026, I am "speed dating" my way through the remainder of John's daughters. Yesterday, we discussed Martha Carter, wife of Robert Goodloe, from whose story—and legal documents—we deduced that she was survived by no descendants, male or female. Today, we'll touch briefly on the next youngest daughter, Frances.

For Frances' story, I'm indebted to the advanced work done by fellow blogger Patrick Jones of Frequent Traveler Ancestry, who recently included several posts detailing legal documents outlining the descendants of this particular Carter daughter. Beginning with the will of Frances herself—by then, wife of Rice Curtis and resident of Davidson County, Tennessee—Patrick has provided links and analysis of several other legal documents enabling us to sketch out the lines of descent from Frances Carter, including, as Patrick observed, several female descendants. 

From that point, the next step is to outline in a genealogical format the lines connected back to John Carter's wives, specifically seeking those descendants following each wife's matriline. Along the way, proper documentation needs to be attached to this pedigree chart to verify the lines of descent. Since we've begun with John Carter, whose own last legal document was a codicil issued in 1783, we've got a long way to go to bring our search into the era of "modern" records. Even arriving at the 1850 census, which marked the first time each member of a household was listed by name, represents a wandering search through the document wilderness prior to that time, a stretch of nearly seventy years.

This part of a research project devolves into the tedium of genealogy. As I've said often, it's rarely something to write home about. But in Frances Carter's case, we see some changes. Though her father and his subsequent wife, Hannah Chew, remained until his death in his home in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, Frances and her husband moved to Tennessee, to a location near current day Nashville. From there, some of John Carter's grandchildren and great-grandchildren began migrating westward, some of them toward the northern portion of the midwest, others toward the south.

And there were daughters. Several daughters. This branch of the Carter descendants will surely keep us busy behind the scenes for some time to come.

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. 

Permission to Copy

 

We may think little about what goes on behind the scenes regarding those wonderful, instantly-accessible historic documents we retrieve from resources such as Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org. We somehow realize that someone had to grant permission for the genealogy organizations to access and digitize records from someone else's archives. But what went into that permission-granting process seldom appears on the surface of the exchanges we conduct, every time we look for an ancestor's paper trail.

I'm not here to provide the "MEGO" (My Eyes Glaze Over) blow by blow on just how that process unfolds—a process which, I suspect, has as many variants as companies signing the behind-the-scenes contractual agreements. I can, however, give a nutshell-sized vignette of how that series of agreements impacted me in my attempt this weekend to gain access to some old Polish genealogical records.

When I went looking for documents verifying the family details of my father's ancestors in the Pomeranian regions of northern Poland last fall, I found a frustratingly high number of records for which I could only view the transcript, not a copy of the actual handwritten record. The problem with such transcriptions is in that lack of access. To not be able to see the scrawl of the handwriting and check whether it was transcribed correctly—or completely—can hamper research progress. I wanted to see a digitized copy of the actual documents, not simply a transcription.

Finding any mention of such records on FamilySearch meant getting an error message informing me that, to see the actual document, I needed to go in person to a local FamilySearch Center. As I found out this weekend at such a center, that doesn't simply mean to physically sit in the library, tap into their wifi, and pull up the document.

"It depends on the agreement," the FamilySearch volunteer informed me. "Some agreements involve copyright issues."

I am looking for documents in the mid-1800s, I thought, being the grump that I am...but bit my tongue and didn't say. Obviously, this was a matter of more than simple copyright. Contractual arrangements can reach far beyond the date at which published material would enter the public domain.

Being instructed on exactly how I could proceed to the permission point, I began my work. I had about twenty documents for which I had gleaned the URL for quick access. Oh, no, that turns out: each document had to be accessed by a new search, then pulled up on the center's own computers, the transcribed record printed, then brought up on another screen by the volunteer, who would then access and carefully cut and paste the document into another file for printing.

By the time I had to leave that day, I had about five actual documents printed up, with far more to complete than I had time to access. In the meantime, I gained a few insights. First, don't batch work in piles so high, they can't be dispatched in a matter of a couple hours; this wears out volunteers, not to mention, welcome mats. Second, leave margin for unexpected discoveries. When I finally was able to look at the actual document for one of my Zegarski ancestors in Czarnylas—a line item in a baptismal record—not only did I find the relative I was seeking, but stumbled upon names of family members in other entries included on the same page. Cousins! In a small village, that type of serendipity can happen. And third, don't assume the routine that makes the most sense from your vantage point will be the one that makes sense to the people who set up the system.

Now that I've got a clearer picture of how that system operates, I'll be making more frequent—but less lengthy—visits to my local FamilySearch Center to gain permission to access the rest of those twenty-something documents. In the meantime, I'm scouring the documents for all the details I can glean—including those surprise appearances of collateral lines in this Polish ancestry.

The Genealogy Dilemma: Online or Off?

 

I'll admit: we've been spoiled. There was a time when all complaining about brick wall ancestors occurred within the confines of local genealogical society meetings—or by placing a query in the classifieds of the Everton's Genealogical Helper. Now, we can take our family history rant online and have instant commiseration through social media.

Better yet, we can actually look for records concerning that brick wall ancestor, thanks to multiple online resources—some for a price, admittedly—and even find an answer. There are more digitized documents available online now than there have ever been. What used to be impossible can now actually be easily findable.

When it comes to continued learning, perhaps it was Covid which influenced our turn to online resources to increase our research skills. And the steepest—and most quickly mounted—learning curve was being able to acquire the knack of signing on to genealogy society events on Zoom, Google Meet, or other platforms for online meetings.

With our increased dependence on online gathering, I've noticed one thing: I miss getting together with fellow genies. Online settings may have afforded us such a broader vista of opportunities, but one thing it lacks: the spontaneity of face-to-face gatherings. 

Perhaps that's what prompted me, lately, to make the shift for an online genealogy class series I've taught for years. This spring, my co-instructor and I are switching to an in-person venue at a local community college. Yes, every class member will end up paying for parking permits and toting their laptop across campus once a week. But we'll get to collaborate weekly over our brick wall ancestors, face to face for a glorious two hour long genealogy jam session.

Perhaps, too, that's what beguiled me to drive three hours to attend a local D.A.R. chapter's day-long family history event today. It's not that I need to sit in on beginning genealogy classes; I want to go where the people are. (Truth be told, I will be shopping for possible future speakers for our own society's programs—and you can be pretty sure I'll lug my laptop into the host church's FamilySearch Center to glean all those access-onsite-only Polish documents I found last December while I'm there.)

It's all about the surprising energy we find when we gather to talk about our research passion. Yes, that can sometimes erupt spontaneously during online meetings, but I've seen more times when that hasn't been the case. But face to face, we can't help but steer towards sharing those genealogical discoveries that intrigue us and spark that excitement.

Face it, we share our research passion far easier when we gather together. I know I search for those opportunities—and want to make them a reality, too.

Scorecard: The Carter Girls' Team

 

Let's just say it's halftime—or time for the seventh inning stretch, depending on your preferred sports analogy—and it's time to cheer on the girls' team. In other words, I'm still in the process of finding daughters of daughters of daughters...et cetera...of my fifth great-grandfather John Carter of Spotsylvania County, Virginia, and I want to take a snapshot of the possibilities for pursuing a mitochondrial DNA project.

Let's review what we already know: John Carter had eleven daughters. What we don't know for sure is which daughter was born to which of John's wives. That's the hoped for big reveal if we can put together an mtDNA project for this Carter line.

If I follow the argument of George Harrison Sanford King, then John had two daughters by his first wife, Sarah Kenyon. Those two daughters would be Elizabeth, who married Owen Thomas, and Ann, wife of William Heslop.

So far, I've begun tracing the generations of Elizabeth's three daughters. As for Sarah Kenyon's second daughter, Ann, wife of William Heslop, I have only located one daughter, who apparently died unmarried and childless. Following my post on that branch of the Carter family, thanks to a comment by Patrick Jones of Frequent Traveler Ancestry, I see he has already been a way-finder for court records regarding the Heslop side of the family, so that will join my Carter to-do list for the final week of this month's Twelve Most Wanted pursuit.

That would leave four other daughters who were not children of the other documented wife of John Carter, Hannah Chew. Those four daughters—in some books, children attributed to Elizabeth Armistead—were Martha, wife of Robert Goodloe; Frances, wife of Rice Curtis; Sarah, wife of William Sutton; and Margaret, wife of John Marshall.

At this point, our girls' team scorecard wobbles. For Martha, I have no children listed yet, though I see she likely died around 1786. Frances has been more widely documented, and I look forward to tracing her five Curtis daughters. Sarah left three Sutton daughters, one of whom, also named Sarah, had three daughters of her own. And, pulling in the opposite direction, daughter Margaret's union with John Marshall produced seven sons—zip for the daughters' score there.

The remaining five daughters were documented as children of John's wife Hannah Chew. The oldest, Mary Beverley, became wife of Revolutionary War Patriot Richard Stevens, of which one daughter, Judith, is acknowledged in the D.A.R. website. John Carter's second daughter by his wife Hannah Chew, an ancestor in my direct line named Margaret Chew Carter, married Zachariah Taliaferro and raised a family of four daughters, each of whom raised two daughters of their own—with the exception of daughter Lucy, who claimed three daughters. Third daughter of Hannah Chew, Judith Carter, married Joseph Sutton, but her one daughter died young. Fourth daughter, Lucy, married Burton Taliaferro, but died childless. The youngest of Hannah Chew's daughters, Elizabeth Matilda, died young and likely unmarried, though I've seen conflicting reports concerning her.

As the generations multiply, it's apparent that I've bitten off more than I can research for one month. This, however, is a necessary start. With a triage-style approach to this final week of January, we'll see how many generations we can cover before we turn the calendar page over to a new month and a new project.

A final comment before closing today's notes. Thanks to those who have recently left helpful comments. I always like to leave a reply to comments, but it appears that Blogger is going through a technical glitch similar to what it had experienced a few years ago: I am unable to actually post a reply to your comments. I will try to acknowledge these helpful suggestions within the text of the next day's post, if possible—Kat, your suggestion yesterday about Nancy as a possible nickname for Ann is appreciated; I had wondered the same thing myself—or may try to add that reply as a new comment, if it is possible.