Seeking the Ones Who Stayed Behind

 

After discovering that some Jackson descendants followed in their parents' footsteps and continued their pattern of westward migration, I wondered whether anyone stayed behind where Lyman and Deidama Jackson had settled.

My brilliant thought was to pull up the records left behind by Lyman Jackson, my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandfather, in Erie County, Pennsylvania, where they last lived. The best way to do that, I figured, was to look at FamilySearch.org's Full Text Search.

When I saw the seventy possibilities listed in reply to my inquiry, I assumed some would be more generic results—perhaps something with the name "Jackson" showing alongside "Erie" in the same document.

Not so. It appears that all seventy of those search results merit a closer examination. The only downside: no sign of the will I was hoping to find. Instead, judging by all the deeds listed in the search results, Lyman may have chosen to dispose of his property through other legal means rather than by drawing up a will.

In those seventy results were three or four mentions of Lyman Jackson's name in old history books, themselves becoming possible sources to guide us further in this month's research project. In addition, I found several depositions recorded on behalf of what was likely Deidama's application for pension after her husband's death, as Lyman served in the Revolutionary War. Some apparently contained pertinent information regarding his earlier life, also meriting a closer look as we pursue a fuller story of this ancestor's life.

However, as I sift through those seventy documents this week, I can't lose sight of my original reason for calling up all these legal records from Erie County, Pennsylvania: I want to find Lyman Jackson's will—or at least some pointers to help me locate the subsequent whereabouts of the rest of his thirteen children. Did any of those children stay behind in Pennsylvania? If not, where did they move next? I'm on the lookout for some way pointers.

Clustering Together

 

In looking up documents regarding brick wall ancestors, eventually we get to a point where we start to notice we've been seeing the same names appearing together, time after time. That realization is worth paying attention to, for it is quite typical for people—friends, associates, neighbors, for instance—to cluster together when facing big decisions in life. This, as one might say, could be a clue.

I was ecstatic when I finally broke through the records impasse to discover the parents of my third great-grandfather Thomas Rainey. Following rapidly on that long-awaited discovery was another: Thomas Rainey's mother's name, Sally Firth, appeared in her father's will. Almost instantly, I had a new set of names of collateral lines to research for DNA purposes.

And then I got stuck. Again.

Sally Firth's sister Elizabeth apparently married Randolph Rawlings. The many permutations of her husband's given name prompted me to see what I could find on Elizabeth's husband, regardless of what his name might have been.

That's when I discovered some documents of interest. Maddening in that the main court record actually left blanks where key dates should have been inserted in the first document I discovered, I hung on to it based simply on a hunch. That hunch was that the names listed in the record might signify more of a connection than just any names in a random list.

The record began, "This indenture made the ___ day of ____ Eighteen hundred + one between...."

Then followed a listing of names, somewhat confusing due to lack of commas. Included in the list were:

• Thomas Firth and Nancy his wife
• Randolph Rawlings and Eliza B his wife
• Howell Duggar and Mary his wife
• Isham Rainey and Sally his wife
• Henry Abernathy and Rebeckah his wife

Those listed in that group represented one party in a legal exchange, with someone named William Firth being the second party. For exchange of ninety pounds "lawfull money" the above party released to William Firth a certain tract of land in Brunswick County, Virginia, containing about 125 acres.

This past week, when I had first discovered Rebecca Firth's marriage to Henry Abernethy—the family's  surname was often misspelled in records as Abernathy—I tried tracing the couple's descendants, mainly to help with placing DNA matches.

The Abernethy family was said to have moved from Virginia to Tennessee. Though I had little luck locating the family in other pre-1850 records, one detail I did notice while chasing these Abernethys was the recurrence of the surname Duggar. This was a surname which I couldn't connect with the family, but the frequency of the pairing told me there might be something to the connection that I needed to know.

Since then, I worked on another Firth daughter's line, that of Elizabeth, who we've since discovered became wife of Randolph Rawlings. That couple, too, appeared in this list. Of course, Isham Rainey, father of my third great-grandfather Thomas Rainey, had married another Firth sibling, Sarah, known as Sally Firth. And Thomas Firth, junior, as we discover from this legal document, must have married someone named Nancy.

With all the couples but one containing relatives connected to this same Firth family, could that mean the Duggars were also family members? Could Mary Duggar (in her signature at the bottom of the document showing as Polly) have been a sister of Rebecca, Elizabeth, Sally, and the younger Thomas Firth? If the principle of cluster genealogy holds true, it's worth checking out that possibility. It's time to examine a few more documents.

Advancements to the Heirs

 

In the Monroe County, Mississippi, court records assembled in the administration of the estate of Isham Rainey was one page inserted with the label, "A Bill of advancements to the heirs of the Estate of Isham Rainey, decd."

That, precisely, was what I was looking for. In the jumble, however, I couldn't be sure that the preceding scanned entry was the reverse side of that label. However, there were enough names ending in "Rainey" entered in that list to make me decide to save it for future reference.

What was recorded on that previous scanned entry was a mostly legible note reading,

The undersigned agree that they have received from Isham Rainy dec'd in his lifetime [?] the sums respectively charged to them in the above acct. 7th Jan'y 1845.

Whether that was the settlement to heirs or an exchange for a different financial transaction, I can't tell. The court records seemed to be filed in disarray, so there was no guarantee that the sequence of appearance held any significance. But the list introduces several more Rainey family members than I had previously been aware of—a good list to hold close for this month's project.

The list was headed by the signature of Thomas F. Rainey, Isham's son and one of the administrators of his estate. That known name was followed by some other Rainey family members I still need to identify, beginning with William Rainey. George W. Mealer we first encountered last Friday as the representative of some of Isham's grandchildren of the same Mealer surname. Uriah Duncan we likewise saw last Friday as a representative of one of Isham's daughters. Then came H. C. Rainey, unknown to me so far, and another Isham Rainey, possibly the deceased man's grandson, son of Thomas. An illegible signature appears to be W. R. Broo---, followed by H. W. Allen, and yet another Rainey family member whose signature appears to be W. P. Rainey.

How these names fit into the family constellation—if at all, in some cases—may help build that branch of the family tree in answer to my research question for this half-over month.

Image above from the 1845 Monroe County, Mississippi, probate file of Isham Rainey, deceased, courtesy of Ancestry.com.

Mixed Goals, Mixed Results

 

Having a research goal is good policy; focusing on one specific detail hones attention. Having multiple projects in the air all at once is good juggling practice, but it doesn't always yield the results we were hoping for. So far this month, mixing research goals has produced mixed results. And for those results, my biweekly count only reveals part of the picture.

In the past two weeks, I've mostly been focusing on my March research project: discovering the parents of my third great-grandfather, Thomas F. Rainey. Looking at this latest count, I can see I did make progress: I added eighty two additional names to my family tree. Mostly, these were collateral lines gleaned from names mentioned in court records, with their descendants also connected to the picture.

Included in that effort was a review of DNA matches uncovered either by the ThruLines tool at Ancestry.com or the ProTools option to view Shared Matches. But I also got a bit off the selected path for this month's Twelve Most Wanted, thanks to the unexpected revelation of an adoptee who turned out to be a close relative, a most welcome addition to that same family tree, which now has grown to 41,804 documented relatives.

That, however, wasn't the full tale of this multiple-goal fortnight. A welcome email from my husband's niece started me down a different family path, building out a branch on her father's tree which resulted in forty more names on my in-laws' tree. So that count gets upped to 41,793—a tree which will see regular growth come next month, when I shift my focus to my mother-in-law's branches of that tree.

Granted, trawling through pages upon pages of court-recorded family disputes can slow down progress with my count—but gives a clearer picture of family dynamics, for sure. That will be the path for next week's research on the Rainey family and related branches, and those endless pages of court records as we sort through the remains of Isham Rainey's estate in Mississippi.

Who Got the Money?

 

Now that we've figured out the parents of my third great-grandfather Thomas Firth Rainey and seen him labeled as the son of Isham Rainey and Sarah Firth, it's time to revisit that pile of legal papers assembled in Monroe County, Mississippi, at the time of Isham's passing. 

Normally, a will would clearly spell out the surviving descendants, but we don't have such a convenience, as Isham apparently died intestate. What we do have is a file of court records, complete with scraps of paper containing handwritten notes by all the men who felt that Isham's estate owed them money. In other words, what we now have to sort through is a mess. And the only reason I'd be sorting through this file, page by scribbled page, is to determine just who got the money. I want to know who his children were.

There are a few clearly labeled documents in the file, thankfully—such as this letter to the court by one woman named Elizabeth Arnold. According to her letter, she was appointing Uriah Duncan as her attorney, to ensure that she received the "proportionable share" of her father's estate.

Back in Oglethorpe County in Georgia, where Isham's son Thomas once lived, three people jointly sent a letter to the court in Mississippi. They were James A. Mealer, John M. Mealer, and Mary Ann Mealer, who together were appointing George Mealer of Lowndes County, Mississippi, to serve as their attorney in representing their rights as the grandchildren of the deceased Isham Rainey.

There were, of course, numerous others sending notes to the court to make sure that money owed to them from the Rainey estate did indeed make its way to its creditors. All that takes time to follow.

Though there were many lining up to claim their due from the administrators of the estate, the ones I'm interested in will be the ones who could demonstrate their legal right to an inheritance from that same pot of money—if any was left after that long line of inquiring creditors received their due. Perhaps it is a good thing that I have a weekend ahead of me to read through all those statements.

Isham in Mississippi

 

If, in 1844, the Coweta County, Georgia, court appointed resident Thomas F. Rainey as administrator of the estate of a deceased man named Isham Rainey, what connection between the two would make such an appointment reasonable? Considering that this Isham Rainey had died not in Georgia but in Mississippi, there must have been a significant link between these two men.

I decided to check the records available for Mississippi during that time period to look for anyone by that same name, Isham Rainey. Whether I found the right one will apparently take quite a bit more reading, but I did locate one document regarding the administrators for the estate of one Isham Rainey in Monroe County, Mississippi.

Granted, Monroe County in the 1840s boasted a population of under ten thousand people, but its population, based on census returns, was more than doubling every ten years. The appearance of this Isham Rainey in court records could be a case of a name twin.

The trouble with this document was in the listing of the named administrators. Just like the record we had found yesterday from the Georgia county court, it named more than one man as administrator. There was, however, a problem. While the Georgia appointment named Thomas Rainey as administrator along with a man named Jonathan Lee, the Mississippi record identified someone named H. W. Allen heading up an unnamed group.

In opening up the first pages of the file, though, I barely needed to look farther before spotting one detail: the heading on the next page included the name Thomas F. Rainey. One page beyond that, complete with ink blots and crossed out letters, included the unclear entry, "Isham Rainey paid the above account for Thos. F. Rainey his son."

The complete file—which I have yet to finish reading—contained an accounting of the then-current estate of the man said to be Thomas Rainey's father. If this Isham Rainey in Mississippi was indeed the father of the Thomas F. Rainey then living in Coweta County, Georgia, this little slip of paper was indeed a fortunate find.

Still, I'm unable to quell the doubt, "What if this was a different Isham Rainey who also just happened to name his son Thomas?" Since our Thomas had, years later, reported his birthplace to have been in yet another state—Virginia—the next reasonable stop in checking out this wandering Isham would be to rewind the clock and see if he could be found listed in any records back in Virginia.

Above: Handwritten note inserted into the file including the estate records of Isham Rainey of Monroe County, Mississippi; courtesy of Ancestry.com. 

Is Isham the One?

Finding a name like Isham Rainey in the 1830 census, right in the same Georgia county where my third great-grandfather Thomas Rainey had settled, was encouraging. As rare a name as Isham might have been, though, that was no guarantee that Thomas' neighbor by the same surname was his father. I had to wonder, is this Isham the one? Or was he a brother, a cousin, or even someone totally unrelated?

Granted, Oglethorpe County in 1830 had thirteen thousand residents. I suppose there could have been a name twin in the mix of a crowd that size. But Isham was indeed a less common name. Though an infographic from Ancestry.com—not surprisingly, the genealogy company features details on many given names—attributes an Arabic origin to the name Isham, it also mentioned that according to their data, the country with the most men named Isham is the United States. But don't assume that's today's details; according to that same infographic, the year in which the U.S. had the most people born with that name was 1840—just about ten years after this census record helped me spot that Rainey name.

So, where did such a name come from? One quick detail from Wikipedia noted that Isham is actually the name of a village and civil parish in Northamptonshire, England. It apparently became a surname, also from England. Eventually, as names sometimes do, that surname became a given name; third U.S. president Thomas Jefferson, for instance, had a maternal grandfather named Isham Randolph (though his own mother's maiden name was Isham). In fact, I found a genealogy book filled with details on eight hundred years of family history for one line claiming that surname.

Does that make this Isham Rainey kin to the famous families of colonial America? I doubt it. But I did find an interesting document, filed in 1844 in the Georgia county where Thomas Rainey had, by that time, moved, naming him and another man as administrators of the estate of the late Isham Rainey, senior, of Mississippi.

While that document doesn't necessarily explain the connection between Isham Rainey and Thomas Rainey, the five hundred dollars bond posted by the two named administrators certainly infers more than a passing acquaintance in the old neighborhood.    

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.

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.

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. 

When (Half) Siblings Squabble

 

"Long ago and far away" may sound more like lyrics for a 1970s love song, but right now in real life, that's my problem as I research the children of my fifth great-grandfather John Carter. Apparently, the passage of centuries—not to mention wars and courthouse fires—can make vital documents disappear.

While John Carter and his family may irk us with nagging questions—such as the true identity of his wives—absence of explanations or even documents in such sources as marriage records or wills is not always the roadblock at the end of the research tunnel. If we are fortunate, those half-siblings of different mothers may grow up to see their squabbles grow to full force and erupt in a subsequent generation.

Much as I had discovered last summer when researching my mother-in-law's Rinehart ancestors in Ohio, the disposition of property, or even how a will was drawn up, may spark a smoldering anger that takes years to burst into a flaming legal battle. Though unfortunate for family peace, the resulting court records may clearly draw the lines between the children of one mother and those of the other.

In reading the research report of John Carter's family by one genealogist, fellow of the American Society of Genealogists George Harrison Sanford King, I spotted word of such a possible legal battle. After listing the names of each of John Carter's children, this researcher mentioned,

Several long and tedious suits arose in the chancery courts over the estate of Robert Carter...and several of these reached the Fredericksburg District Court where the voluminous papers are now filed.

A list of the several case names were then provided:

File #139: Hamilton versus Samuel

File #144: Hamilton versus Sutton

File #194: Marshall versus Samuel

File #195: Marshall versus Garnett 

The best detail about this King report is his observation that "these papers clearly separate the two sets of children." Granted, since the suits involved Robert Carter, son of John Carter and his final wife Hannah Chew, the separation was between the specific children of Hannah Chew and all other children as half-siblings, so there is still the question of whether there was one other wife or two. But at least one subset of the Carter children was now clearly identified by their mother.

Discovering this new set of court papers requires us to look further into that realm of blurry copies of handwritten reports, in the hopes that it will lead to more clarifying information. In this trek through those legal records, I am thankfully not alone. Just as I had mulled over what could be found on John Carter's family two years ago, fellow genea-blogger Patrick Jones had also done so, two years ago. In his case, access to what he calls "extensive files" in the Virginia chancery records sheds light on his branch of the Carter line.

Just as Patrick had stumbled upon documents regarding the woman who was likely the true first wife of John Carter, reaching even farther down the related lines of John Carter's extended family may provide us the answers to the questions those original documents had prompted. Just as family members had squabbled in court over property distributions in one generation, there are surely more such disputes to lead us to a clearer picture of the Carter family's true composition.

 

  

 

 

 

 

Exhibit A versus Exhibit B

 

It seems an easy way out to depend on published genealogies of our ancestors, especially those whose life span stretched over that century mark crossing from United States records to colonial British North American records. Exhibit A in that case might be said to be the Joseph Lyon Miller volume, The Descendants of Capt. Thomas Carter of "Barford," Lancaster County, Virginia, published in 1912, which includes a chapter on the "Descendants of John Carter of Caroline and Spotsylvania."

That volume, as has long been noted, contains information on two wives of John Carter. All well and good, you might think—until we reach the part about wife number one being named Elizabeth Armistead. 

The last time I had focused on John Carter's family as part of my annual Twelve Most Wanted, I stumbled upon wills of extended family members which had indicated that John Carter's first wife was not named Elizabeth Armistead, but Sarah Kenyon. Yet the Miller genealogy seemed to make no reference to that possibility.

Enter Exhibit B. Thanks to some exploration at FamilySearch.org using their Full Text Search option, I stumbled upon a typewritten manuscript drawn up by genealogist George Harrison Sanford King. Among other details, this report was concerned with the identity of John Carter's first wife.

As I read through this particular manuscript, I could see George Harrison Sanford King's painstakingly careful outlay of details in support of Sarah Kenyon as John Carter's wife. Let's just say that, in the case of Exhibit A versus Exhibit B, in the first ten pages, he had me convinced—although I admit, I was already partial to that point of view, having found some of those court records, myself.

However, pages one through ten of this manuscript are only skimming the surface of the legal paperwork drawn up concerning this extended family. We've only just begun learning the full story. By page ten it's too soon to draw up a judgment regarding the wives of John Carter just yet. Besides, as the manuscript reveals—and the court records bid me to observe—things are about to become rather messy in the Carter family's story.

Learning About the Step-Family

 

Some families are difficult to trace. The distance of generations, even centuries, is not the only impediment; some family dynamics are simply challenging to navigate. Tracing Simon Rinehart's family has been one example, due to the contentious nature between the children of his first marriage and those of his widow, Anna, who was his second wife. But even though we've found court records to guide us through the twists and turns of Simon's family, it looks like the continuing story of one daughter, Nancy, will require us to repeat that step-family examination through yet another iteration.

We've already learned that Nancy was married at least twice: once to a man surnamed Ankrom, then to a widower named John Colborn. And yet, the question remains: did Nancy, herself, have any descendants? Searching for Nancy Ankrom yields very little, other than her 1855 marriage record to John Colborn in Perry County, Ohio. Records showing a woman's own name were rarer before the 1850 census mark, and so far, I've come up empty-handed for that enumeration. Yet, pursuing the court records for Nancy's step-children might be more informative—something that will become more obvious as we continue this quest over the weekend.

Fortunately for us—though not for yet another squabbling family bringing their argument to court—digitized Perry County court records became just the guidance we need to sort out the tangles in that family. John Colborn had died intestate, and one of his sons decided to petition the court for division of John's land.

While we can find John Colborn in the 1850 census, that document was recorded after the death of John's first wife. Because the 1850 census did not include any explanation for how each person in a household was related to the others, we can't just presume that those others listed were his children—though they could be. That's why the discovery of the Colborn court case became so helpful—if, of course, the document correctly represented what was affirmed in the proceedings.

The 1850 census entry for the Colborn household listed twenty year old Martha, then twenty one year old Ephraim and eighteen year old Elizabeth, followed by six year old Alfred. The odd order of ages made me question whether each of these younger Colborns were children of John and his first wife. Ephraim and Elizabeth could also be a couple, although given their ages, Alfred would be too old to be their son.

Perry County court records following John Colborn's May 1866 death spelled out the details for us completely. The plaintiff's name was given as N. B. Colborn, one of John's sons. Also named was another son using initials: E. S. Colborn—Ephraim from the 1850 census? Apparently, Alfred J. Colborn from the 1850 census was actually John's grandson, from John's deceased daughter Mary. Another daughter, Lydia, was listed as wife of Samuel Feigley. Daughter Sarah was listed as wife of—oh, groan, another research challenge—John Brown. (Fortunately, the couple was identified as living in Pickaway County, Ohio, helping to eliminate the thousands of other John Browns who are out there.) Rounding out the list of surviving children was daughter Martha, who was by then wife of Henry J. Trout.

There were other family members included in the court listing of John Colborn's legal heirs. Another deceased Colborn daughter, Charlotte, had surviving children James P. Colborn and Mary Hare—later surnamed Dick—listed in this same readout. And deceased daughter Euphema had left heirs Francis M. Wright, Margaret Wright, and Elizabeth Eddington, wife of Perry A. Eddington.

It may seem odd, while I'm researching the extended family of Simon Rinehart, to take this detour to list another family's descendants. There is, however, a reason for this: I want to discover whether Simon's own daughter Nancy had any children of her own. The document instigating this question is the census following John Colborn's death, after his second wife Nancy had given up her dower rights in the process of dividing the Colborn property.

In 1870, sixty seven year old Nancy Colborn appeared in the household of a man named David Hull. More to the point of this question, Nancy's entry under the column heading "occupation" was a curious—and hopefully helpful, rather than misleading—statement: "lives with son in law." Was David's wife Eliza part of the extended Colborn family? Could the enumerator—as I've sometimes seen happen—have confused step-family for in-laws? Or was Eliza actually Nancy's daughter from a previous marriage?

That's the next step in this twisting family history trail—a step I wouldn't have been able to take without this clue, and certainly one I couldn't take without being equipped with the full listing of Nancy's second husband's children.

Finding Nancy

This month has become one deep dive after another into court records regarding the extended family of Simon Rinehart, my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather. After Simon's 1852 will was disputed in court in Perry County, Ohio, we've since discovered not one, but two separate listings of the names of his children, itemized specifically by each of Simon's two wives.

One task this month has been to identify and trace each of those sets of Rinehart children. While some of his heirs have been easy to find—especially those married daughters whose husbands were specifically named in the court documents—one child, Nancy, had kept me stumped.

Stumped, that is, until I noticed that her married name in the earlier lawsuit was different than that of the second court case. With this additional clue, it's time to find Nancy in whatever additional documents she might have appeared.

The listing in the earlier lawsuit named Nancy's married name as Ankrom. Since the record didn't provide a name for her husband, I presumed he was already deceased.

I presumed correctly. By November 4, 1855, there was a marriage record for a Nancy Ankrom, who had married John Colborn. And that new surname, Colborn, was exactly the one which subsequent court records concerning Simon's widow Anna Rinehart had labeled their daughter Nancy.

Since I hadn't been able to find Nancy Ankrom in any Perry County records, I checked to see whether I'd have any better luck with this new information. Sure enough, there she was in the 1860 census as we would expect, living in Pike Township with her husband John Colborn and a sixteen year old named Alfred Colborn—too old to have been Nancy's son by this second marriage.

By the time of the 1870 census, Nancy Colborn was living in the same Pike Township, but in the household of one David Hull. As for any entry in the 1870 census for John Colborn, there was none that I could find.

Sure enough, John Colborn had died—intestate—by January of 1866, launching another volley of court reports recording the arguments between John's children. Though none of those Colborn children were Nancy's own descendants, in hopes that this might point another researcher in the right direction, we'll take a look at those documents tomorrow—as well as consider whether Nancy had any children of her own from her first marriage.   

When Eight Becomes Seven

 

Sometimes, the only way to learn the rest of the story is to hunker down and read the entire text of court documents. 

Whenever the Rineharts took each other to court, they apparently kept coming back for more litigation. We saw that after Simon Rinehart's death in Perry County, Ohio, back in 1853. Discovering mention of another court case—this time, brought by Simon's son-in-law, Isaac Brown—I went back to look at the details of this subsequent case. That litigation, in turn, brought up arguments between some of the children of Anna Rinehart, Simon's second wife, and his son Jesse. The contention centered around whether Simon had, before his death, given his son Jesse a certain additional piece of land.

Meanwhile, to complicate the matter following the death of their mother, who died intestate, Anna's remaining eight children squabbled over whether her land should be divided eight ways or seven. But don't think we'd arrive at the end of the story with a simple legal decision. During the time those Rinehart descendants' case worked its way through the court system, other events occurred.

For one thing, Anna's three single daughters who had been residing with their parents in the 1850 census—Hannah, Lucinda, and Charlotte—began to experience health problems as they aged. Charlotte, in particular, had been noted in that census to have been "idiotic." Sometime before the death of their mother, Charlotte was in such need of extra care that the Perry County court appointed her brother Jesse as her guardian.

In the midst of the court proceedings due to Anna dying intestate, mention was made of Charlotte's subsequent death in 1861. That, perhaps, might not have been noted, except that in the squabble over division of their mother's land, Jesse brought up the issue of costs borne by him for his sister's funeral and burial expenses, which he felt should be addressed as they considered division of Anna's estate.

There was, however, that one other contention: whether before his death, Simon had given another parcel of land to Jesse, and if that resolved whether Jesse should be included in this later division of Anna's land. 

The resolution of that dispute? I can't say. I'm still reading through pages and pages of court documents. However, one thing is sure: you can learn a lot about a family, just by reading up on all their arguments aired in the public setting of a courtroom. 

When Court Records Get it Wrong

 

One would think court records would be the final authority on what really happened in the cases brought to justice. However, in reviewing the multiple lawsuits ensnaring Simon Rinehart's children—and later, his grandchildren—I've noticed a few tangles. For instance, in one record concerning a guardianship of Simon's daughter Charlotte, the clerk noted an assertion made in a previous record—only he left the date blank, presumably meaning to fill in the correct information later, but never doing so. In another record more to our specific concern, the court record gave a somewhat different list of names for the children of Simon and his second wife.

This complicates things. Which record do I consider to be the reliable one?

We had already seen, after Simon's will was contested in court in Perry County, Ohio, beginning in 1854, that his children from the first wife were listed as Samuel Rinehart, Martha Fordyce, Mary Smith, Thomas Rinehart, and Sarah Gordon. Also, that court case listed Simon's children from his second wife—the surviving widow Anna—as Nancy Ankrom, Jesse Rinehart, Lucinda Rinehart, Charlotte Rinehart, Cassa Brown, and Hannah Rinehart.

That case, and the following counter-suits, went on for pages and pages in Perry County court records, all of which I've read. But then came that discovery, from an old email, that Cassa Brown's husband Isaac had filed another suit after the death of Simon's widow Anna. Anna had died "about" December 18, 1859, and she had died intestate, putting into motion the very land division that Simon's heirs from his first wife had predicted.

What was confusing about finding that subsequent case was that the record included a different grouping of Simon's children. This second petition, which demanded that the Rinehart land be divided equally among Anna's descendants, noted a different listing of heirs. Named in this case were Anna's children and lineal heirs surviving her: Lucinda Rinehart, Hannah Rinehart, Nancy Colborn (wife of John Colborn), Mary Smith (wife of Robert Smith), Martha Fordyce (wife of Jacob), Jesse Rinehart, Charlotte Rinehart, and Cassa Brown (wife of Isaac Brown). 

My first reaction was an "aha!" moment: I was having the worst time trying to locate a Nancy Ankrom in Perry County. I did find one in Greene County, back in Pennsylvania where Simon and his family had originated, but the time period seemed wrong. But now, according to this document in 1860, here she was under a different married name: Colborn. Step number one following this discovery is to return to census and land records to see if I can find Nancy and her husband John—not to mention, check the marriage records.

To my dismay, however, was the regrouping of the children attributed to Simon's second wife, Anna. In the court case following his death, Martha and Mary were listed along with the other children of Simon's first wife, but now they are said to have been children of Anna. None of the others from Simon's first wife (at least according to that previous court listing) were included in this petition to subdivide Anna's land.

I double-checked, just in case anyone claimed that Anna had raised the older children from childhood as if they were her own, or that they were all just one big happy family, despite being step-children. It was clear that missing from this later list were Samuel, Thomas, and Sarah. While I'm still struggling with the true identity of Samuel Rinehart, Thomas and Sarah were both still very much alive when Isaac Brown brought this case to court in 1861, and yet they weren't included in the listing of Anna's children. Should I now presume that Martha and Mary were actually children of the second wife? This brings us back to our original question from the beginning of this post: which court record was correct?

The document also went on to explain that each heir was to get one seventh of the subdivided land of their mother, Anna Rinehart. However, it doesn't require the mind of a rocket scientist to realize that there were not seven, but eight parties listed as heirs. That, however, requires its own explanation, bringing us to a fitting point to lay this lengthy puzzle aside until tomorrow's post. 

Old Mail

 

I spent the weekend re-reading old mail. Not many people send mail anymore, even of the electronic kind, but I'm glad I made a habit over the years of saving the notes which were most noteworthy. 

Among those notes in my old files was a stack of emails exchanged with avid researchers on the trail of Simon Rinehart and his children. Those letters date back to the late 1990s—and it's disturbing to think I'm still stuck with the same questions today. However, bit by bit, I'm unearthing some details and I wish I could reconnect with some of those decades-old correspondents. If they're still as stumped as I am, I'm sure they'd love to see what I've discovered—as I would be to know if they found any answers, too.

While I've discovered—thanks to court records from Perry County, Ohio—that Simon Rinehart had far more children than my fellow researchers and I had been able to find back then, reading through those old emails this weekend told me that Simon's son Thomas also had more children than I have been able to document.

And there are additional court records to unearth, too, apparently. One email from a researcher who could only find two daughters for Simon happened to mention a court case brought by Isaac Brown and his wife Cassa against three single sisters still living at home with Simon's widow.

That case—which I've yet to find—mentioned several more names, some of which I recognize, but others which have me stumped. For instance, one party to the lawsuit was a man by the name of John Colburn who had married someone named Nancy. Can I presume this is the Nancy mentioned in the Rinehart court case I could find? If so, no wonder I haven't been able to find Nancy in other records, based on the different married name given her in the case I did locate.

Another letter mentioned a full listing of Thomas Rinehart's children, containing far more names than I had been able to locate from his entry in the 1850 census. I presume this listing also was the result of searching through court cases, so I'll need to find that record, as well.

It's time to put FamilySearch.org's Full Text Search back to work on these shreds of information I've harvested from those old letters. This week, we'll take a closer look at those old notes and try to replicate the information conveyed over twenty years ago. When we're talking about families who lived in the early to mid 1800s, those records should still be there with the same information. It's just a matter of locating those dusty files—digitally.  

When Surnames Ricochet Through their Surroundings

 

While stumped in my search for Thomas Rinehart, that son of Simon Rinehart who decided to file suit in Perry County, Ohio, against his half-siblings after his dad's death, I cast my search parameters far and wide, and came up with one tantalizing insertion in an 1847 newspaper:

Filed in Monroe County, Ohio, on May 18, 1847, by attorneys Archbold & Wire for the plaintiff, Daniel Clark, the suit named Thomas Rinehart, Simon Rinehart, Arthur Ingraham, William McCarty, and M. Marling. Thomas and Simon Rinehart are names we've already seen, and the Ingraham name—or sometimes spelled Ingrham—has been a surname linked with the extended Rinehart family back in Greene County, Pennsylvania. But why were these names being mentioned in a court in Monroe County, Ohio?

According to the newspaper insertion, a bill then pending in court, 

states in substance that said Arthur Ingraham has two judgments in said Court against said McCarty and Marling, for a large sum, to wit: upwards of eight hundred dollars. That said Arthur Ingraham is in fact the assignee of Simon Rinehart, and that said Simon Rinehart is the assignee of Thomas Rinehart, who is in truth and in fact the real owner of said judgments, and is largely indebted to the complainant; and that the assignment to Simon Rinehart, and through him to Arthur Ingraham, is a shift and device to defraud the creditors of Thomas Rinehart. Said bill prays that the judgment debt due from McCarty and Marling may be applied to the payment of his debt due from said Thomas Rinehart. The defendants Thomas, Simon, and Arthur, living out of this State, are notified to plead, answer or demur in sixty days after the close of next term of said Court, or the bill will be taken as true and confessed.       —Said term will commence on the fourth Monday in June next.

Was that our Thomas Rinehart? After all, I'm not quite sure whether he lived in Ohio or back in Pennsylvania. And Monroe County, Ohio, is a mere seventy miles from Greene County, Pennsylvania, making it close enough for the Rinehart family to have acquired land or done business in that area. (Business, indeed! The eight hundred dollars noted in that 1847 document would be worth at least thirty one thousand in today's dollars.)

Whether this is our Thomas or not, it will likely pay for me to search through court records for his name in connection with that of Simon Rinehart, as well.

Insert above from the Woodsfield, Ohio, newspaper, The Spirit of Democracy, published on page three of the May 22, 1847, edition; image courtesy of Newspapers.com. 

Situation: Stuck

 

Stuck on one clue for that brick wall ancestor? When I run into such situations, I try my best to find the answer—and when I fail, I move on. Research problems can always be revisited at a later date, especially when more resources would be required to resolve research questions.

Finding that memorial marker erected at the final resting place of Robert Smith, just as his daughter's last wishes had dictated, seemed to rip right through all the research progress I had made on tracing just that one daughter of Simon Rinehart. Simon's daughter Mary, at least according to court records after his death, had married someone named Robert Smith. But when I finally caught up with the memorial marker for the specified Robert Smith in Hocking County, Ohio, it contained the name of his two wives. And it appeared that Mary had a different last name than what I was expecting.

The name, although blurred in the photograph at Find A Grave, seemed to be Mary Ankrum or Amkrum. No matter which way it was spelled, it didn't spell R-i-n-e-h-a-r-t. Now what?

I tried looking for marriage records for Robert Smith and Mary Ankrum, including all the spelling permutations I could imagine—with a wildcard symbol thrown in for good luck. Thinking that our Mary might have been married before she married Robert, I tried looking for other marriage records for Mary Rinehart, both in her home, neighboring Perry County, and Robert's residence in Hocking County. Still nothing.

Since Maria Smith, the one whose will stipulated the erection of the memorial for her father, was the firstborn daughter of Mary and Robert, one would presume that she would know her mother's maiden name. I'd say I've stumbled upon the wrong Robert Smith and family—except I've been wrong about being wrong before. So I'm putting that search on hold for now and moving on to the rest of Simon Rinehart's children.

That strategy, however, is not working much better than my quest to find the right Robert Smith, husband of Mary Rinehart. There were two other siblings mentioned in that 1854 court record concerning the validity of Simon's will: Samuel Rinehart and Thomas Rinehart, the one who had initiated the court case disputing the will.

It turns out both of them appear to be as difficult to find as if they were surnamed Smith. But I did find one curious legal notice inserted in a newspaper about seven years before the paperwork for the 1854 lawsuit was filed. While it may turn out to be merely a coincidence that the names appeared to be related, tomorrow we need to at least take a look at who was named in that other court case.