Untangling the Twisted Lines

Now that I've finished the collection of Civil War letters of my first cousin, four times removed—Taliaferro Simpson, or "Tally" for short—my next task is to go back through all the notes I've gleaned from the editors' footnotes on family relationships. Just to be sure—one never knows, you see, whether I've missed an ancestor.

For instance, one footnote at the end of the volume, affixed to a letter of condolences from a Captain Henry P. Farrow of the Confederacy's War Department, mentioned that he was "husband of Tally's cousin Cornelia." Off I went to search for all the Cornelias in my family tree database. After all, how many Cornelias could there be?!

As it turned out, more than I cared to slog through, including one false lead on the Broyles side of our family. Tally's mother, you may remember, was sister to my third great-grandmother, Sarah Ann Taliaferro, who married Ozey Robert Broyles. Their daughter, Margaret Cornelia, married Samuel Van Wyck. Not Farrow.

I knew that. Maybe it's pushing capacity to remember all those names in a nineteen thousand person tree.

As for the other Cornelias? None of them seemed to relate to Tally's mother's side of the family. Besides, I have no Farrows in my tree. Must be a connection on the Simpson side.

But there are others. Remember the "Taylor Shop" entries in Tally's letters? I'll be reviewing those notes to see what can be added about another of Tally's aunts on the Taliaferro side. And of course, since the Miller family—another Taliaferro link—was featured so prominently in the book, I'll be reviewing all those notes to glean details for my database there, as well.

And then, there is the discussion of the future of the "Fair Unknown," Miss Fannie Smith. Whether the Charleston refugee shows up in any other documents frequented by genealogists, I'm not sure, but I'll be scouring those resources closely to see what became of her, after those tumultuous war years.

If there is anything remarkable to report of all this review of footnotes, you can be sure I'll mention it this week. After all, footnotes can provide the most valuable leads for research.

A Tree for Fannie

It seems surreal, drawing up a pedigree chart for a character I found in a book. While not all books are fiction, reading the letters of Tally Simpson in book form somehow removes me, as reader, from the reality of this historical event, his participation in the Civil War. I can't help but see it as if it were a drama unfolding in the theater of my mind, rather than the micro-history that it represents.

To take up the pursuit for the real-life status of the woman Tally dubbed as "The Fair Unknown" thus seems like stepping between two universes. And yet, Fannie Smith was indeed a real person, fleeing her sacked hometown in Charleston, South Carolina, for the relative safety of the upcountry in Pendleton, home of Tally's extended family. There she lived, in the same town with the Simpsons, the Broyleses, the Millers, and the Taylors of my own family tree.

And stole the heart of one cousin of mine, four times removed.

Since I have seen her mesmerizing effect in the narrative of two different books so far, I wondered just what kind of person Fannie Smith really was—and whatever became of her, once the war was over, and she had returned home to take up the life she had had to put on hold. So I did what any genealogist can do: I built a family tree for her.

Not that I'm anywhere close to being done, of course. That sort of effort takes time, even the "quick and dirty" type of rushed tree making. But I want to piece together the historic Fannie Smith.

What I have been able to find, so far, is that Fannie was born Frances Rosa Smith, daughter of William Burroughs Smith, classified in his obituary as "the richest man in Charleston." Mr. Smith had seen a lifetime of success, rising from the status of a son of an "obscure citizen" through a series of beneficial business partnerships. Of one of them—partnership in the firm of Jones and Company—partnership extended far beyond business, leading to William's marriage with Mr. Jones' daughter, Frances Susan Jones, in 1840.

Of that union, we meet the eldest of three daughters: Fannie, born around 1843. Her sisters, Helen and Pauline, follow, each three years apart. But it is Fannie, the charmer, who takes Pendleton by storm, making her presence known to even us in the twenty-first century, by virtue of comments in letters and diaries sparked by her temporary refuge in Pendleton during the height of the Civil War.

What I'd like to learn is how she developed such a striking personality. The best tool for that discovery, of course, would not be a pedigree chart. Lacking any better way to reconstruct the mystique of "The Fair Unknown," though, I think this might be a fair substitute for a weekend diversion.

Above: Excerpt from 1860 U.S. Census for Charleston, South Carolina, lines 30-34, showing the household of William Burroughs Smith; Fannie is listed simply as "Miss Smith" as the oldest of William's daughters, while her younger sisters Helen and Pauline are mentioned by name; image courtesy Ancestry.com; in the public domain.

"The Taylor Shop"

How can a non-fiction book be classified as a page turner? Moreover, how can a non-fiction composition include a plot twist? I'm not sure, but what keeps me reading through the letters home from Tally Simpson during his Civil War service is the race to discover whether his fascination with Fannie Smith, "The Fair Unknown," gains any traction before his inevitable fate closes in on him.

Tally, my first cousin four times removed, had become infatuated, sight unseen, with one particular young woman from Charleston seeking refuge with her family in the safety of Pendleton, South Carolina, during the Civil War. Tally's hometown relatives plotted with him to court her from the distance of his ever-changing position as a soldier in the Confederacy.

There was, of course, an obstacle to this plan, which reared its threatening appearance in the unlikely form of what Tally and his cousin called "The Taylor Shop." There was little explanation of what that code-speak meant, but I think I know. The explanation on this diversion from our Fannie Smith Sightings may both provide some insight as well as lead us to an interesting additional connection in a future post here.

While the book I am still reading—Far, Far From Home—has been developed into an annotated guide to Tally Simpson's wartime letters, it is more helpful in identifying historic battles and identities of the military personnel referred to continually, but there is not as much editorial guidance to piece together the family structure. I, of course, already know the family tree for that generation, being that Tally's mother, Mary Margaret Taliaferro Simpson, was sister to my third great-grandmother, Sarah Ann Taliaferro Broyles, but not every reader of this collection of letters would have that advantage.

When Tally conspired with his sister Anna, his cousin Carrie and her mother, Caroline Taliaferro Miller, his goal was to secretly win the heart of one Fannie Smith. There was a potential adversary, however, in the form of what the relatives referred to as "The Taylor Shop." It happened that the Taliaferro sisters—Tally's mother Margaret, my third great-grandmother, and Tally's aunt Caroline—also had another sister. This sister was named Lucy, and she had married a man by the name of David Sloan Taylor.

The Taylors, also living in Pendleton during the time of the war, had many children, including two daughters born at about the same time as Tally—Lucy, two years older than Tally, and her sister Susan, born two years after him in 1841. Tally's own sister Anna was born only a few years beyond that, in 1844. Perhaps as Anna served as Tally's eyes and ears, back home in Pendleton, she sniffed out some competition regarding Miss Fannie Smith—or at least disapproval—coming from her cousins' direction, and may have warned Tally.

While reading books such as this may afford me a wonderful opportunity to spy out the everyday complexities of life among my ancestral families, there is still much reading between the lines, even in this context. And yet, being a mere twenty six pages from the conclusion of the story, I am not sure anything further will be revealed on just what it was that kept Tally speaking so obliquely about his cousins.

There is, however, the historic context beyond the text of this book of letters. And I certainly know how to mine that vein of gold nuggets. Fannie Smith, herself, scattered a paper trail of her own micro-history behind her, which anyone can access, despite the challenge of a name as common as hers. What a wonderful rabbit trail of research to add to my list of diversions. I believe I shall set up a tree to see what has become of "The Fair Unknown" and her legacy.

Fannie Smith Sightings

It happened again while I was soaking up the sun (and a cup of coffee) while still plugging away at a book. The book, Far, Far From Home, has been my coffee companion of late, as I'm still seventy pages away from the finish line. Perhaps I'm concerned that, by the time I read that last page, I will have forgotten what the beginning had said. But I now have a second motivation for racing to the finish line: I want to figure out just who that femme fatale of Pendleton, South Carolina, was—the one who had smitten so many of the local young men, including one soldier who had fallen in love with her, sight unseen.

That one soldier was my first cousin four times removed, Taliaferro Simpson, private, Third South Carolina Volunteers. The war had been dragging into the earliest stretches of 1863, and Tally, dreaming of a day far beyond war, was thinking of "a topic which interests me"—a possible bride to begin life with, once he returned home from his duties. His aunt and his sister made one suggestion in their letters, and he was immediately smitten, solely by their written description.

That one suggestion was a young lady by the name of Fannie Smith.

I had already "met" this Fannie Smith through the journaled observations of Emmala Reed in A Faithful Heart. (Emmala, incidentally, turned against her, once their own friendship had faded.) Apparently, the same Fannie Smith had been mentioned in the letters of other Pendleton young people, as well.

She has, over the century and a half since her unwitting debut in such private communications, piqued my curiosity, and I've started tagging spots in my current volume where she had been mentioned.

Today, for instance, I read that, in plotting his possibilities with his Aunt Caroline, Tally worried that his chances might be even slimmer than previously thought:

Look ye here, I got a hint of something which perhaps you have not thought of, that is, she is engaged to a young man now in the army and that her father is bitterly opposed to it. If this be true, it's a dead day with my cakes.

Tally goes on to explain:

Her father's opposition makes the matter stronger against me, for if she loves contrary to his will, being at the same time his pet and favorite, she must be in earnest, and if she be in earnest, it will be difficult...to give her heart to any one else.

He's worried about his chances with her—and he hasn't even met her yet! What kind of charmer is she?

Adding that detail to my newly-composed list of Fannie hints, I now want to race to records to see if she did, indeed, end up marrying someone from the army. But I restrain myself, reminding my better side that this is not one of my highest research priorities, and certainly not in my research plans.

But just a little peek, from time to time, surely wouldn't hurt, would it?