North Carolina Nexus

 

Finding a possible nexus between the Tyson line and the Hardee line, especially leading back to Pitt County, North Carolina, may have been helpful, but the next step is to find actual documentation. For someone said to have been born in 1701—that would be Susannah Tyson, daughter of Mathias and Mary—that next step can cause trouble.

Why? It's fairly simple. Given not only the date over three hundred years ago—not to mention the change of government—the chances of the records we need to verify family connections being in decent condition are slim. Worse, those records might currently be non-existent, if we take into account courthouse fires, wars, and other catastrophes.

One encouraging note, however, was the possible discovery of a will which might have been penned by Susannah's father, Mathias Tyson—or Tisson, as the clerk fashioned that name back on April 5, 1710. I say "possible" because the page upon which the will was written was torn or bent just after the phrase, "last will and testament of." There is one word inserted, but hidden, before the next line continues with Mathias Tison's name.

Granted, at the end of the document, where Mathias Tison left his mark, the clerk inscribed the name as "Mthyas Tisson," which is, I guess, close enough for me.

The document stated that this Mathias was an inhabitant of "Baith County" in North Carolina. As it turns out, there was a county named Bath in North Carolina, but it is now called an extinct county. The county was in existence as part of the British Colony of what is now North Carolina, from the county's establishment in 1696 through 1739.

At that time, Bath County contained three precincts, one of which eventually became known as Beaufort Precinct. When Bath County was officially abolished, Beaufort Precinct became a county in its own right. And, as the years passed, Beaufort County itself eventually was carved out to form additional counties, one of which—as you might have suspected—became known as Pitt County.

Thus, at least for this Tison line which led, through Mathias' daughter Susannah, to her husband and eventually the Hardee family descendant who married Job Tyson's son William, we now have a connection back to Pitt County, North Carolina. But what about Job, himself?

If we can't draw our way up the family tree by virtue of Job's as-yet-unknown father, perhaps we can discover a way down from Mathias Tison back to Job's own generation. We'll take a closer look at Mathias Tison's will tomorrow.

How Twisted and Tedious the Trail

 

If we can't figure out a family line based on one side of a married couple, how about trying the other side? That seemed like a viable premise when I realized that my fourth great-grandfather, Job Tyson, eventually had a daughter-in-law whose roots reached back to another Tyson relationship. Added bonus: that relationship led to the location of the supposed roots of Job Tyson's family, too. Surely, I'd be led straight back to the answer in Pitt County, North Carolina, by following this other line.

That line belonged to the Hardee family of Pitt County—the very line conveniently said to belong to my newfound kazillionth cousin, according to "Relatives Around Me."

To use a trailblazer to outline a family's generations seems straightforward, at face value: find a published genealogy maintaining that connection—in my case, the Tyson and Hardee families of Pitt County—and then verify by finding documentation.

That was easily said. Not so easily done, at least in this case. So far, I've wandered through several manuscripts, thankfully posted either at FamilySearch or at Ancestry. While reading, I've outlined the names and dates of pertinent family members.

Next step: find the documents. That's the not-so-easily done part of the equation. So far, I have eighteen tabs open on my computer. My brain can't hold all that information in one night's setting. Though not quite to the stroke of midnight, I had to give up last night, even though it meant trying to remember everything once again in the morning.

It is likely time to pull out the old yellow warning sign to post on each name I've entered—tentatively—in my family tree. Having a place to diagram the relationships helps, but snaring any unsuspecting passer-by into thinking that posted entry was correct would be a disservice to fellow researchers. But sometimes, finding the facts can take time, yet remembering everything found without a work space can be a challenge.

So far, I've outlined the proposed generations of Job's daughter-in-law, William Tison's first wife Mary Ellis Hardee, back to her ancestor John Hardee, who married someone named Susannah Tyson. Next will be to find adequate documentation to verify the stories handed down through those typewritten genealogies of past generations of the Hardee and Tyson families. There are several resources yet to consult, leading down a twisted and tedious trail, indeed.

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. 

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.