Intimations

 

When pieces are missing from the documentation of your family's story, then what? We learn to read between the lines.

I'm struggling with connecting the dots between my third great-grandmother in Florida, Delaney Townsend Charles, and her Townsend roots back in South Carolina. There are plenty of assertions that her parents were John and Keziah Hays Townsend of Marlboro County, but there are scant references to any paper trail which would confirm such statements.

Still, given what we've got—right now, I'm reading between the typewritten lines of Annie Florence Kinney's D.A.R. membership application, which inexplicably details Delaney's tangential line to her own Kinney lineage—there may be some stray comments which prove helpful.

The main research issues are lack of any death record, probate record, or other final words on the death of Delaney or her husband, Andrew J. Charles, and lack of much of the same for Delaney's supposed father. We can find Delaney and Andrew and their children in the 1850 census, living in Madison County in northern Florida. By 1860, all we can find are their children—living in someone else's household.

That household, as we've already seen, was headed by the second husband of Andrew Charles' sister Drucilla, so theoretically, there should be some documentation specifying the guardianship arrangement that surely was established. But without documentation, we are only guessing.

The assumption is easy to make that some great misfortune befell the couple, causing their death and leaving their children orphaned. Although that leaves us a wide gap of time for our conjecture—anywhere from the date the 1850 census was taken to just before any mortality schedule would be drawn up for the 1860 census—the diligent approach would be to scour any available records, not only in the location of their 1850 residence, but including the counties lying between Madison and the home of their children's guardian in 1860.

In the meantime, there are some aspects of usefulness to the quandary of re-reading and re-reading the same sorry details we've already collected. Take, for instance, this passage, gleaned first from a website featuring the Townsend genealogy and then from the source document referenced in that website, a copy of Annie Florence Kinney's D.A.R. application (note brackets indicate handwritten correction entered in the original application):

After the death of Andrew Jackson Charles, Mr. Light Townsend ([grand]father of John R. of Blenheim) went to Fla. and brought his two nieces back to Marlboro County with him and reared them in his home.

In providing this explanation, applicant Annie Florence Kinney provides us a clue as to what became of my second great-grandmother's parents. It's a small clue, of course, but it helps paint a scenario of how events unfolded.

Note the narrative states, "After the death of Andrew," not "after the death of Andrew and Delaney." The text is intimating that Delaney died before her husband—possibly from causes unrelated to Andrew's own death. Continuing this examination further, as there seems to be confusion over how many sons Delaney had, this scenario might have intimated that Delaney could have died following childbirth, possibly of that second, unexplained son mentioned in the same D.A.R. application.

Of course, nothing explains—yet—just why the death of the second parent prompted the relatives of the first parent to come claim the children. Nor does that help us understand why those relatives, living a greater distance from the Charles children, superseded the guardianship claims of the nearby relatives, who also lived in northern Florida.

Another clue to help pinpoint a timeline of these unfortunate events might be that Andrew Charles' sister—Drucilla, the one who, after her second marriage, did take in the Charles orphans—could have been otherwise occupied with her own tragedy at the time of Andrew's death. Drucilla's last daughter with her first husband was born in January of 1858, and her next child, with the second husband, was born in April of 1860, hinting at the possibility that she would not be in a position to take in three additional relatives any time around 1857 until the time of their actual arrival before June 22, 1860.

Still, dissecting the wording on a D.A.R. application only fuels our conjectures about what did actually happen. To know for sure, we'd need to see documentation—the very thing we are now lacking. Though a solidly constructed proof argument can work wonders, that only stands if we can weave a web of reasoning with enough indisputable data points to connect the dots logically. At this point, those dots are too few and far between to draw up the argument that the patriot John Townsend was Delaney's father.

Meet the Applicant

 

If I can't, by myself, find the documentation I'm seeking to connect my third great-grandmother to her parents, perhaps I can benefit from the research of others—taking great care, of course, to ensure that every assertion is referenced appropriately before I accept it. But first, before we examine the paperwork, let's meet the D.A.R. applicant whose membership request I'm now inspecting so closely.

During the fall of 1948, Annie Florence Kinney began assembling the many documents required to verify her connection to Revolutionary War patriot John Townsend for her application to join the lineage society. The line of descent was clearly laid out in the copy of her application I purchased through the national organization's website.

Annie, who was born in 1907—and has subsequently died in 1995 in the same South Carolina county where her ancestor once lived—was the daughter of Townsend descendant John Frank Kinney. He, in turn, was son of William Frank Kinney and Annie Townsend. 

Now, we see the trail opening up clearly to the patriot ancestor. That Annie Townsend was daughter of Light Townsend, born in 1798, who in turn was son of the patriot, John Townsend. The patriot himself was born about 1760 and died in Marlboro County, South Carolina, in 1843.

In assembling her application for membership to the Daughters of the American Revolution, Annie Florence Kinney used several sources to verify the names and dates connecting her with her second great-grandfather, the patriot John Townsend. Though at the time, no one had access to photocopying equipment, sources were verified through a system of sworn statements given in the presence of a notary public or, in some cases, a statement signed by a judge of probate for Marlboro County (who just happened to have the same name as the applicant's father).

Many of the records used to verify Ms. Kinney's application were typewritten transcriptions. Typewriting being typewriting, such was prone to, um, typographical errors. For instance, in one section of the application, "Children of Revolutionary Ancestor," my own third great-grandmother, Delaney Townsend Charles, was listed—but with her year of birth given as 1915, not only one hundred years after her actual birth, but certainly long after she had died, as well.

While I am grateful for the nineteen pages of Annie Florence Kinney's application and attached supplemental statements, embedded within the file were several details which were enough, added up, to leave me still in doubt. But let's save those details for tomorrow—as well as the listing of all those many children of that Revolutionary Ancestor, John Townsend of Marlboro County, South Carolina.