The Mess We're Left With

 

It's been a month filled with large court files regarding the intestate estates of Rainey men and their related families—not to mention name twins who couldn't possibly be father and son. In other words: following the line of Thomas Firth Rainey and his extended family has left me with more of a mess than when we started.

My goal for the third of my Twelve Most Wanted for this year was to find the identity of Thomas Firth Rainey's parents. That I did, and then some. The only problem was that this search has led me to more questions than answers.

I again reviewed those lengthy court cases, seeing if now, in retrospect, those many names mentioned in the files would make more sense. I've saved the links to specific letters in the estate files, entering them in the profile pages of each named ancestor or collateral relative. Yet only a few more details popped up.

For instance, I noticed that Isham Rainey's grandchildren from his daughter Sarah and her husband George Mealer were listed in two separate letters to the court where he died in Monroe County, Mississippi. Isham R. Mealer and his sister Martha together sent their letter regarding their grandfather's estate, identifying their residence as Murray County, Georgia. In that letter, tantalizingly, was a third grandchild mentioned: John Hammock. Do I have any idea which Rainey parent that third grandchild claims? Of course not. I can find absolutely no sign to connect him to his supposed grandfather, Isham Rainey.

Another letter to Monroe County, Mississippi, with the same purpose was signed by the remaining Mealer grandchildren of Isham Rainey. Why in a separate letter? Other than the fact that that letter was sent from the court in Oglethorpe County, I have no idea why the family was represented from two different Georgia counties.

As for the children of Isham Rainey's daughter Sarah, I can trace some of her descendants, but not all. This will need to wait for another year's examination. Full Text Search at FamilySearch.org has helped immensely to locate these big, messy court cases, but it hasn't found everything that I might need to answer the remaining questions. Nor have I been able to trace Sarah's sister Elizabeth, who in the same intestate case had represented herself as Elizabeth Arnold.

Repeating this same process next time for the children descended from Isham Rainey may reveal more court records—hopefully not of the intestate estate variety—but that effort will need far more time to complete than the brief day we have left to us in this month. It's time to pack away this month full of discoveries on both the Rainey and Firth families, be grateful for what can now be found much easier than in past years, and move on to April's focus from my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026.

The Slow Trip Down the Path to the Past

 

The verdict is in: spending weeks reading legal documents can slow down one's research progress. At least in the case of my family history goal for this month, the numbers have not sported their usual robust appearance. The path to Thomas Firth Rainey's parents may have finally yielded some of its previously-hidden answers, but that path has also led through some messy probate files. I am far from gathering all the details needed to take the next step.

All told, I did add 104 names to my mother's side of the family tree, mostly by working my way through the lines of descent from the collateral lines associated with these Rainey and Firth ancestors, and by examining DNA matches who tie into those same ancestral families. Granted, that was not bad for two weeks' research efforts—but I have seen better results. Right now, that family tree has a total of 41,908 documented individuals gleaned after well over a decade's work.

On the other side of the family, my in-laws' tree has stayed frozen in position for most of the past six months, now at 41,793 individuals. However, in less than a week, we will shift our focus to my mother-in-law's side of the family and begin work on that tree for April's research goal—though again, we will be working on ancestors removed from our current times by well over a century.

In the last few days of this month, we'll need to wrap up what can be finished of the court records regarding Isham Rainey and George Mealer and see whether any further details will add to this tally. Then, it will be time to draw up a summary report of what's been accomplished and use that to create a to-do list for the next time I tackle the Rainey and Firth family lines back in the Virginia colony where they first were found before the close of the eighteenth century. 

Good Bedtime Reading for the Insomniac

 

One last time this month—at least for this puzzle regarding my fourth great-grandfather Isham Rainey—I've headed back to those DNA matches that Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool has hypothesized are my cousins from that same line. This means, too, that I'll need to revisit the probate records concerning the estate Isham left behind for his family to resolve.

Did I mention messy? As in perfect bedtime reading for the insomniac? 

As if sorting through the intestate Isham Rainey's belongings weren't sleep-inducing enough, there is the question of George Mealer. George, it appears from some records, was Isham's son-in-law, through marriage to his daughter Sarah Rainey. And yet, when I read through the 1845 court records in Monroe County, Mississippi, about the administration of Isham's estate there, the mention of someone named George Mealer pops up.

But wait! The George Mealer married to Isham's daughter was back in Georgia, where Isham himself once lived. In fact, it appeared that George Mealer died there, perhaps late in 1831—intestate, what else?—in Oglethorpe County, himself. So who was this other George Mealer? And were court listings of Mealer relatives reliable indicators of our Rainey kin? Or not?

Through the wearying catalog of legal documents contained in the two various cases, it was possible to glean a listing of the children of George Mealer, son-in-law of Isham Rainey—enough to launch me into a more recent time period where it might be possible to trace those Mealer children and their descendants through to a time period known for more well-documented records. That, in turn, may help determine how some mystery DNA cousins are related to me. All that stands between me and at least the discovery of one set of Isham Rainey's grandchildren is a huge stack of reading material in the form of mind-numbing legalese.

I'll let you know how it goes, tomorrow morning.

Overextending

 

Having hopes of discovering whatever became of the siblings of a fourth great-grandfather, even if his name was as unusual as Isham, may have been a bit overextending. There is, after all, only so much that can be found about an average resident of late 1700s Virginia.

There is, however, a number of loose ends to tie up regarding this Rainey family before the month comes to a close. Grateful to have achieved my goal of discovering not only my third great-grandfather Thomas Firth Rainey's parents, but grandparents as well, I'd like to see which of his siblings may have left a genealogical paper trail. After all, though Thomas' sisters had likely married in the early 1800s, they had at least made their appearance in court documentation owing to the fact that their father had died intestate. This is a record source that could be useful to revisit.

At the time of Isham Rainey's 1843 death in Mississippi, both his daughters had spoken up to make sure they were included in the distributions of their father's estate, should there have been a residue. One daughter, Sarah, had married someone in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, by the name of George Mealer. The other daughter, Elizabeth, had identified herself in letters to the probate court in Mississippi as Elizabeth Arnold.

Returning to FamilySearch.org's Full Text Search, it may be possible to discover more about the family of George and Sarah Mealer. From that point, if any other indicators surface, we may also be able to wrap up this month's research project with information on the identity of Sarah's sister Elizabeth Arnold and her unnamed husband.

The end game here will be to identify whether either sister had children for one purpose: to locate any DNA matches for these lines that might have been descendants of this Rainey line.