Ancestor #3: Farther Down the Line

 

When cousins marry cousins, reading that family's history can become confusing to an outsider. Hang on to your hats, then, as we press farther down the family line while jumping from one third great-grandmother's Taliaferro family roots to that of another.

For the first two of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2024, I chose my third great-grandmother Sarah Taliaferro's maternal lines of the Carters and the Chews. For this final selection from my mother's family for this year's Twelve Most Wanted, I'm going to add another cousin to the mix by jumping from Sarah to her cousin, Mary Elizabeth Taliaferro.

It was Mary Elizabeth's youngest daughter—also named Mary—who, orphaned, was married to her cousin, Sarah's son Thomas Taliaferro Broyles. We worked on his family for last year's Twelve Most Wanted. This year, though, I need to jump tracks and review what I don't know about his wife's matriline. After all, her matriline is also mine, making this a good chance to review some of my mtDNA matches a bit more closely.

Another opportunity for research success comes blended into this goal for March: Mary Elizabeth's roots connect to some historic names from colonial America, including the Gilmers, the Lewis family, and the Meriwethers.

I realize March may seem like a long month—at least comparing those thirty one days to the shorter month of February—but I admit I may be over-reaching for this one month's research goal. Let's just say we'll start in March with Mary Elizabeth Taliaferro's mother, Mary Meriwether Gilmer, and see where that research trail leads us.

Those Old Family Stories

 

Being quite cognizant of the dangers of relying on family legends, I want to take some time today to explore some old family stories passed down from well over a century ago. The reason: I'm on a mission to figure out just why Benjamin Taliaferro might not have been included in his father's will.

First, let's rule out the obvious: Benjamin Taliaferro was certainly quite alive when his father, Zachariah, drew up his will in 1797. Furthermore, Benjamin, born in 1750, did not die until 1821. That he left his childhood home in Virginia could not be the issue, either. Benjamin's service in the Revolutionary War—a war which his father also supported, as we can see from Zachariah's listing as a DAR Patriot—took him far afield of his parents' Amherst County home. His service took him to both Georgia and South Carolina, where he was captured by the British at the fall of Charleston.

It may take a little more reading between the lines to find any signs of a rift in the family constellation. And that is where those family stories come in.

Thankfully, there has been well over one hundred years of genealogical publications to fill the void for us—if, that is, we are willing to tread that shakey ground of family legends and sometimes less-than-perfect research and reporting.

Let's take, for instance, the Historical Sketches of the Campbell, Pilcher and Kindred Families, a 1911 publication co-authored by Margaret Campbell Pilcher and three men, presumably also members of the family lines in question. Among those authors was one Calvin Morgan McClung, whose name resonates for those familiar with the name of the historical collection housed at the library of the East Tennessee History Center.

According to the Historical Sketches, Zachariah Taliaferro and his wife, Mary Boutwell, had ten children, of whom Benjamin was the oldest. The authors share some details about Benjamin's service in the war, then launch into the anecdote in question:

He and his brother, Zachariah, were in love with Martha Merriweather [sic], of Amherst County, Virginia; Benjamin won and married her.

What was this "winning" that pitted Benjamin against his brother Zachariah? The Historical Sketches goes on to conclude, "This caused a lifetime estrangement between the brothers."

Understandable, considering the ramifications, which we can only imagine, given such a story. Wanting to know how true this family story might have been, I went looking for another version. Granted, an earlier version I found, published in 1855, was far closer to the time of its supposed occurrence, but the catch is that it puts us relying on the too-blunt, tell-all former Georgia governor, George Rockingham Gilmer.

Here's the governor's take on the situation, from his own book, Sketches of Some of the First Settlers of Upper Georgia. After describing Benjamin Taliaferro's service in the war and his capture by the British, Gilmer begins by describing Benjamin's appearance: 

His person was six feet high, his features handsome, and his understanding good. Army intercourse had refined his manners and made his conversation agreeable.

The author went on to describe young Martha Meriwether, "a blooming, charming young woman." Then the author inserts this one line of explanation: she "had previously been engaged to marry Zack Taliaferro," Benjamin's brother. Apparently, she broke off the engagement and married the older brother. As one can imagine after a move like that, "The brothers quarreled and parted, never again to meet in friendship."

Would that explain why their father didn't include Benjamin in his will? Possibly. But in that same narrative, I noticed one other detail. Author Gilmer had just concluded an anecdote on Benjamin's father, Zachariah, concerning an event which occurred just before the elder man was sworn in as sheriff of Amherst County, when he chased after a "notorious outlaw" and didn't give up pursuing him until he caught him. 

This vignette demonstrating the man's thorough determination led up to the next family story: that of Benjamin being challenged publicly by a bully to a fight. Benjamin somehow deflected the challenge, but when his dad heard of it, Gilmer's interesting comment was that he "was threatened with disinheritance by his father for his supposed want of courage."

Disinheritance? Could that be the reason? Would it have been from that specific instance in his youth, considering that Benjamin eventually served with distinction during the war? Or could this simply be pointing out his father's inclination to do such a thing as write a son out of his will?

There are likely many details of the daily life of our ancestors for which we will never be able to read between the lines with confidence—or even accuracy. But when those gaps in the story make their appearance, it's pretty evident that subsequent generations are tempted to try and fill in those blanks. 

Whether the Pilcher Sketches of 1911, or even the Gilmer Sketches of half a century prior were able to capture the essence of the reason, I can't say. But I know for sure that something happened to create a rift that ricocheted through the family for decades afterwards.  

 

The Strange Ways of Cousin Bait

"Cousin bait" can work in mysterious ways. We post blogs and chat on online genealogical forums and fling our family surnames far and wide on social media...and receive nary a query about our ancestors. Just when we give up and decide to hunker down in our genea-caves to do some solitary research, out of the blue comes a little nibble of interest.

I got my latest contact via the messaging system at Ancestry.com. Someone had found my maternal family tree through a search for a specific couple in the Meriwether line. Because I've been doing everything possible to help connect distant relatives—not to mention, potential DNA matches—with the right portion of my extended tree, it includes doing what so many now call "reverse genealogy," seeking descendants of specific ancestor lines.

Needless to say, since my Meriwether ancestors go so far back in time—remember, this is the speculative connection I discussed during the past two weeks—that means a lot of lines of descendants have been added to my tree over the last several months. Enough, that is, to help locate the fourth cousin connections which seem to populate my match list at Family Tree DNA.

So when I got a note via the Ancestry messaging system, inquiring about one Esmonde Meriwether, born 1894 in Montgomery, Alabama, it was referencing someone who was the husband of my second cousin, thrice removed.

Not anyone I knew personally, you see.

The situation was this: the woman writing me explained, first of all, that she was not, herself, related to the Meriwether line. However, she was hoping I could help her connect to family who was more closely related to Esmonde and his wife Cornelia Meriwether (yes, a Meriwether married a Meriwether).

As it so often happens, this woman—Pat, an active genealogical researcher for over a decade—thankfully had a son who knew his mother's passion for family history. This son happened to be well known in his city for his home repair skills. A house in his own neighborhood had recently been sold and was in need of some rehab work. The new owner called this man in for assistance.

When Pat's son arrived at the property, he found it empty except for one small detail: a box of old photographs. The new homeowner told him he could have them, if he wanted.

Fortunately, Pat's son remembered his mother's penchant for genealogical research and gave her a call. He suggested she "might find someone that would be interested."

Interested? Of course! You know we all would be. After sending a surname-free photo album back to Ireland, this should be easy. Right?

The only identifying marks on the photos were the names of the Meriwether couple, thankfully named in one of the photos. I offered to share the photos here on A Family Tapestry, and my correspondent was certainly willing to let me do so—except that something happened before we could get to that point.

She started doing her own research.

And—you guessed it—she found family members of the named couple, herself.

What was interesting was that, while my Esmonde and Cornelia lived in Alabama, this house was in Virginia. Turns out, one of their children—a daughter—had married and had children of her own. That woman's daughter eventually moved and bought the home in Virginia, where eventually her mother—Esmonde and Cornelia's daughter—also came to live.

Of course, Pat's next thought was to see if either this woman or her daughter, though selling the house, still remained in the same city. It was a long shot to attempt that connection, because Esmonde and Cornelia's daughter would now be well into her nineties.

Pat's message to me continued,

I'm going to try and locate them. If I fail then I will scan the pictures and send them to you. I'll let you know how it all turns out.

True to her word, a little over two weeks later, I heard back from Pat. She wanted to provide an update. She did, indeed, find the daughter of Esmonde and Cornelia Meriwether. As Pat put it, that daughter is now "ninety five years young."

Pat's enthusiasm is infectious, as she reflects on her meeting and what she was able to return to family:

I met with her this morning and was able to give her the box of old pictures. She was delighted and very grateful. These were pictures of her husband, her brother..., herself as a young woman and a beautiful picture of her mother. There were also pictures of her daughter and her grandchildren. So glad I made the effort; her joy was worth it. I love happy endings.

When Connie, the blogger behind Forgotten Old Photos first gave me the nudge to start looking for "orphan photos" and figuring out how to return them to family, I discovered this same joy. While the result may be a small victory, it is a happy ending. Now that I've had that experience, I'm eager to encourage others to go out and do the same.

With this unexpected contact, thanks to the cousin bait inherent in genealogy blogging, I got to witness first hand another researcher's chance to experience that same altruistic joy over having put those research skills to good use. It's a different kind of genealogical kindness—perhaps even somewhat random. But just as rewarding to know that the skills we possess can be a blessing to others.

Above: "Still Life with Robin's Nest," 1863 oil on canvas by American artist Fidelia Bridges; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.
   

Cousin Collections

It was the quest to find all of my distant cousins which led me to the discovery of a fifth cousin who had won the title of Miss North Carolina, back in 1956. In fact, I've stumbled upon quite a few stories, thanks to this goal—which means more stories coming up to share, as well.

If you are the research type who insists, "Direct ancestors only, please," you may wonder why I bother with tossing my net so wide. The simple answer is, it all started with my mystery cousin. If you've stuck around here at A Family Tapestry for the past few years—oh, like back to the fall of 2014—you may have recalled that moment in which I received an email announcing an exact mtDNA match with someone who is an adoptee.

Since that time, it's been a top priority project for this mystery cousin and I to push our way back through the generations to see who our most recent common ancestors might have been. It's a good thing that reuniting with those birth parents wasn't contingent upon my finding the right woman on my matriline. (I still haven't found her, though my cousin at least has now met his birth mother and has a solid idea of the women in his family tree.)

Granted, that introduction happened over two years ago. Yet here I am, still trudging along on my family lines, pushing back through the generations from mother to mother's mother to mother's mother's mother to—well, you get the idea.

With each generation I push back in time, I then double back, tracing all the descendants of that woman. In one way, it's a tedious process. In another way, it sure fills in plenty of blanks in my family tree. And, as an added bonus, I find myself stumbling upon some names that get me wondering.

You knew there had to be a reason for telling you all that, of course. And there is. Right now, I've pushed back to the level of my sixth great grandmother, Jane Strother, and her husband, Thomas Lewis of Rockingham County, Virginia.

Then came the long trek back to the present. On my side, the line went through Jane's daughter Elizabeth, who married Thomas Gilmer, and saw her female descendant in my direct line associate with such notable colonial surnames as Meriwether and Taliaferro before settling on the Rainey which led to the second great grandmother who married Thomas Taliaferro Broyles, whom I've mentioned before.

In this particular iteration of the search, I compared my own line from Elizabeth Lewis, wife of Thomas M. Gilmer, to that of her older sister, Agatha Lewis. Agatha was twelve years older than Elizabeth, having been born in 1753 to Elizabeth's 1765 arrival.

Agatha was married twice. For our purposes here, it's a descendant of her first husband, John Frogg that I'll be focusing on. They named their daughter Elizabeth Strother Frogg. This Elizabeth, in turn, married someone by the name of Estill, and for the subsequent three generations, I found myself tracing the descendants of that same Estill surname—seemingly endlessly.

Eventually, I ran into one daughter in that most recent Estill generation, and my research finally broke out of the Estill mold in which I had been captured. As I moved into this new surname—admittedly, also breathing a sigh of relief that I was now back into the 1900s and in definitely more familiar territory—something kept nagging at me from the back of my mind.

That surname, the one she had married into: it seemed so familiar. Wasn't there a senator by that name somewhere?

Above: "In Café Bauer," 1898 work by German Impressionist painter Lesser Ury; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

...Yet Never Discounting Those Staples of Sound Genealogical Research

While I'm grateful—as I mentioned yesterday—for those book-digitizing projects that are bringing hundred-year-old publications to the forefront of our researching attention once again, those books were penned by people who were no less prone to error than are humans of our modern era. Admittedly, those authors faced the same snares we face—and we all know the foibles of family fables—and yet, they had other research challenges we now can bypass with a click of a mouse. When you think of the snail-mailed, personal-memory-riddled reports authors of a bygone century once had to overcome just to compile their genealogies, it's a wonder they got as much right as they did.

One aggravating aspect of riding the online family history wave back through the centuries is the lack of scanned documentation, once the census records drop off the scene. While everything seems to go along swimmingly back to 1850, before that, researchers may—or may not—have at their disposal copies of any other actual pertinent governmental documents. Ancestry.com, for instance, offers up a lot of "data collections" which may or may not merely be compilations of user-contributed say-so reports. It is nice to peek at these collections for hints, much as one queries a trailblazer before attempting a wilderness journey never before traveled. But we all have to prove our own way, eventually.

On the other hand—at least for those of us with ancestors firmly (and successfully) interwoven into the American social fabric of the last two or three centuries—our well-heeled forebears left significant paper trails of another sort: court records and land records. While I am exploring the possibilities in my Meriwether, Gilmer, Lewis and Strother lines, I'll be corroborating—or disproving—the details unearthed by other researchers via governmental records of a type entirely different than the scant details offered up in pre-1850 census records.

That, of course, becomes the part of my daily research which goes underground as I pursue it, mainly owing to my observation that, like the making of laws and sausage, the tedium of genealogical research can sometimes get both messy and boring. While we all live for the stories, it's the sound genealogical research methods that provide the skeletal framework upon which those family stories need to hang.

Not that I won't make a peep about it, from time to time—one never knows when an exceptional or curious anecdote may surface that simply must be shared. In addition, as I hit each matrilineal node, based on my mtDNA quest, and turn around to trace that other woman's female line back down to the present, I'll track my progress in connecting to my mystery cousin. But my first love, at least for blogging purposes, is to share the stories. It's just that there aren't too many stories amidst all the grunt work of reading legal proceedings or land records.

Above: "Autumn in the Welsh Hills," watercolor on pencil, circa 1860, by British landscape artist, George Price Boyce; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

The Way They Went

[T]hese settlers formed the most intimate friendly social union ever known among the same number of persons; how exceedingly active they were in business; economical in their expenditures; honest in their business dealings, and how they prospered beyond example.

Almost mournfully in his book, George Rockingham Gilmer reflected on the demise of the Broad River settlement—though peopled with friends and relatives he was quite comfortable in portraying in as realistic a light as possible, situated in a position he unapologetically lavished with praise.

In the introduction to Sketches of Some of the First Settlers of Upper Georgia, it was noted the author

hopes that though now scattered widely apart through the southern and southwestern States, his book may unite them together once more in the kind feelings of kinsfolk.

Whatever led to the domino effect of one family after another choosing to leave their Georgian paradise behind—and note here, this decision was not one arrived at, understandably following the turmoil of the war in the 1860s, but well before the 1850 census records—one by one, many of my Taliaferro family had edged westward through Georgia, then across the Chattahoochee River into Alabama.

Some of them may have eyed this move as a shrewd investor's move, as the federal government was offering large tracts of land for sale in the newly-opened territory. Though following not many years after the original emigration from Virginia to the Broad River settlement in Georgia, this next move may have been made in relatively modern comfort, thanks to the progressive development in Georgia of a thorough network of rail lines between the 1830s and the 1850s.

Since I have, as one of my research goals, the outlining of the descendants of each of my maternal ancestral lines—thus my focus on surnames like Taliaferro, Harvie, Gilmer and Meriwether—I began to see a pattern as one family after another seemed to disappear from Georgia census records and re-appear in the rolls of Alabama cities like Montgomery.

Seeing the considerable emphasis placed by author Gilmer upon the industry and prosperity of the social milieu in the Broad River settlement, it was easy to recognize echoes of those characteristics in the next generation in their own selected residences. It would be interesting to examine the social networks formed in the next generation by these families of the Broad River settlement—not only from the genealogical aspect of their intermarriages, but from a sociological viewpoint, as well.

Though not in a particularly flattering way, that very point was picked up by a book in the 1970s, examining the socio-political underpinnings of their apparently elite, cohesive subculture. The book had coined the term, "Broad River Group," to refer to the Alabama settlers emigrating from that Broad River settlement of former Virginians who had, only a generation prior to this, claimed their new homes in Georgia.

One reviewer of that book later rehearsed the very migratory history of the Taliaferros, et al, that I've already mentioned, and described the "Broad River Group" as

an alliance of relatives and friends who dominated Alabama politics in the territorial and early statehood period.

It is not surprising to learn that the families of this group were considered to have been the early movers and shakers who established both Huntsville and Montgomery as two of Alabama's financial and business centers. As I had, independently, followed the family history of these lines, from the 1850s onward, it was quite obvious that these were people who had experienced a great deal of success.

All this was not without the turmoil that so often accompanies political maneuvers. As an entity, the Broad River Group of Alabama saw its demise with the loss of key candidates and rejection of unpopular policies, even in the state's formative territorial days. Whether my Taliaferros and Meriwethers were in the thick of these battles, I haven't yet uncovered—though I can certainly see that, as individuals, they had a fair number of successful attorneys, judges, and physicians in their ranks.

Examining whatever personal and business qualities had been bred into them during their earlier years in the families' residence back at the Broad River settlement in Georgia would be an interesting study. These traits likely stood them in good stead, even after moving to the recently-opened "frontiers" of the lands that were to become the states we now know as Alabama and Mississippi.

Above: "In the Arbour," 1882 oil on canvas by Polish artist Aleksander Gierymski; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Vectors and Migrations

If one had just arrived in paradise, what could possibly induce a soul to want to leave again?

The move to the Broad River area of Georgia seemed just the thing for the party of Virginians joined by my Taliaferro ancestors, just after the Revolutionary War. The land held out promise of productivity. The river provided convenient access to markets via Augusta to Savannah. What more could anyone desire?

Within one short generation, however, the promise of this new land had begun to fade. And with that fading went the prosperity of the people called there by that very hope.

For one thing, living near a river in a temperate climate can have its down side. A first clue to such difficulties was one I found in a biographical sketch of Nicholas Louis Meriwether—doubtless a distant relation—who had become one of the many who sadly bid goodbye to his Broad River home. The entry noted, "He spent most of his time attending the sick of the Broad River settlement."

The possible cause of such illness might be inferred from a history of nearby Augusta, Georgia—similarly situated upon a river. What was once dubbed "Stranger's Fever" periodically made its appearance in Augusta over the years following the nearby establishment of the Broad River settlement. According to Charles C. Jones' Memorial History of Augusta, Georgia, what later became known as Yellow Fever was documented in an outbreak there in 1839 in which one third of the entire Augusta population suffered an attack. Another such episode followed in 1854.

Members of the local Medical Society set themselves to the task of evaluating possible causes of this devastating illness. Opinions vacillated between conjectures that the disease was not contagious and that it was—and if so, how it was spread.

Eventually in the Society's investigations, it was noticed that "an unusual quantity of animal and vegetable putrefaction" had been found in "a number of small ponds and marshes." (Jones, page 258-259.)

In a stellar example of public policy that might have seemed like a good idea at the time, it turned out that the city fathers, some time before this, had decided that

there be constructed a slide or platform on the river bank for the purpose of throwing the dirt and rubbish collected by the street officer clear of the bank into the river.

As it turned out, their plan worked quite well, as many in the city availed themselves of this dumping-off point—so much so that the heap had swelled into a mountain of its own. Once the local officials realized what they had done to themselves, the next task—a similarly huge assignment—was to dismantle the hazard.

While that entire debacle occurred not in the Broad River settlement, but down river in Augusta, it serves to demonstrate the then-current view of rivers and their usefulness. It also revealed lack of understanding, at the time, of vectors of diseases—including the oft-found mosquitos of such low-lying "small ponds and marshes" as had been noticed in the physicians' inquiry into the Yellow Fever causes. Apparently, the good people of places like the Broad River settlement were all but hanging out welcome signs for the very visitors who bred the disease that was killing them.

I doubt very many of those choosing to leave the Broad River settlement realized, at the time, what it was that convinced them to pack up and move. Perhaps they once again convinced themselves that that periodic wearing out of the land was upon them.

Then again, the rise and fall of fortunes seemed pegged to more local causes, such as the fate of the nearby town of Petersburg—the down river inspection stop for shipments of tobacco headed to Augusta, then Savannah, then across the ocean for international trade. A shift in cash crops from tobacco to cotton and a change in transportation modes from "Petersburg boats" to roads and railroads routed elsewhere had a devastating impact on the economic well-being of the region.

Or maybe the Broad River families succumbed to a new kind of fever—western fever, for which the only known relief was to forsake all and move out West.

Begin at the Beginning

Though genealogy is a craft that starts at the end and works its way back toward the beginning of a family's history, in the case of our hunt for the nexus between two matrilineal lines—mine and that of my mystery cousin, the adoptee whose mtDNA test results are an exact match to mine—I'm going to reverse direction and examine possible migratory routes of this family from their original home in the colony of Virginia.

First, of course, comes the caveat that not only does my adoptee cousin not know his matrilineal line for sure, but I don't know mine, either. Remember, in tracing backwards in time from my mother to her mother to her mother, I'm stalled at my second great grandmother's origin, for she, too, was said to be adopted.

"Adopted" back then, however, was not the closed case it would be in our time. Likely, before her marriage to Thomas Taliaferro Broyles in 1871, Mary Rainey was orphaned in her teen years and taken in by relatives willing to do their duty, as good family members of that age were expected to do. (Think Pollyanna moving in with her spinster aunt after the death of her parents.)

With that in mind, we need to remember that I am still assuming who my second great grandmother's parents were. With every step backwards through the generations, I'm working on the hypothesis that Mary Rainey's mother was Mary (possibly Nancy) Taliaferro, daughter of Warren Taliaferro and Mary Meriwether Gilmer of Rockingham County, Virginia.

So for our task of examining the migratory pattern of this family line, we'll reverse the usual research direction and start at that beginning—that jumping off place in Virginia from which some of the Taliaferro family and some from the Gilmer line left their ancestral Virginia property for the promise of a better life elsewhere.

The earliest influences on the Gilmer and Taliaferro families, in considering the question of moving from Virginia, may have been a result of the Revolutionary War. According to George Gilman Smith's The Story of Georgia and the Georgia People, General George Mathews, having served during the Revolution with Virginia troops in Georgia, decided to return there after the war (see page 112).

He was a shrewd speculator, and he bought at a bargain a claim to a large body of land known as the Goose Pond tract on Broad river and decided to move to it. He brought in the famous Broad river settlers....

Then, too, the agricultural practices back in Virginia had impoverished the land, and in combination with land grants following the war, became attractive incentives for many Virginians to forsake their previous land holdings. Again, according to Smith (page 139),

the prospect of finding good tobacco land in Georgia drew large colonies from all the central and tide-water counties of that State. 

Georgia governor George R. Gilmer, writing his own understanding of the migration of the company of Virginians to Goose Pond, gave the date for General Mathews' move to the Broad River area as 1784. Another survey of the history of the area listed, among the many Virginians following General Mathews' lead and relocating in this Broad River settlement, the Taliaferros, the Harvies, the Meriwethers and the Lewises.

Just the people we'll be looking for.

 

 

Sometimes, You Just Know

Why is it that, in the midst of the most frustrating defeats, something seems to work itself loose and open up a possibility that—though it hasn't yet been fully proven—you just know will lead to the right answer?

I cannot begin to tell the countless hours I've spent, sifting through data, trying to unearth patterns that will lead me backwards on my path through time to the woman who correspondingly, taken forward in time again, would yield a female descendant who would become the mother of the adoptee whose DNA test tells him he and I are exactly linked.

Sensing my lack of progress, I've redoubled my effort this summer. But the more I add to my database of ancestors and their related lines, the less I feel I am succeeding.

I had hoped that switching tracks would jump start a stalled project: rather than pursue my line back in time, look for the nexus in my mystery cousin's line. But as you have probably already noticed, I am mired in the disappointing research snares of burned courthouses and missing records on that account, as well.

Last weekend, I told myself I needed to strategize this search better. In fleshing out my skeletal family tree—typically, in genealogical research, we seek out the direct line, not the collateral lines as much—I had now been adding siblings in each line, then bringing those lines forward to the present generation. That would work well in finding ways to match with those other eight-hundred-plus matches on my autosomal DNA test, but it wasn't doing much for this matrilineal pursuit. I needed to focus on one goal at a time, and if I wanted to find the answer to how I was related to this mystery cousin, that meant looking solely at the women's lines descending from my direct matrilineal line.

In other words, keep the route straight on the narrow path of mother's-mother's-mother. And then, only the women born to those mothers—and, in turn, their daughters—until I reach the terminal descendant, in my mystery cousin's case, a son.

So those were my marching orders: evaluate every female descendant descending from that specific matrilineal line.

I don't do well with taking orders.

Well, when I started out, I meant well. I looked at my maternal grandmother—she being the mother of only one daughter who had children of her own. That wouldn't work. I took one baby step backward through the generations to her mother, Sarah Broyles McClellan, who again had only one daughter who bore children.

Repeat one more generation: the next contestant was her mother, Mary Rainey, the woman who reportedly was adopted—in my opinion, taken in by family as an orphan—and then, on the other end of her life, had died young, before the age of customary documentation for deaths. Though I know little about her before her marriage to Thomas Taliaferro Broyles, I do know she had not one, but two daughters who then had children of their own.

However—and you know there would be a caveat, even here—Mary's other daughter was the proud mother of sons. End of that matrilineal line.

Moving up yet another generation proved to be a problem. How was I to know for certain who Mary's mother was? I did find someone whom I believe is my Mary in the household of her relatives in Georgia, just before her marriage to Thomas Broyles, pointing to the possibility of extended family relationships. And I did locate a possible Mary in a Rainey household in Georgia—though after the death of the father, leaving me with a mother also named Mary, an unfortunately too-common name on which to hang one's confidence.

Let's just say that the elder Mary Rainey was the right mother. She certainly had many daughters from which to choose possible routes for another iteration of her matrilineal line.

But that was the 1860s, and not only was war the mode of the tension-filled decade, but the invisibility of daughters given in marriage, duly noted in records filed at soon-to-be-burned courthouses, made the search wearying.

That's where I got bogged down. And that's where, last weekend on a lark, I decided to swim upstream and try my hand at another generation. Not only was my plan stalled at Mary Taliaferro Rainey's generation, but I needed a branch of the extended family with a migratory pattern much different than the one typical for this part of the family—instead of heading from Virginia to Georgia to the deep South, a trail that went westerly, from Virginia to Kentucky and then onward to Missouri.

No one was showing me the way to the Show Me State. But that's where I needed to go.

The next stop, in my tour of generations, was also puzzling me. I really had no indication of Mary Taliaferro Rainey's parents. I had a good guess, based on who took in her orphaned children after her passing. So making that assumption would mean also hoping the mtDNA test would bear out the hypothesis—yet maybe lead me farther away from my original goal of locating the nexus with my mystery cousin.

You can see how mired in the details I became, pondering these women and their changeable names and identities. Coupled with that was one unfortunate anomaly: a family of intermarriages. Moving backward into those decades before the Civil War, I entered the arena of old colonial families for whom arranged marriages among families familiar with each other seemed customary. Thus, I saw surnames echoed through the generations, when taking the sweeping view forward in time from their colonial Virginian origin. I saw Taliaferros intertwined with Gilmers and Meriwethers, Harvies and Lewises, their names waltzing in and out of the generations in grand procession.

I became quite at home with seeing these repeating surnames. Perhaps that was what caught my eye while stymied with considerations about just what to do with this "adopted" Mary Rainey Broyles and her maybe-mother, Mary Taliaferro Rainey. If I followed my best hunch about her mother—incidentally, in direct opposition to respected genealogies of bygone centuries—I would then be looking at the daughters and sisters of one Mary Meriwether Gilmer, wife of Warren Taliaferro. Her mother, in turn, would be Elizabeth Lewis, wife of Thomas Meriwether Gilmer.

You see how those surnames echo through the generations.

Though I'm not sure how this next step happened, it was in that late Sunday night ennui when sleep might have been a better choice. I was still poking through records, trying to find marriage connections and female descendants for these women. I ran across one name, recognized that redundant surname echo, and wondered what else could be found on that person. I jumped from Ancestry.com to FamilySearch.org to Find A Grave, looking.

Perhaps it was from sheer exhaustion with the whole process that I forgot to note my path as I wandered online. Somehow I came to my senses while looking up a Sarah on Find A Grave. Among the possibilities offered for my search was someone named Sarah Harvie Gilmer, daughter of Frederick George Gilmer. Though the Find A Grave memorial stated she had no children of her own, I couldn't help but be arrested by her entry.

I took a look at the list of parents and siblings linked to her name. Not only were those same old surnames creating a siren call in my head, but here was a man (Sarah's father) who was born in Georgia, stopped long enough in Kentucky to have children there, and then moved on to Lincoln County, Missouri.

Now, Lincoln County may not be a locale that rings a bell for you—even if you've been here over the long haul to put up with my internal agony over lack of research progress—but it was one of those along-the-way details that I spared in the narrative. However, before our Sarah Kinslow and her husband, William Stinebaugh, settled in Dallas County, Missouri, William had evidently grown up in none other than Lincoln County.

Of course, it is a long way from the Stinebaugh and Kinslow genealogy to any connection with the Gilmer and Harvie clans—with, incidentally, some Taliaferros thrown in for good measure—but somehow, it was enough to elicit that awestruck gut response in me.

You know this is one lead I'll need to follow.

Above: "The Cottage in the Lane," 1827 drawing in pen and ink with gray wash by English artist, John Constable; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Stuffy Old Genealogy Tomes Tell All

What do you do when it’s 1855 and you have no tell-all tabloids to keep you informed when standing in line at the dry goods store?

Apparently, you read genealogy books.

One of my resources, in following my Taliaferro and related lines, is a book that was first published in 1855. Written by former governor of Georgia, George R. Gilmer, it was known by one of those traditionally-elongated titles of the era: Sketches of Some of the First Settlers of Upper Georgia, of the Cherokees, and the Author. Let’s just call the book Sketches for convenience.

The Gilmer book was re-printed, in a “corrected” form, in 1926 and then again—this time, with an added index for ease in researching—by the Genealogical Publishing Company in 1965.

“That most charming book,” as the foreword to the corrected edition of Sketches noted, had a mixed reception,

…because of the chatty style, unpleasant gossip, minutiae of descriptions, and the too candid truths therein about so many prominent people. The author’s unvarnished story and lack of extenuation made his book distasteful to many who were aggrieved thereby.

The foreword did go on to admit,

This history, however, written as it is in this most unusual style will always remain as an oasis in the moral desert of truculent and time serving literature.

So, what did the tell-alls of mid nineteenth century America say?

Remember the woman I mentioned yesterday—the one I suspect might be in my direct matrilineal line? Here’s what Governor Gilmer had to say about her on page 15 of the most current edition of his book:

Mary Meriwether, the oldest daughter [of Thomas Meriwether Gilmer and Elizabeth Lewis] is a woman of good understanding. She married successively two very indolent, inefficient men, whom by her industry she saved from poverty. The first was Warren Taliaferro, brother of Col. Benjamin Taliaferro; the second, Nicholas Powers, a handsome Irishman.

Should you think this was just a slip of the pen in a late-night writing session, here’s an additional passage from Sketches, this time focusing on the Taliaferro side of the genealogy:

Warren Taliaferro was tall, muscular, good-tempered, very indolent and inefficient. He constantly reminded those who listened to his conversation of his Italian descent. He married Mary M. Gilmer, daughter of Thomas M. Gilmer. He was a fond husband and father.

Sure, the author blended the good with the bad in his version of the family memoir. But when it came to the bad, George Gilmer seemed to hold no inhibitions about expressing his opinion. Take this entry about Warren Taliaferro’s older brother:

Richard Taliaferro was deformed—his legs and thighs being only a span or two long, whilst his body was of ordinary length and size, and his head unusually large. His mind was of good capacity, but his deformity so soured his temper, and mortified his pride, as to drive him from society. He never married, became very penurious, and died without ever having enjoyed the love or commiseration of any but his nearest kin.

How’s that for a eulogy?

Though a passage like this might permit you a glimpse into just what it was that had some of the good governor’s readers outraged at his opinions, apparently the plainspokenness of this former generation carried the day. Gilmer’s genealogy went on to be cited and his stories paraphrased in other genealogies, as well.

An 1892 publication, The Meriwethers and Their Connections, followed suit in divulging one of those personal stories, the subject of which undoubtedly would die a thousand deaths if she had known what had been said about her. Just imagine this scenario:

David Meriwether, the third son of Thomas and Elizabeth Thornton Meriwether, was a quiet, upright man… He married Mary Harvie, a very sensible, good woman, and one of the best of wives. She was so fat when old, that she seldom left the house. Her husband was usually found by her side. She weighed between three and four hundred, and was tall in proportion. He was low in stature, and weighed about a hundred and twenty. Her seat was a broad split-bottom chair, and when she rose up, she put each hand upon a round of the chair, and ascended so gradually, and for so long a time, that she looked as if she would never stop.

David and Mary Harvie Meriwether, incidentally, were the parents of the charming young lady, Martha, who became the focus of the struggle between brothers Benjamin and Zachariah Taliaferro for her hand in marriage. My fourth great grandfather lost.

Not to be out-done in this genealogical tell-all, Colonel James Edmonds Saunders—aided and abetted, no less, by his granddaughter, Elizabeth Saunders Blair Stubbs—added to the Mary Harvie story in their own version in 1899:

She was one of a family of nine brothers and sisters, whose aggregate weight exceeded 2700 pounds. When Mrs. Meriweather [sic] became old, she weighed between 300 and 400 pounds. The four daughters in this family were all well favored…

The Saunders narrative, Early Settlers of Alabama, continued with the next generation of this Taliaferro family,

Major Benjamin Taliaferro [son of Martha Meriwether, whose mother was Mary Harvie] married Martha Watkins, in Georgia; moved to Alabama and lived in Marengo county. He was low in stature, but very squarely built, and in old age weighed largely over 300 pounds. He inherited the fattening tendency from his grandmother.

Still, there were some kind words to add to the picture.

Major Benjamin T. was of sprightly mind, and sharp wit; and he had a fund of the best Georgia anecdotes, which made him the life of every company he entered. His rippling, guttural laugh much resembled that of the renowned English actor Hackett, when he personated Falstaff.

Good, bad or indifferent, these authors’ observations about the foibles of our ancestors at least give us an idea of what these people of past generations were like. Perhaps the kindness was—at least, I hope this was so—that the subjects of the sketches in these genealogical narratives were, by then, long gone.

Yet, we have to remember that the candid nature of such writings does not guarantee their accuracy. The transparency of the authors lends somewhat of a charm to what would otherwise be the dull droning of begats—but that doesn’t mean we are safe to allow ourselves to be beguiled by what made it into print, well over one hundred years ago.

A warning from the author of Sketches, himself, reminds us to take the information we glean from such manuscripts with caution. In the 1926 edition of his work, Governor Gilmer wrote, regarding himself,

Old age and long continued ill-health have made the author’s hand tremulous and his sight dim, so that he writes badly and cannot readily perceive mistakes. He employed copyists to transcribe his manuscript. They made many mistakes. The author could not supervise the printing. The printer added to the mistakes of the author and copyists.

And you think these time-honored genealogies are reliable resources?  

On the Trail

I’m back to that perennial struggle between staying on the research itinerary’s timetable and stopping to smell the flowers along the roadside.

Admittedly, I’ve spent a lot of time smelling those roses lately. When genealogical research finally makes it back to colonial times in this country, it’s time to really enjoy the scenery. It seems like every surname could be connected to something of significance.

Whether it’s history or a serious case of inbreeding, I don’t know. But it sure is tempting to follow those rabbit trails.

Take this week, for instance. I was truly repentant for my past transgressions of following my nose onto the Tilson line—even though it led me straight to Mayflower Society eligibility. I meant well when I promised I’d head back to the main trail and stick to my original purposes.

But then I stumbled upon another set of surnames that made me wonder. And my resolve faltered.

Yes, I took the detour.

But it was only a small one. Really.

You see, if I want to figure out how my mitochondrial DNA test results lead me back to an exact match with someone who was adopted at birth, one thing’s for sure: I need to stick with the matrilineal trail that leads from my mother to her mother to her mother. There is no deviating from this line. After all, that’s what matrilineal means.

Since I have one of those annoying brick wall road blocks keeping me from moving up that trail beyond my third great grandmother, I will have to engage in some guess work to test the possibilities of who her mother might have been.

That leaves me stuck at third great grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Taliaferro, wife of Thomas Firth Rainey. Since both of them died in Georgia before their daughter—my second great grandmother, Mary Rainey Broyles—married in 1871, I had to glean some clues from the nearest census record.

Fortunately, as we’ve already seen, I was able to find a Mary “Reiney” in the 1870 census. Along with a Thomas Reiney, she was living in the household of Charles and Mildred Taliaferro. In addition, there was a Minnie “Broyes”—which I suspected might actually be Broyles—in the household.

Could Thomas be Mary’s brother, I wondered. Since Minnie’s mother also turned out to be a Taliaferro, could sixty one year old Charles be the guardian of choice for this branch of the Taliaferro family?

Looking backwards one decade, I was able to locate siblings Thomas and Mary in the household of widowed Mary (Elizabeth Taliaferro) Rainey in 1860. One more decade, and I had located the senior Mary’s husband’s name—Thomas Firth Rainey—in addition to a marriage record for the couple in 1818 Oglethorpe County, Georgia.

Here’s where the guessing game revved up. Next question: so who would have been the mother of Mary Elizabeth Taliaferro? Remember, my quest calls for strict adherence to the matrilineal line—no wandering!

Thinking that there had to be a reason why Charles Taliaferro took in two of Mary Elizabeth’s children after her death, I decided to play the “what if” game and call Charles Mary Elizabeth’s brother. After all, it is possible.

Then the quest was on to find a Taliaferro family which included a brother-sister team of Charles and Mary Elizabeth. While the part about Mary Elizabeth had me stymied, I did know Charles’ middle name was Boutwell, and that there was a Boutwell maiden name in another of my Taliaferro lines.

Checking out the family of Warren Taliaferro, sure enough, there was a son named Charles Boutwell Taliaferro—I already knew this—but he didn’t have a sister named Mary Elizabeth. My only options in this four-child family were sisters Nancy, Sarah and Lucy (who also went by the name Sophia). One published genealogy of the last century noted that Nancy married a Thomas Rainey.

Could Nancy be Mary Elizabeth? Since I’ve yet to find any solid documentation—other than a marriage record indicating Thomas married someone named Mary Taliaferro—I decided to continue playing the “what if” game.

So, what if “Mary” was really “Nancy” and her father was Warren Taliaferro? Who did Warren marry?

The answer to this, according to various published genealogies, was Mary Meriwether Gilmer. (And, because Warren died fairly early in their marriage, Mary married, second, a man who likely served as her family’s minister, Nicholas Powers, with whom she went on to have six additional children.)

This Mary becomes the next entry in my hypothetical matrilineal line, then. And the question moves on to be, “And who was her mother?”

The answer to this next sequence is that Mary Meriwether Gilmer was daughter of Thomas Meriwether Gilmer and his wife, Elizabeth Lewis.

By this time, the repetition of the name Meriwether, coupled with the addition of the maiden name Lewis, started to ring a bell.

Ding! It’s Rabbit Trail Time! What name do you know that contains both a Meriwether and a Lewis?

You know I went to check that one out.

Gone was the pursuit of matrilineal lines. Now I wanted to follow that Meriwether line as far back as I could. I wanted to make some connections. To continue the genealogical litany, Thomas Meriwether Gilmer was son of Peachy Ridgeway Gilmer—yes, that was his name—and his wife, Mary Meriwether.

Ah ha! That’s where the Meriwether surname came in!

Jumping tracks to follow her name—and, in case you’re lost, no, that would not be part of my matrilineal line; now it’s just for the sheer curiosity of the joy ride—Mary Meriwether, wife of Thomas M. Gilmer was daughter of Thomas Meriwether and his wife, Elizabeth Thornton.

Now for the long descent down the other side of the family mountain.

Mary, daughter of Thomas Meriwether, had a sister named Lucy. According to Louisa H. A. Minor’s 1892 The Meriwethers and Their Connections, Mary’s sister Lucy was “a woman of sterling sense and admirable qualities.”

Lucy was one of those women of that era whose husband’s early demise was followed by another marriage. Though I don’t know why Lucy’s first husband died, I do know his name and rank: Colonel William Lewis.

Lewis? Ah, now you sense what I’m after. A wedding in which a maiden name might be blended with a married surname.

And what do you get? Meriwether Lewis.

Yes, that one.

To recap—just in case you lost track—the grandmother of my suspected fourth great grandmother Mary Meriwether Gilmer Taliaferro Powers was sister to the mother of Meriwether Lewis. That same suspected fourth great grandmother was thus first cousin, once removed, from the renowned explorer, Meriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark fame. That could make me his first cousin, a kazillion times removed. Even so, that’s a rabbit trail worth exploring.

Above: Portrait of Meriwether Lewis, circa 1807, by Charles Willson Peale; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.