Back on the Trail of Uncle Dabney

 

Do you ever, in the pursuit of your distant ancestors, run across a name so different that you just have to grab it and run with it? That's the case in my current chase after the family of Zachariah Taliaferro: I've run into a name I'm certain has to be one of a kind.

True, the man's surname is Jones, and that can be impossible to research. But for a first name, Dabney has got to be unique. And that is indeed what I'm discovering.

Recall last week, in examining the will of my fourth great-grandfather Zachariah Taliaferro's brother Richard, how specifically he identified his sister Frances Taliaferro Penn and her two children. While mentioning his nephew Richard Penn, the elder Richard went into far more detail about Frances' daughter Mary, first identifying her as wife of Dabney P. Jones, then putting her inheritance in the control of a man named John H. Johnson, rather than bequeathing it directly to his niece or even to her husband.

You can read volumes into a statement like that. And you know I need to follow up on that trail.

So why the concern? It's hard to say, from information on the surface of local history. Apparently, Dabney P. Jones was well known among the residents of Georgia. A Methodist preacher, he was credited with preaching the first sermon in Newnan, Georgia, in 1828. On the Fourth of July in 1832, he made what some believe was Georgia's first temperance speech, "the beginning of a labor that ended only with his life."

Eventually considered the state lecturer for the Temperance Society in Georgia, Dabney Jones was soon "known everywhere as Uncle Dabney" (see page 63 here). He was mentioned by that moniker in biographical sketches of other notable residents of Georgia, owing to his influence during that era.

Funny thing is, I've been down this research trail before. Ever have that déjà vu feeling dawn on you?

It turns out the name Dabney P. Jones had been stuck in my mind four years ago when someone mentioned the name "Dabney" during a Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy course I was taking on Southern Research. Of course, I had to check it out then—even wrote about it in a blog post.

Reviewing my thoughts from that 2019 post made me realize something else. There are two huge reference collections which were mentioned in that SLIG course which may be extremely pertinent to my Taliaferro research now.

It's time to revisit those collections. This could be a chance to unearth some valuable reference material. Somehow, you know I'll be weaving those manuscript collections from that old 2019 post into my work during the rest of this month's research goal.

Finding More About Frances

 

We've been on a genealogical journey, trying to piece together the family constellation of my fourth great-grandfather, Zachariah Taliaferro. So far, we've found mention in his will of one Richard Taliaferro, whom he named as one of his executors. Chasing that clue, we found in Richard's own will—at least, we think it's our Richard's will—the naming of his sister Frances Penn and her two children, Richard and Mary.

As it turns out, it is a good thing that Richard Taliaferro specifically documented the name of Frances' two children. Where one would think to find such a listing, there is none. If I've found the right will for the Penn family, Frances' husband mentions her by name, but doesn't provide any detail concerning their children other than mentioning them generically as "our children."

Frances' husband Wilson Penn drew up his will on the nineteenth day of May in 1811. The document was filed at Elbert County in Georgia, the state where some of our Zachariah Taliaferro's siblings had settled. We already noticed yesterday that Richard had also made that decision to migrate from Virginia to Georgia before drawing up his own will.

Wilson Penn's will was fairly brief. Despite leaving us no clue as to his children's names, he did help us by appointing executors whose names will aid our research. Along with his wife Frances, whom he named as executrix, Wilson appointed Benjamin Taliaferro, Dr. John T. Gilmer, and "Thomson" Watkins.

While Benjamin Taliaferro is most likely brother to our Zachariah as well as to Richard and Frances, the other two names provide us assurance that we have found the will for the right Penn family. While we don't yet recognize who Dr. Gilmer might be, that surname interestingly is the same as that of the outspoken biographical author we mentioned yesterday. And the note inserted with the passage quoted yesterday from the Gilmer book mentioned a neighbor by the name of Thomas Watkins, who was said to be a brother-in-law of the lifelong confirmed bachelor, Richard Taliaferro.

So far, we've identified as siblings of my fourth great-grandfather Zachariah: Richard, possibly Benjamin, Frances Penn, and the wife of Thomas Watkins. Thankfully, we can now turn to the will of their father, also named Zachariah, to see who else should belong in this family tree. We'll begin that exploration at the beginning of the coming week.

Richard Taliaferro's Last Wishes

 

My fourth great-grandfather, Zachariah Taliaferro, named in his 1831 will several executors. Besides naming two of his daughters to the position of executrix, there were three men named. Two of those men were his sons-in-law: my third great-grandfather Ozey R. Broyles and David S. Taylor, husband of Zachariah's daughter Lucy.

There was an additional person named to this position in Zachariah's will: a man by the name of Richard Taliaferro. Presumably, that man was Zachariah's brother, for he did have a brother by that name. But since I know very little about that brother Richard except that his was a given name popular in the extended Taliaferro family, this is obviously both a moment to learn more about the man and a warning to proceed cautiously with research.

As it turned out, a cursory check of online documents revealed two court records. One was an 1834 guardianship appointment for the two orphan children of Richard "Talifaro," drawn up on the third day of November in Monroe County, Georgia. The other record was the last will of one Richard Taliaferro, which he signed in nearby Coweta County, Georgia, on the last day of October in that same year.

At first glance, despite being drawn up in two different counties, date-wise it appears as if the two documents fit together like two pieces to a puzzle. But let's take a look further. The children named in the guardianship proceedings were Mary H. and Charles R. Talifaro. The guardian appointed was a man by the name of John Brown, rather than any Taliaferro kin who could easily have stepped into this position.

Let's take a look at that other document to see who among his kin was named in Richard Taliaferro's will.

Beginning as did many last testaments of that era, the will first took care of the necessary business of ensuring a decent burial and paying off his remaining debts. After that, where one would expect to see a listing of a wife and children, Richard proceeded to name two women "formerly belonging to me" to give them specific items out of his possessions.

Family was eventually mentioned in Richard's will, but not a wife, and—even more germane to our question—not any children. Those he did name were either siblings or children of those siblings. Among them were:

• "my sister" Frances Penn
• nephew Richard T. Penn
• niece Mary Jones

The last mentioned relative, Richard's niece Mary, had stipulations attached to the inheritance she was about to receive. For one thing, it was actually granted to John H. Johnson in trust for Mary, which might lead one to believe, at that point, that Mary was a minor. But not so. A parenthetical comment after that line explained that Mary was "formerly Penn"—in other words, Frances Taliaferro Penn's daughter—and "now wife of Dabney P. Jones." The will also specifically adds the words, "and her children."

In one single paragraph, we are granted a clear sketch of a family tree, if not of Richard, at least of his one sister, Frances. But is this our Richard? If so, what about the other document, drawn up only a few days later, naming orphaned children Mary and Charles? And how does John H. Johnson fit into the picture—if, indeed, either one of these documents belongs in the picture for our Richard Taliaferro.

Our first step will be to see whether we can find anything else on our Richard, executor for his brother Zachariah Taliaferro's will. Then, we'll also explore what can be discovered on Frances—ours? or another Taliaferro line?—and her Penn and Jones relatives. (Jones might be a rough research prospect, but perhaps not so difficult when coupled with an unusual given name like Dabney.)

Bit by bit, we'll either confirm or reject this connection between the Richard in the 1834 documents and the Richard mentioned in the 1831 will of our Zachariah Taliaferro—and learn a lot about at least someone's Taliaferro family.   

Squirrel !

We may be—as LaBrenda Garrett-Nelson reminded us Monday evening at SLIG—"all in this boat together," but when it comes to genealogically delving into the south, I'm seeing evidence that our co-instructor Anne Gillespie Mitchell was spot on: family life in the south was built upon clusters.

I, however, am not as circumspect about my genealogical research plans as she might have hoped. I've already fallen victim to what Anne refers to as, "Squirrel!"

Case in point: yesterday, co-instructor Kelvin Meyers toured us through the finer points of the Draper Manuscript Collection and a related collection, the Shane Manuscript Collection. It just so happens that that second, and smaller, Shane collection was compiled by a man named John Dabney Shane. A Presbyterian minister himself, Reverend Shane sought to collect all the material he could find on the expansion of the Presbyterian church in the United States, particularly on the American frontier of the time.

While that tidbit of information may be significant for those of us intent on researching our families' southern past, there was one small detail that caught my eye: the Shane collection was compiled by a man whose middle name was Dabney.

Dabney?! I have that family name.

And faster than Anne Mitchell could shout, "Squirrel!" I was off, flying through the virtual genealogical wilderness in search of a factoid. After all, if this were a southern family, that Dabney could just as well be a surname from deeper in the family tree. A maiden name. A connection. I've seen a lot of that in the southern families I've researched.

It didn't help that, in all this detail about both Draper and Shane, Kelvin mentioned another name that caught my ear. Somehow, the name Gabriel Jones was connected.

Gabriel Jones? Yep, you guessed it: I have that name, too.

In a quick and dirty exploration of John Dabney Shane's own family tree, it may be that the name Dabney came from his maternal grandmother's maiden name. I can't say for sure; I haven't proved it for myself. But it makes a reasonable explanation for how someone named as plainly as John could acquire such an unusual middle name.

Meanwhile, it just so happens that the Dabney connection in my own tree comes from a descendant of the same Taliaferro who qualified me for eligibility to DAR: his granddaughter Mary Penn (nicknamed Polly) married a minister named Dabney P. Jones.

How this particular Reverend also acquired a name as unusual as Dabney, I can't yet say, but I do know that after her passing, the widow Mary Penn Jones, dying intestate in 1874, had one Gabriel Jones appointed as administrator of her estate. Was he the same gentleman as the one connected to either of the researchers?

Well, you know a soul spirited away by the sight of a tempting research squirrel—this non-hunter prefers to refer to this as going down the rabbit trail—can't just stop there. So, multi-tasking through the remainder of class (true confessions), I poked around to see what else I could find.

You know the search is long from done at this point, especially when encountering more squirrel, er, rabbit trails. In the process, I followed the paper trail for all the descendants I could find in this line—we are, after all, supposed to uncover the clusters which tie our southern kin together—and discovered that a great-granddaughter of Mary Penn and Dabney Jones married a man who later married another woman and fathered (or possibly was the step-father of) the man who was the film director who brought us the motion picture version of the Harper Lee novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Now, isn't that all so very southern?!

Whether this is the kind of "connected" my Southern Research course instructors intended, I can't say. And I can't yet claim to have acquired the disciplined restraint of the professional genealogist. Follow the trail, connect the dots, and pretty soon we're all part of the family constellation.