Solving for the Unknown

 

Genealogy, as I've always seen it, can be quite like an algebra equation: you need to separate the known values to one side of the equation to solve for the unknown entity isolated on the other side. 

Right now, I've been grappling with an unknown: the names and identities of the children of my fourth great-grandmother Mary Meriwether Gilmer and her second husband, Nicholas Powers.

Unfortunately, Nicholas Powers did not leave a will—at least, not one I could find anywhere in the state of Georgia, the Powers family's residence, during the mid 1800s when he most likely died. However, I was able to find a court document indicating that someone named Nicholas F. Powers had been appointed administrator over the estate of "Nicholas Powers late of Oglethorpe County." The catch? The document only identified three children: Nicholas, Sarah, and Thomas.

It occurred to me that I did have a way to isolate the unknown entity in this genealogical equation to learn more about the family of Mary and Nicholas: DNA testing. While the relationship would be distant, it was still within reach. I decided to take a look.

Since my ancestor Mary Meriwether Gilmer had been previously married to a man who was my own direct line ancestor, Warren Taliaferro, I first looked up how many matches I shared with people who descended from Warren. According to Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool, I currently have sixty four DNA matches who share a genetic connection to Warren. 

Normally, you'd expect about the same number of matches to also connect with Warren's wife, Mary. But in this case, because the young widow had married Nicholas after Warren's death, descendants of those Powers children—however many there actually were—increased Mary's match count to seventy seven.

Sure enough, when I clicked through to see who made up the difference in the two counts, there were descendants of three Powers children in the mix. However, don't count on that easily solving my genealogical algebra problem. The three Powers ancestors were listed by these DNA matches as George, Mary Caroline, and Thomas. 

Well, Thomas I've already found in documentation, but Mary Caroline? And George is on the borderline, as I haven't found him in any records so far, either, though links to his Find A Grave memorial display family names which sound like Powers and Gilmer namesakes to me. 

I've begun checking each of the seven DNA matches descending from Thomas Powers, as at least I have documentation confirming his descent from my fourth great-grandmother. Surprisingly, the closest match shares twenty six centiMorgans with me, all in one segment, when it could have been quite possible that we would share absolutely no genetic material at all. The paper trail confirmed the connection, encouraging me to review the rest of the list, too. As for George and Mary Caroline, though there is a slight smidgeon of DNA that could tie us to the same ancestor, it is a very weak link. Better to look first for positive signs in the paper trail, before trying to solve for that unknown.

Getting to Know the Neighbors

 

There is a concept in genealogical research known by its snappy moniker, the F.A.N. Club. Depending on whom you ask, that acronym could stand for "Family, Associates, and Neighbors" or "Friends, Associates, and Neighbors." In my ancestor's case—Mary Meriwether Gilmer and her brothers in early 1800s Georgia—apparently, that F.A.N. Club could signify both at the same time.

Yesterday, while trying to discover whatever happened to Mary's second husband, Nicholas Powers, I ran across a census record for 1840. When I saw that hint posted to Nicholas Powers' profile page on my tree at Ancestry.com, I was pretty sure that was my ancestor's family. However, I wasn't in much of a rush to view the document, because I already knew my fourth great-grandmother's name would not appear in that listing. For that enumeration, only heads of household were listed by name. Besides that, Mary's husband Nicholas was not one of my direct ancestors; it was her first husband Warren Taliaferro who claimed that designation.

Still, I had to take a peek at that 1840 census page. Though my main purpose in looking it up was to narrow the possible date range for when Nicholas actually died, I was curious to see who else was living in the neighborhood. I guess you could say I was looking for the "N" in the F.A.N. Club for Mary and Nicholas.

Almost immediately, I spotted another name I recognized from my family tree: Hay T. Landrum. Hay's name was listed right above Nicholas Powers' entry. Not only were they neighbors in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, but they were—at least, according to my calculations—family in the same neighborhood. Hay's wife Sarah was daughter of Nicholas' wife Mary. In fact, since Nicholas was likely the only father Sarah really knew—he stepped in as step-dad only a few years after she was born—it is not surprising to discover that she and Hay named one of their sons after her step-father Nicholas Powers.

It is when I cannot find any documentation for the key points in an ancestor's life that I begin resorting to that F.A.N. Club again. In hopes that some familiar names would be repeated enough times in my ancestor's life story to lead me to the details I am missing, I trace every possible clue. There is certainly an abundance of those F.A.N. Club clues in Nicholas Powers' case, even if I haven't been able to find a will for him.

The Other Husband

 

If George Gilmer had disparaging remarks to make about his sister's husband, Warren Taliaferro, with that commentary he was only warming up. When it came to the other husband, George's sister Mary's second marriage, he likely had far more reason to be critical. While Warren Taliaferro at least had a will, second husband Nicholas Powers apparently did not.

I found that detail—or rather, noticed its absence—when repeating yesterday's search routine using the FamilySearch Labs Full Text search feature. This time, I was on a mission to find the will of Nicholas Powers. There were two reasons I wanted to find this. First, of course, was to confirm the approximate date at which he had passed. The second reason was to get a more accurate listing of Nicholas' children, since I was concerned the count for the Powers children was not correct in George Gilmer's book.

Despite my success yesterday with the search for Warren Taliaferro's will, no will came up for second husband Nicholas Powers. Instead, there were multiple entries for deeds which included the Powers name. To narrow the search, I added his wife Mary's name, which helped reveal part of the story.

From that attempt, I have been able to glean a few indications. The first was that someone named Nicholas F. Powers served as administrator for "Nicholas Powers late of Oglethorpe County" in a document dated May 3, 1853. An earlier indenture, drawn up in April of the same year, identified Mary M. Powers as wife of Nicholas Powers, and listed their children as Nicholas, Sarah, and Thomas—three children hardly being the "six from her last" husband that her brother had reported in his book.

The third discovery I found was somewhat curious. Entered toward the end of a deed recorded in Oglethorpe County, a specific parcel of land was sold "excepting forty feet square in the North west corner of my Garden where my Eldest Child and Nicholas Powers deceased is buried." The document was signed by a W. T. Williams on August 31, 1849.

Our Mary's Nicholas? Hard to say, though in a county of twelve thousand residents, it might have been doubtful that there were two couples by the same names. Without a will, the only way to determine the names of all their children would be to search through the many other deeds listing Nicholas' name in hopes there were further provisions for the fatherless children. As for Mary, herself, we may learn more by focusing on her own siblings—especially the brothers who had been named as executors in her first husband's will.   

About the Reverend

 

The search was on to discover my roots—specifically, the mother of my orphaned second great-grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Warren Taliaferro Rainey. Because the name Taliaferro kept showing up in what I could find about this family, I was fairly certain that was M.E.W.T. Rainey's mother's maiden name. However, in looking around the page where the younger Mary Elizabeth's marriage entry had been made in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, I noticed some interesting details.

For one, the name of the minister who performed the marriage ceremony for young—and I do mean young—Mary Elizabeth and her beau Thomas F. Rainey was Nicholas Powers. The Reverend Powers had signed a statement indicating that he had performed their marriage ceremony on June 9, 1818. Remembering that Mary Elizabeth had, in later years, reported her age such that her year of birth would have either been in 1804 or 1806, I did the math. Yep: this girl was either fourteen or—worse—twelve at the time of her marriage to Thomas Rainey. Surely, that couldn't be correct.

That marriage date was gleaned from one Oglethorpe County record, but there was more than one entry for Mary Elizabeth's wedding date. In another ledger, listing only the date and names of bride and groom, the entry date for Mary and Thomas' wedding was given as May 30, not June 9. Could that have been the date when the marriage license application was made? 

While puzzling over that discrepancy, my eyes wandered over the page. What should I spot, just below the Rainey and Taliaferro entry, but another Taliaferro entry. This one also was dated the same: May 30, 1818. The Taliaferro in question for this entry was someone named Mary, but rather than Mary E., as our Mary's record had been entered, this other Mary was "Mary M."

And the groom? The Reverend Nicholas Powers, himself.

Of course, the next question was: who was this Mary M. Taliaferro? She couldn't have been a sister of our Mary, I reasoned. It would be unlikely to see two sisters with the same given name. Perhaps this was an entry for two Taliaferro cousins who coincidentally got married on the same day—or at least applied for their marriage license at the same time.

As it turned out—at least, if we can trust this clue at Find A Grave—the other Mary was someone named Mary Meriwether Gilmer. The reason she was identified in her marriage record as Mary Taliaferro was that she had been the widow of someone named Warren Taliaferro. On the same day that the Reverend Nicholas Powers applied for a license to marry the widow Mary Taliaferro, Thomas Rainey had applied to marry the exceedingly young daughter of that same widow, and her future step-father had performed the ceremony ten days later.

   

Above: Entry from the marriage records of Oglethorpe County, Georgia, showing the entry dated May 30, 1818, for Thomas F. Rainey and Mary E. Taliaferro immediately above that on the same day for Nicholas Powers and Mary E.'s mother, Mary M. Taliaferro; entry courtesy Ancestry.com.

Meet M.E.T.

 

It is always wise to start with what you know, when launching a search for the unknown predecessors lying behind those brick wall ancestors in your family tree. At one time, my third great-grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Taliaferro was one of those mystery ancestors. Only because of the help gained by using the mitochondrial DNA test was I able to break past the point before that, when all I knew about my second great-grandmother was that she was an orphan from Georgia who married Thomas Taliaferro Broyles and moved to Tennessee six years before her untimely death in 1877.

It wasn't easy to find the orphan's parents. Before DNA, all I knew, thanks to an entry in a family Bible, was that my second great-grandmother's maiden name was Mary Rainey—and even the spelling of her surname was suspect, due to handwriting issues. Eventually, the discovery that the daughter lived with her older brother Thomas in the 1870  household of one Charles Taliaferro in Columbus, Georgia, led me to the previous census record where, in 1860, the two siblings lived in a household headed by one Mary E. Rainey.

The older Mary was, at that time, apparently widowed, for there were several young people living in the home with her—but no husband. In typical fashion for the 1860 census, the household was itemized, giving the names of the men below the head of household, then the women who, in bookend fashion, followed—first the oldest daughter Martha, then the youngest daughter, "Mary W. E." 

The problem was that looking for the family in the previous census meant that baby Mary Elizabeth Warren Taliaferro Rainey would not be included in the household, since the 1860 census had indicated she was born about 1851. Noting the names of the older children, though, I pushed back to the 1850 census to discover baby Mary's father's name: Thomas F., same as the brother with whom she had been living after her parents' deaths. From there, I also obtained a copy of the elder Thomas' will, filed in Campbell County on June 7, 1858 which, although not identifying the other children, did name two daughters, including—thankfully—Mary Elizabeth Warren Taliaferro Rainey.

Now that I knew her parents' identities, it was time to learn more about them. Unfortunately, I haven't learned much about Thomas, husband of the elder Mary Elizabeth and father of the longer-named daughter. As for his wife, Mary Elizabeth, I discovered through her husband's will that, in addition to naming his wife as executrix, the same Charles Taliaferro in whose household I originally found the younger Mary Elizabeth and her brother Thomas living had been named executor of the elder Thomas Rainey's 1858 will. That, combined with the repeated reference to Warren Taliaferro, both as name of the couple's deceased son and the appendage to their youngest daughter's name, sure seemed to point the way to a Taliaferro surname for Thomas Rainey's wife.

As it turned out, there was an 1818 marriage record recorded in Oglethorpe County for one Thomas F. Rainey and his bride to be, Mary E. "Talafero." What was concerning, though, was that if the bride was indeed our Mary E. Taliaferro, she would have been quite a young bride. Based on the ages given in the 1850 and 1860 census enumerations, she would have been born in either 1804 or 1806.

The initial thought might have been, given the different location of the county, that this was not our Mary. However, it was the name of the minister which hinted we might have the right bride, after all. This minister of the gospel signed his entry in the court records as Nicholas Powers. Like many other clues we find in family history research, this name had more than one connection to Mary Elizabeth's family, as we'll learn tomorrow.