Daughtered Out

 

The line of Zachariah Taliaferro included four descendants, all of whom were daughters. Obviously, familiarity with that surname in subsequent generations was not owing to Zachariah's line, for he had no son to carry his name forward. In other words, as some in the world of genetic genealogy might put it, Zachariah Taliaferro "daughtered out."

Despite that misfortune in an age when sons were important for many reasons, we still need to get to know each of Zachariah's daughters, for in an era in which families often intermarried, we may see those names appear in future generations. We'll take a tour today of each of those four daughters of Zachariah Taliaferro and his wife Margaret Chew Carter, and include a brief note concerning the surnames each of the daughters adopted upon their own marriage.

The oldest of the four daughters was my direct line, my third great-grandmother Sarah Ann Taliaferro, whom we introduced yesterday. Following her 1803 birth in South Carolina was the 1805 arrival of her sister Lucy Hannah Taliaferro. After a brief break from the customary stairstep fashion, the next Taliaferro daughter, Mary Margaret, made her appearance in 1808. The youngest, Caroline Virginia Taliaferro, arrived another three and a half years later. If there were more children of this couple, I have yet to find them.

While we already are familiar with the name of Sarah's husband—we just spent the past month researching Ozey Robert Broyles' ancestry—it might be helpful to list the spouses of Sarah's sisters. While it is true that some of these southern lines from that earlier era did end up intermarrying over the generations, I have another reason for wanting to list these spouses' names: some of them turn up in local history anecdotes. Of course, during that time period, it is sometimes difficult to research a woman without keeping her in the context of family names.

Sarah's next-younger sister Lucy married a man in 1826 by the name of David Sloan Taylor, son of Joseph and Nancy Sloan Taylor of Pendleton. Theirs was a large family which grew to twelve children, though some which I cannot trace may have died in childhood. While David was said to have accumulated a large fortune before the Civil War, not only his fortunes but his health turned, shortly after the close of the war. He apparently died intestate.

Sarah's second sister, Mary Margaret, married a local attorney destined to be not only a local office holder, but also a three-term American congressman prior to the Civil War. Richard Franklin Simpson's interest in local history likely was passed down to his son, Richard Wright Simpson, whose History of Old Pendleton District provides some guidance on the families he was closely related to in that region.

The youngest daughter of Zachariah Taliaferro and Margaret Chew Carter was Caroline Virginia Taliaferro. Like her older sisters, Caroline married and spent the rest of her life in the Pendleton area of South Carolina's upcountry, where she raised at least four children. Her husband, Henry Campbell Miller, was said in all the census records from 1850 through 1880—the last enumeration before his 1899 death—to have been a farmer, but according to his wife's obituary, he was listed as Dr. H. C. Miller. Caroline predeceased him by several years, dying in 1877 by what her obituary referred to as a "painful accident."

It is interesting to note, in examining the record of American Revolutionary War patriot Zachariah Taliaferro, these four sisters' paternal grandfather, that three of the sisters were named in the genealogical listings in applications for membership to the Daughters of the American Revolution. For some reason, descendants of Lucy Hannah Taliaferro, wife of David Sloan Taylor, do not show among the DAR applications for membership, at least that I can find.

No matter. Even if they couldn't pass down the specific surname of their father, every one of these daughters passed down a Taliaferro legacy to their descendants.

That, however, is not what we are pursuing this month. We want to continue our research journey by pressing further into the past. With that, our next step in the process will be to examine the daughters' father, Zachariah, and what we know about his own siblings.  

 

 

Off the Shelf: A Rebel Came Home

Well, some books just fly off the shelf, once I decide to read them, even if they sat on said shelf awaiting that moment for years since purchase. But this time, we witness the total opposite: I will read this book for sure, but there is one limiting factor standing between me and this good read: I haven't gotten the book yet.

A Rebel Came Home, the collection of journal entries and letters written by Floride Clemson, has been on my to-do list, ever since I discovered that some of my Pendleton, South Carolina, kin were mentioned in various published diaries and letters. I obtained a copy of three out-of-print books for that specific purpose: to see what might have been mentioned by the peers of my ancestors. That was what first inspired me to get a copy of The Diary of Clarissa Adger Bowen, and then move on to A Faithful Heart and Far, Far From Home.

Once I finished all those books, the next volume on my list was to be Floride Clemson's diary. Besides the hometown connection shared with my Broyles and Taliaferro lines, Floride Clemson had one more link to my family—although one which she would never live to witness.

It was Floride's father, Thomas Green Clemson, who, after his children's death, willed his property for the establishment of an agricultural college in South Carolina. It was Richard Wright Simpson, the brother of Tally Simpson whose letters home during the Civil War were featured in Far, Far From Home, who served as legal counsel in devising that Clemson will—and who defended it, all the way to the United States Supreme Court against a Clemson relative by marriage who wanted to contest it.

While the Clemson home was about five miles distance from the Pendleton location of my own ancestors, Floride likely was familiar with many of the families in that nearby town—and hopefully mentioned some of my distant family members in her journal entries, once she returned to South Carolina. Even if there is no mention of these family members specifically by name, reading her journal will give me a bigger picture of the life and times of my ancestors who lived in that same region.

There is only one problem with this reading plan: the book of Floride Clemson's journal entries and letters, ranging from 1863 to 1866, was edited and eventually published in 1989. My best hope for obtaining a copy now is to find a gently-used version, hopefully in hardcover. Of course, my meaning to do so in the past apparently translated into thinking I did what it turns out I did not do, and I am still casting about for the best way to obtain a copy. Given the date, I am convinced this might be an excellent Christmas gift idea for someone I know who claims I am the most difficult person to buy for.

Hint.

Hint.

About Sister Mary

In his Civil War letters home to Pendleton, South Carolina, Tally Simpson seldom referred to his one sister, called Mary, simply by her name. His letters often mentioned her as "Sister Mary" or, in some later posts, merely "Sister M."

In strategizing with his Aunt Caroline over a likely candidate to court, once he returned home from the war front, he had noted to her in 1863:

I heard through Sister Mary of the reports that were getting out concerning my humble self. They actually had my wedding clothes nearly completed and reported that I was daily expected home on furlough for the express purpose of consummating my happiness by my marriage....

In later letters with family members, particularly when caught up in strategizing over that "Fair Unknown"—the visiting Fannie Smith, refugee in Pendleton from war-torn Charleston—Tally would resort to code talking, referring to specific individuals under discussion only by initials. Even his own sister Mary, he mentioned as "Sister M."

In one of Tally's later letters to Mary, he addressed her complaint that, when she wrote her brother, she was concerned about being in an "uninteresting mood." He responded,

it was one of the most interesting epistles that I have received from you in a long, long time, and if such are the productions of your dull hours, I must ask you to write me a letter only when you feel in an dull and uninteresting mood.

Yet, despite her own "uninteresting" mood, Mary seemed to have keyed into signals from Tally's own letters, writing that she was concerned that he was "very desponding." True, he had written others in the family concerning his assessment, in the summer of 1863, that Charleston would fall "sooner or later" and that "several other of our important cities" would likely fall at that stage in the war, as well. Despite the details of the circumstances, she seemed to zero in on her brother's feelings.

Perhaps there was good reason for Mary's sensitivity about her brother. Mary, herself, had already lost her own sweetheart, Colonel Benjamin Conway Garlington, to the war. The brother of Tally's brother Dick's fiancee, Benjamin Garlington had left for the war, secretly engaged to Tally's sister Mary. Upon hearing the news that Ben Garlington fell at the Battle of Savage's Station in 1862, Tally confessed to his confidante, his Aunt Caroline,

Never in all my life have I had any occurrence to so overwhelm me. I have felt mournfully sad, and tears have often filled my eyes when I think of [Mary's] deep affliction.

And yet, when he had occasion to write his sister after her tragic loss, his letter seemed to address anything but her current circumstances. In a postscript, however, Tally explained himself:

Perhaps this letter may not suit you nor may it be such as you would wish. But I am persuaded that it is best to make no further allusion to your bereaved condition, for it could tend to keep fresh in your mind thoughts and remembrances which open anew the wound in your gentle heart...

Mary did, eventually, step beyond this great loss in her life. By sometime in the early 1870s, she was married to Captain Thomas Lanier Williams of Greeneville, Tennessee. By the time her father's genealogy of the extended family from Pendleton was published in 1913, Mary and Thomas had six children living: Eliza, Richard, William, Thomas, Maria, and Anna.

Mary's husband, several years older than she, died in 1895, and was buried in Greeneville. Mary followed her husband twenty years later.

Though I have yet to trace the descendancy of each of those lines of Thomas and Mary Williams' children, hopefully they have some great-grandchildren left today who are aware of, and have read, Tally Simpson's letters to his sister Mary during those tumultuous times during his service in the Civil War.

The Nieces and Nephews He Never Met

Tally Simpson, the voracious letter writer from the Confederate front of the Civil War, died before the close of hostilities. He never returned home to see how the lives of his siblings turned out.

Of course, I am one to wonder whether any of his family's descendants held his memory in their hearts long enough to pass it down to subsequent generations, so I went looking for who was left. Tally's sister Anna apparently never married, and his younger brother, John Garlington Simpson, died as a teenager before the war even started.

Tally's brother Dick, though, did marry and raise a family. Though Dick's letters home were also included in the book, Far, Far From Home, they ended at the point at which Dick was discharged from the Confederate army on account of his many illnesses. Once home, he and his sweetheart, Maria Louise Garlington, eventually married.

There were several footnotes in the book of war letters explaining the off-again-on-again wedding date for Dick and Maria. Maria's family suffered not one but two losses during the Civil War, and for the death of each brother, their wedding date was understandably postponed. That, however, was not the only reason their wedding date kept being pushed off. Besides Dick's recurrent illnesses, a lingering symptom of his days in the service, Maria herself encountered health problems.

A footnote in Far, Far From Home revealed that, in a private family history written by Maria, she "took diphtheria" one week before their wedding day. Not wishing to postpone any further this wedding event between two very much in love but terribly sickly sweethearts, on the appointed morning of their wedding, Maria was still sick in bed, but

got up and was closely wrapped up and went down stairs, was married, and immediately returned to my room where I remained for nearly a week.

With a start to married life such as this, one would expect the marriage to not last very long. However, as the book reported, Mr. and Mrs. Richard W. Simpson enjoyed a marriage "which lasted forty-seven years and produced ten children."

Only problem: of Tally's nieces and nephews whom he never met, I could account for only eight of them. Could two have disappeared from view by means of an untimely death? I went back through the census records I could find, but was unable to discover any additional names for the Simpson household.

There was, however, another resource: that recently-remembered book—by Richard Simpson himself, published after his death—which included many genealogies of families from Pendleton, South Carolina, the place where Tally and his family had lived. Sure enough, R. W Simpson did not neglect to include his own family in the recounting of Old Pendleton's heritage.

Only problem: according to the father of the family, he listed not ten children, but nine: Margaret, Susan, Maria, Annie, Conway, Richard junior, John, Taliaferro, and Jean. (Though I have yet to research her line, I suspect Jean was born after the 1880 census and married before the 1900 census was taken.) Of those nine children of Tally's brother Dick, at least six married and had children of their own—some of those generations undoubtedly stretching down to our own times.

With that, I have my research work cut out for me, if not for curiosity over whether any of them will show up as my DNA matches, at least for the question of whether any of Tally Simpson's nieces and nephews passed down his legacy for their own descendants to know.

In the process of learning all that, I discovered yet another missed person. I had neglected to note that several of Tally's letters were addressed to "Sister Mary"—a name I had not included in my own charts for his family group record. As it turns out, this Mary became yet another reason why Tally had nieces and nephews to remember his name in their own family constellation—and a line I need to add to my own records, as well.   

About That D.A.R. Clue

Sometimes, the hints generated by genealogical programs seem to present more of a puzzle than a prod in the right direction. Take the clue I found yesterday, in the quest to determine if Tally Simpson—my first cousin, four times removed—had any nieces or nephews whose descendants might still be with us, reading his Civil War letters home.

Since Tally had written so often to his favorite aunt, Caroline Virginia Taliaferro Miller, I began my search with the descendants of her children. Sadly, Aunt Caroline's son Harry also lost his life in the war, and her two daughters—Resaca and Caroline—had no children of their own.

That left Henry and Caroline's youngest son, George William "Watt" Miller, as the only one of Tally's Miller cousins to have any descendants. And that was where the clue I found in the D.A.R. Lineage Book seemed to be more of a hindrance than a help.

The reason is likely because "Watt" and his wife, the former Edith Ellen Walker, married after the 1870 census, but did not show up in any enumerations following the 1880 census. George William Miller died in 1890, and though his wife died in 1903, I can find no mention of the widow or her children in the 1900 census (yet, at least).

The search plot thickens when we take a look at that sole snapshot of the George Miller family in 1880. The household includes their son, Percival, plus three daughters: Maud, Martha, and Caroline. But no Dorothy, the woman mentioned in the D.A.R. lineage book as being daughter of George and Edith.

Dorothy—by the time of her mention in the D.A.R. publication, known as Dorothy M. Miller Massey, wife of Arthur Ballard Massey—certainly wasn't a name included in the 1880 census, but could that middle initial be the clue to her identity in 1880? After all, southern families were often known to switch identities from one to the other of their given names. But which daughter would be the one whose "M" initial would be coupled with a first name of Dorothy? After all, there were two possibilities: Maud, and Martha.

It took a lot of traveling up and down the descendancy ladder with each of the Miller children to locate any further clues as to the "M" name which affixed itself to a Dorothy. I tried my hand at signatures of informants on death certificates and lists of survivors on family obituaries, but nothing seemed to show up.

In the process, I realized something: I already own a book of the genealogy of this extended family, thanks to Tally's own brother, Richard Wright Simpson. The book, History of Old Pendleton District, was published one year after Dick Simpson's death in 1912, and thus necessarily cannot include marriages in the Miller family after that date. It did, however, advise me of some important details.

Among those reports in the Simpson book was the mention of the names of all of the George W. Miller children. In a brief listing of the Miller family on page 138-139, the author included among George Miller's children five daughters: Dorothea, "Mattie," Caroline, Edith, and Beatrice. While all but one of the daughters—Caroline—were listed as unmarried at the point the book was written, the text did provide one other detail to help with my puzzle: it included the middle name of Dorothea.

Remember how the 1880 census gave one of the daughter's names as Maud? That is apparently a function of an enumerator misunderstanding the verbal response of the reporting party. As it turned out, "Maud" should actually have been Dorothea's middle name, spelled as Modd—likely representing a surname from her parents' own ancestry.

With that identity problem solved, it was easy to move forward to connect the D.A.R. listing with other documentation for Dorothy (as she apparently preferred to spell her name in later records). Her marriage record to Arthur Ballard Massey, listing her as Dorothy Modd Miller, provides the date of 12 June, 1913, the same year as the Pendleton genealogy book was published. And her 1947 death certificate in Virginia includes the name of her younger sister Beatrice as the informant.

Finding that entry in the D.A.R. Lineage book had been frustrating at first, because I had no way to link it to the right person, based on the information I started out with. But thanks to an old book from the time period in which these people all lived, I had an additional report to connect the dots from the family's past to its near future, leading me to additional verification of that line.

Above: Excerpt from the 1880 U.S. Census for the George W. Miller family of Pickens County, South Carolina; image courtesy FamilySearch.org.

Untangling the Twisted Lines

Now that I've finished the collection of Civil War letters of my first cousin, four times removed—Taliaferro Simpson, or "Tally" for short—my next task is to go back through all the notes I've gleaned from the editors' footnotes on family relationships. Just to be sure—one never knows, you see, whether I've missed an ancestor.

For instance, one footnote at the end of the volume, affixed to a letter of condolences from a Captain Henry P. Farrow of the Confederacy's War Department, mentioned that he was "husband of Tally's cousin Cornelia." Off I went to search for all the Cornelias in my family tree database. After all, how many Cornelias could there be?!

As it turned out, more than I cared to slog through, including one false lead on the Broyles side of our family. Tally's mother, you may remember, was sister to my third great-grandmother, Sarah Ann Taliaferro, who married Ozey Robert Broyles. Their daughter, Margaret Cornelia, married Samuel Van Wyck. Not Farrow.

I knew that. Maybe it's pushing capacity to remember all those names in a nineteen thousand person tree.

As for the other Cornelias? None of them seemed to relate to Tally's mother's side of the family. Besides, I have no Farrows in my tree. Must be a connection on the Simpson side.

But there are others. Remember the "Taylor Shop" entries in Tally's letters? I'll be reviewing those notes to see what can be added about another of Tally's aunts on the Taliaferro side. And of course, since the Miller family—another Taliaferro link—was featured so prominently in the book, I'll be reviewing all those notes to glean details for my database there, as well.

And then, there is the discussion of the future of the "Fair Unknown," Miss Fannie Smith. Whether the Charleston refugee shows up in any other documents frequented by genealogists, I'm not sure, but I'll be scouring those resources closely to see what became of her, after those tumultuous war years.

If there is anything remarkable to report of all this review of footnotes, you can be sure I'll mention it this week. After all, footnotes can provide the most valuable leads for research.

Finished: Far, Far From Home

Finally, today I had just enough of the leftover sunshine from our waning fall weather to grab a cup of coffee and sit outside to enjoy the last few pages of the book I've been reading.

Well, perhaps "enjoy" is not the best choice of wording for the completion of this collection of Civil War letters home from one Tally Simpson. Spoiler alert: he died at the Battle of Chickamauga. But the editors of this volume handled the last chapter with just the right touch. In their epilogue, they even cast a passing nod to Emmala Reed's journal and her commentary on Fannie Smith—though the editors claimed not being able to identify Fannie Smith or her family in the years after Tally's death.

What the editors did flag for me, though, was a generous helping of footnoted commentary on the many members of Tally Simpson's extended family, many of whom have already taken their place in my mother's online family tree. My next task is to review all these marked passages and insure that the editorial notes provided in the book reflect what I have entered in my official record for this family line. My work is certainly laid out for me there.

The end of one book is seldom the end of a research journey; there is always one more book to be read. As soon as I wrap up the exercise of processing all these notes from the Simpson saga—and glean everything I can on what became of Fannie Smith—I will pick up again with the theme of this small, upcountry hometown of the extended family of my ancestors. There is still more to be read about Old Pendleton and Anderson County, South Carolina.

"The Taylor Shop"

How can a non-fiction book be classified as a page turner? Moreover, how can a non-fiction composition include a plot twist? I'm not sure, but what keeps me reading through the letters home from Tally Simpson during his Civil War service is the race to discover whether his fascination with Fannie Smith, "The Fair Unknown," gains any traction before his inevitable fate closes in on him.

Tally, my first cousin four times removed, had become infatuated, sight unseen, with one particular young woman from Charleston seeking refuge with her family in the safety of Pendleton, South Carolina, during the Civil War. Tally's hometown relatives plotted with him to court her from the distance of his ever-changing position as a soldier in the Confederacy.

There was, of course, an obstacle to this plan, which reared its threatening appearance in the unlikely form of what Tally and his cousin called "The Taylor Shop." There was little explanation of what that code-speak meant, but I think I know. The explanation on this diversion from our Fannie Smith Sightings may both provide some insight as well as lead us to an interesting additional connection in a future post here.

While the book I am still reading—Far, Far From Home—has been developed into an annotated guide to Tally Simpson's wartime letters, it is more helpful in identifying historic battles and identities of the military personnel referred to continually, but there is not as much editorial guidance to piece together the family structure. I, of course, already know the family tree for that generation, being that Tally's mother, Mary Margaret Taliaferro Simpson, was sister to my third great-grandmother, Sarah Ann Taliaferro Broyles, but not every reader of this collection of letters would have that advantage.

When Tally conspired with his sister Anna, his cousin Carrie and her mother, Caroline Taliaferro Miller, his goal was to secretly win the heart of one Fannie Smith. There was a potential adversary, however, in the form of what the relatives referred to as "The Taylor Shop." It happened that the Taliaferro sisters—Tally's mother Margaret, my third great-grandmother, and Tally's aunt Caroline—also had another sister. This sister was named Lucy, and she had married a man by the name of David Sloan Taylor.

The Taylors, also living in Pendleton during the time of the war, had many children, including two daughters born at about the same time as Tally—Lucy, two years older than Tally, and her sister Susan, born two years after him in 1841. Tally's own sister Anna was born only a few years beyond that, in 1844. Perhaps as Anna served as Tally's eyes and ears, back home in Pendleton, she sniffed out some competition regarding Miss Fannie Smith—or at least disapproval—coming from her cousins' direction, and may have warned Tally.

While reading books such as this may afford me a wonderful opportunity to spy out the everyday complexities of life among my ancestral families, there is still much reading between the lines, even in this context. And yet, being a mere twenty six pages from the conclusion of the story, I am not sure anything further will be revealed on just what it was that kept Tally speaking so obliquely about his cousins.

There is, however, the historic context beyond the text of this book of letters. And I certainly know how to mine that vein of gold nuggets. Fannie Smith, herself, scattered a paper trail of her own micro-history behind her, which anyone can access, despite the challenge of a name as common as hers. What a wonderful rabbit trail of research to add to my list of diversions. I believe I shall set up a tree to see what has become of "The Fair Unknown" and her legacy.

Off the Shelf: Far, Far From Home

I know it's not Saturday—when I usually post such items as my favorite upcoming reads—but hey, I'm still languishing with this fever, though not quite knocked out enough to sleep away the days. So I read.

Right now, I'm about one-fifth the way through the collection of letters home from the Civil War front by Confederate soldiers (and brothers) Dick and Tally Simpson, Far, Far From Home. Compiled and annotated by Guy Everson and Edward Simpson, this 1994 volume, as did my experience reading Emmala Reed's journals, provides me very personal vignettes of the life and times of relatives of my ancestors.

"Tally" was Taliaferro Calhoun Simpson, and "Dick" his younger brother, Richard Wright Simpson. They were sons of my fourth great-aunt, Margaret Taliaferro, and her husband, Richard Franklin Simpson. Thankfully, the book organizes the cast of players—at least those from the extended family—according to relationships, so that the reader is informed of the connections, but you know I already have that diagrammed in my own family tree.

I've taken to reading these books concerning family members much as I have handled other books I am studying. First—and unabashedly—I'm reading slowly, bucking the trend to speed read for success (whatever that is). I take my cue from an old book I found useful in my homeschooling years, which I code-named the "How to Read a Book Book." By philosopher and educator Mortimer Adler, the book's title is literally How to Read a Book, and though it seems old-fashioned—it was originally written in 1940—it provides much thought in how to extract the most out of a volume.

Armed with those tiny Post-It flags, I am now off to pursue—and tag—any mentions of my direct line ancestors from the little town of Pendleton, South Carolina. Just as I did with the Emmala Reed book, I flag each footnote that needs to be double-checked. I'm especially on the outlook for any items which reveal relationships which are not already recorded in my own family tree—never know when such a detail might multiply out to connect with a current-day DNA match.

In the meantime, the flavor of the letters themselves, and the commentary provided by the editors, allow me to get a sense of life in general in Pendleton among the relatives of my ancestors. I never dreamed I'd have such a wonderful opportunity to catch such a glimpse, but here I have received that opportunity, thanks to such books, not once but now twice. If I can't get much of anything else done this week—I'm missing out on a wonderful mini-vacation in Monterey on account of this illness, by the way—at least I have some enjoyable reading in store.

Caution: Footnotes Multiply To-Do Lists

I've long since realized that paying attention to footnotes can provide further reading for someone seeking a richer tapestry concerning their ancestors. Having gone cover to cover on a book, A Faithful Heart, written by and about the friends, associates and neighbors of my Broyles relatives, I may have completed that reading task, but I also come away from the experience with a long to-do list of further reading. Let me catalog some of those future tasks for you here.

There were several Civil War diaries mentioned, among which is one I wish to focus on: A Rebel Came Home: The Diary of Floride Clemson, 1863-1866. Floride Clemson, daughter of Clemson university founder Thomas Green Clemson, lived a few miles from the towns in Anderson County which my Broyles relatives called home. More than that, one of my Taliaferro ancestors' relatives through marriage was instrumental in the establishment of that college, so my family has multiple ties to this woman and (hopefully) her diary.

One early footnote in the Emmala journals mentioned Louise Ayer Vandiver's Traditions and History of Anderson County. Originally published in 1928, according to the FamilySearch wiki for Anderson County, South Carolina, a copy can be had for the subscription price to either Ancestry.com or World Vital Records. However, I've found a searchable resource for this book at Google Books, and, better yet, a browsable version at HathiTrust.

Mentioned in that same footnote in Emmala's journal was reference to another book of interest. According to the footnote, as well as the bibliography, Silas E. Lucas published a book in 1978 through the Southern Historical Press entitled Early Anderson County, S.C., Newspapers, Marriages, Obituaries 1841-1881. That book was mentioned in several footnotes to Emmala's journals. As you can imagine, I'd love to get my hands on a copy of that book, but I couldn't find anything online concerning it—not at Amazon, not through a Google search (other than to provide a link to the footnote in Emmala's journal), not at WorldCat, not even while searching through the book tab at FamilySearch. How could a book so recent as that have vanished so completely? Now my to-do list has to be augmented with the "to-do" of finding the book before I can even read it.

But there are many more resources to tackle in the meantime. Among them are Richard Wright Simpson's History of Old Pendleton District. It can be found in its original 1913 edition at Internet Archive, but I also obtained a print copy of the book, having something to hold in my hand as I read being my preference. Having already obtained it, the only thing left on my to-do list here is to actually, ahem, read it.

And speaking of Richard Wright Simpson, he it is who was one of the two letter-writing Confederate soldiers whose war-years life was laid out in the book, Far, Far From Home: The Wartime Letters of Dick and Tally Simpson, 3rd South Carolina Volunteers. While not directly related to Emmala Reed, whose journals comprised the volume I just finished reading, Dick and Tally were indeed relatives of the oft-mentioned Robert Broyles in her diary. There are so many other volumes mentioned in the Reed journals footnotes and bibliography, but since that, too, is a book I already own, it's high time I begin reading. The other books can wait their turn. 



 

The Clemson Connection

What a bonus it was to discover mention of my Broyles and Taliaferro ancestors in a book of local history in Pendleton, South Carolina. I'm still steadily working my way through what I call the Ashtabula book—a collection of various resources centered around the home by that name where my Broyles ancestors once lived—delighting in each minor discovery. The detail gained on everyday life of my third great-grandparents and their children has enriched my perspective on this one branch of my family.

You have likely had your eyes opened to the possibilities of gleaning hints about the life of your ancestors through this method, as well. While we can search directly for genealogies written about long-gone people claiming the same surnames as we descend from, there are other sources to be tried, as well. One of those is the rich resource of personal journals and diaries, whether published or unpublished manuscripts.

I already know one avid supporter of that research method: a reader right here on A Family Tapestry. Lisa, who has commented with suggestions of various diaries incidentally mentioning the Broyles family members, has been working her way through a family collection of letters concerning her own Civil War era family members (and, I'm delighted to report, has begun her own blog to share her transcriptions and observations, as well).

The other day, Lisa commented about finding mentions of Margaret Broyles—"Maggie"—in a book containing the diary of Floride Clemson, A Rebel Came Home. That, of course, makes another addition to my ever-growing reading list meant to help me absorb the minutiae of life for the Broyles family of Pendleton, South Carolina.

However, there is a wonderful backstory to the connection between Floride's family and that of the Broyles family that could not possibly have been included in Floride's diary. To tell that story—briefly, I promise—I will partially rely on posts made here over four years ago, as well as refer to a brief review of a post at the beginning of this Ashtabula series.

Floride Clemson Lee was likely named after her maternal grandmother, Floride Calhoun, wife of former U.S. Vice President John C. Calhoun. The younger Floride's early death—a young wife, she was not yet thirty at the time of her passing in 1871—eventually left her soon-to-be-widowed father, Thomas Clemson, the sole owner of the beautiful home and property her mother had recently inherited (through a long and complicated legal process) at the passing of John C. Calhoun.

Now having lost both wife and daughter—as well as all his other remaining children—Thomas Clemson may have seemed a tragic figure, indeed. However, the man had a dream: to establish an agricultural college to introduce modern scientific farming techniques to the residents of his home state. This is where the connection to the Broyles and Taliaferro families comes in.

While Sarah Taliaferro and her husband, Ozey Broyles, had a daughter they named Margaret—the one whom we've met as the Civil War widow of the ill-fated army surgeon Samuel Van Wyck—pushing back another generation, we discover that Sarah had a sister named Margaret, as well. She it was who was one of the four daughters of Zachariah Taliaferro we had seen mentioned in the Ashtabula book.

This sister Margaret married a South Carolina man named Richard Franklin Simpson, who, before the Civil War, served in the state senate, as well as becoming a United States congressman. An attorney by profession, perhaps it is no surprise to learn that his son, also named Richard Simpson, eventually became a local attorney as well.

The younger Richard Simpson—known as Richard Wright Simpson—became law partner with his cousin, Sarah Taliaferro Broyles' eldest son Augustus "Gus" Broyles. One of the things old Gus was known for was his expertise in crafting wills. Likely, so was his partner, Richard Simpson. Simpson worked with Thomas Clemson to make his dream of establishing an agricultural college a reality—in part, by seeing that that embattled property inherited from John C. Calhoun became part of the seed to plant the new college. This, as it turned out, was a good thing, as, after Thomas Clemson's passing, yet another round of wrangling, this time, instigated by Clemson's own son-in-law, the younger deceased Floride's husband, brought the argument over the contested will—and thus the establishment of the college on which the property was to stand—all the way to the Supreme Court.

Of course, I would never have found that connection if I hadn't stumbled upon another research quandary, the question of why some Broyles children had ended up buried in a Simpson family cemetery. It's these rabbit trails, as I call them, which, rather than leading away from the purpose at hand, not only lead us on a winding trail straight to the answer, but enrich us in the process of dogged pursuit of the discovery.

Back in 2015, when I first tackled the question, the trail led me from that question of the unexpected location of the Broyles burials to discover the nexus between the surnames Broyles and Simpson—through the Taliaferro sisters—and then, finally, the answer to why some of Ozey and Sarah Broyles' children were buried in the Simpson family cemetery which is now part of the school named after its benefactor: Clemson University.

With the town of Clemson being barely five miles away from Pendleton, and with the Broyles family and their cousins in the Simpson family so intricately involved in the plans of the university's founder, it is no surprise to learn that Thomas Clemson's daughter would have mentioned widow-turned-educator Margaret Broyles Van Wyck's name in her own diary upon her return back to South Carolina. Passing away so young, though, Floride Clemson Lee likely had no idea how much of a role Margaret's family would someday play in securing Thomas Clemson's initial donation and administrative work to create the school he once dreamed of endowing.