Not Sure What to Believe

 

Sometimes, in pursuing information on our brick wall ancestor, we can end up with too much information. That may be the case with my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe. I've pulled up so many records that I've hit the spot where I'm not sure which document to believe.

Last week, it seemed a fortunate moment to locate the widow's application for pension filled out by Alexander's wife, Rachel Riley Boothe. From the several pages of that application, I saw she claimed Alexander's date of birth was February 14 of 1816. That date seemed to fit reasonably well with other records where I had found Alex mentioned.

This week, however, tells a different story. And I'm not sure which one to believe. On the one hand, last week's discovery came supposedly from the mouth of Alexander's own wife. This week I've found his own appeal for disability benefits as a soldier serving in the Civil War—which, incidentally, was rejected. Guess what: the man gave his own date of birth as a quite different answer: July of 1828.

Now, wait a minute here. We already know from previously-found documents that Alexander had a son who was born about 1838. Of course, there can be mistakes on headstones, too, my main source of his year of birth. But if Alexander were really born in 1828, then his oldest child wouldn't have been born ten years later.

That also colors the other details I've found on Alexander a suspected shade of gray. It's almost as if the statements he made were not believable. How do you search for someone like that?

On the other hand, thinking of him as an unreliable witness to his own life story doesn't serve us well, for when we review some of the many tax records I've found for someone by that same name in Nansemond County, Virginia, by 1839, he was claiming to have been over sixteen years of age. Even embedded in his own pension application was a statement vouching for Alexander's reliability and good standing in his community, signed by several of his Tennessee neighbors, including a mayor, a former mayor, and a bank president.

One other detail gleaned from Alexander's pension application was his statement that he had lived in Tennessee for fifty two years. Since the application was drawn up in October of 1893, that would yield us an arrival date in that state around 1841. We already have spotted the household of one Alexander Boothe in Nansemond County, Virginia, in the 1840 census. Possibly he left his home town shortly after that point and headed for Tennessee. In that case, it makes more credible his second son David's claim that he was born in Tennessee, not Virginia.

While reading Alexander's statements in his pension application was an interesting—though conflicting—exercise, it didn't point me in any solid direction. (It did, however, yield me a possible sample of his signature.) It's time to head back to Virginia and experiment with the names of all the other Boothe residents of that county, to see whether any of them would be of an age to claim a son of Alexander's generation.

Perfectly Clear — and Inscrutable

 

How can handwriting be so perfectly clear, and yet not communicate the information we need? That's what had me stuck last week as I puzzled over Rachel Riley Boothe's application for a widow's pension.

Granted, there were some rough spots in the several pages of her application, like the place recording her answer about her husband Alexander Boothe's place of birth. Nancyman? Perhaps that meant Nansemond, a county in Virginia at the time of her 1906 application.

But when it came to a series of questions about her own background, I was both excited to glean more information and equally stymied by the content of her response. The official completing the form used the clearest handwriting for question number three: "When and where were you born and what was your maiden name?" And yet, for the answer about her place of birth, I am at a loss to find the designated location.

While it is obvious that the answer was entered piecemeal, as each section of the information was added. The handwriting for the date of birth and Rachel's maiden name, for instance, seems different—more compressed and smaller than the handwriting that provided the beginning of the answer.

For one thing, while the state name seemed to be misspelled, it is obvious that the answer was South Carolina. However, in retrospect now that we have the resources to view each decennial census, I can't say I am confident of even that answer. For one thing, the earlier census records—1850 and 1860—reported Rachel's place of birth as North Carolina. While anyone's guess is good for the enigmatic entry in the 1870 census, the answer "South Carolina" didn't appear until the 1880 census.

Perhaps it was Alexander himself who provided the answer about his wife's place of birth for those earliest records. An answer like North Carolina would make sense for those living in the northeastern edge of Tennessee, where North Carolina was just over the mountain range. But with the answer Rachel provided on her pension application leading me to a dead end, I wondered whether perhaps even she had gotten the two states mixed up.

The handwriting was so clear on her answer. I enlarged the copy to make sure I was seeing it correctly, though I already knew what I was seeing.

The trouble was, there was no such county by that name in either South Carolina or North Carolina. Remembering that Virginia had some "extinct" counties—after all, that's the case with Alexander's own place of birth, Nansemond County in Virginia—I tried looking for historic names. Remembering "Nancyman," I tried imagining how a county's name might have been spelled phonetically. Still, no clue as to what she meant by her answer. Tobarrass County? Lobarrass? Fobarrass?

Over the weekend, I chatted back and forth with fellow blogger, Charles Purvis of Carolina Family Roots, who offered to help figure out the South Carolina location. Charlie has been experimenting with Artificial Intelligence, and offered to run a few questions through two different systems: Perplexity.AI and ChatGPT.

Based on input regarding the possibility of phonetic spelling coupled with variances in regional accents plus challenges with literacy levels, Perplexity read the entry as "Starrass" and offered a possible answer of Starr, South Carolina. ChatGPT, taking a different approach, noted that the optical character recognition result was distorted but managed to read the entry as "Spartansburg," which obviously would refer to present-day county of Spartanburg.

While further input and refinements would make AI assistance more helpful—not to mention, it's likely a tool which we all could develop skill in using—I can't help but go back to the original document and stare at that crystal clear handwriting, just wondering what the clerk meant when his impeccable handwriting penned that entry. 

Considering "Nancyman" County

 

Brick wall ancestors demand a relentless push to find additional records in the hope that perhaps finding just one more, we'll receive our answer. So it's been with searching for the roots of my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe.

Late last week, I found a document which possibly confirmed Alexander's birth in Nansemond County, Virginia—well, almost. The document actually reported that Alexander Boothe was born in "Nancyman" County, Virginia, on February 14, 1816.

That document was my wakeup call to be creative and patient with handwritten records drawn up during oral interviews. In this case, the interview was with Alexander's second wife, Rachel Riley, in her 1906 plea to receive a pension as an indigent widow on account of her husband's service during the Civil War.

According to the government record of that interview, Alexander Booth served in Captain Hugh McClung's Tennessee Light Artillery company. (Apparently, not only Alexander served, but his son David may have, also.) His service, however, was cut short—"something over one year"—due to development of a disability, according to his wife Rachel's statement in the pension application.

From the time of his discharge, Alexander apparently remained home, and died in Johnson City, possibly going there for medical assistance, as that was not his place of residence. As to when he died, the pension application, although providing space to record that information, lacked any response marking in the date. That Alexander Boothe had died before Rachel's 1906 application is assumed—and at any rate, is more than certain by this date, though his humble grave marker simply indicated his name—"Alex Boothe"—and the initials C.S.A. to designated on which side he chose to serve.

Besides such missing answers in the pension application, there were other details which I hadn't before known about the Boothe family. From each little clue harvested from a newfound document, we take tiny steps forward toward discovering more about our brick wall ancestors. This application gives me a few more points we need to consider for this month's research goal.

Building it Yourself

 

Sometimes, ya just gotta build it yourself. Since I've been stuck on the origin of my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe, I wondered whether following the lines of his two eldest sons might shed some light on where Alexander came from in Virginia, and who his first wife might have been. Quinton and David Boothe, supposedly born to that first wife, certainly were with their father when he arrived in Tennessee, so I have at least a toe-hold to climb their family tree—or build a descendancy tree to use in exploring DNA matches.

Turning to Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool to see what matches might already have been lined up for me, I saw that I'd be amply rewarded if I followed the eldest son Quinton's line, but for David, his younger brother, not one match was showing.

Quinton's line has been easy to follow, and I've actually been in touch with distant Booth cousins from that half-sibling to my own line's ancestor. It turns out that this was the family of whom my grandfather used to tell unverifiable wild tales about John Wilkes Booth—yes, the John Wilkes Booth—that he survived the manhunt following his assassination of President Lincoln and escaping to "a horse farm in west Texas." 

That farm in west Texas, incidentally, belonged to Quinton Booth's family. And apparently, that story was so widespread among Booth cousins that I actually got a phone call from someone wanting to exhume the body from the supposed burial site and use DNA testing to verify the identity of the person supposedly buried in John Wilkes Booth's grave.

For as much as we've known about the descendants of Quinton Booth, I don't know about his full brother David. Checking Ancestry.com ThruLines to see if there were any matches aligned to David's descendants, I was disappointed—but not surprised—to see there was not one DNA match attributed to that ancestor.

That is where the "build it yourself" comes in. If I build that branch into my tree, will ThruLines pick up the possibilities and point me to David Booth's descendants who have tested their DNA? That's what I'm hoping, but doing so will mean lots of work.

Sometimes, building out a DNA match's tree is the only way to verify connections. There are so many who test their DNA, yet never build—or post—their family tree so others can compare notes. For those of us convinced of the utility of genetic genealogy, we have to take that do-it-yourself approach.

In the case of this missing line of Alexander Boothe's progeny, it is certainly worth it for me to check out what can be discovered. Perhaps there is a cousin out there who does know the rest of the Boothe story, going all the way back to Virginia—not speculation, not information copied from someone else's tree, but actual records that will piece the story together and allow us all to take yet another step back through the generations.

Searching for False Positives

 

Family trees can do mysterious things to the identity of our ancestors. Perhaps an ancestor has acquired a false identity, as I'm beginning to wonder about my second great-grandfather, whom I had always known to be Alexander Boothe. According to some vocal—and experienced—researchers from my own earlier days as a neophyte genealogist, that ancestor's name was supposedly William Alexander Boothe.

I, on the other hand, was not able to locate any documents asserting that detail—but what did I know, having just started out on this family history adventure? Now, in retrospect, I feel it is time to go back and do some testing for false positives. In other words, can I replicate any sign that the man's name actually was William? Or, moving even further, can I find any signs that the Alexander I thought I found in Virginia actually remained in Virginia, while I assumed the man I found in Tennessee was one and the same as the Alexander found ten years prior in Virginia?

If I find any indication that there were others with that name in the same location, it would help to know—and to steer me clear of selecting the wrong person by the same name. Let's see what we can find, based on the assertions made by other researchers over the past few decades.

First of all, let's examine the claim that the man's name was William Alexander Boothe, and that in 1832, he married a woman named Mary Smith in Franklin County, Virginia. Can we find the couple in that same county eight years later in the 1840 census? If I've found the right couple, their household of nine individuals in 1840 included one man over forty years of age, along with an adult woman in the same age bracket, plus three boys and four girls (two of whom were fifteen or older). Granted, there is no way to determine from that information whether each of them was a child of that William, but I'm beginning to feel some doubt creep in that this was my second great-grandfather's first marriage. Unless some devastating disease wiped out all my Alexander's children except for his son Quinton—born in October of 1838—that census scenario doesn't seem likely.

Were there any other possible candidates for William Boothe in the 1840 census in Virginia? I took a look. There were multiple Booth and Boothe entries in that state in 1840, but none that looked promising.

What about fast-forwarding to 1850? I first looked for the William and Mary Booth whom we had found in the 1840 census in Franklin County. If that were my Booth ancestor, I'd expect the bereaved widower to not show up in Virginia, since by then I had traced him to Tennessee with his two sons. But here was William, still in Franklin County, with his wife Mary and three children of ages reasonable for a couple married in 1832. This obviously wasn't the "William" who left with his two sons for Tennessee.

Just in case there was another Alexander who also was left behind in Virginia, I tried looking for some indications that I had followed the wrong "ancestor." While I was fairly confident that the Alexander I found at the bottom of the census page in Nansemond County in 1840 was the right one, I looked for someone else by that same name in Virginia.

First, I checked the listing for all Booth heads of household in Nansemond County in 1840—there was none besides our Alexander. Then, I checked to see if, by some odd chance, there already was another Alexander Boothe in Washington County, Tennessee, back in 1840—no one. Back to Virginia I went, to assure myself that my Alexander hadn't remained there while I thought I had traced him to Tennessee. For the 1850 census in Virginia, there was one Alexander Booth of about the right age, but he was living with a younger woman named Louisa, and neither of his two sons were listed in that household.

At this point, I'm gaining confidence that my Alexander Boothe was just that—Alexander, not William Alexander. And while I only have documentation affirming that he was born in Virginia—not, specifically designating a location within that state—thanks to other records, we do have some reports about the possibility of his birth in Nansemond County. To find that, however, requires us to look not in the direction of his earliest years, but beyond the other side of his life, after Alexander Boothe's own death.

Surveying the Document Landscape

 

Today is the start of RootsTech, so you can hardly expect me to focus on my own research when there are so many presentations to watch online. However, I did take some time to explore what documents could be found on this month's research predicament: finding the roots of my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe.

Yesterday, we had explored the direct route of looking for all documents concerning Alexander, himself. Then, stretching our search one more step, we examined the father named in the death certificates of each of Alexander's children. Seeing the consistency gives me more confidence to discard the insertion of a first name of William, as some researchers had asserted.

There is, however, another inconsistency I've noticed in this saga of the migrating Boothe family. Supposedly, Alexander left his home in Nansemond County, Virginia, with his two sons after the death of their mother, arriving in Tennessee in time for the 1850 census. If that was the case, one would suppose the boys' father would report their place of birth as Virginia for that 1850 census—but that was not the case. Take a look for yourself at that record and notice that, while Alexander reported himself as having been born in Virginia, twelve year old Quinton and five year old David were marked as having been born in Tennessee, not Virginia.

Surely that must be a one-off error, you might be thinking. I did, too. So my next step was to look at all the other census records in which I could find either of those earlier two sons from the first marriage.

Searching for Quinton did not produce any helpful information. I have yet to find him in the 1860 census, though I did notice that someone by that same name enlisted in the Confederate Army in Texas in the early 1860s. Checking Quinton's children's death certificates for father's place of birth was not helpful, either. I found his son John's death certificate reported Quinton as having been born in Tennessee—but then daughter Sallie's death certificate showed Texas for her father's birthplace, and son William's informant gave his father's place of birth as Georgia.

It would have helped if Quinton had died just a little bit later than he did. Having breathed his last on January 6, 1908, that date fell at the beginning of the very year in which Texas instituted statewide registration of deaths. Unfortunately, Quinton's does not appear to be among those earliest of such a statewide format, else I'd be snatching it up to view not only the detail on his father's place of birth, but the name of his own mother.

Quinton's younger brother David Booth did not boost my confidence in that story about a Virginia birth for the boys. I was able to find David in each enumeration from the first census after his birth to the last census still existing before his 1899 death. Just as his brother had done, David eventually moved his family to Texas, so a death in 1899 meant his passing predated the modernized form of reporting which includes name and place of birth of each parent. Bottom line for David: every one of those enumerations listed his place of birth as Tennessee, not Virginia.

If those reports of place of birth in Tennessee were correct, that sticking point gives me reason to pause when considering the family story about Alexander Booth losing his wife in Virginia. Perhaps yet again that is a reason why this man has played the part of a brick wall ancestor. Maybe his story is far different than what some of us Boothe cousins had assumed.

Make a List, Check it Twice

 

Having made a list of all the records where I found mention of my second great-grandfather, it's time to check it again. Whether the man was named Alexander Booth or William Alexander Boothe (as one researcher had electronically published far and wide), I still can't say. But it's time to go back through all the records in which he appeared, and check them twice for the precise detail on his name.

This can be tedious work—the kind that, towards the end, may have us kicking ourselves for not being as thorough the first time around. (I'm not to that stage yet, though this ancestor has been a brick wall stopping research progress for far longer than I'd like.)

We've already reviewed Mr. Booth's cameo appearance in each of the census records from 1840 until his supposed death in 1895 and, excepting the missing 1890 census, the name always showed as Alexander Booth—no William in sight.

The next task was to go back and check the death record for each of his children to see what their bereaved relatives reported about the decedent's father's name. This was no small task, considering our man had at least two children with his first—and unknown—wife, plus eleven (at least) children with his second wife Rachel T. Riley.

Had I been able to track down an actual death certificate for either of those first two sons, I would have been rewarded not only with information on Alexander's true identity, but also with the name of their long-gone mother. No such luck, though, for eldest son Quinton died in Texas at the beginning of the year of 1908, perhaps before the more modern format for death certificates was instituted in that state. Quinton's younger brother David likely died before that point, possibly in 1899, though I have yet to complete my search for his death record.

However, moving on to Rachel Riley's Booth children, there were many opportunities to receive the same answer. Beginning with the eldest child, their daughter Laura Caroline, all the way to the youngest of the Booth children I could find—daughter Charlotte Rachel—the entry for the deceased's father was basically the same. It was either Alexander Booth or Alex Booth. Sometimes the surname was spelled with the flourish of a final "e"—Boothe—but other than that, no surprises.

In that trek through the Booth children's own death records, the farthest the standard answer varied was for son Leroy Burton Booth's death certificate, for whom his brother James was the informant, in which the father was listed as "Alec Booth."

There were, however, a couple hiccups in that thorough search. In one case, for daughter Mary, who died in Virginia in 1948, the informant was her son-in-law, Charles Smith, who reported that Mary's father was named John Booth and that he was born in Scotland. In another instance, for son Charles, the section on parents' names and places of birth was left entirely blank—as was the entry space designated for the name and address of the informant. Looking more closely, though, I spotted the cause of death—"railroad accidents causing scalds of almost entire body"—which might be considered a justifiable omission.

Overwhelmingly, the evidence pointed to the man's name not being William. For now, I'll proceed by forsaking that other name and stick with Alexander Booth.

This process of checking every detail, every document, once again has fingered one detail: if there was anything else we could find about those first two sons, the children of Alexander's first wife, perhaps that would lead to some solid guidance back to Virginia—and to some collateral Booth lines.

The Story, as Once was Told to Me

 

Sometimes, those family stories are just that: stories. We can't, however, simply dismiss them out of hand. As with so many such instances, a family story may contain a kernel of truth. It's up to us as family historians to determine which part is the right one to pursue.

So it is with the instance of this month's focus for my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors for 2025. I am beginning to wonder if the story told to me was not entirely verifiable truth. The information was told to me years ago by my mother's second cousin—a fairly close relative, granted, though one I had never known in person—so we could presume it was accurate. Before we make any judgments about its reliability, though, let's take a few minutes to consider the story, as it once was told to me by this distant cousin.

According to the story, William Alexander Boothe—for that was the name this researcher insisted was the man's correct and full name—was born in Nansemond County, Virginia, about 1812. Unknown were his parents, as far as this researcher could tell, as well as the identity of any siblings.

This William was supposedly married to a woman whose name, also, was unknown. The implication was that the marriage took place in Virginia—but again, no documentation.

At some point—perhaps after the birth of a child—the unfortunate, and unnamed, wife died, leaving William Alexander Boothe with the task of raising two young children. A most reasonable solution for such a predicament would be to stay close to family, where grandmothers or aunts could fill in as surrogate mothers until the children's bereaved father could win another bride.

In this William's case, though, his answer was to uproot his two young sons, leave everything behind in Virginia and move to the sparsely-settled region of northeastern Tennessee, where he remained until his dying days.

The backstory to all this drama, according to my cousin, was that William was not too wise with financial matters, perhaps—here's the conjecture—having been tempted by the purchases of fancy race horses. No matter what lured William into this supposed debt, his resolution was basically to do the nineteenth century version of skipping town. And thus...Tennessee.

Was that really what happened? I've tried to find documentation to shed light on any portion of that saga. With the exception of finding someone named Alexander Boothe—note the lack of any "William"—in the 1840 census in Nansemond County, I have so far been unsuccessful in replicating that story.

While I'll always keep that saga in mind—remember, family lore can sometimes contain an element of truth—I may as well start from the beginning and see if the paper trail leads me to a different tale.

Re-Start With What you Know

 

If one of the guiding principles of genealogy is to start with what you know, then when we find ourselves stuck, perhaps the corollary should be to re-start with what we know. This month, in puzzling over my brick wall second great-grandfather, that is exactly how I need to get started.

I'll give you an example right off the bat. I had always thought this man's name was William Alexander Boothe. Why? Because years ago, when I first started working on my maternal grandfather's roots, I had found information on a man named Alexander Boothe. Not much, mind you, but at least the bare essentials.

Back then, there was no access to FamilySearch.org, let alone all the powerhouse research resources we have now—but there was an active community of researchers reaching out to each other via email, "listservs" and, eventually, online forums. From such resources, I discovered there was a man who not only was actively pursuing this same second great-grandfather, but online, he was prolific in his sharing of what he had found about the man. I connected with him by email, then eventually by telephone, and learned quite a bit about what he had discovered about our mutual ancestor.

There was, however, one problem: this researcher insisted the ancestor's name was not simply Alexander Boothe, but William Alexander Boothe. His influence was apparently quite widespread. Now, I can find many trees mentioning that given name in combination with the Alexander I saw—without supporting documentation.

Now that I look back over every document I've found to support what I know about this second great-grandfather, I'm realizing one glaring omission. You guessed it: no mention of the given name William in any of those records. Could chasing William have been the rabbit trail which caused that left turn I missed in Albuquerque? 

Take, for example, this run of census records. In 1880, shown with his wife Rachel and eight of their children (including my great-grandmother Cassie), the head of the Boothe household was listed by the name Alexander. Same goes for the 1870 census. You might get a sense of something happening here by the time we check the 1860 census, and feel more of a certainty about the man's name when we press back, even before his marriage to Rachel Riley in 1854, to the 1850 census, where Alexander was enumerated along with his two eldest sons, Quinton and David, still in Washington County, Tennessee.

In each of those enumerations, Alexander was listed—consistently—as having been born in Virginia, not Tennessee. Checking—just in case I could find something—there was someone named Alexander Boothe in the 1840 census in the now-nonexistent Nansemond County, Virginia, being of the approximate age indicated in subsequent enumerations, along with a wife and child under five years of age. Our Alexander? Hard to tell, but the ages and scenario seem to fit.

What's missing in each of those records was any sign of a given name William. Perhaps, as we start off this month looking for my brick wall second great-grandfather, we should agree to stick with a search for Alexander, and set aside any notion of a man named William Boothe. After all, with a surname as common as that, following the wrong given name might lead us far from the person we're seeking.

A New Month, a New Challenge

Some months, my research candidate for my Twelve Most Wanted brings me lots of work—and, if I'm fortunate, plenty of new DNA cousins in the process. For March, however, we won't be chasing the 124 DNA matches I garnered for last month's Townsend project; for this month's project, I'll be lucky to add twenty five new matches.

Those serendipitous chases can certainly up my count on my very "bushy" family tree, full of collateral lines and all their descendants. In just the last two weeks, for instance, working on the Townsend problem added 491 new entries to my family tree. My tree is now hovering near the 40,000 mark: 39,971 individuals, to be exact.

This month? Don't count on such progress. The ancestor I'm seeking in March is my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe. Deciding whether his surname was really spelled Boothe, or the more common Booth—his descendants seemed to alternate between the two—is only a small part of the question. And a few researchers' insistence that his given name was William doesn't seem to have documentation to support it—so add that little detail to the task list for March. 

However, what I really need to know about the man is his early history. Sure, he showed up in Tennessee before 1850, a widower with two young sons in tow—but who was the wife he had buried? More to the point: who were his parents? That he came from Virginia can be clearly seen by his consistent reports in each of the decennial enumerations conducted while he lived in Tennessee. But I have yet to find the identity of his parents.

That is my goal for this month: find my second great-grandfather's Boothe forebears. Now that I've found so many other answers through FamilySearch.org Labs' Full Text search tool, I'm hoping that resource will lead me to some verifiable answers in this Boothe question. And there certainly is a need for verification. If I look to one publicly available universal family tree, there are assertions about his parents' names. Problem: if I look to Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool, there is a suggestion that his parents' names represent an entirely different couple. And where is the documentation? At this point, I'm wondering whether it will even be possible to determine which answer is correct—or if another set of parents would be the true identity.

Tomorrow, we'll start with what we already know about this Boothe second great-grandfather. This would also be a good time to evaluate a few assertions that have been made by other researchers about the man. Wrong assumptions can lead us down a very different research path, so we may as well start not only with what we know to be correct, but with what we can see might be incorrect, as well.  

Not Out of the Hat

 

The trouble with planning research goals months in advance is that, once the time arrives to do so, we can't just magically pull a genealogical rabbit out of the hat. Sticky research problems that had me stumped last December, when I was outlining plans for my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025, are still just as sticky as they were back then. Sure, I'm optimistic about what new tech tools can do for document retrieval, but if the documents were never digitized—or worse, destroyed by some catastrophe—fancier tools simply will not produce documents which were never there.

Learning that other researchers have not been able to locate a will for John Townsend, presumed father of my third great-grandmother Delaney Townsend, has been a discouragement. Trying to trace the collateral lines of Delaney's possible family has not proven successful, as far as documentation is concerned. While a descendant of one sibling did apply for membership in the DAR using, among other records, a family Bible, the record was transcribed into the application; there is no actual photocopy of the original record. Keeping in mind that there were at least three Delaney Townsends that I've run across, it would be more reassuring to see the Bible entry itself.

There is, however, one other method to provide a bit more confidence: those 124 DNA matches I'm still reviewing. At this point, I've followed lines of six of the possible siblings of my Delaney to confirm records linking my DNA matches to their ancestral Townsend. While some appear to have documentation problems, most of the matches do line up. But this is not a quick fix to the original problem of having no document to tie all those siblings to the same parents.

And yet, the month is over. With the coming of March, we'll be moving from South Carolina and Florida to mull over another ancestral line with missing documentation, this time in Virginia. We'll meet William Alexander Boothe tomorrow, but for now, wrapping up the question about Delaney could use a to-do list for the next time I revisit her research problem.

First off, finishing the confirmation of each of those DNA matches would help. It's encouraging to see at least one way to demonstrate family connection to this Townsend line. I'm not sure what percentage of successful matches would satisfy my doubt, but if at least fifty percent of the descendants of each presumed Townsend sibling could be confirmed, I'd feel a little less tentative about the connection.

In addition, completing the process of looking at last wills and other documents at each sibling's passing in hopes of finding a sibling identified would be my next step. While the oldest of the presumed Townsends, born in the late 1700s, would not have an obituary written in their honor complete with names of surviving siblings, perhaps among the youngest members of the family, such a remembrance could be found. And looking for signs in wills—such as witnesses to the document or naming of executors—might reveal a brotherly connection.

As I've already witnessed, moving from last year until now, technology has made so many more records accessible and quickly retrievable. It is doubtful I would have found the estate sale inventory for Delaney or the guardianship appointment for her orphaned children without the help of FamilySearch.org Labs' Full Text search. Who knows what tools will be available to us in another couple years?

For now, we'll bid goodbye to my mystery third great-grandmother, Delaney Townsend Charles, and all the question I have about whatever became of her. It's time to look at the early life of a second great-grandfather, William Alexander Boothe. Born in 1812 in a now-nonexistent county in Virginia, by 1850 he had lost his wife and moved with his two young sons to a new life—and a new wife—in Tennessee. My task this month will be to see if I can rewind history to uncover documents about those earlier days back in Virginia. My hope is that, even if I can't pull those documents magically out of the hat, so to speak, I'll find a clear research path forward towards discovery.

Time to Wrap Up

 

It's wrap up week for goal number one of my Twelve Most Wanted for this year, and I haven't found much to write about. The end of the line for my Laws family still appears to be my second great-grandmother, Sarah Catherine Laws Davis.

Well, take that back. I do have some tiny DNA matches with several descendants of a man from Greene County, Tennessee, known as Larkin Laws, and a couple token DNA matches with Larkin's brother Pine Dexter Laws. 

Those matches point to a father for the brothers—and possibly Sarah Catherine, too—known as William Laws. But I'm still not really sure. Tiny shared segments of DNA could mean those matches are my fourth cousins—or they could mean more distant relationships, at least according to the Shared CentiMorgan Project. For all I know at this point, Larkin and Pine Dexter could be cousins of Sarah Catherine, not brothers.

With only three more days to work on this puzzle, there aren't many research options left before I need to move on to February's goal. I could go back to those DNA matches whose ThruLines results at Ancestry.com do not match the lines of descent I've been able to replicate through documentation, and try building their tree from the current generation backwards in time. In leading me to the right ancestor, that may help tie Sarah Catherine's as yet unknown parents to the right family group.

I'm still working on building the trees downward for Larkin and Pine Dexter, still waiting for a telltale obituary or newspaper headline to point me in a more useful direction. Searching through newspaper collections online for articles including the Laws family names might still yield some helpful answers. And I'm still poking around for other local resources to explore.

All told, though, at this point I'm not expecting any revealing breakthroughs. But doesn't it seem that it's always the last place we look where we find what we've been looking for?

Finding the Family Details

 

There are several details about a family's history which may be available to those who know how to search through publicly-available records. But when there are no such records easily accessed—I'm thinking here of my suspected third great-grandfather William Laws of northeastern Tennessee, possible father of Sarah Catherine Laws Davis—the next step, besides looking locally, is to check for private records. That's why I reach out to others researching the same family lines, especially those who also have tested their DNA for genealogical purposes and discovered that we match.

I tend to presume that my DNA matches would know more about their direct line ancestors than I do for simple reasons. I think of all the descendants who inherited family heirlooms, or at least got some of the old family photos. When it comes to thinking about recipients of such generational gifts, that would not be me. However, in the case of one branch of this particular Laws family I'm researching, I'm thinking also of one valuable collectible I do have: the Davis family Bible.

My second great-grandmother, Sarah Catherine Laws, married a man by the name of Thomas Davis. Though the Bible I now possess doesn't reach back that far in the family's history, it does provide me with some full names, along with dates of birth, marriage, and death for my Davis ancestors, all written in the hand of an ancestor who gifted me with some of that Davis DNA.

Somewhere among all my Laws DNA matches, I'd like to hope a distant cousin might have a similar record of family members, passed along from generation to generation. So I keep reaching out to find someone.

There are other ways to check for family Bibles, of course. I was already aware of the family Bible record collection of the Daughters of the American Revolution, an index of over forty thousand such digitized records which can be searched online through their Genealogical Research System (GRS). But what I didn't know was that there are other resources for finding family records in Bibles kept by previous generations, such as through the Digital Public Library of America. Beyond that, some such resources are tucked away at various state archives and other repositories of historical material.

Granted, the patchwork spread of resources may make searching for a specific family's personally-kept records challenging. There may not even be such a record kept in prior centuries by my Laws ancestors, whoever they turn out to be. But at least I can start by reaching out to DNA matches and others who have their tree posted online and ask if they know of such a resource.

In the meantime, having such a treasure for my own Davis line makes me realize that the book, like all of us, is not getting any younger. It's time to check on the best way to help preserve it so that I can pass it on to future generations, intact and still legible. At some future point, someone may want to take a look at this keepsake for which I'm serving as current conservator. 

The Treasure in DNA Discoveries

 

Finding DNA matches may be fun for some—hence those now-antiquated Ancestry.com ads about trading one's lederhosen for a kilt—but I have an entirely different focus for testing my family's DNA: a focus of hope. It's not that I want to meet family, although that would be nice. Nor do I use DNA test results to plug my 2,597 (to date) matches into my ever-expanding family tree. For me, the real treasure in using genetic genealogy discoveries is to find someone out there who knows more than I do about that particular branch of the tree we share in common.

Every now and then, I'm fortunate to hear back from a DNA match whom I've messaged with that question about their family. But I'm disappointed when the respondent gets to the answer: no, apparently I know more about that match's family than he or she does. 

I'm holding out with my current exploration of the Laws family tree though. It has been encouraging to note that some near-doubtful branches on that expanded Laws family of Greene County, Tennessee, actually do match my test.

For instance, in working on the matches identified as descendants of Larkin Laws—whom I am theorizing was brother of my second great-grandmother Sarah Catherine Laws—I had run across some census records hinting at the possibility that Larkin had lost a first wife and, with second wife Matilda Oler, had raised an additional family. There was enough documentation for that second wife's children, but I still am lacking any record of a first wife; it's only the situation which intimates that Larkin was a widower at an earlier point. And the children from that earlier time period turn out to be the ancestors of some of my DNA matches.

Next step—and one taken with an abundance of hope—is to contact those matches to see if they know the rest of the story. After all, this is their direct line of the family. Maybe they'll know. Or maybe not. But it is always worth reaching out and asking. After all, somebody's got to know. 

No Flowery Obituaries to Mark Their Absence

 

It sometimes feels as if the family history pursuit is a chase that leads in circles. In this month's goal to determine exactly which line of the Laws family of North Carolina and Tennessee would be mine, it seems as if I haven't made much progress. Not that I haven't covered research ground; it's just that for every search term I try, it seems I round the final bend in the journey, coming back empty-handed.

There is something about Greene County, Tennessee, the place where William Laws settled his family by 1870. It seems to be a place where people may go to die—yet their demise never results in flowery obituaries, let alone a burial marker to commemorate their absence. With those items missing, my chance of uncovering clues about the dearly departed's loved ones left behind vanishes.

While I check alternate resources for such missing records—going local here for resources—I've returned to work through the seventeen Laws family DNA matches waiting for my confirmation at Ancestry's ThruLines tool. Tentative third great-grandfather William Laws may well be related to me somehow, as witnessed by the matches who claim his son Larkin Laws as their ancestor. A small victory—you wouldn't believe the tiny size of the shared centiMorgans here—but I'm glad to have one glimmer of hope. These are, after all, DNA connections at the fourth cousin level.

Documentation, however, would be nicer. And something tells me there has got to be a way to find it. Remembering that not every record is preserved online yet—despite remarkable progress by organizations such as FamilySearch.org, Ancestry.com, and MyHeritage.com—sometimes this dilemma calls for hands-on effort. Phone calls and emails seem so antiquated after years of instant access via online connections, but it's time to reach out and research other available avenues.

Reading Between the Lines

 

It is sometimes hard to support conjectures about the details we spot in ancestors' records. For William Laws—a man I don't yet have support to claim as my third great-grandfather—his paper trail seems to suggest changes, but confirming documentation for these hypotheses I've yet to find.

Take yesterday's theory that William's 1860 household actually contained three children from his son Larkin's possible deceased first wife. When I try to follow those children through the rest of their life history, I lack obituaries, even burial records to help trace their last days. I have yet to confirm my conjecture is right—but I can't find any reason to deny it. Yet.

There's another hint lurking between the lines in William's 1870 census entry: the possibility of a new wife and daughter. How else to explain that former wife Elizabeth was now missing, and that someone named Catharine—but not Catherine, my second great-grandmother—was in the household, along with a one year old daughter Mary?

Discovering details hidden between the lines in the usual documents prompts us to scour the possibilities of other records—one more time, if they were missed the first time around. It took a while for me to locate it, but there was indeed a marriage record in the Greene County books dated May 29, 1868, for one William Laws and a Catharine Margain Filler.

Filler? Hiller? Fuller? It is hard to read the handwriting—but at least there's a handwritten record to support my hypothesis. Sometimes, in order to read between the lines in an ancestor's life journey, we need to follow those ancestors, every step of the documented way from one end of life to the other.

Extra Children

 

Sometimes, when the seemingly never-ending list of children in the household grows to unbelievable extents, it might be just that: unbelievable. In the case of William Laws, his 1860 census entry included three extra children who hadn't been there in the last census. Granted, those three children were each under ten years of age, so it makes sense that they didn't appear in the 1850 census. But their inclusion in William's 1860 household might just be a clue about life events of the past ten years for a different member of the Laws household.

The three children in question in that 1860 household were Margaret Laws, age five, Elizabeth Laws, age two, and William Laws who, at the time that census was drawn up on July 13, 1860, was reported to be seven months old. All but the youngest were reported to have been born in North Carolina. Thus, baby William, born about December of the previous year, would serve as an approximate marker of when the entire Laws family arrived in Tennessee from their native North Carolina.

Theoretically, since by then William himself was reported to be fifty, and his wife Elizabeth forty nine, it was possible that they could have been the parents of these three additions to the Laws household. But I'm not quite so sure. Once I started following the separate households of each of William and Elizabeth's children—at least the ones I could trace in later censuses—a parallel set of youngsters seemed to show up in one of the senior Laws' sons' household. 

Of course, the handwritten census enumerations of that century being what they were, I have no guarantee that any of the reported details were exactly correct. Nor do I have a guarantee that what was given as answers in response to the enumerator's questions were correctly entered in the records. Thus, with a bit of grace for the wiggle room required of us for the 1870 entry for William's son Larkin—his name being entered then as Landon—we make a discovery: the two girls, Margaret and Elizabeth, were now residing in  Larkin's home, not William's.

Granted, none of these census years included reports of just how the members of the household might have been related to each other, but this seems to suggest that Margaret and Elizabeth were daughters of Larkin, not William.

On the other hand, for the 1870 entry for Larkin's home, Margaret's age was given as seventeen, while Larkin's wife Matilda was said to have been thirty that same year. Furthermore, Larkin Laws and Matilda Oler were married in 1862, far too late for Margaret to have been Matilda's daughter.

Though the ages for the two girls didn't neatly advance ten years between the two census entries where they appeared—1860 in William's household, 1870 in Larkin's—I've seen such aberrations before. But what about the third child from that 1860 census, William, the seven month old infant who was the only one in the Laws household to not have been born in North Carolina? Though ages didn't follow the expected ten year equation, William was likely still back in the household where I found the senior William in 1870, in Greene County, Tennessee, near his married daughter Catherine Davis.

My guess in all this shifting of the youngest members of the Laws household is that Larkin may have lost a first wife. That woman would have been the mother of the three children, Margaret, Elizabeth, and baby William. If her death was precipitated by baby William's birth in 1859, perhaps growing up in senior William's household was the only family the child knew. A second marriage often became a point at which children of the first spouse might have been left with grandparents, at least until the widower and his new wife felt more at home after setting up housekeeping on their own. By then, the older daughters might have become a welcome help to the new stepmother as she began having children of her own, thus moving into their father's new home. 

These are assumptions based on patterns I've seen repeated during this time period in the case of loss of a spouse in the families I've researched. The challenge now is to search for any documentation confirming or directly contradicting such assumptions. At this point, I'm only reading between the lines, but I'd sure prefer getting my hands on some records to point to solid answers. If nothing else, DNA matches and I would like to know just exactly how we connect.

The Blind Fiddler

 

There is one less-obvious column in the United States enumerations for the mid to late 1800s for which I've been grateful as I pore over records concerning the family of my possible third great-grandfather, William Laws. That column, often left blank, was the place for entries concerning serious health issues. The one detail that helped me tie William Laws' records together over each decade's move from county to county was the fact that his youngest son, Wiley, was blind.

I noticed that detail in the 1850 census, when the family lived in Yancey County, North Carolina. That same fact showed up for seventeen year old Wiley in the record ten years later, when the family surfaced in Carter County, Tennessee. But when a seemingly derogatory comment about "Wiley Laws, the blind fiddler" appeared in a Chattanooga newspaper from 1874, you know I had to take a closer look.

Yes, the Laws family seemed to have a less than favorable standing in the communities they had recently left. It seemed they kept one step ahead of impending trouble. Or perhaps it was trouble which attracted them—I have yet to figure out this family's dynamics. But one thing was certain: there was a lot going on in Greene County where they had settled. This Chattanooga newspaper was providing a glimpse of the latest disturbance.

The article itself was a retort to an article in the Greeneville American on April 1, 1874, regarding a local Temperance crusade. That article, in turn, quoted yet another newspaper's opinion that "the whisky war at Greeneville is degenerating into an interchange of personalities."

After the column's two long paragraphs which essentially comprised accusations volleyed between three newspapers regarding opinions on the women crusading on behalf of the Temperance Movement, out of the blue was this comment about Wiley Laws. As the newspaper set the scene—"one of indescribable character and almost beyond endurance"—here entered the mention which caught my eye.

Wiley Laws, the blind fiddler, kept by Gass & Campbell to annoy the ladies still continues to fiddle and blaspheme, but without affecting the determination of the crusaders.

Say what?! I had to take a closer look. Was that my Wiley Laws, the blind seven year old son of William from the 1850 census?

Since it was an archived historic newspaper resource which brought me that choice discovery—and left me with unanswered questions—this would be the perfect opportunity to put the company through its search paces.

Thankfully, Newspapers.com served up three other mentions about a blind fiddler named Wiley Laws. From the Jonesborough, Tennessee, Herald and Tribune on October 25, 1883, regarding a "Pic Nic and Dramatic Entertainment," the writer noted that "Wiley Laws and Mr. Henly were in attendance with their violins and discoursed some good music, as you all know Wiley makes no other kind."

A few years later, on February 2, 1888, the Johnson City Comet announced the entertainment for a fund raiser to benefit the poor of the city. Among those featured entertainers was Wiley Laws.

One final article I found, from February 14, 1884, must have been referencing the very episode at the Greeneville Temperance crusade which started me on my search. Back to where this all occurred, according to The Greeneville Herald, 

Wiley Laws, the blind fiddler, was in town making music on the streets on last Tuesday. It reminded us very much of the crusade of ten years ago.

Just as for his father William, Wiley's last days remain a blank slate for me. I have yet to find any mention of him after the 1888 newspaper entry. I am still looking for any record of his death or any burial information. I can't yet be certain this even is Wiley, the son of William Laws. It is almost as if each member of this family just faded off into the twilight toward the end of their lives.

We can't, however, just leave this unfinished research question where it currently lies. It's time to go back, review the documentation that has been found, and start reading between the lines. Perhaps somewhere buried within the details we already know, we may unearth additional clues.

Burning Bridges

 

Speed-reading the genealogy of an extended family line can help spot patterns. In the case of my second great-grandmother's possible link to the line of William Laws of North Carolina, that pattern seemed to be skipping across the county line before the family's name was called in yet another court of law. Whether that was true or not, I can't yet say. I haven't followed up on the entries I found in Yancey County court records from North Carolina.

"Oh, but that would be the fun part," my daughter remarked when I told her what I had found—but she'll just have to wait until I can focus on solely tracing legal documents which, unfortunately, is not my forte. There is, however, another possibility driving the family's seeming disappearance during the time period I've been studying. For that, I needed to widen the lens to examine a broader view of history—not just the Laws family's own history, but that of the time period in which they lived. To put it in a nutshell, theirs was a time and a place for burning bridges.

So far, I had found William Laws' household in Yancey County, North Carolina, in the 1850s. Then it was  across the state line, first to Washington County, Tennessee, where daughter Sarah Catherine Laws married Thomas Davis in 1856, then onward again to Carter County. Finally, the family—along with my second great-grandmother's Davis household—appeared in Greene County, Tennessee.

All told, the time span stretched from 1850 to 1870, encapsulating a critical period in American history: the Civil War. While I don't know much about North Carolina history, I did know one thing about the counties where my maternal grandfather's line lived for generations: northeastern Tennessee, unlike the rest of the state, was pro-Union leading up to the vote regarding secession.

When the vote did not go the way the local populace wanted, there were enough of those independently-minded locals to take the path of the renegade. Perhaps the Laws family was of that same mind.

After reading several newspaper articles from that time period and region, it was clear to me that northeastern Tennessee might reveal some clues about the point of view of my own family if I dug deeper into the local history of those counties. Prime focus led to Greene County, where I found the family in the 1870 census—and where many of their descendants stayed, long after the close of that time period.

Newspapers would publish comments about "the whisky war at Greeneville," the county seat of Greene County, and other reports that gave an impression far removed from the bucolic ambience I might otherwise have ascribed to Tennessee. Greeneville, home of soon-to-be president Andrew Johnson, apparently had a long history of independent action, and was a hotbed of activity for a number of movements, such as the abolitionist movement of the early 1800s and, during the start of the Civil War, an effort to secede from the Confederate state of Tennessee to form a separate pro-Union state.

It was from that fertile ground that a Civil War era plot was hatched to—literally—burn bridges. The idea was shared by residents across several counties of northeastern Tennessee, and the nine bridges targeted were located along the eastern border of Tennessee, stretching from Bluff City near the Virginia border down to Chattanooga and even into Alabama. Among those targeted was one bridge in Greene County, as well as another in Carter and Washington Counties, home to Laws' relatives.

While I have no idea whether any of William Laws' sons were involved in the bridge-burning plot, just reviewing the history of the area points out the mindset that undoubtedly made the Laws family feel quite at home in the region during that era of American history.

Granted, I still want to pore over the original North Carolina court records to see just what incident inspired the Laws boys to step across the county line—and as a genealogist, I certainly am not appreciative of their history's shenanigans which have led me on such a paper chase. But this discovery about history's lesser-known local episodes aptly reminds me that we all are a product not only of our genes, but of our environment and culture, and it can sometimes help to take a step back and explore the headlines of our ancestors' own newspapers. 

One Last DNA Attempt

 

With an ancestral family comprised of many siblings, it is possible to test DNA connections through more than one branch of the family line. With my hypothetical father of second great-grandmother Sarah Catherine Laws Davis, I've already had the chance to check out DNA cousins who descended from Larkin Laws and Pine Dexter Laws—with more promising results coming from descendants of Larkin than those of his younger brother.

There was one more set of DNA matches to attempt unraveling: matches whose ancestral connection was through Larkin's and Pine Dexter's sister Elizabeth Laws. Tracing the line from Elizabeth to the ten supposed DNA cousins who descend from this branch of the Laws family has proven more tangled than my attempts with Pine Dexter's line.

To trace the line of Elizabeth Laws' descendants, I had to go back to some of the documents I had found at first this month. Reviewing these, though, opened my eyes to other family issues. If, for instance, Elizabeth was the head of this line of descent for this set of my Laws DNA matches, I needed to find a marriage record for her—or, at the very least, some records attributing births to this mother.

According to some of my DNA matches, their ancestral Elizabeth had children born as early as 1856. However, when I returned to the census records which contained her supposed father, William Laws, she was still listed in his household. If she had been married before the arrival of that child born in 1856, I would not expect to see a twenty two year old Elizabeth still in her father's household in the 1860 census. Granted, there are three very young children also in that household at the time, and enumerations from that time period did not explain relationships among those sharing the living quarters—but I believe I have discovered a different explanation for those three youngest children, none of whom have a different surname listed in the record.

Likewise for the 1870 census, where I found William Laws' household entered just up a few lines from that of his hypothesized daughter Sarah Catherine Laws Davis. Once again, there is a woman named Elizabeth in the Laws household. Though her age has advanced from twenty two in the 1860 census to only twenty eight in the 1870 census, such anomalies I have spotted before in other family lines.

The point in all this exploration is that it is likely that the proposed children for Elizabeth—at least according to the trees of those DNA matches—actually belong to someone from another line of the Laws family.

That, of course, leaves me with one fairly convincing exploration of DNA matches—that of Larkin Laws' seventeen descendants who match my DNA results—plus a somewhat less convincing set of matches from Pine Dexter's line, and a definite no-go for their sister Elizabeth's line. If I take the same approach as I did yesterday, though, and look both ways on that DNA street, perhaps that exploration may offer up some siblings or cousins for William Laws, himself, possibly pointing me to who William's parents may have been, as well.

Before I reach that far beyond my goal for this month, today's exploration pointed out a few additional details I need to examine about William Laws, himself. While I am still on the hunt for a will—or at least burial records—for William, I'll take some time next week to read between the lines on what I noticed about the census records over the decades for this William Laws household.