Looking Back, Looking Forward

 

The start of each month has me facing forward, looking at the plans from this year's Twelve Most Wanted for the upcoming month. When that starting date falls on a Sunday of my biweekly count, it also has me looking backwards at what I've accomplished in family history pursuits for the past two weeks.

Since February had me examining colonial records to see what could be discovered about my fourth great-grandfather Job Tyson—hint: it wasn't much—I didn't think I had made much progress on my family tree. Surprise: the numbers told a story that was a bit more encouraging.

Though progress wasn't galloping forward at my usual two-hundred-plus rate of the past few reports this year, in the past two weeks, I did manage to round up records for an additional 148 ancestors and their collateral lines.

Much of this was thanks to examining DNA matches linked to the Tyson line of descent, as I brought several lines down to the present time through solid documentation. There is much more work to be done on these Tyson descendants, despite my inability to identify Job's parents yet. Hopefully, in a future year, I'll narrow the possibilities from the three locations which were under consideration this month, possibly through inferences, as actual documentation has, so far, eluded me.

Bottom line in looking back is that I now have 41,722 documented individuals in my family tree. It's growing slowly but steadily. Research attempts like this month's quest to find Job Tyson's origin may have gone especially slowly, but future months may fare better.

For this upcoming month, we'll turn our attention from the coastal Georgia home where Job Tyson spent his adult years to another southern ancestor. For March, that featured research project will involve finding the roots of yet another Georgian ancestor, my third great-grandfather Thomas Firth Rainey. Again, this will be a man whose adult life can be documented through records in Georgia, but his connection to the past will involve finding colonial connections, this time possibly in Virginia.

Tomorrow, we'll take a closer look at what has already been found concerning Thomas Firth Rainey. 

Certainty Without Documentation

 

It's the end of another month, and I'm ready to grumble. My goal for this month was to break through the brick wall keeping me from discovering my fourth great-grandfather Job Tyson's parents. Though I've become weary with reading the scribbled handwriting in court records, I've yet to find any documentation to confirm what others have asserted in either today's online resources or the published reports of past generations. 

That tour of the documents has brought me through Pitt County in North Carolina, Beaufort County in South Carolina, and Wayne and Glynn Counties in Georgia—not to mention that detour to follow his wife's genealogy back to her Sheffield grandfather in Duplin County, North Carolina. Though it was not lost upon me that Pitt County was once known as Beaufort County, North Carolina—a possible source of confusion for researchers—I have not unearthed one document on Job Tyson's related family lines which could point me backwards in time, with the possible exception of his father-in-law West Sheffield's 1830 will.

Yet, in reviewing genealogies which include this family, I notice how certain those reports sound about their assertions concerning Job's roots. How do so many people seem to know this? If they have found a source to support that published information, it would help to be able to review such records. 

With the last day of this short month drawing closer, I doubt I'll find any success in continuing the search in such a limited time. As we complete this week, we'll lay aside this research goal and check in on a few other projects which I've been working on, behind the scenes, from earlier this year.

Since We're in the Neighborhood

If this month's research project—finding the origin of my fourth great-grandfather Job Tyson—has led me to the discovery that Job's wife may have come from Duplin County, North Carolina, we might as well take a closer look. Since we're now in the neighborhood, I thought I'd do some exploring. It helps to get oriented to the places our ancestors once called home.

For that task, my first stop is to glean an overview from various "wiki" resources. Among them are the Wikipedia entry for Duplin County, and the FamilySearch wiki for the same location. 

Using Wikipedia is one quick way to learn about a location from a more modern point of view. County entries usually contain an overview of the place, as far as current-day details are concerned. These entries usually also provide a map and, more suited to my purposes, a brief history of the county which, depending on the time frame of each particular ancestor, may still shed some light on my search. One basic detail I look for is the date in which the county was formed, and which counties preceded that formation, in case I need to delve further into records created in a different location prior to that point.

From the Wikipedia entry for Duplin County, I can see that county was carved out of New Hanover County in 1750. Since Job Tyson's father-in-law West Sheffield was likely born in 1747, that tells me I might need to explore New Hanover County records as well—if any church or land records before that time had survived the series of record destructions incurred over the next couple centuries. More to my current pursuit, however, would be the marriage record for West Sheffield's daughter Sidnah to my brick wall ancestor, Job Tyson.

Regarding record survival over the ages, I generally turn to my second resource for scoping out the neighborhood: the FamilySearch wiki. The specific resource there for Duplin County shows me the battle against the ravages of time may have put me on the losing side. There are land records from 1749 and court records from 1784, but the FamilySearch wiki included a disappointing note: "Many court records are missing."

Still, that means some court records may still be accessible. Although I've been forewarned, now that I know, it's worth a try to check it out. 

Bypassing "Go"

 

Remember that old game, Monopoly, where if you drew the "go to jail" ticket, the instructions told you "do not pass Go; do not collect $200." If the game I've been playing this month were called "Geneapoly," that's exactly the card I'd be dealt now. I don't seem to be able to move anywhere. I'm stuck in genealogy jail.

Since I haven't been able to push back time far enough to find my fourth great-grandfather Job Tyson in records before his arrival in Georgia at the beginning of the 1800s, I thought of a way to bypass "Go"—I could try one other variation on the F.A.N. Club concept. I could look deeper into his wife's family history.

Job's first wife, Sidnah—also called Sidney—Sheffield, was said to have been born in North Carolina. That location was the same as the place where Job Tyson may have originated. Granted, I've tried two different times to locate any mention of Job in North Carolina—and failed. But I'm willing to enter this playing field from yet another angle.

I already have seen mention of Sidnah's father, West Sheffield, being from North Carolina. In fact, he was said to have been a Patriot by the Daughters of the American Revolution. Not that the applications for his eligible descendants all perfectly documented that assertion; even there, the D.A.R. has found problems. 

No matter. That organization also pointed out one other detail of interest: that West Sheffield's father was also listed as a Patriot. Sure enough, looking at the D.A.R. website, I found an entry for John Sheffield, West Sheffield's dad, as well.

In that file, his origin was said to be in North Carolina. But none of this Pitt County stuff that had waylaid me for so long in my search for Job Tyson last week. This time, the North Carolina location was said to be Duplin County, instead.

Armed with this information, I headed to FamilySearch.org and their Full Text Search option to look for a Sheffield will that mentioned Job Tyson's father-in-law, West Sheffield. And just as the D.A.R. entry for John Sheffield had implied, there was a will in Duplin County for him, dated the same day, November 22, 1790, as the D.A.R. entry had noted. Added bonus: the will contained mention of a son named West Sheffield.

If West Sheffield's daughter Sidnah was said to have been born in North Carolina, could that specific location have also been in Duplin County? What about her marriage record? And if her future husband found his bride in North Carolina, does that mean I can find Job Tyson in Duplin County, as well? If nothing else, this discovery points me in another direction than those failed attempts at finding him in Pitt County. Maybe I can get out of Geneapoly jail, after all.

Looking Every Which Way

 

It's official: I'm stuck—at least on my goal to find the parents and origin of my fourth great-grandfather Job Tyson. I'm beginning to wonder whether he used an alias. Or spontaneously appeared out of thin air. Or contrived a way to make all his tell-tale documents self-combust. He simply isn't there to find.

Not being able to look backwards in time on this brick wall ancestor, I've turned to looking every which way. If I can't find him in his earlier years in life, perhaps looking at his children's history—and then expanding to collateral lines—might reveal some secrets.

With that in mind, I turned back to my DNA matches. At Ancestry.com, at least, I've got thirty eight DNA cousins who connect with me through that Tyson line. I figured this weekend might be a good time to catch up on that task.

As it turns out, I haven't yet made any revolutionary discoveries, but I did notice one detail: at least for the Tyson descendants in my match list, it seemed they followed the same path from Georgia to northern Florida. In fact, as I looked at the documents for these grandchildren and beyond, I spotted some of the same towns mentioned in my McClellan family history. This extended family did seem to stick together. Signs of F.A.N. Club cohesion seem to be everywhere, at least in some Tyson lines. 

Perhaps this is a good sign. It is a reminder, at least as I seek Job Tyson's roots, that perhaps he did travel to Georgia in the company of others. His descendants certainly stuck to that rule of thumb as they moved onward from Georgia.

It will be quite some time before I finish documenting each of those DNA cousins' lines of descent. Hopefully, as I move through the list, there will be other encouraging signs. A big plus would be connecting with a DNA cousin who inherited the family Bible, or family letters, or any other personal guidance pointing back to Job's origin before his arrival in Glynn County, Georgia.

At least, one can hope.

There Just Might be a Reason

 

Sometimes, a family history research problem seems like it has gifted us a one-way ticket on a tight loop. Around and around we go, never seeming to find an answer—not even a hint to break us loose of this endless search. That's the way it's been this month, trying to discover any clues about Job Tyson's origins.

It dawned on me that there just might be a reason for this lack of information on my fourth great-grandfather—a reason which should have occurred to me earlier. What if Job emerged from what later became known as a burned county?

There are, of course, several counties across the United States which have been considered, at one time or another, to be burned counties. I took a look at brief notes at the FamilySearch Wiki for the two counties I found mentioned concerning Job Tyson's roots. Pitt County, the North Carolina jurisdiction mentioned in the genealogies I found regarding Job's daughter-in-law's Hardee line, happens to be one of those burned counties. So is Beaufort County of South Carolina, where I found an entry in the 1790 census for Job Tison near the household of someone named Aaron Tison. 

That, however, doesn't call this search a lost cause. There are other ways to piece together an ancestor's story. FamilySearch.org offers alternative strategies, not just in the many record sets which have been digitized in that online resource, but through a helpful guide concerning what can be done next.

Once again, this may point me back to that old genealogical research friend, the F.A.N. Club, in seeking any more clues about where Job Tyson originated. Perhaps my next step might be to wonder just who that Aaron Tison was who appeared alongside Job in the 1790 census. Traveling partner? Relative? Future Georgia resident? It might help to keep an eye on this associate. Who knows? He may also be family.

Taking a Closer Look

Taking a closer look at an ancestor's will from 1710 is a far cry from examining a typewritten testament from, say, the twentieth century. If we want to learn any more about Mathias Tison of Bath County, North Carolina, we'll have to buck up and read the handwriting, no matter how unusual it might seem.

Mathias Tison—or Tisson, as the 1710 document styled him—was the father of Susannah, the woman who eventually married John Hardee of Pitt County, North Carolina. John and Susannah, in turn, were progenitors of a friend of mine from our local genealogical society, who discovered our tentative Hardee-Tison connection through using FamilySearch.org's "Relatives Around Me" at a local society meeting.

The question I have now is how to follow the other lines descending from Matthias Tison, to see whether somewhere in the mix is my fourth great-grandfather, Job Tyson.

To launch us on that multi-generational journey, we first need to look at Matthias' own will. But how to read the difficult handwriting? Thankfully, I found a more recent abstract listing each of his descendants named in the will, obtained from a 1987 hardcover book compiled by genealogist Roger Kammerer and published by the Devisconti Scroll Trust. According to that volume, The Tyson and May Genealogy of Pitt County, Matthias' children included "Jhon," Edward, "Corneilyous," Edmond, Thomas, Susanna, "Jhonas," Samuell, and Mathyas. Also mentioned was a grandson, "Arone."

While looking at the Tyson genealogy revealed much of what we've already discovered about Susannah, who eventually married into the Hardee line, a quick glance through the pages concerning the earliest generations revealed only one mention of a descendant named Job—and that, without any further information. While admittedly, this is a volume representing one researcher's discoveries, that does not seem to be a promising sign. The author did note that, "with regret," tracing all known descendants of Mathias Tyson was not possible at that time.

With that, it's back once again to searching for any documentation which can lift us from Job Tyson's generation back at least one step toward the past.

North Carolina Nexus

 

Finding a possible nexus between the Tyson line and the Hardee line, especially leading back to Pitt County, North Carolina, may have been helpful, but the next step is to find actual documentation. For someone said to have been born in 1701—that would be Susannah Tyson, daughter of Mathias and Mary—that next step can cause trouble.

Why? It's fairly simple. Given not only the date over three hundred years ago—not to mention the change of government—the chances of the records we need to verify family connections being in decent condition are slim. Worse, those records might currently be non-existent, if we take into account courthouse fires, wars, and other catastrophes.

One encouraging note, however, was the possible discovery of a will which might have been penned by Susannah's father, Mathias Tyson—or Tisson, as the clerk fashioned that name back on April 5, 1710. I say "possible" because the page upon which the will was written was torn or bent just after the phrase, "last will and testament of." There is one word inserted, but hidden, before the next line continues with Mathias Tison's name.

Granted, at the end of the document, where Mathias Tison left his mark, the clerk inscribed the name as "Mthyas Tisson," which is, I guess, close enough for me.

The document stated that this Mathias was an inhabitant of "Baith County" in North Carolina. As it turns out, there was a county named Bath in North Carolina, but it is now called an extinct county. The county was in existence as part of the British Colony of what is now North Carolina, from the county's establishment in 1696 through 1739.

At that time, Bath County contained three precincts, one of which eventually became known as Beaufort Precinct. When Bath County was officially abolished, Beaufort Precinct became a county in its own right. And, as the years passed, Beaufort County itself eventually was carved out to form additional counties, one of which—as you might have suspected—became known as Pitt County.

Thus, at least for this Tison line which led, through Mathias' daughter Susannah, to her husband and eventually the Hardee family descendant who married Job Tyson's son William, we now have a connection back to Pitt County, North Carolina. But what about Job, himself?

If we can't draw our way up the family tree by virtue of Job's as-yet-unknown father, perhaps we can discover a way down from Mathias Tison back to Job's own generation. We'll take a closer look at Mathias Tison's will tomorrow.

How Twisted and Tedious the Trail

 

If we can't figure out a family line based on one side of a married couple, how about trying the other side? That seemed like a viable premise when I realized that my fourth great-grandfather, Job Tyson, eventually had a daughter-in-law whose roots reached back to another Tyson relationship. Added bonus: that relationship led to the location of the supposed roots of Job Tyson's family, too. Surely, I'd be led straight back to the answer in Pitt County, North Carolina, by following this other line.

That line belonged to the Hardee family of Pitt County—the very line conveniently said to belong to my newfound kazillionth cousin, according to "Relatives Around Me."

To use a trailblazer to outline a family's generations seems straightforward, at face value: find a published genealogy maintaining that connection—in my case, the Tyson and Hardee families of Pitt County—and then verify by finding documentation.

That was easily said. Not so easily done, at least in this case. So far, I've wandered through several manuscripts, thankfully posted either at FamilySearch or at Ancestry. While reading, I've outlined the names and dates of pertinent family members.

Next step: find the documents. That's the not-so-easily done part of the equation. So far, I have eighteen tabs open on my computer. My brain can't hold all that information in one night's setting. Though not quite to the stroke of midnight, I had to give up last night, even though it meant trying to remember everything once again in the morning.

It is likely time to pull out the old yellow warning sign to post on each name I've entered—tentatively—in my family tree. Having a place to diagram the relationships helps, but snaring any unsuspecting passer-by into thinking that posted entry was correct would be a disservice to fellow researchers. But sometimes, finding the facts can take time, yet remembering everything found without a work space can be a challenge.

So far, I've outlined the proposed generations of Job's daughter-in-law, William Tison's first wife Mary Ellis Hardee, back to her ancestor John Hardee, who married someone named Susannah Tyson. Next will be to find adequate documentation to verify the stories handed down through those typewritten genealogies of past generations of the Hardee and Tyson families. There are several resources yet to consult, leading down a twisted and tedious trail, indeed.

When Two Families Collide

 

It was at a local genealogical society meeting when, just for fun, several of those in attendance pulled out their phones, logged in to the FamilySearch app, and fired up "Relatives Around Me." The goal was to see whether—at least, according to the universal tree at FamilySearch.org—anyone in the meeting room that day was sitting near a distant cousin. You never know when, generations past, two families' ancestral lines might have collided.

It turned out that one woman in the meeting just happened to get a result indicating that she and I were distant cousins. Her ancestor? Someone surnamed Hardee. Mine? My brick wall fourth great-grandfather, Job Tyson. Supposed shared origin for those two? Pitt County, North Carolina.

Now, I know that sometimes the universal tree at FamilySearch.org can contain mistakes. I didn't get too excited about that discovery back then—and even now, I'm struggling to find documentation to cement the connection. But I didn't ignore it, either. My newfound cousin and I have been collaborating, as time permits, to seek out the explanation for how those two lines are related.

But Hardee. And Pitt County. While I'm stuck with that designation of Pitt County, North Carolina, for the origin of my Tyson ancestors, I did remember that Relatives Around Me readout pointed to that other surname, Hardee or Hardy. I kept looking for an explanation that might make sense. This weekend's discovery of a Hardee family history manuscript, a copy of which I found posted at Ancestry.com, reminds me that this is a worthwhile route to re-examine.

Sure enough, pushing the line back far enough—starting from Job Tyson's son William Tison, to William's wife Mary Ellis Hardee—I then continued the Hardee line, according to what was written in the David Hardy manuscript. Mary's father, Thomas Ellis Hardee, was said to have been son of John Hardee and Sarah Ellis.

Following the family line upwards from there two additional generations, the Tyson surname once again popped up in this Hardee manuscript. This time, the manuscript contained a mention of the wife of another John Hardee: he had married someone named Susannah Tyson. The line entry for this couple noted they were in Pitt County, North Carolina.

With that brief outline, I now had another possible connection between the two families. More importantly, the line brought the Hardee family from Camden County in Georgia—not far from where Job Tyson lived in Glynn County, and the same county where the witness to Job's will, another ancestor named Charles McClellan, also lived at that time.

With connections seemingly pointing in the right direction, it was time to check out this assertion with actual documentation, a task on my to-do list for this week. 

Exploring the Back Stories

 

We're halfway through the month, and so far I've been unable to find any solid connection between my fourth great-grandfather Job Tyson and either possible location of his birth. Lacking any further leads—at least until yesterday's discoveries—I decided it was time to explore collateral lines for any sign of the Tyson/Tison back story.

That's essentially what has been happening behind the scenes over the past two weeks: looking for the back story. Since today was time for my biweekly count, I was surprised to see what an impact that effort could make. All during the time I was writing about not finding any documentation to connect Job Tyson to either North or South Carolina—two alternate possibilities for his roots—I've been exploring the ThruLines connections to the Tyson family and building a line of descent for each of those collateral relatives.

What was the result for this two weeks of grunt work? I actually added 263 more documented individuals to my family tree, all from this Tyson line descending from Job and his wife, Sidnah Sheffield. That pushes the tree's total to 41,574. Bringing a family's history down to the present time from a point on the timeline spanning over 225 years can add a lot of names—and I'm nowhere close to being done.

The test results blossoming from holiday DNA tests are now finally hitting my count, as well. I've gained ten more matches at Ancestry DNA, more than my usual one or two for each biweekly stretch. Though it doesn't help my focus for this month's candidate for my Twelve Most Wanted, I also found a Zegarski match to my father's side of the family tree. I'll be watching for more from the Tyson or Tison side of the story as the rest of these holiday tests keep appearing in my results. Likewise for every other company where I've tested.

Meanwhile, though I'm not researching anyone on my in-laws' side of the family, once again that tree grew by one additional name, thanks to follow up work after a phone call from a relative. It's so exciting to see younger members of the family taking interest in the details of their own family history, especially when they, too, are awaiting DNA test results and want to know how they connect to the bigger picture.  

A Detour Through the Sidelines

 

Sometimes, when I'm stumped with a collateral line, I go wandering. This time, still puzzling over the origin of my fourth great-grandfather Job Tyson, I started looking at DNA matches while exploring what became of Job's many children. Yes, I took a detour. Since I couldn't advance the record to Job's parents (or even siblings), I went exploring the sidelines of this Tyson family.

Reviewing the records I had already assembled about the children of Job Tyson and his wife, Sidnah Sheffield, my eye settled on one of their sons, William. There, I spotted one detail which stopped me: William had married a woman whose maiden name was Hardee.

That Hardee surname, I had learned when I first decided to make this Tyson project my Twelve Most Wanted focus for February, was the surname which my newly-discovered kazillionth cousin—thanks to FamilySearch's Relatives Around Me—had focused on. She was a Hardee descendant, and she knew exactly where, deep within their history, the family had once lived: in Pitt County, North Carolina, the same location where I simply cannot place our Job Tison.

Nearly holding my breath, I tried to draw up a quick and dirty sketch of that family line. Starting from William Tison, himself, his declaration for a passport provided his date and location of birth: August 6, 1812 in Glynn County, Georgia. I had already recorded that William had been married twice. As often happened in that time period, his first wife had apparently died young before 1850, making discovery of her family blurred in that time period of invisible women. However, as I spotted in a summary publication of D.A.R. members, this woman's surname was Hardee.

Hardee? In Georgia? How might she fit into the larger picture, and explain Job Tison's connection with the Hardee line—not to mention, tie him back in North Carolina? This woman, Mary Ellis Hardee, was apparently daughter of Thomas Ellis Hardee and his wife, Mary Ann Berrie.

This, though, was merely from a typewritten genealogy, The Hardy-Hardee Family, compiled by David L. Hardy (according to the source for the Ancestry.com collection from which this was drawn; but possibly David Lyddall Hardee, as noted in this manuscript collection). And how often we find errors in such collections.

No matter. Any published or unpublished genealogy can serve as a trailblazer, helping to find otherwise hidden details, if we only take a disciplined approach to verifying—or rejecting with support—the assertions made in the manuscript. That, in fact, is what I'll be doing next week, seeing what assertions can be corroborated in this case with actual documentation. If the genealogy turns out to be accurate, perhaps it will lead us to an explanation of just how our Job Tison was said to have originated in Pitt County, North Carolina, after all.

Catch Them if you Can

 

Perhaps this is just my unlucky day. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of my missing ancestor, Job Tyson, back in what was supposed to be his old stomping grounds. The tip was that he might have been seen in the old Beaufort District of South Carolina, since my attempt at snagging him in Pitt County, North Carolina, had left me empty-handed.

Granted, that last sighting would have been sometime between 1790 and the early years of the 1800s, when Job Tyson settled down in Glynn County, Georgia. But even though I could find mention of someone by that name in North Carolina, the dates and circumstances just didn't line up. I had to follow the lead of some clues, no matter how weak they might have been. When it comes to chasing brick wall ancestors, you try to catch them—wherever—if you can.

First, I tried searching for Job Tyson in Beaufort District, South Carolina. I selected as wide a date range as possible, just in case he needed to return home to clear up any legal business, long after his departure for Georgia. Though I performed my search on the FamilySearch Full Text Search, I found no results.

Yes, I also needed to try my search using the alternate spelling for his surname: Tison. Again, no results.

Then, remembering the disjointed history of the Beaufort District—first it was, then it wasn't, a geopolitical division—I tried changing the label on the specific location to see if I could get any better results. According to one website, the designation of the Beaufort District—actually, all Districts in South Carolina—was abolished in 1800, and replaced by its four underlying counties: Granville, Hilton, Lincoln, and Shrewsbury. 

Back to the Full Text Search I went, this time searching for Job Tyson—or Tison—using each of the four new county designations, just in case. Nothing.

As a last-ditch effort, I also tried searching in each of those South Carolina locations for Charles McClellan, who eventually became a witness to Job Tyson's will in Georgia. Again, nothing.

My only consolation could be that not everyone faithfully remains in the same location for over ten years, so as to ensure their appearance in the subsequent decennial census enumeration. Perhaps our Job Tyson was one of those people, continually on the road until he finally found a place he could call home.

Ancestor Fatigue

 

It's been back to Pitt County, North Carolina, to put FamilySearch's Full Text Search through its paces. Entering my fourth great-grandfather's surname there by each of the two spelling variants—Tison and Tyson—I had plenty of documentation to consider. It looked like Pitt County might be tipping the genealogical scales in its favor with all the records this search for Job Tyson was providing. 

No matter how convenient it might be that FamilySearch's Full Text Search not only highlights my search terms but provides a transcription of the sometimes difficult to read handwriting, reading through court records of any time period can become wearying. In addition, with the Tyson family doing no differently than any affluent southern family of that time period in the 1700s by dealing in enslaved persons, there were several deeds entailing the trading of specific, named human beings. I was reaching ancestor fatigue in my search for Job Tyson's origin.

Then came two documents which were worthy of further consideration. One was an indenture drawn up on February 4, 1790—the same year in which we had found Job Tison listed in the census in South Carolina. The indenture named the two parties: John Tyson of Lincoln in North Carolina, and Job Tison in Pitt County, where the document was recorded. The purpose of the document was to record the exchange of property from John to Job for land on the north side of Black Swamp, for which Job paid what looked like 250 "Spanish mill'd dollars." 

The record noted that the land was originally patented by a man named John May on October 8, 1754, and apparently willed to his daughter, Elizabeth May. While the indenture was drawn up in February, the record noted that it was signed "in April Court" in 1790.

This caught my attention because 1790 was supposedly the year in which Job Tison married Sidnah, daughter of West Sheffield. Perhaps it was time to make arrangements to set up housekeeping.

A second document was of even more interest. Dated November 19, 1785, once again in Pitt County, this record was initiated by John Tison, with his residence this time listed as Pitt County. The record began, "for natural love and affection I have unto my grandson John Tison, son of Job Tison...." 

This line had my attention. Was this John Tison the answer to my research question for this month?

The record went on to detail a specific tract of land, lying on the east side of Black Swamp, originally patented to a Thomas Tison in 1738. The document also mentioned a second tract of land, granted to John Tison by "the Earl Granville."

This record, though drawn up toward the end of 1785, was presented in January Court in 1786. The names of two witnesses also caught my eye: Frederick Tison and Benjamin May. I was beginning to wonder whether names of the Tison collateral lines were unfolding before my eyes with these two documents.

But wait a minute. I had to think this thing over a bit. Maybe this ancestor fatigue was getting to me. It might have been great to discover a record which mentioned Job Tison, the very ancestor I've been looking for, but was it my Job Tison?

Hauling my mind back to reality, I looked up records I already had for Job Tison. Question number one: did my Job Tison have a son named John? And question number two: was he alive by 1786?

While my Job Tison did indeed have a son named John—John Mason Berrien Tison—he was born long after that record was drawn up in court in Pitt County, North Carolina. Indeed, if Job and Sidnah were married about 1790, there would not have been any children of this couple as early as 1785, let alone a grandson old enough to gain his grandfather's favor. 

While these two documents, to bleary, search-wearied eyes, may have seemed tempting, they simply do not work with the scenario already unfolding for the family of the Tison man who spend his adult life in Glynn County, Georgia. Perhaps a better approach would be to repeat the same exercise, only this time focus on the Beaufort District in South Carolina.

Juggling and Genealogy

 

Genealogy can be a juggling act, and my current obsession with the roots of Job Tyson has put me squarely in that category. I've been searching for my fourth great-grandfather's parents and birthplace, bouncing back and forth between several resources. Behind the scenes, I'm still grinding my way through a long list of DNA matches from the Tyson line. I've tapped the supercharged capabilities of FamilySearch's Full Text Search to find legal records. And I've relinquished hopes of finding Job, as supposed by others, in Pitt County, North Carolina and I've begun looking elsewhere.

I've also been hopping between online genealogy resources. And that's where I discovered something: depending on deciphering capabilities, one company's search engine might not snag the same details from handwritten documents as another company might.

Case in point (conveniently for me, involving our Job Tyson's story): the 1790 census. As you likely presumed, any forms used by enumerators for the first-ever United States census had to be hand-drawn as well as completed by hand. So searching for details on what information was included in such a tally might make the example from the National Archives seem deceiving. You'd have to scroll to the bottom of the census form posted on their website to read, "The U.S. Government did not furnish uniform printed schedules until 1830."

More pertinent to our situation was this information provided on the FamilySearch blog, stating the main categories covered in the nation's first population survey. The most glaring detail was the very length of the list: only six categories. Put simply, the 1790 census sought to gather data on who was eligible for military duty, should the need arise again. Questions included:

• Name of head of household
• Household's count of free white males 16 years of age or older
• Household's free white males under 16
• Household's free white females
• Any other free persons in the household
• Number of enslaved persons in the household

Of course, one of the hazards of preserving historic content over the centuries has been to keep it preserved, no matter how long it has been in existence. Every family historian has encountered those groan-worthy moments when we discover that some records simply haven't made it through the ravages of time.

Such has been the case with the 1790 census with returns of some states, some of which the United States Census Bureau has noted were destroyed by fires during the War of 1812. Happily, two states of interest in our pursuit of Job Tyson were not among those listed as lost by the Census Bureau.

One of those states, of course, was North Carolina, where some researchers had posited that Job Tyson once lived in Pitt County. And while I've found mention of many men with that surname—or its variant spelling, Tison—in Pitt County records, I've recently been exploring records from a second state: South Carolina.

Remembering last week's exploration of the friends and associates of Job Tison in his later years when he lived and died in Glynn County, Georgia, I'm just now beginning to connect the dots between Job and a man whose name had appeared on the Tison will, Charles McClellan. While my McClellan line also has me stumped as to their origins, I have verified that this was the Charles McClellan who was in my direct line. And I can see that there was a good possibility that the McClellans once lived in South Carolina. Might they have met up with Job at that location before they all moved to Georgia?

While I was unable to find Job Tyson in the 1790 census when I searched for him at Ancestry.com, checking FamilySearch.org yielded a surprising result: there was a Job Tison listed in the Beaufort District of South Carolina. That was the same location I've seen attributed to my McClellan line, as well.

The census entries seemed to be roughly alphabetized, and just a few lines below Job's entry was another Tison entry for someone named Aaron. Both heads of household had the same numerical entries listed next to their name: one male sixteen or over, one female member of the household, and one enslaved person. Whether Job and Aaron were brothers or cousins, I don't yet know, but at least this gives me some guidance as to where else to seek my Tyson line in those earlier years. I now have another category to add to my genealogy juggling act. 

Image above: 1790 U.S. Census entry for two Tison households in Beaufort District, South Carolina, courtesy of FamilySearch.org.

How Young is "Young"?

 

I confess: I'm getting impatient with Job Tyson's descendants. As I go, relative by relative through my Tyson DNA matches, I am not finding any who can shed light on Job's own origin. I even got impatient enough to try tracing his father-in-law's DNA matches, since West Sheffield was also said to have originated in the same colony as Job: North Carolina. When that yielded no guidance, I turned to my last resort: a visit to FamilySearch's Full Text Search to find any sign of Job Tyson—or Tison—in Pitt County, North Carolina.

Whether you consider the result of that search a success or not depends on how you might define the term, "young."

My first search result, looking for a Job Tyson in Pitt County, was for a legal notice in a Raleigh newspaper. In fact, that 1808 report seemed helpful in that it spelled out the names of several Tison family members, as such legal battles often do. But was it my Job Tison? I couldn't be sure, so I kept looking.

Eventually the Full Text Search results pointed me to an old history book, Henry T. King's 1911 work, Sketches of Pitt County. The book explained that "Deserters and Royalists who were too active" were often confined to local jails. Such was the case with the Pitt County jail. At that point, I ran into a curious entry:

Job Tyson, a young man, who had enlisted, after the fall of Charlestown, for the defense of the State, accepted a parole from Lord Cornwallis, when he passed through. Becoming uneasy for his safety, he fled to South Carolina, and not knowing, could not avail himself of the proclamations of conditional pardon. Having never taken up arms against the State, when he returned many of the most prominent citizens of the county petitioned Governor Burke for his pardon, which was no doubt granted. 

Was that our Job Tison? I had to look further.

Full Text Search had me covered. There was another entry among my search results. In volume sixteen of the transcribed State Records of North Carolina, was a legal entry. Addressed to His Excellency, Thomas Burke, Governor of the State of North Carolina, the petition read,

The inhabitants of Pitt County humbly sheweth: That Mr. Job Tyson having taken a parole from Lord Cornwallis...and hath not acted an inimical part against it, so far as to take up arms, but he being young and apprehensive, that his conduct was sufficient to bring him to severe punishment, left this State and went into South Carolina so that he being ignorant of the several proclamations offered to delinquents could not avail himself thereof. 

The petition went on to defend this Job Tyson as someone who had "taken up an active part in defense of this State...when the British first reduced Charlestown." Besides, the petitioners continued, since this Job was "a person intirely [sic] young," if the governor were to accept him back into the fold, the petitioners assured him that Job Tyson would "become a useful member of Society."

Hmmm...the fall of Charlestown? When might that have happened? I had to look that one up. The siege, it turned out, began on March 29, and lasted through May 12, 1780. The petition itself was drawn up in 1782.

Though the petitioners kept stressing the fact that this Job Tyson was "intirely" young and "apprehensive," I wouldn't have thought they were referring to a mere boy. Admittedly, I haven't found any documentation of Job's birthdate, let alone his place of birth. However, several women who applied for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution who were descendants of Job and his wife Sidnah (whose father was a Patriot) have given his year of birth as 1770.

If that 1770 date were correct, that would put our Job into those petitioners' scenario as a ten year old boy, "intirely" young, indeed. While the connection with Pitt County, and even his escape to South Carolina, may be tempting details to fold into our narrative, I'm not sure I'm ready to accept that apprehensive Job Tyson as my ancestor quite yet. 

Onward to search for more documentation. 

 

Cheering for Team Tison

 

What a ghost town our city became yesterday as we drew closer to the evening's kickoff. Four o'clock began the pre-game ritual on this side of the football nation, and six-lane streets here, usually packed with Sunday travelers, became empty enough for us to scoot across town without any trouble. Our day? After spending a delightful, almost-spring afternoon overlooking the river delta while sharing a pre-season ice cream, we returned home—my husband to some online games of a different kind, and I to cheer on the team for my current Tison puzzle.

That meant beginning the matching game for a long string of DNA cousins. All of them share one significant detail: relationship to my fourth great-grandfather Job Tison. Along the way, I've already encountered some incognito test-taking cousins, disguised by enigmatic monikers—but I've also met up with some dedicated researchers, including one distant cousin whose ample provisions on Find A Grave provided a thorough family history of at least one branch of the Tison descendants.

I can be grateful for such efforts. This particular researcher went so far as to include footnoted reports on individual members of the family—not to mention photos of numerous family members. These may be my fifth cousins, but after reading these thorough and carefully-crafted articles, I feel like I almost know them. I'd cheer for a team like that.

With only four of the first batch of ThruLines cousins reviewed—I'm starting with Job's son Aaron, for whom there are seven more matches to go—it will be a grind to work through all thirty four Tison DNA matches. So far, it seems this family line moved to the northern part of Florida, not far from the old Tison family home in Georgia, and stayed there for generations.

Hopefully, the process will lead to helpful clues enabling me to return to this month's research question concerning Job's parents and origin. If I encounter any more researchers as thorough as the one just found among Aaron Tison's descendants, that might indeed be a possibility.

Jumping Tracks

 

When it feels like I'm pounding my head against the same brick wall over and over again, it helps to just jump tracks for a while. It's time to try another approach to the question of Job Tison's origin.

One approach may be to check the DNA matches who have descended from this same Tison family. There are plenty of them to examine. Just at Ancestry.com's ThruLines listing, there are thirty four DNA matches to consider, both for my fourth great-grandfather Job and his wife, Sidnah Sheffield. 

If that isn't enough, I could combine approaches—the ThruLines DNA approach along with the F.A.N. Club concept—by jumping back one more generation through Job's father-in-law, West Sheffield, to see whether any of Job's Sheffield in-laws followed him to Georgia.

Even that approach, however, will take time. It requires examination of the lines of descent, checking carefully and corroborating with documentation, since not all generational outlines at ThruLines have been fully vetted. They basically provide a popular vote of who everyone thinks the greats- and great-greats might have been.

Having started with Job Tison's eldest son, Aaron, I've already begun the long slide down to the present, building my family tree out, document by document, to confirm the closest of my Tison DNA matches from his line. For my first Tison DNA match, that route led me, predictably, to a fifth cousin. With that encouraging start, I'll be spending more time behind the scenes, rehearsing the generations descending, first from Aaron, then moving to Job's other children's lines, one by one. Besides my own direct line through Sidney Tison McClellan, I have DNA matches from the line of Job's daughter Melinda, and Job's son John Mason Berrien Tison.

This should keep me busy for quite some time. Hopefully, one of these lines may provide a clue linking the family back to Job's siblings, maybe even parents, from his birthplace, whether it was in North Carolina or elsewhere.

When Friends Become Family

 

While conducting a search for the friends, associates, and neighbors of a brick wall ancestor may seem rigorous, the effort doesn't seem so daunting when you realize some members of a "F.A.N. Club" eventually become family. As we explore the Georgia men behind the names appearing in Job Tyson's will—and then in the will of West Sheffield—we'll find additional intermingling with that one surname appearing in the Tyson legal documents: McClellan.

Two McClellan men in 1824 witnessed Job Tyson's will. One, whose identity I don't yet know, was named Joseph McClellan—the same name, albeit not the same middle initial, as the McClellan mentioned in West Sheffield's own will. Later in that same year of 1824, Joseph personally appeared in court in Glynn County, Georgia, to confirm that the document in question was indeed the last will of Job Tyson.

The other McClellan man whose signature was affixed to the Tyson will was Charles McClellan, who eventually became father-in-law of Job's daughter Sidnah. Charles thus was my fourth great-grandfather, whose McClellan line has been a focus of my research for years. Researching the extended McClellan family line meant discovering that Charles had a brother, Andrew, who also seemed to move in tandem with Charles over the years, helping to track them back to their supposed origin.

While it is frankly possible to be misled by reporting parties of centuries long gone, all we can do is work to corroborate the reports we find. In the McClellan case, any hopes of finding the brothers in the same pre-Georgia locations as Job Tyson were dashed. When we fast-forward to the 1850 census for the first chance to view such information, Sidnah's husband George McClellan reported his birthplace to be in South Carolina, not the North Carolina location attributed by reports to Job Tyson.

In fact, I was able to find entries in the 1800 census for two households—one for George's father Charles, the other for Charles' brother Andrew—in the Orangeburg District of South Carolina. It took a lot of exploring to find anyone related to this F.A.N. club who was connected to a North Carolina origin. That family was headed by Jacob Highsmith, who was father-in-law of Andrew McClellan. Andrew's wife Sarah was said to have been born in Pitt County, North Carolina. Indeed, turning to the 1800 census for Pitt County, there was Sarah's father Jacob Highsmith heading the top of this page in the record.

Since we're now in the neighborhood, I couldn't help but take a look at the Tison entries there. Sure enough, there were plenty of Tisons in Pitt County in 1800, including that one I had previously mentioned, for "Joab" Tison. Same as our Job? Hard to tell at this point. I'd still like to find more details on Job's origin before presuming we have found our answer.

Friends, Associates, and Matchmakers

 

What better way to determine an ancestor's origin than to discover where he met his future spouse? If puzzling over just how Job Tyson first met the good friends who witnessed his will didn't provide us any guidance, there are others in the Tyson "F.A.N. Club"—friends, associates, and neighbors—who could still help point the way for us. Perhaps they even played the role of matchmakers.

One of those other F.A.N. Club possibilities was a man named West Sheffield, father of Sidnah Sheffield, who eventually became Job Tyson's wife. Fortunately for us in this exploration, unlike Sidnah who, like most women of the early 1800s, was virtually invisible, her father West Sheffield left a paper trail of useful documents.

Since West Sheffield served in the American Revolution, there are some records concerning key points of his life. He was, for instance, recipient of both land grants for his service in the war, as well as headrights for land in Camden County, Georgia as early as 1812. While Camden County was near Job Tyson's Georgia residence in Glynn County, Job's marriage to West Sheffield's daughter about 1790 may have indicated that the two families met elsewhere, as so far, I have found no records of residence in Georgia before that early 1800s date.

Job Tyson's wife outlived him by over twenty years. Fortunately for us, Sidnah lived until 1855, leaving us a trace of her reported earlier whereabouts through her entry in the 1850 census. To find that, though, means learning that after Job's death, Sidnah quickly remarried. Thus in 1850, by then twice-widowed, Sidnah, now surnamed Peck, was living in her own household next door to her son John Tison. She reported for herself her birthplace in—wait for it—North Carolina.

The question, of course, would be whether Sidnah met her intended, Job Tyson, back in her native state, or somewhere else. Keeping in mind that her father West Sheffield was a Patriot, I checked for his record through the D.A.R. website. There, his record stated that while he served from Georgia, he was born in North Carolina in 1747. Indeed, looking at a published biographical sketch of West Sheffield, obtained from volume 3 of Folks Huxford's Pioneers of Wiregrass Georgia, the writer gave Sidnah's year of birth as 1776. Was the Sheffield family living in North Carolina then, if her father served in Georgia?

By the time of Sidnah's wedding, it's unclear where her family was located. I have so far been unable to locate a marriage record. Still, if we fast-forward to the 1850 census for each of her oldest three daughters, they were reported to have been born in the earliest years of the 1800s in Georgia, not in North Carolina.

With that possibility exhausted of finding any link to tie Job Tyson back to his parents' home in any location other than Georgia, there is one more lead to explore for this examination of the Tyson F.A.N. Club. When I reviewed West Sheffield's own will, I noticed a familiar name pop up among the witnesses: McClellan. That, as I had mentioned yesterday, was a surname appearing twice in Job Tyson's own will—first for witness Charles McClellan, and then another entry for someone listed originally as "J. H." McClellan, and then spelled out as Joseph H. McClellan.

Looking now at West Sheffield's own will from 1830, someone listed as "J. A." McClellan, then signed as Joseph McClellan, once again made an appearance. Could this Joseph be the same as the witness in the Tyson will? If so, we need to see what we can find about the origin of those McClellans.