In Search of Charles McClellan's FAN Club

 

It's a new month, and time to switch research gears and step into the challenge of a different type of research goal. While most family history quests are outlined by simple statements—like, "Who was the father of Charles McClellan?"—I already know my third selection for my Twelve Most Wanted for 2022 will not be cooperative in that sort of way. I am going to have to sweet talk him into revealing his deeply-held relationship secrets.

As I put it back in December when I outlined my hopes for this month's research project, I want to learn about "the whereabouts, extended family, friends and neighbors" of the man I count as my fourth great-grandfather.

There is a reason I'm being less than specific. For one thing, having as many descendants on his research trail as I know there are for a man born on the eve of the American Revolution, you'd think there would be ample discoveries to resolve the mysteries about his origin by now. Details like where Charles McClellan was actually born, or where he married his wife—Elizabeth, the woman who has been doomed to exist in pedigree charts sans so much as a maiden name to augment her identity—have been noted as unsubstantiated in several resources where his name is mentioned. Documentation may be key, but in Charles McClellan's case, there is much that is missing.

That's not to say there are some who are sure they know who his parents were. On one widely consulted tree, Andrew C. McClellan and Sarah Rebecca Edwards are attributed as Charles' parents, with the only source to verify that information credited to a family tree on a different, subscription-based genealogy website. I can't say I'd be happy reporting that as a bona fide confirmation of fact.

Yet, neither can I assume the quest will be a simple matter of looking this up on the Internet. When I see who else has been looking—and how long they've been searching—I can recognize a tough case when I see one. That's why I'm content to try a different approach.

This month, we'll explore the places Charles McClellan once called home. More than that, we'll retrace our steps from his final resting place in territorial Florida—Jefferson County—back through his home in southeastern Georgia, where he showed up in the documents associated with another of my relatives we've already studied, Job Tison. And finally, we'll see what other associations Charles McClellan might have had that can help us construct a F.A.N. Club of all the people associated with him at different stages of his life.

To be sure, there are signs of this McClellan ancestor in several places. During this month, we just need to piece together the story, especially with an eye to possibilities that Charles' friends, associates, and neighbors might point the way to a broader understanding of who else might have been included in that McClellan family.

Revisiting Those "Notes to Self"

 

The pursuit of family history, despite now being so heavily digitized, can still leave an enormous paper trail in its wake. Let's just say my second-most active pursuit is cleaning up the scraps of paper upon which I jot down reminders of research revelations as they occur to me.

When those notes have passed their prime, it's into the trash they go. Except...I can't help re-reading what I'm about to rid myself of—and then decide the note really needs just a little bit more work.

Take the scratch paper upon which I had noted several details about an upcoming meeting—a to-do list which, now two years later, is well-qualified to have become a "done" list. It would easily have landed in the recycle bin, except what should catch my eye as it wafted its way downward but a different note added in the margin. In a different color ink, it was a clear spot of paper upon which to hurriedly jot—before I forgot, no doubt—yet one more thing that I absolutely could not neglect to follow up on.

The terse note said only 

Drucilla—died March 3, 1866

Mary A. McLeran's sister

This was the family line descended from the Florida pioneer, ferryman Ruben Charles, father of that Mary-of-the-Red-Scarf legend who, at least as far as I could tell, did not die the tragic death in her youth romanticized in local lore. Here was a note reminding me that I had found mention of her—married, no less—in some of the court proceedings surrounding her husband's sudden death.

Mary's husband, as I recalled once I returned to look this up, was a northern Florida man by the name of William T. McLeran. And William's parents were a North Carolina couple of the early 1800s by the name of Nevin and Rebecca.

Oh. And Rebecca's maiden name was Tison.

That fact had never been lost on me. Let's just say I sort of forgot that little detail this year until I ran across that bit of torn paper now flitting from my fingertips into the trash can. Now, after having spent a month searching high and low for any signs of another Tison's origins in North Carolina—and watching some of his progeny leap the border to settle in territorial Florida—can anyone walk away from this other research temptation and not wonder whether there is yet another, though unseen, connection to ferret out from all this early American era's scant personal records?

Let's just say I'm not exactly walking away from it. I'll just reconstitute that shredded note and fold it in with the file containing my to-list for the next time we ponder those mystery Tisons from North Carolina. The books must remain closed on that case for now. We've got another task to tackle for our February research challenge. 

Where to Look Next

 

So, you've worked on garnering all the facts about your ancestor from governmental records—wills, marriage records, maybe even census enumerations—and you still come up short. Are there any other ways to fill in the blanks on your ancestor's story?

That's where I'm stuck with my research goal to discover the roots of my fourth great-grandfather, Job Tison of Glynn County, Georgia. Supposedly, he settled there from a previous home in Pitt County, according to what other researchers assert—but I'm not uncovering a satisfactory paper trail leading back to that North Carolina location. Since my research schedule allots one month for each project—and then I must move on to the next of my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors for the year—I'll need to set aside my goal of determining Job Tison's parents and origin for another year.

Though I set him aside, that doesn't mean I can walk away without gathering notes from my unfinished trail of discoveries. I've found some possible clues which will need some follow up, and if I don't write down those details for future reference, you know I'll forget where the trail has led me, next time I journey down this same research path. That means the last step I take, before wrapping up this belated January research project, is to note possible directions for my first steps, next time Job Tison is on my research agenda. As they say in the restaurant business, at the end of my work day, I need to "close to open."

There were indeed some tempting resources to explore this past month. In trying to learn more about the many Tisons who did live in Pitt County, I found Tison land grant records from the North Carolina Land Grants website. If my Job Tison did turn out to originate in Pitt County, he had plenty of relatives in the neighborhood.

As I do for many of my research puzzles, I look at Internet Archive for any digitized copies of local history books. In this case, finding mention of a young Job "Tyson" in Sketches of Pitt County makes me wonder whether that narrative provides the explanation for my Job's sudden break for land farther south in Georgia at about the same time. Of course, as has already been suggested, I also perused pertinent entries via Google Books, and encountered a footnote regarding two Tisons in Beaufort, South Carolina. Though it involved a much later era, it reminds me of a possible intermediate settling point for my Job as well, which also piqued my curiosity—again, for ongoing research possibilities.

Internet Archive is one target-rich research opportunity, if one can adequately sift through the myriad digitized resources available there, but not everything online is as easily found. One recently-updated resource is the Periodical Source Index—PERSI for short—which has now been re-located to its new home at the Allen County Public Library. Cari Taplin has recently posted a three-part series, explaining what to expect at PERSI's new host location, how to put PERSI through its search paces at its new host home and, finally, how to access the articles you've found through the PERSI system.

On my trial run of the relocated PERSI, I discovered—no surprise here—some articles on the Tisons published in the Pitt County Genealogical Quarterly. How to find them? Google revealed that several of the issues are available through DigitalNC. Sure enough, when I followed the links, I found there are at least twenty two volumes already digitized and accessible. I'd call that an ample start.

That's not to say I won't also consult ArchiveGrid in hopes that Job Tison, his forebears or descendants might have bequeathed their "papers" to a participating repository—once again, a multi-step process to be learned and exercised, but worth the effort when something off the beaten research path is located. And I'll continue my search through the various historic newspaper collections. Maybe even a foray into the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections could prove helpful. And I won't forsake reviewing the basics, such as the FamilySearch wiki for places like North Carolina's Pitt County or the later Tison home in Glynn County, Georgia.

The real task is to locate material which provides not necessarily the specifics on Job Tison or his family—ancestors or descendants—but on the communities in which they lived. Finding the breadth of the narrative through writings of his own time period may open a researcher's eyes to the way of life experienced by our ancestors.

While Job Tison may only have been a handwritten entry with trailing tick marks in an 1820 census record, we may be able to reveal more about the likely components of his life by locating and absorbing the details in published material on the local history of places he once called home. Though we'll need to set aside our Tison research task for this year, with a hefty future to-do list tucked in his file, I can hit the ground running, next time his name comes up for a research project. There's always more to learn about our ancestors—and always more resources which will come available in the future—making a policy of revisiting our research targets periodically a smart move.

 

Job's Daughters

 

After seeing what little could be found on an ancestor from governmental documents of the early 1800s, the idea was to garner resources from non-governmental written material of the era—archived collections of journals or diaries, say, or other manuscript collections mentioning the Tison family of my fourth great-grandfather. Or at least newspapers. Surely some chatty columnist of a subsequent century would interview the aging grandchildren of Job and Sidnah Tison and press for stories of the "good ol' days" in Glynn County, Georgia. 

So much for plans. After wrapping up a survey, nearly empty-handed, of any newspaper mentions of their parents' legacy by the sons of Job Tison, I assumed there would be even less material to examine through the effort of searching for Job's daughters. How wrong I was.

My strategy was to avoid conducting a search from oldest to youngest. My reasoning? We already knew the oldest daughter, Naomi, predeceased her father. Though she was not named specifically, her place in the Tison family had been inferred by Job's 1824 will. With women being nearly invisible during that era, any hopes of finding Naomi's name in even an obituary was unlikely.

The next daughter, Sidney, was my third great-grandmother. Just seventeen at the point of her father's death, seven years afterward, Sidney married George McClellan, a son of her father's associate—and witness to his will, Charles McClellan—and was whisked away to a new home in territorial Florida. Since I've already researched her extensively, I passed on researching any mention of her name again, as I doubted I'd find anything new regarding her remembrances of her parents back in Georgia.

Sidney's younger sister Melinda was married barely a month after Job's passing—his minister friend Charles McClellan conducting the ceremony—to John Charles Richard. Less than ten years later, Melinda and her family had followed her brother's lead and moved to Alachua County in Florida. Even though her name can be found on sales of land in Alachua and nearby counties, I tend to doubt her name would surface in a search of Florida newspapers during those early years of statehood.

Likewise for the next sister, Susan Caroline, who was barely a teenager when her father passed. Hers was a mournful story, from what few mentions I can find in vital records. Widowed with a young son by the time she was nineteen, she remarried in only a couple years. By 1864, she, herself was gone.

It didn't really take as much thought as what appeared to go into those brief paragraphs above to choose my course of research action; I instinctually knew there would be more likelihood that the youngest sister's name would be found in public mentions than her older sisters. Thus, the hunt was on to discover any published mentions of Job's daughter Theresa Elizabeth Tison.

And what a cache I found—some of it even true, I'll wager.

At three years of age, Theresa lost her father, so Job would likely be even less than a fleeting memory. Sometimes, though, it is the ones who most keenly feel the lack of family connection who seem most drawn to learn more. Whatever the case, there were ample online resources for tracing Theresa's family story.

Apparently, a man ten years her senior had, in earlier times, been associated with Job Tison in the mercantile business. The man's name was Sylvester Mumford. Born in New York, this northerner had somehow found himself drawn to the southern coastal reaches of Georgia, where he opened up shop near Job's wayside inn—and, as reports had it, fared quite successfully.

Theresa and Sylvester Mumford's 1841 marriage produced two daughters, whom they named Oceana and Goertner. The family lived quite comfortably in a home built for them which was considered a jewel of the area. Pictures of the residence can still be found online, despite the fact that the home, by then long abandoned, had been badly damaged by fire in 2005.

Along with the photos can be found stories of the family who once had lived there. It was there that I gleaned a few references to Theresa's father Job Tison. More than that, though, was the continuation of the family's saga with their beautiful, nearly legendary daughter Goertner who, as the widow of Jay Curtis Parkhurst, lived to be nearly one hundred years of age.

Of course, along with the family stories and remembrances of the property came some reports of a more legendary sort—including conjecture about the Mumford fortune in relation to the missing "Confederate gold." Whether the stories about Goertner's father Sylvester Mumford were true, of course I cannot tell, but one thing is sure: at her passing, she bequeathed a significant sum for the educational support of Georgia's orphans, especially young women. Her legacy can be found even today on the website of one Georgia college, detailing the origin of the student residence known as Parkhurst Hall. And when the childless widow Goertner Mumford Parkhurst's will was presented in court in Washington, D. C., four southern states' newspapers reported on her legacy: besides recipients Georgia and South Carolina (location of one beneficiary orphanage), the story was carried in North Carolina and Alabama.

While the details of Job Tison's prominent granddaughter do not provide as much information as we'd hoped to see on the man himself, at least his shadow can be discerned in these remembrances of those subsequent generations. With that, we'll bid adieu to the tantalizing possibilities of the Mumford legacy, and the research goal of tracing Job Tison's origin for this year. But before we close the books on this family story, tomorrow we need to formulate a plausible research plan for when we pick up the quest in the future.  

Unpleasant Transformations

 

It was the third son of Job Tison whose biographical sketch, published in the Brunswick Advertiser on February 19, 1879, led fellow researcher Kathy to share the link and comment that looking "far downstream" sometimes led to helpful information about our ancestors, reported by their own descendants. With that—and especially considering John Mason Tison was a Georgia state senator—I had hoped to find a substantial stash of information on his roots.

Apparently, the political activities of southern gentlemen of the 1850s were not quite as widely examined in news reports as that of our current representatives. Surprisingly, even John Mason Tison's passing in 1882 merited barely two lines of newsprint, under the stark heading, Deaths:

TISON—Died, at Bethel, Glynn county, Ga., November 1st, 1882, John M. Tison, in his 66th year.

Hardly the chatty biographical sketch we were hoping for. And don't look for the tone to improve as we move backward in time.

Though only a child of six when his father Job Tison died, as an adult, John apparently rose to prominence in the county of his birth. I found indications of his success in animal husbandry, in addition to his work as an attorney and, later, in civic duties. A Brunswick columnist explained, in a brief insertion in the May 24, 1882, Savannah paper, The Morning News,

Court is held in a one story frame building with no conveniences whatever, and is in anything but a cleanly condition.... It serves the purposes of the Superior Court, Ordinary and Justices, and is no more creditable to this thriving city than is the court house to Savannah. I learn that the county was unable to build a court house, and this structure was erected by Mr. Jno. M. Tison, a wealthy and prominent citizen and a near relative of the late Wm. H. Tison, of Savannah....

Still, of the reports of the man found in his local newspaper, much of the news has a melancholy tone to it—even those items cast as humorous. Back in Brunswick, the November 28, 1877, Advertiser noted, in straightforward somber tones,

Monday's telegrams brought little else but sad news...a dispatch was received from Savannah, announcing the death of Mr. Wm. Tison, of the firm of Tison & Gordon, and brother of our esteemed fellow citizen, Hon. John M. Tison. Troubles come not single handed—only a few days ago Mr. Tison followed his daughter and her husband, Mrs. and Mr. P. A. Hazlehurst, to their last resting place, and now must part with his only brother.

But the Savannah Morning News on May 25, 1882, tried a light approach to what surely turned out to be a serious matter.

Yesterday afternoon Mr. W. F. Penniman, agent of the Savannah and Florida steamers, Messrs. John M. Tison and S. C. Littlefield whilst standing on Bay street engaged in conversation, were suddenly, aye, in the twinkling of an eye, transformed from Caucaussians [sic] into Ethiopians, and the process was decidedly unpleasant. They were standing near a building, the roof of which was being repaired. A workman had a mammoth bucket of melted coal tar in use, when accidentally he disturbed its equipoise, and over the eaves it went, about twenty gallons of the melted tar falling in a shower, and completely deluging the three gentlemen named. Fortunately the bucket did not strike either of them, and they escaped injury, but their plight was fearful. However, there is a cheerful side to the picture—a clothing merchant shortly after the accident sold three suits of clothes.

I'm not sure that was a sufficiently cheerful antidote to the misfortune, nor can I believe the victims "escaped injury." Not three months afterwards, the Brunswick columnist for Savannah's The Morning News reported on August 16 that

Hon. J. M. Tison, one of the oldest citizens of this county, is at present lying very low at Hot Springs, Ark. Mr. J. M. Tison, Jr., of this city, was summoned to his bedside some time ago, and at last accounts the hope of recovery was very small.

From that point until the announcement of his death, silence as far as news reports went. Then, after John Mason Tison's passing, an eruption of legal notices of an estate sale, "before the Court House door," of the thousand head of cattle and three hundred sheep belonging to the estate of John Mason Tison. Indeed, according to a transcription of his will, John's instruction—"I wish my stock of cattle sold as soon as practicable"—was clearly followed.

It was, sadly, in that final document of John Tison where, in addition to his last wishes, the father commented about his namesake son, the one who traveled to Arkansas to be with his father in those last days, "I regret to say that I do not feel that he has treated me during my illness as a dutiful son should." Who knows how to read between such lines, in a document as permanent as a last testament, to determine what unfolded between father and son which led to his choosing those parting words.

Since seeking effusive reminiscence about the legacy of their parents did not turn out to produce the hoped-for family history cache from Job Tison's sons, I doubt we'll see any more chatty results from the Tison daughters, but we'll take one last look tomorrow, before wrapping up with a research to-do list for the next time I visit the gaps in this family line.    

 

Learning About William—and a Little Latin

 

In looking for any published reminiscences by the children of Georgia pioneer Job Tison, I realized the more likely choice for a productive search might be to first follow his sons. Why? Job's death in 1824 signaled a time when women were nigh invisible when it came to published material. Thus, after examining the possibilities yesterday linked to Job's oldest son Aaron, we'll bypass his daughters Sidnah, Melinda, and Susan, to arrive at the next oldest son, William.

As the Tison family expanded over the next two generations, the name William seemed to become a popular choice, so when examining newspaper entries for William Tison, I needed to be careful to select the right initial: H. While I have no idea yet what the "H" signifies, that is the letter affixed to the name of Job Tison's second son.

I had stumbled upon some remarks, in online searches, which seemed to indicate that William Tison had, at one point, served in the Georgia General Assembly, so I was keen to explore what could be found on the man. Not much surfaced, other than the usual genealogical resources such as census and marriage records—until it came to the months following the year of his death.

Before jumping to that point, though, let's get a brief overview of what occurred during William H. Tison's lifespan. First, we must realize that when mentioned in his father's will, William was generally clustered by his father with three siblings, "my four youngest children." At the time of his father's passing, William was about eleven years of age.

Only from his grand-daughter Frances' D.A.R. membership was I able to learn that William had been married twice. On that record, William's first wife was listed as Mary Ellis Hardee, who died in 1847, possibly following the birth of a son.

Between the date of William's wife's death and his second marriage, it is hard to trace William's location. One possible entry in the 1850 census is for a traveling merchant, enumerated in the household of one Silas Niblack in Columbia County, Florida. Despite no mention of his children, this is not as far-fetched a possibility as it may seem, keeping in mind that the recently-formed Columbia County was carved from the northern portion of Alachua County, the same location where William's older brother Aaron had settled, twenty years prior.

By 1860, William was back in his native Georgia, where the census showed him living in Savannah with his second wife, the former Mary Scotia Fenton, plus fourteen year old Fannie and twelve year old Mitchell, William's two children from his earlier marriage. An unexpected bonus from this record was the enumerator's overzealous listing of not only each person's state of birth, but detailing the specific location. From this, we glean the fact that Fannie was actually born in Hamilton County, Florida, giving credence to the discovery of William's possible location in Columbia County, adjacent and to the southwest of Hamilton County, in the previous census.

It is likely that William stayed in Savannah for the remainder of his life. He was buried alongside his second wife only a year after her death in 1876. Discovering the location of their final resting place—a beautiful landmark cemetery known as Bonaventure Cemetery—I realized my research trails had led me to pass this way before in chasing Tison descendants, which I explained nearly two years ago in a four part series exploring the Tison connection to the family behind Savannah's Mercer House.

While not much could be found—at least not yet—about William H. Tison during his lifetime, there were several mentions of his name in Savannah subsequent to his passing. One, buried in the legal notices in The Morning News on April 23, 1888, announcing, "Whereas, Brantley A. Denmark has applied to Court of Ordinary for Letters of Administration d. b. n. on the estate of William H. Tison, deceased" got me scurrying to discover what "d. b. n." might mean.

Thankfully, a second insertion in the May 10, 1888, edition gave me more of a handle on resolving the mystery: "Brantley A. Denmark qualified as administrator de bonis non of the estate of William H. Tison."

Quick, racing from search engine Google to the genealogist's legal friend, blogger Judy Russell's Legal Genealogist, I ran for help—and help I received, from a post she wrote back in August 31, 2012, spelling out not only the meaning of "de bonis non," but of all the various terms we can encounter while researching our ancestors' administrators or executors. The straightforward explanation: "If the administrator dies and part of the estate still needs to be administered," that is the term used to designate the court-appointed replacement.

Of course, that brings up questions. Like, what happened to the original administrator? And, why hadn't William appointed an executor? Did he not have a will before his death at age sixty five?

Those, however, are questions for another research project. Our goal here, in trying to wrap up January's family history quest, was to see whether any of Job Tison's children might have reminisced about the good ol' days when their father was one of the early settlers in Glynn County, Georgia. Apparently, Job's son William was not only tight lipped about the history of his forebears, but about his own life, as well.

Above: Insertion in the legal notices in The Morning News, Savannah, Georgia, on April 23, 1888; image courtesy U.S. Library of Congress Chronicling America project.        

Stuff Found While Looking for Something Else

 

It's amazing the stuff you can find while you are looking for something else. Perhaps that's the bane of those of us prone to rabbit trail detours. Let me just call this a post about tying up loose ends.

Quite a while back—while I was still working in earnest to discover the roots of my fourth great-grandfather, Job Tison—reader Charlie Purvis of Carolina Family Roots had sent me a transcription of a legal notice posted on April 7, 1808, in the Weekly Raleigh Register. It was of particular interest not only because it involved legal proceedings in Pitt County, North Carolina—where my Job Tison was reported to have originated—but because of the many Tison family members mentioned in the notice.

Whether those were all kin to my Job Tison, it's too early to tell, so I had set the details aside—along with a follow-up notice on May 12 of that same year—for future pondering, once I uncovered some hoped-for links between those earlier years and Job Tison's later years in Glynn County, Georgia.

Well, those hoped-for links have yet to materialize. Still, setting out on this week's research task—trying to find any mention about Job's history given by his own children in their later years—what should my search terms conjure up, but more details about a Tison family in Pitt County? Of course, I should have thought at first to check for any genealogical publications issued by the very county in question, but did I think of that last month? No, but now that I'm seeking information on Job's son Aaron in Florida, somehow Google thinks I should be looking back in North Carolina.

Nevertheless, onward I go with my revised research task: review each of the Tison children's history, beginning with Aaron, son of Job. Born at the Tison home in Glynn County, Georgia, in 1803, Aaron, I shortly discovered, would not be my most likely target for those hoped-for reminiscences in his golden years. Unfortunately for Aaron, his life was cut short in 1840 when, according to family legend, he was out riding his horse on his land in territorial Florida. The horse apparently threw him, bringing on his untimely death by breaking his neck.

It will be a challenge to find many mentions of Aaron Tison in local records of that time, though assertions have been made of his civic involvement. Aaron was listed in the 1830 census for the territory, living in the then-expansive region designated as Alachua County, "near courthouse and St. Afee River." By the time of that enumeration, Aaron had been married to Louisa Jane Dell for five years, and had three daughters under the age of five.

Though Aaron Tison likely died intestate—thus limiting my ability to gather the names of all his children thus far—he did leave enough descendants to eventually memorialize him as an early settler of the state of Florida. According to the Florida State Genealogical Society's Pioneer Database, his brief biographical notes indicate he was a signer of several petitions to the territorial government—which can hopefully be located in archival collections—and that he and his wife (depending on various reports) were the parents of either five or seven children. Incredibly, my own DNA can vouch for some of those distant cousin connections, despite lack of a complete paper trail at this point.

Apparently, all was not the bucolic farmer's life for Aaron and Louisa, though, as all I could find via a search of newspaper archives regarding Aaron Tison's name were four insertions of an advertisement published less than two years before Aaron's death, reading,

CAUTION—Whereas, my Wife LOUISA JANE TISON, has left my bed and board without my consent, all persons are cautined [sic] and notified, not to harbor or trust the said Louisa Jane Tison, on my account, for I will not pay any debts of her contracting.

Somehow, that makes me wonder what the story really was behind the family lore of Aaron's petulant mount.

If his descendants were keen to memorialize their ancestor, in addition to the resources at the Florida State Genealogical Society, it occurred to me that Aaron Tison, by virtue of his maternal grandfather, could possibly be listed as a descendant of a D.A.R. Patriot. Searching the national D.A.R. website—this time, using the tab for descendants rather than ancestors—I located all the descendant lists for his grandfather West Sheffield which included the line of Aaron Tison. There were two sets of applications, once again demonstrating that the children of this son of Job Tison were more than willing to reminisce about their ancestor. And yet, the stories seem to fall just one generation short of reaching my goal.

Tomorrow, we'll explore some of Job's other children to see whether anyone else remained in Georgia to share his story.    

When Their Aging Children Remember the Good Ol' Days

 

When we can't find our way back through our family's history—when we encounter those bemoaned "brick walls" of genealogical research—one approach is to see what our mystery ancestor's children recall about their parents. True, some families are prone to create what becomes the myths of the family's story, but sometimes, those memories can be borne out by research. I take them as handy trailblazers to point me in—hopefully—a right direction.

So it is with seeking information on the roots of my fourth great-grandfather, Job Tison. While I know he died in Glynn County, Georgia—I have at least a transcribed copy of his will presented in court there—it is only hearsay which points me to a birthplace in Pitt County, North Carolina. And even that report is nebulous: it says he "came from" North Carolina, not specifically that he was born there.

A while back, reader Kathy of Porch Swings, Fireflies, and Jelly Jars pointed me in a promising direction. She mentioned in a comment that she likes to "look far downstream for information," mostly for printed family histories or newspaper articles featuring residents remembering the early years when the area was first settled—and provided a link to the Georgia Historic Newspapers database, which included an article on Job's son, state senator John Mason Tison, and how his parents first came to Georgia.

Remembrances about an early settler like Job Tison might be a good resource for such an extended search—but how to find such articles in the multiple places they might be hidden can be challenging. True, Job Tison, was active in the public affairs of his county, and was likely well-known by the many travelers hosted at his wayside inn, but there may be as many ways to find such tucked away resources as there are articles to uncover.

Reader Charlie Purvis of Carolina Family Roots put in a vote for taking my research question straight to Google Books, and indeed, that produced several mentions. But there are many other resources I've yet to try which may produce even more useful material. Just taking my research terms to a newspaper collection like GenealogyBank told me that in 1819, Job Tison served as a grand juror for Glynn County, and, later that same year, he ran for office in what became a "contested election" in his home county.

Besides Job's son John—the one featured in the brief biographical report—who else might we follow to see whether they ever put to words their remembrances of the "good ol' days" of their parents' arrival in Glynn County, Georgia? From Job's own will—which, keep in mind, I only have in transcribed and abstracted formats—we know that Job and his wife Sidnah Sheffield Tison had at least eight children. While Job's will does not list his children by order of age—he was careful to first see to the needs of the younger children still at home—with a little additional research, we can come up with a viable list.

Oldest son Aaron, born in Georgia in 1803, was followed by my direct ancestor, his sister Sidney, born in 1806. Her younger sister Melinda, born in 1808, was the first of the Tison sisters to marry after their father's death in 1824, though not the first of the siblings to ever have married, since Job's will referenced an unnamed daughter—the one who predeceased him—who turns out to have been named Naomi, who married Matthew Carter in 1811. Naomi surely was born at about the time of these older children.

Following those older children of Job and Sidnah were the ones explicitly mentioned in a cluster in Job's will: Susan (born in 1811), William (1812), John (1817), and Theresa (1820) round out the Tison family portrait. This week, we'll follow each of these descendants to see what clues can be gleaned from any possible remembrances they left, and from that, formulate a research plan for picking up this question of Job Tison's origin at a later date. After all, it's now a new month, and time to mount yet another research challenge.  

The Repercussions of Recuperation: If Hard's too Hard, Try Easy

 

Well, here I am, tentatively peeking out from under the Covid covers to survey the damages of a very rocky two weeks past. It's great to set out a research schedule that's full speed ahead for family history, but is probably wiser to build in a Plan B for the inevitable down time that comes with the ills of winter.

Incredibly, all was not lost while spending a "captivating" two weeks of recuperation. It wasn't the virus itself, per se, which knocked me flat, but the repercussions. However, while I was too exhausted to get up and do anything, I discovered my restless mind could only cope with the inactivity if I grabbed my lightest laptop computer and pieced together collateral lines and DNA matches while flat on my back.

Talk about desperation. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the malaise, I opened up my mother-in-law's tree of multiple generations of solid Catholic families and added the descendants of each collateral line. At my last count—skipping one of my customary biweekly rounds completely, thanks to Covid—the tree she is in held 25,124 individuals. Not any more. In mindless but rapid succession over the past two weeks, I managed to add 979 of her relatives—all duly documented via records at Ancestry.com, and many now connected to my husband's DNA matches—to bring that tree's count up to 26,103 people.

And was grateful for the diversion.

My own tree didn't fare too badly, either, though most of the collateral lines there come with far more struggles. Still, I managed—at least since the last count almost a month ago—to squeak out fifteen additional entries, to bring my tree up to 27,285 people.

The struggle in my own tree is mainly due to the research challenge I had selected for my January goal: to explore the wider realm of historical records and reports for the areas where my fourth great-grandfather Job Tison once lived. That research, by necessity, came to a screeching halt the minute the Covid fever hit, two and a half weeks ago. Though I had already gathered some links to online resources for upcoming posts, the requisite comprehension power to follow through with that just wasn't something to be tackled at quite the same level of effort as simply adding yet another dozen kids to a good Catholic family's tree might have been.

The best approach I've found, when scheduling requires such a shift, is to make note of how far I've progressed, what has already been accomplished, and the remaining steps to tackle the next time I revisit the research problem. Family history research is often a cyclical process, at least in my experience. Sometimes we are limited by the availability of accessible records, or the foundational knowledge from which to make that leap of discovery. I'll take the next week to wrap up material I did uncover—but have not yet written about—then construct a to-do list for the next time I visit this issue. Perhaps, by then, it will be safer to venture out and actually research this ancestor in person, following the same paths he once walked, himself.

In the meantime, before we transition from the last notes on Job Tison to exploring another ancestor's mysteries, I do want to express my thanks for the encouraging comments and emails sent and prayers offered on my behalf over the past two weeks. Genealogists—and genealogy bloggers and followers—are some of the most caring people I know. It is a privilege to count you as friends.

Meeting Job's Family

 

If a straightforward search into my fourth great-grandfather Job Tison's roots yields us nothing but disagreeing assertions, perhaps, as has been suggested, we can glean some clues from his children. After all, some of Job's younger children were born in a time frame which yielded them a ripe old age coinciding with the romantic reminiscing about the "good old days" back at the start of the nation. Perhaps we can find some reports that way.

First, though, we need to examine just who Job's children were—and, in case that yields us nothing, also explore Job's wife's siblings. I find it curious that mentions of Job Tison were often coupled with reports of his father-in-law, West Sheffield, making me wonder whether there is more to that connection than meets the eye. Could Job have been orphaned and taken under his father-in-law's wings? Could this have been an example of an old-fashioned betrothal? We may also want to trace what became of Job's Sheffield in-laws, as well.

Job's 1824 will begins a long process of settling his estate—which went on for years, including a second marriage of his wife and executrix, Sidnah. Job was particularly careful to attend to the needs of his youngest children—then minor and unmarried—Susan, William, John, and Theresa. We also learn from his will that he had a son named Aaron, who had barely come of age when his father died, and two older daughters, the soon-to-be-married Sidnah (my direct line) and just-married Melinda. One last detail was the discovery of an unnamed older—and, by the time of Job's will, deceased—daughter who had married a man by the name of Carter, to whom she had borne a son and a daughter.

For each of these, we'll take some time next week to explore what can be found in those hidden nooks across the Internet concerning any of Job Tison's children—and, for that matter, his wife, Sidnah Sheffield Tison Peck, as well. 

 

Speaking of . . .

 

Yesterday, I was fairly lusting over the twelve volume set of Pioneers of Wiregrass Georgia. Today, I think I've gotten over it. As luck would have it, I didn't need to actually fly to Salt Lake City to access the entire collection at the Family History Library there; all I needed do was take a look at their website.

While true, all twelve volumes are indeed at the Family History Library, a little poking around online showed me enough of a snippet to dampen those flames of bookish desire. For the book's entry on Job Tison's father-in-law, West Sheffield, another researcher had posted a snippet from page 295 of the third volume of Folks Huxford's massive work.

In the very first line of the entry for West Sheffield, I spotted details I could easily work to verify—or discount—right from home. According to Pioneers of Wiregrass Georgia,

West Sheffield of Wayne (now Brantley) County, was a son of John Sheffield, R. S., of Duplin County, N. C., and was born there Dec. 13, 1747. He died at his home in Wayne County, Sept. 22, 1830.

True enough, West Sheffield died on September 22, 1830, and his will was presented in court in Wayne County on the first day of November in that same year. The rest of that biographical entry, however, needs some closer scrutiny.

The least of our concerns is the assertion that Wayne County is now Brantley County. True, Brantley was carved from Wayne—but that didn't occur until 1920. Even if the original land upon which West Sheffield built his home now stands in that location, it is to Wayne County that we need to turn for records on his life story in the early 1800s.

But let's get down to more serious doubts—in particular, whether West Sheffield was from Duplin County, North Carolina, and, more importantly, if he was indeed son of a man there named John Sheffield.

I took the "R. S." after John Sheffield's name to stand for Revolutionary Soldier, though of course, I don't have access to the volumes to seek out any reader's guide to abbreviations used in the Wiregrass works. It is easy enough to see what can be found on any confirmed Patriot: just look at the website hosted by the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

There, I find two entries for a John Sheffield. Fortunately, one is specific to a man by that name from Duplin County. Things seem to be going swimmingly so far—until, that is, we realize the entry is bathed in red ink. There seem to be problems with this Patriot's record. Prime among the objections is the obvious fact that a man born "circa 1740" would be hard pressed to father a son born in 1747. The D.A.R. record comments on this aberration.

Of course, West Sheffield has his own listing as a Patriot at the D.A.R. website, as well. An interesting comment added to that entry was his residence listed as the Beaufort District of South Carolina, bringing us back around to that other puzzle for the extended family.

While twelve volumes of biographical and genealogical information may seem, to those of us far from research repositories, to be a gold mine of information, we need to keep in mind that despite being published works, books can contain errors in research, or even copy errors. They are simply guides pointing a possible way for us to continue our own quest for answers.

  

The Déjà vu of Wiregrass Country

 

It was only yesterday, when perusing my Twitter feed, that I came across Judy Russell's pertinent comment in The Legal Genealogist:

Genealogy is as much a matter of geography as it is of history.

Of course, she had no idea I was on the search for the whereabouts of my fourth great-grandfather's parents somewhere in North or South Carolina; she was looking for her, ahem, "German" ancestors.

While the point is well taken—as we've already discussed here—that borders do move from time to time, geography is a pertinent part of genealogy for more reasons than those shifting borders. As I find in so many of my family history puzzles, it helps to know the places where our ancestors settled. Like, really get to know them.

Instead of trying to trace my line backwards through time—following unsubstantiated reports that my fourth great-grandfather Job Tison came from Pitt County, North Carolina—I want to tack in a different direction. Here's why.

As I explored the place in Georgia where Job Tison and his future father-in-law, West Sheffield, came to call home, learning about Glynn County and Wayne County gave me this strange, déjà vu feeling, as if I had been there before. I guarantee you, the only time I've ever been to Georgia was to fly through the Atlanta airport when my original wintertime flight home had been cancelled due to predictable weather eruptions. In other words: I've never set sights on Georgia from any way other than an aerial perspective. So how could reading about those two counties make me feel as if I had been there before?

Simple: I learned about Wiregrass Country.

Glynn County, where Job Tison settled, and neighboring Wayne County where West Sheffield established his home, were considered to be part of what is called Wiregrass Country. Named for the aristida stricta (or "wiregrass") warm season grass native to the coastal plains of the Carolinas, the region in which it best grows stretches from there southward to Georgia and the Florida panhandle, and westward toward Alabama. 

The wiregrass region used to cover far more of Georgia than it does today, and it featured some other characteristics which I also found strangely familiar. The sandy soil of the region featured one additional familiar feature: the longleaf pine. Far more prevalent in that wiregrass region in past centuries, the longleaf pine was useful not only for timber, but for turpentine. And that is precisely why the look of the land seems so familiar to me: I had seen this same geographic appearance over the miles while driving to the ancestral home of my McClellan line in Suwannee County, Florida—where Job Tison's daughter Sidnah moved after her marriage to George Edmund McClellan around 1830.

Perhaps I am belaboring this point, but it is for good reason. Not only have people sought out new places to live which seemed familiar to them, but those who were accustomed to living off the land developed ways to assess whether new territories had the natural resources to enable them to continue making their living with the skills they already possessed. I'll never forget Mark Lowe's instruction on southern research at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, advising his students seeking their disappearing ancestors to pay attention to soil maps. If those ancestors moved, they likely removed to a place with the same farming conditions required by the crops they had raised back home.

As it turns out, there was a particular migration pattern bringing people into the southeastern Georgia Wiregrass Country. While I'm still working on framing that picture, it appears one typical inbound route brought settlers from the Carolinas, seeking a familiar environment in which to engage in "self-sufficient" farming and livestock herding on cheap land with open range and relatively few other settlers.

While that description doesn't necessarily solve my research dilemma—were Job's parents from North or South Carolina?—it does at least warm me up to the idea that he didn't originate from another location.

There is another bright side to exploring this geographical angle. Once learning about Wiregrass Country, one can't help but realize that the land's unofficial moniker inspired a massive biographical work to catalog the many Euro-American settlers to the region. Called Pioneers of Wiregrass Georgia, the original seven volume set was written by Folks Huxford, with five additional volumes compiled by the Huxford Genealogical Society.

As you can imagine, obtaining all twelve volumes can be a prohibitive process—though a trip to Homerville, Georgia, during their pandemic-limited hours could gain you entrance to the Huxford collection of notes and books which became the impetus of what is now billed as "one of the largest privately owned genealogical libraries in the United States." Not on your itinerary for 2022? No problem: you can check the Pioneers of Wiregrass Georgia index online for your ancestor's name, then tap the book's listing at WorldCat.org in search of the right volume closer to home.

I've already checked for Job Tison: he is mentioned in volumes four and five. West Sheffield? He's there also, in volume three. And why stop there? A glutton for more research resources, I checked for Charles McClellan, father to Job's future son-in-law George as well as witness to Job's will, and even another promising connection by the name of Andrew McClellan.

Now, all I have to do is actually find a library which contains all those volumes. If there's nothing closer, looks like that will be something to add to my to-do list for my next trip to Salt Lake City. I know there's a library there which can help...  

Where in the World was Job Tison?

 

Finding a validating census record may seem a commonplace ritual among those researching their family history. We have many finding aids to help us plug in a name and narrow the possibilities to just the right candidate—if we are researching our more modern ancestors. When it comes to seeking someone named Job Tison in 1790, we're facing an entirely different situation.

First, consider the liberties taken by the forerunners of our modern census enumerator. In 1790, an enumerator may have spelled such a man's name as Job, recalling the famed subject of the biblical tale of woe and endurance. Or he may have added an additional vowel to render the spelling Joab.

That's just for the given name. What about the surname? There is much to wiggle in the wiggle room there. When I first encountered records of my fourth great-grandfather, his surname was reported as Tyson, a surname spelling many readily recognize today. However, in other documents, Job's surname might be spelled as Tison, or even Teson.

Point well taken: be flexible with these early document searches, especially if looking at transcriptions rather than digitized originals.

So...if we open ourselves up to the possibility that our Job Tison could be anywhere in the fledgling nation of the United States in 1790, where might his name show up? Granted, this is a risky question to pose; the results to such a search could, theoretically, be overwhelming, and not very helpful. With that caveat, let's try our hand at such a search.

As it turns out, the only places where I could find any spelling variations for the name Job Tison were not in Georgia where he later resided, but in North and South Carolina. The entry in Pitt County, North Carolina—location of the home historically reported to be his origin—is no surprise to us, given what we've already discovered. However, the other result—in the Beaufort District of South Carolina, was unexpected, as was the lack of any entries for Georgia.

Let's take a look at these. First, the Beaufort entry. I found it interesting that there were two different entries for the Tison surname. Along with Job's—household with one "free white" male "of 16 years and upward" and one female—there was a replicated count for a man by the name of Aaron Tison, as well. I find that interesting, considering that our Job named his oldest son—at least the oldest one listed in his 1824 will—by that same name: Aaron. Perhaps this was a sign.

On the other hand, there was a listing for a "Joab Tyson" in the 1790 census for Pitt County, North Carolina, exactly where later history accounts indicated. That census entry also showed a two-person household: one male and one female. Along with the Joab Tyson entry, there were others listed on the same page, both Tysons and Tisons. In fact, there were several Tysons, as well as Tisons, throughout all of 1790 North Carolina.

Does that satisfy the contention that our Job Tison originated in Pitt County? I'm not quite ready to concede that, for several reasons. First, let's fast forward to the most recent decade in which we can find our Job Tison listed in the U.S. Census: for 1820. As it turns out, Pitt County happened to show that (presumably) same Joab Tyson—this time, spelled as Tison—in 1820. However, we already know our Job Tison was living—and about to be dying—in his home in Glynn County, Georgia, during that same enumeration, this time, listed as Job Tyson.

Yet another reason to doubt the Job Tison version appearing in North Carolina: although the 1790 census gathered names of heads of households sixteen years of age and older—and if our Job was born in 1770, he would certainly have shown as older than sixteen—he could very well have not been considered a head of household, if living with his parents or within another household.

The other consideration which holds me back from wholesale acceptance of the Pitt County theory is the report of Job's marriage to Sidnah Sheffield. Granted, I have no document to secure the date. The only record I have is a copy from a family Bible—and even that record entry was not contemporaneous with the event, itself, being embedded within entries for marriages as late as 1892 (the note immediately above Sidnah's wedding entry) and 1913 (the note immediately following her entry).

However, prior to Sidnah Sheffield's marriage to Job Tison in 1790—or whenever it was—she would theoretically be living in her father's household. So where was that? West Sheffield's name does not appear in the 1790 census—at least, that I can find—either in North Carolina or Georgia. The closest entries I could find were for two households of John "Shuffil"—junior and senior—in Moore County, North Carolina, and the home of a possibly widowed Elizabeth "Shuffield" and her six boys under sixteen in North Carolina's Duplin County. The latter county, according to an entry at Ancestry.com, included a signature ten years earlier on a petition to the General Assembly listed as West Shuffield. Though I'd prefer to see that on an original document than a transcription—much less a note about a record—I'll take that as a clue.

With all that exploration, I can't say anything conclusive yet, but I sure want to explore those North Carolina counties more closely for any sign of our Tison and Sheffield families.

How 'bout a Third Look?

 

The search for information on distant relatives—such as my quest to discover more of the biographical details of my fourth great-grandfather, Job Tison—becomes more complicated, the further back in time we reach. Given that Job Tison was born in 1770—where is the question, and to whom—we are stretching back quite a while, indeed.

Last Friday, we took a second look at what I've already entered in my genealogy database for Job Tison and his family. Thankfully, posting my research dilemmas online through the medium of a genealogy blog makes for some helpful crowdsourcing, and readers have risen to the challenge. Perhaps this is one way to remind us all to take a third look at resources as we grapple with our brick wall research questions.

In an email after Friday's post, fellow genea-blogger Charles Purvis of Carolina Family Roots advised me to widen my search by taking it to resources online like Google Books. And blogger Kathy Duncan of Porch Swings, Fireflies, and Jelly Jars suggested broadening the scope by looking "downstream" at possible published later-life recollections of Job's children or grandchildren, such as this brief bio of Job's son found in the February 19, 1879, Brunswick Advertiser.

There are indeed several other resources we can explore during the remainder of this month, but these helpful suggestions remind me that, in preparation, it would be helpful in that "third look" to review just what we already know about Job Tison's family.

In brief—and I'll share more as the week progresses—I have found that several researchers claimed Job Tison was "from" Pitt County, North Carolina. The problem is that none of the mentions of this detail seem to include documentation to verify that assertion. Worse, now that I've taken Kathy's advice in reading the article she mentioned, I see the Brunswick Advertiser stated back in 1879 that Job Tison—and, incidentally, his wife Sidnah Sheffield—were born "on the line of Virginia and North Carolina," yet that is certainly not an apt descriptor for the location of Pitt County.

True, that one biographical sketch for John Mason Berrien Tison featured details for just one of Job Tison's descendants. I have seven other Tison children's lives to explore—and undoubtedly, I've missed maybe one or two of the earliest of his children. Plus, going on the F.A.N. Club theory that Job Tison may well have shadowed his father-in-law's migration pathway, I can do likewise for Sidnah's father, West Sheffield and (especially) his many sons.

In the meantime, tomorrow we'll strike out to explore the possible census entries from the Virginia-North Carolina border southward to see whether there are any signs of either Job Tison or West Sheffield as early as the first census in 1790. If nothing else, that exercise will confirm or reject the reports that Job Tison had moved to Glynn County, Georgia, by the time he was fifteen.

Taking a Second Look

 

When stuck on a research question, as I am with my fourth great-grandfather Job Tison, it sometimes helps to go back and take a second look at all the documentation already gathered. When we focus on one specific research question—as I had in the past, when looking at Job Tison's probate case to examine the specific listing of slaves named in his records—unrelated details may fly by our eyes unnoticed. Sometimes, the very facts we are seeking now turn out to have been there all along. This time, looking with fresh eyes, we can sometimes unearth those details from their camouflaged position.

Now that I'm stuck on Job Tison's personal details—specifically, what documentation can I find to pinpoint where he came from in North Carolina, if those reports are indeed true—I'm more than willing to go back and check everything I've already gathered, in minute detail if necessary. And as I go, I'm thinking things through—for instance, with his timeline.

Supposedly, Job was born in 1770. And reports of his later life in Georgia portray him as having come there from Pitt County, North Carolina. But "coming from" and nativity are not always the same detail. All I know is that the man ended up raising a family in Georgia and leaving a messy probate case in Georgia's Glynn County which took decades and additional family deaths before it was resolved.

In my own record, Job's oldest child had shown as a daughter, Sidnah, who became part of my direct line upon her marriage to George Edmund McClellan and subsequent move to a new life in northern Florida. That is not exactly the case, however. Besides Sidnah—"Sidney," born about 1806—there was an older son, Aaron. But there was also an unnamed daughter listed in Job's will, a child who had predeceased her father—but not before marrying a man by the name of Carter and bearing him two children.

Those two children were remembered by name in their grandfather Job Tison's will. Thankfully, they can now be found by name in this transcription of Job's will, as well as another published abstraction of the same. The granddaughter, named Eliza, and her brother Job, named after his grandfather, were likely born to a Tison daughter named Naomi, who married a Matthew Carter in Wayne County, Georgia, on August 4, 1811.

Think about that for a moment. If Naomi Tison was married in 1811, she could likely have been born sometime around 1791 or a few years afterwards. Where did her parents live then? Could there have been additional children before Naomi, as well?

Looking back over other resources I had found in the past, I noticed this one entry in another of Job Tison's granddaughters' D.A.R. application summary. Unlike the others printed in the Lineage Book of D.A.R. charter members, this particular entry had neglected to include the simple letter "m" signifying "married" before a date published in the granddaughter's entry. Thus, the line concerning her grandparents read:

Granddaughter of Job Tison (1770-1824) and Sidnah Sheffield (1776-1855), his wife, 1790...

and then continued with the other ancestors in the D.A.R. member's line. Not seeing the "m" before "1790," my mind just glossed over the significance of that date.

So...if Job and Sidnah were married in 1790, where did that occasion take place? And were there any additional children born before the listing I now have, beginning with son Aaron's birth in 1803? A gap between the 1790 date of marriage and that of the birth of the first child I have listed (1803) seems unusual for that time period.

An insignificant mere letter like the missing "m" may not seem to you to be worth the attention I'm giving it. On the other hand, realizing that was the date of marriage, it now opens worlds to me in my quest to find an answer to my research question. Granted, since Sidnah Sheffield's father seemed already to be living in Georgia, the marriage likely occurred at that same location. But just in case, I'd like to trace not only where any earlier children might have been born, but any other sign of a household headed by someone with that name—Job Tison—anywhere besides his eventual home in Georgia.

 

Not Where They Found it

 

Footnotes are great for helping other researchers replicate the paper trail that led you to the family history answer you've been wrestling with for days (weeks, years). When it comes to noting an online resource, though, the troubles begin when URLs start shifting.

URLs—those online addresses with the unwieldy official title, "Uniform Resource Locators"—apparently can change over time, as webmasters rearrange the organization of their website. Clicking on a hyperlinked address is like magic: it can whisk you immediately to the location of a specific file—if, that is, the file hasn't since changed its address. Sometimes, though, the promised document other researchers might have told you about in the past is not where they found it anymore.

Keeping that URL address steady over time, no matter what, is like a gold standard, in my opinion. Of course, that's provided the specific online record we're seeking has been cited with a URL. In some cases, only the descriptor of the document set might be provided—and if that footnote's resource undergoes reorganization, well, there you go once again. Just because we find a footnote for the document we covet doesn't mean the document will still live at that same spot when we go to find it.

Take my fourth great-grandfather Job Tison's trail from, supposedly, North Carolina to Georgia. Since every mention of the Tison name seems to be coupled with a report on his father-in-law, Revolutionary War Patriot West Sheffield, I figured I'd add that name to my FAN Club research approach.

It might have seemed a stroke of luck to stumble upon an article mentioning West Sheffield's extensive estate papers in a 2017 post at Legacy Family Tree's blog, but alas, I couldn't replicate the footnote's way marker once I took it for a spin at FamilySearch.org. I did, however, locate the Sheffield will itself in the browse-only online collection. Sadly, none of the juicy details were in that part of the file, though—only the factual litany of descendants which, admittedly, does serve to help in the strictest genealogical sense.

None of that, however, serves to point me backwards in time to that mystery spot in North Carolina where West Sheffield was said to have originated. Nor did it help me, by any hint of association, discern where West Sheffield's daughter Sidnah might have pledged her troth to my Job Tison.

Fortunately, however, the Legacy Family Tree author was not the only one to willingly share resources. Once again, another Ancestry.com subscriber came to my rescue, posting a copy of the same marriage document which Michele Lewis had reported in the Legacy Family Tree Legacy News article. And in this case—thankfully—the researcher also noted the exact URL so I could find it at FamilySearch.org, too.

Of course, it's not the documented marriage woes of that other daughter of West Sheffield that I'm interested in, but merely a hope that something else in the apparently extensive file might provide me a clue as to his origin—or at least a tip regarding his family's complicated timeline that brought them from that unknown location in North Carolina to their final home in Wayne County, Georgia.

Now that I've found the spot, I'm in for a long season of reading up on all the details.

Becoming a FAN

 

A most useful concept in family history research techniques can be the "FAN" Club, an acronym representing the Friends, Associates, and Neighbors of our difficult to trace target ancestors. In the case of my fourth great-grandfather, I'm beginning to realize that his FAN Club may be just what I need to find the answer to my question, "Where in North Carolina was Job Tison born?"

Granted, we've already read one article which stated he was from Pitt County, North Carolina. But if Job Tison was born in 1770, it's a far stretch to simply take an author's word for the fact from a report penned in 1933. I'd like a bit more information on how that detail was garnered, thank you.

According to local historian Margaret Davis Cate's column in the July 7, 1933, Brunswick News, Job Tison arrived in Glynn County, Georgia, about 1785. That would mean he was only fifteen when he got there. Did he come alone? Probably unlikely, given his age. That's the first clue that I need to look around for others who might have been traveling partners.

I noticed the same article in the Brunswick News detailed the history of Job's eventual father-in-law, West Sheffield. Interestingly, West Sheffield also came from somewhere in North Carolina, but unlike Job, had settled in nearby Wayne County, Georgia.

Though D.A.R. records readily indicate that West Sheffield was born in North Carolina, they note his service in the Revolutionary War was in Georgia, not North Carolina. Indeed, one of Job Tison's granddaughters applied for D.A.R. membership, stating that her great-grandfather West Sheffield had served as a private from Wayne County, for which he was granted land bounty.

That same membership report includes a statement about West Sheffield's father, John, who also lived in Wayne County, Georgia, but was born in North Carolina, and had died back there in Duplin County, two counties removed from Pitt County. Could John Sheffield have been returning on business to his original home in North Carolina when he was stricken?

The connection both of these men had with North Carolina—both frustrating in its possible coincidental closeness and its stubbornly remaining anonymity—certainly calls for not only further research, but research of the deep kind of inspection perhaps not available online. Despite that, I took my question to Google to see if there was anything to be found on West Sheffield and Wayne County, Georgia.

There was. Of all the unexpected resources, I found an article posted by Michele Lewis in the Legacy Family Tree blog on September 11, 2017. The article itself was about tracing records from burned counties and focused on an example from Jackson County, Mississippi. I assure you, that is the farthest from my research goals I could think of at this point, so let's just say that was unexpected to find.

However, the story the author presented was an illustration of how records from one burned county may be found—at least in duplicated version—in a far removed county. In this case, the document under examination was a marriage verification belonging to another daughter of West Sheffield—who at the time was living in Mississippi, site of the burned courthouse—which ended up in West Sheffield's estate papers in Georgia. A digitized page from that record was included in the Legacy Family Tree article, and a footnote provided a resource online at FamilySearch.org.

Guess I'll be doing some serious reading of those estate papers, if I can actually find them online. Perhaps I'll be fortunate enough to find some slips of unexpected documentation, too. 

If No One Had Told Us

 

It is at times when I research ancestors like my fourth great-grandfather Job Tison that I become most aware of the fragility of family history. At some point, but for some weak link in the nexus between public history and the private nano-history of the common individual, if no one had told us the story, we would never have any way to know it. That thin line connecting generations can be so easily broken and disappear.

This is when I become so aware of how beholden I am to the other family story-tellers who heeded that calling to record what they personally knew. Whether they realized it or not, they became the nodes in this tenuous line who spoke up enough to be heard, who wrote down what they knew so it could be passed on.

Much of what I already know about Job Tison comes from such reports. If I'm lucky, some of the written material will come with scholarly footnotes and bibliographies—but I doubt it. Barring such academic road maps, I'll be left to rummaging through whatever archival material has not been burned in courthouse fires or blown up through the ravages of war, or washed out by the storming furies of nature.

In the meantime, I'm happy to trust what other researchers have passed along—a clipping shared by an Ancestry.com subscriber, or an enterprising blogger or an avid local historian. That, at least, is what I will start with, as we take this journey backward through time, beginning with the 1824 end of Job Tison's life in Glynn County, Georgia.

One such local historian compelled by the inner drive to "pass it on" was Margaret Davis Cate. Whoever she was—the website WorldCat provides her life timeline as 1888-1961—she was the writer to whom we can attribute the snippet an Ancestry member linked to the hints gleaned at that website for Job Tison.

The article shared at Ancestry continues the conversation we began yesterday about the Old Post Road in Georgia and the historic marker placed there in 1932 by the Brunswick Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. As it turns out, I was able to find a transcription of the article, which ran in The Brunswick News on July 7, 1933, shortly after the plaque was placed in a ceremony at the Old Post Road. (Though the transcription is freely available, after accessing the hosting website, glynngen.com, you need to perform your own search by pressing the Control plus F keys, then entering the surname Tison to locate it.)

The article, entitled "Old Post Road Historic Path," was indeed credited to local writer Margaret Davis Cate, and provided a history of the road and its surrounding area. From the column, we also learn that the tavern established by Job Tison and his wife, Sidnah Sheffield, was a wooden structure which, according to the author, was "perhaps the oldest wooden structure in this section" and, at least as of Ms. Cate's 1933 article, still standing.

While it was Job Tison's wife, Sidnah Sheffield, whose Patriot father West Sheffield gained more attention in the Brunswick News article—perhaps also the instigation for the DAR chapter to place the historic marker—the article did mention that Job Tison was from Pitt County, North Carolina, and that he arrived in Georgia about 1785. How the author substantiated that detail, I can't tell, but despite the lack of any scholarly attribution, I'm grateful for yet another one of those tenuous links and the desire of that one lone voice to be an instrument to "pass it on." These are the way-markers pointing us in at least a possible direction.

I realize through that Sheffield-Tison connection that there may be more to that link between Job's new home in Glynn County and his origin in North Carolina. We'll take a look at Job's in-laws tomorrow to see what we can learn.