The Slow Trip Down the Path to the Past

 

The verdict is in: spending weeks reading legal documents can slow down one's research progress. At least in the case of my family history goal for this month, the numbers have not sported their usual robust appearance. The path to Thomas Firth Rainey's parents may have finally yielded some of its previously-hidden answers, but that path has also led through some messy probate files. I am far from gathering all the details needed to take the next step.

All told, I did add 104 names to my mother's side of the family tree, mostly by working my way through the lines of descent from the collateral lines associated with these Rainey and Firth ancestors, and by examining DNA matches who tie into those same ancestral families. Granted, that was not bad for two weeks' research efforts—but I have seen better results. Right now, that family tree has a total of 41,908 documented individuals gleaned after well over a decade's work.

On the other side of the family, my in-laws' tree has stayed frozen in position for most of the past six months, now at 41,793 individuals. However, in less than a week, we will shift our focus to my mother-in-law's side of the family and begin work on that tree for April's research goal—though again, we will be working on ancestors removed from our current times by well over a century.

In the last few days of this month, we'll need to wrap up what can be finished of the court records regarding Isham Rainey and George Mealer and see whether any further details will add to this tally. Then, it will be time to draw up a summary report of what's been accomplished and use that to create a to-do list for the next time I tackle the Rainey and Firth family lines back in the Virginia colony where they first were found before the close of the eighteenth century. 

Vanishing Into the Gap

 

As exciting as it was yesterday to find mention of the paternal grandfather of my brick wall third great grandfather Thomas Firth Rainey, it barely took one more day for me to realize that finding anything more on this Rainey family may take far longer than just another evening's research. Wills may be the go-to resource for discovering more about our distant ancestors from the 1700s, but it takes a couple more generations before widespread documentation can carry us through the ages. What's happened with that Rainey family line—poof! In just a moment—is that it has vanished into the document gap between the earliest years of our nation and the 1850 census.

So far this month, we've discovered that Thomas Firth Rainey, my third great-grandfather, was son of Isham Rainey. Isham, in turn, was son of William Rainey of Brunswick County, Virginia. Finding William Rainey's 1812 will yesterday opened up new research possibilities for me by revealing the names of Isham's siblings: Mary, Martha, Elizabeth, William, Jesse, Herbert, and Zebulon.

Now that I've found those names, you know I've begun the search for those collateral lines of descent. After all, I have potential DNA cousins to place in the right family group. But do you think I've found any actual documentation for these siblings? Sadly, no—with the exception of some marriage records from the 1790s. Other than that, it seems like the entire family, other than Isham, has disappeared.

The problem that has presented itself at this point in the research is two-fold. On the one hand, there are researchers out there who have been puzzling over this family for decades. They have not been shy about sharing their speculations. And others have been more than willing to help themselves to those theories by pasting them into their public family trees, despite lack of documentation.

On the other hand, there is that gap I mentioned. Unless I can find where the (possibly) wandering Rainey descendants moved, I can't with certainty say I've found a will for any of the brothers. If any of those siblings died before the advent of the 1850 census with its listing of every resident in a household, I'll have no way to know that those are the right descendants for my Rainey line. It's that gap between the early 1800s and the 1850 census which has suddenly brought me to a standstill.

There is, however, one encouraging sign. In William Rainey's 1812 will, he mentioned several grandchildren, providing us a token sign that there were indeed marriages and families continuing the Rainey legacy. But other than one specific grandson, there is no mention of names for any of the others among his grandchildren. 

One, however, is better than none, so it will be worth our while to learn a bit about Benjamin L. Rainey to see if information gleaned there can lead us to any others in the extended Rainey family.   

Back to the Beginning

 

Sometimes, genealogy research seems to gain lightning speed, even after having been stymied for months, even years. That's what happened this month, with the discovery not only of Thomas Firth Rainey's parents, but then the revelation of his maternal grandparents and their children. Then, progress can just as quickly turn in the other direction, and that is where I'm stuck right now, unable to push back through that maternal Firth generation any farther.

Since I'm stuck on that detour to what was once the research path of least resistance, it may be a good time to turn back to the beginning of this month's research goal. After all, the goal for my Twelve Most Wanted for March was to find the parents of my third great-grandfather Thomas Firth Rainey. What about pushing further back on his paternal side?

We've already discovered that Thomas' father gifted us with an unusual given name, Isham. Also knowing that the Rainey and Firth families originated in Brunswick County, Virginia, I decided to see whether Isham himself might have been mentioned in the will of any other Raineys in Brunswick County.

Once again, FamilySearch.org's Full Text Search came to the rescue. There in Brunswick County, the will book contained a document signed by one William Rainey on September 30, 1812. In his testament, which was presented in court on April 24, 1815, William Rainey named his wife Mary, along with his daughter, also named Mary; another daughter, Martha; a married daughter, Elizabeth Edmunds; his sons William, Jesse, Herbert, Zebulon, and, of course, Isham. In addition, the will acknowledged several grandchildren.

If we've gone back to the point at which we started this month, we now have plenty to work with in also pushing Thomas Firth Rainey's paternal line back two more generations. Not bad for one month's exploration.

Hinting About Marriage

 

There will always be complications encountered by those pushing back through the generations in search of their family's history. That, at least, has become the case with Polly Firth, sister of my fourth great-grandmother Sally Firth. If she wasn't married twice, as one record I just found seems to indicate, then she has a name twin. I need to determine which one is the case for my ancestral line.

No sooner had I located a marriage record for Polly in her home county of Brunswick in Virginia than up popped an alternate proposal. On its face, it seemed likely that Polly Firth might have been married twice. A closer look, however, steers me clear of such an assumption. Here's what showed up as I searched for details on Polly's life.

First was a hint at Ancestry.com, indicating that Polly was married to someone named John Burch. To top that off, the record supposedly also contained the clincher that Polly was daughter of someone named Thomas Firth. Yes, I agreed, both my fourth great-grandmother Sally and her sister Polly were daughters of someone named Thomas Firth.

Following that hint was another. This time, the resource was a page gleaned from a book called Related Royal Families. This two-volume genealogy was compiled by Marilu Burch Smallwood and published in 1966. The book can be found at the FamilySearch Library. As a copy of the book was also scanned by the University of Virginia and can be digitally searched through Hathi Trust, it is fairly easy to access.

The Ancestry hint dropped me squarely at the top of page 154, where the first sentence asserts: "John Burch Jr. born 1758 died 1796 married Polly Firth." The entry goes on to explain that a transcription of Brunswick County marriage records had indicated that Polly Firth, daughter of Thomas, had been married to John Burch on May 30, 1782.

Indeed, there were other Ancestry hints providing transcriptions of this same assertion. Fortunately, some of those hints included the "FHL Film Number" which could lead me directly to a digitized copy of that same Brunswick County record from 1782. Naturally, I wanted to check that out.

Copying the film number, I logged on to my account at FamilySearch.org, clicked the "Search" tab to select "Records" from the drop-down menu, scrolled down the page to select "More Options." That opened up a new dialog box, where I zoomed straight to the option near the bottom, "Add Record Options." I selected the wordiest choice, "film/fiche/image group number (DGS)," and pasted the FHL Film Number I had gleaned from the Ancestry hint.

Up came an option, into which I entered the names I was seeking. Sure enough, it led me to a May 30, 1782, marriage record for John Burch and Polly Firth. And Polly's father was entered as Thomas Firth, just as the Ancestry hint had noted.

But could this be right? Could this actually be our Polly Firth, daughter of Thomas? How many father-daughter pairs of the same name could there be in a county of, at the time, twelve thousand people?

I couldn't say why, but something seemed off about this record. I decided to retrace my steps and review all the information I had gleaned about Polly and the Firth family. After all, despite lack of all the usual documentation we rely on for finding family later in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, what little I had already found included a few pertinent details.

The first record was the 1794 will of Polly's father, Thomas Firth. In that will, as I've already noted, all the Firth daughters were listed by their maiden names with the exception of one: Betsey Rawlings. If Polly had married John Burch in 1782, her father would have listed her by her married name, since he drew up his will subsequent to that wedding—even if her husband had died before her father's wishes were set to writing. She was, however, entered simply as Polly B. Firth.

There was, however, a second issue which surfaced as I reviewed the documents I had found. In the later marriage record for Polly, in which she was married to Howell Duggar in December of 1795, a note inserted in the record stated that on that date, Polly was twenty one years of age. If so, that would fix her year of birth at about 1774. Someone born during that year would only have been eight years of age in 1782, when our Polly supposedly married this John Burch. If, jumping back to the Smallwood genealogy, John Burch's wife had a son named Bazell in 1786, our Polly as his mother would have been twelve years of age—an unlikely scenario.

What seemed like an easy-to-accept suggestion from Ancestry turns out to be, at best, the case of name twins. Yes, finding two daughters in the same locale named Polly claiming a dad named Thomas Firth may seem to be a stretch, but apparently in Brunswick County, Virginia, it is far more likely that that was so, than that an eight year old child was given in marriage, even if it was to a descendant of royalty.

Digging Into the Duggars

 

After finding a document regarding an exchange of property which named several children of Thomas Firth, my fifth great-grandfather, I was curious about one couple who didn't seem to fit into that profile. That couple was Howell Duggar and his wife Mary. Based on the pattern which seemed to be emerging from the connections in that document, I wondered about the possibility that Howell Duggar's wife might be another one of Thomas Firth's daughters.

Admittedly, contained among the signatures at the bottom of the indenture was one woman who signed her name as Polly Duggar, not Mary, as was named in the text of the legal record. Since Polly has traditionally been used as a nickname for Mary, regardless of the variance, I thought that was still a promising sign. 

Thanks to FamilySearch.org's Full Text Search, it didn't take long to uncover a marriage record from the Firth family's home location, Brunswick County, Virginia. The date on that record was December 21, 1795—about a year and a half after Thomas Firth had signed his own last will naming Polly Firth as one of his daughters.

The marriage register indicated specifically—and in quotes—that by the point of her marriage, Polly was "21 years of age."  On that December day in 1795, Polly was to become the wife of Howell Duggar, revealing the connection that had later included his name in the property exchange we had seen yesterday.

In 1799, as Thomas Firth's executor, Aaron Brown, wrapped up distributions from the Firth estate, Howell Duggar's name was once again mentioned, along with the husbands of Thomas' other daughters. And yet, as clear as those records may seem to be, there was one problem caused by these discoveries: there are other indicators showing that Polly Firth, daughter of Thomas, had been married before this point to someone by a different name.

Guess that means it's time to take a closer look at those other documents.

Clustering Together

 

In looking up documents regarding brick wall ancestors, eventually we get to a point where we start to notice we've been seeing the same names appearing together, time after time. That realization is worth paying attention to, for it is quite typical for people—friends, associates, neighbors, for instance—to cluster together when facing big decisions in life. This, as one might say, could be a clue.

I was ecstatic when I finally broke through the records impasse to discover the parents of my third great-grandfather Thomas Rainey. Following rapidly on that long-awaited discovery was another: Thomas Rainey's mother's name, Sally Firth, appeared in her father's will. Almost instantly, I had a new set of names of collateral lines to research for DNA purposes.

And then I got stuck. Again.

Sally Firth's sister Elizabeth apparently married Randolph Rawlings. The many permutations of her husband's given name prompted me to see what I could find on Elizabeth's husband, regardless of what his name might have been.

That's when I discovered some documents of interest. Maddening in that the main court record actually left blanks where key dates should have been inserted in the first document I discovered, I hung on to it based simply on a hunch. That hunch was that the names listed in the record might signify more of a connection than just any names in a random list.

The record began, "This indenture made the ___ day of ____ Eighteen hundred + one between...."

Then followed a listing of names, somewhat confusing due to lack of commas. Included in the list were:

• Thomas Firth and Nancy his wife
• Randolph Rawlings and Eliza B his wife
• Howell Duggar and Mary his wife
• Isham Rainey and Sally his wife
• Henry Abernathy and Rebeckah his wife

Those listed in that group represented one party in a legal exchange, with someone named William Firth being the second party. For exchange of ninety pounds "lawfull money" the above party released to William Firth a certain tract of land in Brunswick County, Virginia, containing about 125 acres.

This past week, when I had first discovered Rebecca Firth's marriage to Henry Abernethy—the family's  surname was often misspelled in records as Abernathy—I tried tracing the couple's descendants, mainly to help with placing DNA matches.

The Abernethy family was said to have moved from Virginia to Tennessee. Though I had little luck locating the family in other pre-1850 records, one detail I did notice while chasing these Abernethys was the recurrence of the surname Duggar. This was a surname which I couldn't connect with the family, but the frequency of the pairing told me there might be something to the connection that I needed to know.

Since then, I worked on another Firth daughter's line, that of Elizabeth, who we've since discovered became wife of Randolph Rawlings. That couple, too, appeared in this list. Of course, Isham Rainey, father of my third great-grandfather Thomas Rainey, had married another Firth sibling, Sarah, known as Sally Firth. And Thomas Firth, junior, as we discover from this legal document, must have married someone named Nancy.

With all the couples but one containing relatives connected to this same Firth family, could that mean the Duggars were also family members? Could Mary Duggar (in her signature at the bottom of the document showing as Polly) have been a sister of Rebecca, Elizabeth, Sally, and the younger Thomas Firth? If the principle of cluster genealogy holds true, it's worth checking out that possibility. It's time to examine a few more documents.

Given Under our Hands This Day

 

FamilySearch.org's Full Text Search is becoming my new best friend. When it comes to researching those hard-to-find ancestors from centuries past, the best place—sometimes the only place—to find mention of those near-invisible relatives is in court records. Yes, those tedious-to-read, overly wordy, illegible handwritten documents buried in back rooms of courthouses can bring us exactly the details we're seeking on our kin—if we can find the right records. And Full Text Search can zero in on the most reasonable possibilities.

As we wade through flowery phrases like "In the name of God, Amen," that open pages-long documents, or search for concluding statements such as "given under our hands this day," just to uncover the date confirming we've found the right person's record, our exhausted eyes are rewarded by the goldmine we are chasing. Sure, the handwriting may frustrate us, and the length of documents may weary us, but the good news is that we have it so much better than those family historians who went before us. The computerized digitizing process and transcribing AI systems have now made this process possible in a snap.

For this month, that is excellent news for me. Ever since discovering that I could break through my brick wall and find my third great-grandfather Thomas Rainey's parents' names, it's been far easier to continue down this path beyond that brick wall. I've started working on Thomas Rainey's maternal grandparents back in Brunswick County, Virginia, then branched out to their children, Thomas' aunts and uncles on the Firth side of the family.

We've already started work following the descendants of one Firth sister, Rebecca, who married Henry Abernethy. Then, the next attempt was to decipher the name of another sister's husband, supposedly listing Elizabeth Firth's spouse in one document as "Randle" Rawlings.

I took that question about "Randle" to Full Text Search at FamilySearch.org and played with the possibilities. Searching first for "Randle," some spelling alternatives popped up, beginning with "Randal." Pretty soon, another alternative was offered up at Full Text Search: the more reasonable Randolph.

I didn't want to presume that that was the actual name at first, as I didn't want to mislead the search process by jumping to that conclusion. Doing so might have caused me to miss some other possibilities. But with patience, I noticed that Randle and even Randal seemed to lead nowhere, no matter which keywords I combined with those options.

It was easy to eliminate those other options, even though they popped up in actual documents. The more reasonable option, Randolph Rawlings, soon took the lead with a preponderance of search results. And despite missing some key documents I'd like to see—a will, for instance—the documents Full Text Search offered up turned out to paint a useful picture, indeed.

In particular, one document started me on a new research path with its concluding statement, "Given under our hands this 9th day of January 1828." Following Elizabeth Firth Rawlings from that document's date uncovered an entire cluster of possible family members and business associates of her by-then deceased husband Randolph Rawlings—a project to piece together over the next few remaining days of this month's research project.

Clawing Through Another Brick Wall

 

As often happens in genealogy research, one long-awaited breakthrough precipitates others. Whereas before, that brick wall seemed impenetrable, now it becomes a matter of simply clawing our way through the next brick wall. The research is still tedious, but it's no longer at a standstill.

After having discovered the will for my brick wall third great-grandfather Thomas Rainey's maternal grandfather, of course I was elated—until I realized all the work that awaited at this next iteration. For a man whose last testament was signed in 1794—leaving all but one of his daughters still unmarried—slow progress was understandable. Yes, women back then could be nearly invisible, but documentation on anyone was hard to come by.

I did follow the lines of descent for one sibling of my fourth great-grandmother Sally Firth: her sister Rebecca, wife of Henry Abernethy (and conveniently the mother of a widely known Methodist preacher in Alabama). Even so, trying to identify the lesser-known siblings in that family's next generation has been, so far, beyond my reach.

Today, I explored another Firth daughter, at least far enough to discover some documentation on her own marriage. This daughter, "Betsey" in her father's will, was the only one listed there by her married name, Rawlings. Fortunately, a line item in a ledger of Brunswick County, Virginia, marriages showed an "Eliza" Firth marrying someone entered in the record as "Randle" Rawlings. An additional note in the 1784 ledger identified the bride's father as Thomas Firth, to assure us we had found the right one.

Granted, my question at this point is: was that husband's name actually Randle? Or are we once again witnessing some creative record keeping? I'll follow this line as long as I can to see what else might be uncovered from those early American records. In the process, perhaps that, too, will explain some distant cousin DNA matches.

Where There's a Will . . .

 

Succeeding with this month's research project to find the names of my third great-grandfather Thomas Rainey's parents—Isham Rainey and Sally Firth—I've since gone beyond that and found mention of Sally's name in her father's will. With wills being what they are—and since I also am using DNA to connect the dots between distant cousins—I couldn't pass up the chance to take a closer look at that earlier generation. After all, where there's a will, there's a chance I can find a mention of the entire family.

Sally Firth, wife of Isham Rainey, was apparently daughter of Thomas Firth and his wife, also named Sally. It was not hard, once the original document pointed me back to Brunswick County, Virginia, to locate Thomas Firth's 1794 will. From there, a reading of the simple will provided the names of Sally Firth Rainey's surviving siblings, something I'd like to review today.

The elder Thomas Firth first named his sons in his will, beginning with son William, then mentioning his namesake son, Thomas Firth junior. Then the document moved to the daughters, beginning with Polly B. Firth, then Betsey B. Rawlings, Sally Firth, and last, the youngest daughter, Rebekah Firth.

Since the senior Thomas Firth would have been my fifth great-grandfather, his relationship was still within range to yield some possible DNA matches—slim connections, but there, nonetheless.

Now that I have those names of the elder Thomas Firth's children, I'll be working on the lines of each of these descendants to see whether I have any DNA matches among those collateral lines. You never know when a detail discovered while exploring a sibling's line might reveal the answer to a fact about our own direct line that may have had us stumped up to this point.

Sally Firth

 

Ever since the 1980s, there has been a comic strip featuring a title I love: "Sally Forth." The title itself is a play on words, calling to mind the phrase which essentially means to launch out on an adventure. How apropos it has been to discover, in this month's research adventure, that the ancestor whose parents I've been chasing through centuries-old documents turns out to have a mother who claimed a slightly-morphed version of that same "Sally Forth" name. Only, in this case, her name was Sally Firth.

It was earlier this month, in slogging through mind-numbingly tedious court documents, that we discovered Thomas Firth Rainey's mother was named Sarah Firth. Yet, since one nickname often used for the given name Sarah has been Sally, that is exactly how I found her name documented in yet another court document. 

This time, her name appeared in an even older record, that of the will of her father, drawn up in Brunswick County, Virginia, in June of 1794. His name? Thomas Firth, providing a fuller explanation of just how my third great-grandfather received his own name. Not only did his middle name reflect his mother's maiden name, but his full name clearly linked him to his maternal grandfather, who likely died the very month that my third great-grandparent's parents were married.

So far for this month's research goal, we've discovered the names of Thomas Firth Rainey's parents—and now, the identity of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Firth. In addition, the will revealed that the elder Thomas was married to a woman also identified as Sally.

Whether the senior Sally was mother of the younger Sally, I can't tell, but the pull of the identical names lends credibility to that possibility. Since we've got quite a bit more time to pursue this research project for this month, perhaps that will become clearer before we need to move on to April's challenge. 

Revisiting Virginia

 

Over fifty years after the fact, Thomas F. Rainey reported that he had been born in the state of Virginia. While the sole location of any documents I had been able to find for this third great-grandfather of mine had been the state of Georgia, where he had married his wife and raised his family, I've now been able to connect him to someone who had died in Mississippi. But Virginia? What were my chances for finding Thomas by searching through an entire state?

The 1850 census showed that Georgia resident Thomas Rainey had reported his age to have been fifty three at that time. Hence, a birth year of approximately 1797, right? At that point, Virginia's population would have been around eight hundred thousand. What were my chances of finding him in a crowd that size?

I decided to look, anyhow. But not for Thomas, himself. Instead, I tried my hand at searching for his father whose gift—at least to me—was the more unusual name Isham.

One item that stood out for me in that quixotic search was a marriage entry in a Virginia ledger preserved from Brunswick County. Dated July 31, 1794, it named Isham "Raney" as the groom. Granted, I still had my doubts that he would be the only person with that name among eight hundred thousand residents. But seeing the name of the bride made all the difference.

Her name? Sarah Firth. The very name represented by the middle initial "F" in Thomas Rainey's own name.

Image above: Line item entry from the Brunswick County, Virginia, marriage ledger as transcribed by The Virginia State Library; image courtesy of FamilySearch.org.   

Getting to Georgia

 

If the goal this month is to research a family which had originally lived in Virginia, how did they get to Georgia?

Though we are barely into the month of March and the third of my Twelve Most Wanted research topics—Thomas Firth Rainey—I can already see that while this third great-grandfather may have spent his adult life raising a family in Georgia, he claimed to have been born in Virginia. What made a young resident of one of the leading locations of the nascent United States decide to move elsewhere?

On the surface, the reason might seem to do with Thomas Rainey's choice of a bride, for he married a Georgia-born woman by the name of Mary Elizabeth Taliaferro. But even her maiden name told me that this, too, was a family name known for its roots in Virginia.

As it turns out, that connection between the Raineys and the Taliaferros may have revealed only a small part of a larger circle of Virginians who all decided to head south to Georgia. That migration may have reached back to the days of the American Revolutionary War, when support for colonial military action was weaker in Georgia than in the other American colonies. Some of the early recruits sent to serve in Georgia were actually from Virginia. The second Georgia regiment formed in 1776, for instance, was comprised of eight companies of men from Virginia.

Whether any men from the Rainey family were among those recruits, I can't yet say, though I do know that a Taliaferro relative of Thomas' future wife did serve in Georgia. After the war, though, a small group of Virginian Continental soldiers returned to Georgia, remembering that they liked what they had seen there. They petitioned the legislature for a grant of 200,000 acres, which was provided upon the condition that two hundred families would be brought into the settlement.

That group of settlers arrived and claimed land in the Broad River valley, a location which, before 1790, was part of Wilkes County. Beginning in 1790, Wilkes County was divided to form a number of smaller counties. Among those newer counties was Oglethorpe County, the same county where, in 1818, Thomas Rainey took Mary Elizabeth Taliaferro as his bride.

Was the Rainey family part of that migration of two hundred Virginia families to Georgia after the Revolution? I can't yet say, but I do know that Mary Elizabeth's extended Taliaferro family was among those Broad River settlers. It may be possible that that was the same reason that drew Thomas Rainey's family to the area as well. If I can find census records, land records, or even tax records for that area during that time period, it may help to locate any families there claiming that same Rainey surname.

When There Isn't Much to Go By

 

Beggars can't be choosers, as the saying goes. When there isn't much to go by, we must take what we can get. In the case of my fourth great-grandfather Thomas Rainey, he didn't leave much of a paper trail. That, however, is understandable; this pre-Civil War resident of Georgia may likely have been one of the many southern residents whose records subsequent to his death were destroyed by fire, flood, or even wartime casualties.

There are a few clues we can go by, however—weak leads, but possibilities, nonetheless. Keeping in mind my role as the Genealogy Guinea Pig, I'm willing to test any theory.

After searching hopelessly for more documentation—side note: reading court records can put you to sleep at any time of day—I decided to take a cue from some of the names in Thomas Rainey's own family.

First on my list was the patriarch, himself. Written in the records I found as "Thomas F. Rainey," I wondered what the "F." could mean. Though none of the documents I already located divulged the answer to that question, I did notice two clues. One was the fact that his namesake son was called Thomas Firth Rainey, as was that man's son after him. The other was that, apparently, other family members among Find a Grave volunteers had inserted that information on Thomas' own memorial on that website. Firth might be a clue worth keeping in mind.

If I couldn't find anything from that first clue, I could take a more indirect route and trace Thomas' wife. After all, the two of them would have met up somewhere. What was their connection? Finding the history of Thomas' wife Mary might give us a more well-rounded picture.

However, relying on the marriage record itself to guide us in finding Thomas' in-laws would not be a wise move. The minister, Nicholas Powers, had entered Mary's maiden name as "Talafero." Her real family name, as it turned out, was Taliaferro—as we have already seen from her baby daughter's impossibly long name, Mary Elizabeth Warren Taliaferro Rainey. Why the minister couldn't get Mary's maiden name right is beyond me; at about the same time as Reverend Powers performed the ceremony for the young Rainey couple, he himself married the new Mrs. Rainey's widowed mother, Mrs. Mary Taliaferro.

If that detail doesn't sound complicating enough, it is important to know that the young Rainey couple named their first son Warren Taliaferro Rainey, after Mary Taliaferro Rainey's father. And when that son died young in his twenties, the couple must have decided to name a subsequent child by that same name in order to honor Mrs. Rainey's deceased father. The only problem was that that next child turned out to be a daughter, not a son.

With all of that family detail—even if much of it was about the in-laws—we may have enough to search for the nexus between the two families. And that nexus might lie buried in the details of what convinced a number of colonial Virginia families to move the distance to the borderlands of Georgia. 

The Stated Goal — And Then Some

 

Work on last month's research plan got me thinking it was a productive month. Now that it's time for my biweekly count, we'll get to see just how busy that month actually was.

Truth be told, I wasn't solely working on my stated goal for the first of my Twelve Most Wanted in January; I had some side projects also clamoring for attention. Thanks to some open-ended questions from last year when I muddled over my father's Polish ancestry, I've still been working on all my Zegarski connections from Czarnylas in Pomerania. That is mostly due to a collaboration with a distant DNA cousin who is also pursuing those Zegarski roots.

Another side project has been thanks to a recent phone call from my husband's niece, who had several questions about specific family lines. A long talk—and an invitation sent for her to view my in-laws' family tree for herself—prompting me to revisit that work, myself. I just couldn't help myself; I ended up adding a few more details to that tree, resulting in an increased count for my in-laws' tree, despite that project not being scheduled until this spring.

The main focus in January, though, has been in building out the family line of my fifth great-grandfather, John Carter of Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Granted, as I build out those lines to the present time, some branches extend towards sixth and seventh great-grandchildren for those families whose generations aren't quite so long as my own branch has tended to be.

While that is a work still in progress—and will be for a long time to come—the numbers are encouraging. The Carter branch stretched to take in 274 additional descendants of John Carter and his (likely) three wives. My tree now has a total of 41,311 documented individuals included.

On the other side of the equation, my in-laws' tree—which should have stayed stock still until April—gained an additional fifteen people, just from that one unexpected conversation with a niece. That tree now contains documentation for 41,752 family members.

Yet to come will be the impact from another joyful announcement, this time from my own niece, who just texted me the news that her application for membership to the Mayflower Society has been accepted. Time to get busy and put in an application on my own behalf—which, of course, will find me adding more collateral lines for that branch of the family, as well.

The main focus for this new month, however, will be to stick with my plan for the second of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026. This month's research direction came through a delightful in-person discovery at our own local society meeting last fall, leading to some conversations which inspired my decision to do more in-person classes and events for our local genealogy scene. We'll talk about that tomorrow, as I introduce my brick wall ancestor from colonial North Carolina, Job Tison. 

End of Another Messy Month

 

The month is out, but not the messy project I had planned for January. Perhaps it's a rule: in genealogy, we always bite off more than we can chew, but we don't always realize that predicament at the first bite. Choosing to outline the descendancy of John Carter's two, possibly three, wives couldn't possibly be a project that would fit into thirty one days.

As this often happens for those Twelve Most Wanted projects, at the end of the month I still have far more work to do on the Carters of Virginia. At this stopping point, as usual, I'll outline what still needs to be done for the next time I pick up this research question.

The overarching goal was to seek out those lines of descent which would follow the matriline leading back to John Carter's two documented wives, Sarah Kenyon and Hannah Chew. That would mean charting the daughters of the daughters of those two Carter wives. The goal—in case this project could ever become a viable reality—would be to find eligible descendants willing to take a mitochondrial DNA test to help trace back to the specific Carter wives. I am far from done with that work, meaning that this will be a task to continue behind the scenes.

As I went through this process during January, I noticed one detail. Just as genealogist George Harrison Sanford King had observed in researching the line of descent from first Carter wife Sarah Kenyon—that the Kenyon surname kept appearing as a family name in subsequent Carter generations—I saw the same repetition for the Carter wife for whom marriage records have been elusive. That wife was said to have been named Elizabeth Armistead, and for her likely descendants, that Armistead name seems to appear quite frequently over the generations. Completing the matrilineal line of descent for the supposed Armistead offspring may help clarify that question—though it will also call for examination of the family names which may have been inherited from the other, non-Carter, side of their family.

In the future, the mainstay of this continued research will be a thorough examination of court records for generations to come, in some cases the only way to find mention of the names in each Carter child's own family. This, too, will be a process requiring much time—although the help of technology through such conveniences as FamilySearch's Full Text Search will help expedite this exercise. It will also be a project which requires us to trace some family members as they moved away from their childhood home in Virginia to settle in other states.

For now, we'll close the books on John Carter's family and our exploration of what can be found of his colonial Virginia home and neighborhood in Spotsylvania County. It's time to step into a new month, and the second of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026. 

A Matrilineal Mainstay

 

Though we may have struck out yesterday in our review of possible matrilineal lines of descent for the wives of John Carter of colonial Virginia, there are three Carter daughters yet to review before we close out this month's research project. Those three daughters, all born to John Carter's final wife, Hannah Chew, were: Margaret Chew Carter, Lucy Carter, and Elizabeth Matilda Carter. Our quest is to follow the lines of these Carter daughters' daughters.

Starting today with Margaret Chew Carter, we find an encouraging possibility: this Carter daughter may apparently become our matrilineal mainstay, for she had four daughters of her own. Following Margaret Chew Carter's marriage to Zachariah Taliaferro, the couple welcomed in Sarah Ann, Lucy Hannah, Mary Margaret, and Caroline Virginia.

The good news is that each of those daughters eventually went on to marry and have children of their own.  Sarah Ann married Ozey Robert Broyles and together they raised a large family, including two daughters: Margaret Cornelia and namesake daughter Sarah Ann. But the genealogy happy dance stops right there. Margaret Cornelia, wife of Samuel Maverick van Wyck, produced four children—but the one daughter in that family died before reaching five years of age. And while her sister Sarah Ann went on to marry William Dickson Williams, her three daughters appear to have all died unmarried and childless.

That, however, was the result of my search through only the first of Margaret Chew Carter's four daughters. I'm still in the process of reviewing the lines of descent for her second daughter, Lucy Hannah, who became wife of David Sloan Taylor. For Lucy, her large family included three daughters. Likewise for her sister Mary Margaret, wife of Richard Franklin Simpson, for whom at least one daughter had daughters of her own.

I'll continue working my way through this line of descent from Margaret Chew Carter. I find myself cheering, each time I discover a daughter had daughters of her own—fervently hoping that matriline continues down to the present time.

There are a lot of reasons to hope for the matriline of Margaret Chew Carter. If we look beyond her family to those of her remaining sisters, we don't see many good signs. Margaret Chew Carter's younger sister, Lucy, became second wife of Burton Taliaferro, brother to Margaret Chew Carter's husband Zachariah, but Lucy had no children at all. And the youngest Carter daughter, Elizabeth Matilda, apparently died young and unmarried.

While the hope may be to find enough Carter descendants interested in and willing to participate in a mitochondrial DNA test, charting these lines of matrilineal descent may prove to eliminate any chances of exploring just how many wives John Carter actually had, and what their identities might have been. Granted, the final node in each line of descent—the eligible mtDNA test volunteers—can be either sons or daughters, but the catch is that, from that point up the line, each generation needs to be represented by a woman who was a direct matrilineal descendant of one of John Carter's wives.

There still is a long way to go before that tree outlining the possible test candidates is complete. This weekend, reviewing my biweekly count will tell the tale on progress on this Carter line. While I keep hoping for family lines which have "daughtered out," it will certainly be helpful to have outlined the entire line of Carter descendants, both sons and daughters.

The Girls' Team Strikes Out

 

If my search for matrilineal descendants of my fifth great-grandfather John Carter's wives were a baseball game, I'd say we are about to head into the ninth inning, and the girls' team just struck out.

After reviewing the family line of Carter daughter Sarah, wife of William Sutton, I thought it might be handy to simply skip over the next daughters and head straight to the other Carter daughter who also happened to marry a Sutton family member. That would be Judith Carter, third daughter of Hannah Chew, the wife who survived John Carter.

Judith and her husband, Joseph Sutton—who, incidentally, was brother of Sarah Carter's husband William Sutton—had four children. Of those four, only one was a daughter: Maria Chew Sutton. According to the 1941 Suttons of Caroline County, Virginia, this Maria was born in 1790. By 1811, she had married her double first cousin, John Carter Sutton, son of her Carter aunt, Sarah, and her Sutton uncle, William. The marriage didn't last long. After giving birth to her only son, John Oliver Sutton, Maria apparently died within the subsequent year. Strike one.

Well, I guess I should have stuck with protocol and continued the line of Carter daughters by age ranking. So, back we go to Sarah Carter's next youngest sister, Margaret, the last of the daughters said to have been born to John Carter's wife Elizabeth Armistead, the wife whose missing documentation I've been puzzled by. At first glance, though, we can easily see that when this mom came to bat, she'd easily be strike two: to her husband, John Marshall, Margaret bore several children, all of whom were sons.

At this point, we move on to Mary Beverley Carter, the oldest child of John Carter's final wife, Hannah Chew. Mary Beverley became wife of D.A.R. Patriot Richard Stevens. At this point, I didn't quite realize I was about to face up to strike three, since Mary Beverley claimed at least three surviving daughters: Lucy Carter Stevens, Mary Chew Stevens, and Judith M. Stevens.

Of those three possibilities, though, I have yet to find confirming documentation. It appears that Lucy Carter Stevens never married. Mary Chew Stevens did marry, and bore her husband, Samuel Winston, one son and one daughter—but as far as I can find, that daughter never married. And all I can find for the third daughter, Judith, was one son. Until more research unearths the tell-all documents I've been seeking, we'll have to concede that Mary Beverley Carter's progeny did indeed represent strike three.

Not to worry, though, for there are yet three more Carter daughters to review tomorrow in the final inning of this month's project for my Twelve Most Wanted of 2026.

 

Following the Trailblazer: Trust, but Verify

When moving into new territory, it helps to have a trailblazer lead the way. That thought, however, comes with caveats. Is the trailblazer reliable? Someone who deserves our trust? Can the guide's assertions be verified? When following a trailblazer, at least of the genealogical kind, adopt the motto: "Trust, but verify."

Continuing our whirlwind tour of the daughters of John Carter, my fifth great-grandfather, our next child to consider is Sarah. For pursuit of this daughter, our efforts may be hampered by a few factors. The first is that, according to one published book on the Carter genealogy, her mother was reported to be Elizabeth Armistead, of whose marriage to John Carter I haven't yet found any record. The second detail is that Sarah's name didn't appear in a subsequent legal document regarding the Carter children from 1818, suggesting her death prior to that point.

Still, there is much to learn about Sarah Carter. She had married William Sutton sometime before 1780, bearing him several children, three of whom were daughters representing the matriline of one of John Carter's wives. As to that matrilineal founder of Sarah's line, though, the question may be whether it was Elizabeth Armistead or someone else. 

Perhaps fortunate for us—although such a plan doesn't always turn out as neatly as hoped—Sarah's marriage into the Sutton family earned her a spot in one published volume from 1941, The Suttons of Caroline County, Virginia, compiled by Trible Dix Sutton. By virtue of that report—and entries in the book of the generations to follow Sarah Carter—we now have one researcher's idea of how the generations unfolded. The plan, then, is to use this book as a trailblazer and trace Sarah's line, confirming the reports on each subsequent generation through documents available online.

Three details of interest stand out as I begin this process of tracing the line of William Sutton and Sarah Carter. The first is that, from what I've found of Sarah's three daughters so far, she was blessed with at least seven granddaughters—of keen interest to us in this matrilineal project. Secondly, among Sarah's sons was the very relative whose Carter family stories had such an influence on the Joseph Lyon Miller book on the Carter genealogy. The third detail, becoming obvious as I move through the lines of Sarah's grandchildren and beyond, is that the family name "Armistead" appears on a regular basis.

Much as was the case for the first of John Carter's wives, Sarah Kenyon—who, though forgotten in one major Carter genealogy, saw her maiden name echoed in subsequent generations—Sarah Carter Sutton's mother, if she was indeed Elizabeth Armistead as Joseph Lyon Miller asserted, may have been memorialized in the repeated use of the Armistead surname. Of course, this could be attributed to an Armistead ancestor on the Sutton side of the family equation, but it reminds me to keep watching for any further signs of that surname.

For now, with the time remaining for this research project so short, we'll continue tomorrow with another of John Carter's daughters. Behind the scenes, though, I will be confirming the suggested lines of descent of Sarah Carter and William Sutton by linking each individual to supporting documentation. This first project of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026 has become far more than could be handled in one short month. We will likely revisit this multi-generation project again in another year.

Following the Descendant Trail

 

Working our way through the lines descending from my fifth great-grandfather, John Carter, one detail is apparent: he had a lot of daughters. That, as it turns out, suits my purposes just fine, as I'd like to lay out a diagram of those lines of descent from the daughters of John Carter's daughters. To be more specific, I'm seeking to outline the matrilineal descent of John Carter's wives—whether there were two wives, or three.

Right now, I'm working on those Carter daughters for whom the mother's identity was unclear. Some attribute those daughters' line to be children of Elizabeth Armistead—although I'm in plenty of company when I say I have yet to find confirmation of John Carter's marriage to anyone of that name. 

Since this is the last week of the month and time is running short for this first selection of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026, I am "speed dating" my way through the remainder of John's daughters. Yesterday, we discussed Martha Carter, wife of Robert Goodloe, from whose story—and legal documents—we deduced that she was survived by no descendants, male or female. Today, we'll touch briefly on the next youngest daughter, Frances.

For Frances' story, I'm indebted to the advanced work done by fellow blogger Patrick Jones of Frequent Traveler Ancestry, who recently included several posts detailing legal documents outlining the descendants of this particular Carter daughter. Beginning with the will of Frances herself—by then, wife of Rice Curtis and resident of Davidson County, Tennessee—Patrick has provided links and analysis of several other legal documents enabling us to sketch out the lines of descent from Frances Carter, including, as Patrick observed, several female descendants. 

From that point, the next step is to outline in a genealogical format the lines connected back to John Carter's wives, specifically seeking those descendants following each wife's matriline. Along the way, proper documentation needs to be attached to this pedigree chart to verify the lines of descent. Since we've begun with John Carter, whose own last legal document was a codicil issued in 1783, we've got a long way to go to bring our search into the era of "modern" records. Even arriving at the 1850 census, which marked the first time each member of a household was listed by name, represents a wandering search through the document wilderness prior to that time, a stretch of nearly seventy years.

This part of a research project devolves into the tedium of genealogy. As I've said often, it's rarely something to write home about. But in Frances Carter's case, we see some changes. Though her father and his subsequent wife, Hannah Chew, remained until his death in his home in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, Frances and her husband moved to Tennessee, to a location near current day Nashville. From there, some of John Carter's grandchildren and great-grandchildren began migrating westward, some of them toward the northern portion of the midwest, others toward the south.

And there were daughters. Several daughters. This branch of the Carter descendants will surely keep us busy behind the scenes for some time to come.

Probably Not

The Goodloes were a family of excellent standing in Spotsylvania and Middlesex, and later in Kentucky, where a Mr. Carter Goodloe was quite prominent, and from his name was probably a descendant of Martha Carter and Robert Goodloe, of Spotsylvania.         ~Joseph Lyon Miller, The Descendants of Capt. Thomas Carter of "Barford," Lancaster County, Virginia

There's one thing about seeing the word "probably" in a recounting of family history: more likely, we should rather take that word to read, "probably not."

In the case of the descendants of John Carter of Spotsylvania, Virginia, I'm learning to become far more wary of such squishy estimates. Take that statement above, from the 1912 Carter family history regarding Robert Goodloe, husband of one of John's daughters, Martha. For Martha to have had a descendant—whether he was called Carter Goodloe or another less beguiling name—we would have needed to see the stipulation stand in her own father's will regarding the inheritance of the Carter property.

In John Carter's will, drawn up in May of 1778, after granting legacies to specific named children, he designated the rest of his estate to be equally divided among all his children, with one additional stipulation: that, if his "daughter Martha should die without issue," then her equal portion of the inheritance would then revert to all the other surviving Carter children.

John Carter apparently died shortly after drawing up a codicil to his will on October 13, 1883. The one stipulation of that codicil was to add the name of the newest arrival to the Carter family, so that she, too, would receive her part of the inheritance as one of the children of John's surviving wife, Hannah. No further mention was made concerning Martha, leaving those stipulations of the original will intact.

Taking the question of Martha and Robert Goodloe to FamilySearch's Full Text Search, I was once again directed to the genealogical research of George Harrison Sanford King, who noted—unfortunately without mentioning a date—that Martha Carter Goodloe died "shortly after her father." 

In addition, the King papers observed that, based on the Carter will's stipulations, Martha's portion of the inheritance was then to revert to the other members of the Carter family. Furthermore, the author referred to a deed drawn up by the surviving Carter children on August 22, 1786, in which they conveyed the property to a William Duerson.

Still, there was that odd reference to a "probable" descendant of Martha Carter and Robert Goodloe in the Joseph Lyon Miller genealogy of the Carter family. Where could that idea have originated? 

I wondered whether Robert Goodloe had had children by a previous marriage—or even by a subsequent marriage, as sometimes a deceased spouse could be memorialized by the tradition of a namesake child of the next marriage. 

An abstract of Robert Goodloe's 1790 will in Spotsylvania County provided the answer. He listed his heirs as his sons George, Henry, and John, along with the daughter of a nephew. Should any of those three sons have been descendants of Martha Carter, he (or they) would have become party to the division of property stipulated in John Carter's own will. Apparently, based on the deed drawn up in 1786, they were not named as part of that inheritance, inferring their descent from a different mother.

A curious side note: the very person to whom that property went in that 1786 deed drawn up by the surviving Carter descendants—a William Duerson—may have been the "W. Duerson" listed as a witness in Robert Goodloe's own will.

But what about the question that started this whole exploration? Who was that Mr. Carter Goodloe who was "probably" a descendant of Martha Carter Goodloe?

Because we can now do such speedy searches, I took my question to Ancestry.com, looking for someone by that name in Kentucky, the state identified in the Carter genealogy book. While I could find one possible person, "Carter Goodlow," born in Kentucky in 1845, at the time of the 1900 census, he was living in nearby Cincinnati. The variance in geography isn't the problem, though. There is, though, one detail: this Carter was of African descent.

Trying again, I did find mention of others with that name—even with the more specific spelling. One was in mentions for someone associated with a family living in Nashville, Tennessee, and near El Paso, Texas—not Kentucky. The other was in advertisement for books written by an author of that same name. I doubt any of these discoveries would lead to connections to the "probable" ancestor of this Carter Goodloe. 

Now that we're mostly convinced that Martha Carter left no descendants, I'm eyeing the calendar and realizing how little time is left to attain my January research goal of inventorying the female descendants of my fifth great-grandfather John Carter. In the remaining days this week, we'll take a fleeting glance at the rest of John Carter's daughters.