Last List of the Family

 

I, Anthony Carrol, do hereby make my last will and testament....

So began the document which was presented in court in Monongalia County in what was once the state of Virginia, sometime during February of 1830. The witnesses, John F. Dering and Sarah Scott, declared under oath that Anthony Carroll was indeed deceased, and thus the will was "ordered to be recorded."

Despite my access to what is merely a typewritten copy of the original—and surely handwritten—will, there are a few details we can glean from this document. First is the observation that the surname Carroll made its appearance in this brief document in various forms: besides "Carroll" and "Carrol" for Anthony, himself, there was also a variation of the surname spelled as "Carrel" and "Carrell." Hopefully, they all referred to one and the same family, but we need to keep our mind open to the possibility that perhaps that wasn't the case.

More important, at least in pursuit of my research goal for this month—to learn what I can about the parents of my mother-in-law's third great-grandmother, Mary Carroll Gordon—is the fact that wills often provide us a last listing of the decedent's family relationships. In this will of Anthony Carroll, we are not disappointed—although there are a few details which will require us to do more homework to confirm connections.

Anthony's will was fairly straightforward. First, he wanted all the "perishable" portions of his estate sold to pay off his debts and provide for a decent funeral. Second, if the sale of such belongings were not sufficient to satisfy those expenses, he dictated that one specific property of his—located on "Coburn's Creek"—be sold for that same purpose.

Then—and this is the part we were waiting to see—Anthony stated that all remaining portions of his estate be given to his wife, Temperance "Carrell" for the remainder of her lifetime. After her death—and here we arrive at the rest of what we were seeking—Anthony's estate was to be divided between his children.

The children were named as: "James Carrel, Pegey Guseman, Polly Gorden, James Walls."

Lastly, Anthony appointed his executors. We have to presume that he named more than one, because the typewritten copy inserts an ellipsis between the words "and" and "executors," most likely signifying an illegible name. The other executor was listed as "my friend, Temperance Carrell."

That listing of the names of his children gives pause. Why the name of two sons as James? Why, too, would a natural child of a Carroll have a totally different surname? One reasonable conclusion would be that Temperance, while Anthony's wife at the time of his death, might not have been the mother of all of Anthony's children. Also, the second James could be son of Temperance from a previous marriage.

The lack of that second executor's name is unfortunate, specifically because those named to such positions are often selected precisely because they have a vested interest in seeing that the heirs do, indeed, receive the inheritance intended for them. Temperance, of course, would be interested in securing her rights—but if she was not the mother of the children, who would remain to represent the needs of those parties? I suspect that second executor's name would have provided a valuable clue.

As for the identities of the children themselves, our exploration of nineteenth century nicknames came in handy for realizing that Polly could very well be Mary, a Carroll descendant who married a man named Gordon. As for the nickname Peggy, that is one common substitution which has been carried into our own century—but whether that leads us to the right daughter, we'll follow what we can find on any Margaret Carrolls who married men named Guseman, just to be sure.

With such a to-do list evolving from a document as brief as this will of Anthony Carroll, we have much to uncover in the next few days. We'll take some time to double check the possibilities—a research move which is not only prudent, but necessary, simply because of one additional problem: the Monongalia County courthouse fire of 1796.  

A Will, a Way, and Nicknames

 

Genealogists have gladly co-opted that oft-used observation, "Where there's a will, there's a way." While we hardly use the saying in the way it was originally intended, we family historians have put the revelations in last wills and testaments to good use in our own research.

In pursuing my goal for this month—documenting the parents of my mother-in-law's third great-grandmother, Mary Carroll Gordon—I was fortunate to find such a will. Wills, generally found at the local courthouse and often including a file—sometimes quite lengthy—of related material, have become an important tool in piecing together the puzzle of our family history.

We'll soon take a look at a will, filed in 1830 at Monongalia County in what was then the state of Virginia, which might help answer this month's research question. But first, we need to take a detour: we need to explore the use of nicknames in these earlier centuries of our forebears' records.

Unlike our current century—a time in which one cannot even deposit money into one's own bank account without first producing a photograph identification including not a mere nickname, but a full, legal name—earlier eras were not as concerned with a full accounting of the name pronounced upon a child's birth. In fact, if you push back to the earliest records of this nation, don't be surprised to see that same unconcern with variations in spelling of those same names—sometimes, even within the same document.

We'll save rants about spelling variations for a later time, but let's focus now on those alternative terms of endearment used for members of a family. There are several useful tips and searchable lists online for use in dealing with research involving nicknames.

One might expect to see a nickname for a given name as long as, say, Penelope—or for a name which might present spelling complications, like Genevieve. But we are now looking for any mention of a woman's name which is as simple as a four-letter sequence. How hard is it to say or spell a name like Mary?

When I first began researching family history, I had to get the hang of name substitutions such as Sadie for Sarah. Those name choices made by ancestors several generations back didn't just spring off my tongue like they might have for my fourth great-grandmother. That's why I kept that list of nicknames handy. And that's how I first discovered that children given the name Mary at birth might be, in later years, called anything but Mary.

That, as we'll see tomorrow, is exactly what we'll need to keep in mind when we review the will of one Anthony Carroll of Monongalia County. He mentioned his daughters in his will, alright, but he identified each of them, not by their given name, but by their nicknames. And, as we can see from those handy lists of nicknames, the woman mentioned as Polly could well have been a daughter whom her parents had named Mary.

 

 

 

A Day of Peace and Celebration

 

Somehow, Easter doesn't seem quite the same, when celebrations are viewed from the distance of a computer screen. Despite the escalating count of vaccine shots given, our family is still hunkered down here in our country hideout, not heading to the joy of a church service.

Doesn't matter. We are in the process of still making family history, despite obstacles. Or, perhaps thanks to challenges. Today, in addition to the homebound substitute of a traditional observation of Easter, our family celebrates our daughter completing the requirements for her master of arts degree.

Of course, we're proud of her. And the fact that she achieved this milestone despite unexpected challenges won't get lost in the malaise of a lingering pandemic. It is not only the highlights which make a family's history distinct, but also the many day-to-day occurrences which shape a family's trajectory and influence our collective future. There is a peace in the viewpoint which sees the many events that blend to shape just who we are as all meant for our good. Perhaps that is the draw of the joy of Easter.

Pausing to Take Stock

 

When it seems it's full speed ahead, researching the family's history, we sometimes forget, in the forward momentum, to take a look back and see how far we've come. Of course, when the progress comes easy, seeing it quantified can be a great encouragement. However, I find that need to measure research progress particularly helpful when I'm struggling with an unyielding research puzzle; it helps build in some perspective.

Usually, I'm pleasantly surprised to see how much I've accomplished in a given time period—say, the past two weeks, or a month—because when I'm stuck on a problem, it seems I haven't budged for the longest time. Just looking at the numbers can tell a much different tale, and, as a result, provide the needed encouragement to keep pushing onward.

Not so, this past month. Despite sifting through records in two locations—both in Madison County, Florida, and in Marlboro County, South Carolina—the count on my family tree hardly budged. In the past two weeks, I only managed to add twenty five hard-won names to my tree, all on my maternal side, the one giving me such research grief.

Still, after years of steady work, that same tree contains records on 25,466 individuals. But let me emphasize: after years of work—which causes me to reflect on this past month's research experience. 

Some goals may be easily completed. Others have been problems for precisely the reason prompting me to tackle them: there may be little to no currently-existing documentation. Families which tend to favor the independent life of the lone frontiersman may spend a lifetime isolated from the processes which yield governmental records. No surprise, then, to come up short when I work on my mother's ancestors; in many cases, that was their preferred station in life.

On the other hand, with this month's research goal focused on my mother-in-law's roots, that same frontier-hugging tendency yields a somewhat different flavor. Though her forebears often lived on the outskirts of colonial incursions, they weren't lone mountain men. They tended to migrate within a large group.

That group, in some cases, was faith-based—for instance, the westward migration of early Catholics in America. Though not based on a political government's reach, these migrating groups had a record-keeping structure embedded within their church organization—sometimes, one which produced more long-lasting and reliable accounts than their contemporary governmental records.

Perhaps, knowing these two factors influencing the subsequent availability of records to researchers such as myself—removed by not just decades but centuries from the events requiring documentation of births, marriages, or deaths—it is no surprise to see how much I was able to cover in the past two weeks on my mother-in-law's lines. With the addition of 155 verified individuals, that tree now includes information on 20,365 people in that extended family.

With this month's research goal of finding documentation to link Mary Carroll Gordon to her parents—pushing back into the 1700s and colonial American record-keeping issues—I doubt that research pace will hold up in the next two weeks. But for every ancestor I verify, for the sake of identifying DNA matches, I continue to research the lines of all descendants of that ancestor—so the numbers keep expanding.

That strategy has certainly expanded my trees far beyond what most researchers prefer to see, but on the other hand, it has been so helpful to see DNA matches fall into place, whether through the algorithms provided at Ancestry, the genetic genealogy tools at MyHeritage, or the clues I've found at the other DNA testing companies.

This two-step process has certainly bolstered progress on the two main trees which are my long-standing focus. Though sometimes I fly through the process when documentation is easy to find—and other times come to a stand-still when records seem nonexistent—keeping count on a regular basis keeps me grounded with the encouragement that, no matter how much of a struggle it is to attain a research goal, I still am making progress.

Invisible Women: Spotting the Details

 

Researching our female ancestors before the 1850 census can be challenging. Women from that century and previous ones seem to have been near-invisible. If not invisible, perhaps they can only be spotted as the shadows that followed the men in their lives.

That, of course, makes our April research goal of discovering all I can about my mother-in-law's third great-grandmother all the more difficult, because she lived her brief life and was gone by 1812.

To start with, let's list what we already know about this Mary Carroll, who eventually became the first wife of the migrating William Gordon of Frederick County, Maryland. According to Howard L. Leckey's The Tenmile Country and its Pioneer Families, Mary was born August 29, 1773, and married William Gordon in 1793. Based on the report that their eldest son, James, was born a year later in Washington County, Pennsylvania, it may be possible that the Carroll-Gordon marriage occurred in the same vicinity.

Though Leckey provides a date for Mary Carroll Gordon's death, we need to keep in mind that his book did contain some assertions which have not been corroborated by other means. For instance, Leckey's book gives Mary's year of death as 1814, while a Find A Grave volunteer's photo of her headstone clearly shows June 3, 1812. True, perhaps the marker is a memorial with an unfortunate error etched in stone, but it may be just as likely that the error was embedded in the pages of Leckey's tome.

At any rate, we note that, at the end of her brief life, Mary was buried at the Gordon family cemetery in neighboring Greene County, Pennsylvania. Whether Mary's life began in the same region where it ended, I have yet to determine. What I do know, however, is that after her passing, William added to the eleven children of his first marriage by wedding a second Mary, moving from Pennsylvania to Ohio, and fathering an additional eight children.

Most of Mary Carroll's children were born early enough in the nineteenth century to produce a lifespan which missed the mark of death certificates which included the names of parents—those didn't begin to be issued until the start of the subsequent century. Thus, even after her death, Mary's existence was nearly a well-kept secret—if, that is, it weren't for the several genealogy aficionados among her many descendants diligently attending to their family history.

There was, however, one document which did reveal information on Mary's identity: the will of one Anthony Carroll, who died, according to the recording of his will, sometime during or preceding February of 1830. 

From One War to the Next

 

There are many people throughout human history whose life span could be delineated by the historic events shaping their own existence. For this month's research pursuit, I'll be turning to the story of one woman whose earliest life memories might have been the war which catapulted this nation into existence, and whose short life ended with the year in which it could have lost that very independence.

Mary Carroll, first of the three ancestors of my mother-in-law whom I'll be pursuing this spring, was not quite three years of age when America's founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, taking on a war with what was then the world's super-power. She spent most of her life—at least, as much as I've been able to determine—in the far reaches of, first, the colony of Virginia, and then the neighboring region of western Pennsylvania. And in the prime of life—possibly owing to difficulties with childbirth—she passed away in June of 1812. 

Owing to the twin research difficulties of locating documentation in the early years of American history plus the challenges of finding records in the frontier regions of that nascent country, it has been far easier to locate Mary Carroll in her later years as the wife of William Gordon. It was Mary Carroll who bore at least eleven of the Gordon children, mostly in Greene County, Pennsylvania.

Despite those limitations, my goal for this month is to uncover more documentation for Mary Carroll Gordon and her forebears. Though I have seen the names Anthony Carroll and Temperance Dunaway given for Mary's parents, this month's goal means finding documentation to help connect Mary to her parents—and, possibly, connect the dots even further back in time than that.

 

 

Florida Crackers

 

Depending on whom you consult, the term Florida Cracker may refer to immigrants from as early as colonial times to more recent arrivals—well, make that around Civil War times—in Florida. The point of the term is to delineate those who were pioneer settlers, generally of European heritage, in the region which eventually became Florida. Many of those immigrants were North American colonizers who moved south from the Carolinas and Georgia, some of whom were Scots-Irish, Irish, or English by ancestry, often moving along the frontier regions of each of those states before arriving in Florida.

Among Floridians, the term is sometimes used simply to denote that their family has been in Florida for many generations. Of course, genealogists—not about to lose an opportunity to chart such relationships—have come up with designations to honor such pioneer residents, and the Florida State Genealogical Society has made their database of "Florida Pioneers" publicly available on their website. Not surprisingly, some Townsend family members—such as the one I mentioned the other day, Allen Townsend, possible brother of my third great-grandmother, Delaney Townsend Charles—have been recognized in that category of early settlers to territorial Florida.

When the Townsends came to north Florida during its territorial years, they were among many others who had followed that same migration pattern—moving from South Carolina through Georgia, then eventually across the state line into the northern region of what eventually became Florida. Perhaps the fact that in 1860 a map maker issued a map featuring the counties of Florida, strangely juxtaposed with the state of South Carolina, is no surprise.

Though my family line which leads back through the generations to Delaney Townsend has not been confirmed to the specific identity of her parents—my third research goal for this year—this past month has clarified several possible connections to other Townsend settlers in the area around Madison County. Between my Townsend line and the Charles line she married into—plus the McClellan line of her daughter Emma's husband—I certainly have a number of eligible ancestors to document through the Florida State Genealogical Society's pioneer program. Guess that makes me a "Florida Cracker," too.

Now that the month has come to a close, we'll move on in April to another research goal for 2021. This time, we'll move from my mother's ancestors to my mother-in-law's roots and revisit a challenge from last year which also was left uncompleted. While we put the mystery of Delaney's Townsend roots on hold in Florida and South Carolina, we'll move on to another set of early settlers in the south: the Carrolls in colonial Virginia.