Census Records and Civil Wars

There’s a troublesome thing about civil wars: they tend to displace families.

Take the William and Rebecca Broyles family, for instance. It hasn’t been difficult to trace the whereabouts of that particular Broyles family over the decades—except for the one immediately following the war. Try as I might to locate anyone from that family, I couldn’t. Not William. Not Rebecca. Not any of their children born before the 1870 census.

Except Minnie. Maybe.

Minnie, born in 1858 in Tennessee, aligned nicely with the scenario we had just uncovered for the Broyles family’s whereabouts for the decade preceding the war. That, as we had already noticed, was when newlyweds William and Rebecca Broyles had moved to Washington County, Tennessee. Granted, for that 1860 census entry, their one child was listed as a son whose name was only given as three initials: M. N. B.

Let’s fast forward to 1870. Here we find, at the home of Rebecca’s parents in Georgia, a twelve year old child, entered as Minnie “Broyes.” She is listed as “going to school,” and she is shown to have been born in Tennessee. Unfortunately, though, that particular census did not include any requirement for indicating the relationship between any of the people in a particular household. There is no way to know why a girl surnamed Broyes would be in the household of a man named “Talliafero.”

Of course, it’s a simple guess that that “Talliafero” would be our Charles’ Taliaferro surname, only slightly mangled in the spelling rendition. There, along with him, is the woman we know as his wife, Mildred B. Taliaferro. These were Rebecca’s parents. But where was Rebecca? Could something have happened to her during the war years? Where was her husband? And what became of all the other children in their family?

The Civil War was the big disrupter of Southern life between the years of 1861 and 1865. While I cannot as yet determine whether William Broyles served in the Confederate Army—there were, after all, many others with that same name having Confederate military records—I do know that he and Rebecca came out, safe, on the other side. It is the 1880 census record for them in their new home in Girard, Alabama, that reveals the names of all their other children—and Minnie.

By then, Minnie was a young woman of the age of twenty two—just the right age to have made her the mystery two year old from the 1860 census, going by the initials M. N. B. A later discovery that her middle name was Nola helps round out the report.

Minnie wasn’t the only one in that Columbus Taliaferro household in 1870, though. There were two other people I’d like to zoom in on for a closer look. One was a twenty seven year old man by the name of Thomas T. Reiney. The other was a young woman named Mary W. Reiney.

Husband and wife? It hardly seems likely, given Mary’s age at the time was nineteen. Perhaps it was more plausible to think of them as brother and sister. At any rate, Thomas’ occupation in the 1870 census was listed as “clerk in store”—a reasonable listing, considering the head of the household was identified as a dry goods merchant. Mary, too, had an occupation listed: “domestic.” It hardly seems likely that a young wife—even one lodging in the home of another—would be listed as having an occupation, rather than the more proper and demure term of the era, “keeping house.”

Yet, if they were siblings in the household of another after the war, what had become of their own parents?

Another interesting tidbit gleaned from this census was the birthplace of each respondent. Charles Taliaferro, as head of household at age sixty one, gave as his place of birth South Carolina—and, as we’ll soon see, that would indicate a strong possibility that he was not only the head of this household, but also possibly a close relative of William, Rebecca’s husband, as well. Remember, William's own mother was a Taliaferro, too—still living in South Carolina.

South Carolina turned out to be the birthplace of Thomas T. Reiney, as well. However, when it comes to reviewing the place of birth of Mary—the other Reiney in this Taliaferro household—there is a little slip of the pen. The enumerator begins to enter “Tenn” for Tennessee—just as he would for grandchild Minnie at the end of the list—but then, something stops him and he crosses it out to replace it with “Geo” for Georgia. While this may be an excruciatingly small point to notice, I’m keeping that one in reserve. I now know I’m looking for a Reiney family which once lived in South Carolina—at least as far back as 1843—but which moved to Georgia by 1851. Could they, too, have gone by way of Tennessee?

Reiney? Remey? Rainey? Who knows. But now, I have one more clue to work with. I’m now trying to piece together a family whose mother’s maiden name might have been Taliaferro, but whose children now rose from a count of one to two. That can be a big assist in moving me beyond the near-hopeless task of searching for someone with a doubtful surname and an all-too-common given name like Mary.


Above: Excerpt from 1870 United States Census for Muscogee County, Georgia, courtesy Ancestry.com.

Rebecca’s Side

We need to explore the convoluted paths the various Broyles and Taliaferro families took, as they crossed each other on their way from Virginia to South Carolina to Georgia and beyond.

Granted, our first task is to determine how my second great grandfather, Thomas Taliaferro Broyles, met up with his Georgia bride, the Mary Rainey of Columbus, Georgia, whose mother was also supposed to be a Taliaferro.

As we trace down the ranks of the Broyles siblings, though, we find that Thomas’ older brother William also married a Taliaferro from Georgia. It may be worth our while to trace up the Taliaferro tree from the vantage point of William’s wife, Rebecca, and see if we can find any connections that way.

Rebecca was born in February, 1836, to Charles Boutwell Taliaferro and his wife, the former Mildred Barnett Merriweather.

Right away, if you knew the Broyles boys’ mother’s heritage, you would realize the resonance in that Boutwell name. Let me take you through the Reader’s Digest version of their mother Sarah Taliaferro Broyles’ heritage. Sarah was daughter of a Virginia man named Zachariah Taliaferro. He, in turn, was son of another Zachariah Taliaferro. That Zachariah married a woman named Mary Boutwell.

Whether she was the one sporting the maiden name that was carried through the next seventy years to be affixed to the given name of Rebecca’s father, we have yet to see. Remember, I, as the genealogical guinea pig, am taking you on a tour of my family lineage, often unfolding it for you as I go. Let’s just say I haven’t even ironed out the wrinkles from this fold, yet.

By the time of the 1850 census, the Charles B. Taliaferro household was located in Coweta County, Georgia. Along with her six siblings, Rebecca grew up in a large family, not unusual for those days. She found herself third in the household, after her brother Valentine and her sister Eliza.

Not long after that census, Rebecca herself was married. For an as yet undiscovered reason, her husband-to-be came down to Georgia to claim his bride from South Carolina, just as my second great grandfather would do, years later.

By the time Rebecca and her husband, William Broyles, were married in 1857, they likely moved right away to Tennessee, as we saw yesterday. Likewise, Rebecca’s parents and siblings moved, as well—only in a different direction. The Taliaferro family resurfaced for the 1860 census in Russell County, Alabama—though the challenge to find them was owing to an enumerator’s phonetic rendition of their surname as Toliver.

With the 1870 census, we can see the Taliaferro couple had returned to Georgia—as those of you astute enough to prefer your own independent research have already seen. While it might seem as if the family had been frenetically moving all over the place, from Georgia to Alabama and back again, that was not exactly so. Having a map close at hand helps us to realize that they merely crossed the county—and, coincidentally, the state—line to return to Georgia.

Minus all of their children—who had either married or died by this point—Charles and Mildred now had others in their household.

It is at this point that I had originally found them: in the 1870 census. Remember, I had told you I stumbled across this entry, coming in through the back door. It was through my desperation in not finding Charles’ and Mildred’s married daughter Rebecca and her husband William Broyles in 1870—not to mention my overarching concern about whatever had happened to the parents of Thomas Broyles’ bride-to-be, Mary Rainey—that had pushed me to perform one of those “what if” searches. I had entered Taliaferro for mother’s name, along with Rainey and all its spelling permutations, into FamilySearch and Ancestry.com until a viable result came up.

That result led me to the very Taliaferro household in Columbus, Georgia, that we've been discussing: the home of Charles and Mildred Taliaferro, Rebecca Taliaferro Broyles' parents. It just so happened that this same home was the one which housed a “domestic servant” named Mary Reiney.

Could that be the Mary Rainey who married Thomas Taliaferro Broyles in Columbus in 1871? We’ll take a closer look at that possibility, beginning tomorrow.

Can’t Read Too Much Into That Census

It’s 1860. Do you know where your second great grandfather is?

I do: Thomas Taliaferro Broyles was a seventeen year old son living in the South Carolina home of his father, Ozey Robert Broyles. Soon to head off to college, he would someday follow a path similar to his older brother, William Henry Broyles, who had just married his Georgia bride, Rebecca Taliaferro, and moved to Tennessee.

Fortunately, though he was no longer in the Broyles household in South Carolina, Thomas’ brother William was still in the 1860 census, too. In Tennessee, he was landholder of some real estate valued at that time at eighteen thousand dollars. Not bad for a newlywed couple, just starting life together. I suspect William’s good fortune could be attributed to the largess of his father, who had purchased land near Jonesborough in Washington County, where the young couple had just found themselves.

Apparently, William and Rebecca had been in Tennessee for a while. How do I know this? Their little household was no longer a twosome, but a family of three. Their two year old child was listed in the 1860 census as having been born in Tennessee. So if William and Rebecca had settled in her hometown in Georgia for any amount of time after their 1857 wedding, it wasn’t for long.

While the 1860 census gives me hints as to the circumstances of the William Broyles family, it does have its problems. It’s census records like this that make me wish the enumerations were slated to happen more than once every ten years. In this case, it’s not due to horrendous handwriting—although I’ve encountered enumerators whose hand has pushed me to nearly tear my hair out, this gentleman’s work is pristine. Nor is it from data in disagreement with previous census records—everything matches up just fine with previous documentation for both William and Rebecca.

It’s the two year old who is giving me tantrums. Listed in this 1860 record only by three initials, this entry gives me no way to know the name by which I can trace this child in future records. And that, as we’ll find out, will become crucial as we flounder to locate any sign of the child’s parents in the 1870 census.

Called simply by the initials, “M. N. B.,” the child is said to be a two year old male, born in Tennessee.

What you’ll see in a couple days, though, is the difficulty of locating that M. N. B. Broyles boy in future enumerations.

Of course, the next ten years between this census and the subsequent one in 1870 will turn out to be filled with turmoil. Who knows what will happen to this family—I have yet to locate them in that post-war census. But I may have located their child—well, only if the child was incorrectly entered as a son in the 1860 census.

At any rate, there is a possibility in the 1870 census that could lead us back to Georgia. And the initials match. Somewhat.

Before we explore that possibility, though, we need to return to the home of William’s wife Rebecca, before the time of her marriage, and learn a bit about the Georgia household in which she was raised.


Above: Image from the 1860 United States census for Jonesborough in Washington County, Tennessee, courtesy Ancestry.com.

Where William Was

A South Carolina gentleman by the name of William Henry Broyles made his way down to Coweta County, Georgia, to marry his bride, Rebecca Taliaferro, in 1857. How he met her is as undisclosed as is the manner of introduction of William’s younger brother Thomas to his bride, almost fifteen years later. Come to think of it, the connection seems almost as unexplained as their older brother Charles’ move to Georgia—in his case, with South Carolina bride, Lucy Ann Johnson, in tow—nine years prior to William’s journey.

Why these three Broyles brothers moved to Georgia is a mystery that has eluded me. Perhaps, in delving more deeply into history, I might be able to find clues in land sales, or migration patterns, or business rushes. In that realm of study, I might be held captive for untold hours, gleaning old books for hints as to the reason.

I’ll set that assignment aside for another day.

Meanwhile, it isn’t lost on me that the three brothers shared some similar paths in their three separate journeys. All three grew up in South Carolina. All three spent some time farming in Tennessee on property owned by their father, Ozey Robert Broyles. All three have some sort of connection to Georgia: older brother Charles moving there with his wife and firstborn, middle brother William marrying a resident of the state, and younger brother Thomas finding his bride there, as well.

Where each of the three Broyles sons ended up, though, turned out to be different. Charles, as we’ve seen, settled in Dalton, Georgia—long enough to raise one family but then, on the heels of trouble, to leave it all for the prospector’s dream of striking it rich in Colorado. Thomas came to Georgia to claim his bride, but his home was in Tennessee, and there he returned to raise his family. William, like Charles and Thomas, headed for a while to Tennessee. But not for long.

William’s wedding occurred in Coweta County, Georgia, home of his wife, Rebecca Taliaferro. Sometime between that 1857 occasion and the time of the 1860 census, the couple—plus their firstborn child—made the journey from Georgia to Tennessee, much the reverse of the journey older brother Charles had made with his family in tow.

The reason I think it is likely that William headed to Tennessee specifically to tend to his father’s property is that he settled in the same county as had Charles, ten years earlier. Though Charles documented in his journal his reason for arriving in Washington County, Tennessee—at his father’s insistence—I have no such explanation passed on to our generation from William.

The Broyles surname has not been unknown to Washington County, Tennessee. The extended Broyles family was a large one, and their original settling places in Virginia and South Carolina were not far from this northeast region of Tennessee. I sometimes have to be careful with hints from sources like Ancestry.com, owing to the need to tread carefully among all these Broyles distant cousins.

In the case of this 1860 enumeration, though, I can be fairly certain I have the right family. The names and ages seem to match up. The state of birth is accurately reflected. The fact that William is listed as a farmer matches the intent already displayed by his father towards his older brother in the past decade.

There is one detail about the census record, though, to which we need to pay close attention. That is the information on William and Rebecca’s firstborn child. Showing in the 1860 census simply by the initials “M. N. B.,” this child may turn out to be the one to lead us back to the family connection with William’s brother Thomas’ bride in Georgia.

Tangled

As you move back in time, working through the generations of your family tree, have you ever gotten yourself so tangled up in the ever-increasing strands of your family lines that it left you utterly unable to explain how you got from Person A to Person B?

If I tell you what I need to explain for this next step in my search for the family of my second great grandmother, Mary Rainey, I may leave you in exactly that position. Stunned. Speechless.

Well, ditching all the hyperbole, at least it would leave you lost.

Casting about for the best way to explain what I need to say for this next episode, I’ve decided I simply can’t tell it to you the same way I first encountered it. You see, I snuck in from the back door. But I’ll take you through the main entrance. Perhaps that will make things easier to explain.

Our task right now, in finding Mary Rainey’s roots, is to go through the list of the siblings of her husband-to-be, Thomas Taliaferro Broyles—a South Carolina man whom she married in her home town of Columbus, Georgia, in 1871. The reason we’re checking this list of siblings is to see if we can determine who it might have been that introduced the two. After all, it’s rather a long commute from Thomas’ home in Anderson County, South Carolina, to Muscogee County in Georgia. It’s not like they just met, passing on the sidewalk one afternoon. Something had to have been arranged for them to meet.

After discarding as possible matchmakers Thomas’ four oldest brothers, we now arrive at Possibility Number Five: William Henry Broyles. William may well be our nexus for three reasons.

First, he was ten years older than Thomas. The beauty of researching large families is that, at any given time in a family unit’s history, there will be some sons going off to college—or to war, or to seek their fortune—while there are other sons still exploring the world at large on all fours in their diapers. Combining all these stages and ages into one family unit can foster those positive aspects of brotherhood that we all admire: older brothers helping younger brothers.

Given the ten year time span between William and his younger brother Thomas, a lot could occur in William’s life while Thomas was still in his mid-teens. That, for instance, would give William enough time to get married, get settled in his own home, and get established in his own network of friends and associates.

The second reason William may be our prime candidate is that, once married in 1857, William and his bride may have settled for a while in Georgia. Georgia is likely a favorable place for an older brother to be situated, if said kid brother eventually hoped to widen his horizons, as far as marriageable young ladies were concerned. Remember, from our vantage point on the other side of history, we already know Thomas fell for a Georgia belle. What we don’t know is how they met.

Third, well, that clanging bell and shrieking whistle you hear are the clues that lurk in William’s wife’s maiden name. She was a Taliaferro. As you may have guessed from William’s brother’s middle name—Thomas Taliaferro Broyles—there seems to be some type of family affinity to that name. Thomas came by the Taliaferro name honestly: his mother was a Taliaferro. William’s wife, likewise, was once a Taliaferro. What is interesting to note is that, in all the published genealogies I’ve been able to find so far, Thomas’ bride-to-be, Mary Rainey, was also said to descend from a mother who was a Taliaferro. But to find any nexus there is turning out to be as tangled a rabbit trail as is the search for Thomas’ and Mary’s matchmaker.

As you may have surmised, I’m actually talking myself through this routine, in hopes that explaining the tangle to myself will somehow loosen these strands so I can see the disparate lines clearly. Some people call this “thinking things through” but I don’t exactly think I’m arriving at the “through” part, yet.

So, to ease my muddled brain, let’s go through this process step by step. First, we’ll see where older brother William was after his marriage to Rebecca Taliaferro in Coweta County, Georgia, on July 28, 1857. Then, we’ll look at the place where they settled next, according to the 1860 census. And finally, we’ll round up that Taliaferro maiden name for William’s wife, Rebecca, and see who her parents were, where they lived, and who they were related to. The hope, of course, is to isolate and finger that one strand—now, hopefully clear of the web of the rest of those tangled lines—and follow it straight back to either the common Taliaferro relative, or to the family that Mary Rainey claimed. Or, if we’re doubly fortunate, to both.

 Above: Jean-Simon Berthélemy, "Alexander Cuts the Gordian Knot," oil on canvas; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain. While I don't intend to follow suit, sometimes this option becomes tempting... 

Another Georgia Possibility

Identifying the sibling who might have served as matchmaker for my second great grandfather and his bride, Mary Rainey of Columbus, Georgia, has turned out to be a bit more of a challenge than I had hoped. The groom, Thomas Broyles, had been born in South Carolina in 1842, but by the time of his marriage, he lived across the state border in Tennessee. How did he meet up with a prospective bride all the way in Georgia?

While it turns out that his oldest brother, Augustus, may have been his connection to his second wife, years later, there is simply no way to tell whether that was so for this first wife in 1871. No way, that is, short of finding a diary or letter from either of the two men.

Thomas’ next oldest brother, Charles, seemed a promising prospect, mainly because he, himself, moved to Georgia. Not to Columbus, Georgia, admittedly, but at least he was closer to the western side of the state than Thomas was. There again, no evidence of any connection.

As we’ve already seen, Thomas’ next two brothers died young—one, a long time before Thomas was even born, the other dying just a year after Thomas’ birth.

The list of potential sibling matchmakers is dwindling. We are now left to consider the next brother, William Henry Broyles. Ten years Thomas’ senior, William was still in South Carolina by the time of the 1850 census. But not for long. Thankfully, a digitized copy of marriage records for the state of Georgia includes an entry for one W. H. Broyles, who was married in Coweta County on July 28, 1857. His bride was a young lady by the name of Rebecca Taliaferro.

Taliaferro? Does that name cause your ears to perk up? There may be a possibility here.

Admittedly, Coweta County is not the location of the city of Columbus, which is in Muscogee County. But at least we are now talking Georgia.

But not for long. By the time of the 1860 census, it appears he and his bride—and a two year old child listed only by initials “M. N. B.”—were now residing in the same county in Tennessee as his younger brother Thomas would soon be living. Perhaps this was at the same property that his older brother Charles had been farming in Washington County, per their father’s wishes.

Whatever happened to William and Rebecca in 1870 is difficult to say. The war was now over, and in its wake was an immense amount of upheaval—especially for those living in Georgia and parts of Tennessee. Whether that had a direct impact upon this Broyles couple is hard to say, but I can’t locate them in the 1870 census, so far.

However, by the time of the 1880 census, the family has somehow resurfaced. Not in South Carolina, William’s home state. Not in Tennessee, where he had moved. Not in Georgia, the birthplace of his wife. But in Alabama.

Somehow, I see my possibilities of finding a matchmaker in this couple to be fading fast. Alabama would hardly be the launching place for a Georgia romance. I feel the need to be moving on, down the list of siblings, once again.

But wait! A quick peek at Google Maps shows me that the 1880 residence of William Broyles—Girard, Alabama—happens to be right across the Chattahoochee River from Columbus, Georgia. Perhaps we are on the right trail, after all!

Of course, there is one other hint calling our names loudly: the fact that William’s wife’s maiden name happened to be Taliaferro. While that surname represents a large body of descendants from that original family in Virginia, there is the possibility that William might have married a relative from his mother’s side of the family.

To examine these possibilities, though, will require following yet another rabbit trail through some exploratory detours. These may—or may not—prove fruitful endeavors. Believe me, sometimes I am only one step ahead of you, watching the story unfold with each step I take.

To take that next step—and, hopefully, endure yet another rabbit trail—will take a few more days exploration. And explanation.

Second Thoughts About That Confirmed Bachelor

Who says a confirmed bachelor couldn’t serve as matchmaker for others? I may have made that assumption in error, when I was first reviewing my records of Augustus T. Broyles.

My goal, as I’ve mentioned before, is to see who the likely person might have been to connect my second great grandfather, Thomas T. Broyles of South Carolina, with his first wife, Mary Rainey of Georgia.

Now, if you are familiar with the maps of South Carolina and Georgia, you will realize that the Broyles family’s home in Anderson County put them quite close to the Georgia border. So you may be wondering about me—like, “So what’s the big deal? These places are close together.”

On the contrary. The place where Thomas’ bride emerged was a city—Columbus—on the other side of the state of Georgia. It is on the border with Alabama, not South Carolina. That put a bit of distance between them—perhaps enough, in a time like 1870, to make the connection unlikely. Unless, of course, someone provided a bit of encouragement.

That’s where my hunch about the matchmaker comes in. And that’s why I’ve been going down the list of Thomas’ siblings: to find the likely suspect.

That, incidentally, was how we stumbled upon the story of Thomas’ brother, Charles Edward Broyles, and his two lives—one in Georgia, one in Colorado. I had so hoped Charles would have been the one who served as matchmaker. But if he did, nothing about his life story pointed me to that detail.

So, I started back at the top of the list. All siblings are now prime suspects—not just the one who moved to Georgia.

But Augustus, the brother who was at the head of the line, didn’t appear to be a likely candidate, either. A confirmed bachelor, he seemed to be such a marvel to his peers that his unmarried condition was mentioned—quite admiringly, it seemed—more than once in newspaper reports of his passing.

I may have been too hasty in dismissing Augustus out of hand. I had some second thoughts, just as I was wrapping up the rabbit trail about one of the partners in his law firm. That prompted me to go back and revisit the obituary mention of Augustus’ other business partner.

After the war he [Augustus] entered a partnership with Gen. J. W. Harrison and later with Col. R. W. Simpson, of Pendleton.

When I shared the November 8, 1904, obituary published in Charleston’s News and Courier, I had thought about hyperlinking the mention of partner J. W. Harrison to an online bio of the man. After all, he was said to have served as a General. Surely, I should be able to find something about the man.

But I couldn’t. So I let that one pass—until I remembered a comment from a 1923 obituary published in the Confederate Veteran Magazine for Augustus’ brother Thomas:

…He was twice married, first to Miss Reney, [sic] of Alabama, and his second wife was a daughter of General Harrison, of South Carolina, a distinguished jurist of his time.

Could it be that widower Thomas, desperate for someone to care for his young children upon his wife’s untimely passing, found in his “confirmed bachelor” oldest brother a sympathizing confidant? Could that same avowed bachelor have deigned it worth his while to emerge from his man cave long enough to notice who the marriageable women in town might have been?

Regardless of how it happened, the fact remains that Thomas’ second wife was Elisabeth Harrison, daughter of General James W. Harrison and Mary Benson Harrison. At least that’s according to her death certificate in South Carolina, where she as a widow, herself, had returned from Tennessee when she succumbed in 1924 from a ten day bout with influenza.

And that General James W. Harrison led me right back to Anderson County, his birthplace, according to his daughter’s death certificate. And it led me to not only an excerpt from his own obituary, courtesy of Find A Grave, but to the online source for the June 21, 1888, Anderson Intelligencer where the excerpt was obtained.

That, of course, becomes eye candy in my cache box. Now that I’ve found the source, I’m looking forward to digging up more tidbits on the Broyles family members who lived in Anderson County. Surely, this find will lead me to more hints about Thomas Broyles and his connection to the far side of Georgia.