Finding Stories Like Those

 

Reading stories of those mysteries solved only through modern techniques like DNA testing gives both a sense of awe and a sense of other-worldliness. Those stories, we think, can never be part of our own family's narrative. And yet, our family's stories can contain their own amazing events.

While I was reading The Forever Witness last week, I also was continuing my year-long project, mapping out the descendants of my mother's Tilson line. On Ancestry.com, I ran into a subscriber-shared transcription of a newspaper article about a Willis family member in eastern Tennessee, a Tilson descendant who would have been my fifth cousin. This woman, Della Willis Bible, went missing in June of 1994 in the hills of Cocke County.

The family reported Della as missing, launching a search through mountainous terrain that lasted for weeks and involved local law enforcement, neighboring fire departments, rescue squads, even FEMA and the National Guard scouring the kudzu-choked brier patches for miles around the missing woman's home. No sign of her body was found, even after weeks of effort. The search was called off.

Five years later while on a mountain trek, hikers happened to find the body, according to The Knoxville News-Sentinel that Sunday, April 25, 1999. Unlike the Van Cuylenborg case I'm reading in The Forever Witness, authorities suspected no foul play. However, the body was sent to forensic anthropologists from the University of Tennessee, not only to confirm the body's identity but to inspect for evidence of what might have happened to the seventy nine year old woman. At least now, her family could know.

I couldn't help but wonder: once her remains were found—or possibly long before—had Della's family members sprung for DNA tests in hopes of finding the rest of the story in those many "Jane Doe" reports? I went looking for DNA matches among my own results who could have been related to Della's family. Some of those matches in my list might well have gotten there through desperate stories of their own—maybe not brutal murders or even more benign tragedies, but stories of abandonment of one form or another.

This little discovery alongside the saga of a monumental case in the book I'm reading juxtaposed big, sensational stories with those more personal events which can so easily fade into oblivion over the years. Researching our own family's stories—not just the lineage—helps us uncover, relive, and celebrate (or at least learn from) the experiences of the distant cousins we may never meet. These are not common stories—or even "common" lives—but experiences which merit our attention and efforts to preserve. 

Off the Shelf: The Forever Witness

 

With all the social media prompts and promotions lately, it seems the genealogy meme for this new year is writing your ancestors' stories. I picked up this handy list from a now-nameless social site providing twelve "details the best biographers include that you can add to your ancestor's story." The list includes suggestions like adding a "description of the house and/or farm," focusing on the geography of the land, or explaining what it was like to travel from one place to another during a specific ancestor's life.

As I was sharing that list with members of our local genealogical society, I happened to be deep in the midst of catching up on my latest read, a forensic genealogy book published in 2022. Nearly halfway through the book, I realized the very details on that list of writing tips were part of what prevented me, for hours at a time, from putting the book down. The author had this way of making me feel as if I were there with the main characters, driving down the road as they embarked on their adventure or, after they disappeared, getting to know the supporting characters as they learned the awful truth of what happened next.

No surprise here, learning that the author is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edward Humes, for this is not a fictional whodunit of the genre lately becoming popular among genealogy hobbyists. This book is The Forever Witness: How DNA and Genealogy Solved a Cold Case Double Murder, tracing the stalled investigation of the 1987 international case involving two brutally murdered Canadians, Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook, somewhere in northwest Washington state.

Eventually, the book's narrative will focus on the historic application of DNA testing to the case which reversed that stalled investigation. Yet even halfway into the story, the many strands interwoven into the telling of the incident skillfully set the stage and draw the reader into the process.

Right now, I'm reading for the experience, and letting the story carry me along. Later, I'll go back to capture some of the DNA details which will serve as useful references and analogies for my own work. And I'll certainly re-examine those story-telling techniques the author employs which seem the most compelling in drawing me in, page after page.

While case studies of forensic genealogy applications have always caught my attention, this book goes far beyond the academics of the approach. It gifts us with a study bathed in skillful devotion to the little details in life which can allow us to feel what life was like for the people we are studying—whether victims of high-profile crimes, or those elusive ancestors we'd like to bring back to life, at least on paper.

Trusting the Trailblazer

 

While those of us who chase our family's history may pride ourselves on our independent research, the truth of the matter is that none of us could do this detective work without the help of others. One way or another, we need a trailblazer to point the way. The key, however, is to ensure that that trailblazer is worthy of our trust.

There is a phrase which made its appearance toward the end of the Cold War years which I have since co-opted for my own less-political purposes: "Trust, but verify." What inspired me to adapt that motto for genealogy was the frustrating discovery that some information provided on death certificates might not necessarily be correct—details like mother's maiden name, for instance. Not that anyone was deliberately seeking to deceive future generations; it's just that the moments immediately following the death of a loved one can be some of the most high-stress times in a person's life. Thus, we receive incorrect information that once got blurted out by those who should know, then duly recorded by government officials who are only doing their job, but otherwise would have no way of knowing.

My father-in-law's family led me to yet another example of "documentation" which might not be trustworthy: his great-grandfather's grave marker, which clearly spells the patrilineal surname as "Steavens." Since discovering multiple instances such as these, I've learned to be far more willing, in looking at family history resources of any kind, to trust—but verify.

Thus it is when we turn to those published genealogies of the early years of a previous century. Though research trailblazers may have written their findings closer to the time of our ancestors, these books were compiled without the technological aids we've come to take for granted. No matter how well-meaning the researcher, we have to accept it as a given that there will be mistakes. But should we toss out the books as worthless for our purposes? Absolutely not; we take them and double-check the work done a hundred years ago with the tools we have now to bring up digitized documents for verification. Thus, we trust, but verify.

In researching my January project for those Twelve Most Wanted I slated for 2024—the paternal line of my fourth great-grandmother Margaret Chew Carter—I've found mentions that she was descended from a man known as King Carter. We've already discussed one example from a book published in 1911, but I later found that same information repeated in a different book from 1926. The problem is that many of the genealogy books of the previous century were not as stringent about providing their sources; the latter book might only have been repeating what the author read from the previous one, without personally verifying the information. The reader has no way to know—only to verify that detail independently.

Based on what I've learned from the minimal research done this past week, I already have warning bells going off in my head when I read an entry like this:

This section of the 1916 book, The Kinnears and Their Kin, details a Carter line from John Carter, presumably the founding immigrant, through to the children of Margaret Chew Carter and her husband Zachariah Taliaferro. Yet, based on a quick search online, it becomes obvious that the author's designation for the person known as King Carter was incorrect. How many times has this information been repeated?

While that may be discouraging to realize, I have run across some positive signs. I mentioned the other day that I had run Margaret Chew Carter's name through a Google search. Among other hits, I ran across this entry at JSTOR from an October 1910 article in The William and Mary Quarterly. (If you don't have access to that service—though you only need to view that first-page preview—you can also read the article at Internet Archive.)

The article, written by Joseph L. Miller, detailed several discoveries—"positive proof"—found since his last article on the Carter line had been published the previous year in the same quarterly. Among those items was correction of a detail concerning one Margaret Chew Carter, incorrectly noted to be wife of someone named Captain John Marshall. As Dr. Miller explained, it was actually her half-sister, also named Margaret, who had married the captain. Updating such discoveries for the record certainly helped up the author's trustworthiness level, at least in my opinion.

But who, exactly, was that writer in The William and Mary Quarterly? It took a bit more searching to discover that "Dr. Jos. L. Miller" was indeed a medical doctor, whose published works in his chosen field generally pertained to what has been called "his major hobby and passion," first the history of Western medicine, then eventually, local history and the history of various lines in his own family.

These lines included—fortunately for me—the Carter family from which Margaret Chew Carter eventually descended. Not long after publication of the 1909 and 1910 articles Joseph Lyon Miller wrote for The William and Mary Quarterly, he did indeed fold those "positive proof" discoveries into a 1912 volume he called The Descendants of Capt. Thomas Carter of "Barford," Lancaster County, Virginia, 1652-1912. 

From the reputation detailed in the biography included with a donation he made to a Virginia college, to examples of how he updated his own research, I feel Joseph Miller gains enough credibility to tentatively merit trustworthiness as a genealogical trailblazer—but remember, as we look at his discoveries on Margaret Chew Carter's forebears, we still need to keep that mantra close at hand: trust, but still verify.

Finding the Road Map

 

Tracing the line of a family surname can be challenging, as those of us wrestling with "brick wall" ancestors can attest. This month, as I work on the first goal of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2024, I am chasing after a colonial woman with the maiden name of Carter—a surname common enough to possibly lead me astray. However, I am also fortunate enough that this particular Carter line includes some notables from the colonial era in a region rich in history—and historic preservation. Finding the "road map" to lead me through the Carter generations may be easier than I thought.

Of course, the question might be, why find a "road map" for genealogy at all? Just do the work. Yet, pushing back to an era devoid of the common types of documents we might rely on for more recent family research—birth certificates, death certificates, even census records or obituaries for women—it sometimes seems the search would be easier if we already knew the father's name. And that is precisely what we aren't sure of. Yet.

Thankfully, in our digitized age, we stand a better chance of locating records, thanks to trailblazers who've already done the research and shared their work. We have libraries full of published genealogies—think the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, or the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana—with multiple volumes already scanned and put online for anyone to use. The same goes for independent organizations like Internet Archive where, once a book has aged beyond copyright and is in the public domain, a quick search can bring us right to the front page—or deep inside, if we use the website's own search capabilities.

Then, too, subscription services like Ancestry.com or MyHeritage have acquired digitized volumes for their own customers' use. In seeking information on my fourth great-grandmother Margaret Chew Carter, wife of Zachariah Taliaferro, several hints at Ancestry provided citations in books and journal articles.

Besides that, despite the common state of a surname like Carter, I discovered that doing a simple Google search on Margaret's maiden name led me to several resources I would otherwise not have known about. For instance, as part of the Zachariah Taliaferro family records donated to the Clemson University Library Special Collections and Archives, there is a biographical statement which includes Margaret by name. And if I repeat that Google search while specifying one website—limiting my search to, say, "Internet Archive"—it leads me to mentions of her name in several books written in the early 1900s.

Finding the road map, in Margaret's case, is not necessarily the problem. There are resources out there. But once I find them, the question becomes: are they reliable? We've already mentioned the entry in one book, asserting Margaret's relationship to a well-known Carter man who preceded her by one or more generations, "King" Carter. I've seen that claim repeated in other resources. But is it true?

That's a question I'll need to answer for myself. But in the meantime, it points us to another question to consider: once we find a family history road map, how can we know that resource is reliable? Let's take a look tomorrow at a couple examples I've found which give me pause—and some thoughts on how to handle that likelihood. 

What I Know About Margaret

 

Considering Margaret Chew Carter, my fourth great-grandmother, if you asked me what I know about her, I'd have to say: very little. Well, at least that is a step beyond answering, "nothing." But my aim this month is to learn far more about this woman's life.

The problem with researching Margaret starts with learning that she was someone who was born in 1771—not a very good time for finding records about women. Even so, there should have been some records on her life. Women's names did appear in baptismal records and marriage records—if, after over two hundred years, we can still find them. Yet, even those basic documents I have yet to find.

What I do know about Margaret starts at the end of her life. She became the wife of Virginian Zachariah Taliaferro, and moved with him to South Carolina, where they set up housekeeping and he practiced law. Over the years since their wedding, she gave birth to four daughters who survived to adulthood, all of whom married and raised families of their own. These she named Sarah Ann, Lucy Hannah, Mary Margaret, and Caroline Virginia.

In addition, Margaret's headstone is pictured at Find a Grave, a wonderful gift to family researchers, with the small caveat that I can't exactly read the inscription pictured on her grave's memorial. A kind volunteer at Find A Grave transcribed the information onto the website's virtual memorial, indicating that her date of death in South Carolina was May 19, 1822.

While I have no way to vouch for that information—yet—I noticed there was no mention of her name in her husband's will, dated January 14, 1831. Nor was there any indication that he, if a widower, had remarried. Zachariah Taliaferro died—again, according to his Find a Grave memorial—April 14, 1831, nearly nine years after the date indicated on his wife's headstone. 

However, while I can't find actual documentation regarding Margaret, apparently, several others have included her in their published genealogies. Granted, any genealogy can contain errors, but it would do us some good to at least catalog the several sources I've run across while working on this family line. Some of the books were written on the Taliaferro line of Margaret's husband, some on other surnames related to Margaret's own Carter family in one way or another. Let's take a few days to review what has already been written on her in these hundred-year-old resources. If nothing else, we can use any information we find as a road map to guide us in locating those elusive records.

Who is This King —and Why Does he Have a Last Name?

 

When I told my sister that the daughter-in-law of our D.A.R. Patriot ancestor was named Margaret Chew Carter, she wasted no time in shooting out the question, "Was she related to King Carter?"

My sister is a finance person. She specializes in commercial real estate. She was keen to know whether we were related to this man, presumably because of her occupational interests. Me? I have no such specializations. All I could think was, "Who is this king—and why does he have a last name?"

As it turns out, "King" Carter received that nickname specifically because of his phenomenal capabilities—with power, influence, financial management, and political connections much of the reason behind why he ended up being the wealthiest man in colonial Virginia. But there was one thing I needed to learn before I could answer my sister's genealogical question: his name wasn't "King."

It was Robert.

Granted, researching a Virginian named Robert Carter would be only slightly easier than searching for a name like John Carter. And John Carter—at least one of the many surely in existence at that time—was the man we'd need to start with, if we were to trace the roots of our fourth great-grandmother, Margaret Chew Carter.

But since she asked—and since I once again stumbled upon that question with the passage found in the book I mentioned yesterday—we may as well first take a look at just why Robert Carter's peers bestowed such a nickname upon him.

Looking at a portrait of the man, he seems to be self-assured, certainly affluent, maybe even imposing in stature. Born in colonial Virginia about 1664—to yet another John Carter—Robert Carter was orphaned at an early age and sent to London to complete his education, according to his father's wishes. During that time, he also learned the practicalities of the tobacco trade from the English perspective, an edge he capitalized upon, once returning to his colonial home.

Back in Virginia, he mounted a series of political career moves, all of which added not only to his political but financial power. Above all, his keen interest in accumulating land holdings—whether by inheritance, acquiring patents on the best of still-unsettled land in Virginia, or even foreclosing on mortgages—worked to produce financial resources which he then shrewdly invested for greater return.

King Carter died in 1732, leaving a generous legacy to both his sons and his daughters, as well as to grandchildren, detailed in a will stretching for forty pages. Though one of those sons was indeed named John, jumping to any conclusions about our Margaret Chew Carter's father—also named John—would not be a wise way to begin this month's research endeavor. For that quest, we'll return to Margaret herself, and begin our search tomorrow with a more sound approach.

Tracing the Carters

 

There is always the possibility that, delving into our own family's history, we may cross lines with someone who was, indeed, historically significant—not just to our own family, but to the community at large. Tracing the Carter line may just hold that very possibility—but first, we'll have to check this out for ourselves. That's my goal in researching my Carter family history this month.

While this won't be as daunting as tracing the family history of a line of Smiths, the Carter surname—the focus of the first of the Twelve Most Wanted I'll be researching this year—might just be a challenge. Carter is a surname which has been part of this country's history for centuries.

Granted, when thinking of well-known Carters in American history, our former president Jimmy Carter may come to mind, and that would indeed be a good example. Seeing the multitude of people claiming that same surname, though—only a decade ago, records showed Carter being the fifteenth most common surname in President Carter's home state of Georgia—we can hardly say that there must be a relationship there, simply because of a shared surname. Besides that, the Carter I am pursuing was my fourth great-grandmother, Margaret Chew Carter, wife of Zachariah Taliaferro. Back then, those Carters lived in Virginia, which, at least by 1880, claimed Carter as the ninth most common surname in that state.

While we'll need to hone our search to a very specific line of Carters this month, I already have a few clues to guide me. Margaret Chew Carter is mentioned in some published genealogies, which can serve as trailblazer to lead me to documentation, either to verify or discard what's been asserted in those books. While that may seem like "reinventing the wheel," I think it's prudent to confirm for ourselves what others have claimed in any genealogy, whether published as online family trees or coming from the pages of dusty old volumes at the library. Just because a source is old or printed in a book doesn't mean it is more reliable—it's the documentation that counts.

What details I have for now include that Margaret was born about 1771 in colonial America—just a few years shy of the start of the American struggle for independence. Her father—the next step in our search for Carter roots—was said to have been John Carter, a perfect example of how to expand the generic nature of such a name.

While a given name like John may seem to confound the research challenge, we can add that Margaret Chew Carter's mother was a woman named Hannah Chew, passing down her maiden name to her child, as has often been customary, plus providing us a guidepost to separate this one John Carter from the multiple others who were surely out there at the same time around their colonial Virginia home.

However, I can't be sure that those history books including this family's names are entirely correct. This is something we'll need to prove for ourselves. Take, for example, this excerpt about Margaret's husband's Taliaferro line, linking Margaret to another member of the extended Carter family:

According to that book, our Margaret was a descendant of King Carter. So, who was King Carter? And was Margaret's connection to this man one that we can verify?

That resource—the 1911 volume entitled Historical Sketches of the Campbell, Pilcher and Kindred Families—might indeed have been well-researched, but I want to trace that line for myself, not solely because I enjoy the thrill of the hunt, but because we all need to confirm each step in our family's chain of events with solid documentation.

So, lest we get lost in the minutiae of King Carter, we need to focus on Margaret and move in a methodical process, first to the next generation in this Carter line: that generically-named John Carter of colonial Virginia. But for those consumed by curiosity (confession: I am, too), I'll relent to take a brief moment tomorrow to discover who this claim-to-fame possible ancestor might have been, at least according to history. Then, back on track!