Searching for False Positives

 

Family trees can do mysterious things to the identity of our ancestors. Perhaps an ancestor has acquired a false identity, as I'm beginning to wonder about my second great-grandfather, whom I had always known to be Alexander Boothe. According to some vocal—and experienced—researchers from my own earlier days as a neophyte genealogist, that ancestor's name was supposedly William Alexander Boothe.

I, on the other hand, was not able to locate any documents asserting that detail—but what did I know, having just started out on this family history adventure? Now, in retrospect, I feel it is time to go back and do some testing for false positives. In other words, can I replicate any sign that the man's name actually was William? Or, moving even further, can I find any signs that the Alexander I thought I found in Virginia actually remained in Virginia, while I assumed the man I found in Tennessee was one and the same as the Alexander found ten years prior in Virginia?

If I find any indication that there were others with that name in the same location, it would help to know—and to steer me clear of selecting the wrong person by the same name. Let's see what we can find, based on the assertions made by other researchers over the past few decades.

First of all, let's examine the claim that the man's name was William Alexander Boothe, and that in 1832, he married a woman named Mary Smith in Franklin County, Virginia. Can we find the couple in that same county eight years later in the 1840 census? If I've found the right couple, their household of nine individuals in 1840 included one man over forty years of age, along with an adult woman in the same age bracket, plus three boys and four girls (two of whom were fifteen or older). Granted, there is no way to determine from that information whether each of them was a child of that William, but I'm beginning to feel some doubt creep in that this was my second great-grandfather's first marriage. Unless some devastating disease wiped out all my Alexander's children except for his son Quinton—born in October of 1838—that census scenario doesn't seem likely.

Were there any other possible candidates for William Boothe in the 1840 census in Virginia? I took a look. There were multiple Booth and Boothe entries in that state in 1840, but none that looked promising.

What about fast-forwarding to 1850? I first looked for the William and Mary Booth whom we had found in the 1840 census in Franklin County. If that were my Booth ancestor, I'd expect the bereaved widower to not show up in Virginia, since by then I had traced him to Tennessee with his two sons. But here was William, still in Franklin County, with his wife Mary and three children of ages reasonable for a couple married in 1832. This obviously wasn't the "William" who left with his two sons for Tennessee.

Just in case there was another Alexander who also was left behind in Virginia, I tried looking for some indications that I had followed the wrong "ancestor." While I was fairly confident that the Alexander I found at the bottom of the census page in Nansemond County in 1840 was the right one, I looked for someone else by that same name in Virginia.

First, I checked the listing for all Booth heads of household in Nansemond County in 1840—there was none besides our Alexander. Then, I checked to see if, by some odd chance, there already was another Alexander Boothe in Washington County, Tennessee, back in 1840—no one. Back to Virginia I went, to assure myself that my Alexander hadn't remained there while I thought I had traced him to Tennessee. For the 1850 census in Virginia, there was one Alexander Booth of about the right age, but he was living with a younger woman named Louisa, and neither of his two sons were listed in that household.

At this point, I'm gaining confidence that my Alexander Boothe was just that—Alexander, not William Alexander. And while I only have documentation affirming that he was born in Virginia—not, specifically designating a location within that state—thanks to other records, we do have some reports about the possibility of his birth in Nansemond County. To find that, however, requires us to look not in the direction of his earliest years, but beyond the other side of his life, after Alexander Boothe's own death.

Surveying the Document Landscape

 

Today is the start of RootsTech, so you can hardly expect me to focus on my own research when there are so many presentations to watch online. However, I did take some time to explore what documents could be found on this month's research predicament: finding the roots of my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe.

Yesterday, we had explored the direct route of looking for all documents concerning Alexander, himself. Then, stretching our search one more step, we examined the father named in the death certificates of each of Alexander's children. Seeing the consistency gives me more confidence to discard the insertion of a first name of William, as some researchers had asserted.

There is, however, another inconsistency I've noticed in this saga of the migrating Boothe family. Supposedly, Alexander left his home in Nansemond County, Virginia, with his two sons after the death of their mother, arriving in Tennessee in time for the 1850 census. If that was the case, one would suppose the boys' father would report their place of birth as Virginia for that 1850 census—but that was not the case. Take a look for yourself at that record and notice that, while Alexander reported himself as having been born in Virginia, twelve year old Quinton and five year old David were marked as having been born in Tennessee, not Virginia.

Surely that must be a one-off error, you might be thinking. I did, too. So my next step was to look at all the other census records in which I could find either of those earlier two sons from the first marriage.

Searching for Quinton did not produce any helpful information. I have yet to find him in the 1860 census, though I did notice that someone by that same name enlisted in the Confederate Army in Texas in the early 1860s. Checking Quinton's children's death certificates for father's place of birth was not helpful, either. I found his son John's death certificate reported Quinton as having been born in Tennessee—but then daughter Sallie's death certificate showed Texas for her father's birthplace, and son William's informant gave his father's place of birth as Georgia.

It would have helped if Quinton had died just a little bit later than he did. Having breathed his last on January 6, 1908, that date fell at the beginning of the very year in which Texas instituted statewide registration of deaths. Unfortunately, Quinton's does not appear to be among those earliest of such a statewide format, else I'd be snatching it up to view not only the detail on his father's place of birth, but the name of his own mother.

Quinton's younger brother David Booth did not boost my confidence in that story about a Virginia birth for the boys. I was able to find David in each enumeration from the first census after his birth to the last census still existing before his 1899 death. Just as his brother had done, David eventually moved his family to Texas, so a death in 1899 meant his passing predated the modernized form of reporting which includes name and place of birth of each parent. Bottom line for David: every one of those enumerations listed his place of birth as Tennessee, not Virginia.

If those reports of place of birth in Tennessee were correct, that sticking point gives me reason to pause when considering the family story about Alexander Booth losing his wife in Virginia. Perhaps yet again that is a reason why this man has played the part of a brick wall ancestor. Maybe his story is far different than what some of us Boothe cousins had assumed.

Make a List, Check it Twice

 

Having made a list of all the records where I found mention of my second great-grandfather, it's time to check it again. Whether the man was named Alexander Booth or William Alexander Boothe (as one researcher had electronically published far and wide), I still can't say. But it's time to go back through all the records in which he appeared, and check them twice for the precise detail on his name.

This can be tedious work—the kind that, towards the end, may have us kicking ourselves for not being as thorough the first time around. (I'm not to that stage yet, though this ancestor has been a brick wall stopping research progress for far longer than I'd like.)

We've already reviewed Mr. Booth's cameo appearance in each of the census records from 1840 until his supposed death in 1895 and, excepting the missing 1890 census, the name always showed as Alexander Booth—no William in sight.

The next task was to go back and check the death record for each of his children to see what their bereaved relatives reported about the decedent's father's name. This was no small task, considering our man had at least two children with his first—and unknown—wife, plus eleven (at least) children with his second wife Rachel T. Riley.

Had I been able to track down an actual death certificate for either of those first two sons, I would have been rewarded not only with information on Alexander's true identity, but also with the name of their long-gone mother. No such luck, though, for eldest son Quinton died in Texas at the beginning of the year of 1908, perhaps before the more modern format for death certificates was instituted in that state. Quinton's younger brother David likely died before that point, possibly in 1899, though I have yet to complete my search for his death record.

However, moving on to Rachel Riley's Booth children, there were many opportunities to receive the same answer. Beginning with the eldest child, their daughter Laura Caroline, all the way to the youngest of the Booth children I could find—daughter Charlotte Rachel—the entry for the deceased's father was basically the same. It was either Alexander Booth or Alex Booth. Sometimes the surname was spelled with the flourish of a final "e"—Boothe—but other than that, no surprises.

In that trek through the Booth children's own death records, the farthest the standard answer varied was for son Leroy Burton Booth's death certificate, for whom his brother James was the informant, in which the father was listed as "Alec Booth."

There were, however, a couple hiccups in that thorough search. In one case, for daughter Mary, who died in Virginia in 1948, the informant was her son-in-law, Charles Smith, who reported that Mary's father was named John Booth and that he was born in Scotland. In another instance, for son Charles, the section on parents' names and places of birth was left entirely blank—as was the entry space designated for the name and address of the informant. Looking more closely, though, I spotted the cause of death—"railroad accidents causing scalds of almost entire body"—which might be considered a justifiable omission.

Overwhelmingly, the evidence pointed to the man's name not being William. For now, I'll proceed by forsaking that other name and stick with Alexander Booth.

This process of checking every detail, every document, once again has fingered one detail: if there was anything else we could find about those first two sons, the children of Alexander's first wife, perhaps that would lead to some solid guidance back to Virginia—and to some collateral Booth lines.

The Story, as Once was Told to Me

 

Sometimes, those family stories are just that: stories. We can't, however, simply dismiss them out of hand. As with so many such instances, a family story may contain a kernel of truth. It's up to us as family historians to determine which part is the right one to pursue.

So it is with the instance of this month's focus for my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors for 2025. I am beginning to wonder if the story told to me was not entirely verifiable truth. The information was told to me years ago by my mother's second cousin—a fairly close relative, granted, though one I had never known in person—so we could presume it was accurate. Before we make any judgments about its reliability, though, let's take a few minutes to consider the story, as it once was told to me by this distant cousin.

According to the story, William Alexander Boothe—for that was the name this researcher insisted was the man's correct and full name—was born in Nansemond County, Virginia, about 1812. Unknown were his parents, as far as this researcher could tell, as well as the identity of any siblings.

This William was supposedly married to a woman whose name, also, was unknown. The implication was that the marriage took place in Virginia—but again, no documentation.

At some point—perhaps after the birth of a child—the unfortunate, and unnamed, wife died, leaving William Alexander Boothe with the task of raising two young children. A most reasonable solution for such a predicament would be to stay close to family, where grandmothers or aunts could fill in as surrogate mothers until the children's bereaved father could win another bride.

In this William's case, though, his answer was to uproot his two young sons, leave everything behind in Virginia and move to the sparsely-settled region of northeastern Tennessee, where he remained until his dying days.

The backstory to all this drama, according to my cousin, was that William was not too wise with financial matters, perhaps—here's the conjecture—having been tempted by the purchases of fancy race horses. No matter what lured William into this supposed debt, his resolution was basically to do the nineteenth century version of skipping town. And thus...Tennessee.

Was that really what happened? I've tried to find documentation to shed light on any portion of that saga. With the exception of finding someone named Alexander Boothe—note the lack of any "William"—in the 1840 census in Nansemond County, I have so far been unsuccessful in replicating that story.

While I'll always keep that saga in mind—remember, family lore can sometimes contain an element of truth—I may as well start from the beginning and see if the paper trail leads me to a different tale.

Re-Start With What you Know

 

If one of the guiding principles of genealogy is to start with what you know, then when we find ourselves stuck, perhaps the corollary should be to re-start with what we know. This month, in puzzling over my brick wall second great-grandfather, that is exactly how I need to get started.

I'll give you an example right off the bat. I had always thought this man's name was William Alexander Boothe. Why? Because years ago, when I first started working on my maternal grandfather's roots, I had found information on a man named Alexander Boothe. Not much, mind you, but at least the bare essentials.

Back then, there was no access to FamilySearch.org, let alone all the powerhouse research resources we have now—but there was an active community of researchers reaching out to each other via email, "listservs" and, eventually, online forums. From such resources, I discovered there was a man who not only was actively pursuing this same second great-grandfather, but online, he was prolific in his sharing of what he had found about the man. I connected with him by email, then eventually by telephone, and learned quite a bit about what he had discovered about our mutual ancestor.

There was, however, one problem: this researcher insisted the ancestor's name was not simply Alexander Boothe, but William Alexander Boothe. His influence was apparently quite widespread. Now, I can find many trees mentioning that given name in combination with the Alexander I saw—without supporting documentation.

Now that I look back over every document I've found to support what I know about this second great-grandfather, I'm realizing one glaring omission. You guessed it: no mention of the given name William in any of those records. Could chasing William have been the rabbit trail which caused that left turn I missed in Albuquerque? 

Take, for example, this run of census records. In 1880, shown with his wife Rachel and eight of their children (including my great-grandmother Cassie), the head of the Boothe household was listed by the name Alexander. Same goes for the 1870 census. You might get a sense of something happening here by the time we check the 1860 census, and feel more of a certainty about the man's name when we press back, even before his marriage to Rachel Riley in 1854, to the 1850 census, where Alexander was enumerated along with his two eldest sons, Quinton and David, still in Washington County, Tennessee.

In each of those enumerations, Alexander was listed—consistently—as having been born in Virginia, not Tennessee. Checking—just in case I could find something—there was someone named Alexander Boothe in the 1840 census in the now-nonexistent Nansemond County, Virginia, being of the approximate age indicated in subsequent enumerations, along with a wife and child under five years of age. Our Alexander? Hard to tell, but the ages and scenario seem to fit.

What's missing in each of those records was any sign of a given name William. Perhaps, as we start off this month looking for my brick wall second great-grandfather, we should agree to stick with a search for Alexander, and set aside any notion of a man named William Boothe. After all, with a surname as common as that, following the wrong given name might lead us far from the person we're seeking.

A New Month, a New Challenge

Some months, my research candidate for my Twelve Most Wanted brings me lots of work—and, if I'm fortunate, plenty of new DNA cousins in the process. For March, however, we won't be chasing the 124 DNA matches I garnered for last month's Townsend project; for this month's project, I'll be lucky to add twenty five new matches.

Those serendipitous chases can certainly up my count on my very "bushy" family tree, full of collateral lines and all their descendants. In just the last two weeks, for instance, working on the Townsend problem added 491 new entries to my family tree. My tree is now hovering near the 40,000 mark: 39,971 individuals, to be exact.

This month? Don't count on such progress. The ancestor I'm seeking in March is my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe. Deciding whether his surname was really spelled Boothe, or the more common Booth—his descendants seemed to alternate between the two—is only a small part of the question. And a few researchers' insistence that his given name was William doesn't seem to have documentation to support it—so add that little detail to the task list for March. 

However, what I really need to know about the man is his early history. Sure, he showed up in Tennessee before 1850, a widower with two young sons in tow—but who was the wife he had buried? More to the point: who were his parents? That he came from Virginia can be clearly seen by his consistent reports in each of the decennial enumerations conducted while he lived in Tennessee. But I have yet to find the identity of his parents.

That is my goal for this month: find my second great-grandfather's Boothe forebears. Now that I've found so many other answers through FamilySearch.org Labs' Full Text search tool, I'm hoping that resource will lead me to some verifiable answers in this Boothe question. And there certainly is a need for verification. If I look to one publicly available universal family tree, there are assertions about his parents' names. Problem: if I look to Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool, there is a suggestion that his parents' names represent an entirely different couple. And where is the documentation? At this point, I'm wondering whether it will even be possible to determine which answer is correct—or if another set of parents would be the true identity.

Tomorrow, we'll start with what we already know about this Boothe second great-grandfather. This would also be a good time to evaluate a few assertions that have been made by other researchers about the man. Wrong assumptions can lead us down a very different research path, so we may as well start not only with what we know to be correct, but with what we can see might be incorrect, as well.  

Not Out of the Hat

 

The trouble with planning research goals months in advance is that, once the time arrives to do so, we can't just magically pull a genealogical rabbit out of the hat. Sticky research problems that had me stumped last December, when I was outlining plans for my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025, are still just as sticky as they were back then. Sure, I'm optimistic about what new tech tools can do for document retrieval, but if the documents were never digitized—or worse, destroyed by some catastrophe—fancier tools simply will not produce documents which were never there.

Learning that other researchers have not been able to locate a will for John Townsend, presumed father of my third great-grandmother Delaney Townsend, has been a discouragement. Trying to trace the collateral lines of Delaney's possible family has not proven successful, as far as documentation is concerned. While a descendant of one sibling did apply for membership in the DAR using, among other records, a family Bible, the record was transcribed into the application; there is no actual photocopy of the original record. Keeping in mind that there were at least three Delaney Townsends that I've run across, it would be more reassuring to see the Bible entry itself.

There is, however, one other method to provide a bit more confidence: those 124 DNA matches I'm still reviewing. At this point, I've followed lines of six of the possible siblings of my Delaney to confirm records linking my DNA matches to their ancestral Townsend. While some appear to have documentation problems, most of the matches do line up. But this is not a quick fix to the original problem of having no document to tie all those siblings to the same parents.

And yet, the month is over. With the coming of March, we'll be moving from South Carolina and Florida to mull over another ancestral line with missing documentation, this time in Virginia. We'll meet William Alexander Boothe tomorrow, but for now, wrapping up the question about Delaney could use a to-do list for the next time I revisit her research problem.

First off, finishing the confirmation of each of those DNA matches would help. It's encouraging to see at least one way to demonstrate family connection to this Townsend line. I'm not sure what percentage of successful matches would satisfy my doubt, but if at least fifty percent of the descendants of each presumed Townsend sibling could be confirmed, I'd feel a little less tentative about the connection.

In addition, completing the process of looking at last wills and other documents at each sibling's passing in hopes of finding a sibling identified would be my next step. While the oldest of the presumed Townsends, born in the late 1700s, would not have an obituary written in their honor complete with names of surviving siblings, perhaps among the youngest members of the family, such a remembrance could be found. And looking for signs in wills—such as witnesses to the document or naming of executors—might reveal a brotherly connection.

As I've already witnessed, moving from last year until now, technology has made so many more records accessible and quickly retrievable. It is doubtful I would have found the estate sale inventory for Delaney or the guardianship appointment for her orphaned children without the help of FamilySearch.org Labs' Full Text search. Who knows what tools will be available to us in another couple years?

For now, we'll bid goodbye to my mystery third great-grandmother, Delaney Townsend Charles, and all the question I have about whatever became of her. It's time to look at the early life of a second great-grandfather, William Alexander Boothe. Born in 1812 in a now-nonexistent county in Virginia, by 1850 he had lost his wife and moved with his two young sons to a new life—and a new wife—in Tennessee. My task this month will be to see if I can rewind history to uncover documents about those earlier days back in Virginia. My hope is that, even if I can't pull those documents magically out of the hat, so to speak, I'll find a clear research path forward towards discovery.