Stuff Found While Looking for Something Else

 

It's amazing the stuff you can find while you are looking for something else. Perhaps that's the bane of those of us prone to rabbit trail detours. Let me just call this a post about tying up loose ends.

Quite a while back—while I was still working in earnest to discover the roots of my fourth great-grandfather, Job Tison—reader Charlie Purvis of Carolina Family Roots had sent me a transcription of a legal notice posted on April 7, 1808, in the Weekly Raleigh Register. It was of particular interest not only because it involved legal proceedings in Pitt County, North Carolina—where my Job Tison was reported to have originated—but because of the many Tison family members mentioned in the notice.

Whether those were all kin to my Job Tison, it's too early to tell, so I had set the details aside—along with a follow-up notice on May 12 of that same year—for future pondering, once I uncovered some hoped-for links between those earlier years and Job Tison's later years in Glynn County, Georgia.

Well, those hoped-for links have yet to materialize. Still, setting out on this week's research task—trying to find any mention about Job's history given by his own children in their later years—what should my search terms conjure up, but more details about a Tison family in Pitt County? Of course, I should have thought at first to check for any genealogical publications issued by the very county in question, but did I think of that last month? No, but now that I'm seeking information on Job's son Aaron in Florida, somehow Google thinks I should be looking back in North Carolina.

Nevertheless, onward I go with my revised research task: review each of the Tison children's history, beginning with Aaron, son of Job. Born at the Tison home in Glynn County, Georgia, in 1803, Aaron, I shortly discovered, would not be my most likely target for those hoped-for reminiscences in his golden years. Unfortunately for Aaron, his life was cut short in 1840 when, according to family legend, he was out riding his horse on his land in territorial Florida. The horse apparently threw him, bringing on his untimely death by breaking his neck.

It will be a challenge to find many mentions of Aaron Tison in local records of that time, though assertions have been made of his civic involvement. Aaron was listed in the 1830 census for the territory, living in the then-expansive region designated as Alachua County, "near courthouse and St. Afee River." By the time of that enumeration, Aaron had been married to Louisa Jane Dell for five years, and had three daughters under the age of five.

Though Aaron Tison likely died intestate—thus limiting my ability to gather the names of all his children thus far—he did leave enough descendants to eventually memorialize him as an early settler of the state of Florida. According to the Florida State Genealogical Society's Pioneer Database, his brief biographical notes indicate he was a signer of several petitions to the territorial government—which can hopefully be located in archival collections—and that he and his wife (depending on various reports) were the parents of either five or seven children. Incredibly, my own DNA can vouch for some of those distant cousin connections, despite lack of a complete paper trail at this point.

Apparently, all was not the bucolic farmer's life for Aaron and Louisa, though, as all I could find via a search of newspaper archives regarding Aaron Tison's name were four insertions of an advertisement published less than two years before Aaron's death, reading,

CAUTION—Whereas, my Wife LOUISA JANE TISON, has left my bed and board without my consent, all persons are cautined [sic] and notified, not to harbor or trust the said Louisa Jane Tison, on my account, for I will not pay any debts of her contracting.

Somehow, that makes me wonder what the story really was behind the family lore of Aaron's petulant mount.

If his descendants were keen to memorialize their ancestor, in addition to the resources at the Florida State Genealogical Society, it occurred to me that Aaron Tison, by virtue of his maternal grandfather, could possibly be listed as a descendant of a D.A.R. Patriot. Searching the national D.A.R. website—this time, using the tab for descendants rather than ancestors—I located all the descendant lists for his grandfather West Sheffield which included the line of Aaron Tison. There were two sets of applications, once again demonstrating that the children of this son of Job Tison were more than willing to reminisce about their ancestor. And yet, the stories seem to fall just one generation short of reaching my goal.

Tomorrow, we'll explore some of Job's other children to see whether anyone else remained in Georgia to share his story.    

When Their Aging Children Remember the Good Ol' Days

 

When we can't find our way back through our family's history—when we encounter those bemoaned "brick walls" of genealogical research—one approach is to see what our mystery ancestor's children recall about their parents. True, some families are prone to create what becomes the myths of the family's story, but sometimes, those memories can be borne out by research. I take them as handy trailblazers to point me in—hopefully—a right direction.

So it is with seeking information on the roots of my fourth great-grandfather, Job Tison. While I know he died in Glynn County, Georgia—I have at least a transcribed copy of his will presented in court there—it is only hearsay which points me to a birthplace in Pitt County, North Carolina. And even that report is nebulous: it says he "came from" North Carolina, not specifically that he was born there.

A while back, reader Kathy of Porch Swings, Fireflies, and Jelly Jars pointed me in a promising direction. She mentioned in a comment that she likes to "look far downstream for information," mostly for printed family histories or newspaper articles featuring residents remembering the early years when the area was first settled—and provided a link to the Georgia Historic Newspapers database, which included an article on Job's son, state senator John Mason Tison, and how his parents first came to Georgia.

Remembrances about an early settler like Job Tison might be a good resource for such an extended search—but how to find such articles in the multiple places they might be hidden can be challenging. True, Job Tison, was active in the public affairs of his county, and was likely well-known by the many travelers hosted at his wayside inn, but there may be as many ways to find such tucked away resources as there are articles to uncover.

Reader Charlie Purvis of Carolina Family Roots put in a vote for taking my research question straight to Google Books, and indeed, that produced several mentions. But there are many other resources I've yet to try which may produce even more useful material. Just taking my research terms to a newspaper collection like GenealogyBank told me that in 1819, Job Tison served as a grand juror for Glynn County, and, later that same year, he ran for office in what became a "contested election" in his home county.

Besides Job's son John—the one featured in the brief biographical report—who else might we follow to see whether they ever put to words their remembrances of the "good ol' days" of their parents' arrival in Glynn County, Georgia? From Job's own will—which, keep in mind, I only have in transcribed and abstracted formats—we know that Job and his wife Sidnah Sheffield Tison had at least eight children. While Job's will does not list his children by order of age—he was careful to first see to the needs of the younger children still at home—with a little additional research, we can come up with a viable list.

Oldest son Aaron, born in Georgia in 1803, was followed by my direct ancestor, his sister Sidney, born in 1806. Her younger sister Melinda, born in 1808, was the first of the Tison sisters to marry after their father's death in 1824, though not the first of the siblings to ever have married, since Job's will referenced an unnamed daughter—the one who predeceased him—who turns out to have been named Naomi, who married Matthew Carter in 1811. Naomi surely was born at about the time of these older children.

Following those older children of Job and Sidnah were the ones explicitly mentioned in a cluster in Job's will: Susan (born in 1811), William (1812), John (1817), and Theresa (1820) round out the Tison family portrait. This week, we'll follow each of these descendants to see what clues can be gleaned from any possible remembrances they left, and from that, formulate a research plan for picking up this question of Job Tison's origin at a later date. After all, it's now a new month, and time to mount yet another research challenge.  

The Repercussions of Recuperation: If Hard's too Hard, Try Easy

 

Well, here I am, tentatively peeking out from under the Covid covers to survey the damages of a very rocky two weeks past. It's great to set out a research schedule that's full speed ahead for family history, but is probably wiser to build in a Plan B for the inevitable down time that comes with the ills of winter.

Incredibly, all was not lost while spending a "captivating" two weeks of recuperation. It wasn't the virus itself, per se, which knocked me flat, but the repercussions. However, while I was too exhausted to get up and do anything, I discovered my restless mind could only cope with the inactivity if I grabbed my lightest laptop computer and pieced together collateral lines and DNA matches while flat on my back.

Talk about desperation. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the malaise, I opened up my mother-in-law's tree of multiple generations of solid Catholic families and added the descendants of each collateral line. At my last count—skipping one of my customary biweekly rounds completely, thanks to Covid—the tree she is in held 25,124 individuals. Not any more. In mindless but rapid succession over the past two weeks, I managed to add 979 of her relatives—all duly documented via records at Ancestry.com, and many now connected to my husband's DNA matches—to bring that tree's count up to 26,103 people.

And was grateful for the diversion.

My own tree didn't fare too badly, either, though most of the collateral lines there come with far more struggles. Still, I managed—at least since the last count almost a month ago—to squeak out fifteen additional entries, to bring my tree up to 27,285 people.

The struggle in my own tree is mainly due to the research challenge I had selected for my January goal: to explore the wider realm of historical records and reports for the areas where my fourth great-grandfather Job Tison once lived. That research, by necessity, came to a screeching halt the minute the Covid fever hit, two and a half weeks ago. Though I had already gathered some links to online resources for upcoming posts, the requisite comprehension power to follow through with that just wasn't something to be tackled at quite the same level of effort as simply adding yet another dozen kids to a good Catholic family's tree might have been.

The best approach I've found, when scheduling requires such a shift, is to make note of how far I've progressed, what has already been accomplished, and the remaining steps to tackle the next time I revisit the research problem. Family history research is often a cyclical process, at least in my experience. Sometimes we are limited by the availability of accessible records, or the foundational knowledge from which to make that leap of discovery. I'll take the next week to wrap up material I did uncover—but have not yet written about—then construct a to-do list for the next time I visit this issue. Perhaps, by then, it will be safer to venture out and actually research this ancestor in person, following the same paths he once walked, himself.

In the meantime, before we transition from the last notes on Job Tison to exploring another ancestor's mysteries, I do want to express my thanks for the encouraging comments and emails sent and prayers offered on my behalf over the past two weeks. Genealogists—and genealogy bloggers and followers—are some of the most caring people I know. It is a privilege to count you as friends.

Didya Miss Me?

 

With thanks to those of you perceptive enough to find a way to perform a virtual welfare check, yes, I've been absent over the weekend. True, having the Internet service in our neighborhood go out for nearly a whole day contributed to the issue. But the mainstay of a miserable weekend has shown me that it is possible to not even have journeyed to Salt Lake City for my formerly-annual trek to SLIG (thinking of those who cast aspersions upon that wonderful organization for the co-incidental but inevitable January illness) to come down with something of an awful-disease variety: my entire family, despite all precautions including adhering to a sterling, up-to-date vaccination and masking protocol, has come down with the coronavirus.

I see I'm not the only one in the genealogy universe lately plagued with this unexpected outcome. From well-known lecturers to fellow genea-bloggers to even the "Plan B" speaker our local society had engaged for January's meeting—Plan A having been scuttled, also, due to the same virus—the disease is surging and impacting our community. My thoughts and prayers are with you; this is not an easy ride.

That said, it's been a rough go for me, as well. This is the first chance in which I've been able to sit up long enough to type a few words into a computer; don't expect any more for some time. It takes time to do research—let alone write coherently about the jumble of facts gleaned from pursuing promising rabbit trails. I'll be back when I can. In the meantime, please keep healthy with all the protocols at your disposal. For some, this is not a journey for the faint of heart.

Meeting Job's Family

 

If a straightforward search into my fourth great-grandfather Job Tison's roots yields us nothing but disagreeing assertions, perhaps, as has been suggested, we can glean some clues from his children. After all, some of Job's younger children were born in a time frame which yielded them a ripe old age coinciding with the romantic reminiscing about the "good old days" back at the start of the nation. Perhaps we can find some reports that way.

First, though, we need to examine just who Job's children were—and, in case that yields us nothing, also explore Job's wife's siblings. I find it curious that mentions of Job Tison were often coupled with reports of his father-in-law, West Sheffield, making me wonder whether there is more to that connection than meets the eye. Could Job have been orphaned and taken under his father-in-law's wings? Could this have been an example of an old-fashioned betrothal? We may also want to trace what became of Job's Sheffield in-laws, as well.

Job's 1824 will begins a long process of settling his estate—which went on for years, including a second marriage of his wife and executrix, Sidnah. Job was particularly careful to attend to the needs of his youngest children—then minor and unmarried—Susan, William, John, and Theresa. We also learn from his will that he had a son named Aaron, who had barely come of age when his father died, and two older daughters, the soon-to-be-married Sidnah (my direct line) and just-married Melinda. One last detail was the discovery of an unnamed older—and, by the time of Job's will, deceased—daughter who had married a man by the name of Carter, to whom she had borne a son and a daughter.

For each of these, we'll take some time next week to explore what can be found in those hidden nooks across the Internet concerning any of Job Tison's children—and, for that matter, his wife, Sidnah Sheffield Tison Peck, as well. 

 

Speaking of . . .

 

Yesterday, I was fairly lusting over the twelve volume set of Pioneers of Wiregrass Georgia. Today, I think I've gotten over it. As luck would have it, I didn't need to actually fly to Salt Lake City to access the entire collection at the Family History Library there; all I needed do was take a look at their website.

While true, all twelve volumes are indeed at the Family History Library, a little poking around online showed me enough of a snippet to dampen those flames of bookish desire. For the book's entry on Job Tison's father-in-law, West Sheffield, another researcher had posted a snippet from page 295 of the third volume of Folks Huxford's massive work.

In the very first line of the entry for West Sheffield, I spotted details I could easily work to verify—or discount—right from home. According to Pioneers of Wiregrass Georgia,

West Sheffield of Wayne (now Brantley) County, was a son of John Sheffield, R. S., of Duplin County, N. C., and was born there Dec. 13, 1747. He died at his home in Wayne County, Sept. 22, 1830.

True enough, West Sheffield died on September 22, 1830, and his will was presented in court in Wayne County on the first day of November in that same year. The rest of that biographical entry, however, needs some closer scrutiny.

The least of our concerns is the assertion that Wayne County is now Brantley County. True, Brantley was carved from Wayne—but that didn't occur until 1920. Even if the original land upon which West Sheffield built his home now stands in that location, it is to Wayne County that we need to turn for records on his life story in the early 1800s.

But let's get down to more serious doubts—in particular, whether West Sheffield was from Duplin County, North Carolina, and, more importantly, if he was indeed son of a man there named John Sheffield.

I took the "R. S." after John Sheffield's name to stand for Revolutionary Soldier, though of course, I don't have access to the volumes to seek out any reader's guide to abbreviations used in the Wiregrass works. It is easy enough to see what can be found on any confirmed Patriot: just look at the website hosted by the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

There, I find two entries for a John Sheffield. Fortunately, one is specific to a man by that name from Duplin County. Things seem to be going swimmingly so far—until, that is, we realize the entry is bathed in red ink. There seem to be problems with this Patriot's record. Prime among the objections is the obvious fact that a man born "circa 1740" would be hard pressed to father a son born in 1747. The D.A.R. record comments on this aberration.

Of course, West Sheffield has his own listing as a Patriot at the D.A.R. website, as well. An interesting comment added to that entry was his residence listed as the Beaufort District of South Carolina, bringing us back around to that other puzzle for the extended family.

While twelve volumes of biographical and genealogical information may seem, to those of us far from research repositories, to be a gold mine of information, we need to keep in mind that despite being published works, books can contain errors in research, or even copy errors. They are simply guides pointing a possible way for us to continue our own quest for answers.

  

The Déjà vu of Wiregrass Country

 

It was only yesterday, when perusing my Twitter feed, that I came across Judy Russell's pertinent comment in The Legal Genealogist:

Genealogy is as much a matter of geography as it is of history.

Of course, she had no idea I was on the search for the whereabouts of my fourth great-grandfather's parents somewhere in North or South Carolina; she was looking for her, ahem, "German" ancestors.

While the point is well taken—as we've already discussed here—that borders do move from time to time, geography is a pertinent part of genealogy for more reasons than those shifting borders. As I find in so many of my family history puzzles, it helps to know the places where our ancestors settled. Like, really get to know them.

Instead of trying to trace my line backwards through time—following unsubstantiated reports that my fourth great-grandfather Job Tison came from Pitt County, North Carolina—I want to tack in a different direction. Here's why.

As I explored the place in Georgia where Job Tison and his future father-in-law, West Sheffield, came to call home, learning about Glynn County and Wayne County gave me this strange, déjà vu feeling, as if I had been there before. I guarantee you, the only time I've ever been to Georgia was to fly through the Atlanta airport when my original wintertime flight home had been cancelled due to predictable weather eruptions. In other words: I've never set sights on Georgia from any way other than an aerial perspective. So how could reading about those two counties make me feel as if I had been there before?

Simple: I learned about Wiregrass Country.

Glynn County, where Job Tison settled, and neighboring Wayne County where West Sheffield established his home, were considered to be part of what is called Wiregrass Country. Named for the aristida stricta (or "wiregrass") warm season grass native to the coastal plains of the Carolinas, the region in which it best grows stretches from there southward to Georgia and the Florida panhandle, and westward toward Alabama. 

The wiregrass region used to cover far more of Georgia than it does today, and it featured some other characteristics which I also found strangely familiar. The sandy soil of the region featured one additional familiar feature: the longleaf pine. Far more prevalent in that wiregrass region in past centuries, the longleaf pine was useful not only for timber, but for turpentine. And that is precisely why the look of the land seems so familiar to me: I had seen this same geographic appearance over the miles while driving to the ancestral home of my McClellan line in Suwannee County, Florida—where Job Tison's daughter Sidnah moved after her marriage to George Edmund McClellan around 1830.

Perhaps I am belaboring this point, but it is for good reason. Not only have people sought out new places to live which seemed familiar to them, but those who were accustomed to living off the land developed ways to assess whether new territories had the natural resources to enable them to continue making their living with the skills they already possessed. I'll never forget Mark Lowe's instruction on southern research at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, advising his students seeking their disappearing ancestors to pay attention to soil maps. If those ancestors moved, they likely removed to a place with the same farming conditions required by the crops they had raised back home.

As it turns out, there was a particular migration pattern bringing people into the southeastern Georgia Wiregrass Country. While I'm still working on framing that picture, it appears one typical inbound route brought settlers from the Carolinas, seeking a familiar environment in which to engage in "self-sufficient" farming and livestock herding on cheap land with open range and relatively few other settlers.

While that description doesn't necessarily solve my research dilemma—were Job's parents from North or South Carolina?—it does at least warm me up to the idea that he didn't originate from another location.

There is another bright side to exploring this geographical angle. Once learning about Wiregrass Country, one can't help but realize that the land's unofficial moniker inspired a massive biographical work to catalog the many Euro-American settlers to the region. Called Pioneers of Wiregrass Georgia, the original seven volume set was written by Folks Huxford, with five additional volumes compiled by the Huxford Genealogical Society.

As you can imagine, obtaining all twelve volumes can be a prohibitive process—though a trip to Homerville, Georgia, during their pandemic-limited hours could gain you entrance to the Huxford collection of notes and books which became the impetus of what is now billed as "one of the largest privately owned genealogical libraries in the United States." Not on your itinerary for 2022? No problem: you can check the Pioneers of Wiregrass Georgia index online for your ancestor's name, then tap the book's listing at WorldCat.org in search of the right volume closer to home.

I've already checked for Job Tison: he is mentioned in volumes four and five. West Sheffield? He's there also, in volume three. And why stop there? A glutton for more research resources, I checked for Charles McClellan, father to Job's future son-in-law George as well as witness to Job's will, and even another promising connection by the name of Andrew McClellan.

Now, all I have to do is actually find a library which contains all those volumes. If there's nothing closer, looks like that will be something to add to my to-do list for my next trip to Salt Lake City. I know there's a library there which can help...