Friday, March 29, 2024

From Third to Eighth

 

Well, it might not seem as impressive as going from zero to sixty in less than five, but I did make it from third to eighth (great-grandmothers) in less than five—weeks, that is. And that was my research goal for this month. You can tell I'm satisfied, I'm sure.

The idea, at the beginning of this month, was to pursue documentation while piecing together the lineup on my matriline—that line of generations from mother to maternal grandmother to her mother and onward to each subsequent generation's mother. Thus I moved from third great-grandmother Mary Taliaferro to fourth great-grandmother Mary Gilmer, then to her mother Elizabeth Lewis, and her mother Jane Strother, followed by Margaret Watts. And then, onward once again to the woman I so far only know as Mary, wife of Richard Watts.

I had even noted, in my post starting this month, that we "may even land as far back as the beginning of the eighteenth century in colonial Virginia." We did a bit better than that: my newfound eighth great-grandmother, whom I so far only know by her given name Mary, was a woman whose daughter was born in 1700.

The real game changer for me was the FamilySearch Labs development of their Full Text search capability. That made working my way through those colonial wills with their fancy handwriting and extra curlicues less burdensome on my eyes—to say nothing of my patience. I can't help but think of all the other lines in my mother's tree which could benefit from such a review in upcoming months.

In addition, I was able to solidly confirm one of my mtDNA matches, based on what I was able to add to my records with the help of those newly-found wills and deeds. The other three of my "exact matches" are still a mystery, but a task to save for another day.

There are some months, as I work on my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors for each year, when the month closes without much of a sense of satisfaction. There is always work to go back to, the next time I pass that way in the family tree. The same can be said for this month's project. If eighth great-grandmother Mary was born in Virginia, there is certainly a good chance that I'll be able to identify her maiden name—perhaps, even, the name of her mother, as well. But I'll save that for another year's goals.

Somehow, in the cracks between the progress I'll be making on next month's Twelve Most Wanted research goal, I'll be able to squeeze in visits to the FamilySearch Labs site again to confirm more members of this extended family tree through wills and other legal documents stashed away in colonial court records. While research sometimes seems like progress moving ahead in mere inches at a time, it's the conscious, continuous addition of small victories that add up.

With the beginning of the next month—and next week—we'll turn from working on my mother's ancestry to spending three months working on my mother-in-law's tree. And that means, instead of wandering through the handwritten court records of colonial Virginia, in April we'll pick up on a research project from last year to review the family records of neighboring colony Maryland.  

Thursday, March 28, 2024

More About Mary

 

Finding a maiden name for an umpteenth great-grandmother can be challenging, especially if her given name was Mary. All I really knew about that Mary was that she was wife of my eighth great-grandfather, Richard Watts—not that she was actually mother of his children. Worse, even though I've already discovered Mary lost her husband at a relatively young age and likely could have remarried, I didn't have a clue what that subsequent married name might have been.  Still, given FamilySearch Labs' new Full Text search capability, I decided to give it a try and look for more about this Mary in colonial Virginia documents.

Knowing that Mary at least lived longer than her husband Richard—who died in 1716—I had a lot of searching ahead of me. Gambling on a safe bet that she still lived in Virginia after his death, I used the FamilySearch Labs' Full Text search to look for someone named, simply, Mary, which I entered as my keyword. I left the location wide open for the entire colony, as well, having no idea whether the family remained in—or removed from—Westmoreland County, where Richard's will had been recorded.

I didn't leave that simple keyword standing alone, though. I took a risk and guessed that perhaps the oldest Watts daughter would have been married by then—whenever "then" might have been. Thus, for the name of ancestor being searched, I actually loaded in Richard Watts' daughter's married name, Margaret Strother.

Admittedly, with such a wide open search request, I was prepared to see a large number of hits, but 1,703 results still seemed unwieldy. However, looking at the first result, I recognized it as a document I had already reviewed—the 1737 guardianship record in King George County naming Anthony Strother—thus being a record involving Margaret Watts Strother's daughter Margaret, not our Margaret herself.

The very next document in the search results was a will, which was encouraging, but it included names which I didn't recognize as part of the family. It was the last testament of someone named Mary, alright, but her last name was Chilton. Reading further in the document, I spotted two familiar names: John Watts and Richard Watts. However, embedded in the record were other unfamiliar names, including mention of some granddaughters and someone this Mary called "my son James Bowcock."

Remembering, too, that Margaret Watts' father Richard, in his own will, had only identified his two sons—thankfully, also named John and Richard in that earlier document—but had left his three daughters unnamed. I had no way to affirm that the named women in Mary Chilton's will, Jane Monroe and Mary Blackburn, were children of Richard Watts. However, remember that "Margaret Strother" was one of my search terms, and that was indeed the name of the third unnamed Watts daughter.

With that discovery of the will of Mary Chilton, I received confirmation that she was not only Richard Watts' wife, but mother of at least his sons John and Richard. The will also showed me that Mary had been married again, since she named in her will another son named James Bowcock. And though she was married to someone named Chilton, the way in which she made provision in her will for "Captain Thomas Chilton and Jemima his wife" indicated that whoever her final husband might have been—as he was not named in her will—that son of his was not hers as well.

Mary appointed her sons John and Richard Watts, as well as someone named Andrew Monroe, as her executors. They presented her will in court in Westmoreland County on April 26, 1737.

While I still don't know what Mary's maiden name might have been, I can safely place her in my matriline as my eighth great-grandmother, and also begin to examine her other daughters' line of descent for any potential matches to my mtDNA test. While I don't know much yet about Mary, I now know her  mitochondrial DNA still speaks through mine.

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Just One More

 

This quest for who comes next in the lineup of mother's mother's mothers is becoming addictive—especially now that search innovations are opening up ways to delve into the deep middle of those wordy legal documents. Thus, with that "just one more" siren call still shrill in my ears, I press on one more generation.

In following my matriline—in hopes of lessening my puzzlement at those mtDNA match results—we've gone from locating my third great-grandmother Mary Elizabeth Taliaferro in records at the beginning of this month to finding mention of my seventh great-grandmother Margaret Watts, wife of William Strother, in legal documents in colonial Virginia. Surely, we can fit in just one more generation before the end of this month.

Once again, an old genealogy book helps point us in the right direction to fill in some blanks. In a 1915 book called The Hard Family of Virginia, mention of an auxiliary line reviewed the family of one John Grant. This John Grant, you may remember, was the second husband of Margaret Watts after the death of first husband William Strother. The book also explained that Margaret was second wife of John Grant, and went on to explain that she was daughter of Richard Watts. Conveniently, author Arnold Harris Hord added in the comment that Richard Watts' will was "proved October 13, 1716."

Well, that wasn't entirely correct. But it was close enough to lead me to the record.

As it turns out, in that colonial era, women sometimes found themselves widowed and remarried—several times. While Margaret Watts, born about 1700, at least had a father who lived long enough for her to remember him—unlike her youngest daughter, my ancestor Jane Strother—Margaret was in her mid-teens when Richard Watts drew up his will in 1715. His wife, named as his sole executrix, presented the document in court in Westmoreland County on October 31, 1716.

With the discovery of that document, if we can presume that Richard's wife was also Margaret's mother, we learn that the next generation's position in my matriline was filled by this woman, Richard's executrix, named Mary. But that only brings me halfway to my latest benchmark of eighth great-grandmother.

So I fill in the blank in the pedigree with a tentative Mary—but, Mary what? Once again—assuming that if Richard died young, his widow must have been young as well—that empty surname entry surely means another search for a next marriage for our unknown Mary.

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Piecing Together the Paper Trail

 

If it were not for court records, mainly involving those last wills and testaments of our colonial ancestors, I'd be hard pressed to move any farther back in time on my matriline. Even so, finding any more information on my seventh great-grandmother Margaret Watts has been challenging.

That "game changer," FamilySearch Labs' Full Text search innovation, has been helpful, but it still isn't fast enough for me. With less than a week until the close of this month, I still have unanswered questions. Most immediately, I want to know if there were any children from Margaret's subsequent marriage to John Grant after her first husband William Strother's passing—once again looking for potential daughters whose female descendants could be an mtDNA match with me. And, of course, I also want to see if I can push back another generation—you know there is always one more—to discover the identity of Margaret's own mother.

In the meantime, bit by bit, I'm finding support for assertions I had already found in books and journal articles concerning Margaret's family. Though my attempt at finding a will for Margaret's second husband has so far failed, I did locate the very document disputing that "thirteen blooming daughters" legend, as was mentioned in a 1918 article published by The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society. That document, a court proceeding naming the guardian for five of Margaret's daughters after the death of her first husband William Strother, was drawn up in King George County in April of 1738.

There are, however, plenty of other documents which contain William Strother's name. Most all of them are deeds from that same colonial Virginia county. Despite the promise of a "full text" search, that does not necessarily mean researchers get a pass from ever having to engage in a reasonably exhaustive search again. I foresee, in the closing days of this month, a race to find anything else of significance concerning Margaret and her family. 

Monday, March 25, 2024

The Farm That Margaret Sold

 

The pursuit of family history can lead us on a chase past both verifiable details and enigmatic situations which seem more fiction than fact. We've all run across unlikely tales which began, "there were three brothers," or talked to great-aunts who insisted on our descent from famous leaders or the proverbial "Indian princess."

In our current project, however, we can't lose too much time puzzling over the possible legend of the "thirteen blooming daughters" birthed by Margaret Watts, my seventh great-grandmother, or we will pass right over the making of another family legend—this one of presidential proportions. It may just be that the cherry tree which young George Washington supposedly chopped down was planted by Margaret Watts' first husband, William Strother. Before we consider that, though, we first need to learn something about the colonial Virginia farm that Margaret Watts Strother sold in 1738.

Actually, I stumbled upon that detail by accident. I was looking for the will of William Strother, father of my sixth great-grandmother Jane Strother, who eventually became wife of Thomas Lewis. I wanted some form of documentation linking the father with his daughter, and during those colonial times, my best hope of finding Jane's name was to look for her father William's will.

The year Jane was born—about 1732—was close enough to the year in which her father died that I wasn't sure whether he had died unexpectedly before even drawing up such a document. I thought my best chance at finding such a record would be to put the Full Text search at FamilySearch Labs through its paces.

I didn't want to use too many filters—thus wiping out any possibility of finding the will by guessing the wrong details about, for instance, the location of his death. So I simply entered William's first and last name in quotes, added a keyword "Margaret" for his wife, set the location simply as Virginia, and limited the time frame to the 1730s. 

And pressed the "search" button.

With a search as wide open as that, I wasn't surprised the result yielded 310 possibilities. I'm still scrolling my way down that very long list. Right at the top, though, was an entry which caught my eye. It was a deed dated 1738, and it was a document filed in court in King George County, not one of the counties I had seen mentioned in my research yet.

Without even asking for the help yet, this proposed document provided me with the answer to my next question: after William Strother's death, who did Margaret marry? The deed clearly laid out the facts: that William had appointed Margaret as his sole executrix in his will dated November 20, 1732, and that Margaret had subsequently married someone named John Grant.

The terms of William Strother's will included a stipulation that two of his properties were to be sold to the highest bidder. One of those properties was located in King George County, and Margaret had found a willing purchaser there: a gentleman by the name of Augustine Washington.

Once the purchase was made, Augustine moved his family to the property by the end of that year. Unfortunately, Augustine died only a few years later—in 1743—leaving the property to the eldest son of his second marriage, who was only eleven years of age at the time. Thus, George Washington's mother Mary managed the property until George became of legal age to assume ownership of the property where he had lived since he was six years old.

Whether the Strother family had planted any cherry trees on their property before George Washington's father acquired that 150 acre site in 1738, I can't say. Nor can I say whether the future president's father had ever gifted him with a hatchet—or lived to rue the day he had misused it. The general consensus now, at least among those historians who have studied such matters, is that the never-tell-a-lie son of Augustine Washington became the subject of a myth perpetuated long after his own passing.

That Margaret Watts Strother Grant sold the Strother family farm to the Washingtons, however, is certainly not a legend. Though the name of the property has changed—it became known as the Ferry Farm—it is still upkept by The George Washington Foundation. Should I ever get curious enough to wonder what the farm of my ancestors looked like, I can still go visit the property, even get a guided tour if I'd like. More than that, I could take a look at the on-site archaeology lab which has reportedly found "thousands of artifacts" on the property—some, perhaps, dating back to the farm's previous owners, as well. 

Sunday, March 24, 2024

Exploring That Genetic Heritage

 

The other day, I was reading an article on using DNA for genealogy when a term the author used stopped me in my tracks. The term referred to a "genetic heir" being each of us who receives a portion of our ancestors' genetic makeup. That genetic inheritance could be quite tiny, but it is that same pattern, replicated with others of our distant cousins, which allows us to consider ourselves mutual "matches" through that heritage.

While on face value, yeah, I suppose that explains what we are doing when we use DNA to help build out our family tree—especially the parts where we have doubts or untold stories or other unexplained puzzles. It's just that calling it a genetic heritage sounds so much more poetic.

Now that I'm pushing back to the farthest reaches of autosomal testing—looking at my fifth great-grandparents, Elizabeth Lewis and Thomas Meriwether Gilmer—the expectation that I'd see any smattering of a genetic inheritance from them is rather slim. Actually, there's a small chance it could be as good as zero.

However, taking a look at my ThruLines reading for Thomas and Elizabeth, I currently show fifty nine DNA matches through Elizabeth and sixty two leading back to Thomas. Whether those are all correct is a different matter. I'm far from being done with the process of going over each DNA match to verify the connection—and some I've seen already do look tenuous. But for those who check out by paper trail as well as genetics, I still stand in awe of the thought: I've inherited something passed down to me from 1765.

Granted, what Thomas and Elizabeth received at their birth in 1765 had to come from somewhere. Some of their forebears became the lucky ones to have that genetic expression passed down through Thomas and Elizabeth. And what has made it to this current generation so obviously varies: I've seen Gilmer matches who share one single segment of DNA measuring twenty five centiMorgans, while other matches barely squeak by with ten—or less. That may not be much of a heritage, but the fact that any of it is there to measure at all still impresses me.

I'll continue pursuing this tedious task of inspecting each of these distant DNA cousins through the rest of the month. All the while, I'll be pondering the incredible: how that one tiny strand of DNA we share connects us back to a couple whose lives began during our country's colonial days. 

Saturday, March 23, 2024

Genealogy Ennui

 

Today was one of those days, the type when nothing seems to turn out right. A weekend should hardly begin that way, but perhaps I can just blame it on genealogy ennui.

For my weekend research tasks, I like to tackle something light, often veering from my weekday research path. I started out at my computer, seated in front of a window filled with signs of spring in ample sunlight—and ended in threatening cloudiness. What had happened?

My thought had been to put the FamilySearch Labs latest promising project—the Full Text search—through its paces on another research puzzle I've been tackling off and on for a year. Truth be told, it was just last month after I reported my King Carter discovery in answer to my sister's question that she promptly followed up with another question: "And what about our Mayflower connection?"

Rather demanding of her, I grumbled to myself, but had to admit those elusive documents on that Tilson case were, um, still elusive.

But now, there's FamilySearch Labs, right? And now, we can find anything. Right?

Maybe not. We can find a U.S. Land and Probate record if it was digitized and added to the enormous FamilySearch.org collection. Oh, and if it hadn't been lost in a courthouse fire, or a flood, or an act of war. But not—surely—if it hadn't been drawn up at all. Right now, I'm beginning to wonder if that last possibility might have been the true case.

See, all I needed was a handy-dandy digitized copy of the will of my fifth great-grandfather William Tilson, showing his acknowledgement of his son named Peleg. Easy, right? But looking for any such document in the nebulous place where William had settled in southwest Virginia—the county lines kept shifting—brought no shouts of victory. Nor did a similar search in the Tennessee wilderness where he had settled bring even a sigh of relief.

To the credit of the FamilySearch Labs' Full Text search, it did lead me to a document in Washington County, Tennessee, showing an inventory of the estate of one William Tilson, deceased. Whether that was my William Tilson, I can't yet say, but someone named Peleg Tilson certainly went shopping for some tools when that inventory was made public early in the year 1825.

Since there wasn't a will—William S. Erwin was noted as administrator, but I haven't yet found any document appointing him to that position—not only do I lack a record to tie my Peleg to his father, but I have no way to know whether this William Tilson was one and the same as my fifth great-grandfather. Without that, I lack the connection between my paper trail to Peleg and William's paper trail to the original passengers on the Mayflower.

However, what I found does bring up a problem. I've long known that a Find A Grave memorial exists back in Virginia for William Tilson. The date of death given on that memorial is 1833. If you look closer at the memorial, though, the Find A Grave volunteer noted that the headstone, by now, is illegible. There is no way to read the name on the headstone, let alone the date of death. The volunteer reported that, according to the historian for the cemetery, that is "most likely" the grave of William Tilson.

Where did the date 1833 come from? Noticing that the comment on Find A Grave indicated William's service in the Revolutionary War, I cross-checked his information at D.A.R. There, for Patriot William "Tillson," the date of death aligned more closely with the estate inventory I had found in Tennessee: 1825.

At this point, feeling about as unsettled as the weather swirling around outside my window, I wasn't sure which direction to take next. For all I know, there could have been one William in Tennessee and another across the border in southwest Virginia. Or this could have been a case of both identities being one and the same person, owning property in Tennessee, but dying unexpectedly after traveling home to visit his daughter in Virginia. Until I found a document to say so, I can't really know for sure. And there's the rub: what if there is no document to check?


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