Mysteries and Histories: Nehemiah Evitt and Southern Native American Heritage

As a small child, I lived from time to time with my maternal grandparents on their farm in Oklahoma. They lived in Pushmataha County, on what had been Choctaw Indian reservation land before the Dawes Act, and long before that, Caddo Indian land. My grandmother had taught at the community's one-room school, which still served the local Choctaw families. When I started school there, my cousin Mitchell was in the first grade, I was in the second, and my brother Martin was in the third. We were one row apart from each other, along with other kids, some of whom were obviously Indian.

My maternal grandmother was Lillian Agnes Williams Morrison Slatten, born 1 January 1892 in Walker County, Georgia, died 31 October 1984 in Dallas, Texas. Many years later, after her death, I glanced at an old and familiar photo of her. First, I saw her as she had been, my beloved grandmother. Suddenly, something shifted, and she was an Indian, a surprise to me. And then another shift, and she was my beloved grandmother and an Indian. Partly Indian, she would have said. I didn't know how I had missed that part of her. I hadn't seen it before. No one had told me.

Lillian Agnes Williams Morrison Slatten

I called my mother and blurted out my discovery. My mother denied it staunchly and told me her mother had been Italian. I argued with her, saying there were few Italians in Georgia in the 1800s. My grandmother acted nothing like Italians I knew. There were no Italian names in the family tree. Some months later, when I called my cousin Cecile and blurted it out again, I expected the same fight. But there was only her pause for the right thing to say. "We knew we were Indian," she said. Why hadn't I? But Cecile didn't know how we were Indian. I started looking at things differently.

I rifled through other old photos that I had. People who looked Indian were scattered throughout my family. Lots of darker hair and eyes, wide cheekbones, some darker skin. On both sides, too, possibly three grandparents' worth of partly Indian.

L to R, my grandmother's siblings--Leonard Williams, Theresa Ethelma Williams Crowder, Anna Ruth Williams Kelley, Dessie Lou Emiline Williams Marks, and an unknown, perhaps a stepbrother.

My paternal great-great-grandfather, Henry Fauteck, had been a German carpenter. He had gone to California as a private in the U.S. army as the Civil War started, was there in the early 1860s, and brought back his son, my great-grandfather, Henry Martin Fauteck, born 1863 in California, to New Jersey. My mother had heard a story from the Fauteck family that the elder Henry must have been a bigamist--there is no evidence that he married in California, however--because his wife in New Jersey reportedly wasn't the mother of Henry Martin. Many of the Fauteck descendants had dark hair and resembled Indians, and my mother knew that there had been dark-haired Fautecks remaining in California. The tintype of Henry Martin showed him with dark hair; he reminded me of a California mixed blood that I knew, half Miwok and Pomo Indian, half white.

L to R, Louisa Kreis Fauteck, Albert Martin Fauteck, Henry Martin Fauteck

In my maternal family, Lillian's brothers and sisters, her mother, her father, and her grandfather, Nehemiah Evitt, all resembled Indians, too. I showed the photo of Nehemiah and Rosana Emiline, his wife, to a friend. "He's an Indian," she said, "and she's an Indian, too." The biggest mystery had been that they were "partly" Indian.

Given Nehemiah's appearance, I suspected that either the Evitt line, his maternal Rippetoe line, or both, were intermingled with Native American lines in the early South. This photo had been retouched to put in more beard and to take out his longer hair.

Wilson (2002) claimed Nehemiah was descended from Dutch and Welsh: "William was said to be of Welsh descent and Rebecca [Rippetoe] of Dutch descent." There is no known indication of Welsh descent in William Evitt's male or female ancestry. The Evitt family line an be traced back to the late 1200s in Lincolnshire, in the east of England. In the several generations before immigration to Virginia, it was reported that the Evitts lived in Ireland. 

Neither is it proven that the Rippetoes were Dutch. The Rippetoe name descends from Gabriel Ribouteau, immigrant to South Carolina. Ribouteaus were in frontier Virginia by the early 1700s. Gabriel was a Huguenot and perhaps lived in Holland, but he is said to have been born in France. There is no other apparent Dutch descent in the records of the Rippetoe family.

A euphemism in the south for a mixed blood was often Black Dutch, to explain away dark complexion and hair color:

Black Dutch is an unofficial American ethnic designation. It was commonly used in Pennsylvania among ethnic Germans, some of whom migrated south to Virginia and other points. Separately, it became adopted around 1830 and afterward among certain Southeastern families of mixed-race ancestry, especially those of Cherokee descent. When used in the South, it usually did not imply admixture, although some families who used the term were of tri-racial descent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-Dutch). 

While there is less of a record of this with Black Irish or Black Welsh in the South, those terms also have existed to dissemble dark complexions in white cultures. 

There were other maternal family lines where there was evidence. Since my mother's ancestors had been early settlers in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Georgia, and Oklahoma, they had lived close to populations of Indians from the early 1600s to the 1900s. While it is known that some of them fought Indians, it is also likely that some intermingled and intermarried over those hundreds of years.

The intermingling of many of the early colonists in Virginia with women from the Powhatan Confederacy can be established from colonial records. Separate letters to King Phillip III of Spain in 1612 from the Marquess of Flores and Don Pedro de Cunega reported that as many as forty to fifty colonists had married Indian women (Link out of date. Was at: http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/jame1/moretti-langholtz/chap10a.htm, citing Brown 1964). 

At a time when there were very few European women in Virginia, forty to fifty colonists represented a substantial percentage of the population: "the dearth of English women at Jamestown in its early years and the close proximity of Indian women probably made intimate relationships between English men and Indian women inevitable" (Goetz 2012, 65).

Such relationships were apparently pursued strategically: "The English pursued a second strategy common in trading communities: cultural assimilation and commercial advantage through sexual alliances" (Games 2008, 131).

In early colonial Virginia, it has been said that the Great Powhatan Wahunsenacawh, chief of the Powhatan Confederacy, fostered many of these relationships in diplomatic moves to establish better relations with the European colonists (see Bernhard 2003, 16). The marriage of Pocohontas, the Great Powhatan's daughter, to John Rolfe ushered in an eight-year period of peace (http://www.virtualjamestown.org/jrolfe.html). 

Pocahontas Matoaka Rebecca Rolfe

While Pocahontas' marriage is the best-known English and Indian union in colonial Virginia, other prominent unions are noted in historical records. In one instance, Lt. Col. John West, the son of Gov. John West and the grandson of Thomas West, 2nd Lord de la Warre, had a long-term liaison and a child or children with Cockacoeske, the Queen of Pamunkey, a cousin of Pocahontas, in the mid-1600s (see McCartney 2006). Outside the Powhatan Confederacy, white and Indian relationships are also documented among the Cherokee, Catawba, and other Southern tribes.

William L. Deyo, the tribal historian for the Patawomeck [Potomac] tribe of Virginia, has published multiple articles and books detailing many more historical unions between whites and Indians in Virginia, including the Pettus, Bryant, and Williams families: 

Chief Wahanganoche was very shrewd in allowing a number of his daughters to marry well-to-do English colonists in the area . . . It is because of the children of those daughters and some of the orphan children of [the massacre] of 1666, who also married English colonists that the Patawomeck Indians and their culture survived (http://virginiaindians.pwnet.org/today/patawomeck.php).

Such interminglings represented a continuing reality of colonial life:

In colonial Jamestown, the first biracial Americans were the children of white-black, white-Indian, and black-Indian unions. By the time of the American Revolution, somewhere between 60,000 and 120,000 people of "mixed" heritage resided in the colonies. During his presidency, Thomas Jefferson begged Americans to consider "let[ting] our settlements and [Indians'] meet and blend together, to intermix, and become one people" (http://www.ferris.edu/News/jimcrow/question/may10/index.htm, citing Hodes 1999, 11).

Many anti-miscegenation laws prohibiting intermingling between whites and Indians were eventually passed in the South: South Carolina (after 1717), North Carolina (after 1715), Tennessee (after 1715 as North Carolina, after 1796 as state), and Georgia (after 1750). Kentucky, Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana passed laws that prohibited only relationships between whites and blacks. Prior to the Louisiana Purchase in 1815, white and Indian cohabitation and intermingling were permitted in Louisiana, but not marriage, unless both parties were Catholic (http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/engl_258/Lecture%20Notes/american_antimiscegenation.htm).

A variance in this pattern was Virginia, which in 1691 prohibited marriages between whites and negroes, mulattoes, and Indians. However, when the law was amended in 1705, it omitted mention of Indians. In 1753, the law in Virginia was reenacted, but it still only addressed black-white marriages (http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2012/06/01/intermarriage-and-the-law-colonial-style/). In part because of the change to Virginia's laws in 1705, "In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a good number of Anglo-Americans advocated inter-marriage with the Indians as a means of speeding up efforts to 'civilize' the Indians or as a means of acquiring Indian land" (Lemire 2011, 47). In the Virginia legislature in 1784, Patrick Henry proposed the payment of rewards to white men and women who married Indians; the bill did not pass (Higginbotham and Kopytoff 2000, 108, n. 133).

When Virginia eventually passed a law barring white unions with Indians in the Racial Integrity Law of 1924, an exception was made that skirted racial-status issues for descendants of such earlier unions, particularly those of Pocahontas, whose descendants included some prestigious and influential American families (http://www.americanancestors.org/an-excursion-into-southern-genealogy/): 

[I]t was not until 1924 that Virginia again expressly barred marriages between whites and Indians and even then it declared that “persons who have one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and have no other non-Caucasic blood shall be deemed to be white persons.” This so-called Pocahontas exception was expressly designed to accommodate descendants of the John Rolfe-Pocahontas marriage (http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2012/06/01/intermarriage-and-the-law-colonial-style/). 

As a result of the changes in Virginia's laws, intermarriage with Indians was at least legally permitted, even if not always socially accepted, from the earliest settlements to 1691, from 1705 until 1924, and from 1967 on. In 1967, all states' anti-miscegenation laws were struck down by the U. S. Supreme Court in the Loving v. Virginia case (388 U.S. 1 (1967)).

Virginia, therefore, was a haven, along with other states without anti-miscegenation laws, for those families who were Indian and white. Except for the years between 1691 and 1705, only 14 years, Virginia had no fundamental legal sanctions against Indian and white marriages for over three hundred years, between 1608 and 1924.

Despite illegality in other Southern states, these unions still took place, especially on the frontier, where such connections into tribes were useful for trade, diplomatic relations, and establishing further settlements, and where enforcement might be weaker: "The Indians often initiated interracial liaisons . . . these matches had benefits for tribe and trader" (Ingersoll 2005, 68). However, there is often little or no documentation, because it was not just illegal, it was socially unacceptable and even dangerous. In white-dominated communities, people passed for white if they could.

White and Indian intermingling in the South was prevalent throughout the colonial era, especially in Virginia. It was a force in the settlement of the frontier, and it is documented in many family genealogies, in DNA testing, and in the historical literature. 

I eventually identified about thirty-five Native Americans in my mother's other family lines, primarily women. I found my paternal great-great-grandmother, Louisa Smith, was Miwok, Pomo, and Kamchatkan/Aleut.

I also found that Nehemiah Evitt was a direct descendant of Pocahontas/Metoaka and her father, the Great Powhatan, on the Evitt line. 

I eventually had my DNA tested, and there were European, Middle Eastern, African, Asian, Austronesian, and Native American markers. Siberian ones, too. Intermingling had been happening for thousands of years. However, it turned out that the Ribouteau line may have been from Sardinia, via Genoa, Italy--probably Repetto. My mother had been partly right.

References:
Bernhard, Virginia. 2003. Pocahontas Was Not the Only One: Indian and English Liaisons in Seventeeth Century Virginia. In Searching for Their Places: Women in the South across Four Centuries, ed. Thomas H. Appleton and Angela Boswell, 12-36. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press. 

Brown, Alexander. 1964. The Genesis of the United States. New York: Russell & Russell.

Games, Alison. 2008. The Web of Empire : English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560-1660. New York: Oxford University Press.

Goetz, Rebecca Anne. 2012. The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity Created Race. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Higginbotham, A. Leon, Jr., and Barbara K. Kopytoff. 2000. Racial Purity and Interracial Sex in the Law of Colonial and Antebellum Virginia. In Interracialism: Black-White Intermarriage in American History, Literature, and Law, ed. Werner Sollors, 81-139. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hodes, Martha, ed. 1999. Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History. New York: New York University Press.

Ingersoll, Thomas N. 2005. To Intermix with Our White Brothers: Indian Mixed-Bloods in the United States from the Earliest Times to the Indian Removals. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.

Lemire, Elise. 2011. "Miscegenation": Making Race in America. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

McCartney, Martha W. 2006. Cockacoeske, Queen of Pamunkey: Diplomat and Suzeraine. In Powhatan's Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast, ed. Gregory A. Waselkov, Peter H. Wood, and M. Thomas Hatley, 243-266. Lincoln, NE : University of Nebraska Press.

Wilson, John. 2002. Evitts Were Among Earliest Ooltewah Settlers. Chattanoogan.com, February 17. Excerpt from Wilson, John. 2001. Early Hamilton Settlers. N.p.: Sheridan Books. Accessed February 6, 2014. 
http://www.chattanoogan.com/2002/2/17/18127/Evitts-Were-Among-Earliest-Ooltewah.aspx.

Background Information on Mid to Late Colonial Virginia

During this span of time, roads had been better developed for travel. Carriages, coaches, and carts became available in Virginia. Horses were being bred, like the Narragansett Pacer, to make riding long distances over unsure terrain faster and easier, especially for planters, who rode regularly from property to property (http://www.saddlebred.com/Breed-History-500-1700).

But travel overland was still difficult, and settlement centered along the rivers because transportation and trade there were easier. Settlement pushed substantially inland to the Piedmont from the Tidewater (coastal) area between 1725 and 1750 (Virginia Department of Transportation, 6). "Three primary factors drove the creation of most new counties in Virginia's early colonial period: increasing population, new land for tobacco fields and the difficulty of travel"
(http://essexmuseum.org/history-county.htm).

The population of Virginia in 1730 was 114,000. By 1760, it had nearly tripled, to 340,000 (http://www.virginiahistoryseries.org/linked/unit%206.%20life.growth.development%20of%20va%20colony.slides.pdf).

For much of the colonial period, tobacco was currency: "As gold and silver became scarce, and the use of wampum was terminated because of its complications, the Chesapeake colonies were able to rely on tobacco as a means of currency. Tobacco was the safest and most stable currency that the Chesapeake colonies had or could have, and it always had a value in exchange for gold" (http://archive.tobacco.org/History/colonialtobacco.html; see also Scharf 1879, 273).

The tobacco crops exhausted "minerals and nutrients from the soil. The first Virginia colonists to acquire ownership of land were positioned to gain great wealth, permitting them to abandon old fields and plant in fresh soil that would produce great quantities of the crop" (www.virginiaplaces.org/agriculture/tobacco.html). There was thus a constant demand for uncultivated acreage. Since 500-pound hogsheads of tobacco were often manually rolled to shipping docks in this time, proximal access to navigable waterways was optimum. Prime acreage, with both fertile soil and shipping access, was to be found along the area's navigable waterways.

What also drove development into the Piedmont were the public desire to defend the frontier and substantial incentives for settlement:

The policy of the colonial government at this time was to encourage settlements on the upper waters of the Rappahannock to protect the frontiers of the colony against Indian incursions and from French settlers "to the westward of the high mountains". Lands, therefore, were not only granted freely, but when Spotsylvania County was formed in 1721, money was appropriated to supply the new settlers with arms and ammunition, and they were exempted from taxation for a period of ten years (Groome 1921, 22).

The ten-year, tax-exempt period for ten years began May 1, 1721. In addition, 500 pounds were approved for the building of the church, court house, prison, pillory, and stocks, which relieved the imposition of these tax burdens from the Spotsylvania citizens (Hening 1820, 78).

Names and extents of Virginia colonial counties evolved constantly during this period. In 1644, York County covered an large area of the Tidewater and Piedmont areas of Virginia. In 1651, Gloucester was created from York, and in 1654, New Kent was created from York. In 1691, King and Queen was created from part of New Kent. Essex County was created in 1692 from Rappahannock County. In 1721, Spotsylvania County was created from Essex County, King and Queen County, and King William County. In January 1734/35, Orange County was created from Spotsylvania. Orange County originally extended farther westward, including all of present Kentucky and West Virginia. Culpeper County was created from Orange County in 1749.

As one example of how these changes affected particular places, a relatively small area known as the Great Fork of the Rappahannock River, where my ancestor John Read bought property in 1730, was located in eight different counties over a 150-year period--Charles River, York, Lancaster, Rappahannock, Essex, Orange, Spotsylvania, and Culpeper.

Two "wrinkles in time" were corrected in this era. The Julian calendar had drifted by 11 days from the solar calendar, and from the 12th century to 1752, the civil or legal year in England began on March 25th. For a period of 170 years (1582 – 1752), both dating systems were in concurrent use in different parts of Western Europe and its colonies. The conversion caused some days in winter to be noted with two years. While "Old Style" (O.S.) and "New Style" (N.S.) are sometimes added to historical dates to identify which system is being used, and an occasional date is written, for example, 1715/6, dates are somewhat soft as data in this period of time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates).

The primogeniture customs were still in effect in Virginia at this time. Under primogeniture, an eldest son would automatically inherit real property, the land and buildings of an estate, unless otherwise devised in a deceased person's will. No specific mention of title transfers under primogeniture would usually be made in the court records of the estate. If the inherited real property was later sold, for instance, documents would be on record, but the actual inheritance would be invisible, leaving no paper trail (Keim 1968).

Entail or fee tail was a form of restricted ownership of land, where the terms of a legal document, as in a will, could bind property in perpetuity to heirs to restrict conveyance. Entail was different from fee simple property ownership, where property could be sold, mortgaged, or devised without such restrictions. Often the entail was done to protect a surviving wife and children and to keep property in a family's hands. This meant that entailed real property could not be sold, mortgaged, leased, or otherwise devised by will after that without further court or assembly action, also known as docking. In 1705, the Virginia Assembly voted to stop the docking of entails, and they no longer could be converted to fee simple by court action (Keim 1968, 546). Exceptions to this happened, however, by Act of the Assembly. In 1776, fee tail was abolished by statute in Virginia (548-549).

Because the historical fusion of church and state still prevailed in this era, Virginia counties were organized into parishes. Church attendance was mandatory, taxes were collected by the churches, and "[e]very male inhabitant over sixteen was tithable" (Clark 1908, 28). Under order of the courts, individual parishes determined and collected tithes, taxes from individuals, to support the parish. Levies of tithes were based on property ownership and agricultural production, particularly of tobacco. During this time, tobacco was also used as a form of currency in Virginia.

Virginia legislation "required each man in the colony to work on the roads a given number of days each year" (Virginia Department of Transportation 2006, 5) or to have someone work on the roads in his place, unless aged or disabled.

Processioning was also a requirement mandated by the courts through the parishes. Surveys laying the initial property boundaries were often incorrect or contested. Once every four years within a range of dates, properties were to be walked by adjacent landowners in order to clarify boundaries between the properties and to avoid litigation. This was to be supervised by two freeholders who saw and reported on the processioning. Conflicts were to be resolved by two surveyors. Once processioned three times, boundaries were deemed to be fixed in perpetuity (http://www.genfiles.com/legal/Processioning.htm).

Members of new parish vestries were elected by parish-wide votes, but the vestry members chose later replacements on the vestry council. They were most often wealthy men, who wielded the power to set the local parish levies annually. In regard to the taxes levied by the individual counties, if "county residents thought that the county levy was set too high, they had little recourse other than to move away . . . That tax increase could generate resentment among the large number of taxpayers who paid the levy" (http://www.virginiaplaces.org/taxes/taxcolonial.html).

Land patents were one basis of land acquisition in Virginia. A person could claim responsibility, called headrights, for sponsoring Virginia immigrants, and receive a per land grant, generally 50 acres per capita, of available land (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/guides/opac/lonnabout.htm). There could be a requirement that granted property be seated, settled and planted, within three years or the land patent would be voided (e.g., Hening 1823, 313-314). The record of these acquisitions could also appear in later public records such as wills or deeds when the property changed hands. Manipulation of the headright system, including fraud, was common. The system fell into disuse sometime after 1732 (http://genealogytrails.com/vir/land_patents_book15.html).

In 1649, an area of 5,282,000 acres, including the Northern Neck, was granted in its entirety as the Northern Neck Proprietary by the exiled King Charles II to some of his loyal supporters. This countermanded the authority of the Virginia colonial government, which had continued to issue its own land grants, throwing the status of preexisting land patents in the Northern Neck into confusion. Despite the king's grant, however, patents continued to be issued in the Northern Neck by the Colony of Virginia. The Northern Neck Proprietary became actuality after Charles II was restored to the throne, and King James II eventually reissued the grant. Thomas Lord Culpeper eventually acquired a majority interest in the title to the proprietary. After Lord Culpeper's death, Culpeper's interest passed to his heirs, including his daughter, Katherine, and son-in-law, Thomas Lord Fairfax, who subsequently initiated land grants in that Northern Neck area. The status of the original patents made by the Colony of Virginia was ultimately reaffirmed (Groome 1921, 19–20).

With the advent of the Fairfax grants, neither seating nor headrights were required for land grants in the Northern Neck.

References
Clark, W. M., ed. 1908. Colonial Churches in the Original Colony of Virginia. 2nd ed. Richmond, VA: Southern Churchman. Accessed September 28, 2013. http://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924005835842/cu31924005835842_djvu.txt.

Groome, H. C. 1921. Northern Neck Lands. In Bulletin, Fauquier Historical Society, 1:7-65. Warrenton, VA / Richmond, VA: Fauquier Historical Society / Old Dominion Press. Accessed September 29, 2013. http://archive.org/details/bulletin00vagoog.

Hening, William Waller. 1820. The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619. Vol. 4. Richmond, VA: Samuel Pleasants, Junior, Printer. Accessed September 29, 2013. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009714930.

Keim, C. Ray. 1968. Primogeniture and Entail in Colonial Virginia. William and Mary Quarterly 25, no. 4 (October):545-586. Accessed November 3, 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1916798.

Scharf, J. Thomas. 1879. History of Maryland: From the Earliest Period to the Present Day. Vol. 1. Baltimore, MD: John B. Piet. Accessed September 25, 2013. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001874049.

Virginia Department of Transportation. 2006. A History of the Roads in Virginia: "The Most Convenient Wayes." Accessed September 24, 2013. http://www.virginiadot.org/about/resources/historyofrds.pdf.

The Tax Protests of John Read of Culpeper County, Virginia and His Relatives, John, George, and Lawrence Washington

I spent a lot of the last year researching the John Read[e] family of Culpeper County, Virginia. It will be a book soon, but I haven't finished it yet. Sometimes there's no bottom to it! He was my 6th great grandfather. He was also a plantation and slave owner; he was definitely a man of his times.

He lived in York, Gloucester, King and Queen, Spotsylvania, Orange, and Culpeper Counties, in colonial Virginia. The county names changed faster than he moved. He was born before 1692 and he died in 1765 in Jeffersonton, Culpeper County. He was married to Winifred Favor. And while his own life seems quiet in comparison, he was the grandson of Col. George Read[e], the great grandson of Nicholas Martiau, and a cousin to George Washington and to Thomas Nelson, Jr., who all took their places in Virginia history. Here is a link about Nicholas Martiau, one of the first American patriots: http://www.jamestowne-wash-nova.org/NicholasMartiau.htm.

The laws of Virginia and actual practices were in flux during the colonial period. But in general, since the state was also the Church of England, the Anglican parish church vestries decided and imposed local tithes, basically county taxes on property, and provided public and social services. Attendance at church services, military service, public services, and payment of taxes were often adjudged to be mandatory. Public services could include road construction/maintenance, local court actions, and the keeping of birth and death records. The church vestries also provided public charity for widows, orphans, and those who could no longer support themselves; the working indigent could become indentured though the vestries, laborers under contract. 

In general, too, the vestry boards were initially elected by and from freeholders, that is, white, male landowners. This also applied to leaseholders for an interval of time: "The law made clear in 1684 that tenants with life leases, not just outright landowners, could also participate in elections and that a person could vote in any county in which he held land" (http://encyclopediavirginia.org/Elections_in_Colonial_Virginia#start_entry). By 1736, the law was more restrictive:

The Colony of Virginia voting law of 1736 defined a Freeholder as a white male 21 years of age who owns at least 100 acres of unimproved land or 25 improved acres with a house and a "plantation". Any qualified Freeholder who failed to vote was subject to a fine of 200 pounds of tobacco. Any non–Freeholder who attempted to vote was subject to a fine of 500 pounds of tobacco (http://www.milaminvirginia.com/glossary.html).

However, after and between initial elections, boards often appointed their own replacements. In Virginia elections, "wealthy planters won nearly all of these political contests" (http://encyclopediavirginia.org/Elections_in_Colonial_Virginia). As a result, members of wealthy, influential families sat on the vestry boards (Bruce 1910, 62-72; see also http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Church_of_England_in_Virginia#start_entry).

During the 1720s, there was an economic depression in Virginia, tobacco production had been limited in 1723, and in "1724 a drought followed by a storm ruined the tobacco crop, destroying 34,000 harvested hogsheads, and the following year also  produced a low yield (http://www.san.beck.org/11-9-VirginiaEtc1664-1744.html).

On 23 December 1726, John Read was present at Petsworth Parish vestry, with Capt. John Washington in attendance. When the levy of the annual tithe on tobacco was discussed, "Capn/. John Washington Desired that It might be Entred that he Doth not Consent to the Making the Abosd/. Order by Reason he Doth not Agre to the laying of the levey this present Year" (Chamberlayne 1933, 192).

Washington's comment is immediately followed by the note, "At this Vestory, Mr/. John Reade Struck his Name Out of the Vestory Book And Would Stand No longer Vestory man" (192). This may have been peaceful or it may have been a resignation in protest, in that it immediately followed Washington's protest. "Struck" connotes a more forceful action. There exists an earlier vestry page, an oath of office signed circa 1714, where John Read's signature is partially crossed out (Petsworth Parish, 127).

Individual vestries set their own local tax rates each year to cover operating expenses in the parish, thus potentially creating financial burdens for local landowners, who were already challenged by conditions. The feud noted above with the Petsworth vestry was a symptom of a more generalized resentment among taxpayers. However, the vestries wielded substantial power. If "county residents thought that the county levy was set too high, they had little recourse other than to move away" (http://www.virginiaplaces.org/taxes/taxcolonial.html).

The wealthy and influential were definitely in charge in Virginia from the beginning, benefitted from their families' wealth and previous connections in Great Britain, and consolidated their positions over time through intermarriage and interconnections in Virginia. Immense land grants were made in the colony's history to people with substantial connections, including the Fairfaxes, below. In addition, the early system of head rights provided the opportunity to accumulate immense properties by sponsoring new colonists; the system is acknowledged to have been abused (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headright).

George Washington was upwardly mobile and very well connected. He inherited property from his father and acquired property, some through his early connections to the Fairfaxes, one of the most powerful families in Virginia, and through his marriage to Martha Dandridge Custis. Her wealthy late husband was only recently buried when Washington courted her--he didn't waste the opportunity, as unmarried women, particularly wealthy ones, were a valuable commodity in the Virginia colony. By the time of his death, George Washington owned an immense amount of property, over 52,000 acres. Undoubtedly, he helped to finance at least part of the Revolution. It was indeed a tax revolt, run by the wealthy who could keep it going.

Lawrence Washington, George's half brother, is known for his tax protest against the minister of the Truro Parish, whom Lawrence sued because of the minister's alleged sexual improprieties with Lawrence's fiancée, Ann Fairfax. Lawrence eventually lost the case, but he married Ann. Since taxes were controlled by the parish vestries, it was a very political power struggle wrapped in honor and personal vengeance. Like George, Lawrence was also marrying up, into the Fairfax family, who controlled the grants of the Northern Neck Proprietary, over five million acres under a royal grant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Neck_Proprietary).

Here are some more references:

Bruce, Philip Alexander, 1910. Institutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: An Inquiry Into the Religious, Moral and Educational, Legal, Military, and Political Condition of the People Based on Original and Contemporaneous Records. Vol. 1. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Chamberlayne, C. G., trans. 1933. The Vestry Book of Petsworth Parish: Gloucester County, Virginia, 1677–1793. Richmond, VA: Library Board, Division of Purchase and Printing. Accessed September 28, 2013. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001263677.

Henriques, Peter R. 1992. Major Lawrence Washington versus the Reverend Charles Green: A Case Study of the Squire and the Parson. Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 100, no. 2 (April):233-264. Accessed October 5, 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4249277.

Petsworth Parish (Gloucester County, VA).Vestry Book, 1677-1793. Accession 19992. Church records collection. Library of Virginia, Richmond VA.

The Mystery of Rev. Nehemiah Evitt and Rosana Emiline Andrews

Nehemiah Evitt (20 December 1836-18 January 1891), also known as Miah, and Rosana Emiline Andrews (1 May 1836-18 June 1924) were my maternal grandmother's maternal grandparents. Emiline carried the maternal line DNA that was eventually passed along to me--she was my mother's mother's mother's mother.

We visited relatives in Georgia from time to time when my brother and I were young. My mother, Frances, drove east to Georgia from Texas like a migrating bird in the summers, heading out and back in the heat and humidity. Sometimes Grandma Lillian was with us. We would go to visit family--they were descendants of Nehemiah and Emiline, too, more mtDNA. On the way we would tour battlefields and antebellum homes, see kudzu and cannons, eat ham and grits, and then return before school started in the fall. Chattanooga, Lookout Mountain, Chickamauga, Lafayette, and Vicksburg were registered in my memories, along with the homes of two of my grandmother's sisters, Dessie and Theresa.

I heard conversations about Nehemiah and Emiline, but I couldn't put the pieces together. Certain things seem to have been unsaid. Family photographs of Emiline, taken when she was older, looked serious and stern. A photograph of the two of them together, much younger, was intriguing. I couldn't gauge her expression; she seemed to be squinting. Nehemiah looked very intense and different, with dark hair and piercing eyes. They were mysteries to me--I eventually looked for the clues they left behind.

Nehemiah was the son of William Evitt (1804-1875) and Rebecca Rippetoe (1810-1886). William and Rebecca married in Bledsoe County, Tennessee, where she lived and where Nehemiah probably was born. By 1841, their family is reported to have settled at Ooltewah, in Hamilton County, close to Chattanooga and the Tennessee River:

Rebecca was one of the 30 charter members when the Rev. Hiram Douglas organized the Ooltewah Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1841 . . . William and Rebecca named one of their sons Charles William and another Nehemiah. They also had William Jr., Malinda, George H., James, Samuel and Minerva. Samuel was killed by a bulldog when he was 11 (Wilson 2002). 

I have no evidence at present besides this from Wilson to support this list of other children of William and Rebecca. There is an online note of another child, Nancy Jane (19 March 1836-17 October 1921), listed as daughter of William Evitt, who married John W. Thurman. Her date of birth listed would make her a very close sibling of Nehemiah (http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=dfl&GRid=9616965), as she was just nine months older.

One mystery was that Nehemiah was a Confederate cavalry soldier, who fought and was wounded in the Civil War. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Nehemiah enlisted in the Confederate army 7 August 1861, in Cleveland, Tennessee in the First Tennessee Cavalry, Company B (Carter's). Nehemiah's younger brother Charles W. Evitt (b. ca. 1839) also enlisted 17 October 1861 at Ooltewah in Company K, 43rd Tennessee, then was in Company B, First Tennessee Cavalry (Carter's) as of 1 June 1862 (Hughes and Wilson 2005). They apparently served in the same company after that date, and they both saw action in the South. In 1864, their regiment "fought at the Battle of Piedmont, or New Hope Church, and in the subsequent campaign in the Valley of Virginia" (http://www.tngenweb.org/civilwar/csacav/csa1carter.html). Nehemiah was hospitalized in Charlottesville, Virginia, in June of 1864 (Hughes and Wilson). Federal records indicate that he had been a sergeant and was paroled as a private (http://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-regiments-detail.htm?regiment_id=CTN0001RC01). The brothers had blacksmithing skills, which they may have acquired or used during their service with the cavalry (Hughes and Wilson).

A majority of the population of Eastern Tennessee was strongly in sympathy with the Union cause as war was declared and enlistment in the Confederate army became mandatory: "It is rather a remarkable fact that East Tennessee in 1861, with a male population of forty-five thousand between the ages of twenty and fifty, should furnish for the Union army thirty-five thousand volunteers—not a conscript among them" (Carter 1902, 18). Many men fled to Kentucky to enlist in the Union army to avoid this conscription. Whether Nehemiah and his brother voluntarily enlisted is unknown.

While there were multiple company and regiment name changes in the course of the war, lots of Carters to confuse the issue, and even a Company B, First Tennessee Cavalry (Carter's) in the Union army, which is the subject of W. R. Carter's volume (1902), I believe that the company and regiment given for them first above is accurate information. Nehemiah and Charles served in Captain Snow's unit, First Tennessee Cavalry, Company B: "[Charles W. Evitt] was transferred to the cavalry company of his neighbor, William Snow, on June 1, 1862. He was paroled at Washington, Ga., in May 1865. Nehemiah Evitt also joined the Snow unit" (Wilson 2002). This was a local recruitment in 1861: the "first cavalry organization in the County for Confederate service was recruited by Captain William Snow among the farmers living near Snow Hill, Ooltewah and the section along the Tennessee River" (Armstrong 1993, 295).

The Union Army reportedly burned the Evitt home in Ooltewah, during one of several campaigns. The Chattanooga campaign extended from late August to late November, 1863, at which time the Union's 4th Michigan Cavalry raided the Ooltewah area. Other military actions were recorded in Ooltewah 21 January 1864, 18-19 February 1864, and 4 February 1865 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooltewah,_Tennessee; Hamilton 2012). William and Rebecca Evitt moved their family south across the state line into Walker County, Georgia, to the McLemore Cove area (Wilson 2002), around Lookout Mountain and Pigeon Mountain.

After the war was over, on 6 December 1866, Nehemiah married Rosana Emiline Andrews Beaird, a widow, in Walker County. Emiline had already borne at least one child, perhaps two more, and had possibly lost one during the war. She was born in Orange Co, North Carolina, the daughter of William (Billy) Andrews (8 February 1797-1877) and Martha Carroll (3 May 1802-1861). Emiline had a large extended family, some of whom settled in Walker County.

The Civil War was hard on the women who were left at home alone with their remaining families. Armstrong wrote, re Tennessee:

The Union women of [Hamilton] county and a few who held to Union sympathy in the town were in deplorable straits. In many cases they suffered from actual privation. Nowhere in America during the war was the fortune of women so desolate as that of these Union women in Hamilton and the other counties of lower Tennessee (1993, 11). 

This is likely also true for a wife of a Confederate soldier left behind in an adjoining county in Georgia.

Her first husband, Edmond S. Beaird, served in the Confederate army, Co. G, 9th Regiment, Georgia Infantry. He was wounded and captured at Gettysburg 2 July, 1863 and died of dysentery in the Point Lookout prisoner-of-war camp in Maryland 6 February, 1864. Company G was known as the "Lafayette Volunteers" (http://9thgeorgiainfantry.org/gcompany.html), so Edmond and Emiline must have been in the Lafayette area before the war. Marilyn Houser reported online that the Beairds "came from Arkansas before the Civil War to Pigon Mt in Walker Co Ga." (http://genforum.genealogy.com/beaird/messages/499.html, citing Gibbs 1984).

With Edmond, Emiline had children, Calvin Whitfield Beaird (April 21, 1858-1928); possibly Martha (1855-1862); and Edna (4 July 1862-29 August 1938). With Nehemiah, she had William E. (1867-1875); possibly Lenelle (b. 1869); Cora Rebecca (4 May 1870-5 January 1904), m. Rev. William (Will) Rudicil Williams (4 September 1868-9 July 1845); and Alfred Miah (7 July 1873-25 March 1931).

Front: Rosana Emiline Andrews (Beaird) Evitt; Rear: I believe these folks are (right to left, Calvin Whitfield Beaird, his wife, Mary Elizabeth Stout Beaird, and their son, Edmond Eason Beaird.

Nehemiah and Emiline lived in Independence County, Arkansas for a period of time. Cora was born there in 1870, Alfred Miah in 1873, and William E. died there in 1875. Emiline's father, Billy, died in Arkansas in 1877. Emiline also had relatives from the Andrews family who lived in Arkansas. For an outline of her immediate family, see http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/w/r/e/Nanalee-Wrenn-NC/GENE1-0008.html.

At some point, Nehemiah and Emiline returned to the McLemore Cove area, in Walker County, where they had a farm and a small store.

Another mystery was that Nehemiah was a Baptist minister. Wilson reported this, likely based on newspaper articles at the time, below. I could not find a record of where Nehemiah studied or served. He and Emiline were associated with the Antioch Baptist Church at Cedar Grove, and they are buried in a church cemetery there. I believe that Rev. William R. Williams, Cora's husband and my great grandfather, and Rev. Marshall Lucien Crowder, my Grandaunt Theresa's husband, both served at the same church later on, but I have no written evidence of this.

A bigger mystery was that Nehemiah was murdered. On Saturday night, 17 January 1891, he was asked to open the store by Roscoe Marable, a black and an "ex-convict" (Davis 1982, 354), and possibly one other man. Marable had been helping Nehemiah with hog butchering and delivery that day. Per Marable's confession, on their way from the house to the store, about seventy-five yards away, they argued over Marable's account at the store. Marable then knocked Nehemiah down and struck him in the head with a "stick." When Nehemiah failed to return, Emiline searched in the dark, found him unconscious in a gulley. His skull was fractured, and he died the next day. It was suspected that the killer had used a sledge hammer and had robbed Nehemiah. Marable escaped by train, but he was arrested 25 August 1891 in Hampton County, South Carolina (not Florida or North Carolina, as reported), where he was working with a group of laborers under an assumed name. A reward of $150 was given by the Governor of Georgia to W. J. King, the man who found and arrested Marable. At trial, King testified that Marable had confessed to him. Emiline testified that Nehemiah had between $240 to $260 in his pocketbook, which was discovered empty, except for receipts, in the same area two months later. Cora was a witness as well, testifying as she was pregnant with my grandmother. Marable was found guilty of murder. On appeal, the verdict was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Georgia 13 June 1892 (Marable v. State. 89 Ga. 425, 15 S.E. 453). Roscoe Marable was executed by hanging 6 October 1892 in Walker County.

Sensationalized news articles of the murder, trial, and hanging were found in newspapers in Atlanta and as far away as Pennsylvania and New York. The Atlanta Constitution (20 January 1891) claimed that "two negroes" were involved in the murder of "Rev. Nehemiah Evitt" and that the murder weapon in "this most heinous crime" was a sledge hammer. At the time of the arrest, the same paper declared, "Marable will surely hang" (1 September 1891), and, when there was a last-minute announcement of an appeal, "A great many people will be disappointed[,] as they will come expecting th[e] hanging to take place" (28 October 1891). The Altoona Tribune, from Pennsylvania, reported on the execution, "On the scaffold he protested his innocence" (7 October 1892). The Havana Journal, from New York, reported that "twenty-five hundred persons were present when the drop fell" (15 October 1892). The Wilmington Morning Star, from North Carolina, noted that "seven thousand persons were present" (8 October 1892, 4).

The Atlanta Constitution's account reported that the crime occurred along the Chattanooga Southern railroad line (20 January 1891). Another source mentioned the murder of "Mira [sic] Evitt near the tunnel on Pigeon mountain about 1895" (Sartain 1932, 313). A train tunnel was completed through Pigeon Mountain in 1890-91 (http://railga.com/oddend/tagtunnel.html). At the time of the murder, there was a convict camp in the vicinity of the Evitts' store, "defendant worked for some time near" the store, and Marable helped that day to slaughter hogs and to deliver the pork to the convict camp. When Marable was arrested, he was working with a labor crew in South Carolina "working on a trestle" (Marable v. State 89 Ga. 425, at 427-428). It is possible that the convicts' camp consisted of laborers working on railway construction and that Marable was associated with them. If the camp were a prison gang doing forced labor, money from a robbery would have enabled Marable's escape.

Rosana Emiline Andrews Evitt

Emiline endured through the Civil War and the death of two husbands and many others in her family. It was no wonder that her photographs looked the way they did. She lived to 1924, long enough to see some of her great grandchildren born. When we visited her granddaughter, Theresa Williams Crowder, around 1961 in Georgia, she showed us a long, white apron that had belonged to Emiline. A rolling pin that was made for Emiline by Nehemiah was passed down to me.

Emiline, Nehemiah, and his parents are buried at the New Antioch Baptist Church Cemetery, Cedar Grove, in Walker County. Emiline's mother, Martha Carroll Andrews, is buried at the Old Antioch Baptist Church Cemetery there. Her father, Billy Andrews, is buried at the Mahan Cemetery in Sharp County, Arkansas.

Gravesite Links:
Nehemiah Evitt:  
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=58494715

Rosana Emiline Andrews Evitt:  
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=65885333 

Rebecca Rippetoe Evitt:  
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=99215978

William Evitt:  
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=50296066

Martha Carroll Andrews:  
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Andrews&GSiman=1&GScnty=528&GRid=82209544&

William (Billy) Andrews:  
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=43747821

References:
Altoona Tribune. 7 October 1892, 1. Accessed February 15, 2014. 
http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/56698760/.

Armstrong, Zella. 1993. The History of Hamilton County and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Vol. 2. Originally published 1940. Johnson City, TN: The Overmountain Press.

Carter, W. R.. 1902. History of the First Regiment of Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry in the Great War of the Rebellion [Union Army]. Knoxville, TN: Gaut-Ogden Co., Printers and Binders. Accessed February 6, 2014.
http://www.archive.org/stream/firstregiment00cartrich#page/n5/mode/2up.

Davis, Robert Scott. 1982. The Georgia Black Book: Morbid, Macabre and Sometimes Disgusting Records of Genealogical Value. Vol. 1. Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press.

Gibbs, Sherman D., ed. 1984. Walker County Georgia Heritage 1833-1983. LaFayette, GA: Walker County History Committee and the Walker County Historical Society.

Hamilton, Chuck. 2012. Civil War Engagements in the Chattanooga Area. Chattanoogan.com, July 2. Accessed February 11, 2014. 
http://chattanoogan.com/2012/7/2/229448/Civil-War-Engagements-in-the.aspx.

Havana Journal. Saturday, October 15, 1892. Accessed February 15, 2014. Search s.v. Roscoe Marable at http://fultonhistory.com/.

Hughes, Nathaniel C., Jr., and John C. Wilson. 2005. Hamilton County Confederates, D-F. Chattanoogan.com, August 16. Excerpt from Hughes, Nathaniel C. Jr., and John Wilson. 2001. The Confederate Soldiers of Hamilton County, Tennessee: An Alphabetical Listing of the Confederate Soldiers Who Lived at One Time in Hamilton County, Tennessee. Signal Mountain, TN: Mountain Press. Accessed February 6, 2014. http://chattanoogan.com/2005/8/16/70953/Hamilton-County-Confederates-D-F.aspx. 

Marable v. State. 89 Ga. 425. Accessed February 15, 2014.
https://archive.org/details/reportscasesarg488courgoog.

Marable v. State. 15 S.E. 453. Accessed February 15, 2014. 
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Southeastern_Reporter.html?id=NAI8AAAAIAAJ.

Sartain, James Alfred. 1932. The History of Walker County Georgia. Vol. 1. Dalton, GA: The A. J. Showalter Company. Accessed February 8, 2014. 
http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ga/county/fulton/walkerhistory/.

The Atlanta Constitution. 20 January 1891, 1. Accessed February 15, 2014. 
http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/26831432/.

The Atlanta Constitution. 1 September 1891, 2. Accessed February 15, 2014. 
http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/26883379/.

The Atlanta Constitution. 28 October 1891. 3. Accessed February 15, 2014. 
http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/26868388/.

Wilmington Morning Star. 8 October 1892, 4. Accessed February 15, 2014.
http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/54456855/.

Wilson, John. 2002. Evitts Were Among Earliest Ooltewah Settlers. Chattanoogan.com, February 17. Excerpt from Wilson, John. 2001. Early Hamilton Settlers. N.p.: Sheridan Books. Accessed February 6, 2014. 
http://www.chattanoogan.com/2002/2/17/18127/Evitts-Were-Among-Earliest-Ooltewah.aspx.

Searching for Identity and Heritage

I grew up thinking I was Southern. My mother described her family generally as Scots-Irish. She said that the family was both "poor" and "genteel." I labored under these ideas for most of my lifetime. I thought I must have descended from dirt-poor farmers and pioneers--all dour, well-behaved ancestors. The truth of the matter was far more complex than that.

My mother, Frances Morrison Fauteck, born 19 June 1923 in Red Oak, Oklahoma, labored under similar ideas, and she wanted to break through them to the something else she suspected or wanted to be there. She researched her family's histories for many years in old books and public records, in bibles and family stories, leaving meticulous notes and a family pedigree chart behind her, markers to follow. The chart showed ten generations in some family lines, to Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia colonies; it showed lengthy gaps in other lines. She died 14 July 1994 in Davis, California, just as computers and the Internet had started to make it easier.

Her first cousin, William Mann Morrison, had published an extensive family genealogy in 1977, The Morrison-Williams Register, which she was building upon. My grandmother Lillian knew some of the family tree by heart, and it differed in places from the Register. So did my mother's chart when she was done.

I read my mother's work, was curious about it, but didn't explore it seriously until 2012. It wasn't quite what my mother said. She was a Southerner, that was true. Culturally, I was close to Southern, but half of my heritage wasn't--my father, who was Swiss, German, English, Welsh, and Unknown--had lived in New Jersey most of his life. There were a few initial surprises--her family was dotted with Protestant preachers. Genteel. People of faith. Soldiers and pioneers showed up in her research and The Morrison-Williams Register. Feisty. Hardy. And many of my ancestors weren't Scots-Irish, although a few were. Dour went out the window.

Her father, John D. Morrison, was born 1 January 1883 in Mt. Vernon, Jefferson County, Illinois. His father, Rufus Adlai Morrison, born 20 December 1842 in McNairy County, Tennessee, fought in the Civil War in the Union Army and was a farmer. A brother, Samuel Bartlett Morrison, was a preacher. John D.'s paternal grandparents, Adlai Sharpe Morrison (b. 13 October 1808, Wilson County, Tennessee) and Mary Bartlett (b. 17 May 1811, Hardin County, Kentucky), had fled from Tennessee to Illinois with their family during the Civil War. Rufus Adlai had fought in the Civil War for the Union army.

My maternal grandmother, Lillian Agnes Williams, was born 1 January 1892 in Walker County, Georgia. Her sister, Theresa Ethelma Williams, married a preacher, the Rev. Marshall Lucien Crowder. My grandmother and her sister were daughters of a preacher, the Rev. William Rudicil Williams, born 4 September 1868 in Chattooga County, Georgia, and his wife, Cora Rebecca Evitt, born 4 May 1870 in Independence County, Arkansas. Cora Rebecca, in turn, was the daughter of another preacher, the Rev. Nehemiah Evitt, born 20 December 1836, probably in Bledsoe County, Tennessee, and his wife, Rosana Emiline Andrews, born 1 May 1836 in Orange County, North Carolina.

When I dug a little deeper, beyond dates and places, to find the substance of their lives, I began began to understand that there were bigger stories in my family, stories that had fallen between the cracks of time. I was looking at the legacies of colonization and slavery, war and migration, religious beliefs, and economic and political realities, among other things. The history of my family suddenly became very real and far more complex than I had expected.

White Roads and Other Paths to Walk

In naming this blog site, I was inspired by what is known as the white road, the sacbe, plural sacbeob, found in Mayan lands in Central America. Originally paved in limestone stucco, these paths are estimated to have been created over time since 1800 BCE. The white roads were holy roads, peace roads, that pilgrims walked to visit sacred sites, walking sanctuaries where they were not subject to attack. The roads were also used for trade and other peaceful interchanges between communities. 

It is claimed in the literature that a white road once extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific, across North America. There is established evidence that an extensive trade network existed historically across the Americas. The network included paths, together with extensive waterways and portages. It was discovered and used by colonists in the conquering and settling of North America. Major segments were eventually incorporated into what became contemporary highway systems. Historically, the paths were sometimes paved and often marked in particular ways. Directional markers often existed as petroglyphs, pictographs, carving on trees, and bent trees. 

Clear evidence exists in some locations of a separate, collateral system of roads, the red roads. These were war roads, war paths, and when people walked them, it was a signal that they were declaring war. Being on the warpath. I have wondered if early Europeans walked the wrong roads and placed themselves in danger as they explored into the interior of this continent, not knowing the systems in place. 

Contemporary usage has reversed and replaced the idea of white road. The phrase red road now is widely accepted as a Native American spiritual path or lifeway; it is often known as the good red road. The path of the warrior has been deemed in many lifeways to be good, but the historic racial distinctions between "red" people and "white" people may have precipitated this change. 

White roads and red roads. Some people are peaceful, and others seem to be warriors. A warrior gene has now been identified by geneticists. What if somewhere in our DNA there is also a peacemaker gene? Appreciating the sacred is said to be a result of chemistry, and it also has been said that we inherit the spiritual beliefs of our mothers, not out fathers. At least some of our attitudes seem to be rooted in our genes.

To know a people's and a family's lifeways and the evolution of those lifeways over time is important to be able to understand why we are the way we are, why others are the way they are, what we have in common, and what we do not seem to share. This is the nature of cultural histories. 

So why look at our ancestry? Ultimately, it can illuminate who our ancestors were and what they left us as an inheritance, who we became, or who we could become. It is valuable information about an individual and about their family of origin. In researching my family history, I am on a path that's both familiar and mysterious, exploring who we were, who we are. It is good to know what road we're on.

Building Families with Our Stories

I've created this blog to share my family's stories, at least some of them. There are a lot of stories to share. Doing this builds family. Maybe my family will read them and pass them along. It may hold us together better. And maybe I'll find relatives I don't know I have.

Once I retired from a nine-to-five job to take up my academic research in earnest, I started doing genealogy research as well, and for the past year, it has trumped my academic searching. Now I'm addicted to hunting and gathering names and dates, vital information. My mother had taken it on, too, prior to her retirement, and steadily built her charts over twenty years. She was building on her cousin's work. I, in turn, am building on hers. This is what a family does, builds itself on our shoulders. A family tree house.

A few years back, I briefly worked with a woman, with whom I found some rapport and things in common. We stayed in touch infrequently, as we could in the midst of our busy lives. In this past few years, both of us, independent of each other, gravitated to family research. And we have found that we are cousins in multiple lines, descended from some of the same families. In this past year, I have found many more cousins, some distant, some close.

Some of them have helped me build my family tree house over the past year and showed me which of the ropes/family lines to swing on. My thanks for this go particularly to Patrick Jones (http://jonesandrelated.blogspot.com/) and Norm Pritchett, who were so very helpful when I was first coming up to speed.

Notes on Family History

Every family has a history, not one person's history, but a history of everyone we are descended from and ancestors to, all our relations. It can go years or decades or centuries, stretching backward and forward in time, with multiple tributaries and branches. It is past, present, and future, but it is constantly changing, currents in a flowing river of time.

And for every person, family history is different, with different sets of ancestors. For myself and my brother, at least, it's the same set of ancestors and probably many of the same genes, but for everyone else in what I call my family, the possibilities are shuffled and redealt. My children share all my family ancestors, but it's only half of what they hold as heritage. My first cousins share half of the same family history and many of the same genes. Beyond those relationships, to third cousins and grandsons, so many other currents affect them differently that it is a wonder how we hold together this thing we call family.