I cannot find my great-grandfather’s household on the 1910 census.  His name is James Benjamin Butler.  He appears on other censuses as follows:

• 1900:  James, in his father’s household in the Ball Ground District, Murray County, Georgia.
• 1920:  “J. B. Butter” in the Ball Ground District, Murray County, Georgia.
• 1930:  “James B. Butler” in Chatsworth, Murray County, Georgia.

He should be found in Texas in 1910.  His first five children were born in Quanah, Hardeman County, Texas between 1907 and 1916.  Moreover, his second son was born in Quanah on February 14, 1910.  So, 1910 in Hardeman County seems like a no-brainer.  The only problem is I can’t find him.

I’ve searched every permutation of his name that I can think of in both Ancestry.com and FamilySearch (not just in Texas – the whole country).  James, J. B., Jim, Butler, Butter.   I’ve searched all Butlers born in Georgia in 1880, then again as a wild card search with the last name as But?er.  I’ve also searched for his wife, Maud Angeline, and his two oldest sons, Floyd David and James Benjamin, Jr, again with any name combination I could come up with.

I found his sister, Mattie (Butler) Sampler and her husband in Quanah.  His younger brother, William, lived with Mattie.  I would have thought that Jim’s family lived somewhere nearby, but I’ve browsed through every page of the census images for Hardeman County and they are nowhere to be found.

If anyone know where to find this family on the 1910 census, please leave a comment.  Also, please comment if you can think of any other ways to search.  I’m out of ideas.

If you missed Part 1 of “Chipping Away at the Baxter Brick Wall,” you can read it here.  To recap, I’ve been searching for the parents of my great-great-grandmother, Barbara Baxter, for several years to no avail.  I’ve looked in local history books, browsed many, many census records, and done more Google searches than I count.  Then in mid-2009, I found a death index entry for Barbara that listed her parents as Dave Baxter and Polly Lowery.  Going back to the census, I found some Baxters and Lowerys living adjacent to each other in Murray County, Georgia in 1850. . .

Fast forward to December 2009. I spent an afternoon at the library looking through The Heritage of Polk County, Tennessee 1839-1997 for any surnames of interest. That’s where I found a reference to Felix “Pete” Arthur who had married Polly Lowery Baxter! If this is my Polly, then that explains why I haven’t been able to find her and Barbara in the census. She had remarried and would be found under a different surname. When I went home, I immediately started looking for Arthurs in the 1860 census in Polk County. I quickly found Felix and Polly, but no Barbara. Assuming that her birth year is correct, Barbara would be about six in 1860, so why wouldn’t she be living with her mother? More papers for the “maybe” file.

I did various other searches and found several references to Felix “Pete” Arthur and wife, Mary “Polly”, but no one had connected them to Barbara. However, in the course of these searches, I learned about the Polk County News office in Benton, Tennessee, which has a collection of genealogy papers called the Sudie Clemmer Notebooks; apparently these are the work of a local genealogist. Individuals are allowed access to these notebooks, and since Benton is only about 30 miles away from where I live, I decided to drive up and check them out.

I found two papers of interest in my search for Barbara, Dave, and Polly. One was in the Sudie Clemmer Notebooks and listed three children of Andy Baxter:

• “Sarah married Alfont Chable
• Dave
• Barbara married Hallie Kendrick”

“Barbara married Hallie Kendrick.” I have heard that my F. M. Kendrick was known as Hodie.  Hodie and Hallie seem close enough, and frankly, any Barbara Baxter married to a Kendrick was enough to get my heart racing.

Then, the nice lady at the Polk County News office pointed out that they had some other “Family Stories” that weren’t part of the Sudie Clemmer collection, but that had been written by various people. In that notebook, I found a paper called “The Baxter Line.” And this is where all my other bits of research started coming together.

“The Baxter Line” reports two brothers, Jim and Andy, who came to the Alaculsa Valley. They married Lowery sisters, Betsy and Pollie. The paper then details the descendants of Sarah Caroline Baxter and Alphonso Chable – this is clearly the same Sarah Baxter from the Sudie Clemmer Notebooks as described above.

Once again, I went back to my census records.

1850 Census, Georgia, Murray County.

With the information found at Polk County News, I think it is probable that dwelling 1480 houses the two brothers, James and Andrew. Sarah, the older woman enumerated between them is probably their mother.  Mary, aged 15, is probably my Polly. Furthermore, the Elizabeth who is enumerated in dwelling 1479 with William and Barbarey Lowery is probably the Betsy who married Jim Baxter.

Why, you may be asking, am I writing this on Madness Monday? Because I still have nothing definitive to connect Barbara to any of these people. I have a lot of circumstantial evidence. I feel like Barbara is standing in a circle and all these people are dancing around her, but no one will reach out and grab her and say “she’s my daughter, granddaughter, cousin, niece.”

What are my next steps? I ordered Barbara’s death certificate, which tells me that Polly was born in Murray County and Barbara was buried at Calvary (I’m assuming this is Calvary Baptist Church in Cisco).  A trip to to the cemetery at Calvary is definitely in order.  I’ll continue to look for census and other records for the people around her. Maybe she is named in someone’s will. I’ll check her father, grandfathers, etc. to see if any of them has estate or probate records filed in Murray County. If the records were in Polk County, I’m probably out of luck, as the courthouse burned during the late 1800s.

If you have any information about Barbara or about any of the families mentioned, please, please leave a comment.

In the meantime, I’ll be here, going slightly mad.

I’ve written before about my Baxter brick wall. Barbara E. (or possibly A.) Baxter is my great-great-grandmother and the wife of Francis Marion Kendrick.  She probably was born in 1854¹ and died March 5, 1939.²  She and F. M. were married April 16, 1871.

For a long time, all that I knew about Barbara, other than her surname and general birth date, was from her life after she and F. M. married. I can locate them on the 1880, and 1900 through 1930 censuses, living in the Alaculsa Valley of Murray County, Georgia. Without having any further clues, it has been difficult to research Barbara; I’ve often felt like she hatched out of an egg and immediately married my great-great-grandfather, because I just couldn’t find out anything about her, prior to their marriage

In my original attempts to chip away at the Baxter brick wall, I took the following actions:

Figure 1. Alaculsa Valley in Murray County, Georgia. Home of many Baxters and Kendricks

1. I looked up all references to Baxter in Murray County Heritage. I learned that many Murray County Baxters and Kendricks lived in the Alaculsa Valley. That’s good news, right? Perhaps Barbara was one of these Baxters and I could find her family in the valley near the Kendricks. Perhaps that is how Barbara and F. M. met.  Alas, Barbara is not specifically mentioned in the book.
2. I did various searches in census records for the Alaculsa Valley, looking for Baxter households with a child named Barbara, but found none. I expanded my search to the rest of Murray County, to no avail.
3. I searched in Polk County, Tennessee, which is just across the state line from Murray County, and from which the Kendricks migrated to Georgia. I found some Baxters there, but no Barbara.
4. I did numerous, numerous Google searches on any variation of names I could think of, but no luck.

I was stumped.

Then I had a breakthrough. In July 2009, while doing research at the Murray County Probate Court, I found Barbara’s entry in the Murray County Death Index and it listed her parents as Dave Baxter and Polly Lowery.³ Finally! Evidence that she did not hatch out of an egg. I was so excited. I just knew that the brick wall would come tumbling down.

I went home and looked through some notes I had taken previously on Baxter marriages in Murray County and I found a listing for Andrew D. Baxter and Mary Lowery.⁴ Andrew D. could be Andrew Dave and Polly is a nickname for Mary, so this seemed promising. I located the marriage license online at Georgia’s Virtual Vault, but it turned out that Andrew’s middle initial was actually recorded as B.⁵   Still, there weren’t any other names that were close to Dave Baxter and Polly Lowery, so I filed this away under “maybe.”

Then I started looking at census records again. I looked at all the Baxters in Polk and Murray counties again, hoping to find some variation of the names Dave and Polly. I found nothing even close in 1870 or 1860, but I did find some Baxters living adjacent to Kendrick families, so I added those pages to my “maybe” file for future reference.

The most promising find was in 1850 in Murray County.

Figure 2. 1850 Census, Georgia, Murray County.

I found a household headed by a James Baxter (age 27) that included Sarah B. (51), Andrew B. (21), Mary (15), Mary C. (2), and James E. (6/12).⁶ They were living next door to William Lowery (54), Babarerey (61), and Elizabeth (21).⁷ I feel pretty confident that this Andrew B. and Mary are the same ones whose marriage license I found earlier and, if they are my Dave and Polly, I think it is likely that they are living next door to Mary (Polly)’s parents. The fact that the Lowery mother probably is named Barbara, adds a little weight to the idea that Andrew and Mary may also be Dave and Polly, because it makes sense that they would name a daughter after one of their mothers, but I didn’t feel like I had enough information to make that leap, so this census record also went in the “maybe” file.

So, as of mid-2009, I ended up with parents’ names for Barbara and many maddening questions.  Check back next Monday to see if I’ve found the answers to any of them, or simply created more.

Dear Genea-Santa,

I have three genealogy wishes and if you could help me with any of them, I would really appreciate it.  I promise to be a good genealogist – to make a list of all avenues of research and check it twice, to document my sources, and share my findings.

1.  Barbara Baxter, my great-great-grandmother.  Oh, Genea-Santa, please help me find something, some small clue, about her parents.  I learned their names earlier this year, but the trail stopped cold after that.

2.  The Hemphill Family Bible.  You know the one I mean; it was referenced in Hemphills of North Carolina and records the vital records of Thomas Hemphill and Mary Ann Mackie’s descendants, all the way down to my grandfather’s siblings.  I don’t want to own the bible.  I just want to know that it hasn’t been lost or destroyed.  If you do locate the bible and could prod the person who has it to donate it to a repository where it could be accessed by others, that would be icing on the cake.

3.  Family photos.  Any family photos.  I’m not picky.

That’s it, Genea-Santa.  There will be brownies on the mantle on Christmas Eve.  And don’t be afraid of Chocolate when you stop by.  She just wants to play with the reindeer.

Chocolate

This post was written for the 86th edition of the Carnival of Genealogy.  To see other posts I’ve written for the COG, click here.

Randy Seaver’s latest mission for us is to locate our Most Recent Unknown Ancestor.  The mission instructions are:

1) Who is your MRUA – your Most Recent Unknown Ancestor? This is the person with the lowest number in your Pedigree Chart or Ahnentafel List that you have not identified a last name for, or a first name if you know a surname but not a first name.

2) Have you looked at your research files for this unknown person recently? Why don’t you scan it again just to see if there’s something you have missed?

3) What online or offline resources might you search that might help identify your MRUA?

4) Tell us about him or her, and your answers to 2) and 3) above, in a blog post, in a comment to this post, or a comment on Facebook or some other social networking site.

My most recent unknown ancestors are numbers 56 and 57 on my Ahnentafel chart.  They are the parents of William H. Ward, who is number 28 and my great-great-grandfather.  I have found the names Harvey Ward and Ann or Jane Tucker online as his parents, but there were no sources, so those names may or may not pan out.

I haven’t done any research on this line in quite a while.  However, I did stumble across an entry in the Georgia Deaths index on Ancestry (gotta love those shaking leaves) a few weeks that I’m pretty sure is William.  I’ve ordered the death certificate from the Georgia Vital Services department and am anxiously awaiting its arrival.  I have high hopes that his parents will be named.

William married Mary Lourania Forrester on 09 Sep 1888 in Fannin County, Georgia.  He appeared on the census in Fannin County in 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930.  Each of those censuses reports that he and both parents were born in Georgia.  He died in 1933.

I don’t have names for any siblings of William, which adds to the search difficulty.

If the death certificate sheds no light, then my next step will probably be to visit Fannin County for some onsite research.  The library may have newspapers on microfilm – an obituary would be a great find.  I think that the courthouse records were destroyed sometime in the 20th century, but one never knows – I may be able to find probate records that name some of William’s children as beneficiaries.  I don’t know where William was buried; perhaps the death certificate will lead me to a cemetery that has other Wards.  I’ve put queries out on some of the message boards, but it may be time to follow up.  I also need to locate census records for all of William’s children as adults – maybe Grandma or Grandpa can be found living with one of them.

2/13/10 – Follow-up:  I received the death certificate yesterday and it confirms William H. Ward’s father as Harvey Ward and reports his mother as Mary Tucker.

A great advantage to living in the same small town where many of my ancestors have lived for 150 years is that I can do genealogy research during my lunch break.  Every few weeks, I”ll drop by the county probate office and look through one resource.  I knew that county death registers existed, but I didn’t know what information they contained.  I thought it was probably the decedent’s name, date of death, and maybe the spouse’s name.  I woke up this morning and decided that today was the day to find out if there was more.

So I breezed into the probate office, asked to look at the Death Index, flipped to the K’s (for Kendrick) and BAM!, there is was. . .the brickwall breakthrough I’ve been trying to make for two years.

I first posted about Barbara (Baxter) Kendrick in October 2008.  Since that time, I’ve found her widow’s pension application based on Francis Marion Kendrick‘s Civil War service, I’ve found the record of their marriage, and I have a lead on the location of the Baxter Cemetery.  But I still had no idea who her parents were.  It was like she dropped out of the sky the day she married Francis Marion.  I’ve even looked at every single Baxter who was enumerated on Murray County censuses from 1850 to 1930, hoping against hope for a clue, all to no avail.

Today was my lucky day.  It turns out that the Death Index (at least in Murray County) records the decedent’s parents’ names, including the maiden name of the mother.   There they were in black and white:  Dave Baxter and Polly Lowery. So now I have another generation to research and a fabulous new resource to comb through.

I recently wrote about my decision to join the DAR.  The application requires evidence for each name, date, and place for each individual in the line from me to my patriot.  I have what I consider to be very good evidence for each fact; however, I am missing one, non-essential piece.  I can apply without this evidence, but I’m a perfectionist and I want my application to be as complete as possible.

I’m looking for proof that Thomas McEntire Hemphill‘s second wife, Margaret, was also a Hemphill by birth.  She is reported as the daughter of William Hemphill in the book Hemphills in North Carolina; the evidence, however, is anecdotal:

Miss Mary Greenlee also reported that her mother had the information that William Hemphill and Sarah Morrison were her great grandparents and the parents of Margaret Hemphill who married first a Dysart and secondly Thomas McEntire Hemphill.  According to Miss Greenlee, Thomas Bradshaw (Bratcher), son of Thomas McEntire Hemphill and his first wife reported that the parents of his stepmother, Margaret Hemphill, were William Hemphill and Sarah Morrison.¹

If you have any documents proving Margaret’s maiden name – perhaps her father’s will, a family bible page, a marriage certificate, anything – please, please leave a comment.

¹Hemphills in North Carolina, Margaret Hemphill Anthony, (Collegedale, Tennessee: The College Press, 1981), 45, 13 Dec 2008.

James B. Butler is as far back as I can go in the Butler line.  He was my 3x-great-grandfather.

Thanks to his military history, I have quite a lot of information on James’ life as an adult.  He was born sometime between about 1810 and 1824, according to various records.  He was likely born in Virginia and may have moved to Rutherford County, North Carolina.  My first confirmed location for him is Hall County, Georgia in 1837; this is where he enlisted in the Army to fight in the Florida Seminole Wars.  After his return from Florida, he married Rhoda Qualls (Quarles) in Hall County in 1839.  They later moved to Habersham County, then Cass County, where Rhoda died.

James had a sister named Susannah, who married John Fletcher Sullins.  Supposedly, James was raised by Susannah and John.  He also followed them from Hall County to Cass County as an adult.  The Sullins’ moved to Alabama, but I have no records of James following them there.  He enlisted in the Confederate Army in Adairsville, Cass County, and all records show him returning to Georgia on various furloughs.  Military pension records show him as being in Bartow County (formerly known as Cass County) in 1872, when he had a stroke, and then being sent to the State Lunatic Asylum where he died in 1876.

If you have any information on James’ parents, please leave a comment.  Any information would be most appreciated.

On December 8, 2008, I posted an article regarding a family legend of Native American ancestry.  Here is an update on what I have learned since then.

Several weeks ago, I was looking through the Guion-Miller Rolls for the name “Patterson.”  I found a “Wm. H. Patterson,” who filed an application from Georgia.   I thought that Mary Patterson had a brother named William, although I had no documentation of this fact.  I took a chance and ordered the file from NARA.

Pay dirt!  While I still don’t have definitive confirmation of Native American ancestry (the claim was denied), I learned so much from this application and obtained confirmation of many facts for which I had little or no evidence.

William Henson Patterson was, in fact, the brother of Mary (Patterson) Whitener.  His claim was through his father, Jerry Patterson.  The application reports William’s parents, their birthplaces, and death dates.  It reports his siblings and their birthdates.  Then it reports his grandparents on both sides, their birthplaces, residence in 1851, and their children, with death dates, if applicable.

His claim to be part-Cherokee is through the following line:  his father Jerry Patterson was the son of Jane Chapman and John Patterson.  Jane’s parents were John Chapman and Christina Hubbard.  Christina’s parents were John Hubbard and a woman whose surname was Tucker, who he claims “was a full Indian.”  Her first name is not stated, but the application lists a brother named John.

As I said, the claim was denied, although this fact does not disprove William’s information.  According to an article on the Georgia Pioneers website:

“If the “claimed ancestor” was not found on earlier rolls, if the information was too vague (exclusion of names of the presumed Cherokee ancestor), or if the application, when compared to other relatives’ claims using the same ancestor as proof, were inconsistent, the claims were rejected. Thus, many so-called blood descendants of the Cherokees, were denied.”

Source:  Austin, Jeanette H. “Cherokee Indians.” EXPERT GENEALOGY Newsletter (Nov. 2002). Georgia Pioneers. 8 Feb. 2009 www.georgiapioneers.com.

I have very little information on Morning Tabitha Bruer.  She is the wife of Wyatt Lankford and the mother of my g-g-grandmother, Leaty (Lankford) West.  She was enumerated as “Tobitha Lankford” on the 1850 census in Polk County, Tennessee.  She was enumerated as “Morning T. Lankford” on the 1880 census in Murray County, Georgia.  The only evidence I have for her surname is various online family trees.

Both census records report her birthplace as North Carolina, in either 1810 or 1819.  The 1880 census reports her father’s birthplace as North Carolina and her mother’s as Virginia.

If you have any information on Morning Tabitha’s family, please leave a comment.  Any help would be appreciated!