Thursday, June 21, 2012

First Cousins—A Group Photo of an Unruly Bunch

AS Pendleton and Pendleton cousins copy

I couldn’t stop laughing when I found this photograph in my dad’s office. What a sight! That’s my dad (Albert S. Pendleton, Jr.) in the back. He looks like he’s having a great time! We’re all at my paternal grandparents’ house, Albert S. and Helen (Brown, Thomas) Pendleton on Slater Street in Valdosta, Georgia. From left to right: my brother Andy (Albert III), cousin Charles Joyner (my dad’s hand on his shoulder), cousin Billy (William Frederick) Pendleton, my baby brother John in Billy’s lap, next is cousin Leigh Pendleton (now Smith), and that’s me on the right with my hand on my hip. What’s up with that face I’m making! This must have been taken before 1960 because my sister Melissa (Missy) isn’t in it (or maybe they didn’t dare let one of us hold her). She was born in 1960 (my other sister Helen wasn’t born until 1963), and my brother John looks to be maybe going on two (he was a big baby, so it’s hard to tell). He was born in 1958.

Charles’s parents were Charles (Charlie) and Clyde (Thomas) Joyner. Aunt Clyde was my dad’s half sister. Billy and Leigh’s dad was my dad’s brother William (Billy) Frederick Pendleton, and their mom is Virginia (Bolen) Pendleton Bennett. Not in the photograph is my first cousin Rob McLaughlin, son of Robert and Frances (Thomas) McLaughlin, who lived in California. Aunt Frances was my dad’s half sister.

Things were definitely lively when all of us first cousins got together!

Catherine

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Fall from a Buggy: The Death of Sarah Everett Young

Born in 1797 in Bulloch County, Georgia, Sarah Everett was my maternal 3rd great grandmother. Her parents were Jane Carter and Joshua Everett. She married Michael Young in Bulloch County in 1819, and their son Remer Young (1826-1888) was my 2nd great grandfather. By the 1830 census, the Youngs are living in Thomas County, Georgia.

While I was researching Sarah’s mother, Jane Carter, I looked up the Thomasville, Georgia, newspaper on South Georgia Historic Newspapers which has digitized copies of the Thomasville Times Enterprise from 1873 to 1922. While the articles don’t go back far enough to research Jane, I decided to see if there was an obituary for Sarah. I found an article about a buggy accident that later resulted in her death [1].

1876_Apr_15 Thomasville Times pg 3 Sarah Everett Young
Sarah was headed into town on a Thursday from her home three miles away when the “horse took fright, and started to run.” Sarah and the young girl who was with her were thrown from the buggy. The young girl wasn’t hurt, but Sarah hit her head which knocked her unconscious. She was taken to the home of her son (“Col. Young”—probably William Joshua Young who was a Colonel in the Confederate Army) where she had been living and was given medical treatment, but there was no hope of recovery [2]. She died two days later on Saturday, April 15, 1876, never regaining consciousness [3]. She was in her late 70s. Funeral services were held at her son’s house, officiated by Rev. Mr. Quaterman of the Presbyterian Church, and she was buried in the “new cemetery” in Thomasville [4]. The April 22, 1876, issue of the Thomasville Times Enterprise notes, “Her spirit gently took its flight from the bruised body which had been its tenement for near three score years and ten” [5]. The matriarch of the Young family of Thomas County, Georgia, was gone. Rest in Peace, Sarah.


Catherine
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[1] Sad Accident, Thomasville Times Enterprise, April 15, 1876, p. 3. Presented online by the Digital Library of Georgia.
[2] See footnote 1 above.
[3] Article about the death of Sarah Young. Thomasville Times Enterprise, April 22, 1876, p. 3. Presented online by the Digital Library of Georgia.
[4] See footnote 3 above.
[5] See footnote 3 above.

Monday, June 4, 2012

Who Were the Parents of Jane Carter?

I became interested in finding out more about my maternal 4th great grandmother Jane Carter when a newly-found cousin on 23andme contacted me about a DNA match. I compared our surname lists and found that the only surname we share is Carter. The only Carter I have in my family tree is Jane Carter, but since I have no parents or siblings listed for her, we were at a (hopefully temporary) standstill. My curiosity got the better of me, so I set out to see if I could at least find out more about Jane and maybe even who her parents were.

Jane was born in either North Carolina or Bulloch, County Georgia, in 1780. She married Joshua Everett in 1797 in Bulloch County [1]. They had at least 11 children, one of whom is my 3rd great grandmother Sarah Everett who married Michael Young (grandparents of Catherine Young). Joshua died in Bulloch County in 1846 [2]. At the time of the 1850 census, Jane was living with her daughter Pamelia Everett Williams in Bulloch County [3]. I haven’t found Jane in the 1860 census, so I don’t know where she was living at the time, but at some point, she moved in with her son Josiah in Thomas County, Georgia, where she died in 1864 [4].

One of the things I’ve learned from other genealogists is that when trying to solve the mystery of a person’s parentage, look at the names of that person’s children for clues. Jane’s children’s names are rife with clues, but most of the names seem to come from the Everett side. Their oldest daughter Sarah could be named for Joshua’s mother Sarah Fagan. The names of the two oldest sons, John and William, are the names of Joshua’s father and grandfather, respectively. Sons Josiah, Aaron, and Jehu appear to be named after Joshua’s brothers. One son is named after Joshua, and his middle name is Bedford, the name of Joshua’s maternal grandfather Bedford Fagan. Daughter Eliza’s middle name is Fagan.

Clearly from Jane’s side of the family, two children have the middle name of Carter (John Carter and Cassandra Carter). One daughter is named Ann Jane—after Jane herself? Is the name Ann a clue? As mentioned above, one daughter is named Pamelia (I also saw it spelled Permelia)—an unusual name and one I haven’t come across in my research on Jane. It seems to be a pretty popular name in the 19th century. There are several on ancestry.com in Bulloch County, Georgia!

An interesting clue is son Aaron’s middle name of Barber. I happen to have the Barber surname in my family, and they also lived in Bulloch County. Keziah Barber (1750-1810) married William Henry Cone (1749-1816). These are my 5th great grandparents, and they are also on my maternal side but on a different branch. Or maybe not.

I don’t have any parents or siblings listed in my tree for Keziah Barber, and I didn’t find anything on ancestry.com. I did find a memorial on findagrave.com for her that says she had a sister named Cassandra which is also the name of one of Jane Carter’s daughters! (It also listed possible parents for Keziah.) The memorial on findagrave.com for Cassandra says she was married to Matthew Carter! I searched ancestry.com for Cassandra and found that she and Matthew had a daughter named Jane, but the birth years are given as 1790 or 1795, and some of the family trees list a death year of 1856 or 1860 in Jackson, Mississippi, which doesn’t match “my” Jane.

A digitized family history book on ancestry.com, The Kenan Family and Some Allied Families of the Compiler and Publisher, says that Jane Carter’s father may have been Isaac Carter [5]. Cassandra Barber’s husband Matthew Carter had a brother named Isaac Carter. Coincidence? I found several family trees on ancestry.com but none of the children listed for Isaac are named Jane. I also noticed that the marriage year noted for Isaac (1787) and his wife Christina Rester is after the birth of some of their children, so maybe Isaac was married twice or the dates are wrong.

I noticed other names in common in these families. This is making my head spin. The Barbers, Carters, and Cones of Bulloch County, Georgia, (and beyond) are definitely connected, but who were Jane Carter’s parents? I’ll have to save my continued pursuit for the answer for another day.

Catherine
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[1] Ancestry.com. U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900 for Jane Carter and Joshua Everett.
[2] Alvaretta Kenan Register. The Kenan Family and Some Allied Families of the Compiler and Publisher. James Shields Kenan Publisher, 1967.
[3] Ancestry.com. 1850 U. S. Census Bulloch, Georgia for Jane Everett; Page 264B.
[4] See footnote 2 above.
[5] See footnote 2 above.