Another great idea up in smoke
Okay.
The Legal Genealogist is now officially burned up.
I mean really.
Officially.
And … sigh … in one very important sense, even literally.
For one brief moment yesterday afternoon, sitting in the North Carolina State Archives, I thought I had achieved The Breakthrough.
Well, okay, so The Breakthrough on one of my (many) major research issues.
You see, I descend from Martha Louisa Baker who married George Washington Cottrell. The marriage was in 1854 in Johnson County, Texas.1 Or maybe 1853 in Parker County.2 Or maybe 1854 in Parker County. 3 Or maybe 1855 in Johnson County.4
No matter, it was sometime around then somewhere around there.
We think.
And we know that Louisa, as she was called, was the daughter of Martin Baker and Elizabeth Buchanan.
Well, at least, we’re pretty darned sure of that.
Even though the one child of the right age and gender in the Baker household in the 1850 census is enumerated as (sigh…) Margaret.5
Okay, so the fact is, I don’t have a single solitary record that puts her right into Martin’s family. No family Bible, no federal or state census, no birth or marriage or death record.
Lots of indirect evidence, and plenty to construct a proof argument.
But oh… it would be so nice to have just one piece of direct evidence.
And yesterday I thought I had it.
I came across a set of records yesterday that absolutely should have been the icing on this cake. They are school census records, and they begin in North Carolina as early as 1841.6
The law under which these census records were required provided that school committees would be elected in each school district around the state, and it specified part of the responsibilities of the members of the school committees:
The school committees shall, in one month after their term of office commences, report in writing to the chairman of the board of superintendents, the number and names of the white children in their districts, of six and under twenty-one years of age; and on failure so to do shall each forfeit and pay five dollars, to be recovered by warrant before any justice of the peace, in the name of the chairman of the county superintendents, to be appropriated to the use of the school district in which such failure shall occur.7
And the school census records I had originally come across for one county listed every head of household by name, and every child — boy or girl — in that household… by name.
Now Martha Louisa Baker was born in 1832.8 The family lived in North Carolina during at least some of the years when Louisa would have been over the age of six and under the age of 21. She should be on one of those school census forms, neatly enumerated with her similarly-aged siblings, for more than one year.
I thought I had this licked.
Except for one little detail.
The county where they were living during those critical years when Louisa should be on one of those school census forms, neatly enumerated with her similarly-aged siblings, for more than one year, was Cherokee County, way on the west side of North Carolina.
Yep.
You guessed it.
“During the Civil War (1860-1865), … the county courthouse… was burned by Union raiders.”9
The records loss for pre-war records? Pretty much total.
Oh, and for anything the Union soldiers didn’t get?
The courthouse burned again in 1895. And again in 1926.10
Sigh…
I love Southern research.
Another great idea up in smoke.
SOURCES
- Survivor’s Claim, 23 March 1887, Pension application no. 7890 (Rejected), for service of George W. Cotrell of Texas; Mexican War Pension Files; Records of the Bureau of Pensions and its Predecessors 1805-1935; Department of Veterans Affairs, Record Group 15; National Archives, Washington, D.C. ↩
- Ibid., Survivor’s Brief, 17 February 1890. ↩
- Declaration of claimant, 21 Jan 1897, widow’s pension application no. 13773 (Rejected), for service of George W. Cottrell of Texas; Mexican War Pension Files; RG-15; NA-Washington, D.C. ↩
- See Weldon Hudson, Marriage Records of Johnson County, Tx. (Cleburne : Johnson Co. Historical Soc., 2002). ↩
- 1850 U.S. census, Pulaski County, Kentucky, Division 2, population schedule, p. 111 (stamped), dwelling/family 528, Margaret Baker; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 5 Aug 2002); citing National Archive microfilm publication M432, roll 217. ↩
- See e.g. 1841 School Census, Wilkes County, North Carolina; North Carolina State Archives. ↩
- See §38, Chapter 66, Revised Code of North Carolina (1854), 385; digital images, Google Books (http://books.google.com : accessed 14 Nov 2014). ↩
- Declaration of claimant, 21 Jan 1897, widow’s pension application no. 13773 (Rejected), for service of George W. Cottrell of Texas; Mexican War Pension Files; RG-15; NA-Washington, D.C. ↩
- “Cherokee County (1839),” North Carolina History Project (http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/ : accessed 14 Nov 2014). ↩
- FamilySearch Research Wiki (https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/), “Cherokee_County,_North_Carolina,” rev. 10 Nov 2014. ↩
Well hang in there, you never know, something might surface back up and change your mind.
I keep hoping, Shelley!
Well, Judy, Welcome to the Club of non existence. It happens not only in the South, but up North too, in Pennsylvania, where my Wadsworth relatives lived, where my ancestor Catharine Runk married Samuel Wadsworth circa 1821. Or at least that is what the Summit County Ohio bio sketch on a marry-in relative states. But no paper work anywhere in Westmoreland County where their son Jacob Runk Wadsworth was born in 1823. Nope, nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. So I can readily sympathize with you and we can mutually cry on each others shoulders.
But sooner or later, my thought is, we will prevail!
I sure hope so, Gloria, but sheeeeeesh. I sure would like just one easy line to research!
Hi Judy,
I read your blog entry and had a few questions. When George and Martha married did any of the pensions record who performed the marriage? Possibly ministers name to give an insight of the true marriage location?
In any of these areas does Martin and Elizabeth move with George and Martha or do they stay in North Carolina?
Martin and Elizabeth moved from NC to KY to IA and then at least Martin made it to TX. (The family story is that Elizabeth died en route, was buried on the trail and the body later moved to TX. Me, I think she probably made it to TX and died there. She’s buried next to Martin in Parker County.) George and Louisa didn’t marry until they next in TX. The pension records don’t identify who performed the marriage; the marriage book itself is missing in action.
Judy, I understand the frustration of pinning ancestors and connecting generations. I went through a similar situation with my Starlings in Ohio and Connecticut. The only direct evidence I had was an 1810 US census for Ohio in Washington County. The census showed my ancestor as a ten-sixteen year old “tick” mark in his father’s household – the only linch-pin to hold the generations together. My ancestor’s father and grandfather are in the Barbour; but, no my ancestor was born in 1796 in the Northwest Territory (now Ohio). I had to write a proof argument and to my surprise, was accepted. Officially, now I have 3 generations of Starlings in Ohio before Statehood.
I do have a good indirect case, Lee — but is it sooooooo much to ask to have one single shred of direct evidence? Just one?
The Cherokee County historians make it sound like the “Union raiders” burnt the courthouse out of pure meanness. But it was rebel raiders who were at the courthouse. Let me quote directly from the 24 May 1902 testimony of east Tennessean Isaac Lindsay, regarding the lack of an antebellum marriage record for Lucinda Carter in Cherokee County:
“…there is no record there as the court house was burned in time of the war. I know it was burned as I was the one who burned it. I belonged to Co. H of the 3rd Tenn. Mtd. Inf. and hearing that there were some rebel raiders in the loft of the court house, I poured some turpentine on it and set it on fire.”
source: Civil War Pension application file [case 684,797] for Lucinda K. Leming, supposed widow of William Leming. Deposition of Isaac Lindsay, postmaster, at Povo, Monroe County, Tennessee.
No matter how you cut it, it was a Union soldier who set the place on fire. Why he did it doesn’t matter a whole lot.
Nearly all my mother’s ancestors passed through Cherokee County before the Civil War. Like your family, most of mine had left before the War, and thus did not go back there to re-record their deeds and other legal matters. So it really struck me when I first read this Isaac Lindsey’s statement, and finally had the explanation for what happened.
Quite the frustration for us today, but imagine what that record loss meant for the widow [Lucinda Leming] trying to get her pension – she was old and destitute and couldn’t even get the arrears of her final husband’s last pension payment. When she tried to apply for that payment and get her own widow’s pension, it was over 45 years after her marriage. The presiding Justice of the Peace and all witnesses in Cherokee County were dead. Lacking any witnesses and without the courthouse record, she could not prove a legal marriage. Her local postmaster, storekeeper, and Justice of the Peace, the Isaac Lindsey I quoted above, had helped the husband complete his paperwork for a soldier’s pension, but couldn’t do much for the widow. She was never allowed any pension.
Ouch. Yeah, as much as the loss of these records may annoy me, it doesn’t compare to that widow’s loss, does it?
If you ever get tired of getting all fired up about your own Southern research, Judy, you can rekindle the spirit by helping me with mine.
I have enough trouble dealing with my own kin, John!
Oh, dear Legal Genealogist. North Carolina and those school records and speaking of getting burned. This is exactly why I do not do forensic genealogy. Even to this day I can’t get into the details, but suffice it to say there is danger in them ‘thar hills. I quite innocently was trying to help one of my very first clients, and the whole thing came down to school records in North Carolina. The result was that we found the name of the person who this poor client thought was her dead husband. But he was very much alive. They had switched identies while on the lamb, so her husband could escape a murder wrap. I will never forget leaving her alone for an hour with the “real” person of the name in North Carolina as he explained this all to her some 40 years after it happened, and her coming out of my office in tears and shambles. Oh, it gets better. She swore me to secrecy about it. Years later, my phone rang and it was her daughter calling to tell me her mother had died, and that she “knew” I “knew” something. So I had to relive the whole awful experience all over again. Nope. Won’t do no forensic genealogy ever again.
We’re all a lot more comfortable with things that happened in 1814 than in 2014!
Thanks for mentioning these records at the workshop. I had no idea they existed. I’m very sorry, though that your family was not represented. I wouldn’t be able to use them either because all my family left NC before 1830. Oh well, keep trekking!
They really are a terrific resource in the places where they exist, and they exist in many more locations than we might expect. Just not … sigh … where my family lived.