NEVER say NEVER Redux

Rule:  Just because you have checked your research resources once, don’t stop looking in the same places over and over again, ever so often.

This was the “rule” I began with when I wrote my blog of April 7^th  2014 – NEVER say NEVER.  I explained how I had looked for YEARS for the parents of my great grandmother, Margaret ALEXANDER.  I won’t go into all those details here, you can read all about her in my blog of April 7^th  if you wish.  But I was so thrilled to have found (I thought) information on her, naming her father and a long line of ALEXANDERS back into the ancient past, that I committed the cardinal sin.  I wrote before I verified!

I had found a 3rd cousin on Ancestry who had all this information in her tree, we communicated, and I copied all her ALEXANDERs into my tree.  Of course I intended to verify the information, and I did.  My mistake was that I began with the furthest back ALEXANDERs – one ALEXANDER ALASDAIR CARRACH DONALD MacDONALD, King of the Hebrides, Ninth Lord of the Isles, Earl of Ross! Born 1369!  Doesn’t that sound “exciting?”  I was in seventh heaven! 

This line included several Barons of Menstire and Barons of Stirling – influential people who associated with kings, so it was pretty well historically documented.  I began checking at that point and came forward, verifying father and son, father and son, all the way down to ROBERT M. ALEXANDER, born 13 SEP 1807 in Mecklenburg County, NC who was the father of a MARGARET ALEXANDER.  Everything looked good. And I, at this point, wrote a blog!  WRONG!

And then I looked at Margaret (which I should have done FIRST!

I won’t make that mistake again! 

But let me first start with my MARGARET.

My MARGARET ALEXANDER first appears in the records when she marries my great grandfather Josiah (Jo, Joe, Joseph – you find all these names in his records) HAYWOOD in 1850.  Here is the marriage bond:

 

This gives the date of the marriage as 8 JAN 1850.

Next they are in the 1850 census, just married, no children yet.  Her age is stated as 19 making her birthdate “abt 1831.”   Consistently through all the censuses she appears in (1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880) her birthdate remains the same.

They are living right next door to Josiah’s mother, Catherine WENTZ HAYWOOD, who has all his brothers and sisters in her household.  This land was the HAYWOOD home place established by Catherine and BENTON HAYWOOD around 1831 when they moved from Lincoln County to Mecklenburg (now Union) County.  Catherine had her home there, Josiah, the first to marry, had his farm there, and eventually his next brother, John Franklin would have his farm there.  Remarkably, there are still HAYWOODs living on that land today!

1850 Census

Source Citation: Year: 1850; Census Place:  , Union, North Carolina; Roll: M432_647; Page: 43B; Image: 92.

1860 Census shows Josiah and Margaret with five children.  Mary Ann and Barnett

disappeared from the record after this.  I don’t know what happened to them, but I can follow all the others.  The Louisa A. at the bottom is the one I wrote about in my blog last time – DNA and Finding Louise Haywood.

1860 Census

NOTE: The 3 year old “George” should be listed as “John A.”

Source Citation:  Year 1860 ; Census Place: Union, North Carolina; Roll: M653_915; Page: 417

                                                 Image: 233, Family History Library Film: 803915

We next have the 1870 census showing Margaret with all the children.  Josiah has disappeared in the Civil war and is not heard from again.  The Thomas second from the bottom is Thomas M., my grandfather.

1870 Census

 (This image from two consecutive  pages)

Source Citation: Year: 1870; Census Place: Goose Creek, Union, North Carolina; Roll: M593_1161; Page: 517B; Image: 555; Family History Library Film: 552660.

We finally find my Margaret in the 1880 census.  She is listed as age 52, a widow, living alone, and is living next door to John Franklin and all his family, and Catherine 87 is now living with John Franklin.

1880 Census

Source Citation: Year: 1880; Census Place: Goose Creek, Union, North Carolina; Roll: 983; Family History Film: 1254983; Page: 446A; Enumeration District: 215.

Of course, there is no 1890 census, but I have a final notation on Margaret.  When Thomas M. took out a marriage license on 3 MAR 1884, his mother MARGARET ALEXANDER is listed as deceased.  So she died between 1880 and 1884.  She would have been between 53 and 56 years old.  She would have been buried at Morning Star Lutheran Church in Mecklenburg County, NC, because that is where she and all the WENTZS and HAYWOODs went at that time.  But unbelievably, sometime in the 1940s, MorningStar “destroyed” all the old original grave sites, to use the land for something else, I have read.  What a sad thing.

But it is evident from all these records, that my Margaret is well documented from 1850 to 1884.  Always on the HAYWOOD homeplace.  All these records readily available.

Now, for the wrong Margaret ALEXANDER, daughter of Robert M. ALEXANDER.  These discrepancies are so evident, it should have been clear to anyone researching that this was a different Margaret.  I realized it immediately!  (Once I got down to Margaret!)

She first appears in the records in the census of 1850 as a daughter in the household of Robert M. ALEXANDER  in Gaston County, NC.  She is 15 years old, making her birthdate1835.

1850 CENSUS

Source Citation: Year: 1850; Census Place:  , Gaston, North Carolina; Roll: M432_630; 

Page: 417B; Image: 445.

By the time of the 1860 census, Margaret is 25 years old, and has married Dr. Charles T. POWE of South Carolina, and they are living with her father Robert M. ALEXANDER in Memphis, TN, with one child.  It is listed as a “boarding house.”  They are on their way to Arkansas.

1860 CENSUS   ROBERT M. ALEXANDER

 Source Citation: Year: 1860; Census Place: Memphis Ward 6, Shelby, Tennessee; Roll: M653_1273; Page: 152; Image: 309; Family History Library Film: 805273.

By 1870 Margaret and Charles Powe are in Richland, Crawford, Arkansas, their final destination.  (It is the final destination also of her father and mother.)  They are living right beside her father ROBERT M. ALEXANDER and mother SUSANNA CROCKER "SUSAN" RUDISILL (1809 – 1880.)

1870 Census

BN Source Citation: Year: 1870; Census Place: Richland, Crawford, Arkansas; Roll: M593_51; Page: 229B; Image: 234; Family History Library Film: 545550.

By 1880, Charles had died (28 FEB 1878) and Margaret is a widow, head of the household, with four children.

1880 CENSUS   M. A. POE  (POWE)

Source Citation: Year: 1880; Census Place: Alma, Crawford, Arkansas; Roll: 42; Family History Film: 1254042; Page: 561B; Enumeration District: 049; Image: 0064.

Margaret died 2 FEB 1883 and she and Charles are both buried in the Alma City Cemetery, Alma, Crawford Co, Arkansas.  Her father and mother are also buried there.  You can find all their graves on Find a Grave.

This Margaret’s records are also readily available.  The mix up of the Margarets should never have happened.  Once I got through the fabulous ancient ALEXANDERS, and began checking out MARGARET, it was plain that there were Margarets on two different NC census records for 1850 – two different Margarets!  One in Gaston Co, 15 years old (1835,) unmarried.  One in Union County, 19 years old (1831), married.

Needless to say, I have removed all these illustrious ALEXANDERs from my tree, and my poor Margaret is alone again with no father and mother.  It’s so sad!  I hope someday this will remedy itself.

I still believe in my rule - Rule:  Just because you have checked your research resources once, don’t stop looking in the same places over and over again, ever so often.  Go back and look at records and trees over time.  Things do show up as new people come on line.  Just be sure to verify and start at the beginning not the end!

Good researching and

NEVER say NEVER!

 I have given the announcements and info their own special page. 

Always check out what is happening there.

See Tab at top

DNA  and  LOOKING FOR LOUISA HAYWOOD

I didn’t know I was looking for Louisa until I found her.  Louise Catherine HAYWOOD was my great aunt, the sister of my grandfather, Thomas Melton HAYWOOD.  They were the children of Josiah HAYWOOD who never returned from the civil war, and his wife Margaret ALEXANDER.  There were five children in that family – four boys and one girl.  I was able to follow the four boys, I knew where they lived, what they did, and where they were buried.  Males are usually pretty easy to follow.

But Girls!  Oh My, Girls!  If you don’t have a family full of documents, wills, land records, newspaper articles, or family stories, you will lose the girls when they become 16 to 20 years old, get married, go away from home.  As I have mentioned before, the HAYWOODs were not story tellers.  Since she lost Josiah in the war, Margaret had to raise the 5 children on her own, on the farm.  Thomas Melton was 2 years old when Josiah left, and Louisa was 4 years old.  They never knew their father.  It was probably a hard life.  There was not a lot of documentation except for the census records.  I never expected to hear about Louisa (she was called that on the 1860, 1870, 1910 and 1920 censuses) again.  The only thing I had was the census records as follows:

1860 census – Union County:  

                        Source Citation: Year: 1860; Census Place: Union,North Carolina roll 653_915,
                              Page: 417; Image: 233; Family History Library Film: 803915

 1870 census – Union County:

From two separate pages

Source Citation: Year: 1870; Census Place: Goose Creek, Union, North Carolina; Roll: M593_1161; Page: 517B; Image: 555; Family History Library Film: 552660.

Louisa was 2 years old in 1860, and 12 years old in 1870.  Of course by 1880 she would have been 22 years old and, I assumed, probably married.  There was no record I could find of her or her husband after that.  They did not appear on the 1880 census.  She was lost in time.

Now “beam” forward to today with all the unbelievable electronic marvels, the instant documentation, the endless sources we have to explore.  Our whole history is evidently stored in huge  “filing cabinets” out there in space somewhere!   {:-D

I recently decided to check out my DNA through Ancestry.com – their autosomal method.  It doesn’t go back to ancient ancestors like the Y DNA testing does, it compares more current family connections,  (6 - 7 generations) both male and female.  Since I cannot do the Y (male) testing, I decided to start with this and perhaps do the mtDNA (female) testing later.  I discovered all kinds of interesting things with this test, such as my genetic background.

It answered questions like YES I have mostly English, Irish, and German (Europe West,) in my background.  Well . . that little bit of Scandinavian probably came from the Viking invasions of England  . . . right?  Anyway I am not spread out all over the world

But . . . back to Louisa.  Along with the above information, they send you a long, long .  .  . l  o  o  o n g  list of people you might be related to.  It starts off with second cousins and goes on from there, finally just listing people who have the same names in their trees as you do, even if they are NOT the same people.    So you have to sift through it, look at everything they offer and decide if it belongs to you or not.  A LOT OF WORK!!  I have found some cousins I knew about, some I even actually knew, and some I did not know, but they were mine!  I have contacted a few of them, and a few of them have already contacted me.  They provide both sides with email contact information.

But . . . back to Louisa! (again)  On the list, down a couple of pages, I was checking out each one as they came, here was a tree in a name that I could see no connection with.  I quickly scanned the main “characters” – the headliners – (you can see a small pedigree chart) and didn’t see any name I knew.  I’m thinking at that point “why did they send me this tree!!!”  Then down at the bottom of their charts, they list all the names in that tree that match names in your tree.  (All this comes from Ancestry.com of course, so they are working with the trees they have on record.)  I discovered the name HAYWOOD!  So I had to go back and delve deep into all the minor characters, the unimportant people, dead-end wives, etc.  There, as the wife of a man who was also not a “main” character, (he was a great great grandfather to the mother-in-law of the home person) was the name LOUISE CATHERINE HAYWOOD!  I said, “O. K.  looks interesting.”  But I had her as Louisa A. (1860 census) and this had a “Catherine.”  BUT Catherine was the name of my Louisa’s grandmother (Catherine WENTZ, married to Benton HAYWOOD.)  So I thought, “I’ll just look into it, but it probably won’t be the right one.”  So I went to Ancestry and found the real tree that all this was based on.  I saw that the owner remarkably had a Death Certificate for his Louise Catherine HAYWOOD.  So I said, “I’ll check that out and it will prove that this is not my Louisa!”  I pulled up the South Carolina certificate.  Father’s name:  Joe HAYWOOD!  Mother’s name:  Margaret ALEXANDER!  Birth place and date correct.  She was MY Louisa!                (Josiah was often listed as Jo or Joe.)

I had not looked into South Carolina records much, as all my HAYWOODs were always in North Carolina – NEVER ASSUME!  Now that I knew her married name, I began to pull together everything I could find on Louisa.  She had married CALVIN PRESSLEY (his second wife) sometime around 1876.  She was about 18 years old.  He was also from Union County, but by the time their first child arrived in 1879, they were living in Clover, York County, SC, just below the North Carolina line.  They appear in the 1900 census and the 1910 census for York Co, always living in Clover.  Calvin worked for Duke Power Company, the local electric company.  The census for 1900 states that Louisa had 12 children, but only 10 were living.  I could only find 9 of them. ¹

Everything on this certificate seems to be correct.  The informant was “B. W. Pressley.”  That would have been the youngest son, Britton Wise Pressley (1898 – 1986.)  But what is VERY strange is that no cause of death is listed.  It says, scrawled across it, “No Doctor Charge – Dropped Dead!”  It states that at 8:00 pm on November 11, 1922 she just dropped dead in her home, age 64yrs 4mos.  No mention of from what.  I have never seen a certificate like that!  It states that she is buried in Kings Mountain Chapel Cemetery (United Methodist Church) in Filbert (right next door to Clover.) Historic Kings Mountain, NC is just a short distance from there, and the S. C. township of Kings Mountain evidently goes as far down as Clover.  Directions to this cemetery are on the  ANNOUNCEMENTS/INFO  Page.  (Tab at top.)

All this was such a shock to me.  This was my grandfather’s sister, my father’s aunt.  Of course she had moved from Union county before he was born.  But I wonder if he knew she was living right below Charlotte.  She died in 1922, (he would have been 29 years old,) and he had just returned from the war, decided not to go back to the farm in Union County, and was living and working in Charlotte. 

Louisa had married Calvin “Cap” PRESSLEY (does this name sound familiar?  Look below!²)  Calvin died three years after Louisa in 1925 and is also buried in this cemetery, right beside her.  These are the only two PRESSLEYs here.  How do I know? 

Well Clover is just 20 minutes down HIWY321 from where I live!  I go there about once a month year round, to a farmer’s market, a flower nursery, and other destinations.  I have been going for 6 years, ever since I moved here.  And I never knew Louisa was there.  A lone HAYWOOD up here far from all the others buried in Union County.  I had to go see her.

A friend and I went last Saturday.  The Church and cemetery are only 5 or 6 blocks from the vegetable stand!  I was always that close and I never knew!  Here are the pictures.  But it only brought up another mystery  (isn’t that always the case?)

Notice Louisa’s stone.  It should read LOUISE HAYWOOD PRESSLEY but it reads LOUIS HAYWARD PRESSLEY.  This is entirely wrong, but the dates are correct and the stones are side by side.  I have gone back to the home person of the tree where I found Louisa, to ask if any family member knows why such a mistake was made, and why no correction was ever done.  But the connection was his mother-in-law and she has recently passed away.  So I don’t know if we will ever discover the truth.   It seems very sad to me to lie there under a stone with the wrong name on it.

Because of this error, this grave does not come up in Find a Grave when searching for Louise.  I found it by getting to the cemetery on Calvin's name, then clicking on “Find all the Pressleys in this cemetery.”  But, at any rate, and despite all odds, Louisa has been found.

^1.              (for a list of  Louisa’s children that I found, go to my tree on Ancestry.com –
                  Haywood, House, Yandle, Wentz  / Parker, Arant, Nelson, McCain)

^2.    But I always like to end on a lighter note.  I mentioned above about the PRESSLEY name.  If you go back in Calvin’s tree 10 generations, you will come to:

Sir George Jacob Presslar/Bressler

Birth:   1590 in Obercrintz, Zwickau, Sachsen, Germany

Death:   1650 in Germany  He seemed a prominent man in his community, owning huge vineyards and a well-known winery.
(Germans didn’t differentiate much bet. Bs and Ps) 

Along Calvin’s line of ancestors 5 generations back, you find

ANDREAS DAVID PRESLAR

Birth:   2 Jun 1701 in          Hochstadt, Sudliche Weinstrasse, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany

Death: 2 Jun 1759 in          Anson County, North Carolina, USA

Along with other children, he had two sons -  two brothers:

THOMAS PRESLEY Sr   (Calvin's line)

Birth:   27 Aug 1730 in       St Stephens Parish, Cecil, Maryland, USA

Death:  7 July 1808 in        Anson County, North Carolina, USA

ANDREW PRESLEY Jr   (Elvis' line)

Birth:   2 Jun 1732 in          St Stephens, Cecil, Maryland, United States

Death: 2 Jun 1790 in          Fayette, Anson County, North Carolina, USA

Yes, Calvin was a distant cousin of Elvis Pressley! 3

3.  Go to my tree, find (search) ANDREW PRESLEY Jr, and you can trace his line 
      down to Elvis.  The main line is always in CAPs

                   Never Give Up and Never Assume

 I have given the announcements and info their own special page. 
Always check out what is happening there.

See Tab at top.