Walking In The Footsteps of the Past. A Journey into Genealogy: ROADBLOCKS

ROADBLOCKS !

The bane of genealogists.

I think everyone working on a family history has a roadblock they are struggling with. In our genealogy group in Belmont I can think of no one not anguishing over their own roadblock. Every now and then we as a group jump on one of these and brainstorm about what the person could try next, coming up with new ideas not thought of before. We are like detectives working on a case over a long time (they call it a cold case file,) following every little clue, adding them up, coming back over and over again, trying to come up with a solution. It is not easy!

In my family history, I have eight family lines which I can trace back to the early 1700s or further. Almost all of my ancestors were already in the Charlotte, NC area before 1776. But then there is my roadblock! What I consider my main line, my father’s line the HAYWOODs, is my problem.

(Why do we consider our father’s line the main line? Is it because it is the name we carried from birth? Why is it any more important than our mother’s line, or our maternal great, great grandfather’s wife’s line? Don’t we have just as much of their genes in us? It is a puzzle. Just as astonishing is the fact that in just four generations, we have the genes, the DNA, of sixteen people running through our bodies! And we wonder where the “redheaded” child came from!)

My Great Great Grandfather Benton HAYWOOD is my roadblock. We didn’t find him for a long time. As I wrote about in Butterfly Whispers (June 28) my cousin Peggy and I were working on the two brothers, my Josiah (1825 – 1865) and her John Franklin (1829 - 1911) HAYWOOD at the same time. (There was a third son James Madison [1831 – 1896,] who was born after they moved to Mecklenburg County, NC.) Peggy, who had been at it a lot longer than I had, thought there was another Josiah who was the father of them both. She had found a deed where Josiah was giving some land to John Franklin. So she thought he must be the father.

She was on the verge of printing her book on the HAYWOODs. I was in NC for the Christmas holidays and I decided to go to Monroe, the county seat of Union County, NC. They have a wonderful History Room in the Court House, so I took the opportunity to do some research. In the process, I met my newly found cousin (first cousin once removed) Sandy who I had only conversed with by telephone at that time. Sandy took me all over Union Co., finding all the old home places, cemeteries, and such. She took me to Morning Star Lutheran Church to see what they had. We were sure of Catherine Wentz as the mother of the boys for they were with her for a long time, living right beside each other. The Wentzes had helped found Morning Star, and the family were strong members.

Morning Star has a huge ledger of the minutes and church business from their beginnings. The pages have been laminated so you can handle them. I was just turning pages to see what I could find. I turned the page and looked down to see:

Benton Haywood and his wife Catherine brought their two sons John Franklin and James Madison to be baptized.

We had found the father of the three boys! We had never seen that name before. I called Peggy frantically telling her NOT to give the “book” to the printers! I stopped by her house in South Carolina on my back home to Florida, and we went through the book, finding every time “Josiah” had been mentioned as the father, and replacing it with “Benton.” WHEW!

Back home, I entered Benton into the Ancestry search box, and up he popped – In the 1830 Census of Lincoln County, NC! Lincoln County – that was a surprise! The problem is he is never mentioned again. He was in the 30 – 40 age group, meaning he was born 1790 – 1800. He should have been in the 1820 census as he would have been age 20 – 30. He was not. Then otherwise, he should have been in someone else’s household. But since there are no names other than the head of house before 1850, he cannot be found. But there were no other HAYWOOD households In Lincoln County, or in Mecklenburg County in 1830 that he could have been in. There were no HAYWOODS in either the 1800, 1810 or the 1820 census in this area.

In the 1830 census all the other given facts match Benton. There was a female age 20 – 30 which matches his wife Catherine WENTZ who was born in 1805. There were two males, the dates matching Josiah born 1825, and John Franklin born 1828. Benton lived in Lincolnton. He is living among many of the well known, financially well-off citizens of this area at that time. His next-door neighbor Ephraim Brevard was one of the most prominent citizens of Lincoln County. He is listed with 26 slaves, who probably worked in his mines and iron furnaces along the South Fork River. There were several of these iron furnaces in this area which contributed greatly to the economics of Lincolnton and Lincoln County during these years. Other prominent men living in proximity to Benton were Larson Wilson, D. M. Forney (another iron furnace,) Andrew Dellinger, and Joel Stowe. He was in “good company.” Benton appears on no tax records, voters list, no other record in Lincolnton or Lincoln County. This is my Benton, but where did he come from?

(The following is excerpted from my blog We came From The West, dated 7/24/13)

“I did my searching. I followed every path I could find. There was a whole county named HAYWOOD over on the North Carolina/-Tennessee Line. It must be full of Haywoods, I thought, since they named the county that. It turned out that HAYWOOD County, NC (founded in 1808) and also HAYWOOD Co in Tennessee were both named in honor of a retiring Judge John Haywood who had been the Treasurer of NC for 40 years (1787 to 1827). He came from a large family of HAYWOODs settled around Raleigh and Wake Co, NC. His ancestor John H. HAYWOOD (1684 – 1758) had sailed from Barbados into New Bern harbor in the mid 1700s and they had settled from Edgecombe County on the coast drifting across the state leaving GREAT MEN in their path to situate at Raleigh. I call them “The Society Haywoods.” They were wealthy; doctors, judges, lawyers, and professors, and I can find NO connection between them and Benton. None of them would ever have been found plowing a mule to feed himself and clothe his children. And it also turned out back then there were hardly any HAYWOODs in Haywood County after all, except for the Judge’s family who had moved with him. So that blew that theory!

Then my attention turned to a clan of HAYWOODs settled in Montgomery Co, NC near Rockingham. There is a grand restored home there close to Mt. Gilead called HAYWOOD HOUSE which had been the site of a large plantation with a huge number of slaves. There is a wonderful culture which has grown up around HAYWOOD HOUSE, and many African-American people today have built their genealogical tree from that point in time and go by the name of HAYWOOD. But alas, I couldn’t connect to HAYWOOD HOUSE, finding it had been founded by a Byrd HAYWOOD who had come down from coastal Brunswick Virginia in 1778. No Benton in that family.

These two HAYWOOD families were the only ones in North Carolina before the early 1830s. They are the ones showing on the 1790 census. There were no HAYWOODS in Union, Mecklenburg, Gaston, Lincoln, or Anson Counties before 1830. So if there were none anywhere for us to come from, where the “heck” did we come from!”

By 1831 when the third son James Madison was born, Benton had moved his clan to the Stallings/Hemby Bridge area of Mecklenburg County, which eventually became Union County (just east of Old Providence Road.) This was quite near the family place of Catherine’s parents, John Andrew WENTZ (1751 – 1827) and wife Catherine STARNES (1774 – 1814.) and her grandfather Johann Andreas WENTZ, the immigrant, (1717 – 1809,) and his wife Catherine CHURTZ (1729 – 1826.) I had often wondered, in that time period, when travel was so difficult, and there were two rivers to cross (the Catawba and the Southfork,) how in the world did Benton and Catherine get together. And then I discovered (ah the joys of genealogy!) that two of Catherine’s aunts had married men from Lincoln County earlier and had lived there for a time before moving on west. Barbara WENTZ (1767 – 1849) had married Leonard Lipe (1763 - 1848) and sometime around 1820 they moved to Nine Mile Prairie, Perry, Illinois. Catherine WENTZ (1775 - 1875) married John Slinkard (? - ?) and they eventually moved to Newberry, Green, Indiana. So that offered an opportunity for Catherine to be in Lincoln County and meet Benton.

When Benton and Catherine removed to Mecklenburg County around 1831, they founded the HAYWOODs which populate Mecklenburg and Union county today. There were none there before they arrived – there are many, many there now. There is a full record of the family from that point on. There is no record before 1830.

. . .Unless you consider SAMUEL HAYWARD, Anson County, circa 1751!