Now . . . aboul Samuel . . .

Continuing with my effort to get beyond my roadblock on Benton HAYWOOD.  (See blog ROADBLOCKS 10/7/13.)  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.

1830 CENSUS LINCOLN CO. NC

Benton pops up in the 1830 Lincoln County NC census, and I cannot find him before that time.  How did he happen to be in Lincolnton, the main town at that time of Lincoln County?  There were no other HAYWOODs in this area . . .

except . . .

I know genealogists are not supposed to “assume.”  FACTS!  You must have FACTS!  You cannot just “adopt” someone you want to put on your tree.  But there is Samuel . . . I don’t “assume” he is mine, but like I’ve mentioned in the past I have a feeling about Samuel.  Like my “feelings” about Catherine, about Josiah, (see blog Can you Feel Your Roots 9/4/13), I just know he is mine.  I can’t prove it (yet!)  I don’t assume, but I consider him a very interesting possibility!

I first met Samuel a long time ago, about 1994, when I was just beginning to learn about genealogy.  I found him in a book in the LDS library in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida -  a book on plantation owners in North and South Carolina.  And like most beginners I failed to record the name of the book!  (And have never come across it again.)  Anyway, it said Samuel HAYWARD had a “plantation,”  (any farm at that time was called a “plantation,”)  on Fisher’s Creek  south of the South Fork River.

When I investigated the South Fork River I found that it forked off the Catawba north of Lincoln County in NC, ran past where Charlotte is now, and on into South Carolina.  On a map I found a small creek called Fishing Creek just below what is now Mecklenburg County, on the South Carolina line.  This is where I pictured Samuel, right at Charlotte, right where my known family was located.  I had assumed!  I carried this tidbit of information with me for 20 years, a small note on a piece of paper, tucked into the back of my file folder.  All the time I was constructing my family tree (from Benton forward) this tiny note stayed hidden, deep in my mind.

Much later, after I retired and moved back to North Carolina, and resumed my genealogy research in earnest, I discovered how wrong I was.  In Brent Holcomb’s abstract of Land Grants in NC, I found the following:

SAMUEL'S 400 ac. PLOT

Pp.  183 – 184:  17 JUL 1752, Thomas POTTS of Anson Co. to SAMUEL HAYWARD of same, for £10 Va money…land on S side Catabar R. (sic)… Francis MACKILWAINE line…granted to POTTS 29 SEPT 1750,  400 A…THOMAS POTTS  (SEAL) , wit: WILLIAM SHERIF  JUR  (W),  ANTHONY HUTCHINS.

337   Pg 63   SAMUEL HAYWARD    30 AUG 1753   260 acres in Anson County on the S. fork of the Cataba river on Fishers creek.

359   Pg 66   SAMUEL HAYWARD    30 AUG 1753   350 acres in Anson County on the S. side of the S. fork of the Cataba River on Leonard Reeds branch above DANIEL WARLICK, joining sd WARLICK.

5082   Pg 196   Samuel Hayward   13 OCT 1756    400 acres in Anson County on the South side of the South fork of the Cataba River, joining his Old Survey, His Lower Corner,  FRANCIS MACKILWEAN, PETER HAVENY and Fishers Creek.

Pp 162 – 166  23 SEPT 1755  Samuel is listed as a Witness on a grant to DERRICK RAMSEUR

s. s. 894  (Inventories  fr. Sec of State’s papers) 28 Oct 1756    SAMUEL HAYWARD is listed as being present at an estate sale for BURILL GRIGG,  Decd.

5694  Pg 338   10 APR 1761   SAMUEL HAYWARD is listed on a land description as…”joining  SAMUEL HAYWARD Decd.”

7158  Pg 57  The creek was first called HOWARDS CREEK  about 1764.

Pp.110 – 111   30 OCT 1769  Samuel’s first 260 grant was transferred to CHRISTIAN REINHARDT, and noted as being “ on waters of S fork of Catawba River on Fishers Creek, now called Howards Creek.

As you probably know the names HOWARD, HAYWARD, and HAYWOOD were interchangeable at that time.  I believe the creek was named for Samuel after he came there, and towards 1800 some people were already calling it “the HAYWOOD Tract on Haywood’s Creek” in land records.  The name was evolving to HAYWOOD. 

Samuel was mentioned often in other land grants stating their land was “adjacent to, bounding, or in some way beside of or touching” the land of Samuel HAYWARD.  He was a witness on a deed in 1755, he was present at an auction in 1756.  Samuel was around and about in Anson County in the 1750s.  The part of Anson County where all this took place later became Tryon County, then Mecklenburg County, and finally in 1779, Lincoln County.  You have to look in all these counties, when doing your research.

And then, finally, on a land grant dated 10 APR 1761 to DANIEL WARLEIGH it states that this land bounds the property of Samuel HAYWARD, Decd.  Samuel has died sometime between his last mention at the estate sale in 1756 and 1761.  His land is mentioned (for location purposes) in other land records up until about 1800. 

And then one day I discovered that between 1782 and 1789  (there are several entries noted as “n.d.” which meant no date and Samuel’s was, of course, one of the ”no dates”) the “Inventory” of Samuel HAYWARD was entered into the court record by Administrators Samuel WILSON and his wife Sarah. (Administrators, not Executors, means there was no will.)  Who were these WILSONs?  Why were they handling the estate of Samuel HAYWARD?  This puzzled me for several years.

SAMUEL'S INVENTORY

The Inventory provides good information about Samuel.  He seems prosperous.  He owns books (very unusual on the frontier, - he evidently was an educated man,) guns, horses, wagons, much household and kitchen equipment (pewter plates and spoons,) a bed, with linens, 3 blankets and 2 quilts, much wearing apparel – men's and women's, much farm equipment.  Interestingly it mentions good coats, two “children’s” coats, a bolt of good broadcloth, bolts of silk dress material, a bolt of ordinary dress material, and a spinning wheel.  There were definitely two children and women in the household.

One day as I was researching at the Historical Library in Lincolnton, my head was all in Lincoln County at the time, but lying on a table I saw the very large Heritage Book for Mecklenburg County.  I said to myself “well, I have people in Mecklenburg County, I’ll just glance through it looking for HAYWOODs.”  I picked it up and carried it to my table, and when I put it down, it practically fell open in the “Ws.”!  (I told you before to pay attention when these things happen.  They are probably important.  Someone is trying to tell you something!)  I could have flipped on over to where the HAYWOODs were in the book, but instead I looked at the top right corner of the page and - I saw SAMUEL WILSON!  That was the name of the person listed as Adm. of Samuel’s estate!  And then I read the article.

It mentioned Samuel WILSON and his wife Sarah HAYWARD, born in Anson County!  It listed her father as Samuel HAYWARD.  This was all that was said about Sarah.  But it explained why the WILSONs were administrating Samuel HAYWARD’s estate.  SHE WAS HIS DAUGHTER!  I have since found Sarah named in two WILSON family trees on Ancestry, listing her as wife of Samuel, and mother to George (1775 - 1850,) but I have been unsuccessful in contacting the owners to find out where this information came from.

Now, this raised the question “Why, if Samuel HAYWARD died by 1761, was the inventory not entered into court record until 1782 - 1789?  That was at least 20 years after he died.  I learned that when a person died, if there were any minor children, the estate could not be settled until all the children were of legal age, 21 years old. 

So – o - o,     

who were they waiting on to reach 21 years of age!  Waiting 20 years to begin settling the estate doesn’t make sense otherwise.  Samuel is too old to be the father of Benton.  But if there had been a son (who had become 21 years old around 1782 - 1789 when the Inventory was entered, the one who wore the second child’s coat) he could have been Benton’s father!  Benton was born between 1790 and 1800 according to the 1830 census.  All this would have taken place in the part of Anson County which became Lincoln County, right at the town of Lincolnton where Benton turns up in 1830.  This Unknown HAYWARD/HAYWOOD is who I am looking for.

This makes for an interesting (not assumption) possibility.  The coincidences are too much to be ignored!  Benton appears in Lincoln Co. and the only other HAYWARD/HAYWOOD in that county was Samuel 50 years before and “UNKNOWN”  20 – 30 years before.  My “to do” list says I must go back to Lincoln County and begin searching the Quarter Sessions and Pleas for the time period 1750 – 1790 to see what information may be there concerning the final settling of Samuel’s estate.  These records are not indexed, so it will require much page turning and bleary eyes.  This will consume many, many day trips to Lincolnton during the coming winter.  (Good time to research – cold winter days.)

Don’t Assume - Research

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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!

 More about Samuel next time!

This remains a

The announcements and info now have their own page.  See tab at top.

FALL COMES ON

I’m not writing so much about “Genealogy” today, but I am writing about our ancestors, how they survived their hard rough life, and how I honor them in this day and time.

I saw the first orange leaf on my maple tree out front yesterday.  Fall is coming to my space, here on the edge of the Blue Ridge

FALL GLORY

Mountains.  In a few more weeks the hills will be flowing with yellows, oranges, and browns.  The mountains will look as if a piece of colorful fabric had been thrown over them like a warm snuggie.  All the instincts of mankind will plug in, and storing up, packing in, drying, canning, preserving of every kind will kick in.  We will be lining our nests, hunkering down in our best survival mode, to outwit the cold hard winter.

All the summer goodies in the local farmer’s market, the peaches, tomatoes, squashes, beans and peas are mostly cleared out now, taken home to be preserved by canning or freezing. They’ll be replaced with the treasures of fall: cider and apples from the mountains, collards, cabbages, broccoli,  onions, winter squash.  In my garden, I have had cabbages, onions, and collards, last way into the early spring, covered often by the snow.  Nothing is prettier than green scallions peeking through the white snow.

SUMMER'S HARVEST

All summer I have brought in the luscious yellow peaches grown just ten miles down the road in South Carolina.  I slice them, sugar them, let them sit a while to make sweet pink juice, and then bag them in single servings for the freezer.  I have done the same with straw-berries and blueberries grown on this same farm.  These beautiful fruits have not come 2000 miles on a refrigerated train.  The strawberries do not have hard white centers.  The peaches drip juice all over you when you eat them.  I have put up fig preserves from the fig trees growing all around this same farmer’s market building.  I can have “fresh” fruit all winter long, until the new crop comes in next summer.  I have canned tomatoes, salsa, and spaghetti sauce.  I have made peach jam and dill pickles.¹  I ferment my pickles in a crock, and then put them up in glass jars in my fridge.  I have some there now, from last year, still perfect.  I will soon make new apple butter², aromatic with cinnamon and cloves (oh the house smells so good on that day.)  I am waiting for the house temperature to drop down to about 65 – 70 degrees to make my sour kraut.  Did you see my blog of August 7  The Kraut Barrel?   I’m waiting to see who of you will join me in this new adventure.  Read The Kraut Barrel  and then go out and buy a cabbage.  We will do this together.  Let me know how it goes. Come back to me on the “COMMENTS” block at the bottom of each blog

All this is fun, but it brings to mind the plight of our ancestors.  If they had not done all this, they would have starved during the cold winter.  It was not a matter of “hobby,” or “crafting,” or a “fun” afternoon for them.  It was a matter of survival!   I've written before about the Leather Britches Beans from the Foxfire  books ³,  (see blog  IN PRAISE OF WOMEN, July 10.)  If they had not canned enough vegetables, dried enough fruits, preserved enough meat, salted enough fish, stored enough potatoes, yams, turnips, cabbages, etc., in their “root cellar,” their children would have gone hungry.  If they had not put by enough grains of wheat, or dried enough corn kernels to take to the miller to be ground, there would have been no bread.

Think about this for a minute.  This is such a foreign concept to us that we can hardly wrap our minds around it.  There is no huge 

SNOW STORM  ⁵

supermarket a few blocks down the street (or even in the STATE!) there is no “jiffy mart” around the corner where you can send someone for a loaf of bread.  The preserved meat is long gone, and the dried corn has just run out.  It is a cold March.  What would you do? 

I often think about the isolated farmer’s wives, and the women in the hidden valleys of the mountains, way back in the hollers.  Their whole existence was about surviving, keeping their children alive. And the man of the home - it was his duty to protect his family.  He has done the best that he could, worked beyond imagining, and it has gone awry, they have run out of food!  How does he cope, what does he do?  

Of course it would have been different for the city people, the folks who lived in towns, and had town jobs.  Ideally they would have had their salary all year.  But bad weather, blizzards, etc., could have put a crimp in their survival also.  There were no paid “sick” days.  If the business had to close for some reason, there was no pay.  Heating fuel, whether wood or oil, was needed in abundance in the northern part of the country.  If food was not grown nearby, or in that season, or the crop had failed, it was not available.  City wives would have had to preserve and can, and “put by” for the winter also.

 And always lurking around the corner, hiding in some deep, dark crevasse was disease, ready to pounce on the unexpecting, the weak and malnourished.  You couldn’t run out and get a  

Asphidity Bag

flu shot at Walgreens, or an antibiotic from the local doctor.  You suffered through it with your hot “toddy” and your mustard plaster or onion poultice.  Or maybe your grandma made an Asphidity bag ⁴ to tie around your neck to keep away colds, flu, and congestion.

To me it seems a horrifying existence.  And I would not have wanted to live in that period, or under those circumstances.  All of our ancestors endured problems like this.  They seemed to have found a way to survive, because we are here!  They were brave and resourceful people.  Give them the honor and respect they all deserve

Survive, remember, and honor

   ^1.  Recipe for fermented pickles         – see next page – Announcements,

        Info, and Incidentals.

^2.  Recipe for Shirley’s Apple butter    – see next page – Announcements,

        Info, and Incidentals.

^3.FOXFIRE BOOKS: (Edited by Eliot Wigginton. Published by Anchor Press,     the first editions in 1972, 1973 and 1975)  In the early 1970s a high school in Rabun Gap, Georgia, right in the heart of the high mountain counties of Macon (NC) Habersham and Rabun (SC) decided that all the mountain lore of that region, all the knowledge of how to exist in that extreme environment, which was stored in the brains of the old inhabitants of that land, needed to be captured before they were all gone.  And the current young people needed to know what had gone before them.  So for years, they assigned the students the job of interviewing those old mountain people, starting out with their own families.  They went up into the hills searching out what people knew and writing it down.  Sometimes they used audio media to capture the sound of these folks telling their own stories.  Eventually there were 12 books.  It is a marvelous set of books, stories about the ones who came before us.  You might find one in your library.
I  see them still available on EBay and Amazon.

 ^4. An Asphidity bag was a folk remedy most commonly found in the Appalachian Mountains and the south in the 18th and 19th centuries.  They were also used by the Cherokee Indians.  Usually, it was a tiny bag of very smelly herbs, often including garlic, ginseng, pokeweed, goldenseal, and yellow root.  However, the exact recipe varied by the maker.  The vapors were supposed to ward off colds, flu, or other diseases.  It was often said that the disease was warded off because no one would (or                                 could) come near you!

          http://pics.davesgarden.com/pics/2008/02/18/Sharran/6dfee6.jpg

     ^5.  http://media.photobucket.com

        Other photos are possessions of the writer.

CAN YOU FEEL YOUR ROOTS

Sorry there was no blog last week.  We were sick with a virus!  Well . . . my computer was, and had to go “in hospital” for several days.  As when that happens, there is always rehabilitation needed at home afterwards.  My “favorites bar” was missing.  The pages I go to for two extra email accounts that I use were not in evidence.  It took several days to get everything back to normal.  We are now recuperating nicely, thank you very much.

Can you Feel Your Root s ?

I am a believer in psychic energy.  I believe that there are all kinds of information “out there” in the universe, floating around, just waiting on us to pick up on it.  A long time ago, for many years, I was a member of a wonderfully interesting group of people who met each week to explore the many phases of ESP, what is now called “the paranormal.”  Now there are scads of programs on TV delving into the realms of paranormal diversities.  Today the paranormal is almost normal.  But back then, we were the “outcasts”, the oddballs; people rolled their eyes when we talked about what we had experienced.  We ignored them and went right on having a marvelous time exploring the edges of “normal.”

But during that time, I experienced things, saw things, was involved in things that made me KNOW what I KNOW.  I am uniquivitely not intimidated by skeptics who wish to argue about things which they have neither seen nor experienced.  After all, it would be the same thing as me arguing with a nuclear physicist about nuclear fission which I know nothing about!  And I know that there is a lot more in this world than our mind lets us see.  There is more to reality than our conscious brain wants us to know.

But, getting to GENEALOGY, my open mindedness on this subject makes me wonder sometimes if we really feel things, know things, hear the faint whispers which are all around us.  As if our ancestors are reaching out to us, steering us to information we are searching for.  Is it psychological or physical?  I don’t know.  But it happened when I just knew that Catherine Wentz was my Catherine (see blog Butterfly Whispers from the Past  dated June 28th.)  And I always felt that my great, great grandfather, Josiah Haywood (who never came home from the Civil War and none of the family knew why) was leading me on to find him on the bloody battlefield of Bentonville. 

I have had these feelings over and over again through the years.  Before I discovered my great grandfather, Benton Haywood, my extended family did not know anything beyond 1850 Union-/Mecklenburg Counties as our HAYWOOD origins.  Then I found Benton across the Catawba River in Lincoln County in 1830.  “Who knew!”  This is really my “main” line, the only one that does not go back into the sixteen or seventeen hundreds.  It is my “brick wall,” and really needs researching.  When I decided to retire and return to North Carolina, where did I settle down?  Down on the coast where I grew up, where my sister still lives?  On the east side of Charlotte where all my lines of relatives still live?  NO!  Something led me to the west side of Charlotte where I was right next door to Lincoln County.  It made for easy researching this part of the state when I am trying to take Benton back further to possibly link him with SAMUEL HAYWARD, Anson Co, 1755.  Where Samuel received four land grants is now right in what became Lincolnton, Lincoln Co, NC, on the south side of the South Fork (of the Catawba River) on a creek called Fisher’s Creek before Samuel arrived, and Howard’s Creek ever after.  (As you know Haywood, Hayward, and Howard were completely interchangeable back then.  I believe the creek was named for Samuel, and towards 1800 some people were even calling it Haywood’s Creek.)  I have the same feeling about Samuel that I had about Catherine.  I just know he is mine.  I just have to prove it.

I had these same feelings the first time I arrived in Paris.  I have always been fascinated by all things French.  I have no explanation for this.  There is no French in my family, no connections of any kind.  However my whole family knows that when presented with something French  I become completely unglued.  It can be home décor, food, theater, history – WHATEVER – completely unglued.  I began teaching myself French years before I was finally able to go to the Sorbonne in Paris for a “summer” class in French Language and Culture.  I have seen Les Miz 6 or 7 times.  When it comes time in the production for those students (rebels) who are getting ready for the great battle on the next day to march across the stage, waving that huge red flag, the tears just roll down my face, and I am completely undone.  No matter how many times I see it, I know it is coming, it still happens.  I feel like I have a personal connection with those people demonstrating against the unfeeling monarchy, and about to die.  The first time I arrived in Paris, on a bus with a tour group, just off the ferry in Calais, we came into town on the Peripherique, the auto route encircling Paris.  We were slightly higher up than the city which sits in a small bowl.  I was looking down on Paris.  It looked familiar.  I felt as if I knew it.  I felt as if I were coming home.  I knew the city.  I have no explanation.  It just WAS! 

It leads me to believe that at some time in the past, I was French, I lived in Paris, I knew those people.  Another little bit of “knowing” sifting through time and space.  A connection.  A connection to Catherine.  A connection to Josiah.  A connection to Samuel.  When you get those little nudges, a feeling of “knowing” that overtakes you, don’t turn it off.  Don’t disregard it.  If you do that long enough, they will stop sending you whispers.  Butterfly whispers from the past.

Remember

I would like to know what you think about all this.  Please send me a Comment telling me about your experiences with the whispers!

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CREATING SENSIBLE FAMILY TREES

I have been writing about family stories for a while, so today is a LESSON DAY.  Non-genealogists will just have to excuse me today, and go read another blog like FRENCH ESSENCE, my current favorite.

My Tree

Lately I have been doing some family trees for people other than my family.  In doing that, I always check with Ancestry.com to see if there are already some trees registered with that name before I start my serious research.  I realize that you MUST verify everything you find in these trees yourself, but it will give you a start, and you can see what others have already found (or think they have found.)  Sometimes you will get a hint about a question you have in mind.  Sometimes you will find (in their citations) some bit of information you did not have.  I have found much information on Find A Grave, citations where they give you a photo of the stone, or record a memorial or obituary.  I often find names I did not have, lists of children, and facts about the wife (or wives when I did not know there was another.)  But in doing this, in comparing all the trees that are out there, I find the most glaring ERRORS!  I sometimes wonder if these people even read with their brain engaged what they have recorded.  I would be embarrassed to have others see these glaring errors on my tree.

One of the most prevalent mistakes is in listing children.

Take the following as an example:

Assume the mother, Mary, was born in 1840 and was married about 1859.  Father Josiah is a poor farmer, born about 1835.  They live in Buford Township, Union Co, NC.

CHILDREN               BORN                                    PLACE

John                           Nov 1          1860                 Buford, Union Co, NC

Mary                          March 18     1862                 Buford, Union Co, NC

Robert                       June 12        1864                 Buford, Union Co, NC

George                       Nov 2          1866                 Buford, Union Co, NC

Looks OK so far.  Mother is of child bearing age, and married right before first child.  Children’s birthdates look logical, and are all in the same place.

Now the next line should throw you:

Emeline                     April 14        1867                 St. George, Person Co, Illinois

Annie                        May 3          1868                  Buford, Union Co, NC

Thomas                     April 4         1870                  Buford, Union Co, NC

It is possible but highly unlikely that this poor “dirt farmer” and his wife moved or traveled to Illinois and had a child “Emeline” there.  This is highly suspicious.  Also there is not enough time between George and Emeline – only five months.  And the next child Annie is born back in Buford, NC, and also the following child.  Unless I had unquestionable proof such as a document which absolutely showed that the family had traveled to Illinois at that point in time, I would not put this child in my tree.

Now using this same “fictitious” family, let’s suppose the wife, Mary, dies in 1874.  There is a citation proving this.

Then we have listed:

Samuel                      June 30      1879                  Macon Co, NC

This child cannot belong to Mary.  It is possible that Josiah married again.  In those days, people often married again and soon.  After all, there was a farm to run, a house to be kept, and children to be looked after.  Sometimes “romance” had little to do with it.  They needed a spouse, and FAST!  But what was Josiah doing in Macon Co, which is up in the mountains, far from Union Co?  The 1880 census shows him still living in Union Co.

I would see if future records ever showed Josiah with another wife – a will, land records in Macon Co, etc. or these same children on a census with Josiah and another woman or these children on a census with another woman with Josiah’s last name after he died.  If I could not prove he remarried, or moved to Macon Co for a couple of years, I would not put Samuel on this tree.

Let’s assume that Josiah died in 1890.  You have a Find A Grave record for this (you might find Mary buried right beside him.)

On the same family tree I have seen another child added:

John                                                1906                  no location

And even:

Roger                                              1925.                 Edgecombe Co,   NC

This sounds ridiculous, but I have seen this many, many times.  It seems that some people will grab ANY record with the same last name and stick it onto their tree beyond all logic.  I find this so often that it seems like an epidemic.  Do people really not “examine” their tree after it is done?

There is one other error I find often.  I found it in trees in my family name on Ancestry.  When I first found it several years ago, there were only two trees with this error, distant relatives living in the same location.  They were probably working together, copying each other.

Old Haywood Deed

First some background:  I have written about my GGGrandmother Catherine Wentz (Haywood) before. There is the family homeplace  on Hiwy 74 just above Monroe, NC where Catherine and Benton established themselves when they came from Lincoln County about 1832..  Over the years as land was shifted around and redeeded, there was always a portion called “The Katy Haywood Homeplace.”  It was always set aside for her and she lived her whole life there.  There is a Haywood living on that “homeplace” today.

She had her first son, Josiah my GGrandfather who was lost in the Civil War, and second son John Franklin.  She and daughter Margaret Pamela, Josiah’s widow Margaret, and John Franklin all lived on the original Haywood land, right beside each other, verified by the censuses through the years (1840 - 1900.)  Catherine was still in her house with daughter Margaret P. in 1870 when she was 65 years old, but she was living in the household of her son John Franklin in the 1880 census when she was 75 years old.  And, of course, we don’t have the 1890 census.  (Don’t you just hate that!  It is so “inconvenient.”  I have loads of events that happened during that 20 year time period which I cannot document!)

Catherine went to MorningStar Lutheran Church all her life.  It was founded by her GGGrandfather, Johann Andreas Wentz in the 1750’s. Her children were baptized there.  Catherine died sometime in the gap between the censuses.  She was there in 1880, she was gone by 1900.  Her descendants and relatives were mostly buried in four cemeteries in the Monroe NC area – Old Bethel Methodist, MorningStar Lutheran, and Shiloh Baptist Church, and Bond’s Grove Methodist, a later cemetery.  Catherine is not recorded at Old Bethel.  The people at MorningStar, as excellent as their records are about births, baptisms, and attendance, did not record deaths!  There are no tombstones apparent in the old original wooden church cemetery.  John Franklin who she was living with at 75 years of age, and a lot of his family are at Shiloh Baptist.  Catherine is not there.  She should be at MorningStar, but I cannot prove it – yet!” 

 

But I am pretty certain that after 1880 at age 75, she had NO connections with any other church or burying ground in this Union County area, OR in South Carolina!

As I stated above, several years ago I found two trees with an evident error.  They had Catherine buried in Newberry, South Carolina!  Newberry is across the state line and a good distance from Union County NC.  There is NO evidence of any connection with Newberry in any of the HAYWOOD families.  Somehow they had found this tidbit and put it in their trees.  It was bad enough when there were only two of them.  In re-researching my facts for this blog I now find that 74 people have picked up this bad information and put it in their trees!  (This is evidence of how interest in Genealogy has grown by leaps and bounds in the past few years.) 

I should have sent them a message when I first found this, but since I can’t prove anything about Catherine’s death, I did not.  I should have anyway!  Now there are 74 trees with this bad information.  Since I cannot “Prove” Catherine’s death and burial, I just don’t put any info in my tree other than Death: bet 1880 and 1900.  There is no proof about this, it is just COMMON SENSE to know Catherine was not buried in South Carolina.

Please READ your trees with a “common sense” attitude.  Don’t put in a “fact” unless you can prove it.  BE SENSIBLE!

Create Believable Trees

And enjoy

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How My Dad Bill Got Arrested in Paris

 

Sgt. L. G. Haywood
c  1920

 I have written previously about My Dad Bill (and how he got his name) soon after he  returned from France after serving in  WWI.

 In his old trunk where he kept souvenirs from  his time in the army, Daddy had a picture of  his “French girlfriend.”  (This was long before  Mama came along.)   She had on a big black  overcoat, and a big black hat with a large      brim like they wore back then, which was crammed directly center top of her head.  But she was standing in a field, and the photo was taken from so far away you couldn’t really see her face, see what she looked like.  Maybe it was planned that way!  We, Mama and my sister and I, would drag that picture out every now and then when the trunk was opened for some reason, and kid him about “his beautiful French girlfriend!

  

Google Image

However the most exciting (maybe not for him) and humorous  (maybe not for him) thing was when he got arrested in Paris!

His unit was situated in northern France, near Montbizot and Le Mans.  And sometimes the boys were granted weekend leaves to go away from the front lines for a little respite from the terrible fighting. Bill and some of his buddies were granted a leave to go to Paris.  

Can’t you just imagine these young unsophisticated farm boys who have never been anywhere, or seen any large city, on the streets of Paris, gawking at everything, their heads thrown back staring up at the tall beautiful buildings, completely awestruck and oblivious to all around them.  

Along comes this “newly minted” 2^nd Lieutenant.  So proud of his rank!  So wanting to be acknowledged!  And they never even saw him! Horrors!   They didn't salute him!

           Antoine Blanchard theatre_du_gymnase_boulevard_bonne_nouve lle

             http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en

So he had them arrested and they were thrown in jail for the afternoon - until finally some more level headed officer came along and, understanding the situation, let them go. 


But we always accepted it as a badge of honor.  Not

everyone can say that their revered father was thrown in jail in Paris!  

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