Arlene Eakle’s Tennessee Blog

Appearing in the Knoxville Gazette, 27 Mar 1794:

A number of Patents for Land in the Counties of Jefferson and Knox, formerly part of Greene, belonging to the undernamed persons have been registered in the Register’s Office of Greene County, and are now in my possession.  The owners of them are desired to pay the fees thereon and take them away.

David Campbell, Henry Nave, James Wood Lackey (2), Archibald Lackey, Jonathan Langdon, John Patterson, Anthony Patton, Thomas Galliher, John Wright, Andrew Lewis, John Hannah, John Walker, Abraham Swagerty, Robert Carson, Alex. Kelly and Archibald Lackey (2), Alex. Kelley, John Cowan, Archibald Lackey, and James W. Lackey, Wm Whitfield, Needham Whitfield (3), William Clark, Robert M’Tear, Geo. Brown, William Hughes, David Lindsey, William Tate, William Hutton, Samuel Montgomrey, Samuel Thompson, James  Galiher,  Abner Chapman, Joseph Long, Josiah Leath, William Willcock, Mathew Williba, Samuel Wear (2), Isaac Taylor (7),  Hugh Beard.  

John Stone, Knoxville.  Apr 4, 1794.

David Rencher developed a series of checklists to use against name lists that I want to share with you:

Interpreting Name Lists:  What does or doesn’t the record tell you? 

__Age of person

__Apprenticeship

__Associates

__Deceased or Living

__Economic Status

__Education

__Eligibility to Vote

__Free or Slave

__Heirship

__Legitimacy

__Marital Status

__Migration

__Military Status

__Municipal or other Government Duties

__Spelling of Name

__Nationality

__Nobility/Title

__Occupation

__Political Allegiance

__Prisoner

__Relationship

__Religion

__Residence

Where does the search trail lead?

__Are there other records created before or after that are directly related?

__Has the entire set of records been searched?

__If using a transcript or abstract, has the original been searched?

Evaluating the Name Lists:  This is the point at which your analytical and research skills are tested.  Multiple name lists are preferred to evaluate the changes in the records. Thus, changes in land ownership, death or marriage, migration or emigration can be compared.

__Can you define the cohort?

__Why was the record created?

__What are the limitations of the record?

__What are the strengths?

__Can discrepancies be adequately explained?

__Has the transcript of the record been kept in its original context?

__Does the context of the record reveal the total value of real estate?  Or only the value of the taxes paid?

c 1998, David Rencher Seminar Handout [with permission]

When you run these checklists against the list above, there are some obvious conclusions you can draw:

1. These are [Scots-Irish] men, formerly of Greene County TN and now in that part of the county that became Jefferson and Knox.  The majority of the surnames are Scottish. Long and Willcox can also be English.  Kelly and Lackey can be Irish.
2.  Name lists, especially for early settlement times when jurisdictions are changing rapidly, can be quite valuable. They identify persons who have an interest in the area–and the source describes that interest.
3. Since property ownership was among the prerequisites for voting, these men will be voters in local, state and, national elections. 
4. Citizenship may be questionable:  usually a man had to have citizenship to own land.  To encourage population growth in early settlements areas, however, provision could be made to declare intent to become a citizen, or to identify place of birth/origin and age, or to apply for lands set aside for new arrivals to inhabit–without formal granting of citizenship.  Legally, these are included in what is called denizenship.
5. Note that the announcement is made in the newspaper–which has to be read.  So the majority of these men probably could read. 
6. Alex. Kelley,  John Cowan, Archibald Lackey, and James W. Lackey are grouped together in the list–partners?  Merchants?  Traders?  the list does not include that information.  Additional records are needed.
7. The patents have been issued–giving you an idea when the men first come into the area, or send their agents to choose the land, enter the land, order the survey of the land, meet the settlement/claim requirements,  etc.  Did they live on the land or elsewhere during all this process?  Additional records and needed.

And so on.  Even with just one list, it is possible to make progress toward proving genealogy relationships.  Your favorite Tennessee genealogist, Arlene Eakle http://www.arleneeakle.com

PS  Stay tuned–I have a cool chart that shows where the newspapers were published and circulated in Tennessee.  I have to scan it into the computer to put it into this blog–don’t know how to do that yet.

PPS  A word of explanation on my growing computer skills–I am now attending a beginning class (finally found one!) and it meets every Monday morning at 11:00 am.  So I will be a little while learning all I need to know to run these blogs.   Call this my post-graduate education for the digital world.  This next week, I learn how to use a flash drive.  And I am so excited about it. 

Remember–I believe in continuing education–in whatever you don’t yet know, that you need to be a good genealogist. And I practice what I preach!

FACT: 35 Tennessee courthouses suffered substantial records loss.

FACT: Only 6 can be attributed directly to destruction from the Civil War–especially enemy terrorism.

While many records survived and some were literally snatched from the flames, other records were secreted in false floors, hollowed-out fence posts, and spaces between the walls of outbuildings or passageways.  Some records were buried in the wet sand along river banks.  These records were later retrieved–some forgotten and re-discovered quite by accident when the posts rotted out and the fence collapsed exposing their treasures.  Some were moved from harm’s way long before the enemy was sighted and later captured by Army units who carried them to safety in the bottoms of wagons under boxes of ammunition.

The Civil War becomes a convenient excuse for current County personnel who have no clue what became of the records.  They just know those records are not part of the inventory they are responsible for.

See Family History For Fun and Profit, 30th Anniversary Edition, by Arlene H. Eakle and Linda E. Brinkerhoff.  (Tremonton UT:  Genealogical Institute, Inc., 2003), pp. 287-88 for those records that did survive and the years they begin.*

When The Records Are Gone…

• Step One. Collect and summarize family sources.  These constitute the beginning facts upon which your genealogy research will be based–these are your “knowns.”  Include siblings, parents, spouses, and family namesakes in your collecting, so you can use this “pivotal” data to help0 identify the ancestor you need.
• Step Two. Do a complete census search where family members reside:  both where you know they lived and where their places of origin are alleged to be.  If census records are also lost, use census substitutes like tax rolls, militia lists and oaths of allegiance, newspaper abstracts, etc.  Note which family members are found in specific households or neighborhoods.  And who they are associated with.
• Step Three. Draft a time line of residence in each place.  Note who else matches those same time periods, so you can research the whole group together.  Try out the Google online time line feature.  You may be amazed at how much loose information is now retrievable from the internet about individual ancestors.
• Step Four. Begin your searches in printed sources with every-name indexes.  Those counties that are badly burned often have the most printed records as genealogists strive for access to whatever is left.  Then check re-constructed or re-recorded records–those richest in proof of relationships and thus, lineage.
• Step Five. SEARCH IT ALL!  Surrounding counties, especially those along the borders including parent counties.  Privately held collections including title and abstract companies in cities and towns.  Other courthouses (some counties have more than one).  Other levels of jurisdiction including state and federal records.  Appeals courts where local briefs are filed with summaries of the evidence now lost.  State legislative sources–watch for private laws that apply to your ancestor only.  Records printed before or between fires and other disasters.  Records copied for and by genealogists and local historians with grandiose plans to research all the families or all the towns in the county.

Your favorite Tennessee genealogist, Arlene Eakle  http://www.arleneeakle.com

*  There are more than 50,000 copies of Family History for Fun and Profit in genealogy libraries across the United States and in many other countries which you can consult at your convenience.  Or you can order your own copy online using your PayPal account at http://www.researchmyfamilytree.com/

Let’s not kid around here–Tennessee has some of the worst genealogy record losses in the whole United States!  Few counties escaped some loss and many counties lost everything.

Read it and weep–

GAINSBORO TENN.  Aug. 15, 1872–Between one and two o’clock last night the Courthouse at this place was discovered in flames.  The fire made such progress before its discovery that it was impossible to save it or any of its contents, the flames having, from the appearances, evidently been kindled in the attic, and the offices all being upstairs, the records of the Circuit and County Courts, all of the Register’s books and a portion, if not all of the County Surveyor’s books, were destroyed, leaving our county a blank so far as public records are concerned, except those of the Chancery Court.  Thus by the torch of an unknown incendiary, Jackson is almost ruined.  The stillness of the night probably saved the whole village of Gainsboro from destruction.

Nashville Union and American, Nashville Tenn. Wed, Aug 21, 1872 (as quoted by UCGA, Vol XV, No. 4, p. 144)

When the public records are missing, you weep quietly, then you turn to the private records which still exist in large quantities…possibly more than you will ever have time to search.

Daybooks, memo books, journals, diaries, scrapbooks, store ledgers, pension transcripts and military lists, family Bibles and cemetery readings, personal letters, and genealogies compiled by descendants who often have all of these in their own possession.

I went through the first 15 volumes of the Upper Cumberland Genealogical Association Quarterly, UGCA. Page by Page.  And I counted the number of family Bibles transcribed in each issue–64 Bibles with their genealogy pages of births, marriages, and deaths.

Then I counted the cemetery tombstones transcribed in the same volumes–154 family cemeteries, some with 5 or six graves only.  10 community cemeteries.  12 church graveyards.  A total of 176 cemeteries identified,read, and shared by individual genealogists over 15 years of quarterlies.

I didn’t count the other private record categories, just noted that most years one or more of these records appear in these 15 volumes–beginning in 1966.  The periodical is still being published–all these years later.  Think of the store of genealogy information published by just this one association.

Jackson County Tennessee is one of the counties served by the Upper Cumberland group.  And most volumes have something on Jackson County.  You see, if they want to keep their subscribers, they have to offer information of interest to all of their readers.  And they do a good job.

http://www.ajlambert.com On their website is a list of the back issues from Volume 1 to Volume 30 and a report of their meetings at the Putnam County TN Public Library in Cookeville TN with a picture of the current Board.

I researched Jackson County, in person, traveling there with Afton Reintjes.  We visited the public library and its Genealogy Collection.  Then we went to the Historical Society and to Special Collections at the College.  Each time we used private record sources to trace the families back in time.

Comparing the data with the U.S. Census records and the Tennessee State Court Records, we visited local churches and cemeteries and finally put a pedigree in place with many full dates of birth, marriage, and death.

And you can do the same thing.  Using the above checklist of private sources, to which you will add those you discover along the way.  A burned county need not halt your genealogy progress for long.  And if you are lucky, some of these records will now appear online–including photos of the very tombstones you seek!  Your favorite Tennessee genealogist, Arlene Eakle

PS  Next episode, I’ll give you a research strategy for success in a burned county and some special TN compiled sources and indexes that help bypass the records lost.

PPS  And just consider–if the county tax assessor took the records home to work on them the night of the fire, as many taxmen did, they were  not at the courthouse to be burned.  The newspaper may never discover the saved volume(s) to report them to the public.  And years later,  the local genealogists reveal their treasures to us in periodical articles, that they duly index at the end of the year.