It's Not Easy Being Green

When I was in school, it was the custom to pinch anyone not wearing green on St. Patrick's Day. It had nothing to do with being Irish. I attended a Black segregated public school. However, I would proudly tell my fellow classmates that I really was Irish. This was the oral legend of my family.

Now with the aid of science and DNA testing, I have proof of my Irish heritage. According to ancestry.com, I am a whopping 19% Irish. I still don't know how, when or where, but I am definitely descended from several persons from Ireland. And my Irish ancestors reside behind my brick wall.

I know most of my Black ancestors back to 1825. I only know one White ancestral line up to that date. That is my Featherston line. There may be Irish roots there. The Featherstons did come from England so there may be Irish ties somewhere in that family tree.

What is unique about my Featherston ties is that the interracial union of my great grandparents occurred right after slavery. Those other earlier couplings were, more than likely, forced and they definitely were not documented.

Irish immigrants didn't have it easy when they first arrived here in America. People looked down on  them, discriminated against them, called them "black" among other epitaphs. Some were even held as slaves. Of course, their road to equality cannot compare to Black American's tedious journey.

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel about my Irish heritage. I'm no longer that young naive child that gladly pronounced that she was Irish. I don't resent it either. My feelings, like Black genealogy, is complicated.

Brick Walls

I have been researching for nearly 20 years now. I have made great discoveries but I'm still stuck behind the proverbial brick wall. My brick wall is visual.

I know all my great grandparents' names. I even know most of my great-grandparents' names. And there it stops. Except for five names, I know little or nothing of my great great great grandparents. And therein lies my problem.

I was so excited when I got my DNA results back from Ancestry.com. I received all these wonderful matches. I even have two circles with shared ancestors. The problem was that those shared ancestors were already known to me. Yes, it did confirm that Charles Featherston was my great grandfather and that was nice. However, I was hoping for something more enlightening. And that won't come until I can figure out more about my great great great grandparents.

Unfortunately, the DNA results has also confirmed another assumption I had made. I am alone in my family when it comes to this pursuit. My closest relatives to have their DNA tested, except for my uncle, are distant 4th cousins. That means we share --you got it-- an unknown great great great grandparent.

So I will continue to scour the records as I try to chip away at that wall and I will continue to pray that more of my cousins, closer cousins, catch this genealogy bug. It could happen.

The Featherstons

From the evidence, Charles and Gene Featherston are my great-great-great-great grandparents on my mother’s paternal line. I know Charles lived because I know he died. I can’t prove when he was born or who his father was. I have suspicions but suspicions are only that. But I do know he died between 1788 and 1790 because I found him on the tax list of 1788 and his will was proved in 1790 in Brunswick County, Virginia. [1]  It has been frustrating when searching for him online. There are so many Charles Featherstons. Many people have linked him to a family in Henrico and Amelia Counties, Virginia. However, I think they are in error.

In 1765 he had been married to Gene Wright for five to ten years  and had fathered at least five children, maybe more, maybe with more than one wife.(1)[2]  According to Virginia courts, Charles and Gene’s kinsman Reuben Wright gave or was commandeered to give property as aid for the Revolutionary War.[3] This is more evidence that he was living in Brunswick County after 1776.

I have not been able to trace Charles back any farther. According to Goodspeed, Charles was born in England. However, evidence for when and where Charles was born eludes me. I am still searching.

Charles' children were Faith or Fathey, Charlotte, Carolus, Hezekiah and Jeremiah. I am uncertain of the birth dates for all except Jeremiah who was born in 1776. He also possibly fathered an older son named William. He is found on marriage records in Brunswick County in 1791. He is also claimed on some family trees. But we all know that doesn't prove anything.


In following up on the children I have found that Faith and Charlotte married two brothers, David and Burwell Grant. David even served and died in the Revolutionary war.  "June Court 1783 (Halifax County Virginia) (Entry at the very bottom of page - last 3 lines) ORDERED that it be Certified that Faith Grant is the Widow of David Grant deceased and that she is the Mother of a Son of the said David both of whom died in Service of the Southern Continental Army."

I don't believe her son was actually a soldier. A John Grant, a civilian,  died at Yorkfield.  In 1781, British general Lord Charles Cornwallis brought his army to Yorktown to establish a naval base. In the siege by American and French forces that followed, much of the town was destroyed. David's will was probated on September 21, 1781. I believe both men died as the result of the siege.

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[1] Brunswick Co., Va., Will Book 5, pp. 342-43

[2] The Virginia Genealogist, Vol. 23, No. 1 - Jan/Mar 1979 'Beware of the Charlotte Co., VA Marriage Bonds: The Featherston Family' by Mrs.Margaret T. Macdonald, Chapel Hill, NC.

[3] Virginia Military Records, Brunswick County, 1782.

How Far Back Can I Go?

(Prologue -Tapestry of Tangled Ties)

That is the question everyone interested in genealogy ask. It is my desire to go back as far as Africa. I probably need a genie in a bottle to complete that quest. As a Black American, my ancestry is hidden from me in a way that is not hidden from other Americans. Since my ancestors were slaves, their names were not on the census before 1870. It is not impossible to go back farther if I can identify the slave owners but that is difficult too. Many slaves wanted to distance themselves from their lives as property. They changed their names. They didn’t talk much about that time with their innocent descendants. White descendants of slave owners are also unwilling to share that part of their family history.

However, once the slave owners are identified, it is possible to find records on file because slaves were part of a financial transaction, as heinous as that is. I have the receipt of the purchase of my great-great-great grandfather Solomon Koonce who was sold to Isaac Koonce of Haywood County, Tennessee in January 1840..  I have also deducted that Solomon was owned for a period of time by Francis Nunn who died intestate in Lauderdale County, Tennessee around 1837.

I may be in the minority but I am also interested in my White ancestors. I am the sum of all of my parts. In looking for those ancestors I am learning more about my country’s history and psyche. That is also part of my history—slavery, the Civil War, the American Revolutionary War, the making of a nation. I plan on studying that too, to put my history into the larger context.

I can go back much farther on some of my white ancestors. So far I am able to go back at least 12 generations. I have found the link between me and one of my favorite writers, Jane Austen and even closer, the link between my family and Reba McEntire. This is exciting to me. I am not ashamed at embracing all my of heritage because I do not deny my ancestry regardless of color or nationality.

This is what I attempt to do in updating my family history. The surnames that I will be following are Koonce, Warren, Featherston, Cotten, Alexander, Brassfield,  Tarpley, Elmore, Alexander, Saunders, and Wright. There may be more as I learn more. I will also research the locations where they lived--Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi and maybe others as I learn of them. Hopefully, one of those locations will be somewhere specific on the continent of Africa.

New Year, New Decade

New beginnings mean new starts. So of course, I resolve to do better than before. My resolutions include:

* First of all, posting more.

* Solving at least one mystery of my family's ancestors.

* I intend to visit Featherstone Castle in Northumberland County, England. This castle may have some connection to my Warren/Featherston roots. It will be mostly a trip of curiosity. I do not expect to have some profound epiphany while there.

* I hope to go to Mississippi once again but this time I will venture into the county courts. The trip to the state archive was monumentally disappointing.

* I will make at least one pilgrimage to one of the genealogy libraries, probably Fort Wayne, although I would love to get back to the Tennessee state archives and the national archives in D.C.

I realize resolutions are often broken so I'm trying not to reach too far beyond my grasp.

Conversations I wish I could have with dead people

This is not an original thought. I saw this on a blog some weeks ago. And I'm sure every one into genealogy wishes they could sit down with a few dead people and ask some questions.

I wish I could ask my great grandmother Katie Featherston why she named my uncle "Ester." I met my uncle Ester. I remember him as a round, pleasant man with a bright complexion. I was just a child and I never thought anything about him having a girl's name. But I do now. What was Katie thinking? All her other children had nice common names like my grandfather Freddie so I'm thinking there was a purpose to it. Did she want a girl and got my uncle instead?

I wish I could talk to Charles Featherston and find out if he loved Matilda and her children. Did the rest of the family know about them? Was he ostracized because of he was white and she was a former slave or was it accepted?

And of course great-great-great-Amy and Solomon Koonce would be special guests of my interrogation. I would finally find out who she was and what happened to her. And while I had them, I would ask about their parents too and if they were born in America or Africa.

Wouldn't it be great if the television execs could produce "Ghost Whisperers--the Genealogy Edition." It would be a hit. People would be clamoring to be on the show to solve all their genealogy mysteries.

Maternal difficulties

As already stated, I have a wealth of information about my grandfathers, greats and otherwise. My grandmothers are a lot harder to flesh out but I'm not giving up.

Last week I discovered that my great-grandmother Katie Featherston, the woman on the left in the photo, had even more children than I was previously aware. I happened upon it after looking for information for a cousin by marriage. The cousin is a Wilkins and had heard of Katie. She tried to put two and two together but it didn't add up to four.

Katie married Tom Wilkins in 1881. By 1898 she was married to a Henry Hardy. On the 1900 Dyer County Tennessee census, she listed all her children as Hardy's. Not only that, she stated that she had been married to Henry for 16 years. Not true. She also stated that she gave birth to 11 children but only 6 were living. That math didn't add up either. On the very same census eight children are listed. Obviously the younger 6 were hers from her first marriage. The census taker didn't catch that or didn't care.

Two years later she is married to my great grandfather Ike Warren. By the 1910 census only my grandfather and her youngest child by Wilkins, Joseph, are living with her. She states here that she had three children but only one is living. The census taker didn't correct her again.

These are just some of the discrepancies genealogy geeks have to weed through in our search.

Cemeteries in Tennessee

I'm finding little tidbits of information, adding more flesh to the skeletons. Ironically, the information I am finding is from cemeteries which can be a wealth of data.

I found the burial place of Charles R. Featherston, my great-great grandfather. The cemetery is listed on the Dyer County page of the tngenweb site. Charles is buried in Shaw Cemetery in Dyer County. The vital information is also listed there. He was born Aug 6 1824 and died Jan 12 1873. His father, William Featherston, which would be my great-great-great grandfather, is buried there too. He died Jan 21 1870 at age 76. The cemetery is in danger of being abandoned. I can't find where or when Matilda, the mother of Charles' children, died and was buried although by sleuthing on the same website I found out she married Henry Hall in 1883 and was dead by 1900.

There was a sad notation about one of the abandoned cemeteries in Crockett County. According to Jonathan K. Smith, who compiled the cemetery inventory for the county, the African-American Nunn cemetery began as a slave burial ground. There are many graves here, some marked with cedar trees, but only one tombstone. The tombstone is for the daughter of my great-great aunt Mosella Koonce Dodson. It reads:

Fannie L. Dodson
30 Apr 1883 - Nov 11 1885
Daughter of J.D. & M. Dodson.

That means that the unmarked graves could very well be for other relatives of mine and I will never know who they are. It is also another piece of information that connects my family to the Nunns in some way.

My family maintains the New Cemetery (that's its name) in Crockett County. It was formerly known as Nunn Cemetery. This is where Solomon and his wife Cherry Koonce, my great-great grandparents James and Mary Jane Koonce, great-grandparents Willie and Lizzie Koonce are buried as well as several other relatives. I am very proud of the fact that the cemetery is still being used for family. I love the continuity. Mosella, mother of little Fannie is buried here and is the oldest grave. There are also graves as recent as 2005.

I must make a note to speak with my cousins who maintain the cemetery to see if they know anything about the old Nunn cemetery.