More on Solomon

This blog is my way of keeping up with my research into my family. It records my first impression of data I find. Instead of keeping a written journal that I may lose, I write here. I don't mind sharing what I find so that it can help others and also so it can help connect me with others. That's just a benefit.

I'm concentrating on going back farther on Solomon Koonce, my great-great-great-grandfather. I am looking into whether he was sold from the estate of Francis Nunn of Williamson, Tennessee. The information should be in the court records according to "Nunns of the South," an old book written about the Nunn family. I'm looking into having those records sent here from the Tennessee state archives through the inter-library program.

While looking up Solomon on ancestry.com, I noticed for the first time that Solomon claimed he was a mulatto. How did I miss that? Of course, I'm not sure what that means. Sometimes Blacks were called mulatto because of the color of their skin. Sometimes because the person was acknowledging that his or her parentage was part white. In the photos, Solomon does not have a light complexion. However, his features are somewhat keen. As one of my cousins noted, the nose the family calls the Koonce nose didn't come from Solomon. His nose was more aquiline. Our family nose actually came from Lizzie Brasfield, Willie Koonce's wife and my great grandmother. So it is really the Brasfield nose.

The mulatto designation is on the 1880 census. Solomon also says he was born in 1828 in South Carolina and that his parents were born in North Carolina. I am seasoned enough to know not to believe everything I see on the census. I know the birth year is probably wrong but are the other things wrong as well?

Back to Work

It's been a while. My computer crashed making it difficult for me to write and research at home. So I took one of those breaks that I need from time to time. But I'm ready to get back to work now.
This has been the perfect week. School has been out for a week due to flooding. No, I don't live in Texas. Northwest Indiana and the Chicago area got more rain than Texas from Hurricane Ike.
So I finally sat down and started searching. Maybe it's because I'm coming back to the research cold but some data popped out at me that hadn't before. I'm still on this search for my great-great-great-great grandmother. We were told her name was Amy and that she was Cherokee. We were also told she birthed Solomon Kooonce's first children.

I have already written about an Amy Nunn living on one side of Mosella Koonce Dodson while Solomon lived on the other side. This is on the 1870 census. Amy is married to Mose Nunn who is 61 on that census. She is 47 making her birth year around 1823.

On the 1880 census, she and her husband have only aged five years making the true birth year questionable. Now it would put her birth year around 1828.

There is an "Ammie" Nunn living with Mosella's family in 1900. Mosella has now passed away. Ammie's status is that of grandmother not mother to Joe Dodson, Mosella's widower. Her birth year is 1819. However, it is stated that Ammie was born in North Carolina just like Amy Nunn of 1823, 1828.

So is this a stretch? What keeps popping out at me is that Amy's first child with Solomon is named Mosella and her last is named Mose. Amy is married to Mose Nunn. It was not uncommon for slaves to be forced to reproduce for the slaveowners regardless of their affections or the lack of them. Could this be the case with Amy and Solomon and why she disappears after emancipation? That she went back to her first love-Mose Nunn?

I wanted so bad to travel this summer to find out more about these theories but lack of money and time hindered me. It's times like these that I miss talking to Adrene about the "what if's" and wish that I had some relative who was just as interested as me in these dusty trails.

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.

Faith Leaping or Conclusion Jumping

It is a cardinal sin for any genealogist to jump to conclusion. Everything must be collaborated and documented. It makes it real, real hard for those of us researching our African-American ancestors. There is very little documentation readily available and much of that is inaccurate. It is so tempting to jump to conclusion.

For example, my cousin Juanita found her grandmother Rosa Nance listed on the Tennessee census as the daughter of Harvey Dunnagin. She immediately claimed that we were not related based on that information. However, it turned out that Dunnagin was Rosa's grandfather. The census was taken during a time when Rosa and her siblings were living with their grandparents. Rosa's mother Malessie was living in Memphis while Rosa's father, my great-grandfather Ike Warren, was living elsewhere. The information was there in black and white but it was wrong.

Right now I'm on the trail for Amy, mother of Solomon's children. I already mentioned my theory in a previous post. After searching the 1900 census, I found an "Emmie Nunn" living with Joe Dodson and his family. She is listed as a widow and "G-mother." I checked other Tennessee censuses and could not find an Emmie Nunn. I want so much to believe that Emmie is mispelled for Amy. Joe's children would be her grandchildren since his wife was Mosella Koonce, Solomon and Amy's oldest living daughter. Mosella had passed away ten years earlier. I want to believe but I have to keep digging for actual proof.

There is also evidence this is not my Amy. First of all the name is wrong. The birthdate is listed as March of 1819. And she had 10 children but none of them are living in 1900. So there is a good chance she isn't who I hope her to be. I plan on taking a trip to Tennessee soon to find out more. No matter what I wish, it has to be verifiable proof.

There are all kinds of love affairs

My love affair with genealogy has been an off and on thing. Not that I ever give up on it. But sometimes I get so exhausted that I have to take a long vacation from it. I was in the middle of a long, long break when a new-found cousin wrote me last year and now the affair is back on.

With some distance from my last stint, I've been going over notes and details with a different perspective. It's exciting because I am seeing things I overlooked before. For example, with my fresh outlook a new theory is evolving about my great-great-great grandmother. We have been trying forever to figure out who she was. All we have to go by is the name Amy and that she may have been related to the Winstons. That's it. She disappears from our story immediately after the Civil War. We assumed she died.

Solomon had at least six children by her. The oldest daughter was Mosella born around 1849. The youngest son was Mose born around 1865. It struck me that both children were obviously named after Mose. Could Mose be a real person and important to the family in some way?

On the 1870 Tennessee census there is a Moses and Amy Nunn living next door to Mosella. Two doors down is Solomon with his wife Cherry and a centenarian named Ann Nunn. Is this just a coincidence?

All ex-slaves did not stay together as a family after emancipation. Some families were forced during slavery, only cohabitating together because the the slave master wanted them to reproduce. Some had two families having been sold away to other farms. Once they were free, some went looking for those family members they had been separated from during slavery. Some went looking for separated loves too. Could this be the case in my family?

Right now, I am surfing message boards to see if anyone knows about Mose or Amy Nunn. I am also going to go back and ask older relatives if they ever heard about the possibility of this. It is during times like this, I wish my aunt Adrene was alive so we could figure this out together.

This will not be a popular theory. It would mean Amy gave up her younger children voluntarily. It will also be a very difficult theory to prove. Ah, a challenge.