New Year, New Discoveries

I was not very good at keeping up this blog in 2017. Instead I spent much of  last year updating my family history and finally self-publishing it. I have distributed copies to several family members. This was to make sure all my hard work was not in vain and that written information is out there for those who are interested. It is a pet peeve of mine that so many family historians do the hard work of investigating their family but never write it down for others to see.

I had plans to go back to Mississippi. Unfortunately I did not make it. However, I did correspond with a Mississippi cousin who I discovered through AncestryDNA. She is one of the few ancestors I have discovered who is related to me through Winnie Dear, my grandfather Stanley's grandmother. I knew more about our history than she did and I shared that info. One important fact she shared with me was that one of her uncles, which would have been my grandfather's uncle, was lynched in Mississippi. She's not sure of the name because two uncles disappeared from the records. Their last name was Ames. She also told me that one of the other uncles migrated to Chicago because of the lynching. This could have also been a reason for my grandfather moving up north. The other interesting fact was that this particular uncle was a communist, something my grandfather was accused of being because he was a strong union man.

One more thing. The most exciting things I discovered were the photos of my grandfather's maternal grandparents. Photos are priceless. I found these on ancestry.com on a tree of another DNA cousin. These are the parents of Mary Sanders. I wish I had a photo of Mary and Napoleon but I will take what I can get. And who knows, maybe someday those photos will surface too. As an extra added attraction I also found the photo of James, the brother of Mary.

Charles Saunders

Rosa Thomas? Saunders

their son James Saunders

I will try to do better this year. I never stop searching even if I don't blog about it. Happy New Year! Happy New discoveries!

What I learned in 2016 Part One

Welcome 2017! Hope you're better than 2016.

Last year wasn't completely without merit. I learned many new things about my family history and also about myself. After attending the International Black Genealogy Summit in early September, I learned that I am an intermediate researcher and I need more challenging and informative conferences at that level. Of course, it is always a plus to mingle with like-minded people and to meet some of the experts in this field. Meeting and talking with Hari Jones and Kenyatta Berry was the highlight of the conference for me. Jones  is a writer, lecturer, historian, curator and motivational speaker. For twelve years, he was the assistant director and curator at the African American Civil War Freedom Foundation and Museum in Washington, DC. Berry, pictured below, is one of the genealogists featured on Genealogy Roadshow.

 

I learned the hard way how difficult it is to hold a family reunion. The Warrens and the Wilkins on my family tree met in late August. It was a labor of love for me. However, I'm afraid the result of this labor will be a "one of."

I took a trip back to Mississippi, hoping to uncover more information from the family cemetery in Summit. That was a big disappointment. I couldn't even find the tombstones I located on my trip three years ago or so I thought. After looking at the photos I took, I realized one of them was that of my great aunt Elizabeth Cotten Ames' tombstone, one I had discovered on the first trip. It seemed to have deteriorated faster than I would have expected.

Surprisingly, several new information surfaced in the last month of the year. Much of it came about because of the results from my DNA test, a gift that keeps on giving. More on that later.

I made no new resolution this year. The second edition of my family history is finished. There may or may not be a Koonce family reunion this year. I'm not even planning any trips for this year. If I had a resolution it would be to take it one day at a time and thank God for each day.

Grains of Truth

In 2013 I confirmed an oral legend I had recently learned about my paternal great great grandfather. Up until 2009 my family had never heard about our ancestor John Alexander being in the civil war. I was skeptical even after I found a John Alexander on the roster of U.S. Colored Troops out of Mississippi. After all, John Alexander was a common name. I found dozens of them serving in the war. For that reason, I did not send for the pension papers. It was a lot of money to spend to find out it was the wrong man. I decided to go in person. I justified the expenditure as a trip for business and for fun.

It turned out that the pension papers were for my relatives and it gave me more details about John's life. However, it did not give me the name of his slave holder. That was left blank. I had to deduce who it might be from other evidence. I concluded that the slave holder had been a Huffman. This was also the man my aunt always thought was the slave holder.

Since 2013 I haven't done much more research on John Alexander but I think the ancestors have been nudging me this week. Yesterday I decided to look into John Huffman born in 1801 in Alexandria, Virginia and died in 1882 in Lincoln County, Mississippi.  In 1870, Huffman lived in the same neighborhood as John Alexander. This is one of the clues I have been told to look for when trying to find the slave holder. I looked at Huffman's family tree. Huffman was married to Mary Glass. Her parents were Frederick Mason Glass and Elizabeth Strother. When I saw this I got very excited. You see, according to another oral legend, John Alexander lived on a plantation in Virginia called Strouder. Some of my cousins have told me that "Strawder" was his nickname. Am I on the right trail?

I was still skeptical. Glass and Strother married and lived in Georgia. Georgia was never part of any oral history for Alexander. However,  I was able to find a family tree on ancestry.com for the Glass family. It gave me Mary's ancestry. Her grandfather was William Strouther, born in 1755 and died in 1833 in Virginia. He was living in Fauquier County when he died. Fauquier is adjacent to Rappahannock County, where John Alexander claimed he was born!

I definitely think I'm on the right trail now. It also makes me curious as to whether all the oral legends I have heard have a grain of truth. My to-do list has just gotten longer.

Genealogical bread crumbs

I'm trying to see if DNA can chip away my brick walls. I was a little disappointed that I wasn't able to come up with anything new after the inspirational conference I had attended. So today I decided to concentrate on my Cotten family mysteries.

To recap, my great grandfather is Napoleon Cotten. His mother is Winnie Deer. It took me years to find them on the 1870 census mainly because I was looking for Cottens. Then on one of my searches I used only the first names and the state, Mississippi. Heritage Quest rewarded me with success. I found the whole family in 1870 in Amite County. The reason I couldn't find them before was because I wasn't looking for Andersons, the surname they were using in 1870.

I then tried to find them on various Amite county farms owned by Andersons. Moses Gordon Anderson became a person of interest in my mystery. He lived near Winnie in 1870. In 1860, he owned 40 slaves including a 100 year old woman named Sophia. On the slave schedule, following the tip I learned at the conference, I noticed a family group that corresponded to the ages of Winnie's family. There were discrepancies. There was a one year old male. On Winnie's tombstone and on the 1900 census, she is recorded with only three sons and a daughter. If this is Winnie, she is recorded on this slave schedule with four sons. Also the ages of the sons were a little off except for Napoleon's.

I then looked at the 1850 slave schedule. M. G. Anderson owns 23 slaves.  They are separated into two groups. On the smaller group, there is a 15 year old female, the right age for Winnie,  and possibly her oldest son Hiram at one year old.

I went back to 1840 and found Anderson with a new wife and seven slaves. I checked out his bride. Her name was Cynthia Carolyn Causey, daughter of Capt. William Causey and Susanna Jackson. The Captain had died in 1828 and left a will. He had sired many children. He also possessed many slaves. He willed only one, "negro girl named Mary" to his daughter Cynthia. Now I know Mary is a very common name and it means very little but it still gave me a glimmer of hope that this was Winnie's mother, Mary. And when I checked the 1840 census, Anderson owned only two female slaves-a child under 10 and a woman between 24 and 35 years old. Could this be Mary and Winnie?

I continued searching family trees for the Causeys on ancestry.com. I came across a familiar name. The woman who owned one of the Causey family trees was also a match to me through DNA!!!

I still have much to do to determine who was the shared ancestor. Her family tree had a surname that was also on my family tree-- Cain. We may be connected that way. Cynthia  Causey's brother had married Lucretia Cain, a daughter of Isaiah Cain and sister to Mary Cain Cotten. These same surnames keep coming up. That is why I am holding out hope that this bread crumb trail will finally lead me to the ancestors of Winnie and Napoleon and knock down that brick wall.

Migrating

I've been blogging off and on here for several years. I wasn't even aware that today is the anniversary of my first blog. There are times I want to stop. Writing has always been very personal for me. It isn't about making money. It's about sharing my experiences and feelings and knowledge and possibly helping others who happen to read my stuff. So I will probably keep writing sporadically because sometimes I feel like it and sometimes I don't.


After many years, I have migrated my blog to another location. If you are interested in keeping tabs on my research, you can find me at Say My Name.


I have a lot of goals for this year. I'm updating my family history which I hope to publish in one form or another. My research will take me to Mississippi again, D.C. again, possibly to Fort Wayne and Virginia. If I am able, I may even go to Tennessee. I'm been blessed with time and lots of helpful relatives. They helped me last year. I hope it continues.


Last year was very fruitful but it was also crowded with so many events, I didn't have time to reflect. I hope to be able to do that this year but some times the doing gets in the way of the reflecting. God willing, it should be another productive year. Happy New Year and happy sleuthing!

Q & A from the grave

I'm back from a road trip to Mississippi. Although I didn't get a chance to get to the courthouses, the cemeteries had much to tell me. And visiting with relatives that I only knew through social media offered an insight into my paternal grandparents' life that dusty courthouses could not.

My greatest find was the tombstone of my great great grandmother. It gave a short family tree!

It reads "Winney Dear Born to Mary Cotten Dec. 10, 1824 Mother of Hiram and Richard Cain, Poley and Elizabeth Cotten Died July 10. 1903." 

I never knew my great great great grandmother's name. It gave me the date of Winney's birth and death, and it also let me know which surname Hiram used most of his life.

As is the case in genealogy, when one question is answered, another question appears. I am now trying to pinpoint Mary Cotten on the censuses. I believe Hiram Cain lived in Franklin County. I still don't know why the different surnames.  

I wish I had found my great grandfather's tombstone. It was probably there but many of the markers were undecipherable. I will return to Mississippi, probably next year, God willing. This time I will head to the courthouses and try my luck there.

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.

Sleuthing out the slave owner

I spent half of yesterday following the trail of names found on the civil war pension applications. I couldn't find the name of the last slave owner of John and Catherine Alexander but there were plenty of clues. Being a little gun shy, I don't want to say equivocally who it is yet but I'm pretty sure I'm close.

My aunt Hortense believed that the name of the last slave owner was Huffman. I had no reason not to believe her until I was told two other contradicting stories. However, I am inclined to believe that John Huffman was his last slave owner. Here is the evidence:

1. John was buried in Huffman graveyard according to the pension application for his widow.

2. Sylvester Ames, a comrade in arms, who also enlisted on the same day and location, stated that his slave owner was G.D. and J.W. Huffman. I believe that John and Sylvester came from the same locale and possibly the same farm.

3. Two of John's witness that stated they knew him most of his life were J.S. and Julia Felder. Julia was the daughter of John Huffman, the same Huffman that lives in the same area as John on the 1880 census.

This is my circumstantial evidence. However when I look at the slave schedules for Mississippi, I find corresponding ages for John, Catherine, and Sylvester but not for the young children of John and Catherine that were born in 1858 and 1860. And the schedule is for Amite County not Pike County. So I am not 100 percent sure. Yet.

It's elementary, my dear

Sometimes the easiest route is the simplest route to getting answers about our heritage. Years ago I found a Sylvester Ames married to an Elizabeth Cotten in Amite County, MS. I wondered if this Elizabeth was the sister to my great grandfather Napoleon. Everything seemed to fit but I wasn't absolutely sure of the connection. Next I found that a Sylvester Ames filed for a Civil War Pension. I still wasn't sure if he was related to me so I planned a trip to D.C. to view his pension application. I'm finally going to the National Archives this weekend. I don't know what I will find. I'm crossing my fingers that there will be a great deal.

Today I called my aunt Hortense to see if the name "Ames" rang a bell. "Yes, we're cousins to some Ames." She even met one of them. I know that some of Sylvester's descendants relocated to Chicago. She thinks that is where she met them. I never thought to ask her before. Duh!!!

The same thing happened with my Warren relatives. I've been looking and looking for traces of them before 1888. The only thing I could find were people with the same first names but with the surname Lanier. I emailed my cousin Juanita who is also researching the Warren line. She had information about them that I couldn't find. I was hoping she could tell me what were the records that she where she found the data so I could look them up while I was in D.C.  I told her of my dilemma and how I even believed they had changed their name. She emails me back that she found them under the name Lanier. Duh!!! She never mentioned this before to me in all our discussions.

So now I have a second source for two of my deductions. I'm very happy but I could have been happier sooner if I had just asked.

Here We Go A Sleuthing

Others may see this season as the time to be jolly. For me, it is a chance to get back to my hobby that I have neglected for too long. I feel like a knitter that has put down that baby bootie and lost some stitches. Got to pick them up again but it isn't that easy.

First order of things, I went to ancestry.com and looked up Napoleon. He still remains somewhat of a mystery. I looked at the 1910 census which is the last public place I can locate him so far. He dies some time before my grandfather goes to draft board for WWI. What I notice on the census is Felix Cotten. He is living next door. Everyone else living in the vicinity are relatives of Mary. Who is Felix? Napoleon's brothers' names are Hiram and Richard. Felix was born around 1867 and isn't on the 1870 census with Napoleon's immediate family but there has to be some kind of connection.

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.

Six degrees of separation

Another day of trolling the internet for data and I'm coming up with more and more coincidences. Coincidences -- "the occurrence of events that happen at the same time by accident but seem to have some connection." These following things do have a connection but are they pertinent?

Oscar Dears, Winnie Anderson and family are living a couple of lines down from Lucretia Dears on the 1870 Amite County, MS census. Lucretia Dears was married to William Carraway before marrying William Dears. William Carraway's brother was Bruce A. Carraway who was married to Lucretia (may be Letitia) Cotten. Lucretia was sister to Joseph R. Cotten. When the Carraways died young, Thomas L. Cotten was appointed guardian to their children for a short time. One of those children, Bruce M. Carraway, married Huldah Cain. The only surname I'm missing is Anderson. Could that be why my ancestors changed their name from Anderson?

It feels like I'm playing six degrees of separation here. Time and research will tell if it is only a game of coincidences or if it is a realconnection.

On the trail again

It has been two weeks since the International Black Genealogy Summit ended. I came back with renewed fervor. Then I went back to my job. But I am endeavoring not to let all that good information and zeal go to waste.

Working on a tip written in my previous blog, I looked up H.S. Anderson on the 1850 slave census for Franklin County in Mississippi. The "H" stands for Henry. I was pleasantly pleased to find that Henry was living next to Joseph R. Cotten in 1850. This is the same Cotten that I once thought was Winney's slave owner. There is a female slave and male slave listed under both Joseph's and Henry's name that correspond with the ages of Winney and her oldest son Hiram.

I googled Henry's name and found some minutes for Mt. Zion Baptist Church, Franklin County, Mississippi. Henry, Joseph and a few Cain's were members of the church in 1852. Now I'm getting excited.

Could this be the smoking gun for my ancestors? Of course, I don't know the answer to that yet. I have looked up several Andersons that I thought may be the slave owners. However, the coincidence of Joseph and Henry being neighbors is making me think this may be the right trail to follow.

Black Genealogy Summit

Wow! I didn't know it had been so long since I blogged. School started the last week of August, enrollment is way up, and I am far behind in grading papers. Those are the reasons not the excuses for me not writing.

But I'm back. Not just to blogging but from the first International Black Genealogy Summit that was held this past week in Fort Wayne, IN. It was a wonderful conference. I learned a lot and met some wonderful people. I am inspired and energized to get back to work.

However, I also learned one disturbing fact. I have been searching for my Cotten ancestors for years now. Cotten is my maiden name. Napoleon Cotten is my great grandfather. Several years ago, I learned that Napoleon's surname on the 1870 MS census was Anderson not Cotten. That threw me for a loop and I've been trying to recoup ever since. Well, I learned at the conference that not only was it common for surnames to change constantly, the reasons for the different surnames are numerous. This makes it even harder to track down my ancestors' beginnings.

I searched the Allen County library, the second largest genealogy collection in the U.S., for hours. I came up with nothing, zilch, nada. Then on the last hour of the last day, I talked to a lady who sat across from me in the library. I was helping her locate the MS files so I asked what were her surnames and who was she searching. Her counties were close to my counties. When I looked at her family group sheet, she had the name "Anderson" as one of her ancestors. After talking with her, she said she had come across lots of Cotten's that were owned by H.S. or H.R. Anderson in Franklin County. That name sounded familiar. I checked it right away but time was waning so I couldn't verify the information. I will.

I also found, after her urging, that my family was using the last name Cotten in 1890. I found this on the school records of Pike County by Serena Haymon. It was a small fact but hey, it was better than nothing.

The search goes on. I'm not giving up. Genealogical pursuits are what I love to do.

Oral Legends

Oral legends are the beginning points of most genealogical pursuits. We take them with a grain of salt knowing that they must be corroborated before the legend can become history. We hope that there is enough truth in the legend as we search for evidence.

I am following several family lines each with an oral legend. However, when it comes to my Alexander line, I have a wealth of oral legends and they all contradict each other.

The facts: John Alexander and his wife Catherine lived in Lincoln County, Mississippi with several of their children in 1870. According to the census, John was from Virginia and Catherine was from Maryland.

Oral legend as told to me by my aunt Hortense: John took the name Alexander as his surname because it was Catherine's and because he had some beef against his last slave owner whose surname was Huffman. There are Huffmans living close by on the 1870 census so it kind of made sense. Still, it is conjecture not fact.

Oral legend as told by Florence Octavia Townsend in her bio: "My grandfather, John was born in Liberia and captured and brought to this country when he was twelve years old. He was a slave on the Lambright plantation in Virginia. He was sold to the Huffman plantation in Alabama. He married another slave named Catherine (originally from India) on the Huffman plantation. During the Civil War he ran away and worked for the union forces. After the war he returned home and took his wife and children to Mississippi. Because a union officer named “Alexander” had impressed him he changed the family’s name to that of Alexander. He and Cahterine had twelve children, nine sons and three daughters." Catherine is identified as black not East Indian on the censuses. I have not been able to find a Lambright or Huffman plantation yet in the named states. I have not determined if the John Alexander that I located in the Civil War records is my ancestor or not. I am dubious that someone moved to Mississippi by choice. Still, these are not facts, just legend.

Now I have been told another story by another Alexander. She said as far as she knows John was always an Alexander who lived on a plantation in Virginia called Strouder (sic). She does not know how he got to Mississippi and she never heard of John being in the Civil War.

The one constant is Virginia in this story. The rest are loose strings hanging out on my ancestry tapestry. But this is what is fun about genealogy--being a detective in my own detective story.

Baclk in Indiana

I am back from short trip to Mississippi wiser but not much more informed. I learned that I need to go to the courts because the records that I need are not in the archives. I learned that it is going to take a lot of patience unearthing the data. I'm an information archaeologist. Discovery doesn't happen over night.

It is frustrating and disappointing but I am more determined than ever to find my ancestors. Whenever I google my great grandfather's name, the search only turns up my references. That doesn't help me but just think, it does turn up.

Road Trip

It's the Memorial Day Weekend, the unofficial start of summer. The thing most on my mind is getting out there and physically digging for my roots. Not literally, of course, but I am getting off my comfy chair and going into the archives and libraries of Mississippi and Tennessee.

Genealogy isn't a cheap hobby although the internet has made it more accessible. I had my own personal recession 5 years ago so I am looking for the most frugal strategies to make my trip possible. For example, this July I am taking a bus to Nashville and Jackson and McComb, Ms. I am buying my tickets 21 days earlier. My trip will cost me around $143 round trip! By traveling overnight I will save one night in a hotel. Of course, some may think I'm crazy going by bus. I look at as an adventure and a small price (really small price) that I pay for my hobby.

Unfortunately there are no bus stops near the cities I need to visit in Tennessee except for Newbern. It stops there at three am. That's not a good time to be stopping in a strange southern city. I do draw the line somewhere. The Koonce reunion is supposed to be in Tennessee this September and I will try to get ro some libraries and/or courts around during that time. I'm hoping to get enough new information at the archives in Nashville to update my book in time for the reunion.

All in all, I'm excited about my road trip. It will be interesting. No doubt.

Newberry Library

Last weekend I finally made the trip to Newberry Library in Chicago. I usually go about once every two years. It is a great research library, houses many rare maps and hosts excellent exhibits. However, I have never been very successful at finding new data there. This trip was no exception. The time passed by fast, of course. I was able to find some data in the Mississippi Soundex for marriages before 1926. It gave me a few leads on possible ancestors on the Cotten side--leads but no answers.

What I did find out through surfing after I visited the library is that Newberry is a Family Research Center. That means I can have microfilm sent there from the Salt Lake City Family History Library. Although there are two centers closer to me -- one in Griffith and another in Valparaiso, Indiana --their hours are very limited and their staff is small. I am thinking of making another sojourn to Newberry sooner rather than later once I designate which records they have that are pertinent to my family.

Dead Ends

I checked the slave census for Mississippi. According to the censuses, my Cotten family can't have been slaves on any Cain family farm in Amite or Franklin county. So I'm back to square one.

It may be as simple as was the case for many emancipated slaves--Winnie first took the name of her last slave owner, Anderson. The Andersons had very large plantations in Amite and numerous slaves. I will check the Amite records when I visit Mississippi. At least the Amite County court records weren't burned like Pike County's.

The other dead end is the trail of my great-great-great grandmother Amy. After a quick look at the Cherokee history, I found out there is practically no way Amy could have been a full-blooded Cherokee. It is true that there was a large presence of Cherokees in North Carolina and Tennessee where my Koonce relatives lived, so it is possible she could have been part Cherokee. However, enslaving tribal natives proved to be so dangerous that America stopped doing it by the 1820's. There is only a slight chance that Amy was full-blooded Cherokee since she was probably born in the 1820's.

I was wondering if her heritage had anything to do with the absence of her stories in our family's oral legend. This tangent deserves more research. I am finding out that there is a strange relationship between Cherokees and slavery. I wasn't aware of how many slaves were owned by native Americans until I watched the African American Lives 2. The documentary traced actor Don Cheadle's ancestors back to slaves owned by native Americans. It also stated that many black Americans claim to be "part Indian" but actually aren't.

At an early age I was told that I was part Indian and part Irish. Being young, I just accepted it as a fact. Now, as I research my history more, I question the possibilities. It could be true but I need proof.

Mysteries to Solve

I haven't been able to make much headway into finding my great-great-great-grandma Amy. I've been rereading a lot of material that I inherited from my aunt. I found something I missed from my first perusal. According to the oral legend, she was supposed to be a full-blooded Cherokee.

I don't know why I feel she abandoned her family. She could have died right after the Civil War. It's the absence of stories about her that makes me think she decided not to stay with Solomon.

I am also trying to find out more about my Cotten line. I want to know why they changed their name from Anderson to Cotten. Knowing why will make it easier to trace the family. I now have a new theory to disprove.

My great-grandfather Napoleon Cotten had a brother who chose the surname Cain. After googling the name Cain in the Mississippi archive, I came up with several families in Amite County, the same county where my family lived in 1870. Here's an excerpt from Cain, a book by Mildred and Margaret Ezell which I found interesting.

"Descendants of Isaiah and Polly (Butler) Cain: 1) Mary B. Cain, b 21 Nov. 1822 Amit. Co., d 8 Sep 1843, bur Zion Hill Cem., Amite Co.; m 5 Mar 1840 (Amite 3-81 by T W Pound J.P., George W. Carmack bondsman) Joseph Robertson Cotten, b 7 July 1818, d 17 Mch 1885, bur Cotten Cem., Fr. Co. MS (S32 T5 R5)."

Joseph and Mary had one daughter. Mary died young and Joseph remarried. Isaiah and Polly (sometimes called Mary too) raised Mary's daughter Mary Cotten, not Joseph. Joseph is also the father of Thomas Cotten by his second wife. This is the very same Thomas that lived next door to Ammon Cotten, Napoleon's son, on the 1900 Pike County census. Both Thomas and Ammon listed their profession as merchants. I found that too much of a coincidence. That was why I first thought Joseph was the slave owner of Winnie and her children. There had to be contact between the two families because of Mary Cotten.

In addition, I found a white Hiram Cain and a white Elizabeth Cain and a white Napoleon Whittington, a Cain cousin all in that family group in Amite County. These were my family's names too. I know that doesn't mean much by itself. These names could have been very popular during this time. But it has made me think about checking in a whole new direction.

What if my gr-gr-gr-grandmother Winnie and her children were originally on the Cain plantation? What if Winnie married someone named Anderson and he was not the father of her children? What if they were befriended by the Cottens after the Civil War? I know these are a lot of "what ifs." Hopefully, by following these "ifs" I will run across more family members and the answers to some of the mysteries.