Following the Trail

Above is a photo of James and Jane Koonce and family.

Real life has been intruding but I'm doing fairly well at not getting off track when it comes to focusing on my research.

I was finally able to talk to a cousin I met during one of the Koonce family reunions. She answered one of my questions about the family oral legend. All of my life I have been told that part of my heritage was Cherokee. I remember looking years ago at a pictorial history of native Americans and noticing one lady looking so much like my grandmother. I thought that blood line was through the illusive Amy. However, I have almost eliminated that possibility due to the fact that the trend toward enslaving native Americans ended before Amy was probably born.

My cousin Barbara told me that my great-great grandmother Mary Jane Roberts Koonce was half Cherokee. Her mother, Judie, according to Barbara, was a full-blooded Cherokee. Here's the thing that surprised me. Mary Jane Roberts was not black at all. According to Barbara, her father, unknown, was white. Barbara says that Judie and Jane arrived in Tennessee in a wagon. They stopped because they were tired. Judie subsequently married Will Roberts who was not Jane's father. She also tells me that Jane's half-siblings were much darker than her.

Barbara didn't seem to know that Jane had an older brother named Joseph and younger sisters Partuna and Willie who were all said to have been born in Alabama. I have found them on the 1870 census in Haywood County, TN. There is also a one-year-old brother Edmond born in Tennessee. The elder Willie is also said to have been born in Alabama. Barbara's story seems to be that Judie and Jane came alone. She had surmised that they may have been part of the "Trail of Tears." After further research I know that this is impossible for Jane. The Trail of Tears for the Cherokee nation took place in 1838. Jane was born in 1861. Judie was born around 1825 so the legend may be about Judie and her mother (unknown). Barbara also recounts that Jane would often take trips to Hot Springs, Arkansas and some place in Oklahoma. She didn't know why but assumed there were relatives there.

This is another example of why you can't believe word for word the oral legends. You must investigate and verify. It is also an example of how when one question is answered another question is formed. I love genealogy!

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?

On the scent

I guess the family reunion has spurred me on to do more than I have been doing in my research. Thanks for the encouragement, Mavis and Mary.

I am, as we all are, the product of several threads in this genealogy quilt. I have chosen not to concentrate on just one thread but to keep pushing to discover as much as possible about all of them. Sometimes that is daunting, sometimes it is exhilarating.

For the past day I have been looking closer at Solomon, the patriarch of my maternal grandmother's family. I am fortunate to be in the possession of the receipt of his being sold in 1839/40 to Isaac Koonce. I was so enthralled with this relic that I didn't even look at the obvious. Solomon was between 14 to 19, depending upon the source, when he was sold to Isaac from the Nunn's estate. I made some weak attempts to discover Solomon's earlier years but now I am in earnest. I want to go back and possibly find his parents as well as his first mate Amy.

According to the census, Solomon was born in Tennessee, South Carolina or North Carolina. I know that the white Nunns and Koonces came from Lenoir County, North Carolina so I approached the moderator of the North Carolina genweb page, Taneya Koonce (so far no relations. I asked her if any Nunns had died in Lenoir County around 1839. No luck. Then I went to ancestry.com. I looked for Francis Nunn, David Nunn's uncle, who passed away around that time. Instead I found something that may be more promising. In 1816, Francis Nunn IV died in Williamson County, Tennessee. This Francis is not the uncle but is a distant cousin to David. What was more interesting is that Francis Nunn's will was not probated until his widow died. Marcy Nunn died in 1839 and there were slaves. Upon further research I learned she had lived in Gibson County, Tennessee. Parts of Gibson became Crockett County after 1870. Crockett County is where Isaac Koonce and David Nunn lived after 1870. Although I could not find Marcy on the 1830 census, I did find several of her children. Two of them, Sally Nunn Mayfield and Joel Nunn, owned a slave that could have been Solomon.

I think this a strong, possible lead. We shall see.

It's a Family Renuion

Every two years the Koonce family hold a family reunion hosted by different individual families. This year it is my mother's family's turn. Of course, I am on the committee and I am very excited about the upcoming event. It is to be held, as is our custom, during the Labor Day weekend. Although I'm excited, I still feel some anxiety and annoyance. I look at envy at those families that are able to attract hundreds of kin to attend their reunions. My family can't seem to get even 100. My grandmother had 11 children. Out of those 11, the family has grown to nearly 100 by itself. Yet, the interest in family has dwindled. My uncle says that we are fragmented and seems to have no optimism about that changing. I don't want to accept that.

I contracted the "genie" bug from an aunt who has since died. Unfortunately, no one else has gotten the addiction. It would make such a difference in my research if I had at least one partner to share it with me. So part of this year I will try harder to infect a few others of my family with my genealogy obsession and figure out how to entice more family members to gather together. (I'm not calling that my resolution but it sure sounds like it.) Any suggestions?

Loose Ends

Slowly I'm getting back into my addiction. School is closed this week so I have lots of free time. I finished my pictorial family history book which I plan to sell as a fundraiser for the upcoming Koonce family reunion. I looked up several names on ancestry.com to see if anything new had been added. There hadn't. It is frustrating that those brick walls haven't come down yet. It is unrealistic of me to wish they had but I still had that dream. That frustration is what led me to take my hiatus.

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.

Dead People Talking

Back in 2008 I blogged about conversations I wish I could have with dead people. One of my conversations concerned Charles Featherston. "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 (sic) he was white and she was a former slave or was it accepted?"

Would you believe that I have had that conversation? After renewing my research on the Featherston family, I came across someone on ancestry.com who was also researching Charles Featherston and Matilda, my great great grandmother. I almost couldn't contain my excitement. Of course, I contacted the person immediately. After several tries, I finally spoke with her.

I am not disclosing her name for privacy reasons but she was an individual who was related to Matilda's daughter Dollie's husband. She had photos of Dollie Melvina and her family. Even more important, she had interviewed Dollie's granddaughter. According to the granddaughter, Charles' family knew of the relationship and children between him and Matilda. After Charles died, his sister visited them often and sometimes contributed financially to the family. The sister believed that this was a love story! I didn't even ask the question. It was volunteered. See, my questions were answered posthumously.

However, there is a bone of contention here. Dollie's granddaughter disputed the love story idea. Maybe the love was only in Charles' mind and not Matilda. Maybe the children resented the situation. Consider the idea of a relationship between a slave owner and his slave. You can romanticize it but the fact remains one person owns the other. That is the definition of statutory rape.

But I am not dealing with that at this moment. It was just so fantastic to see the photos and hear new stories. It has energized me and opened up new avenues to research.

The photo is of Katie Featherston Wilkins Hardy Warren ? She may have married again. Katie is Matilda's daughter, sister to Dollie Melvina and my great grandmother. My grandfather looked like Katie. In the photo that I saw, Dollie looked like an elderly white woman. According to her grandson, she was often mistaken for being white when she was riding in the "colored" section on the train in Tennessee. The conductor would put her in the "white" section.