Medical leave has given me time to catch up on genealogy. I decided to pass the time by researching my Goodger kinfolk who lived in the counties of Warren, Lincoln, Greene, Hancock, and Taliaferro, Georgia after 1800. While some Goodgers stayed in Georgia, my 4th great grandfather, Stephen Goodger, and his brother, Andrew Martin Goodger, did not, migrating first to Perry County, Alabama and then on to Tishomingo County, Mississippi by the mid-1840s. I know quite a bit about Stephen and Andrew after their migration west but wanted to learn more about their lives in Georgia. And boy did I!

It started with an image a descendant of Andrew’s shared with me on Ancestry. It was a screenshot of a newspaper ad from 1824 concerning a sheriff’s sale to be held at the Lincoln County courthouse the first Tuesday in October. Up for auction was a house and lot in Lisbon and, sadly, one-fifth ownership in a slave named Jack. In a nutshell, James Herring and Company was suing Andrew to recover unpaid debts against the estate of William Goodger, Andrew and Stephen’s older brother who had died sometime in 1819 (most likely) in Lincoln County. Andrew was identified as William’s executor. I know from annual tax lists that William owned no property of value the year before he died. Nada. Since Andrew was the executor of William’s questionable estate and he was responsible for his debts, James Herring did the next best thing… he went after Andrew’s assets. In the newspaper ad, Andrew was also identified as a legal heir of Hickerson Barksdale, and as such, owned one-fifth of Jack. The only logical conclusion is that Andrew had married one of Hickerson’s daughters, thus becoming his legal heir.

I knew from many, many trees on Ancestry that Andrew’s wife was Polly or Mary Barksdale, but I had no documentation of a marriage. And that’s where the trouble started. I found the will of Hickerson Barksdale which had been written in 1800 while he was living just across the state line in Abbeville County, South Carolina. In his will, Hickerson identified his five children. He had two sons, William and Stith, and three daughters, Phebe Stinson, Sarah Lowe and Jane Murray. (Hmm. Where’s Polly?) He also owned a young slave named Jack. This information aligned with the newspaper ad 24 years later. Hickerson’s probate records also included detailed accounts of the sale of his other assets and who purchased what. Near the end I found listed Andrew and his brother, William, having purchased a few items. Okay, clearly this was the correct Hickerson but none of the three daughters was named Polly or Mary. That would have to mean that one of three – Phebe, Sarah or Jane – had married Andrew after Hickerson’s death. Whatever she owned legally became his. I quickly found wills for Sarah who had died in 1826 and Phebe or Phoebe who had died in 1836. Both of them had grandchildren. (Interesting.) Okay, that leaves Jane. For the record, I’ve found no document proving Jane married Andrew … but she’s the only one left who could have made Andrew an heir of Hickerson. And I’ve found no wills for a Murray having a wife named Jane and ownership in Jack. There’s more research to do there, but it’s indisputable that James Herring was going after property formerly owned by Hickerson Barksdale.

But what about Polly Barksdale, who is, incidentally, widely accepted as the “Mary” living with Andrew in the 1850 census? (1850 being the first census in which every household member was enumerated.) I needed to understand how Polly came about. Again, Andrew’s descendant on Ancestry threw me a bone and pointed me to an 1823 lawsuit from Abbeville County naming Polly as a daughter and heir of William Barksdale and the wife of Andrew “Goocher.” Sadly, the lawsuit was devoid a dates and only mentioned Polly and Andrew once in establishing the number of heirs William had at the time of his death. (Yeah, I read the entire case which went on for days.)

Okay, so in his lifetime, Andrew was married to daughters of both William Barksdale and Hickerson Barksdale. I should also mention that Andrew was living in Abbeville County in the 1810 census near other Barksdales. Thus, it’s not a stretch that he’d taken two Barksdale brides. But, I want to focus on Jane for a moment. As mentioned, her sisters had grandchildren named in their wills in 1826 and 1836. Andrew would only have been about 19 when Hickerson wrote his will in 1800 naming his three married daughters. Was Jane considerably older than Andrew when they married? Was it considered scandalous?

Here’s a clue: in October of 1823, less than a year before the ad of September of 1824, Andrew was sued for unpaid debts by a different person, not James Herring. The sheriff delivered a copy of the complaint to Andrew’s residence. The county clerk included a note describing it as a “most notorious place of abode.” Yes, you read that correctly. Perhaps his marriage to an older Jane was salacious!

So, we’re left with Mary in the 1850 census. Who was she? Wife number three or a reconciled Polly done wrong? Because of the newspaper ad, we can conjecture that Andrew married Jane (maybe or if at all) after Polly. Polly was identified as Andrew’s wife in a lawsuit from 1823. She’s likely his first wife and perhaps his only wife. Perhaps Andrew was having an unseemly affair with Jane and the ad was meant to embarrass him into paying the debt! Andrew obtained 490 acres in Irwin County, Georgia in the 1820 land lottery —- far from Lincoln, yet the sheriff served him in Lincoln in 1823 at his “most notorious abode.” Incidentally, I can find no records of sales after the date of the auction indicating it ever took place. Perhaps the ploy to embarrass him worked. Is this the reason I can find no other records of him in Georgia after the 1824 newspaper ad? Perhaps he got out of town quickly and started over in Perry County, Alabama where he was living by the 1830 census.

Thus ends the research rabbit hole that is Andrew Martin Goodger.

Kenfolk: Trantham
Relationship: 4th great grand-uncle
Common ancestors: Andrew’s parents were my 4th great grandparents, Martin Goodger and Elizabeth, whose maiden name is sadly unproven.

I’ve had quite a bit of unexpected time on my hands recently so I decided to chase one of my ancestors through court records. My Goodger ancestors left Chesterfield County, Virginia sometime after 1799, following the death of my 5th great grandfather, Martin Goodger. His widow, Elizabeth, was left with 10 children, eight of whom were minors, and debt. We know from a lawsuit filed by James Lyle against the heirs of Martin Goodger the identities of the 10 children: William, Andrew Martin, Mary, Elizabeth, Nancy, Henry, Stephen, my 4th great grandfather, Susanna, James and Jordan.

Sometime after the lawsuit, the family packed up their belongings and headed to Georgia, where we find Elizabeth in 1805 tax records in Warren County. I knew from marriage records that Stephen had first married Fanny Bacon in Wilkinson County, Georgia in 1813, followed by my ancestor, Julia Veazey, in Greene County, Georgia in 1819. But from there, I knew nothing about Stephen’s life (save for a newspaper appearance in 1821) until he showed up in Perry County, Alabama in 1837. And, I also wanted to possibly understand why I haven’t been able to find him in the 1830 census.

Searching in Greene County resulted in nada. I’d almost given up hope until I looked at records for his brother, James, who was enumerated in Greene County in 1820 and Taliaferro County in 1830. Did he move or did the county move around him? And then I remembered an important lesson about genealogical research: understanding how and when counties formed is critical.

Taliaferro, which is pronounced “toliver,” was formed in 1825 from parts of five other counties. AHA! I’ll spare you the details but I found records of land Stephen purchased in Greene County prior to 1825 recorded in Taliaferro County after 1825. That was sheer luck! In all, Stephen owned about 170 acres which he then sold in February of 1830. Another AHA! This may explain why Stephen is missing in the 1830 census. The family was likely on the move when the census was undertaken.

Kenfolk: Trantham
Relationship: 4th great grandparent
Common ancestors: Stephen’s parents were Martin Goodger and Elizabeth, whose maiden name is sadly unproven, but often mistaken as Pankey – which doesn’t make sense because had Elizabeth Pankey been married to Martin at the time, she’d have appeared as Elizabeth Goodger and not Elizabeth Pankey in her alleged father‘s will – but I digress!

Have I mentioned that when I first became interested in genealogy I was shocked to hear folks who were much more experienced than I say things like “I’ve been doing family history for 30 years.” I remember thinking to myself – quite arrogantly in retrospect – “What is taking you so long?”

I get it now.

The farther back you go, the harder it gets. I am not ready to throw in the towel but good grief almighty.

For the last several months I have been racking my brain trying to unravel a mysterious DNA match whose name is Ann Sheldon. I have no idea if that’s her real name but she hasn’t bothered to respond to my repeated requests for info. So if she reaches out to me here to complain about my posting her name, I’ll happily remove it. Fat chance!

Anywho, Ann shares DNA with my dad and has more DNA matches in common than some members of his close family. Ann is in the 4th to 6th cousin range which is why that’s an usual number of shared matches.

After months of painstaking research I am able to group the shared DNA matches into one of three categories:

1. Descendants of Nathanial Sweat and Sarah Jarrell
2. Descendants of Grief Whittington and Rebecca Gilliam and other Whittingtons
3. Others – meaning I haven’t yet found a common ancestral couple or they have no trees on Ancestry

I believe I have solved group #1. If I travel up Nathanial Sweat’s tree two more generations, I find Lucy Turbeville, who is my 1st cousin, 9x removed. Lydia Turbeville was my 4th great grandmother and they both descend from Richard Turbeville so there’s one possible connection. But I am not convinced that is the only connection.

Like Ann, the shared DNA matches are in the 4th to 6th cousin range based on the amount of shared DNA. But having Richard Turbeville as the common ancestor puts them in the 8th to 10th cousin range. Thus my skepticism that Richard is the only connection.

Enter the Whittington matches. The folks who share DNA with my dad and Ann and descend from Whittingtons also share DNA with other descendants of my 5th great grandparents, Martin Trantham and his wife Massey, my favorite brick wall. The intriguing part of this is that the Whittingtons migrated from South Carolina to Amite County, Mississippi. The relevance is a bit convoluted but I’ll try to explain.

I have hypothesized that Martin Trantham, as a young man and veteran of the Revolutionary War, ventured into Mississippi while it was still under Spanish control — we know at least one Martin was there with three children – probably his father — but that he, Martin Jr, returned to South Carolina sometime after 1790 just in time to learn that he’d missed the deadline to file a land claim for military service rendered (fact). I have further hypothesized that he met Massey while in Mississippi and either married her there or back in South Carolina.

While Martin did not go back to Mississippi that I know of, his brother Robert did and settled in Amite County — which is where we also find the aforementioned Whittingtons.

Now, DNA does not lie but it’s not always forthcoming with the truth either. If Massey, or Martin for that matter, was related to the Whittingtons, which is what the DNA strongly suggests, and the Whittingtons are somehow related to the descendants of Lucy Turbeville, it means the following:

My 3rd great grandparents, Robert Floyd Trantham, and Rebecca Deason, whose mother was a Turbeville, were likely related. How closely related? I don’t know. Not a shocker, though, because families tended to move together and intermarry with one another. I may never know for sure but it sure is fun to speculate.

Kenfolk: Trantham
Relationship: Unravelling
Common ancestors: Yes

Happy American Independence Day!

The War of Independence took on new meaning for me when I started researching my ancestors. Beforehand, it was nothing more than a subject I had studied in school. Today, I have identified five ( proudly-confirmed) male ancestors who served in the Continental Army. In remembrance of their service to our country and with deep gratitude, here are their names:

1. James Joyce
2. Jonathan Stone
3. Joseph Greenwood
4. Martin Trantham (III)
5. Williamson “Wilson” Rogers

Just yesterday, I was perusing a collection of un-indexed records on Family Search. This quarantine has given me a lot of free time and it’s too hot outside to do anything else. Collections like these are usually hit or miss, more often they are more miss than hit.

But I got lucky. Buried in a collection of early public records from Shenandoah County, Virginia was a sales receipt from 1781. My 6th great grandfather, Daniel Hackney, was compensated for selling 325 lbs. of beef to the Continental Army.

I have no idea if they paid him market rates or if he cut them a deal; but, I do know that he helped feed the troops that fought for our independence. It’s a reminder that supporting the war effort did not always mean picking up a gun; and, I am sure there are countless others whose names have been forgotten but who contributed however they could.

I finally took 23andMe’s DNA test. I wasn’t really expecting any Earth-shattering revelations, having already tested with Ancestry, FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage and BritainsDNA. Not so.

23andMe has an interesting facet to their test results: they report on the amount of Neanderthal DNA you have. I assume they tested a bunch of Neanderthal remains and came up with a way of comparing your DNA to “theirs”. According to 23andMe’s results, I have 71% more Neanderthal DNA than other folks who’ve been tested. No surprise there. I like grilling big chunks of meat over an open flame.

That was, however, was not one of the Neanderthal traits 23andMe identified lurking in my genes. No, instead, I likely have a proclivity to hanging on to unused items, a.k.a. hoarding.

Ouch.

I suppose I should be grateful, looking around my office at stacks and stacks of books on genealogy, that I can now blame it on my genes. On the other hand, I think it’s a perfect trait for a family historian.

I am off to hunt for groceries now.