Alas, misfortune found its way to me as I tried to find a familial tie to Fortescue Turbeville who died under mysterious circumstances in South Carolina circa 1710. He may be related but he is not my ancestor.

There are two genealogical research principles I learned early on and I ignored both of them. Don’t skip generations and try to connect the dots to someone who might be your ancestor; and, always search for research done by others. In my defense, since my Turbevllle ancestors owned land in South Carolina not far from land purchased forty or so years earlier by Fortescue, I thought it was a safe bet that he might have been their ancestor and mine. Not so. It appears to have been an un-fortuitous fluke.

The Turbevilles of South Carolina, my ancestors, came from Virginia. I didn’t want to entertain the idea at first because I was fixated on Fortescue. But that all unraveled this weekend when I kept finding connections to Virginia. And so I stopped researching Fortescue and started searching for research done by others on the Turbeville family of Virginia. Good grief.

I realized my Fortescue fixation was a folly when I discovered that Francis Turbeville (a 9x great uncle) assigned power of attorney rights over land he had been granted in South Carolina from his residence in Brunswick County, Virginia. That happened in 1740. And then in 1805, my 7th great grandfather, James Turbeville, his mother, Rutha, and his siblings filed a deed for land they sold in South Carolina in the courthouse of the same Brunswick County, Virginia where Francis lived. Duh.

It didn’t take me long to realize the Turbevilles left their fingerprints all over Virginia. This is uncharted territory for me. And so, I must bid adieu to poor Fortescue of South Carolina and turn my attention northward.

Kenfolk: Tranthams
Relation: Turbo-charged
Common ancestor: the chances that Fortescue is not a relative are very slim given the last name. We’ll see.