Have you ever sat down to watch your favorite television show and as it begins, the main character is on his deathbed, or falling from an airplane through the sky, or is in the midst of some other catastrophe and you're like Wait a minute, did I miss something? And then, these words appear on the screen: 36 Hours Earlier. And then they go back in time to show you how the hero ended up in such a life-threatening situation before they reveal how he gets out of the mess.
Today's post is going to be something like that. So, picture this:
The sheriff stands on the courthouse steps, a crowd gathered below him. It's a muggy 82 degrees, and the men shuffle their feet impatiently as they wait for the auction to begin. The sheriff checks his pocket watch, and at precisely 10:00 a. m. he reads out the description of the property being auctioned off - the entire property of one Silas M. Blackshear . . .
About three weeks ago I started looking for a deed to show me when Silas Blackshear actually bought his land in Anderson County Texas. I had to go to a Family History Center because the only Anderson County records available online are in locked files on the FamilySearch website. So I started going through the index to deeds, which was transcribed (sigh!) and didn't find a single one listing his name in the Grantee column. I found one listing for his name on the Grantor side:
I saw that his land was sold at a sheriff's sale, so I thought, Oh great, another ancestor who didn't pay his property taxes! Fortunately, whoever transcribed the index got the information right for this one, and the record book was not missing from the online database, so it was easy to get a copy of the deed. And that, my dear family and friends, is when the plot began to thicken.
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You can click on the title and enlarge the images if you would like to read it that way, or you can just read my transcription. Here is the first section, which actually runs onto the second page:
B. F. DurhamSheriff
To Deed
J. J. Davis
The State of TexasCounty of Anderson
Know all men by these presents that whereas by virtue of a certain execution issued out of the District Court of Anderson County in favor of Wm G Lane and against Silas M Blacksher and James S Hanks on a certain judgement rendered on the 22nd day of April A D 1859 and directed and delivered to me as Sheriff of Anderson County commanding me of the goods and chattels land and tenements of the Said Silas M Blacksher and James S Hanks to make certain monies therein Specified I, B. F Durham Sheriff as aforesaid did upon the 29th day of August A D 1860 (?) on and seize all the right title and interest which the Said Defendant Silas M Blacksher on the 29th day of August A D 1860 had in and to the premises herein after described and on the First Tuesday in October A D 1860 within the hours prescribed by Law Sold Said premises at public vendue in the County of Anderson at the Door of the Court House thereof having first given public notice of the time and place of Such Sale by causing an advertisement thereof to be posted up at three public places of Said County one of which was the Court House thereof for Twenty days pervious to Said Sale and whereas at the Said Sale the Said premises were Struck off to J J Davis for the sum of One Hundred and twenty five dollars he being the highest bidder therefor and that being the highest Secured bid for the Same Now therefore in consideration of the premises aforesaid and of the payment of the Said Sum of One Hundred and Twenty five Dollars the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged I, B. F Durham Sheriff as aforesaid have Sold and by these presents do grant and convey unto the said J J Davis all the Estate right title and interest which the Said Silas M Blacksher had on the 29th day of August A D 1860 or at any time afterwards of in and to the following described premises “Viz”. . . .
I'm sorry about the complete lack of punctuation - I read somewhere that when transcribing an old letter or document, you are supposed to spell, capitalize, and punctuate the transcription exactly like the original. Well, the county clerk apparently didn't believe in punctuation, so that's what we've got to work with!
Okay. This was not a tax sale. It appears that great great (great) granddaddy and one of his friends (business partner? just some other guy in town?) were sued by one William G. Lane and lost the case, and the judge decreed that all of his land and property would be sold at auction to satisfy what he owed. Woah. His land. His house. His slaves. His barn, shed, slave shack, chicken coop, wagon, cattle, horses, tools, tack, furniture, you name it - everything on the premises was sold out from under him. The only things the family would have been able to keep would have been anything he could claim belonged to his children as a part of their inheritance from his deceased wife (I know, we haven't talked about that yet. It's coming up next time!)
Unfortunately, unlike our favorite television hero, Silas Blackshear would not manage to get out of his sticky situation. But how did he end up there in the first place?
Ten Years Earlier
The first we see of our Blackshears in Texas was in 1850. If you remember, Silas appeared on the agricultural schedule for Beat 5 - Plenitude, Anderson County, Texas. This is the same location in which the whole family appeared on the 1860 census, and also in which the land in the deed above was located. (Whether it was the exact same piece of land or not, we don't know for sure - as you will see in a bit, the land in the deed was more acreage than what was reported on the agricultural schedule.) The census records do not make it clear whether or not he actually owned the land he was farming in 1850. It allowed the name of the "owner, agent, or manager" to be recorded, so it is possible that Silas was leasing the land, or was a sharecropper.
Whether or not Silas was residing in Texas on a permanent or semi-permanent basis during the time the 1850 census was taken is also unclear. He was reported as the head of household in Arkansas, but the more census records I look at, the more problems I seem to find with them. Remember, the agricultural schedule was supposed to report what he harvested during the entire year prior to June of 1850, so it's possible that he was already in Texas as early as the spring of 1849, since he would have had to plant and grow anything that was harvested in the second half of that year. (Unless, of course, he had somebody else actually working the land for him.)
What is clear, however, is that the rest of the family was in Arkansas until at least November 13, 1850, since that is the day the census taker recorded their family's data. We don't know when they actually left Arkansas and joined him in Texas (or when they all left, if he was actually in Arkansas and had somebody else working the farm in Texas). They were definitely there by January of 1853, because that is when his son Simeon was born.
So, with a ten year gap before the next census date and no deed to show what Silas might have been up to, how are we going to find out what was going on prior to 1860? Well, let's start with the tax rolls.
In 1850, 1851, and 1852 there are no Blackshears on the tax rolls for Anderson County, Texas. (This makes me think that maybe Silas wasn't residing in Texas at all, or at least not full time during those years, despite being on the agricultural schedule in 1850.) In the years we are looking at right now, citizens were supposed to make their own report between January and May, indicating their status and property as of January 1st. Silas Blackshear first appears on the 1853 tax roll, which means he could have been there as early as spring of 1852.
Let's see what the 1853 tax rolls show us about him:
Here are the tax records for the next four years:
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Well, these all look pretty much alike, don't they? Still no land, still no property. In 1858, though, things start to get interesting.
Silas is actually on two different pages in the 1858 tax book, neither of which appear to actually be for 1858:
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So what does this page tell us about Silas Blackshear? It tells us that in 1856, he still didn't own any land. He did, however, have two slaves, three horses, and some oxen and hogs, all worth $2050. In 1857, he was reported as owning 1004 acres of land, with a value of $1255. And in addition to the slaves, horses, oxen, and hogs, he also had 15 head of cattle. Not too shabby. Those 1004 acres covered a square mile and a half!
Now look at the second page. This one says that it is also for the years 1856 and 1857. The top of the page lists people owning land in other counties, or residing in other counties - if you look at the heading you can see that it was changed and then crossed out - apparently the assessor didn't know what he was doing. I didn't even notice at first, probably because I was focusing on looking for Silas' name, but the whole bottom portion of this page has two big X's across it. It actually says exactly the same thing as the first page, which, by the way, was filled out by a different assessor.
Funny thing, though, there is no page that shows Silas for 1858. Huh. At least now we know when he acquired his land. (Oh, and who the original owner was. Maybe I can go through the deed index again and actually find the deed now.)
So, how about 1859?
Once again, we see Silas on two separate pages:
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On the second page, we see Silas listed as "Guardian for Children." This is where the two slaves were listed as property. So we know that Amelia Virginia's mother had already died before January 1, 1859, and the slaves were apparently owned by her, since we see them belonging to the children now, and not Silas.
We are going to take a pause from the tax rolls now, because we have made it to 1859 - and April of that year is when the judgement against Silas was pronounced. Here is a copy of the index page in which the case is listed:
This index actually shows two cases against S. M. Blackshear and J. S. Hanks, brought by three different people. The deed we saw above was for the second case, brought against them by William Lane. What was the connection between Silas and Mr. Hanks? I don't know. The 1860 census records say that Hanks was a very prosperous farmer; the 1850 census has his occupation listed as merchant. I found some sites online that said he was a Colonel in the U. S. (and later Confederate) Army, was an officer in the Masonic lodge, was a trustee on the board of the Mound Prairie Institute (the private school in Anderson County prior to public schools being established), and was a surveyor and later, state legislator. I also discovered that he co-owned a steam powered foundry (and sawmill?) in the Plenitude area (the records are really unclear on this point). And, while looking through the index to deeds, I noticed that his name came up a lot. But what was his connection to Silas Blackshear and what did they do to anger not one, but three different people, none of whom show up in the 1860 census records for Anderson County?!?!
Let's look at the first case:
(If you want the original document in its entirety, click on the title.) This doesn't really tell us anything, other than that the plaintiffs were supposed to post money to cover the cost of the lawsuit. If you notice, these two guys were suing J. S. Hanks twice, once with Silas Blackshear and once with another person. The top of the page had this dated as the Spring Term of 1859. That's all, so we don't know how long the case dragged out before the judgement on April 22nd.
And then, the conclusion of the case:
Anderson County
Civil Court Minutes, 1859
To be honest, I was very disappointed by this. It tells us that Silas Blackshear was served notice to appear in court, but that he didn't show up, causing him to lose the case. The judgement was that his assets be liquidated to cover the amount that he and James Hanks owed - $359.07 plus 10% interest and all court costs. What it doesn't tell us is why he owed that money. Did he and J. S. Hanks take out a loan for a business venture? Did they get a mortgage together to purchase land or equipment? I'm guessing that this doesn't tell us because it is just the minutes, not the actual case papers. Unfortunately for us, when whoever it was who made the decision of what records to put on microfilm, they chose to only do the case papers dealing with divorces, guardianship, partitions of estates, naturalization, and a couple of other things, but not cases where people were just suing each other over business transactions. I'm guessing that the original case papers might still be in the Anderson County court house archives.
And here is the second case:
Okay, just another order for the plaintiff to put up costs.
And the conclusion to this one:
Anderson County
Civil Court Minutes, 1859
Once again, Silas and Mr. Hanks failed to show up in court and therefore lost the case, with the judgement being a liquidation of their assets to cover their debt of $629.63 plus 8% interest plus court costs. (And since I didn't put the whole page up, you didn't get to see the fact that Mr. Hanks actually received the same judgement on three separate court cases brought by W. G. Lane, with three separate co-defendants on the same day!)
I tried to find out something more about the three men who were the plaintiffs in these cases, and would you believe, I couldn't find anything at all about any of them anywhere in Texas! Also, the court minutes say they appeared "by their attorney." This makes me think that they were out-of-towners who came in and offered loans.
So, all together, Silas owed (together with J. S. Hanks) $988.70 plus interest for who knows how many years. And all of his property sold at auction for $125. All of his property, which according to his estimate on the 1859 tax rolls was actually worth $3,520 (and how much do you want to bet that was a low-ball figure?). When I first saw that his property sold for so little, I was like, I would have been outraged! But then again, it could have been some consolation after losing everything he owned that the investors didn't get back what they loaned him in the first place!
Okay, so Silas had everything sold at auction. No triumphant hail Mary salvation for him. So then what? Well, 1860 rolls around and he is still in Anderson County, still farming, and as far as we can tell, maybe even still on the same piece of land:
In 1860 we see Silas Blackshear with the exact same piece of land, but now with a value of $3,612 - more than double what it was valued at the year before. We also see that the slaves were under his name alone instead of as guardian for his children. In case any of you forgot - just like I did even as I was writing this (ha!) - even though the court case was decided in April of 1859, for some reason the property wasn't seized until August 29, 1860, and the auction didn't take place until October. That is why we see him with all of the same property!
It is also why, on the 1860 census, which was recorded a mere eight days before the sheriff seized his assets, he was still showing a value for land and property as well. So, at least he and his children were not kicked off their land for more than a year after the judgement. I would think that would have given him time to figure something out. Let's see what the 1861 tax rolls show:
No land, but still about the same number of horses and cattle, and about two-thirds of the value in personal property. So he didn't lose everything. Or, he was able to buy some of it back from the guy who won the auction (or he sneakily moved his livestock off of his property before the sheriff came and seized everything "in and to the premises" on August 29th). Maybe he was even able to lease back the land and house so they didn't have to move. In any case, it doesn't seem to have been a complete and utter disaster for the family. (I just discovered that I didn't highlight this properly - the line just below shows him as guardian of the children, still with the two slaves.)
Now for 1862:
Still no property, no horses, the same number of cattle, some sheep, and one slave, but now the slave was listed as his own property, not as belonging to his children's estate. He must have sold one of the slaves for some reason.
1863 is the last year we see Silas Blackshear on the tax rolls for Anderson County:
1863 had a weirdly abbreviated form where they tried to squeeze two pages worth of information on one page. This means that they lumped the value of all property together. We can still see that he didn't own any land, but he reported a total property value of $3,195 which was considerably more than the year before. Almost as much as he had before his assets were seized, in fact, so I don't know how he managed that!
And then, the whole family pretty much drops off the radar until the children are grown. And it's not just because the next several years are missing from the records - they're not. Silas Blackshear just isn't there. Most people assume that he disappears because he died, which then leads me to ask a whole lot of new questions. But we'll get to that another day.
And I know that we never looked back at the second part of the deed I showed you at the beginning of this post - it gives a legal description of exactly where Silas Blackshear's land was located, which means we would have to switch gears and look at more maps, and this post has already gotten pretty long, so I think I will just make that into a little bonus post that I will put up next week.
- Therese
By the way, all of these documents will eventually be put up on the Blackshear document page, but if you would rather download them now, you can copy the highlighted version by right-clicking the image itself, or download the original by left-clicking on the title underneath! (Likewise, you can get the cropped version by clicking on the image - the ones that come from two different pages can have the entire page downloaded by clicking on the page number in the title.)
Update: Some of the conclusions drawn in this post later turned out to be incorrect. The mistakes are corrected in subsequent posts, along with an explanation and documents showing how the mistake was discovered.
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