Every once in a while I'll decide I should probably update my tree on Ancestry.com. So I'll pull up a person and check out other people's trees to see if they have discovered anything I've missed. Sometime I find some fantastic new stuff. And sometimes I find a lot of jumping to conclusions.
For example, the 1900 census for some reason named W. C. Cheatham's wife as "Lizzie." I have no idea what that was all about, because the names and ages of the children were all correct. Now, it just so happens that there was a W. C. Cheatham, one generation younger, in Waco, Texas, who just so happened to have a wife named Lizzie. So every once in awhile I'll come across somebody who has attached their records to our W. C. (never mind that most of those are dated after he left Texas).
Now, I get how this happens. Sometimes you see that someone has the same person in their tree as you do, so you just transfer everything over. And sometimes, you just aren't paying a whole lot of attention to the details. And sometimes, in the midst of your research, you come across something that may be right, and you are afraid you will never find it again, so you attach it just in case and then never go back to verify if it makes sense. And then, sometimes you are trying to solve a mystery, and you gather a whole bunch of clues that seem to make sense, and so you think you have it all figured out . . . only to find one little piece of evidence later that calls it all into question.
I had a couple of days back in September that were kind of like that.
For years now, ever since I started putting Blackshears into my Ancestry tree, there has been a nagging question in the back of my mind: What happened to Amelia Virginia and her family after the 1860 census?
Over the years I have found new documents that give some clues, but I've also found documents that have thrown a monkey wrench into my theories. Now that I am really trying to write the Blackshear story, it has become a sort of pressing issue for me. So I finally decided to really dig deep to try and come up with an answer.
Everyone and their brother who were researching our Blackshear line knew that Amelia Virginia's mother had died by October of 1858. (We have now confirmed that she died in the year 1857.) However, it appears that none of those people actually read the probate case files that they attached to their tree as evidence, because if they had, they would have known that Silas Blackshear was still alive in October of 1862, and they wouldn't have been recording his death date as August of 1860.
So what happened after that? Was October 1862 the last entry in the probate case because Silas had died at that time? For years, that is what I assumed (conclusion #1). But what if he hadn't?
If you read my posts about W. C. Cheatham, you will remember that he and Amelia Virginia married in Robertson County in 1871. While working on that post, I read through the entire 1870 census for Robertson County with no luck finding either one of them. So now, here I am talking about Amelia Virginia's family, and the mystery just keeps nagging me. How did she even end up there in the first place? What happened during those missing eight years?
Silas Blackshear appears for the last time on the tax rolls for Anderson County in 1863:
He was shown as having property with a total value of $3,195, none of which was actual land. He was not listed as holding any of the property as guardian of the children, which is strange, because Amelia was only fourteen years old, Simeon was ten years old, and Harrison was seven - all still minors. And in order to have property with that high of a value, he must have still had at least the one slave that he reported on the previous year's tax roll.
Then, in 1864, he is gone, never to be found again. (Well, not by search tools anyway, and not in the obvious places that I've been looking. For some reason none of our family members were buried in city cemeteries, and if they were, they were either given a wooden marker that has long since disappeared or something happened to their stone. Whatever the reason, I have yet to find anybody who wasn't buried in Arizona!)
So, did they all move away? Did Silas die and somebody was given custody of the kids?
I assumed that if they had moved away, it would have been to Robertson County, since that is where Amelia Virginia turns up in 1871 (conclusion #2). I searched the tax rolls there, and although I found a few Blackshears, none of them showed up until 1871, and none of them were Silas. That means that, either they did not move there when they left Anderson County, or Silas had died and an unknown guardian took in the children.
So obviously, my next step was to try and find out if a guardian had been appointed by the courts. I figured that Anderson County would be the best place to look. I went through the indexes for the probate and District Court records (Minutes, records, I don't know. Whichever there were indexes for!) and didn't find anything. I scanned through the entire book from the end of 1863 through 1864. I still didn't come up with anything.
I did keep seeing a Blackshear name over and over again, though, beginning in 1866: L. A. Blackshear. And guess what? In 1864, the first year that Silas was missing from the tax rolls, a Mrs. L. A. Blackshear shows up, living in Anderson County, but owning land in Leon County. Maybe Silas had remarried, and his new wife just took custody of the children without it even going through probate (conclusion #3)?
Luckily, the Anderson County marriage records are all online! I didn't find a marriage for Silas Blackshear in the index, so I decided to look through, page by page, for all of the marriages beginning in 1859 and running through 1866. I still didn't find him. So I began to rethink my idea of a marriage. I mean, if he was already "old and infirm" back in 1858 and had lost his land and who knows how much other property in 1860, was he really an eligible bachelor? (Not to mention the fact that he had five children still at home!)
I had found several other Blackshears in the index, though. So I thought, maybe one of those people was a distant relative who took them in. After all, no other Blackshears were in any records for Anderson County until after Silas disappears. It would be a logical conlcudion (#4!) that their arrival had something to do with our Blackshear children needing a guardian, right?
I decided to look them up on Ancestry.com and discovered that nearly every single one was black (they had married after the Civil War ended). There was one who wasn't, though, and he was named R. K. Blackshear. Maybe either he or the Mrs. L.A. took the children in? After searching numerous online trees and consulting the Blacksheariana, I discovered that he was Rufus King Blackshear, the son of William Blackshear, who was the son of Moses Blackshear, who was the brother of Jacob Blackshear. That means that his father and Silas had been first cousins. Now, that branch of the family had settled in Leon County when they arrived in Texas, which just so happens to sit right next to Anderson County. Hmmmm. The tax rolls said that Mrs. L. A. Blackshear owned land in Leon County. So maybe she was a cousin, not Silas' wife after all! Maybe Silas had died, and those were the closest living relatives, and so somebody sent them off a letter, and one (or more) of them came over and took the children in.
After more searching, I discovered the following bits of information: R. K. Blackshear had a sister who never married named Eliza Anderson Blackshear. (Maybe she went by Liza and that was our L. A. Blackshear? Well, that doesn't work, because the tax rolls called her "Mrs.") R. K. also had a brother, who married a woman named Lydia A. Webb. They had two children, both of whom died in infancy, and then he died, leaving her a widow. Perfect - there is our Mrs. L. A. Blackshear! And since she was a childless widow at the time (she did remarry in 1869), she was a perfect candidate to take in someone else's children. Not only that, but apparently that branch of the family was pretty wealthy at the time, which explains why this woman showed up so often in the court cases getting judgements against people who owed her money!
Now, you might be asking, why wouldn't she have just sent for the children and settled them in her own home in Leon County? Yeah, I asked myself the same question. Maybe, since this was around the end of the Civil War, they knew they couldn't keep up their plantation in Leon County, and moved to the Anderson County side of the Trinity River. (Apparently, at some point they had two plantations, one on either side of the river.) Or maybe they had to go through the guardianship process before they could remove the children from Anderson County? Of course, I didn't find any mention of that in the court record, but maybe, since there was no property, it didn't actually go through the probate courts. Since I was desperate to figure out what had happened, and this was the best idea I'd come up with, I was willing to overlook that little problem. (See how that happens?!)
As it turns out, I wasn't ready to overlook that problem after all. It just really bothered me that I didn't have any proof!
So, a couple of months later, I put on my thinking cap and tried to come up with any idea of what else could have possibly happened. And then it dawned on me: What if Silas died and the minor children were taken in by one of the older sisters? By 1864, Samantha would have been about 29 years old, Melvina about 26, and Louisa about 23. It makes perfect sense that Amelia Virginia and her younger brothers would have lived with any of those sisters who were married with a husband to support them. (Of course, Seaborn would have been around 22 by that year, but he had enlisted in the Confederate Army so I didn't consider him as an option.)
If you remember, after Samantha died, Melvina married her widower, John Rogers. Maybe if I traced his whereabouts, I'd be able to find some indication that the children were indeed in his household.
So. . . . back to the tax rolls. Remember, Silas last appeared in the Anderson County rolls in 1863. I checked, and John Rogers was also there in 1863. In 1864, there were a ton of entries for "the estate of" and "guardian of," presumably due to the Civil War. John Rogers was still there in 1864, even though Silas was not. This means that Silas could have died or moved away, or that he simply did not report any property (and since he did not own land anymore, he probably would not show up on the unrendered rolls). By 1865, John Rogers is also gone (permanently) from the Anderson County tax rolls.
That wasn't particularly helpful, was it?
Luckily, the marriage records for John and Melvina are online. And guess what? They were married in Coryell County on January 30, 1865. See?
Coryell County Marriage Record:
John Rogers & Tabitha Melvina Blackshear
In case any of you have forgotten, back in my post about the Scarborough vs. Blackshear et al case we discovered that Silas' death had been reported to the courts by the Fall Term of 1865, and by the Spring Term of 1866, it was suggested that Samantha had also passed. This came after four and a half years of not being mentioned in the minute books at all.
Maybe they all moved to Coryell County together, and then, while living there, Silas and Samantha both died, and then Melvina married John Rogers and they kept the younger children. Maybe John (who had two children of his own) and Melvina decided that that would be a beneficial arrangement for everyone.
I figured I could test this theory by looking in the tax rolls again (I love those things!). Here is what I found:
Well, look at that. S. M. Blackshear was living in Coryell County, Texas in 1864. I haven't come across any other Blackshears with the initials S. M. in Texas other than his son, who would have only been 14 years old (okay, and some little girl born in 1860), so yeah, I'm 90% sure that this is our guy.
John Rogers also showed up in the tax rolls for Coryell County in 1864, even though he was still on the rolls for Anderson County that year. (Remember, they had about a five-month period beginning in January in order to report, and they were supposed to report their status as of the 1st of the year.) So now I am 98% sure that the "S. M. Blackshear" on this page is Silas. Both he and John Rogers reported no land and very little property in Coryell County, which implies that they might not have been living there very long.
(And on a side note, we can see that Silas still had one of his slaves, and $1600 in Confederate treasury notes (yikes!), which is waaaaay more than anyone else on this page of the tax rolls.)
In 1865, John Rogers was still on the tax rolls for Coryell County, but Silas was absent. I am taking this to mean that he probably died some time during the second half of 1864, even though the court minutes in Anderson County don't note his death until the fall of 1865.
When I look at records like these, I always like to check a year or two before and after the dates I think I will find our ancestor, just to cover my bases. (I mean, if that S. M. Blackshear starts showing up again, it's probably somebody else.) And guess what I found for 1866? John Rogers was still there, but take a look at this:
Texas, County Tax Rolls
Coryell County: 1866
(John Blackshear, Freedman)
In 1866 we find a "John Blackshear, Freedman." Do you remember the names of the two slaves who were mentioned in the probate case? Peters and John. The tax rolls show that Silas brought one slave with him to Coryell County. Then, on December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment freed the slaves. And then, on the 1866 tax rolls, there is a former slave by the name of John Blackshear listed. That's a pretty big coincidence, don't you think? I am now 99.99999% sure that Silas Blackshear didn't fall off the records in Anderson County after October 1863 because he died, but because he moved to Coryell County at the end of that year, and then died some time in the second half of 1864.
Woohoo! (Not that he died, but that I finally solved the mystery of what happened to him!)
I think this calls for another map.
Texas Counties
You can see Anderson County marked in yellow. Coryell County is marked in blue, right next to Lampasas County, which is actually quite a distance from Anderson County - about 160 miles! Assuming that the family was traveling by ox-drawn cart (Silas owned oxen in 1859, the last tax roll to provide space in which to record miscellaneous property), they could have traveled ten to fifteen miles per day. That means it would have taken them a minimum of ten days to make the trip. Assuming that they had sold most of their belongings before the move (it would explain the high value of Confederate notes he reported) and were traveling by horse-drawn wagon, they could have moved as fast as 20 miles per day (if they had a good trail), which means the trip still would have taken more than a week. I wonder what was in Coryell county to entice them to move there.
As happy as I am to have figured out what happened when the family disappeared from Anderson County, we are still left with the mystery of where the children went after Silas died.
So here's what I've been able to gather:
- According to the family trees online, Tabitha Melvina and John had six children. The first, John, was born in February of 1865/1866 in Coryell County. (His death certificate says 1865, but his parents were barely married eight days before his supposed birth, so I think he remembered the year wrong. The 1870 census shows an age that indicates he was born in 1866.)
- The second child, James Irvin, was born in 1867 (I haven't found any evidence to indicate the place yet).
- The third child, William Thomas, was born in August of 1870 in Johnson County.
- All of the remaining children were born in Johnson County.
- The tax rolls are not at all helpful: All of the last names were cut off the "R" page for the 1867 Coryell County rolls. I found no Blackshears and no John Rogers there in 1868. As for Johnson County, I found no Blackshears and no John Rogers for 1868, and the 1869 and 1870 rolls were completely unreadable.
- John and his family do show up on the census in 1870, though, living in Johnson County, but they do not have any of the Blackshear children listed in their household.
So Tabitha Melvina and John had moved to Johnson County, Texas by 1870 at the latest. If the Blackshear children had been living with them, how did Amelia Virginia end up in Robertson County in 1871? And what happened to her brothers?
I tried looking for Louisa, thinking maybe she had gotten married and taken in one or more of the three younger children, but there are no records of any kind for her after the 1860 census (well, other than the court records from Anderson County that we have looked at). I couldn't find a marriage record for her, so either she died before getting married or her marriage record was lost. Or, her name was spelled so wrong that it isn't coming up on the search tools (I tried Louisa and Sophama, and just Blackshear)! If she did get married, without a record I don't know what her married name would have been, which means there is no way to look for her in the census records either.
Since that was a complete dead end, I decided to try to trace the boys. After about five hours of looking through tax rolls, and census records, and deed indexes, and marriage books, and online family trees, I managed to collect a whole mess of information. And by mess, I don't just mean a lot. I actually mean a mess. I am going to try to explain it to you in a way that makes at least a little bit of sense.
Let's start with Seaborn. Remember, he had enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1861. I couldn't find any actual evidence of how long he served (his Find a Grave page says until 1864), but I figured that when he was discharged, he would have gone wherever the rest of his family was. He would have been about 23 years old in 1866, which is old enough for him to be on the tax rolls, but I couldn't find him anywhere until 1871. In that year, he shows up in Hill County, which is just below Johnson County (marked in light purple on the map above - the tax rolls there are missing for 1868-70). He was not on the census for Hill County in 1870, though, even though his wife's family was.
This is one of the places where things become a mess - his wife was named Sarah Ince, and she would have been 27 years old that year. Her family was living in Hill County in the household of John Stockton, who had a 27 year old wife named Sarah. Some online trees assume that that Sarah was the Sarah who married Seaborn, but according to the 1900 census, Seaborn and Sarah were married in 1869, one year before the 1870 census. I don't think the Sarah Stockton in the household was actually Sarah Ince, especially because the birth place listed is incorrect. One of Sarah's older brothers was living in Johnson County as early as 1868, and by 1871, she had three male relatives living there.
So, I say all this because maybe Seaborn lived in Johnson County and he met Sarah in either Johnson County or next door in Hill county, got married in either of those two places (marriage records for Hill County aren't available until 1873, and marriage records for Johnson County are lost for the years 1867-1870), and didn't actually move to Hill County until sometime after the 1870 census was recorded.
It's a plausible scenario. Maybe Seaborn even came back from the war while the family was in Coryell County, and they all moved to Johnson County together. I didn't find him on the 1870 census there either, but I didn't find him on the 1870 census anywhere, and each county that I've checked appears to have pages missing from the records.
Now let's look at Simeon Marshall. 1872 was the first year that he was old enough to be on the tax rolls, and he shows up right on schedule in Hill County. However, he was actually married in May of 1871 in Johnson County. And guess who he married? Elizabeth Ince, the sister of Seaborn's wife, Sarah. This lends credence to the idea that all of the boys were in Johnson County prior to 1870.
Both Seaborn and Simeon remained in Hill County through the turn of the century, and Tabitha Melvina had also moved there by the year 1900.
Now for Harrison. He would have been old enough to be taxed in 1875, and in that year he also was listed on the Hill County tax rolls. He remained there until some time in 1877, then disappeared between 1878 and 1881, and then turned up in Taylor County, where Amelia Virginia had moved with her husband, W. C. Cheatham, at the very end of 1879.
Things get a bit messy in the records during this time, because he was married in Coleman County in 1885, and his first child was reportedly born there in 1887, even though he is listed on the resident tax rolls in Taylor County during those years (there are no tax rolls for Coleman County after 1886, but I didn't find him there in any years prior to that). If you look back at the map, you'll find Coleman County right at the southeast corner of Taylor County, so maybe it was another case like we had with W. C. and A. D. Cheatham where they actually lived and farmed in one county (or state!) but the closest town was across the border. And, to make things even more confusing, the tax rolls show him on the unrendered list for 1887, being the original owner of 160 acres, but the records on the Texas General Land Office website show his brother, S. M. Blackshear, as being the person who had a 160 acre land grant in Taylor County instead! Anyway, Harrison bought land in Coleman County in 1889 and he appears to have remained there until his death in 1897.
I think it is logical to assume that, before Harrison became an adult, he was living in the same place as Simeon, which seems to have been Johnson County. This fits with the scenario that Tabitha Melvina and her husband took the children in after Silas' death (or maybe they were already living in the same household before he died). It would also fit with the scenario that Seaborn was also in Johnson County (assuming we want to ignore the fact that he wasn't on the tax rolls between 1866 and 1868) and that his younger siblings were living with him. Amelia Virginia and Louisa would have both been old enough to be keeping house by then.
Well, that's all fine and dandy, but one glaring question remains: How in the world did Amelia Virginia end up in Robertson County?
I suppose it is possible that Seaborn went from Coryell County to Robertson County, taking the unmarried children with him, and lived there for a few years before joining their older sister in Johnson County. But then why would Amelia Virginia stay behind and all of the boys leave? Who would she have lived with? Maybe Louisa got married either before or after the move, and Amelia Virginia stayed with them, ending up in Robertson County by 1871. Maybe times were hard and she had been hired out as a live-in housemaid or nanny. Honestly, I have no idea. Whatever happened to separate them, it is obvious that they were keeping in touch with one another - otherwise why would Harrison eventually end up in Taylor County, the same place as his sister, who had been living in two other counties in the years prior to ending up in a newly created county? (The mail was running to pretty much every town in Texas by this time.)
Unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever be able to solve this mystery - I don't have enough clues to even begin to draw a conclusion, faulty or otherwise. So I guess it's just going to have to remain one big question mark. (Sigh. . . you know how much I hate that, right?)
In my next post, we'll just pick Amelia Virginia up after she's married, and I'll share a few documents and some other fun stuff that I managed to gather after I wrote about her and W. C. (And, if anyone wants copies of any of the documents I used to trace her siblings, you will be able to find the minimally edited or unedited versions on the Blackshear page when I finally put it up.)
- Therese
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